What Will People Say? A Novel
abhor any open indiscretion, for my ten commandments are condensed to
two: 'Don't be indiscreet!' and 'Beware of what people will say!' What
more could a husband ask?"
Forbes tossed his hands in despair. He gave her up. She and her creed
were beyond his understanding. "A fine code, that!"
"It is the morality of half the world, Harvey, rich or poor, city or
country," Persis declared. "The crime consists in being found out."
"Do you realize what you are saying?" Forbes demanded, eager to shield
her from her own blasphemies. But she ran on unheedingly.
"Even I have a heart; and why should I play the hypocrite before you of
all men? Before Willie Enslee? Yes; he is my husband. Before the gossipy
world? Yes; it is the one duty I feel I owe that man. Ours was no
marriage for love."
"But it was a marriage," Forbes urged, stoutly, and rose to escape.
"Yes, but after all, what is a marriage?" Persis demanded, like a Pilate
asking, "What is truth?" She rose to her feet, but paused as ardor swept
her headlong. "Do you think it possible for any woman to live her life
out without a lover? She may cherish the memory of a dead man or a
faithless man; or throw her affection away on a fool or a rake; she may
keep it a secret almost from herself, but never, never, never believe
that any woman can exist without some man to pay worship to."
Forbes could only attempt a weak sarcasm, "Is it impossible that a woman
should love her husband?"
In a daze he fell back to his seat, forgetful that he left her standing;
but she was too much engrossed with her great problem to heed this; she
went on, earnestly:
"Any woman may love her husband for a little while; or in rare case for
a lifetime, especially if he beats her or is a drunkard." Then her
unwonted oratory on abstract subjects palled on her. She came back to
the concrete instance with an abrupt, "But Harvey, Harvey, why should we
be wasting time talking about love?" She bent over him, but he did not
even look up at her. He shook his head helplessly.
"I wasn't bred in your world. I can't understand a thing you have said."
His aloofness of manner gave Persis a sense of loneliness, and she
wailed to him as from afar, though she sank down close to him. "But
can't you understand how fate has made a fool of me? I married for
wealth and to cut a wide swath. Well, I have the wealth. I can cut the
swath. But I've found that my ambition isn't enough, any more than your
soldier ambitions were enough. Harvey, I'm lonely, terribly lonely. My
heart is empty; it is like an old deserted house, and a ghost haunts it,
and the ghost is--I don't have to tell you who the ghost is?"
"And you know," Forbes echoed, "what ghost haunts me."
Persis was melted by his kinship with her suffering. She leaned so close
to him that her very perfume appealed to him as the perfume wherewith
one flower calls to another in the noontime of desire. And she said:
"Harvey, I'm going to tell you a terrible secret that I've hardly dared
to tell myself: I--I crossed the ocean to find you!"
He was suffocated with longing for her, and horror of her. He gasped,
"My God! on your honeymoon!"
Everywhere in that day there seemed to be a band somewhere playing a
turkey-trot. There was such a band here, and such music was to be
expected; but there was something whimsical about the fact that the tune
this band struck up now was a rag-time version of "Mendelssohn's Wedding
March."
Persis was so eager to be in Forbes' arms again, and the dance was so
ample an excuse, that she smiled into his mask of horror. "We haven't
danced for ever so long."
A wanton whoop of the violins swept away all such solemn things as
honor, decency, duty. He rose and caught her in his embrace. It was the
same girlish body, irresistibly warm and lithe. They swung and sidled
and hopped with utter cynicism. The only remnant of his horror was a
foolish, bewildered, muttered: "How could you?"
"Come to Paris?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Because I felt you still loved me as I still love you, and because I
thought you were--perhaps--afraid."
"Afraid, eh?" He laughed, his professional soldier's pride on fire.
"Well, I don't think you will find me a coward."
And he tightened his arm about her like a vise and spun her so dizzily
that, though she was rejoiced by his brutality, the discretion that was
her decalogue spoiled her rapture. She felt again that swoon of fear,
and made him lead her back to their niche.
She did not know that Ambassador Tait had come in and had watched the
vortex, was watching now with terror the look on Forbes' face and her
answering smile. He could not hear their words--he did not need to. He
knew what their import would be. The burlesque of the wedding music was
the final touch of sarcasm.
Persis, ignorant of his espionage, sighed, "Oh, it is wonderful to be
together again!"
"Wonderful," Forbes panted. "But it is in a crowd, and you are married."
"That does not mean that I am never to see you alone, does it?" she
asked, anxiously and challengingly.
Forbes was still wise enough and well enough aware of his own passion to
say, "But discovery and scandal would be the only result."
"Not if we were very discreet," Persis pleaded, thinking of those lonely
months.
"But your husband?"
Persis uttered that ugly old truth, "If we can evade gossip abroad, we
shall be safe enough at home."
And as if in object-lesson, Willie Enslee joggled up that very moment.
He showed the influence of mild tippling on a limited capacity, and,
coming forward, shook hands foolishly and forcibly with Captain Forbes.
"How d'ye do--Mr. Ward," he drawled.
"Captain Forbes, dear," Persis corrected.
"That's right. I always was an ass about names, Mr. Ward. I haven't seen
you for years and years, have we? Have you met my wife? Oh, of course
you have."
