What Will People Say? A Novel
his cheerful reception of such news he must be an undertaker. She
explained that it was Mrs. Willie Enslee who was dead.
"My God! the young one?" he cried, afire with the news possibilities.
"Yes; she killed herself."
This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew greedy as a miser.
"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters called at the
house?"
"Nobody; only the doctor."
Hallard looked at his watch. He had time to build up a big story, which
was good; but there was time enough for the other papers also to arrive
on the ground, which was bad.
"Why did she kill herself?"
"Nobody knows. She had a terrible quar'l with Mr. Enslee, though."
"What about?"
"Nobody could find out."
Hallard thought hard. The name of Forbes occurred to him, for he
remembered the time he had seen Forbes with Persis.
"Did Captain Forbes call to-day?"
The maid stared. "Ain't you a wonder! How did you know?"
"Did they quarrel about him?"
"Nobody knows they did, but all of us feels sure they did."
Hallard bade his inamorata good night with genuine affection. She had
been worth while.
He went to the door of the house and reached it just as Persis' father
arrived in his car and was helped up the steps. Hallard tried to push in
with him, but was thrust out. He sent his card in, and it was returned
to him.
Dr. Thill threw up his hands in despair at the card. Reporters seemed to
be as ubiquitous as microbes. But he realized that it was now necessary
to make a formal announcement to the papers. He wrote out for Hallard a
statement, and had the housekeeper telephone it to a press bureau, that
"Mrs. William Enslee, during a period of mental aberration, committed
suicide at her home at seven-thirty o'clock, in the presence of her
husband. Mr. Enslee is prostrated with the shock." It was a simple
announcement.
Meanwhile Hallard, rebuffed at the front door and at the tradesman's
entrance, and rebuffed by telephone when he called up from a booth in
the nearest drug-store, was trembling with the opportunities almost
within his reach. His was the ecstasy of the writer of tragedies who
exults in every new horror that he can inflict on his characters. Only,
the Hallards are dealing in real lives, and not feigned.
Hallard's scent for news quickened at the thought of Forbes. Easily
enough he learned the name of Forbes' hotel. He hurried there and sent
up his card, with a penciled note: "Would appreciate expert opinion
regard to probable fate Philippine Islands in case of war with Japan."
III
The card found Forbes not yet recovered from the hurricane of passion
that had swept through his heart. He was dumfounded at what he had done
and said; at his ruthless cruelty, his revulsions from love to hate and
back again; at the supreme insolence of his treatment of the husband he
had wronged.
He found Enslee's little silver-handled revolver in his pocket and
tossed it on the table. He felt that he ought to turn it against himself
in self-execution. It was too weak an instrument for such a business. He
got out his own big army revolver. But he was not of the type that is
capable of suicide, any more than Persis was.
He began to pack his things for his return to hard service away from the
frivolities of the city. The sight of his uniforms made him the soldier
once more. He grew homesick for the brisk salute of his soldiers, the
gruff and wholesome joviality of fellow-officers, the noble reality of
his chosen career.
And then he came across her boudoir cap again. It bewitched him. It was
so utterly unmilitary, so far from usefulness or importance, all pliant
and fragrant and adorably foolish. He put it back in its nest in the
pocket next his heart. And his heart quickened its pace.
With that quickening came by reflex a sense of terror. What had become
of Persis? He had left her to the mercies of Enslee. It occurred to
Forbes that if a man had dealt with him as he had dealt with Enslee he
would be so maddened that he would run amuck and slay the first thing he
met, and first of all the woman who had dragged him into such shame
below shame.
What if Enslee had attacked Persis? Beaten her, or torn her face with
his nails, or hurled her out into the street? Forbes felt that he must
go to her rescue. The impulse lasted only long enough to be ludicrous.
What right had he in that household? What harm could Enslee wreak upon
Persis to equal the wrongs that Forbes had done her? He blamed himself
for everything, and, blaming himself, absolved Persis, forgave her,
loved her again.
In this seethe of moods the card of Hallard arrived with a request for
his expert military opinion on a subject that had been one of his
hobbies in the days when military ambition was the major theme of his
life. It renewed his hope. It was like the feel of something solid
underfoot to a spent swimmer in cross-currents.
He welcomed Hallard with cordiality, apologized for the disorder of the
room, expressed an opinion that he had met Hallard somewhere before.
Hallard said he thought not. As he stated his plans for a Sunday
special, a "symposium" of views on Philippine fortification, he picked
up the silver-handled revolver on the table and laughed:
"Is this lady-like weapon the latest government issue?"
Forbes did not laugh; he flushed as he shook his head. A wild thought
came to Hallard. Forbes might have been present at Mrs. Enslee's death.
He might have killed her himself with her own revolver. It was a wild
theory; but he had known so much of murder, and had come upon such
fantastic crimes, that nothing seemed impossible to him.
With pretended carelessness he broke the silver revolver open and
glanced at the cylinder. Every chamber was full but one. Had a shot been
fired from it, or had one chamber been left unloaded for the hammer to
rest on?
Hallard put down the weapon and talked yellow journalism of the
Philippine problem. A little later he said, quite casually:
"Too bad about Mrs. Enslee, wasn't it, Captain?"
