What Will People Say? Part 60

Now Forbes caught the twinkle in his eye. It took him off his guard. It was as if some one had made a funny face at a funeral. A guffaw of laughter escaped him. It shocked him and shamed him, but it shattered his depression.

Tait seized the opportunity of Forbes' disorder and urged his idea:

"I've got to have a military attache, you know. I could get the billet for you."

"Why select me for the honor? You'll be beset with applications."

"Yes, but I like you, Harvey. You are your father come to life again. I love you--as if you were your father--or my son. I'm old. I need young shoulders to lean on. I've n.o.body else but you. And you need me. You've had a whack in the solar plexus. You're seeing stars. But you mustn't let 'em count you out. Once you get your breath you'll be as good a man as you ever were. But don't lie down and take the count.

"Besides, I can help you while you're helping me. It's a new world for you, Harvey. n.o.body ought to die without seeing France and England--the Old World that's so much newer than ours and so much wiser in so many ways. It's your opportunity. It may mean wonderful things for you. You can't refuse. You won't refuse, will you?"

The very impact of his blows pounded Harvey's cold heart to a glow. The word "opportunity" glinted like a shower of sparks in the night. He smiled in spite of himself. He felt such a leap of new blood in his arteries, such a rush of fresh air into his lungs, that he seemed to waken from a coma. He could not speak, but he thrust his hand across the table and wrung the Senator's fat old fingers till they ached.

CHAPTER XLVI

Willie Enslee was as little masculine as a man could be without being in the least effeminate. Ten Eyck, whose French was more fluent than exact, called him "_pet.i.te_." His head was small and childish, and the more infantile for a great rearward overhang that would have looked better on a yacht. His voice was high and trebling in its sound. His costumes were always of next season or the season after next. Yet, carefully as he dressed, his clothes never dignified him nor he them. Rich as he was, he attracted few parasites.

Now, no one realized Willie Enslee's defects half so thoroughly as did Willie Enslee. But his failings did not amuse him as they did other people; he could not laugh with the world at himself. He knew the world laughed at him, and not without cause, and yet he hated the world for its laughter. He hated everybody he knew almost as much as he hated himself. To this misanthropy there was one exception--Persis. He hated her, too, in a way, for she never concealed her scorn of him, and she ridiculed his foibles before his face; but he found her so beautiful that he loved her while he loathed her, desired while he abhorred.

He found her cold and flippant to his most earnest moods, but he a.s.sumed that she was cold and flippant to everybody else. She certainly had that reputation, and he comforted himself with the feeling that, while she may have failed in response to his ardors, it was not because she was in love with anybody else.

So little jealousy he had--or, rather, so slow a jealousy--that the silly theory of Forbes' flirtation with Mrs. Neff sufficed to prevent him from paying the slightest attention to Forbes' conversation with Persis. Lack of jealousy is sometimes a form of conceit. Perhaps it was this feeling that no woman could prefer any other man to an Enslee that led him to ignore the ordinary caution of a lover. Perhaps it was just his idolatry of Persis, his inability to believe her capable of the infamy of duplicity.

But somewhere in his soul there must have been a latent spark of suspicion which might some day burst into a consuming flame, for into his dreams came now and then little glints of uneasiness. He dismissed them as the results of indigestion, but they persisted.

One day, shortly after his return from his Westchester estate, he sat down in the living-room of his town house to read the evening papers.

All of them published the announcement of his engagement to Persis, under the general heading of "June brides." There were portraits of Persis in various poses and costumes. Willie saw no picture of himself, and the allusions to him were mainly concerned with "William Enslee, Esq., son of the famous William Enslee."

Willie took so much pride in the fame of his betrothed that he was not jealous even of her monopoly of the newspaper attention. He felt only a great pride in being the future owner of all that beauty.

He lolled on the divan and smoked the cigarettes of prosperity. The divan was so comfortable, and his satisfaction so soothing, that he grew drowsy. His jaw fell open as his eyes fell shut. The newspapers dropped to the floor, and he was asleep.

Into the room, which was now almost ready for the closing of the house and the emigration to Newport or the country, came his mother, a young matron whose aristocratic face and figure were markedly Spanish. Her black hair was fogged with gray at the temples, as if with a careless powder-puff. She pushed back the covering of the mirror over the mantel that she might catch a glimpse of her hair.

