What Will People Say? A Novel
"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't mean to harm you.
Some day--long after--you'll forgive me, won't you?"
"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."
"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost a smile. "I
wonder if God will be as polite? They--they usually pray for dying
people, don't they? I'm afraid they'll never get a doctor in time, to
say nothing of a preacher. So you'd better pray for me, Willie."
The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed; but he would not
so far surrender her as to pray. He sobbed:
"You've got to live! I don't know a single prayer. You mustn't die, I
tell you. You've got to live!" And he wept his little heart out as he
knelt at her side, and, clinging to her hand, mumbled it with kisses.
She wept, too; moaned, and dreaded the black Beyond, which she must
voyage prayerless. Still she must talk. From her silence came a frail,
thin voice like a far-off cry.
"It's growing very dark, Willie--very dark! And I'm drifting, I wonder
where? Can you hear my voice away off there? Better throw me a kiss, and
wish me bon voyage! for this--is the last--of Persis. Poor Persis!"
Something of old habit reminded her of the gossip that would break into
storm at her death. This spurred her heart to strive again. She clutched
at the table and at Willie's arm and shoulder, and held herself erect as
with claws, while she babbled:
"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for--for murder. The
newspapers--the newspapers! Oh, my poor father! And they'll put you in
jail! That mustn't happen to you--not to one of your family!--not
through me!--no--no, it just mustn't! You must run--run--run!"
Enslee shivered at the future, and would have fled if he could have
found the strength to rise from his knees.
And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically, and on the
tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each other and then at her and
shook their heads in pity.
Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in with that eminent
champagne in a dingy and ancient bottle.
He went behind the screen to untwist the wires and rub away the
spider-webs. Then he came forward toward Willie's place to pour the
first few drops there, according to the rite, before he filled Persis'
glass. He had eased out the cork, and the soul of the wine was frothing
forth into the swathing cloth when he blinked at the empty chair; then
his eyes went across to Persis. He stared at her in mute amazement. She
stared at him. She beckoned.
He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.
She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous hand, and he bent down
to hear her tiny voice.
"Crofts, come closer--listen to me--do you hear?" He nodded.
"Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry old hands.
"Well," she began, "I must tell you--and you must remember. Mr. Enslee
and I had a--a little quarrel--and I--I lost my temper--you know--and
seized the knife and--and stabbed myself."
* * * * *
The old man did nothing unbecoming to his caste, but he stood doddering
and longed to die in place of that beautiful youth. She beckoned him
nearer again, and spoke in a strangled voice: "Remember, I did
it--myself! Re-mem--"
Her head fell forward, her exquisite chin rested in her bosom. Her body
collapsed upon itself, and only the arms of the chair and the table kept
it from rolling out on the floor.
But as if even this last ugliness of attitude were intolerable to her,
she fought against the chair and the table, and pushed and slid backward
till her head was erect. And she was whispering courage to herself,
hoarsely:
"Come--come--Persis!"
She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a good loser.
And then her head rolled back in the billows of her hair, with the
jeweled crown pointing downward and her eyes staring upward. Her wan,
pouting, parted lips and the long arch of her perfect throat were
themselves a prayer for mercy, offering up beauty as its own undoing and
its own excuse.
She was dead.
THE AFTERMATH
I
We cannot live to ourselves alone, nor die so. If a man or a dog crawl
off to perish in a wilderness, immediately death sets in motion a great
activity. On the ground ants muster, flies drum and pound; in the earth
worms make haste upward. On the empty sky a speck appears, wings gather,
buzzards are overhead. In the bushes eyes peer, paws are lifted and set
down with caution; coyotes, hyenas arrive. A city of scavengery is
founded and begins to flourish.
Persis had said, "This is the last of Persis." As if there were ever the
last of anybody or anything.
Of Persis it was almost the beginning. People were to hear of her now
who had never known of her existence. She who had never done anything
ambitious or earnest in any large sense was to become the cause of
world-wide debate. The newspapers she dreaded so much were to give her
head-lines above panics, wars, and empires.
When Persis screamed at the horror and the shame of being knifed, and
Roake appeared, and she told him that she was ill, he believed her. He
dispersed the servants. They knew, as servants always know, that a
quarrel had been raging; but family quarrels were the staple of their
lives, and they suspected nothing unusual.
Persis had told Roake to call the nearest physician. The telephone is
the confusion of distance; it mixes near and far hopelessly. So Roake
called the family physician, Dr. Thill; caught him dressing for the
opera. He promised to "be right over."
Then Roake went back to give Mrs. Enslee this word. He found the woeful
spectacle of Persis no longer able to hide her wound, no longer thinking
of appearances. Enslee was on his knees sobbing. Crofts, too good a
servant to express his emotions noisily, had not fallen to the floor or
sunk into a chair; he had turned a little aside and stood waiting the
next command; only, rubbing his hands together a little harder than
usual, while the tears poured across his eyelids.