The startled look of Forbes confounded his theories.
"What is too bad about Mrs. Enslee?"
"Her sudden death, I mean."
"Her death!" Forbes cried, the world rocking with sudden earthquake.
"Her death! Not Persis! Persis isn't dead?"
"Why, yes; didn't you know?"
"My God! My God! how did she die? She was well, perfectly well
at--at--this afternoon when I--tell me, man, man, what do you mean?"
Hallard was readjusting his case. He spoke very gently.
"I'm mighty sorry to have told you without warning. I thought, of
course, you knew. You were a great friend of the family, weren't you,
Captain?"
Forbes whitened at this, but his grief was keener than his shame.
"Tell me, how did she die?"
"The story we get is that she killed herself--stabbed herself!"
Forbes gripped his head in his arms and bowed to the thunderbolts
crashing about him. At length his distorted face appeared again and he
demanded:
"Who was with her when she killed herself?"
"Her husband."
"Then it's a lie. She never--she wouldn't--he killed her! And it's my
fault for leaving her with him. I ought to have known better. I was
tempted to go back to her. I shouldn't have left her there with
that--that--and now she's dead! He butchered her! I'll kill him for it.
I will! He wasn't man enough to fight me--he--did you say you were a
reporter?"
"Well, I'm a special writer."
Forbes' words began to roar back through his memory. He began to hear
them as they would fall on a stranger's ear. Even in his frenzy he
realized the danger of his madness. Talking to a reporter was like
crying his thoughts aloud in Madison Square Garden. Grief, discretion,
remorse, revenge, assailed him from all sides at once.
He seized Hallard by the shoulder and raged at him.
"Look here! This Philippine idea was just a trick, wasn't it, to startle
me and make me forget myself? You fooled me, but you can't get away with
it."
He saw his big Colt's revolver in his trunk-tray, and he thundered:
"I ought to shoot you for this, and I will unless you swear that you
will never print a word of what I've said, never breathe a word of it to
a soul. Promise, or by--"
Hallard smiled and raised his half-eyebrow.
"You're a little excited, Captain, aren't you? You're kind of forgetting
that shooting a reporter would be about the poorest way of escaping
publicity ever imagined. People would naturally ask what it was you were
so anxious to conceal, eh?"
Forbes turned away helpless.
Hallard anticipated his next desperate idea. "I'm much obliged to you,
Captain, for not offering me a ten-dollar bill or a new suit of clothes.
They usually begin with that. But it rarely works, Captain. We're a
shiftless lot, some of us, but we've got our ideas of duty, too."
"Duty to what?" Forbes sneered. "Duty to act as grave-robbers and expose
the sorrows of the world to the laughter of the public? To drag families
down to ruin?"
"Duty to throw the light into dark places, Captain; duty to make it hard
to conceal things the public ought to know; duty to keep digging up the
truth and throwing it into the air."
"Truth!" Forbes raged. "What have you got to do with the truth? Would
you know it if you saw it? Would you use it if you had it?"
"You bet I would," Hallard said. "If you'll tell me the exact truth, as
far as you know it, about the suicide--or murder, as you call it--of one
of the most beautiful members of one of the most prominent
families--I'll publish it."
"In your own way, yes."
"In your own words, Captain. I write shorthand. Just dictate to me the
whole story of your acquaintance with Mrs. Enslee and your reasons for
believing that her husband killed her; and I'll not change a word. You
can read it, and sign it, and take affidavit that it's the truth, so
help you--"
Forbes dropped into a chair, discredited, his bluff called. All the
lofty motives and compulsions of chivalry took on an ugly look. Sir
Launcelot was an adulterer and a welcher.
The hideously altered face of things shattered him so that Hallard felt
merciful.
"I'm sorry, Captain; but you see how it is. You see why reporters get a
little hard, why our mouths sag. We don't publish the truth oftener
because people won't tell it to us. The truth isn't the pure white lady
in a nice clean well that the painters represent her: the truth is a
kind of a worm-eaten turnip that comes out of the ground with a lot of
dirt on it. We don't print all we find out by a long shot. If we did
this old town would make for the woods, and the people in the woods
would run to cover in town. I'd be glad to drop this affair right here;
but, don't you see, I can't. The Enslees are too big to overlook.
There'll be an army of reporters on the job, with their little
flashlights poking everywhere. The police will fall in line later.
There'll be editorials on the wickedness of society. Society--if there
is such a thing--isn't any wickeder than anybody else. The middle
classes are rotten, and the lower classes are putrid. But society makes
what old Horace Greeley called 'mighty interesting reading.'
"The name of Enslee is going to be a household word, because when an
Enslee sins it's like sinning in the grandstand. I saw something like
this coming a year ago. I thought it might simmer down; but it's broken
bigger than I ever dreamed. You're in for it, Captain. The Great
American People is going to rise on the bleachers and holler for blood.
It will forget all about you the minute something else happens. Take
your medicine, Captain. It will be somebody else's turn soon, for most
of us are doing the tango on a thin crust of ashes over a crater. But
it's the face-cards that the two-spots like to read about. The minute