What Will People Say? A Novel 32 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 32Chapter 32
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 32
Chapter 32
HughesEnglish
Lieutenant Forbes had known what it was to bivouac in the black of night in Mindanao, surrounded by wild men native to the trees and as stealthy as the dark, and armed with blow-guns, carved, painted, sometimes studded with gems, but emitting poisonous darts. He had stood then trying to peer them out in the gloom, knowing they were there and unable to descry them.
So he stood now gripping his door-knob lest it turn in his hand and betray him. He realized that he and Persis had lingered in a social ambush. They were in no peril of life, but the unknown spy might let loose upon them an envenomed dart from the silent, the sometimes jeweled blow-gun of gossip.
Forbes' eyes fought in vain against a dark that was like a black bandage. He felt sure that it was not Ten Eyck's door that had thudded so slyly shut. But he could not even guess whether it were the door of Enslee or of one of the women.
He waited and waited, hoping that a light would be made, but there was no glimmer along any sill. Even Persis was evidently undressing in the dark, or in the moonlight that must be pouring into her room.
Forbes visioned her there chilled and tired, her sleepy hands fumbling at the sepals of her clothing till she stripped them off and stood glimmering in the blue a moment before she slipped into that creamy nothing he had seen her wear at the window. And then he visioned her with chattering teeth and shivering hands immersing her lonely beauty in the sheets, snow-white, snow-cold, like a nymph returning to her brook in winter-time. He felt immensely sorry that she should be cold and alone.
He wondered if she prayed at her bedside, and thought of her as a nun in one long, white line of beauty, from her brow bent down, to the palms of her little bare feet upturned on the floor. He hoped that she would not pray too long lest she catch cold. And this seemed a kind of sacrilegious thought, like individual communion cups.
All these things he thought as he waited, gripping the door-knob and listening fiercely for a sign of the eavesdropper. And lest she should have been too cold to pray, he prayed for her, that calumny might not be the reward of her innocent love, the sweet surrender she had made of her discretion and her good repute into his keeping.
Yet he feared for her. He doubted that the secret observer would think her free of guile. He did not fear for himself. The man would be regarded at worst as a successful adventurer, but the woman despised for an easy victim or a willing accomplice.
Forbes reproached himself for bringing this blight on Persis. It was he that had dragged her protesting from the house, persuaded her to steal forth, led her into the distance, and kept her while the respectable hours slipped by.
The only atonement he could make was to proclaim as speedily as possible that their love was honest and that they carried the franchise of betrothal. To-morrow he must make sure of her. He closed his door with the utmost caution, and got out of his clothes and into his bed with all possible silence. He was exhausted with the long day of love's anxieties and triumph, and the new anxiety he had stumbled into. He had yet to tell her how far from rich he was. He had yet to persuade her to leave this golden world of hers for the parsimony he offered.
Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the sacrifice. Then he could not protect her from the unknown sneerer. Indeed, if the unknown listener were Enslee, Forbes would not stand as the protector of Persis at all, but as a ruthless tempter of another man's love. If it were Ten Eyck, he would have ground for reviling Forbes as one whom he regretted sponsoring, a wolf admitted into the fold in sheep's clothing. Or if it were one of the women--everybody knows what mercy females have for one another.
In the chaos of his perplexities he fell asleep, and did not waken till the whir of the telephone on his wall called him from his slumber. Winifred's voice gruffly informed him that his breakfast was waiting for him.
When, as little later as he could manage, he joined the group already at the table, he tried to read in the "Good morning" of each some telltale hint. Mrs. Neff's A.M. languor might mask a reproach. Alice's casual glance might mean aversion. Ten Eyck's reproving frown might be a comment on his tardiness or a rebuke for his bad faith. Winifred's curt manner might be merely her way of play-acting a surly cook, and it might represent disgust.
Willie Enslee smiled--smiled! Was it a crafty sneer, or was it simply his stinted hospitality? If Enslee knew that he was clandestine with Enslee's sweetheart, how could Enslee smile? He must eliminate Enslee, at least, from his suspicion.
Persis alone greeted him with heartiness; her blessed and blessing eyes were like kisses on the brow. But Persis did not know that they had been watched. She had closed her door first. How was he to tell her? how put her on her guard?
Forbes ate his breakfast in the mixed humor of a detective and a suspect. He studied the others, and they seemed to study him or to avoid him. He could not settle upon even a theory.
After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a secret word with Persis. She was told off to the bed-making squad. She was even to do his room! He caught her at the foot of the stairs. She warned him with a gesture, and he broke the news to her without preparation:
"Last night when we were saying good night some one else was in the hall."
Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened. "How do you know?" she whispered.
"I heard her--or him."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.
"Do you think it could have been--All right, Mr. Forbes, I'll be careful of your razor-blades."
This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came by and spoke with icy severity--was it ironical?
"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers in this hotel." She went on up; and Persis followed helplessly, leaving Forbes distraught.
Later he saw her at his windows beating his pillows. The intimate implication thrilled him, and he threw her a kiss while pretending to take his cigar from his lips, and she retreated into the embrasure to answer it with a secret waft from her own mouth.
Forbes had hoped to be invited to ride with Persis, and had put on a pair of civilian riding-breeches and his army puttees. But he was ignored in the program for the day, announced by Enslee, who decreed that he and Persis would ride over to the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, by the quietest roads they could find, while the rest were to motor across. They would all have luncheon together and return in the same way. "If that horse of mine doesn't break both of our fool necks," he added.
"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck asked, speaking Forbes' own uneasy thought.
"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's a born centaurette, while a horse and I are like oil and water--only oil always stays on top, and I don't."
But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did. He ventured to say as much when she appeared, but she laughed at him:
"Horses are not among my afraids. I've ridden since I graduated from the back of a Great Dane to a Shetland pony. I've got rubber bones; when I fall off I bounce back."
He could make no further protest, and hung about in the futile discomfort of an old woman. There was no reassurance for him in the behavior of the horses, which two stablemen brought up the hill with a difficulty that led Ten Eyck to comment:
"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"
There was a slight break in Willie's laugh as he said: "My horse had better behave or I'll let him find his way home alone. I wish I had a parachute."
Persis was wearing the bowler hat and the coat and breeches and boots Forbes had seen her in that morning in Central Park. He knew how well she rode in the bridle-path, but he feared for her in the motor-swept roads. He told her so, but she laughed again.
She set her foot in the stirrup, flung her leg across the saddle, and warned the groom away. While Willie got one foot in the stirrup and went hopping hither and yon in pursuit of it with the other, Persis was getting acquainted with her own mount, humoring him in his school-boy hilarity, and sharply repressing any malicious mischief.
The moment Willie was aboard the two horses whirled and charged down the winding road in a mad gallopade. And Forbes' heart galloped in his breast as he wondered if he should ever see her alive again. He had felt this same fear for her that first day on the Avenue, when her motor shot forward so wildly. He was always feeling afraid for her.
