What Will People Say? A Novel
Forbes answered a few of the appeals with cheques, and planned to file
the others alphabetically for future reference. But he never got round
to filing them.
This was not the only sarcasm of his wealth. He had returned to his
duties as a line captain and was restored to Governor's Island. But here
again there was discomfort. His fellow-officers envied him his luck, but
despised him for not profiting by it. And it did seem peculiarly
grotesque that a man of his important means should be trudging about on
a drill-ground giving orders to stupid privates and taking orders from
stupid superiors. His very men seemed to think he was a ludicrous
fanatic. He felt that he must leave the service.
He poured out his woes to Ten Eyck again, who advised caution. "Don't
jump out of the frying-pan, Forbes, till you've tested the fire with
your big toe. You might be even unhappier out of the army than in it.
Ask for a long leave of absence--say, six months, and see how you like
it. Then you can resign or go back."
"They won't give me six months' leave without a good reason," Forbes
demurred, though he was fascinated by the idea.
"A lot of money is a good reason for nearly anything. Anybody will give
a rich man what he asks for," Ten Eyck insisted. "Take some of the high
boys out in your car, and blow them off to a gorgeous evening, and
promise them some more of the same. Then pop the question."
Forbes made the attempt, and it succeeded with surprising ease; he was
granted six months' leave of absence without pay "for special research
and experiment."
His research was into the comforts of wealth, and his experiment was the
effect of life without labor or ambition.
Forbes had a car now. He had not intended to get one, but after dodging
salesmen for weeks one of them lay in ambush for him and carried him off
for a ride--a demonstration in disguise. He was so captivated by the
1915 model and the enlarged powers it gave him that he capitulated and
bought. He learned to be his own chauffeur; but this was so inconvenient
at times that he was soon hiring a charioteer. And, of course, he never
skimmed the earth or sped through beauties of landscape that he did not
wish for Persis at his side. He had a better car than Enslee's now. He
could buy Persis the costly, cozy little runabout she wanted; he could
hire her father's chauffeur and Nichette. He could buy her great
quantities of clothes, and he had leisure for her entertainment. But he
had not her, nor the right to buy things for her.
Away from her he found that time was softening his remorse without
hardening his heart against her. His wealth was mockery, his leisure was
mockery. His mind was hardly more than a music-box eternally purling one
little tune: "Persis-Persis-Persis!"
And then Persis came back, as if his longing had pulsed across the sea.
She had no difficulty in persuading Willie to return to New York. He
felt positively footsore from travel.
As they came up the Bay on a home-bound liner her heart was beating as
if she were entering a dark room full of ghosts. As Governor's Island
was reached she studied it again with a marine-glass.
She thought of the little homes of the officers' wives, the little
garage-less quarters where there must be so much content. She wished to
God that she were living in one of those little homes there.
If she had married Forbes she would never have caused the Ambassador's
death; she would not have given herself to Willie Enslee. She could not
have had more unhappiness, more loneliness and vain regrets. She would
have dwelt in Forbes' arms; she would have been his all day long and all
the long nights. All this past and horrible year would have been a true
honeymoon. Love would have been wealth enough.
As she had told Alice Neff, "Almost anything that we are not used to is
a luxury." She had learned the corollary, that almost any luxury becomes
a poverty as soon as one is used to it. She was all too familiar with
splendor. She hungered for a life of little comforts. The word "cozy"
grew magically beautiful.
She had not been long ashore before she learned the new status of
Forbes. It was Mrs. Neff who told her, taunting her with having jumped
into the marital noose with Willie too soon.
She had not been long ashore before she met Forbes. And once more it was
Willie who brought her into his presence.
Forbes was now a member of several of the more important clubs. Willie
met him at one of them, and asked him to join a crowd he was inviting up
to the country place.
Forbes' heart began to knock at his breast at the thought of being with
Persis again in the Enslee Eden. A remnant of honesty led him to decline
the invitation on the ground of another engagement, but Willie insisted.
"You had such a rotten time there last spring," he said. "I want to make
up. There won't be any lilacs yet; but there'll be servants--and
something to eat."
Forbes flung off his scruples, and promised to "motor up." The phrase
sounded odd in his ears, for he remembered the poverty of his first
visit, when he went as a passenger in Mrs. Neff's car.
When he spoke of his car Enslee said: "By the way, if you're motoring up
you might bring Mrs. Neff and Alice. The old lady's old car has got the
sciatica or something."
So Forbes brought Mrs. Neff along, and Alice. Mrs. Neff had much to say
of his wealth. And now that she knew Persis to be out of the running,
she had evidently entered Alice for the Forbes stakes. Forbes could feel
the idea in the air, and he was exceedingly embarrassed.
He was embarrassed more by his arrival at the country home. The great
hill was as bleak as the granite bridge. The trees were shaggy with
snow. The house was part of the winter, as white as an igloo. The
statues were oddly distorted with icicles and snow; they looked very
cold--especially the Cupid in the temple--a windy and forlorn white
kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. It struck him as pitifully
appropriate to the Enslee menage that Love should be left out in the
cold.
