Literature · Romance

What Will People Say? A Novel 57

Chapter 57

HughesEnglish

One day Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe found the Enslees shivering like a pair of waifs in a restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its heating arrangements. She asked them if they were coming to the the dansant she was giving at her home that afternoon. They had forgotten all about it, and Persis pleaded an engagement with her doctor. Mrs. Edgecumbe was "so sorry. There would be hardly any Americans there, then, except the old faithful Ambassador and Captain Forbes."

Persis' heart warmed instantly, but she said she was afraid that she had some other engagement booked; in any case, they might drop in for a minute. She shivered with exultance and blamed it on the chill.

When five o'clock came round Persis carelessly remembered the half-promise to Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe. Willie was out of humor. Persis angelically urged him to stay in his room and nurse his cold. Her unusual thought for his welfare startled him. It delighted him. He decided to stay by her and get more of the tenderness she was lavishing to-day. She could not shake him loose.

The the dansant was a failure in Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe's mind, and in her sister Winifred's heart, for the storm kept most of the Parisians away, and the Ambassador sent word by Forbes that he would be tardy if he came at all. He pleaded motives of state. But he sent Forbes with his apologies.

Forbes, having been on a visit in his official capacity, was again in uniform. His eyes and cheeks were aglow from the cold, and Persis watched him with adoration as he came nearer and nearer.

He did not see her, even when he paused to talk to Mrs. Edgecumbe, so close to Persis that she could have touched him. And when she could not endure the delay any longer, she thrust her hand beneath his eyes, and murmured: "Captain Forbes doesn't remember me, but I met him in New York ages ago."

Her voice, suddenly leaping out of the grave of memory, terrified him. He whirled so quickly that his sword caught in her gown. He knelt to disengage it, and there was laughter over the confusion, and then Mrs. Edgecumbe was called away by a new-comer, and they were left together.

Persis beamed upon the complete disarray of all his faculties, and spoke with affected raillery, though her own mind was in a seethe.

"At last we meet again! And how magnificent we are in our gorgeous uniform! It's only the second time I've seen you in it. And I believe we are no longer plain Mr. Forbes--but Captain! Captain Harvey Forbes, U. S. A.! And they say we are rich now. What a pity I didn't wait a little!"

Forbes was hurt at her flippancy. He smiled dismally, and she purred on: "I assure you your title and your wealth are vastly becoming; almost as becoming as all these buttons and epaulettes and things." She walked around him, looking him over like an inspecting officer. "Um-m! How very nice! Magnificent!"

"Oh, I beg of you--" Forbes protested, tortured with chagrin.

But she went on, "And a sword, too!" She ventured even to pull the blade a little way from its scabbard. He would have killed a man for doing that, and he almost wanted to kill Persis as she tantalized him with a strange mixture of ridicule and idolatry. "I've no doubt the boulevards are strewn with the broken hearts of Frenchwomen. Who could resist you? I'm sure my own heart isn't anywhere near healed. It was very cruel of you, Harvey, to throw me over and run away after you had stolen my poor young affections."

Forbes was distraught; he groaned, "I see you've not forgotten how to make fun of me."

But Persis went on in mock petulance: "It wasn't at all nice of you to cast me off just because I married Willie."

This gave Forbes a chance to return her ridicule and he asked, "By the way, how is your excellent husband?"

"You can see for yourself. There he is, still unable to learn the tango and trying to teach it to a fat Marquise."

Forbes attempted that most uncivil of tones to a woman, the ironical: "I hear that you and Mr. Enslee are the most devoted of couples."

"Oh, it's a silly custom that married people should pretend to be congenial during their honeymoon," Persis said. "Thank heaven, my initiation is almost over."

Forbes was genuinely horrified at such dealing with a subject so sacred as marriage; he forsook irony for his usual forthright utterance:

"Surely your--your husband doesn't neglect you?"

There was a touch of quick anxiety in Forbes' tone that showed how deeply he still cherished her.

"Neglect me?" Persis quoted. "If he only would! Willie does tag after me even more than I could wish; but he is growing restless. I can usually escape him by staying at home. He's doing the music-halls very thoroughly. If I can only suggest some very shocking revue I am assured of an evening alone. He is going to one over on Montmartre to-morrow night. I shall be quite deserted. We are stopping at the Hotel Meurice."

There was so dire a meaning in her hint and so much danger in playing again with the fire whose scar he still bore that Forbes ceased fencing and slashed: "Why do you torment me? You refused my love once."

