What Will People Say? A Novel
infatuated fool before. Now you want them to fasten that filthy word
'complacent' on me. You want me to overlook what you have done and what
you've brought me to. I'm just to say: 'Well, Persis, you've had your
lover and your fling, and you're tired of each other, so come home and
welcome, and don't worry over what's past. It's a mere trifle not worth
discussing. What's the Seventh Commandment between friends?"
She was trying to silence him, but he had not heeded the return of
Crofts till the pheasant was placed before him in all its garnishment,
and the plates and the carving-fork and the small game-knife. He was
ashamed, not of what he had said of her, but of his own excitement.
"Is the knife sharp?" he asked, for lack of other topic.
"Oh yes, sir," said Crofts. "I steeled it myself."
Willie began anew, groping in his tormented brain for something to
dispel the silence. The result was a dazed query:
"By the way, my dear, what's the opera to-night?"
"Carmen," she said.
He brightened. "Oh, of course. That's the opera where the fellow kills
the girl who betrays him, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"With a knife like this, eh?" And with a fierce absent-mindedness he
made a quick slash in the air. The knife was small and curved a little,
and it fitted his hand like a dagger. He chuckled enviously. "Ah, he was
the wise boy, that Don Jose. He knew how to treat faithless women. He
knew how to talk to 'em. A knife in the back--that's all they can
understand."
Crofts was too anxiously trying to avoid spilling a drop of the wine he
was pouring to heed the warning gestures of Persis. She felt that the
breaking-point of Willie's self-control had been reached. She must
dismiss the audience. She spoke hastily:
"Willie, my dear--my dear! Won't you send for some champagne--or sherry.
I hate this red wine, and, besides, we've skipped the roast."
"Oh yes," Willie agreed, with abrupt calm. "Crofts, down in
the--er--wine-cellar in the farthest end--you'll find laid away by
itself one bottle of--er--L'Ame de Rheims--one bottle, the last of its
ancient and--er--honorable name. Bring that here."
As Crofts stumbled out on his long journey, Willie commented, ominously:
"It's a good time to say good-by to that vintage!"
His roving eyes discovered Roake standing aloof. Willie snapped his
fingers and yelped at him:
"Get out! And stay out!"
Roake withdrew in haste, and Enslee muttered:
"I'm sick of seeing so many people standing around, staring, smirking,
listening, thinking about me. I wish I were on a desert island."
He sat forward to the pheasant, set the fork into it, and paused with
the knife motionless. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on his
forehead, and he was panting hard; then he groaned:
"My God, he took my revolver away from me!"
His eyelids seemed to squeeze his eyes in anguish. When he opened them
they were bloodshot and so fierce that they seemed to be crossed. He
laughed.
"I was too weak to kill your soldier. But I think I'm just about strong
enough to pay you up. Carmen got her reward with a knife, and you're no
better than she was."
He looked at the knife; it was beautifully sharp, and it inspired a
desire to use it. As a man seeing a gun wants to fire it at something,
he felt the call to employ this implement. He pushed back his chair,
rose, and groped his way round the table toward her, all crouched and
prowling.
CHAPTER LXVIII
Persis watched him come, and did not move. It was unbelievable that
disaster should fall to such as her from such as him in such a way. He
was evidently only playing a part to frighten her.
She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette and fanned it away with
leisure, and smiled.
"You'd look well, now, wouldn't you, if one of the servants came in?"
She laughed at the picture.
"You're laughing at me again!" he groaned. "You're always laughing at
me. But you won't feel so funny with this knife in you."
She saw now that he was not fooling. But she despised him for his effort
to prove his bravery by a cowardice, and she eyed him with a marble calm
worthy of a nobler cause and a better reward.
"Sit down, Willie, and don't threaten me. You don't frighten me at all.
But you may alarm some of the servants and give them more of that gossip
you have harped on so much."
Her obstinate pluck bewildered him, but he lowered his voice as he
commented to some imaginary spectator: "My God! she has no higher
thought than that! Even now when death stares her in the face!" Then he
had a fanatic's mercy for her. "Why aren't you saying your prayers, you
fool?"
She answered him with all the authority she could command:
"Put down that knife! Put it down, I say! You know I could save myself
from any danger by raising my voice. And you know I'd rather die than
bring the servants in on such a scene."
"A scene!" he shrieked. "A scene! Why, woman, I'm going to kill you.
Don't you understand anything? You've only got a minute more to live.
Say your prayers! Damn you! say your prayers!"
There was an insanity in his look that frightened her at last. She tried
persuasion now, and her voice was soft and caressing.
"Gently, Willie; gently now, I beg you. You're not yourself, you know.
You must control yourself. Please!--as a favor to me."
It was the wrong word. It maddened him, and he snarled: "As a favor to
you? You dare ask favors of me? Go ask 'em of the man you've given
favors to! The man? The men!"
And this was sacrilege to her one love. Her lip curled in angry
contempt, and she turned from him in loathing, muttering:
"You dirty little beast!"
It was his muscles rather than his mind that did it. While his mind was
recoiling from the insult his arm had struck out, and the knife had slid
deep in the snow of her half-averted left breast; through the petal of a
rose, and the satin gown, and the deep white flesh beneath it, and on
into the wall of her struggling heart.
