What Will People Say? A Novel 47 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 47Chapter 47
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Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 47
Chapter 47
HughesEnglish
When Willie's mother left him in the aftermath of his nightmare she went to pay her duty call on Persis, to welcome her formally into the family and proffer her the use of the family name.
There was the most gleaming cordiality on the surface of their meeting, but the depths of both streams were a trifle murky. Willie's mother understood now why her own husband's fierce old mother, known as "Medusa" Enslee, had received her with such constraint on a similar occasion. That mother had had to give up part of her name, too, and step back from being queen to being queen-mother, with endless confusion in the newspapers, the invitations, the correspondence, and the gossip.
The present Mrs. Enslee felt now a sympathy for the old woman she had hated. But it crowded out the sympathy she should have felt for Persis, who was suffering what she had suffered as a young-woman-afraid-of-her-mother-in-law.
It was bitter for Willie's mother, still beautiful, feeling herself as young as ever, to realize that henceforth she must be the "the elder," or, worse yet, the "old Mrs. Enslee." Perhaps in a year or two a grandmother! It would be just like Persis to hasten that ghastly day.
At present Persis was not thinking of motherhood. She would have called it quite a ghastly day herself--one to be postponed by every ingenuity and subtlety known to American womanhood. She was thinking of her new name.
"You'll be Mrs. Enslee, and I suppose I'll be Mrs. William Enslee, or Mrs. Little Willie, sha'n't I, mama? Do you want me to call you mama, or shall I stick to Mrs. Enslee?"
"As you like, my dear," said Mrs. Enslee, with a little shudder at being "mama" to a strange woman and a rival. Persis rattled on in ill-managed embarrassment.
"It will be pretty mixy with two Mrs. William Enslees, won't it? Like two in a single bed--pardon me! I'll have to be awfully good or awfully careful, sha'n't I, for fear my letters may fall into your hands? But I'll promise not to give away what I find in yours if you won't tell on me."
Mrs. Enslee was rather pleased than offended at this. At least it credited her with the ability to create scandal.
She was like Mrs. Neff in hating to get too old to be suspected.
She smiled at Persis with Spanish coquetry, and offered her aid in the appalling details of announcing the engagement. It was the new mode to use the telephone for the more intimate friends. For others there were letters, calls, advertisements, luncheons, and dinners in all the exquisite degrees of familiarity.
She and Persis were going into business for a while on a large scale--a business for which Persis was peculiarly fitted and in which she developed an extraordinary energy.
When Persis had returned to New York from the Enslee country place to find her father helpless and dejected, the offer of Willie's aid had acted like a magic elixir. It had meant the payment of old bills, or their enlargement, and the opening of new credits. Dealers whom the mercantile agencies had secretly filled with alarm for the Cabot accounts had been subtly reassured.
In place of letters of pathetic appeal for a little something to meet a pay-roll there came letters announcing private views of new importations. Persis' own father called her his loan-broker, and said that she had earned the usual commission; he ordered her to buy new things. He complained of the shabbiness of her hats. Why hadn't she bought the lot she had spoken to him about some time ago? She did at once--and more.
Persis was like a child waking from a bad dream to find that it is Christmas morning and that its stockings are cornucopias spilling over with glittering toys.
And what woman lives that does not find more rapture in shopping with a full purse or an elastic charge-account than in any other earthly or spiritual pleasure?
The barbaric love of beads and red feathers and mirrors has never been civilized out of the sex. The male succeeds in love and elsewhere by what he thinks and makes and gives; the female by what she looks and wears and extracts. The shops are her art-museums, her gymnasiums, her paradises, and the privilege of reveling among them is more voluptuous than any other of her sensualities. Shopping takes the place of exploration. That is her Wanderlust.
And so when Willie Enslee arrived at the Cabot house with all his weapons ready to force Persis to an early marriage, he was astounded--he was even dismayed--to find that she offered no resistance, but greeted his proposal with delight. It was like making ready to besiege and storm a castle and being met half-way there by flower-girls instead of troops. Persis was so instant with acceptance that he took credit to himself. He cherished a pitiful delusion that she wanted to marry him--was actually in a hurry to marry him!
But it was because she had seen in the shops the new things for this year's brides. They were absolutely ravishing! Whatever they are in reality or in retrospect, fashions are always ravishing as they dawn on the horizon. Such beauties brighten as they make their entrance and wither as they take their flight.
To prepare herself for a wedding did not mean--to Persis, at least, whatever it may mean to other women--that she must prepare her soul for a mystic union with a stranger soul. It meant that she must prepare her wardrobe for the inspection of all sorts of critics, from the most casual to the most intimate. It meant not only buying a veil and some orange blossoms and a meekly glorious white dress, but it meant outfitting a private department store. It meant preparing for travel and a prolonged campaign known as a honeymoon, rather than entering shyly into obscurity and domestic bliss. It meant not half so much what the groom should think and see as what to show and what to whisper to the bridesmaids, hysterically envious and ecstatically horrified.
