What Will People Say? Part 55

"Then let Willie Enslee lock us out."

She saw that he was in a frenzy. He had the bit in his teeth. He would bolt in a moment. She thought hard and swiftly. Then she said:

"There's just one way. When I was playing chambermaid to-day I wandered about and found the servant's stairway in the service wing. It leads down into the kitchen. We could get from there into the dining-room and the drawing-room. There's a great window there--well cut off from view.

I don't think Willie or anybody would see us there. Listen for Willie's door, and when he has gone down into the front hall, slip out and tiptoe down the service stairs to the kitchen and wait for me there. Will you?"

It was a nauseating role to play; but he was bent upon making a last appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered his a.s.sent to the elaborate deceit, and made a whirlwind of the last measures of the tune, "Dancing with the devil; oh, the little Devil!

dancing at the Devil's ball!"

And then he and Persis, dizzy on the swirling floor, reeled to chairs and sat gasping for breath. Mrs. Neff, pa.s.sing on Willie's arm, urged Forbes to give Alice the next dance, and he obeyed, surrendering Persis to Enslee, who was so elate with triumph that only the braggart pomp of the tango could express him.

Alice was lonely and forlorn, and so much in Forbes' mood that they were unintentional parodies on each other. Forbes remembered his talk with Senator Tait, and, feeling that Alice was desperately in need of comfort, told her the whole conversation. If she resented the discussion of her affairs and her mother's plans, she kept silent; but when he told her that Senator Tait had vowed to help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a maenad of joy. She italicized every other word, and declared herself insanely grateful. She declared now that she simply idolized the Senator, and had always thought him the most adorable of men in every respect except the quality of husband.

"I'm afraid he won't give Mr. Webb much of a salary to begin with,"

Forbes said, to moderate her fantastic hopes.

"Oh, I don't care how little it is," Alice panted, "so long as it's enough for us two to live on, if we have to live in a Harlem flat eleven stories high and no elevator!"

She made so startling a contrast with Persis that Forbes regretted thinking her shallow and hysterical. Under her volatile explosiveness was evidently a deep store of loyalty, as under Persis' reposeful manner was a shifty uncertainty, a terror of consequences. "Still waters run deep" was plainly as fallible as any other proverb, for very shallow ponds may lie very calm, and very spluttering geysers may come from far underground.

But it is one thing to approve and quite another to love. Forbes admired Alice, but he loved Persis. He approved Alice as much as he distrusted Persis. But he loved Persis.

CHAPTER XLII

There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of Bened.i.c.k-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests off to bed, warning them that the next morning the caravan would set out on its return betimes in order that Persis might "break the news to her father as soon as he got back." So Willie phrased it, and flattered himself that it was rather considerate and tactful to put it so.

When good-nights were said, and Forbes had gone to his room, Ten Eyck came in to smoke a night-cap cigar. His words were congratulatory, but his intent was sympathetic.

"You looked a bit cut up, old boy," he said, "when Willie, with his usual tact, exploded the news of his marriage. I hope you weren't hit too hard. I warned you, you know."

"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't take Miss Cabot seriously. I--I admit I was surprised. That's all. And it rather shocks me to think of so--so--of her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's all."

"It's her own choice," said Ten Eyck. "And it's a good choice. She can't bankrupt the Enslee estates, and she'll earn all she squanders. Being the wife of Willie Enslee is not going to be any sinecure, believe me.

"And the sooner she's married to Enslee and beyond your reach, the better for your peace of mind and the efficiency of the U. S. A. Get back on the job, Forbesy. You're too important a man to be wasting yourself even on a siren like Persis. I believe in sirens, and I like to hear 'em sing; but they don't convince me one little minute, and I drop anchor at a safe distance from the reef. Promise me you won't let Persis haunt you. Get yourself a pretty canary and forget the siren, eh what?"

"That's the best of advice," Forbes a.s.sented.

He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck shook his head and masked a sigh as a yawn.

"Am I as deadly as all that? And papa always told me that the man who gives the best of advice might better have saved his breath for blowing out his candle. Instead of more advice I will now do so. Good night!"

And he closed his door.

