What Will People Say? A Novel 29 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 29Chapter 29
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 29
Chapter 29
HughesEnglish
For convincing the human heart there is no argument like a parable or analogy, and there is no more worthless proof to the mind. So long as Persis could be called a bird of paradise, too rich for a canary cage, or a sea-gull, too wild, or a planet unattainable, Forbes admitted that his hopes of winning her and keeping her were foolish. He gave her up. So much for the metaphors. But when he saw her at the window in the daylight, and saw, not a sea-gull nor a planet, but just a pretty, drowsy girl with rumpled hair, he tossed aside all the arguments by parable and analogy, as candle-ends unfit for sunshine. She was only a woman, and he was all of a man, and this was America, and, by George Washington, he would have her to wife!
He would begin the day right with a wholesome morning smack. He tiptoed along the grass around to the door, and met her in the living-room. And as soon as he met her he set his arms about her. But she was almost sullen as she pushed him away.
"I won't have it!" she said, with a harshness that shocked him. "It's too early in the morning. And I don't like it. And I don't want gossip set going. And you must be doubly circumspect."
He fell back, baffled, and dropped his eyes in discontent. He saw that her little high boots were sprawling open. He smiled at the homely touch again.
"If you're so circumspect," he said, "you'd better button your shoes."
"I forgot to bring up a button-hook," she laughed, "and when I bent over with a hairpin I got so sleepy that I nearly fell back in bed."
"Permit me," he urged.
"No, thank you!"
"You can't walk with 'em falling off like that," he insisted. "A hairpin, please."
She took one from her hair, and he dropped to one knee. He could not seem to find the right position to work from. After hunching about from position to position he said:
"I reckon your feet are put on the wrong way."
"Thanks."
"For being buttoned, I mean."
"My maid buttons them every morning."
"Tell me how on earth she gets at your foot?"
"No, thanks. I'll button them myself."
"Oh no, you won't. How do the shoe clerks manage it?"
She set her foot on the rung of a chair, and he went at his task with all awkwardness. Her feet were small, yet the shoes were as tight as could be, and she winced as the buttons ground or bit. But she choked back the little cries of pain that rose to her lips.
"Get away," she said; "you're killing me."
But he would not surrender the privilege. He took her foot on his knee and wrought with all care. The hairpin was soon a twisted wreck, and he must have another, and another.
When the lowest buttons were done she checked him. "That's enough! I'd rather my shoes fell off than my hair. And that reminds me: where is my cap?"
"In my pocket next my heart."
"Give it to me, please."
"I'm going to keep it."
"By what right?"
"Conquest and possession."
"What if somebody should see you with it?"
"Nobody shall."
"Somebody always does. Nobody would believe it fell out of a window!"
"It fell straight into my heart."
She gave him up with a shrug. "Good Lord, you men! I don't suppose there's any coffee? I'm so used to having it in bed before I get up that I'm faint."
"I could make you some, if I knew where the coffee was, and the coffee-pot, and if there were any fire."
"Let's look into the kitchen."
She knew the way, and led him into a great food-studio--a place to delight a chef with its equipment and an artist with its coppers.
But the range was as cold as its white-glazed chimney. They cast about for fuel, and found that Prout had fetched kindling and coal the afternoon before.
Forbes soon had a fire snapping under one lid, and Persis hunted through cupboards and closets till she discovered a coffee-pot, evidently belonging to the servants' dining-room, and a canister half full of coffee.
"I haven't the faintest idea how much of that goes in, have you?" she said, helplessly. He nodded and made the measurements deftly.
"Where did you learn so much?" she asked, with a primeval woman's first wonder at a cave-man's first blaze and first cookery.
"A soldier ought to be able to build a fire and make a cup of coffee, oughtn't he?"
"Oh," she shrugged, "I always forget that you're a soldier. I've never seen you in uniform. You never tell me anything about yourself. I always think of you as just one of us loafers."
"It's mighty pleasant to be building a fire for you--for just us," he maundered.
"It is fine, isn't it?" she chuckled, with glistening eyes. "Rather reversing the usual, though, for idiotic woman to stand by while strong man boils the coffee--or are you baking it? I might be getting the dishes."
