What Will People Say? A Novel 61 – Hughes · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 61Chapter 61
18
Literature · Romance
What Will People Say? A Novel 61
Chapter 61
HughesEnglish
Forbes took the steamer he had planned to take, though he had such battles with his recalcitrant heart that he did not feel safe till the tender at Cherbourg put away from the ship and left him no opportunity of return.
Equally disconsolate was young Stowe Webb, who had lost his post with his chief, and who was in a panic of uncertainty. But Mildred, on her first day of calm, reverted to habit and began to take thought of the welfare of others. She asked Stowe of his plans, and, learning of his hopelessness, immediately begged him to act as her own secretary--"at an increase of salary because of the extra trouble she would give him."
The reaction from despair to this paradise was so great that young Webb found it hard to maintain the appropriate solemnity. He fired off a wireless to the friend who received his messages for Alice, and when he heard it crackling from the mast it was like a volley of festival sky-rockets.
He told Forbes of his new-found hope and how poor it was at best, and Forbes envied him his very deferment; there was something so clean and beautiful about a young lover trying to earn enough to earn the girl that waits for him. Young Webb was building a home, and Forbes was destroying one.
The arrival in New York brought a new mountain of tasks for Forbes. Mildred had adopted him as an elder brother; she gave him power of attorney in the endless interviews with the lawyers, executors, directors, and the officials in the Department of State.
Forbes soon learned what the Ambassador's hints as to his will had meant. A recent codicil bequeathed to him almost as much as Tait's dead son was to have had.
It seemed to Forbes as if Satan had laid the wealth of Ormus and of Ind at his feet and knelt there grinning over the hoard. There was a further sardonic bitterness in the legacy, since he knew that it had been given him so that he might feel able to make Mildred his wife without sacrifice of his pride.
The thought came to him that he could square himself with the dead and with the living by carrying out this implied, if not inscribed, condition of the deed of gift.
Mildred was a splendid soul. She was not Aphrodite like Persis, but Minerva was beautiful, too. Mildred was far nobler than Persis, who was not noble at all. She would be a magnificent wife. She would make their home a bee-hive of lofty purposes amid serene delights. A union with Mildred would be wonderful. It would crown life.
And he felt that Mildred would not oppose it. He resolved again and again to ask her; but he simply could not tell her that he loved her as a wife ought to be loved. He and Mildred had become so dear to each other as brother and sister that no other affection seemed possible. To marry her would mean not only an infidelity to Persis, but a more cruel infidelity to Mildred.
Unable to fulfil the condition of the legacy, he tried to refuse it. The executors asked him why; his evasions led them to suspect his sanity. Mildred would ask him why? What could he tell her?
He consulted Ten Eyck, but could tell him only that he could not give Mildred the love that was needed to sanctify the marriage. Ten Eyck probably understood more than he admitted. He lifted one eyebrow and lowered the other, as if his mind were divided between two comments. He said:
"I see why you can't go to nice old Mildred and say, 'Dear girl, I wouldn't marry you for a hundred thousand dollars.' That would be an awful black eye to hand a charming lady. But I can't say that your motives of love appeal to me, Forbesy. You sound like the heroine of an old-fashioned novel refusing to marry a rich man because she loves old Dr. A. Nother.
"But whatever you do, Forbesy, don't refuse the money. In times like these, when bank presidents are robbing their children's savings-banks for carfare, don't spurn any real money, or you'll cause several persons to die of apoplexy, and strong men will lead you to the paddedest cell in the house of foolishness.
"Take the money and build an Old Ladies' Home with it; but don't make a solemn jackass of yourself right out in public."
Forbes took the money, promising himself that he would scatter it in beautiful deeds of charity.
But he didn't.
One never does.
In the first place, money in large quantities has singular adhesive and cohesive properties. In the second place, when the news of his wealth was published he received such serial avalanches of begging letters of every sort, noble and ignoble, that he was dismayed. He showed a stack of them to Ten Eyck, who said:
"You could give away your fortune in a week, and make about as much of a show as if you drove a sprinkling-cart along the main street of hell. All millionaires grow callous; if they don't, they cease to be millionaires."
Forbes answered a few of the appeals with cheques, and planned to file the others alphabetically for future reference. But he never got round to filing them.
This was not the only sarcasm of his wealth. He had returned to his duties as a line captain and was restored to Governor's Island. But here again there was discomfort. His fellow-officers envied him his luck, but despised him for not profiting by it. And it did seem peculiarly grotesque that a man of his important means should be trudging about on a drill-ground giving orders to stupid privates and taking orders from stupid superiors. His very men seemed to think he was a ludicrous fanatic. He felt that he must leave the service.