"Never your love, my dear boy," said Persis, with abrupt seriousness. "I never refused your love--only your hand. I always encouraged your love."

"But I was poor," Forbes sneered.

"Yes, you were poor," Persis said, taking his own word and turning it against him, "and I knew less than I do now." She walked away to a niche beside a statue where they could talk without being overheard, but, being visible, were chaperoned by the crowd. She sank upon a settle of gold and old rose and motioned him to her side. Then, while her face and her fan proclaimed that their conversation was of the idlest, her voice was deep with elegy:

"Harvey, try to be just. If you had been rich--oh! if you had been rich!--then, as you are now, Harvey, then I could have believed that such a thing as a love-match is feasible."

"But I was poor!" Forbes reiterated, with a knell-like persistence.

"That was Fate's fault, not mine," said Persis, in all solemnity. "But haven't I been honest with you? You declared that you loved me; I confessed that I loved you."

"Was it honest, then, not to give me your heart?"

"My whole heart has always been yours for the asking--and still is."

Forbes recoiled with a sudden: "What are you saying? You have a husband now!"

"What does that prove?" was Persis' grim reply. "I don't owe him anything in the inside of my heart. He didn't buy that, thank God! Before the world, I owe him everything, and I should be the first to abhor any open indiscretion, for my ten commandments are condensed to two: 'Don't be indiscreet!' and 'Beware of what people will say!' What more could a husband ask?"

Forbes tossed his hands in despair. He gave her up. She and her creed were beyond his understanding. "A fine code, that!"

"It is the morality of half the world, Harvey, rich or poor, city or country," Persis declared. "The crime consists in being found out."

"Do you realize what you are saying?" Forbes demanded, eager to shield her from her own blasphemies. But she ran on unheedingly.

"Even I have a heart; and why should I play the hypocrite before you of all men? Before Willie Enslee? Yes; he is my husband. Before the gossipy world? Yes; it is the one duty I feel I owe that man. Ours was no marriage for love."

"But it was a marriage," Forbes urged, stoutly, and rose to escape.

"Yes, but after all, what is a marriage?" Persis demanded, like a Pilate asking, "What is truth?" She rose to her feet, but paused as ardor swept her headlong. "Do you think it possible for any woman to live her life out without a lover? She may cherish the memory of a dead man or a faithless man; or throw her affection away on a fool or a rake; she may keep it a secret almost from herself, but never, never, never believe that any woman can exist without some man to pay worship to."

Forbes could only attempt a weak sarcasm, "Is it impossible that a woman should love her husband?"

In a daze he fell back to his seat, forgetful that he left her standing; but she was too much engrossed with her great problem to heed this; she went on, earnestly:

"Any woman may love her husband for a little while; or in rare case for a lifetime, especially if he beats her or is a drunkard." Then her unwonted oratory on abstract subjects palled on her. She came back to the concrete instance with an abrupt, "But Harvey, Harvey, why should we be wasting time talking about love?" She bent over him, but he did not even look up at her. He shook his head helplessly.

"I wasn't bred in your world. I can't understand a thing you have said."

His aloofness of manner gave Persis a sense of loneliness, and she wailed to him as from afar, though she sank down close to him. "But can't you understand how fate has made a fool of me? I married for wealth and to cut a wide swath. Well, I have the wealth. I can cut the swath. But I've found that my ambition isn't enough, any more than your soldier ambitions were enough. Harvey, I'm lonely, terribly lonely. My heart is empty; it is like an old deserted house, and a ghost haunts it, and the ghost is--I don't have to tell you who the ghost is?"

"And you know," Forbes echoed, "what ghost haunts me."

Persis was melted by his kinship with her suffering. She leaned so close to him that her very perfume appealed to him as the perfume wherewith one flower calls to another in the noontime of desire. And she said: "Harvey, I'm going to tell you a terrible secret that I've hardly dared to tell myself: I--I crossed the ocean to find you!"

He was suffocated with longing for her, and horror of her. He gasped, "My God! on your honeymoon!"

Everywhere in that day there seemed to be a band somewhere playing a turkey-trot. There was such a band here, and such music was to be expected; but there was something whimsical about the fact that the tune this band struck up now was a rag-time version of "Mendelssohn's Wedding March."

Persis was so eager to be in Forbes' arms again, and the dance was so ample an excuse, that she smiled into his mask of horror. "We haven't danced for ever so long."