Forbes was revolted. There was something loathsome about the little
farce. Enslee reminded him of the clown in "I Pagliacci," and Persis,
like another Nedda, was determined to finish the scene. Tucking her fan
under her thigh, she said with innocent voice, "Oh, Willie, I've lost my
fan somewhere; would you mind looking for it?"
Obediently Enslee turned and wandered about, scanning the floor
carefully and chortling idiotically, "Fan, fan, who's got the fan?" And
so he floated harmlessly and blindly out of the cloud that was
thickening around his household.
Persis laughed. "You see what an ideal husband Willie is?" But Forbes,
who had a strong stomach for warfare with its mangled enemies and
shattered comrades, shuddered at this tame domestic horror. He blurted
out:
"It is all the more shameful to deceive a fool."
"Oh, now you're becoming scrupulous again!" said Persis, who thought
pride of little moment in the face of the victory she had set her heart
on.
But now she was confronted by an adversary of more weight and acumen
than Willie, a man whose trade was diplomacy and politics. Ambassador
Tait came forward. He was a little pale and weak, and he felt his heart
laboring in his breast, but he had at least one more good fight in him,
and when he found Forbes plainly enmeshed, though struggling, in Persis'
gossamer web, the old man resolved to make the fight at whatever cost.
After a moment of hesitation he came briskly forward with a blunt:
"Pardon me a moment, Mrs. Enslee, I have an important communication for
the Captain. These state secrets you know." And he led Forbes to an
adjoining room, the library, where he said in a low tone, "Harvey, my
boy, I've cooked up an imaginary errand to get you away from her."
But Forbes tossed his head at this aspersion on his ability to take care
of himself. He answered, "I'm not afraid."
Tait's eyes grew very sad, though his lips smiled when he said: "Well,
I'm afraid for you. You're not responsible when you're in her magnetic
circle." Then, seeing that Persis had resolutely followed them into the
room, he raised his voice for Persis' benefit: "You'll find the papers
on my desk. Read them carefully and sign them if they're all right. They
must be mailed this evening." Then he deliberately pushed the reluctant
and faltering captain from the room, hardly leaving him time to say,
"You'll excuse me, Mrs. Enslee?"
Persis understood it all and answered with thinly veiled pique, "I'll
have to." But she would not surrender him so easily. She called after
Forbes, "I'll expect you back as soon as you have signed those--alleged
papers."
The Ambassador was jolted. He could think of nothing to say. He watched
Forbes go, then started to follow; noted that Persis was alone, and
remembered the laws of courtesy enough to ask:
"May I send you an ice--or your husband?"
"An ice--or my husband?" Persis was forced to smile at such a
collocation. "Neither, please. Sit down, Ambassador."
Tait had not expected this. With a hesitating "Er--ah! Thank you!" he
seated himself as far as possible from her on a leather divan.
Immediately she rose, crossed the room, and sat next to him. There was
no escaping her now, and Tait felt like calling for help.
Persis forsook all the modulations of diplomacy and cut straight to the
point. "Ambassador Tait, why don't you like me?"
"Why, I--I admire you immensely," he gasped, amazed.
"Oh, drop diplomacy; I'm not the President of France!" Persis said, with
a whit of vexation. When a woman answers a compliment with anger she
means business. Persis repeated: "I said, why don't you like me?"
"But--I--I--" Tait fumbled for a word; then, somewhat angered by his
discomfort, met a woman's directness with a man's bluntness. "Well, why
should I?"
Persis parried his rudeness with a return to gentle measures; she
beamed. "I'm very nice! I was good to my mother. I'm good to my
husband."
"But are you?"
"I'm as good a wife as he deserves. You've seen him?"
Tait smiled in spite of himself, for he was one of Willie's numberless
non-admirers. Now Persis, seeing him smiling, returned to open attack:
"Last summer you took Captain Forbes to Evian-les-Bains to get him away
from me. Didn't you?"
Tait was off his guard; he stammered: "Certainly not--that is--well, how
did you find it out?"
Persis shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "My mother took me to England
when I was very young to get me away from a beautiful butcher's boy. She
succeeded; she was a woman. You won't; you're a man."
"Help, help!" Tait gasped, in a parody of fear that had a groundwork of
reality.
"You love Captain Forbes, don't you?" Persis lunged at his heart again;
and he answered, solemnly:
"Yes, I do, as if he were my own son."
"Why don't you want me to see him?"
"Why do you want to see him? You're married."
"But they don't keep women in harems nowadays. Paris is very dull this
winter. Don't take Captain Forbes away again."
"As I remember, you gave him marching orders once yourself. You mustn't
mind if he goes of his own accord now."
"But he won't go of his own accord if you don't make him. Why do you?
You're not afraid of me?"
"Oh, but I am."
Persis laughed with a kind of pride. "Really! You flatter me! But why?"
Tait twisted his big, soft hands together and stared at her a long while
before he could speak. "This is very embarrassing, Mrs. Enslee; but
since you are so frank, let me ask you one question. Will you answer it
frankly?"
"That depends upon the question." Persis chuckled, never dreaming of its
nature. When it came it was:
"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
She laughed evasively now. "What a remarkable question!"
The old lawyer repeated the demand:
"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
"I think he is very nice," she dodged. "But what has that to do with our
friendship?"
"Everything," Tait answered, with tightened lips. "Mrs. Enslee, your