He poured out his woes to Ten Eyck again, who advised caution. "Don't jump out of the frying-pan, Forbes, till you've tested the fire with your big toe. You might be even unhappier out of the army than in it. Ask for a long leave of absence--say, six months, and see how you like it. Then you can resign or go back."
"They won't give me six months' leave without a good reason," Forbes demurred, though he was fascinated by the idea.
"A lot of money is a good reason for nearly anything. Anybody will give a rich man what he asks for," Ten Eyck insisted. "Take some of the high boys out in your car, and blow them off to a gorgeous evening, and promise them some more of the same. Then pop the question."
Forbes made the attempt, and it succeeded with surprising ease; he was granted six months' leave of absence without pay "for special research and experiment."
His research was into the comforts of wealth, and his experiment was the effect of life without labor or ambition.
Forbes had a car now. He had not intended to get one, but after dodging salesmen for weeks one of them lay in ambush for him and carried him off for a ride--a demonstration in disguise. He was so captivated by the 1915 model and the enlarged powers it gave him that he capitulated and bought. He learned to be his own chauffeur; but this was so inconvenient at times that he was soon hiring a charioteer. And, of course, he never skimmed the earth or sped through beauties of landscape that he did not wish for Persis at his side. He had a better car than Enslee's now. He could buy Persis the costly, cozy little runabout she wanted; he could hire her father's chauffeur and Nichette. He could buy her great quantities of clothes, and he had leisure for her entertainment. But he had not her, nor the right to buy things for her.
Away from her he found that time was softening his remorse without hardening his heart against her. His wealth was mockery, his leisure was mockery. His mind was hardly more than a music-box eternally purling one little tune: "Persis-Persis-Persis!"
And then Persis came back, as if his longing had pulsed across the sea. She had no difficulty in persuading Willie to return to New York. He felt positively footsore from travel.
As they came up the Bay on a home-bound liner her heart was beating as if she were entering a dark room full of ghosts. As Governor's Island was reached she studied it again with a marine-glass.
She thought of the little homes of the officers' wives, the little garage-less quarters where there must be so much content. She wished to God that she were living in one of those little homes there.
If she had married Forbes she would never have caused the Ambassador's death; she would not have given herself to Willie Enslee. She could not have had more unhappiness, more loneliness and vain regrets. She would have dwelt in Forbes' arms; she would have been his all day long and all the long nights. All this past and horrible year would have been a true honeymoon. Love would have been wealth enough.
As she had told Alice Neff, "Almost anything that we are not used to is a luxury." She had learned the corollary, that almost any luxury becomes a poverty as soon as one is used to it. She was all too familiar with splendor. She hungered for a life of little comforts. The word "cozy" grew magically beautiful.
She had not been long ashore before she learned the new status of Forbes. It was Mrs. Neff who told her, taunting her with having jumped into the marital noose with Willie too soon.
She had not been long ashore before she met Forbes. And once more it was Willie who brought her into his presence.
Forbes was now a member of several of the more important clubs. Willie met him at one of them, and asked him to join a crowd he was inviting up to the country place.
Forbes' heart began to knock at his breast at the thought of being with Persis again in the Enslee Eden. A remnant of honesty led him to decline the invitation on the ground of another engagement, but Willie insisted.
"You had such a rotten time there last spring," he said. "I want to make up. There won't be any lilacs yet; but there'll be servants--and something to eat."
Forbes flung off his scruples, and promised to "motor up." The phrase sounded odd in his ears, for he remembered the poverty of his first visit, when he went as a passenger in Mrs. Neff's car.
When he spoke of his car Enslee said: "By the way, if you're motoring up you might bring Mrs. Neff and Alice. The old lady's old car has got the sciatica or something."
So Forbes brought Mrs. Neff along, and Alice. Mrs. Neff had much to say of his wealth. And now that she knew Persis to be out of the running, she had evidently entered Alice for the Forbes stakes. Forbes could feel the idea in the air, and he was exceedingly embarrassed.
He was embarrassed more by his arrival at the country home. The great hill was as bleak as the granite bridge. The trees were shaggy with snow. The house was part of the winter, as white as an igloo. The statues were oddly distorted with icicles and snow; they looked very cold--especially the Cupid in the temple--a windy and forlorn white kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. It struck him as pitifully appropriate to the Enslee menage that Love should be left out in the cold.
Persis received him now in her quality of owner and housewife, with a flock of servants everywhere. He found her in the living-room, surrounded by guests, chattering and lounging and sprawling. He had not seen her since he left her that night in Paris.