A wanton whoop of the violins swept away all such solemn things as honor, decency, duty. He rose and caught her in his embrace. It was the same girlish body, irresistibly warm and lithe. They swung and sidled and hopped with utter cynicism. The only remnant of his horror was a foolish, bewildered, muttered: "How could you?"

"Come to Paris?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Because I felt you still loved me as I still love you, and because I thought you were--perhaps--afraid."

"Afraid, eh?" He laughed, his professional soldier's pride on fire. "Well, I don't think you will find me a coward."

And he tightened his arm about her like a vise and spun her so dizzily that, though she was rejoiced by his brutality, the discretion that was her decalogue spoiled her rapture. She felt again that swoon of fear, and made him lead her back to their niche.

She did not know that Ambassador Tait had come in and had watched the vortex, was watching now with terror the look on Forbes' face and her answering smile. He could not hear their words--he did not need to. He knew what their import would be. The burlesque of the wedding music was the final touch of sarcasm.

Persis, ignorant of his espionage, sighed, "Oh, it is wonderful to be together again!"

"Wonderful," Forbes panted. "But it is in a crowd, and you are married."

"That does not mean that I am never to see you alone, does it?" she asked, anxiously and challengingly.

Forbes was still wise enough and well enough aware of his own passion to say, "But discovery and scandal would be the only result."

"Not if we were very discreet," Persis pleaded, thinking of those lonely months.

"But your husband?"

Persis uttered that ugly old truth, "If we can evade gossip abroad, we shall be safe enough at home."

And as if in object-lesson, Willie Enslee joggled up that very moment. He showed the influence of mild tippling on a limited capacity, and, coming forward, shook hands foolishly and forcibly with Captain Forbes. "How d'ye do--Mr. Ward," he drawled.

"Captain Forbes, dear," Persis corrected.

"That's right. I always was an ass about names, Mr. Ward. I haven't seen you for years and years, have we? Have you met my wife? Oh, of course you have."

Forbes was revolted. There was something loathsome about the little farce. Enslee reminded him of the clown in "I Pagliacci," and Persis, like another Nedda, was determined to finish the scene. Tucking her fan under her thigh, she said with innocent voice, "Oh, Willie, I've lost my fan somewhere; would you mind looking for it?"

Obediently Enslee turned and wandered about, scanning the floor carefully and chortling idiotically, "Fan, fan, who's got the fan?" And so he floated harmlessly and blindly out of the cloud that was thickening around his household.

Persis laughed. "You see what an ideal husband Willie is?" But Forbes, who had a strong stomach for warfare with its mangled enemies and shattered comrades, shuddered at this tame domestic horror. He blurted out:

"It is all the more shameful to deceive a fool."

"Oh, now you're becoming scrupulous again!" said Persis, who thought pride of little moment in the face of the victory she had set her heart on.

But now she was confronted by an adversary of more weight and acumen than Willie, a man whose trade was diplomacy and politics. Ambassador Tait came forward. He was a little pale and weak, and he felt his heart laboring in his breast, but he had at least one more good fight in him, and when he found Forbes plainly enmeshed, though struggling, in Persis' gossamer web, the old man resolved to make the fight at whatever cost.

After a moment of hesitation he came briskly forward with a blunt: "Pardon me a moment, Mrs. Enslee, I have an important communication for the Captain. These state secrets you know." And he led Forbes to an adjoining room, the library, where he said in a low tone, "Harvey, my boy, I've cooked up an imaginary errand to get you away from her."

But Forbes tossed his head at this aspersion on his ability to take care of himself. He answered, "I'm not afraid."

Tait's eyes grew very sad, though his lips smiled when he said: "Well, I'm afraid for you. You're not responsible when you're in her magnetic circle." Then, seeing that Persis had resolutely followed them into the room, he raised his voice for Persis' benefit: "You'll find the papers on my desk. Read them carefully and sign them if they're all right. They must be mailed this evening." Then he deliberately pushed the reluctant and faltering captain from the room, hardly leaving him time to say, "You'll excuse me, Mrs. Enslee?"

Persis understood it all and answered with thinly veiled pique, "I'll have to." But she would not surrender him so easily. She called after Forbes, "I'll expect you back as soon as you have signed those--alleged papers."

The Ambassador was jolted. He could think of nothing to say. He watched Forbes go, then started to follow; noted that Persis was alone, and remembered the laws of courtesy enough to ask:

"May I send you an ice--or your husband?"