"I'd be willing to do this every morning--for you--for us," he ventured, his heart thumping at its own dauntlessness.
She evaded the implied proposal as she ransacked a cabinet. "I fancy it would rather lose its charm in time. As a regular thing, I like to see breakfast brought up on a tray by a nice-looking maid."
She brought out a perilous, double arm-load of cups and saucers, and a sugar-bowl.
"This is the service china, I suppose. You could drive nails with it."
He stared at her with idolatry. She was so variously beautiful; at the theater, the opera, the luncheon, here in a country kitchen--everywhere somebody else, and everybody of her beautiful. His hands went out to seize her again, but she tumbled the crockery crackingly on the table and waved a cup at him. "Stand back, or I'll brain you with this. There's no cream. I suppose even the cows aren't up yet. And I can't find any butter--or any bread--just these tinned biscuits."
They sat at the kitchen table. The coffee was not good, really; but she found it amusing, and he thought it was ambrosia--Mars and Venus at breakfast in an Olympian dining-room. He told her something of the sort, and implied once more that he longed to make the arrangement permanent.
"I wish you'd quit proposing before breakfast," she said. "I feel very material in the morning, anyway, and I'm having a bully time. I'm feeling far too sensible to listen to any nonsense about the simple life. I can enjoy a bit of rough road as well as anybody. I can turn in and work or do without, or dress in rags--anything for a picnic--for a while. But as a regular thing--ugh! To get breakfast once in somebody's else kitchen at an ungodly hour with a captivating stranger--glorious! But to get up every morning--every every morning, rain or shine, cold or hot, sleepy or sick or blue--no, thank you!"
"You think the rich are happier than the poor?"
"Of course they are. That's why everybody wants to be rich."
"But the rich aren't contented."
"Oh, contented! Nobody's contented except the blind, and hopeless invalids. Contentment is a question of being a sport. There's a lot of good losers that will grin if they have to walk home in the rain from the races, and there are a lot of what they call 'bum sports' that throw their winnings on the ground because the odds weren't longer. But don't tell me that there's any special joy in being poor. If I had to be poor, I suppose I'd put the best face I could on it. That happens to be my nature. It's the good sports making the best of poverty that cause so much talk; but all the poor and middlers that I've met have hated it and envied the rich.
"You see, the rich can buy everything the poor have, but the poor can buy hardly anything the rich have. Sometimes my father goes out in the field on his farm and tosses hay, or beds down the horses, or chops dead trees. Sometimes he likes to have just a bowl of milk and some crackers for his supper. But when he wants something else he can have it--at least, he always has been able to--up to now."
A little shiver agitated her like a flaw of wind running along a calm lake.
"It's cold and damp in here," she said. "Let's get out in the sunshine and quit talking poverty. We're neither of us poor--yet."
She rose and moved out to the kitchen porch, and, round the house, up a sweep of stairs to the main terrace.
"Look," she cried, "isn't it wonderful? Isn't it worth while? It costs thousands of dollars just to make that lawn smooth, and thousands more for the marble balustrades, and the fountains are a fortune, and the sunken garden--the poor can't have a glimpse of it! They don't know it exists. Even Mr. Enslee's cook hardly knows it's here; he doesn't permit any of the servants except the house staff to come out front. Isn't it a shame? But don't you love it? Isn't it heavenly under your feet? My eyes fly over it like birds. It's splendid to have tea out here in the summer, and wear long sweeping gowns and picture-hats, and have delicious things brought to you on the finest of china. Oh, I never was meant for a poor man's daughter. Even if I feed the chickens or pat the cattle, I like to do it as Marie Antoinette did at the Petit Trianon just for a contrast--an hors d'oeuvre."
Forbes thought of the bird of paradise and the sea-gull again, and he doubted the value of his cage again. They sauntered across the lawn and up the stairs. He took her arm to help her, but she shook her head.
"Please! Now, tell me all about yourself."
"There's nothing to tell."