Persis' father had nearly bankrupted himself once before over the wedding of Persis' sister into the British peerage, when she ceased to be the beautiful Miss Cabot and became the Countess of Kelvedon, and had the privilege of being nineteenth in the fifty-seven varieties of precedence among British women.
Mr. Cabot had learned nothing from that investment. He encouraged Persis to extravagances she would never have dared even in her present mood. It was like chirruping and taking the whip to a horse that was already running away.
He sent a long cablegram to Persis' sister, insisting that she come over at once for the wedding and bring the Earl and the eight-year-old Viscount of Selden, the six-year-old Honorable Paul Hadham, and the five-year-old Lady Maude Hadham. Persis received at once a brief reply from the Countess:
"Congratulations old girl snooks says awfully glad to be with you if papa pays the freight we are stony. Elise."
"Snooks" was the Earl of Kelvedon. Sometimes Elise called him "Kelly" for short. Papa cabled the freight--and "freight" was beginning to describe his burdens. But he was in for it; yet he felt that, come what come would, he should henceforward lean comfortably on the Enslee Estates.
Persis kept him signing checks till he was tempted to buy one of those ingenious machines by which one signs twenty at a time.
Persis was running amuck among the shops. She was in a torment of delight--a cat in a cosmos of catnip. The equipment of the humblest bride is a matter of supreme effort. To make a Persis Cabot ready to enter the dynasty of the Enslees was a Xerxic invasion.
The wedding-gown, though it was designed and builded with almost the importance of St. Paul's Cathedral, was the least part of the trousseau. Willie was to take her yachting and motoring and touring--perhaps around the world. They were to be presented at court if the Queen forgave the Countess her latest epigram in time. They were to visit capitals, castles, chateaux, gambling-palaces, golf-links, beaches, spas. Costumes and changes of costumes must be constructed for all these; for each costume there must be a foundation from the skin out. If it had been possible, the skin would have been changed as well. They do their best in that direction--these women with their pallor for a gown of one color and their carmine for a gown of another.
Persis had to have a going-to-the-altar gown, and a going-away gown, and going-to-bed gowns, getting-up gowns, going-motoring costumes, and going-in-swimming suits, dinner-gowns, house-gowns, tea-gowns, informal theater-gowns, opera-gowns, race-track togs, yachting flannels. And these were of numberless schools of architecture from train-gowns to tub frocks and smocks, from lingerie dresses to semi-tailored one-piece and two-piece suits, coats, and coatees, and coat-dresses, and sport-coats, opera wraps, rain slip-ons.
And there were colors to choose from that made the rainbow look like a study in sepia. And there were fabrics of strange names--crepe, tulle, serge, taffeta, brocade, charmeuse, paillette, jet, batiste, voile--what not?
And there were the underpinnings to all these--the stockings and garters, the corsets and chiffon corset-covers and combinations, chemi-pantalons and petticoats. And there were the accessories--hats, caps, bonnets, gloves, fans, parasols, veils, jabots, collars, aigrettes, boots, shoes, slippers, powders, paints, cerates, massage-cream--ad infinitum. And in every instance there must be a choice.
The complexity of a woman's wardrobe! A man is fitted out in a small haberdashery and a tailoring establishment, a hat shop and a shoe store. For woman they build Vaticans of merchandise in order that she may make an effect on--other women!
Persis had so many dresses to try on that she had two pneumatic images made of her form to stand in her stead. She had the servants' tongues hanging out from running errands. Delivery-wagon drivers and messenger-boys kept the area doorbells ringing early and late.
There was so much mail to send out that she hired two secretaries. Ten Eyck called on her just once, and was used as telephone-boy, package-opener, stenographer, change-purse, box-lifter, memorandum-maker, doorbell-answerer, gift-cataloguer till he was exhausted.
"How does a man ever dare to marry one of you maniacs?" he said. "Marriage isn't a sacrament with you; it's a massacre. They have a money macerator at the mint that destroys old greenbacks. Why don't they get a couple of brides to do the work? A wedding costs as much as a small war."
Persis might have retorted that wars were quite as foolish a waste as fashions, and not half so pretty. A new style in projectiles, the latest fabric of armor plate, the mode in airships--these things, too, come and go, cost fortunes, and are soon mere junk. But Persis' head was too full of other things, and her mouth too full of pins, to make any answer to Ten Eyck.
If Forbes had called he might have seen that Persis was a great general, or at least a great quartermaster, equipping not an army with one uniform, but one poor little frantic body with an army of uniforms. And Forbes would have been glad to take that body without a shift to its back and wrap it in one of his own overcoats and ride away with it. But for Willie she must loot Paris.
Still it was her career. Forbes would not give up his for her; why should she give up hers for him?