"An ice--or my husband?" Persis was forced to smile at such a collocation. "Neither, please. Sit down, Ambassador."

Tait had not expected this. With a hesitating "Er--ah! Thank you!" he seated himself as far as possible from her on a leather divan. Immediately she rose, crossed the room, and sat next to him. There was no escaping her now, and Tait felt like calling for help.

Persis forsook all the modulations of diplomacy and cut straight to the point. "Ambassador Tait, why don't you like me?"

"Why, I--I admire you immensely," he gasped, amazed.

"Oh, drop diplomacy; I'm not the President of France!" Persis said, with a whit of vexation. When a woman answers a compliment with anger she means business. Persis repeated: "I said, why don't you like me?"

"But--I--I--" Tait fumbled for a word; then, somewhat angered by his discomfort, met a woman's directness with a man's bluntness. "Well, why should I?"

Persis parried his rudeness with a return to gentle measures; she beamed. "I'm very nice! I was good to my mother. I'm good to my husband."

"But are you?"

"I'm as good a wife as he deserves. You've seen him?"

Tait smiled in spite of himself, for he was one of Willie's numberless non-admirers. Now Persis, seeing him smiling, returned to open attack:

"Last summer you took Captain Forbes to Evian-les-Bains to get him away from me. Didn't you?"

Tait was off his guard; he stammered: "Certainly not--that is--well, how did you find it out?"

Persis shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "My mother took me to England when I was very young to get me away from a beautiful butcher's boy. She succeeded; she was a woman. You won't; you're a man."

"Help, help!" Tait gasped, in a parody of fear that had a groundwork of reality.

"You love Captain Forbes, don't you?" Persis lunged at his heart again; and he answered, solemnly:

"Yes, I do, as if he were my own son."

"Why don't you want me to see him?"

"Why do you want to see him? You're married."

"But they don't keep women in harems nowadays. Paris is very dull this winter. Don't take Captain Forbes away again."

"As I remember, you gave him marching orders once yourself. You mustn't mind if he goes of his own accord now."

"But he won't go of his own accord if you don't make him. Why do you? You're not afraid of me?"

"Oh, but I am."

Persis laughed with a kind of pride. "Really! You flatter me! But why?"

Tait twisted his big, soft hands together and stared at her a long while before he could speak. "This is very embarrassing, Mrs. Enslee; but since you are so frank, let me ask you one question. Will you answer it frankly?"

"That depends upon the question." Persis chuckled, never dreaming of its nature. When it came it was:

"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"

She laughed evasively now. "What a remarkable question!"

The old lawyer repeated the demand:

"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"

"I think he is very nice," she dodged. "But what has that to do with our friendship?"

"Everything," Tait answered, with tightened lips. "Mrs. Enslee, your father and I rowed together in the same college crew, and Harvey's father was my best friend. May I speak freely to you?"

She responded immediately to the almost affection of his tone. "I wish you would."

"What little success in life I have had," Tait began, with the somewhat formal speech of an orator, "has been due to my habit of foreseeing dangerous combinations and preventing them, or running away from them. The most dangerous combination on earth is a woman, a man, and another man. No married woman has a right to the--I believe you said 'friendship,' of a man who cares for her as Harvey cares for you."

She extracted from his warning only the hidden sweet. "And he does care for me still!"

"But you've married another man."

"Of course," she answered. "But do you think that I can find Mr. Enslee so fascinating that I must give up all my friends?"

"Friends!" Tait exclaimed, with bitterness. "In my day, Mrs. Enslee, I have seen some of the proudest families in New York dragged into the mire of public shame by tragedies that began as innocent experiments in friendship. Don't risk it, Mrs. Enslee. You are on dangerous ground."

She mused aloud. "And you think he loves me still?"

Tait tossed his mane in despair. "Good Lord! That's all my words have meant to you? Well, since we are talking so bluntly, you'll perhaps permit me to say that I know you are not happily married. Everybody knew you never would be happy with Willie Enslee."

"I thought I'd be as happy with him as with anybody-else," she answered, meekly; "but since you assume that I am not happy, why deny me the friendship of a man whose society I am fond of? Don't you think that everybody has the right to be happy?"

"Indeed I don't!"

"Doesn't the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or something guarantee everybody the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of--"

"Yes, the pursuit!" Tait cried. "But the Constitution doesn't guarantee that anybody will get happiness, and there are laws that take away life, take away liberty, take away even the right to the pursuit of happiness."

