What Will People Say? A Novel
disliked Mr. Enslee. But they all felt that she was as dangerous in the
house as a panther would have been in a wicker cage. And they all
gossiped with other people's servants. And one of the maids, on her
evenings off, was meeting a very attentive gentleman with brindle hair
and half an eyebrow. She didn't know his business, but he was generous;
he took her to tango-places, and he loved to hear her talk about her
employers.
* * * * *
Suddenly Crofts lifted his head and threw Roake and Chedsey a glance of
warning; they came to attention, each behind a chair, watching with
narrow eyes where Persis slowly descended, as into a gorgeous dungeon,
the three velveted steps leading down through the red-velvet-curtained
golden portal.
First they saw Persis' slipper, a golden slipper on a slim, gold-silk
stocking. Next the gleaming shaft of her white-satin skirt, with its
wrinkles flashing and folding round her knees; and then a rose-colored
mist with glints of gold spangles; a few flowers fastened at her waist;
the double loop of a long rope of pearls; then her wide, white bosom,
with half the breasts revealed in the deep V between. And next her
shoulders; her long throat, passionate and bare save for one coil of
pearl-rope; and then her high-held, resolute chin; her grim, red lips;
her tense nostrils; her downcast eyelids; her brows; and, finally, the
crown of diamonds sparkling in her hair.
Her velvet-muffled footsteps grew faintly audible as her heels advanced
with a soft tick-tock across the black-and-white chessboard of the
marble floor. There was such a hush in the room that even her soft,
short train made a whispering sound as it followed reluctantly after
her.
Then Enslee's glistening black shoes appeared on the steps; his short
legs; the black-rimmed bay of white waistcoat and shirt, and tie, and
the high, choking collar, where his fat little head rested like a ball
on a gate-post.
In the rich gloaming of the big room the table waited, a little altar
alight and very beautiful with its lace and glass and silver and its
candles gleaming upon strewn roses.
Overhead the massive chandeliers hung dark from an ornate ceiling
powdered with dull Roman gold. It was illuminated now only by the
fretful glow of the fire slumbering beneath the carved mantel ravished
from a bishop's palace in Spain.
In such a scene the audience of three servants awaited the performance
of the polite comedy by the farceur and farceuse, who would pretend to
leave their personal tragedies in the wings. The actors made their
entrance with a processional formality, faced each other, and were about
to be seated in the chairs the men had drawn back a little.
But the dignity vanished when the male buffoon, glancing at the array
before him, broke out with a sharp whine:
"Where's my cocktail?"
There was such a twang of temper in his voice that Crofts heard at once,
and made a quick effort at placation.
"Very sorry, sir, but, the other servants being away, I was not able to
learn just how you had it mixed, sir."
"Just my luck!" Enslee snarled. "When I need a bracer most I can't have
one." He shook his head so impatiently that Persis foresaw calamity and
hastened to intervene.
"Let me make it for you, dear."
Enslee threw her an ugly glance, and wanted to refuse, but could find no
reason to give except the truth: that he hated to accept any more of her
ministrations. And truth was the one thing that must be kept from these
menials at all cost. So he said:
"Mighty nice of you."
Persis went to the vast sideboard, and, while Crofts fussed about her,
handing her the shaker, the ice, and bottle after bottle, she prepared
the cup as if it were a mystic philter of love. She poured each
ingredient into one of the glasses, and held it up to the light to make
sure of the measure; then she emptied its contents into the shaker and
filled it again from another bottle; and so when the square, squat
flagon of gin, the longnecks of Italian and of French vermouth, and the
flask of bitters, had contributed each its quota, she pondered aloud:
"That's all, isn't it?"
Willie, who had strolled to the sideboard in a kind of loathing
fascination, spoke up:
"Here, barkeeper, you're forgetting the absinthe."
"Oh yes," she said, recalling his particular among the numberless
formulas--"six drops of absinthe and twelve drops of lemon."
Crofts passed her the absinthe, and, finding a lemon, sliced it across
and handed it to her on a plate. She held it over the shaker and,
squeezing, counted the drops.
"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve--oh, there went the thirteenth! That's a bad
omen." She was so overwrought that a little genuine fear troubled her.
Enslee felt it, too, but would frighten the bogie with indifference:
"Hang the omen, so long as the cocktail's not bad."
Persis nodded with a difficult smile, and, setting the top on the
shaker, said:
"Now, Crofts."
The old man was so slow and so feeble with his agitation that she
snatched the shaker from his hand and shook it herself, the ice clacking
merrily. Then she lifted off the top and poured the cold amber through
the strainer into the two glasses and dried her chilled hands on a
napkin.
Willie was too eager for the stimulus to go back to the table and take
the cocktail there. He lifted his glass.
"We'll take it standing at the bar." And he reached for an imaginary
foot-rail, as he had seen the vaudeville comedians do. Persis laughed,
and he laughed, but sorrily. Still another idea occurred to him in his
determination to enact domestic bliss.
"And now what's the toast? To the absent one?"
The ghastly patness of this unnerved him, but Persis came to the rescue
with, "Toasts are out of date." And Willie, setting the glass to his
lips, guzzled it in that chewing way they had never been able to correct
in him since his infancy. Persis stood a moment with a far-off look of
fierce regret in her eyes, then drained her glass swiftly and dabbed her
rouged lips with her handkerchief.