Forbes knew that Ten Eyck was right, and told himself so. He told himself that common decency, self-respect, Persis-respect, and respect for the rights of a host and a fiance forbade him to keep tryst with Persis. And having resolved that the one thing he ought not to do was to sneak down the servants' stairs, he sneaked down the servants'

stairs--after he had put out his light, opened his door delicately, and waited till he heard Enslee open his door and tiptoe down to the entrance hall.

As Forbes waited in that least poetic of bowers, the kitchen, he felt like a thief. He had abundant time for pondering what a destroyer of dignity love is. But Persis came at last, and so silently and so vaguely through the moonlight that he could hardly believe her to be more than a phantom.

She gave him a hand, however, that was warm and human, and when he caught her in his arms and she yielded rather than struggle, her body was as real as rose-leaves and lilies, a delight to his embrace; and her cheek such a sweetmeat to his lips that he dismissed all scruples as follies beneath contempt.

When she had extricated herself from his clasp she took his hand and led him through the butler's pantry and its swinging door, across the moonlit dining-room, through a majestic somber portal into a cave of black gloom, which was the salon.

"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't I have."

"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.

He snapped the little engine, and a small, blue flame threw a sickly light that helped them to find a channel through the islands of chairs and divans and tables, to the lofty hangings masking the windows.

The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the place he was in.

This superb chamber had not been opened to the present guests. It was still in its winter garb, the portraits in shrouds, and chairs and tables disguised in winding sheets. There was the hint of a mortuary vault about the place. The walls were of Istrian stone hung with gray tapestries of unhappy lovers. The floor was of marble devoid of rugs--they were rolled up against the walls like mummies. The mantel was a huge carved structure. In this dull light it might have been a funeral monument. Noises seemed to be repeated here with spooky comment, and to Forbes the spirit in the air was ominous.

Persis knew the room well, and remembered it as she had first seen it glowing with color, flooded with sunlight, and crowded with gorgeous people; she did not feel the oppression that weighed on Forbes.

To her it was a clandestine romance--the sort of poetic encounter she had read about in ever so many books. Her heart was beating with terror of discovery and ecstasy of adventure. When she gained the window she reached up and persuaded the hangings back on gently tinkling rings. A well of moonlight was revealed--a broad, padded seat in front of a tall mullioned window. Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung this back.

Into the dreary air of the unvisited room flowed a little brook of perfumed breeze scented with the lilacs it streamed across. It shook with all gentleness the hair about Persis' face and the soft lace around her throat. For now she was not in boyish riding-duds with collar and cravat, but in the exquisite trifle of a silken house gown she had put on for dinner.

She was so beautiful in Forbes' eyes that the very faults he had found in her seemed to enhance her. The absence of utility and reliability and other homely virtues seemed to leave her the unmarred unity of futile, fragile loveliness. But this was the fantasy of the moment only. She had no sooner spoken than she was committed to something more than a vision for the eyes.

She smiled at him, and he gathered her up into his arms once more and gave and took a blindly sweet kiss from her smiling lips.

When he released her from this constraint she sighed luxuriously:

"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the world had to be sneaked, doesn't it?"

Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their communion.

"Is that your creed?" he groaned.

"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know--"

"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to own--you."

"You do--pretty nearly."

"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my wife. It's not too late, if you love me."

"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you. You are--it's funny how hard it is to find new expressions for anything you really mean, isn't it? All I can think of is the same old comic-paper line: you are the only man I ever loved. But--oh, Lord, if you only had a little more money! For I sha'n't have any, Harvey. My father can't give me any. I've just found that out. He can't get enough to save himself. I can get enough for us both if I take Willie.

"It's horrible talk, Harvey, but it's business. It's for your sake as much as mine. If I married you I'd drive you mad. I'd rather have you hate me lovingly, as you do now, than have you hate me loathingly, as you would if I became a millstone round your neck. You'd be faithful and work hard and try to love me, but I'd be simply unendurable.

"My brother--you haven't met him; he's loafing through college--he knows more about sport than he does about books. He's always talking about prize-fighters and cla.s.s. He's always telling about some poor fellow getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his cla.s.s. I remember one brilliant welterweight champion who lasted only one round with a broken-down heavyweight. My brother said the welterweight got what was coming to him because he hadn't intelligence enough to stay where he belonged. I'm trying to do that. I'm horribly tempted just to fling everything to the winds and run away with you. I'm starving for your love. My heart says, 'Put love before everything else--'"