Persis received him now in her quality of owner and housewife, with a
flock of servants everywhere. He found her in the living-room,
surrounded by guests, chattering and lounging and sprawling. He had not
seen her since he left her that night in Paris.
She gave him her hand and a few commonplace words, but their eyes
embraced and their lips were tremulous with unspoken messages and
ungiven kisses.
Her manner warned him, and her apparent neglect of him gave him the cue
of his behavior. But there were brief collisions when it was possible to
murmur a word or two before one of the numerous other guests drifted up
and ruined the tete-a-tete. He pleaded ruthlessly for a meeting; she
pleaded for discretion above all things. She reminded him of the great
difference between the condition of their former visit and the present.
With only a few about them before, they had narrowly escaped discovery;
what chance had they now?
As the dinner-hour approached, and the others went up to dress, Forbes
lingered, and Persis sat with him a moment in the embrasure of that
drawing-room window where they had once held rendezvous. The mystery was
gone from it, and the poetry. But they seized each other in one swift
embrace of arms and lips. Even this was broken just in time to escape
the sight of the butler, who entered to ask a question as to the wines
for the dinner.
Persis gave her orders with an impatience that could hardly have escaped
the man's notice. She felt a little extra effort at impassivity in his
manner, and was sure that he suspected her of more than a hospitable
interest in Forbes. She could not resent an unexpressed intuition, but
she felt humbled and shamed and afraid.
When the butler was gone she repeated her warning to Forbes, but he took
her in his arms again. Her mind told her that she must not go on
risking, go on registering faint impressions in the minds of servants
and of guests; but her heart would not defer entirely to her
intelligence.
Forbes was taciturn at the dinner. Mrs. Neff could not provoke him to
vivacity. She noted that his gaze returned constantly to Persis, and
that when her look came down the board to him it softened strangely.
After dinner little cliques were formed about the billiard and the pool
tables, the card-tables, and a few danced the everlasting tango with
some new variation. Forbes and Persis danced together, and many eyes
noted the perfect rapport of their mood, the solemn joy they took in the
welded union.
"How well they dance!" was the spoken comment; but the thought was, "How
congenial they seem!"
Shortly after nine there was an excitement. On the hill opposite a
building was on fire. The guests crowded and jostled at the windows.
Somebody proposed that they all go to the scene of the blaze. The
irresistible fascination of a burning building at night was inducement
enough. Motors were telephoned for from the distant garage, and there
was a scramble for wraps. Forbes' car was not brought up, and he was
invited into Enslee's. He climbed in, but clambered out again to get an
extra wrap for Mrs. Neff. A maid had already run for it, and by the time
he returned the cars had all gone.
He stood regretting boyishly the loss of the opportunity to go to a
fire. He watched for a few moments from the steps, and then turned back
into the house. He found Persis at the drawing-room window. She had
declined to go. He joined her. Out on the white edge of the lawn they
could see the servants in a little mob staring at the pyrotechnics of an
upward rain of sparks.
"I'll put out the light. We can see better," he said.
"No, no!" she protested; but he had already found and turned the switch.
They were in a cavern of darkness, with one window dimly reddened. He
found his way back to her. She urged him to turn the light on again,
but he refused. She moved to turn it on herself, but he held her fast,
and compelled her back to the deep embrasure, and drew the curtains
behind them.
She could count the servants on the lawn outside. They were all there.
She felt that it was safe to be alone with Forbes, at least till one of
the domestics should detach himself from the group and move across the
snowy sheet of white.
They watched in silence awhile the leaping red geyser of the flames. It
grew and expanded till it formed a huge ember-mottled orchid with vast
petals trembling in the wind.
On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of motor-lights
wavering like antennae. From all the homes of the region the neighbors
were hastening to the spectacle, huge night moths drawn by the flaring
lamp.
For a long, blissful while the flame-flower bloomed against the black
sky. At last it wilted and failed and shriveled. Then the servants
turned back to the house. Persis fled from Forbes' arms to her own room,
where Nichette found her, apparently established the past hour.
Forbes waited at another window, and when at last the motors came
puffing back the home-comers were too benumbed with cold and too eager
for warming drinks to know or care whether Forbes had been with them or
not. Any one who might have missed him would have supposed him to be in
one of the other cars.
The next day some of the guests rode over to see the ruins. Forbes and
Persis went along. To their amazement, what had seemed, while flaming,
to be a miracle of enchantments, a palace afire, proved in the daylight
to have been a miserable shack whose hollow shams and rotten timbers the
flames had mercilessly exposed to public contempt, stark, charred, cold,
obscene.
"It was so beautiful while it burned," said Persis. "I can't believe
it's the same. It was like a wild rose in the night; but in the daylight