The blow and her effort to escape flung her backward, but the heavy
chair held her. Before she could remember a wild scream broke from her
lips.
As Enslee fell back his hand withdrew the knife. It came out all red. He
gaped at it and shuddered, and it fell with a little clatter on the
marble floor, flinging a few crimson drops on the black-and-white.
The noise startled him, and he retreated from her, clinging to the edge
of the table. He felt queasy, and pushed back till he felt his chair and
dropped into it--still staring at her and wondering, and she
wondering at him.
It seemed a long time before her cry brought any response. Chedsey was
in the cellar with Crofts and heard no sound, but Roake was in the
pantry. He paused a moment, not trusting his ears, then he pushed the
door open slightly and peered through. Other servants came crowding into
the pantry whispering and jostling. He motioned them back.
His master and mistress were in their places. Mrs. Enslee looked pale
and was lying back in her chair. He slipped through the door and spoke
timidly:
"Beg pardon, ma'am; but did you call?"
Persis, at the sound of the door, finding her fan still in her hand, had
instantly spread it across her wound. And her first impulse was to deny.
"No," she answered; then quickly: "Yes, I--I am ill--a little--suddenly.
Telephone for Doctor--Doctor--the nearest doctor. You'd better run."
He turned to obey, but paused to ask:
"Isn't there anything I can do first, ma'am?"
"No, go! Go!" she fluttered.
"Sha'n't I send some one else while I am gone, ma'am?"
"No, no; keep them all away, all of them, till I ring."
Roake, with a face like ashes, still waited, staring.
"But, ma'am, you are hurt! You are bleeding!"
"Nonsense!" she stormed. "I spilled some claret on my fan. The doctor!
Will you never go?" And he ran out through the jumble of servants,
ordering them back to their stations.
And then Nichette came stumbling through the golden portal. She had
heard the cry above, and had understood the pain and terror in it, and
had run pell-mell down the great stairs, her hand whistling on the
marble balustrade.
She paused now, clinging to one of the red curtains, and stammering:
"_Madame, Madame! qu'y a-t-il? qu'avez-vous?_"
Persis turned her head dolefully toward the face so wild with anxiety
for her sake, and murmured, with a smile of affection and a tender form
of speech:
"_C'est toi, Nichette? Ce n'est rien, mais--mais_"--A shiver ran through
her. "_Je sentis des frissons. Va faire mon lit. Je me vais coucher._"
Nichette came forward unconvinced or to help her, but she motioned her
off with a frantic hand, crying impatiently, "_Depeche-toi! veux-tu te
depecher!_"
And Nichette, mutinously obedient, ran away, leaving Persis shivering
indeed with a chill.
* * * * *
And now husband and wife were alone once more. And Willie could only
stare and murmur, vacuously:
"What have I done? What have I done?"
"You've killed me, that's all," she answered, with a curious amusement.
"It was such a funny thing for you to do, so old-fashioned."
There is a strange fact about wounds in the heart. If they are not so
deep that they flood the lungs and smother out life they inspire a wild
desire to talk, a fluttering garrulity.
So Persis, now, with that madly stitching shuttle in her breast, and
that red seepage from her side, had unnumbered things to say. She
chattered desperately, disjointedly:
"Oh, I suppose it had to come. It's what I get for trying to run things
my own way. And now the tango-shop's closed up. But it's so funny that
you should be the one to--and with a knife! You didn't mar my face,
anyway. I thank you for that much. I'd hate to have my face hidden at
the funeral. I should hate to make an ugly cor--"
Her lips refused the awful word as a thing unclean, abominable. Her body
and all the voluptuous company of her senses felt panic-stricken at the
thought of dissolution. She moaned and struggled with her chair.
"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death? I'm not ready to die.
I'm not ready to die."
Willie got up and ran to her left side, but shrank back from what was
there, and moved cautiously round on the slippery floor, crying: "You're
too beautiful to die, too beautiful! You'll not die! The doctors will
save you!"
"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for I'm bleeding--oh, so
fast." She looked down along her side and complained: "See, my gown is
quite ruined. And it was such a pretty gown. I'm afraid of my blood. How
it gushes! Will it never stop? And it hurts! Willie, it hurts!"
In a long writhe of pain she gathered the table-cloth about her left
side as if to stanch its flow. There was a rattle of falling glasses and
a chink of tumbled silver as she moaned: "Oh, what shall I do? What
shall I do?" And she turned her head this way and that, panting as one
pursued, bewildered, utterly at a loss. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't
want to die. It's an awful thing to die--just now of all times, with no
chance to make good the wrong I've done."
"You can't die; I won't let you die. You're too beautiful to die,"
Willie protested, and then turned to pleading: "I didn't mean to. I
didn't mean to strike you, Persis, at all. It was just my hand. It
wasn't me that stabbed you, Persis. I couldn't hurt you, Persis."
"Oh, that's all right, Willie. I understand. I understand things better
now, with so few minutes more to live. It is you that must forgive me. I
haven't been a good wife to you, Willie. And he--he, of all men!--said I
wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you--faithless to him! But oh,
God knows, most faithless to myself. And now I must die for it."
"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die! You can't die!"