What Will People Say? A Novel
stood, however, as the one strong shelter over Enslee's head.
The skeptics insisted that Crofts, being deaf, had heard wrong or been
bribed to perjury. None of them dreamed that Persis could have devised
that snow-white lie as her atonement to the man she had betrayed.
Hallard was obsessed with an idea that if Persis' body were exhumed it
would be shown that she could not have dealt the fatal wound with her
own hand. He had once organized a campaign against a decision of the
court sentencing a valet to the penitentiary, and kept it up until the
prison gates were opened and the man gained an opportunity to tell his
story anew. He was found guilty again and sent back to his cell; but the
despotic power of the press was demonstrated. If Hallard could open the
penitentiary, why not the grave in which a _corpus delicti_ had been
hastily hidden?
With every weapon in the vast armory of newspaperdom Hallard waged his
battle. The political ambition of the district-attorney finally yielded
to the coercion. An order was obtained from the court commanding the
officials of the cemetery to unseal the tomb where Persis' body had been
stored until the great monument Enslee had commissioned could be made
ready to weigh her down irretrievably.
Forbes, having regained his courage in his absence in the wilderness,
was seized with a mad desire to gaze upon his beloved's face once more
and to whisper to her a prayer that she forgive him for abandoning her
in her desolation and her peril. Ten Eyck used every plea to dissuade
him; but, failing, determined to go with him.
Permission to be present at the exhumation was secured with little
difficulty, and the two men joined the group of court officials and the
six experts who were to decide from examination whether or not Persis
could have inflicted the fatal wound upon herself.
VI
And so Persis came back again to the world in a mockery of resurrection,
back again from the sodden earth to the light of day that had blessed
her beauty and not known her sin.
Forbes waited her reappearance in a frenzy of anxiety. It was to him a
kind of holy tryst that he must keep at any cost.
Slowly the casket was raised; one by one the screws in the coffin-lid
were removed, and at last the board was removed from over the white,
white face. Some impulse of protection led Ten Eyck to thrust Forbes
back until he himself had taken the first look. He gazed and groaned at
the havoc death had wrought in all that beauty. When Forbes pressed
forward, Ten Eyck whirled and clapped his hands over Forbes' eyes and
dragged him aside, whispering huskily:
"Don't look! In God's name keep the memory of her as she was."
Forbes suffered himself to be led aside. He and Ten Eyck waited at a
distance while the tests were made. The knife was closed in the icy
fingers, and the exquisite arms moved here and there. Over the cold and
silent body the experts wrangled. And the upshot of the desecration was
that they could not agree; three of the jurors declared that Persis
could not have reached so far around to set the knife in her side; and
three that she could have done it, whether she did or not.
Persis, wherever she was, kept her secret. And Willie, abiding the
decision in a stupor of terror, thanked God and her for their silence.
The newspapers had much to say of this last phase of the Enslee mystery.
They summed up again all the old scandals, and then they, too, went
silent. Their readers grew weary of the juggle of facts and falsehoods.
The mishaps of other lovers furnished them with unfailing supply of the
old mistakes that are the eternal news. Forbes, who had withheld his
resignation from the army at Ten Eyck's bidding, was received back into
his place, shorn of his ambitions, his youth, and his pride.
* * * * *
Often and often when he is alone he takes from its hiding shelter a
little nightcap of ribbons and laces and shakes his head with vain
regret.
He thinks of Persis always as she was that morning when the filmy cap
fell from her lawless curls. He cannot but feel that there was something
elect in her, something divinely beautiful, however thwarted for this
world.
But then he loved her, he could forgive her anything. If God loved her,
could he not do as much?
When the skies are clouded he remembers her wise little saying, "Behind
the blinds there are always eyes." He wonders if there are eyes behind
the clouds and beyond the sun. And if there are, and if they are the
seeing eyes of perfect understanding, What do those people say?
THE END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors in spelling and punctuation have been
corrected without comment. One example of an obvious typographical error
is on page 345 where the word "irrevocaable" was changed to
"irrevocable" in the phrase: "The irrevocable was accomplished." Other
than obvious typographical errors, the author's original spelling,
punctuation, hyphenation and use of accents has been left intact with
the following exceptions:
Page 24: "tile" was changed to "tie" in the phrase: "... one silk
tie..."
Page 99: "lovelily" was changed to "lovely" in the phrase: "... her
lovely disparted bosom..."
Page 206: "darkled": was changed to "darted" in the phrase: "And
they darted between the planets..."
Page 251: The phrase: "... some one's else success." was changed
to: "... some one else's success."
Page 284: "ditto" was changed to "ditty" in the phrase: "... it was
a romping ditty...."
Page 423: A question mark (?) was changed to a period (or
full-stop) in the sentence ending: "... stealth of clandestine
lovers."
The author's use of the words "thridding" and "thredding" have been left
unchanged as in the following instances:
Page 13: "... as it thridded the unpoliced traffic...."
Page 67: "... he was now thridding the maze...."
Page 380: "... thredding the increasingly mucilaginous crowd...."