What Will People Say? Part 66

"They expect us to be a little silly, don't they? They'll think it stranger if we aren't than if we are, won't they? Even those Scandinavian sailors are human."

And so--for the sake of the Scandinavians--she accepted his caresses.

It was such a sarcastic parody of her own code that she laughed aloud.

She was good sport enough to laugh at herself when the joke was on her.

But it was bitter laughter; and it ended on the margin of hysteria. She conquered that--for the sake of the Scandinavians. But she felt altogether forlorn, miserably cheap, fooled.

That bitterness of hers embittered Enslee. He felt that he was being made ridiculous in the sight of man and G.o.d and himself. He remembered proverbs about mastership, about women's love of brutality, their fondness for being overpowered.

He grew fiercely petulant, sardonic, ugly. He whined and swore and muttered. And, finally, to that mood she yielded, feeling herself degraded beneath her own contempt.

And now Persis was married and not married. Strange fires were kindled and left to smolder sullenly. Unsuspected desires were stirred to mutiny and not quelled. Latent ferocities of pa.s.sion were wakened to terrify and torment her. And only now she understood who and what it was she had married. Only now she realized what it meant to marry without love and to marry for keeps. The vision of her future was unspeakably hideous.

Her life was already a failure, her career a disaster.

Persis had always loved crowds and the excitement they make. It was only with Forbes that she had found contentment in dual solitude, in hours of quiet converse, or in mute communion. Next best to being with him was being alone, for then she had thoughts of him for company.

Now Forbes was banished from her existence by her own decree. Willie was to be her life-fellow for all her days and nights, while her youth perished loveless.

And now once more she pined for crowds. Solitude with Willie was an alkaline Death Valley without oasis. She grew frantic to be rid of him, or, at least, to mitigate him with other companionships. And he who had been restlessly unhappy without her found that he could not be happy with her, because of the one mad regret that he could not make her love him as he loved her.

Mismated and incompatible in every degree, they glared at each other like sick wretches in the same hospital ward. The next evening as they sat at table in the dining-saloon it came over her that for the rest of her days she must see that unbeautiful face opposite her. She felt an impulse to scream, to run to the railing and leap overboard, to thwart that life-sentence in any possible way. But she kept her frenzy hidden in her breast and said, with all the inconsequence she could a.s.sume:

"To-morrow they'll be playing the first international polo game."

Even Willie heard the shiver of longing in the tone. It meant that the honeymoon was already boring her. His heart broke, but all he said was:

"Er--yes--I believe it is to-morrow. Like to go?"

"Oh no," she murmured. "I was just thinking what a splendid sight it will be. Everybody will be there, I suppose."

"Er--yes--I suppose so."

She lighted her third cigarette since the soup, and, rising from the table, drifted to the piano clamped to the walls of the drawing-room.

Her mind was far off, and her fingers, left to themselves, stumbled through a disjointed chaos of melodies from nocturnes to tangos and back.

Willie stood it as long as he could, then his torment broke out in a cry more tragic than its words:

"For G.o.d's sake play something or quit."

She quit.

She walked to a porthole and stared out at the dark waves shuffling past like stampeding cattle.

He apologized at once. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I apologize."

"Oh, that's all right," she sighed, with doleful graciousness. But when he knelt by her and put his arm around her she slipped from his clasp and went out on the deck. He followed her. But neither of them spoke.

The moon on the sea spread a pathway of dancing white tiles. She wanted to run away, to step forth on that fantastic pavement and follow it out of the world.

To Forbes, on a distant ship in midocean the same moon was spreading the same path straight to him. He stared into its shifting glamour till his eyes were bewitched. He could see Persis walking on the water in the boudoir cap and the shimmering thing she wore that morning.

They were thinking of each other, longing for each other, and the s.p.a.ce between them was widening every moment.

It came over Persis with maddening vividness that she had made a ruin of her happiness. All the wealth was nothing but mockery. Even the hats and the mult.i.tudes of dresses were wasted splendor, weapons of conquest to be left in an armory.

The night grew more and more wonderful. The moon was like a white face flung back with unappeased desire. The wind across the waves tugged amorously at her hair and whimpered and caressed her. And she was with Willie Enslee, the unlovable, the hideously uninteresting, the intolerable. She was handcuffed to Willie Enslee for life.

The ache of longing that thrilled the night world thrilled Enslee's heart, too; and he crept close to her, his adoration, his wife, the only soul on earth he deeply loved. He set his cheek against hers and clenched her in his arms fiercely. And immediately he encountered that hopeless antipathy, though all she said was a faintly petulant "Don't, please!"

It struck him in the face like a little fist. He moved aloof from her in abject humiliation and thought hard, took out a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, puffed restlessly, threw the cigarette over the rail, and a moment later took out another. There was no need for words.

The air throbbed with Persis' detestation of the voyage. The sailing-master pa.s.sed. Willie called to him:

"Svendsen!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Put about and make for home."

"I beg pardon, sir."

"You heard!"

"Aye, aye, sir."

The commands were given in the distance, a bell rang remotely in the engine-room, and the stars wheeled across the sky as the yacht came round.

The phosph.o.r.escent sea revealed the wake they had plowed in a long straight furrow of white fire, and now there was a sharp curve in the line. And shortly they were paralleling its dimming radiance.

They were bound for home. The mere thought of the word brought a tragic chuckle from Enslee's heart. Home was a word he could not hope to use.

Home was a thing he must do without.

CHAPTER LII

Persis was sorry for her husband, but just a trifle sorrier for Persis.

She solaced herself with the thought that it was partly for Willie's own sake that she consented to go back, since if she stayed out in that solitude with him any longer she would go mad and jump overboard. And he would not like that in the least. A bride in town would be worth two in the ocean. Besides, a suicide on a honeymoon would be sure to cause a fearful scandal. She could imagine the head-lines.

Willie was a darling to yield so easily. It showed her how much he loved her--also how meekly he obeyed her. That is always an important question to settle. Perhaps it is what honeymoons are for--training-stations in which husbands are broken to harness and taught to answer a mere chirrup; it saves the whip.

But the comfort Persis took in finding that her husband was her messenger-boy ended as they came up the bay again. She suddenly realized that for Willie and her to be seen at the polo games, when they had so ostentatiously set out on their honeymoon only two days before, would provoke a landslide of gossip. Everybody on earth would be at the polo games, and she and Willie could not hope to escape attention. They would be ridiculed to death behind their backs and to their faces. Therefore they must not go.

She explained this to Willie, and he shook his head and broke out, peevishly:

"Why the bally h.e.l.l didn't you think of all this in the first place?"