What Will People Say? A Novel 38 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 38Chapter 38
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Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 38
Chapter 38
HughesEnglish
The reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous "Thank you, Miss Cabot," convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters learn too well, put the worst possible interpretation on her forest promenade with Forbes. This was all that it needed to turn her disappointment into dismay, her bewilderment into panic. She had lost rhythm with her life and the world.
She thrust one boot into its stirrup, swung the other across the saddle, and jerked her horse's head impatiently. Her temper threw his motor machinery out of gear, and he found himself with at least two too many feet. He bolted and sidled in a ragged syncopated gait, snorting and flinging his head angrily. She could not get him into meter with himself or her, or with the horse that Forbes brought clattering alongside.
At first she had felt infinitely sorry for Forbes and indignant only at the fate that made him poor. As she rode her fretful horse she began to feel infinitely sorry for herself and indignant at Forbes. He had permitted her to think that he had ample means. He had encouraged her to love him seriously. Her resentment was the fierce resentment people feel when those they love and idealize do not live up to the standards set for them.
Forbes had come into her life like a bull sauntering into a china shop. A moment before his entrance everything was arranged, orderly, exquisite, and formal--a little cold, perhaps, but charmingly definite. Now everything was crashing about her. She must walk warily among the fragments or she would suffer.
Persis was an orderly soul, and had not suspected that she was also a passionate one. She was more like Forbes than either of them understood. For all the deep intensity of his nature, training had made him first the soldier. In battle he was the fiery warrior; but battles were infrequent, and almost all his days had been spent in acquiring and instilling precision, exactness in the manual of arms, rectitude in the lines of drill formations, perfection in uniform and equipment, in the company books and reports--everywhere.
So Persis had acquired from infancy the rituals of household service, the proprieties and their observance, the arrangement of ceremonies, social book-keeping. And now she was discovering what a disorganizer love is, what an anarch among plans, what a smasher of china.
Before the advent of Forbes she had almost given up the expectation of love. Then out of nothing the fates evoked this man. If he had confessed even a pittance of twenty-five thousand a year, that would have meant at worst "love in a cottage"--cottage being an elastic word. Friends of hers owned cottages of palatial dimensions. But two thousand a year--with a prospect of twenty-four hundred a year! She simply could not imagine it.
She tried to mask her anger under an unusually cheerful manner. She spoke with approval of the landscape, chattered vivaciously about everything, and all the while was burning with resentment. It was small wonder that Forbes felt the blight of her wrath when the very horses knew of it. The most determined politeness can never imitate the fine flower and bouquet of genuine enthusiasm. But what could Forbes say to set things right? The one effective speech would have been a declaration of independent means, a smiling disclaimer of poverty: "I was only joking; I am really very rich."
That would have re-established the entente. But that was the one thing Forbes could not say. He rode on at Persis' side, a silent and dejected prisoner of circumstances, a spy captured in the enemy's camp in the enemy's uniform.
Eventually they reached the Enslee place--the mountain that was Enslee's, with the stately pleasure dome he had decreed there. The majesty of it belittled Forbes still more. The beauty of it shamed him.
They trotted across the granite bridge and urged the horses to the ascent.
The horses plodded doggedly up and up, and the beauty of every spot as they reached it wore away Persis' anger. It was difficult to feel a bitterness against anybody, even against the fates, when they permitted some aromatic shrub to throw an almost visible veil of perfume about her, and another to dandle before her eyes a smiling throng of blossoms almost audibly singing like clustered cherubim. The mere dapple of shadow and sun-splash was felicity, and the white road that curved among its lawns was voluptuously sinuous, like a tawny Cleopatra on a green divan or one of Titian's high-hipped Venuses.
The gardening was formal, the swards were shaved, the trees seemed to have been whisk-broomed, the shrubs had been curled and scented; but they were beautiful, and only wealth could have collected them or kept them at their best. And above them all loomed the house, a chateau of stately charm enthroned in beauty.
Forbes saw how good it was, and coveted it. But it was as if Naboth, the soldier, had envied David, the King, his garden. Persis also saw how good it was, and she could possess it all, become the chatelaine of this place.
She spoke her thought aloud:
"It's this sort of thing, Harvey, that I love and need--beautiful things and plenty of them."
"I understand," Forbes groaned.
"If only you could get them for us!"
"If only I could!"
A little farther she checked her horse, whose trunk was heaving like a bellows. It was in a little colonnade of trees with an arched roof of green leaves in more than Gothic confusion. Birds were everywhere, fluting, fighting, and building.
"Listen to them, Harvey," Persis murmured, with a kind of sad joy, as he reined in alongside. "It's their courtship-time, too. And the male bird is the better dressed of the two."
Forbes noted how sweet her throat was as it arched back; and the under surface of her chin, how beautiful. They were no longer his to admire, and bitterness came into his heart. His smile was close to a sneer as he said:
"The males put on their Sunday best and pour out their finest songs, and the lady bird chooses, they say, the one that wears the best clothes."
She gave him a look that was both rebuking and rebuked, and urged her horse along. But a little later her response to beauty filled her again with the contentment of repletion, and she checked her horse by the marble-walled pool, whose surface was broken and circled here and there by gleaming red fish with lacy fins and tails; they were darting and leaping in acrobatic ecstasies.
"They're making love, too, I suppose," Persis said, a trifle anxiously.
And he was still aggrieved enough to answer: "And the fish ladies also select the gentleman with the most gold."
She stared at him a moment, hurt and shamed. Then she flung back at him:
"Then you oughtn't to blame us--us other females for making the wisest choice we can. It must be a law of nature."
"It must be," he sighed, so humbly that she regretted her victory. She would have put out her hand to comfort him, but she saw above them Willie Enslee leaning across the balustrade. She lifted her horse into a jog-trot, and they rode into the court, where a chauffeur waited to take the horses to the stable.
Willie greeted them in his whiniest tone.
"Where on earth were you? We've been home for ages."
"We got off the main road," Persis said, as she climbed the steps, followed by Forbes, "and the horses were tired and--"
"I was awfully anxious. I was about to start out to look for you."
"There was no occasion to be anxious."
"Besides, your father telephoned you."
"My father! Is he back in New York?"
"No; he telephoned from Chicago. He was just leaving on the twenty-hour train. He couldn't wait till you got back."
"What did he have to say?"
"Lots." Willie looked uneasily at Forbes, as if he were in the way.
"I'll be changing for dinner," Forbes said, with uncomfortable haste.
"You'd better be cooking the dinner," Willie said. "Winifred is counting on your soldierly experience to help her out."
So Forbes went to the kitchen to salute and report for duty. As he entered the house he looked back to see Enslee leading Persis toward the marble steps to the little temple where he proposed regularly.
Forbes' heart thudded heavily in his breast. He felt helpless to protest or intervene in any way. Persis was up at auction. He had bidden her in under a misapprehension of the upset price, and she was put back for sale again.