Crofts held out a little tray, and Willie set his glass down so hard
that the stem cracked. He gave Crofts the blame in a sullen look, then
went back to the table and sat in the chair that Roake pushed under him.
He was up again instantly with another complaint. Willie was by nature
one of the tribe of waiter-worriers. In his present tension he was
doubly irascible.
"Where the devil is my cushion?" he barked. "You know I can't carve
without my cushion."
The cushion was whisked under him instantly.
He stabbed at his canape of caviar with his fork as if he hated it, ate
but a morsel of it, and turned aside in his chair. Persis, watching him
with anxious eyes, gave Crofts a command in a glance, and the plates
were removed and replaced with oysters, the men bringing everything to
the table, but Crofts alone serving their Majesties.
Crofts was senile and slow, and unusually aspen with anxiety and the
rebukes he had had. His deliberation was maddening to Enslee. The
old-fashioned deference of Crofts' manner was only further irritation.
Persis' own heart was wretched enough with its load of shame; she was
hard put to it to sit and smile at the husband who had caught her in the
arms of her paramour and heard him casting her off. But she had that
social understanding of the actor's creed that the show must go on to
the last curtain, no matter what had preceded it, or what might happen
between the acts, or what might follow. She was certain of only one
thing, that she and Willie must sit out this dinner somehow.
The entr'actes in the solemn mummery were the spaces between the courses
while the servants left the room for a few moments to bring on the next
thing.
When the caviar had been nibbled and rejected, the oysters set down and
refused without being tasted, the two men went into the pantry for the
soup-tureen and the hot plates. The swinging door oscillated with little
puffs of air like sneers, and a breath ran around the tapestries hung on
the walls. Ripples went through them in shudders, and, as the wrinkles
traveled, averted faces seemed to turn and glance quickly at the
Enslees, then turn away again.
With all the surreptition possible Crofts and his lieutenants brought in
the silver urn and the ladle and the plates, and set them down on the
serving-table behind the screen of Spanish leather with its glowing
landscape and its gilded sky.
But Enslee's raw nerves shrieked at the soft thud of plate on tray, the
infinitesimal click of ladle on tureen, the very endeavor not to make a
sound. He fidgeted, bit his knuckles, wrung his hands out like damp
cloths, played a tattoo on the arm of his chair, and passed his hand
wildly across his eyes. At length he whirled, and shouted:
"In God's name, less noise! Less noise!"
Crofts turned to bow and made a trifle more noise. And when he took the
plate from Roake's tray and set it before Enslee his hand trembled
perilously. It was Enslee's favorite soup, a luscious _puree Mongole_.
He lifted one spoonful now to his lips and put it away with disgust. His
ignominy was so vile that it sickened his stomach. He had been told that
his wife was unfaithful to him; he had found it true; he had wrought
himself to a frenzy of revenge upon the destroyer of his home; but the
lover, instead of leaping from the window like the typical man of guilt,
had taken the husband's weapon from him, denounced the wife, and left
the wrecked home in triumph.
Enslee had endured all these disgraces; why should he add one more? Why
should he play a part before his own menials? Why should he care what
they thought? None the less, as mutinous soldiers keep the line
automatically, so a lifetime of paying devotion to the ordinances of
etiquette held him to the mark now.
Seeing that Persis had not even made a pretense of lifting her spoon to
her lips, he nodded to Crofts, "Take it away."
The failure of a dinner was a catastrophe to Crofts, and he forgot his
wonted reticence enough to ask:
"Isn't it good, sir? Sha'n't I tell the chef to--"
His solicitude brought him only a reproof:
"Crofts, if you speak again I'll have the other servants serve the
dinner. Take it away, I said."
Hurt and frightened, Crofts hurried the soup and its apparatus off. As
he slipped out with his aides the swinging door went "Phew!" and the
tapestried figures glanced and whispered together.
As soon as he was alone with his wife, Enslee's voice rose querulously:
"If Dobbs ever leaves us in the lurch again I'll fire him for keeps.
This old fool gets on my nerves. Everything is going wrong here. The
whole house is falling to rack and ruin. Ought at least to have decent
servants--if I can't have a decent wife!"
Persis smiled patiently at this, but as with lips bruised from a blow.
"I trust, Willie, that you won't forget yourself. All these doors have
ears, you know."
"You bet they have!" he snapped. "And eyes, too. Are you crazy enough to
think that lowering our voices will conceal the truth from any one?
Don't you realize that those hounds out there know everything that goes
on in this house? Don't you understand that your good name and my honor
were gossiped away down-stairs long before my dishonor became public
property?"
Persis felt a panic in her own heart at his manner. Still she tried
suasion. "I implore you to postpone this. At any moment Crofts will be
back."
"Crofts, eh?" Willie shouted. "Crofts! Crofts will be back! Why, do you
imagine for a moment that even that deaf old relic is ignorant of this
intrigue you have carried on? Don't you know that every servant of ours
that has left the house for weeks has carried through the area-gate a
bundle of news and innuendo and suspicion and keyhole information, to be