She gave him her hand and a few commonplace words, but their eyes embraced and their lips were tremulous with unspoken messages and ungiven kisses.
Her manner warned him, and her apparent neglect of him gave him the cue of his behavior. But there were brief collisions when it was possible to murmur a word or two before one of the numerous other guests drifted up and ruined the tete-a-tete. He pleaded ruthlessly for a meeting; she pleaded for discretion above all things. She reminded him of the great difference between the condition of their former visit and the present. With only a few about them before, they had narrowly escaped discovery; what chance had they now?
As the dinner-hour approached, and the others went up to dress, Forbes lingered, and Persis sat with him a moment in the embrasure of that drawing-room window where they had once held rendezvous. The mystery was gone from it, and the poetry. But they seized each other in one swift embrace of arms and lips. Even this was broken just in time to escape the sight of the butler, who entered to ask a question as to the wines for the dinner.
Persis gave her orders with an impatience that could hardly have escaped the man's notice. She felt a little extra effort at impassivity in his manner, and was sure that he suspected her of more than a hospitable interest in Forbes. She could not resent an unexpressed intuition, but she felt humbled and shamed and afraid.
When the butler was gone she repeated her warning to Forbes, but he took her in his arms again. Her mind told her that she must not go on risking, go on registering faint impressions in the minds of servants and of guests; but her heart would not defer entirely to her intelligence.
Forbes was taciturn at the dinner. Mrs. Neff could not provoke him to vivacity. She noted that his gaze returned constantly to Persis, and that when her look came down the board to him it softened strangely.
After dinner little cliques were formed about the billiard and the pool tables, the card-tables, and a few danced the everlasting tango with some new variation. Forbes and Persis danced together, and many eyes noted the perfect rapport of their mood, the solemn joy they took in the welded union.
"How well they dance!" was the spoken comment; but the thought was, "How congenial they seem!"
Shortly after nine there was an excitement. On the hill opposite a building was on fire. The guests crowded and jostled at the windows. Somebody proposed that they all go to the scene of the blaze. The irresistible fascination of a burning building at night was inducement enough. Motors were telephoned for from the distant garage, and there was a scramble for wraps. Forbes' car was not brought up, and he was invited into Enslee's. He climbed in, but clambered out again to get an extra wrap for Mrs. Neff. A maid had already run for it, and by the time he returned the cars had all gone.
He stood regretting boyishly the loss of the opportunity to go to a fire. He watched for a few moments from the steps, and then turned back into the house. He found Persis at the drawing-room window. She had declined to go. He joined her. Out on the white edge of the lawn they could see the servants in a little mob staring at the pyrotechnics of an upward rain of sparks.
"I'll put out the light. We can see better," he said.
"No, no!" she protested; but he had already found and turned the switch. They were in a cavern of darkness, with one window dimly reddened. He found his way back to her. She urged him to turn the light on again, but he refused. She moved to turn it on herself, but he held her fast, and compelled her back to the deep embrasure, and drew the curtains behind them.
She could count the servants on the lawn outside. They were all there. She felt that it was safe to be alone with Forbes, at least till one of the domestics should detach himself from the group and move across the snowy sheet of white.
They watched in silence awhile the leaping red geyser of the flames. It grew and expanded till it formed a huge ember-mottled orchid with vast petals trembling in the wind.
On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of motor-lights wavering like antennae. From all the homes of the region the neighbors were hastening to the spectacle, huge night moths drawn by the flaring lamp.
For a long, blissful while the flame-flower bloomed against the black sky. At last it wilted and failed and shriveled. Then the servants turned back to the house. Persis fled from Forbes' arms to her own room, where Nichette found her, apparently established the past hour.
Forbes waited at another window, and when at last the motors came puffing back the home-comers were too benumbed with cold and too eager for warming drinks to know or care whether Forbes had been with them or not. Any one who might have missed him would have supposed him to be in one of the other cars.
The next day some of the guests rode over to see the ruins. Forbes and Persis went along. To their amazement, what had seemed, while flaming, to be a miracle of enchantments, a palace afire, proved in the daylight to have been a miserable shack whose hollow shams and rotten timbers the flames had mercilessly exposed to public contempt, stark, charred, cold, obscene.
"It was so beautiful while it burned," said Persis. "I can't believe it's the same. It was like a wild rose in the night; but in the daylight it's hideous, it's revolting. Look at the fraud in the building of the house--the rotten timbers, the ghastly furniture in the back rooms!"
Forbes was about to say that their passion had something akin to this. But as he raised his eyes to hers he saw that she had the same thought.
She shivered and said, "Let's get away from the place."