She brightened at the vision she saw within, and not without reason, for she had broken many hearts in Cuba and in New York before the elder William Enslee won her and married her. The only result of the union had been that at his death he left a widow who was more attractive than a widow has a right to be, and a son who was less attractive even than is expected of a millionaire's son.

As Mrs. Enslee stared at her image in the looking-gla.s.s Willie's heavy breathing caught her ear, and she heard that he was asleep even before she saw him. And then she spoke sharply:

"But you mustn't sleep here. Go to your own room--or the club."

"Let me alone," Willie protested, with querulous anger, still befuddled, and relapsing at once into sleep.

"When I was young parents weren't spoken to like that," said Mrs.

Enslee, forgetting how she used to speak to her parents. She paused to muse upon her man-child. She felt sorry for him, but sorrier for herself for having him. As she watched him he began to mumble a gibberish. She bent closer to hear. Then his hand, hanging limply near the floor, began to clench and twitch.

Suddenly from his lips broke a half-strangled gurgle, then a wild shriek of "Persis! Persis!"

His own outcry seemed to waken him. His eyes flew open, and he stared about him as if searching for some one whose absence bewildered him.

His mother peered into his eyes, and he clutched her by the arms, staring at her. Then he mumbled:

"Oh, it's you," and smiled foolishly, and laughed as with a great relief.

"What is it, my boy?" said Mrs. Enslee.

"I must have dropped off to sleep. It was only a dream."

"What was it?" Mrs. Enslee repeated; but he spoke with a sickly cheer:

"That's the one consolation about nightmares, when you wake up--thank G.o.d, they're not true!"

"But what did you dream?" Mrs. Enslee demanded till he explained:

"Well, it seemed to be my--er--wedding-day. And I was standing there by Persis--I was--er--fumbling in my pocket for the--er--ring, and feeling like a fool--because she's so much taller than I am--and the preacher said, 'If anybody knows any--er--reason why these two should not be--er--wed, let him speak now, or forever--'"

"Yes, yes," said his audience of one.

"There was--er--silence for a minute. Then a man stood up in the church--I couldn't see his face--but he was tall, and he called out--er, 'I forbid the banns! She loves me. She is only marrying that man for his--er--money!' I turned to Persis and said: 'Is that true?' And she said: 'I don't know the man. I never saw him.' And then, when she said that, he gave her one look and--er--walked out of the church. And the--er--ceremony went on. But Persis shivered all the time--er--just shivered, and when I kissed her her lips were like--er--like ice. Then the music began, and we marched down the aisle--and then--then we--er--er--no, I won't tell you."

"Go on--please go on!" the mother pleaded; but Willie grew embarra.s.sed, and his eyes wandered as he stammered:

"Well--at last--we were in our room--and I--er--she shrank away from me as if I were--er--a toad. And she swore she hated me--and loved the--er--other man. Then I saw everything red--I hated her. I wanted to throttle her--to tear her to pieces. But she ran to the window and fell, all--er--tangled up in the veil and the long train. I tried to save her--but I couldn't. And then--when it was too late--my love for her came back, and I cried, 'Persis! Persis!' and--er--woke up. Mother, do you believe in--er--dreams?"

"No, no, of course not," said Mrs. Enslee, without conviction. "Or else they go by contraries."

"Ugh! How real they are while they last. I can't get over it."

"Well, of course, I'm not superst.i.tious," Mrs. Enslee insinuated; "but, if you are, perhaps--I just say perhaps--it might be a sort of omen that you'd better not marry Persis, after all."

"Not marry Persis!" Willie gasped.

"There are other women on earth," Mrs. Enslee suggested.

"Not for me!"

Mrs. Enslee pondered a moment before she took up the debate again. "But do you think she loves you as much as you'd like to be loved?"

Willie laughed. "Huh! n.o.body ever loved me like that; n.o.body ever will."

"Except your mother," said Mrs. Enslee, laying her hand on his hair.

Willie hated to have his hair smoothed, and he edged away, laughingly bitterly.

"I'm afraid even you've found me--er--unattractive, mother. I couldn't have been much to be proud of even as a little brat. I never had a chum as a boy. I never had a girl--er--sweetheart. It wasn't that I didn't like other people, but other people can't seem to--er--like me."

He pondered the mystery so tragically that Mrs. Enslee caressed him, and said: "You mustn't say that. I adore you."