"There must be. I've a right to hear it. Think of it, you've kissed me once, and I didn't fight. I let you. Good Lord, I nearly kissed you!" His arms rushed toward her; but she frowned. "Don't make me go back. I was saying, you've kissed me, and we've had a terrible escapade in a strange kitchen, and I hardly know your first name. So you're a soldier." He nodded. "West Point?" He nodded. "Did you ever get in a real fight?" He nodded. "Where?"
"Cuba. Philippines."
"You were in the Spanish War? Really! I didn't know you were so old."
"I wasn't so old then. I'm very ancient now."
She mused aloud: "They say a husband should be ten years older than his wife."
The implication enraptured him. It showed that she was at least toying with the thought. "Then there's no hope for me. I'm far too old for you."
"But I'm very ancient," she said. "I ought to have been married years ago."
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. There's no need for further delay."
"Are you proposing again? The man's a regular phonograph with only one old broken record! So you've been in battles and battles. Were you afraid?"
"Afterward. I suppose it's because I'm slow and stupid: but I don't usually get scared till the trouble's over. Then I'm sick as a dog and as frightened as a girl."
"That's something like me. Only I get terribly scared of little things that don't count. A mouse or a spider or anything crawly--ugh! is that a caterpillar?"
She shrank back against him in a palsy of repugnance at about an inch of moving fuzz on a rhododendron. He held her with one hand, and with the other broke off the twig and cast the vermin into space. She put his arm away, and said:
"You are brave!"
"St. George and the dragon," he smiled.
"In those battles of yours," she resumed, "were you ever by any chance wounded or killed or anything?"
"I was never killed entirely," he answered, "but I stopped a few bits of lead."
She shuddered and caught his arm with a rush of sympathy none the less fierce for being belated.
"Wounded! You were wounded?"
He put his hand on hers where it lay on his sleeve. "Yes, you blessed thing. Does it make any difference to you?"
She drew her hand away gently. "I hate to think of--of anybody getting hurt. Did it hurt--to be wounded?"
"Afterward. I didn't notice it much at the time--except when I was shot in the mouth."
"Good Lord, how?"
"I was yelling something to my sergeant, and a bullet went right in and out here." He put his finger on his cheek.
"Great heavens! I thought it was a dimple. I rather liked it."
"Then I'm glad I got it."
She writhed with pain for his sake.
"Did it hurt--hideously?"
"Not half as much as the two pellets I got in my side. They probed for them till I made them stop, partly because I wasn't enjoying it and partly because probing kills more than cartridges."
"How did they get them out, then?"
"They didn't."
She stared at him wild-eyed.
"You don't mean to say that you're standing there with a couple of bullets in you? Why, you're positively uncanny."
"I'm sorry, if it disturbs you."
"Oh, please! You're wonderful. But aren't you afraid they'll kill you--turn green or something?"
"They're neatly surrounded by now with aseptic sacs, the surgeon tells me. I'd forgotten all about them till you reminded me."
"And they never pain you?"
"The only wound I'm suffering now is from the arrow of this sharp-shooter."
They were standing in the little temple, between them a little marble rascal with a bow and arrow. Persis put her hand to her heart. He mistook the gesture and asked, with sudden zest:
"He didn't hit you, too, did he?"
"I was thinking of you," she murmured, staring at him with wet eyes. "Wounded and bleeding, your flesh all torn, and the surgeons gouging in the wounds. Oh!"
She toppled backward and sank on a marble bench before he could help her. He stared at her in bewildered unbelief. He understood that she was nearly aswoon because he had suffered once.
"Why, God bless your wonderful sweet soul!" he gasped, and would have knelt and clasped his arms around her. But even in the swimming of her senses her prudence was on guard, and his indiscretion restored her to herself like a dash of water.
"I beg you to be careful," she said. "You are perfectly visible from the house."
"But nobody's awake. The blinds are closed."
"There are always eyes behind blinds."
"Then let them see me tell you how much I--"
"Not here!" she gasped. "Don't tell me that here."
"Why not?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Enslee built this little temple to this little Cupid to propose to me in."
"And did he?" Forbes asked, in a voice that rattled. "Did he propose to you?"