Roake tiptoed to him and put his hand on his arm, and whispered, "Mr.
Crofts."
Crofts put his finger to his quivering lips and, beckoning his underling
aside, whispered to him: "No word of this to the rest of the house, mind
you. We'd best carry Mrs. Enslee to her room. Then we must help the
master to his."
They took Persis' chair by the arms dreadfully; but Crofts could not
lift his share of the weight. It was necessary to call Chedsey, and to
explain things a little to him and to pledge him to silence for the
honor of the house. He sickened of his burden and nearly fainted in the
little elevator as they crowded into it with their hideously beautiful
freight.
Nichette had the bed ready, and Enslee's man was helping her. Also two
other chambermaids had gathered to talk of the scream that had shot
through the house. Nichette banished the men while she took what care
she could of what remained of Persis--so different an office now from
what it had always been to Nichette.
Crofts told Roake to see to things below, and Roake and Chedsey went
down to the dining-room. Here there were tasks that were not pleasant.
They stared at the ruined graces of the table, the spilled wine and the
red-stained flowers, the glasses shattered and fallen, as if an orgy had
preceded there. The cook was told that the rest of the dinner would not
be served. The laundress was called from her supper to take away the red
table-cloth and the napkin. The housekeeper must know that Roake and
Chedsey were not to be charged with the breakage. The kitchen-maid was
sent to scrub the marble, and on her knees she must follow the crimson
trail to the door of the elevator, and wash that, too.
Before the doctor arrived a dozen people had been told that the mistress
of the household had killed herself. It was easy to warn them that
loyalty to the family imposed absolute silence. But what money or what
threat or plea could ever bribe a loose tongue to keep a secret for
somebody else?
Then Dr. Thill came in his motor. He left his huge fur coat on the hall
floor, and, dashing up-stairs, flung off his evening coat and his white
waistcoat, and rolled back his cuffs. He wrought upon the exquisite bare
flesh of Persis and upon the stopped clock of her heart with all his
science; yet he could not make her anything but a cadaver.
As he toiled he asked questions. Crofts and Nichette told him what they
knew, or thought they knew. Willie was supported in and questioned.
Remorse and fright made him pitiable. Still there remained a fox-like
intelligence. He told the doctor what Persis had told Crofts, but he was
so full of contradictions and confusion that Dr. Thill quickly suspected
the truth. He was enraged and revolted. The cruelty of the murder was
bad enough; but the wantonness of destroying so perfect a machine, as he
found Persis to be, was more wicked in his eyes.
Still, he was a typical family doctor. People who were dead were outside
his province. His clients were the living, and his business to keep them
alive and well. He had foiled death-bed revenges, aborted scandals that
threatened ruin to the young; risked his life and his liberty for his
patients. His trade was fighting the ravages of sin and error; saving
people, not destroying them. He felt no call to deliver an Enslee to the
electric chair.
He put Willie to bed, jammed bromides into him, and forbade him to talk
or to see any one. He telephoned Persis' father and Willie's mother to
come at once. He told them as delicately as he could. It was like
breaking a thunderbolt gently. Persis' father was stricken frantic. He
could not believe that his beautiful, his wonderful girl was dead. He
ran to her bedside, lifted her in his arms as if she were again his
little child, called to her, wept horribly over her, imagined the truth,
and vowed every revenge.
After the first tempests had worn him out he began to feel that it would
not comfort her to add scandal to her fate. He loathed the very name of
Enslee; but he had profited by it; he was still involved with it
financially; it was his daughter's final name. He joined the conspiracy
to bury the truth in Persis' grave. To say that she had killed herself
was an appeal for mercy; to proclaim that her indignant husband had
executed her for her crimes was a damning epitaph. He solaced himself
with the thought that it would be her wish.
Mrs. Enslee was first and last Willie's mother. Her thought was of him;
her heart was his advocate alone. She committed herself utterly to his
defense.
Dr. Thill was ready to give a certificate that Persis had died of
heart-failure. Even the story of suicide would attract the noisy
attention of the journals. He left the matter in abeyance for the
moment. The needful thing was a few hours of saving peace and silence.
He would be glad even to postpone the news from the next morning's to
the next evening's papers.
But little things thwart great schemes.
II
One of the Enslee housemaids, who had been flirting with the
brindle-haired reporter Hallard, remembered in the midst of the panic
that he was to take her that night to a moving-picture theater. He would
be loitering in the area now. She ran out bareheaded to explain that she
could not keep her engagement. When he asked why, she told him
falteringly that there had been a death in the family. She apologized
for permitting such an affair to interfere with her promised evening
out, but he gasped:
"A death in the Enslee family! Gosh, I've spent so many dismal hours on
death-watches that it's great to have you slip me a nice little
ready-made death like this. Whose was it? Who died?"
The maid felt that she had a clue now to Mr. Hallard's profession: from