What Will People Say? Part 48

He stared at her in terror, and she smiled with pride at his fear and babbled on almost incoherently.

"Don't be afraid--though I'm glad you are. But I hope you won't despise me. But I couldn't seem to help myself. You're really to blame for being so terribly overwhelming. You see, I--I--I've told you how often Willie Enslee proposed to me, and--well, one day--that very day you saw me in my old hat--the first time, you know--well, I had just had a talk with my father, and the poor old boy was all cut up about his--his money matters. He's too nice and sweet to be much of a financier, you know, and--well, I was scared to death, and I thought the world was coming to an end, and I'd better--better get aboard the ark, you know--and I hadn't met you then, you know, and Willie proposed again, and I--I accepted him."

"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered, chokingly.

"Yes," she answered. "I--you see, I didn't know you. I didn't dream I should ever meet anybody who would--would thrill me--that's the only word--as you did, as you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as other people do--insanely, madly, dishonorably--anythingly to be with the one I loved. And I didn't dare give up Willie till I was sure I loved you, and when I was sure I loved you, I--it seemed so hateful even to mention his name. It would have been like--like this."

With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it thumped and splashed and curdled the little pool.

"That's the effect his name would have had on our moonlight, and I couldn't tell you then. Will you forgive me, or do you think I'm a hopeless rotter and a sneak?"

He smiled at her mixed vocabulary, and gathered her into his arms. "My love! My Persis! But you'll tell him now, won't you?"

"Oh, now, yes!" she cried, ecstatic as a comforted child. "You are glorious to forgive me so easily, and not be nasty and lecture-y. And see the pool; it's all smooth and clear again."

He looked, and held back the confession he was about to make in his turn. The mention of his poverty would be pushing another rock into the pool. And he wondered if the mirror would clear after that. He could forgive her her betrothal to Enslee because that was of the past; but the lack of money was not a matter for forgiving and forgetting; it was something to endure. It was asking love to accept poverty as a concubine or a mother-in-law.

He kept silent on that score, and they murmured their loves and kissed and laughed with contentedness purling through their hearts, and the world far away. She glanced back at the horses blissfully tearing young leaves from high branches.

"We ought to keep those horses as a souvenir of our engagement. It would be a pity to let any one else ride the dear old brutes, wouldn't it?"

"It would, indeed!" he said.

"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for a song."

"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp. He knew how much horses like these were worth--and saddles, bridles, and stables.

"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should we?" she asked.

"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy plans again, and his heart sickened.

"We mustn't let ourselves get fat. Of all things we must avoid that,"

she said. "We might have just a little car like Winifred's--to hold only two. I could drive down and get you and bring you home. It would save wear on our limousine--or perhaps we won't get a limousine just yet. If we didn't have a big car it would be a good excuse for not having a lot of people tagging round with us everywhere, wouldn't it? I feel an awful longing for a lot of solitude with just you and me. I suppose we'll have to put up with the United States army. But I want to shake the gang I've been running with--at least for a year or so, till you and I can get acquainted. Will you buy me a little car like Winifred's--a good one?

There's no use wasting money on the cheap kind. The good little ones cost as much as the good big ones; but once they're paid for, they don't run up repair bills, and they take you where you're going instead of dying under you half-way there. Will you buy me a little car for just us? You can get a darling for about twenty-five hundred; I was asking Winifred."

He made no answer. She turned and looked at him and saw on his face the look she had seen on her father's that day--the look a man wears when he cannot buy his beloved what she pleads for. Now, as then, Persis felt ashamed rather than resentful, and she hastened to add:

"If you can't afford it, old boy, say so. You mustn't mind me. My father says I'm a terrible asker. Just say No, and I won't mind. Promise me that, dear. I want to be a good economical housewife to you; and I was only thinking that if we had a little car it would save taking the big car out, and that saves tires and gasolene and general upkeep."

He heard Enslee's words, "It's the upkeep that costs," and they mocked him again. He realized that in persuading this girl to choose him instead of Enslee, who had already chosen her, he was not only robbing her of a yacht, a palace, two or three palaces, half a dozen automobiles, servants, and servants of servants, foreign travel and foreign clothes and jewels--he was not only robbing her of such things, but he was asking her to learn a new way of life, a habit of infinite denial, eternal economy, and meager amus.e.m.e.nt.

Experience and common sense--for he had them in large measure in his ordinary life--seemed to bend down and say: "Let your sea-gull go.

She'll die in your cage, or she'll break it apart."

But she was in his arms. She was leaning against him, flicking his boots with her riding-crop, and loving him, contented utterly. Romance elbowed Reason aside and said: "See how happy she is. It isn't money that makes happiness. You're sitting on the edge of a silly little brook in somebody's backwoods, and you're happy as a king and queen on a throne of gold."

Common Sense grinned: "Suppose it should rain? This is all very well for a while, but what of next winter?"

Reason and Romance wrangled in his head while she was babbling something in her elfin economy about, "So we won't have two cars yet, just one, a nice big 1913 six, with my chauffeur to run it. Father pays him fifteen hundred a year, and that's good pay. Don't you let him wheedle you out of a penny more."

Forbes' heart cried aloud within him: "My G.o.d! her very chauffeur gets nearly as much as I do!" This was the spark of resentment that gave him his start. He spoke bitterly, almost glad that she was dazed. And he put her away from him that both might be free. And he savagely kicked a rock into the smiling little pool and watched it grow turbid as he poured out his confession.

"Listen, honey; you've got a wrong idea of my situation. I'm to blame for it, I reckon. I've been meaning to speak about it, but I didn't--for just the same reason that kept you quiet about Enslee. I'm not rich, honey. I didn't tell anybody I was rich, but the idea got started from Ten Eyck's fool joke about seeing me coming out of a big bank. I told him the truth, and now I must tell you. You'll hate me, but you've got to know some time. I'm not rich, honey."

"What of it, dear?" she said, creeping toward him. "I love you for yourself. I never thought you were rich like Willie. I gave up all that gladly."

"But I'm what you would call--a pauper, I suppose. I have only my army pay."

"Isn't that enough?"

"Plenty of couples seem to be happy on it, but they're mostly the sons and daughters of army people. You've been brought up so differently.

Wild extravagances for our people would be shabby makeshifts to you."

"Don't you think I'd be able to adapt myself?"

"Would you?"

"I should hope so. How much is your army pay, if you don't mind my asking?"

"As first lieutenant I get a little over two thousand."

"Two thousand a week? Why, that's not bad at all. Why did you frighten me?"

He laughed aloud, and she corrected herself.

"Oh, two thousand a month. That's about twenty-five thousand a year. It isn't much, is it? But we could skimp and sc.r.a.pe, and we'd have each other."

She had given him his death-blow unwittingly.

He smiled dismally, and groaned:

"Two thousand a year with forage."

She stared at him in unbelief. "Two thousand a year with forage! We couldn't eat the forage, could we? They give you a pittance like that for being an officer and a gentleman and a hero?"

"The hero business is the worst paid of all. Look at the firemen."

"But, my dear, two thousand a--why, our chef gets more than that, and our chauffeur nearly as much; and my father's secretary--everybody gets more than that."

"Not everybody. The vast majority of people get much less. But that's what I get."

She had been prepared for self-denial, but this was self-obliteration.

If he had told her that he had the yellow fever she could hardly have felt sorrier for him, or more appalled at the prospect of their union.

She loved him, perhaps, the more for the pity that welled up in her. She denounced the government for a miser.

"We're better paid than other armies," said Forbes. "Officers in foreign armies are supposed to have private fortunes."

"I don't wonder," she gasped. "And you haven't any?" He shook his head.