If Forbes had been leading his company to war he would have felt sorry for Persis, bitterly sorry to leave her, afraid for her; but he would still have gone, as men have always gone. He would not have been immune to bugles or the gait-quickening thrup of drums. He might have hummed love songs to her, but "Dixie" would still have thrilled him. He would not have neglected his uniform or his tactics. He would not have skulked from a charge or dodged a shell on her account.
That was his trade. This was hers. And Persis was as happy as a man is when he is going into battle. She was happy because she was busy and because she was buying, exercising choice, spurning, pillaging among cities of beautiful things. She dozed standing while skirts were draped; at night she simply fell into bed and was asleep; her maid drew her skirts from her hips and her stockings from her legs as if she were dead. But the next morning she woke without being called, and began the day with new ferocity of attack.
She had not forgotten Forbes. The thought of him hovered about her heart. She paused now and then, with hand on cheek and eyes far away, thinking of him so intently that the saleswoman had to speak twice to her, or the dressmaker to lift her arms into the position he wanted for the try-on.
Sometimes she woke from dreams in which she seemed to feel Forbes' arms about her. As she woke they were withdrawn, as if he fled. She would weep a little and lick the salt from her lips and find her tears very bitter. She would pout at Fate and muse: "Why couldn't it have been Harvey instead of Willie? Oh, what a pitiful sacrifice I am making of my life!"
But her anger or despair in these humors was not half so intense as her despair at finding that some color could not be matched or that a color chosen in electric light was wrong in the daylight, or her anger because some tradesman failed to keep his word or some caller came to wish her well at a busy time, when true well-wishing would have shown itself in keeping out of the way.
A president could hardly have given more thought to selecting his cabinet than Persis gave to the choice of her bridesmaids, those lieutenants who must stand by in the same uniform like moving caryatides. There was the enormously important subject of their costume to debate. Since the livery that suited one style of beauty was loathsome on another, there was no little politics to play.
Persis invited the four elect to a luncheon at her club, and by having her ideas clear and enforcing them in a delicately adamant tone she managed to close the session in two hours. It was good work, and it was necessary; for the bridesmaids' costumes must be ready in time for the photographs.
She managed the luncheon so well that she finished it ahead of the time she had told her chauffeur to call for her. She left the bridesmaids all talking at once, for she had an appointment with one of her dressmakers. As she came down the steps of the quaintly colonial Colony Club she found no taxi in sight. She would not wait to have one summoned. The brief walk would do her good. She set out briskly down Madison Avenue and turned into Twenty-ninth Street to cross to Fifth Avenue.
This brought her to one of the few churchyards in almost grassless New York--the pleasant green acre of the Church of the Transfiguration, known to theatrical history as "The Little Church Around the Corner," and to the elopement industry as another Gretna Green.
As she approached it a taxicab drew up at the curb, and Stowe Webb and Alice Neff bounced out, almost bowling Persis over, as usual. Both had a much dressed-up look, and Alice carried a little bouquet.
Persis was in a hurry, but she scented excitement. When the two lovers had apologized for their Juggernautical haste she asked, with the demurest of smiles:
"And what are you children doing in this dark alley?"
"Oh, we're just--just--" Alice stammered.
"Does your mother know you're out?"
"Naturally not," Alice smiled, more cheerfully.
"Mischief's brewing. I've got to know."
"Can you keep a secret?"
"That's my other name--Inviolate."
Alice hesitated, then took a precaution. "Cross your heart and hope to swallow fish-hooks?"
Persis drew an X over her heart, and vowed: "I am full of fish-hooks."
Alice looked up and down the street cautiously, then spoke in a whisper of awesome solemnity: "Well, then, Stowe and I have given mama the slip, and we're going to--to--"
"Get a chocolate-sundae with two spoons!"
Alice bridled with indignation. "Certainly not! We're not children! We are going to run away and be married."
Persis nodded her head gravely. "That was what I was afraid you were going to say. But why this haste?"
"Well, you see, Stowe has just got a job--umm-humm! It's a terribly important post--secretary to Ambassador Tait."
"Ambassador?"
"Yes; the Senator is going to France, and Stowe is to help him out."
The young secretary spoke in, trying not to look as important as he felt: "I simply can't endure the thought of leaving Alice all alone over here. So we're going to get married."
"Fine!" said Persis, with subtlety. "I suppose you get a whopping big salary."
"Indeed he does!" said Alice. "Twelve hundred a year! It's wonderful for a beginning."
Persis suppressed her emotions at the talk of salary. She hated the word; but she exclaimed, "Wonderful!" Then she turned to Stowe to ask: "Does the Senator know you're going to bring a bride along?"
"No; we're going to surprise him."
Persis thought of her appointment. It was vitally important, but she felt a call to duty. She thought it was rather good of her to heed it. She bundled the two young people back into the waiting taxicab in spite of their protests.
"Take us for a little drive, Stowe," she said. "I want a word with you. Tell the man to go down Washington Square way. You're not so likely to meet her mother."