She was on unfamiliar ground among constitutions. She was more at home in emotion. "Let's not get into a legal debate. All I know is that Harvey used to love me, and I loved him too much to marry him, because he was poor, and because I was bred to reckless extravagance. Besides, I had ambitions. I didn't know then what a vanity they were. But now--well, I don't pretend to be a saint, but I have a heart--a kind of heart. I love only one man on earth. You know that he still loves me. Don't rob us of the happiness we can find in each other's society--the innocent happiness."

A gesture of unbelief escaped the Ambassador. "How long could such love remain innocent--when it begins by being unlawful?"

"But I love him," she insisted, "and he loves me with all his heart. Some day, I presume"--the coming sorrow cast its shadow over her already--"some day, no doubt, he'll find somebody he loves more, and he'll marry her. He can have anybody now; but when he came to me he was poor; he needed money. But I also needed money! Things have changed; money has come to him, as it always comes, too late. But that's no reason for robbing me of my chance for a little while of happiness. And you mustn't--oh, you mustn't rob him of the happiness I could give him!"

Tait was always afraid of himself when his tenderness was appealed to, for he knew from experience that such an appeal if harkened a moment too long, would smother all judgment, all resistance. He felt his heart yearning toward Persis' world-old cry, "Happiness! happiness! a little happiness!" He tried to be harsh.

"But, my good woman--my dear girl--you had your chance; you made your choice. You must pay the price. We can't all have the love we want. I can't. You can't."

Persis laid her hand on his arm. "But why? Why?"

And Tait, after a weak temptation, girded himself for the eternal battle with unholy happiness, and answered with Mosaic simplicity:

"Because it is against the law."

"But you know," Persis returned, unabashed, "you were once a lawyer--you know that the laws in the books are only made for those who haven't the skill to bend them without breaking them."

"Such a love as yours is against the great unwritten laws of society."

Persis would not be crushed with precepts. She sneered: "Society! Is anybody on the square? Why shouldn't we be happy in our own way?"

Tait hesitated, then answered coldly: "There are ten thousand reasons, Mrs. Enslee. I'll give you the one that will appeal to you most strongly: 'You're bound to get found out.'"

"Don't you think I have any discretion? Do you think I am a fool?"

"The first sign of being a fool is trying to play double with the world. Some day--let me warn you--some day you will find yourself so tangled up in your own cleverness that you will be delivered, bound hand and foot, to the shame--yes, the shame of a horrible exposure."

She blenched at this facer. "Don't speak to me as though I were a criminal!"

He struck out again. "Then don't become one. You have no right to love Captain Forbes, nor he to love you. It is a simple question of duty."

"Duty?" she raged. "I want happiness. I'm like a hungry woman standing before a window filled with bread. Your duty says, Stay there and starve. But it isn't duty that lets people starve. It's being afraid."

Tait put off all restraint of courtesy. "Oh, I understand your creed. It's the creed of your set. You're not afraid of any risk. You fear nothing but self-sacrifice. Your greatest horror is being bored. But you'll find that there is a worse boredom than you suffer now--the ennui of exile, of ostracism. The very set that practises your theory is the most merciless to those that get found out. It's like a pack of wolves on the chase. The one that falls or is wounded is torn to pieces by the rest, and then they rush on again. I mean to save Harvey from that pack at any cost."

She had no refuge but a prayer. "I implore you not to break my heart."

Tait donned in manner the black cap of a judge. "Such hearts as yours ought to be broken, Mrs. Enslee, for the health of the world. I understand you. I don't blame you. I don't blame your mother in her grave. It was her breeding, as it is yours and that of your pack. You are the people who bring wealth into disrepute. The noise of your revels drowns the quiet charities of the rich who are also good and busy with noble works. I'm afraid of you all. But I don't blame you. I don't blame the criminals, the thieves, madmen; but I fear them. And in all mercy I would mercilessly put them out of the way of doing harm to the peace of the world."

Persis saw that for once appeal could not melt. She said, with resignation: "Then you are my sworn enemy?"

"No," Tait protested, "I would be your friend as far as I safely can. But I love Harvey as a son. I would save him from the fire of perdition, beautiful as it is, bright as it is. And you are the fire."

"And so you will fight me?" Persis faltered.

"To the death!" the old jurist cried, as he got heavily to his feet; "though it breaks Harvey's heart--and your heart--and mine." He staggered weakly and jolted against the divan.

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