What Will People Say? Part 80

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 pa.s.sion 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."

CHAPTER LXII

Never, it seems, has human ingenuity been able to devise a scheme of guardianship that human ingenuity could not thwart. Seeing that seraglio walls, and yashmaks, and eunuchs, and bow-strings, and scarlet letters, and pillories, and divorce courts, and gossips have failed to scare fidelity into the disloyal, perhaps the modern honor system is as good as any. But the honor system is not infallible; and not all the spies of Mrs. Grundy can coerce from without those who are not coerced from within their own hearts.

For those who are willing to devote themselves to deceit and make an industry of other people's property, opportunities have always been infernally provided. Persis and Forbes did not find it difficult to be alone. Solitudes seemed to be created suddenly in crowds, chances to escape and to creep back undetected seemed to be brandished in their faces. The unabated plague of the tango explained their presence at all sorts of hours at all sorts of places. There were morning cla.s.ses in new steps; between the courses of luncheon at numerous restaurants in and out of town there were dances, and these were prolonged till tea, and after that till dinner, and on until whatever hour of closing the individual cabareteer had arranged with the police. The private hostesses seemed to vie with the restaurateurs.

The dancing frenzy had shown no signs of pa.s.sing. It had developed into a revolution that swept the world. Dancers who were yesterday unknown, to-day were wealthy. A dancer and his wife had grown to such dimensions of fame that influential people rented them a house on Fifth Avenue, where lessons could be given at all hours. A girl who had danced in a restaurant became a national figure and hired a hall. The clergy and the editors fought in vain; the Kaiser and the Pope were unheeded; all the nations danced; even the j.a.panese caught the contagion. New steps abounded, became so complex that it was not easy to change partners. The turkey-trot was laughably obsolete. Everything and everybody was influenced by the tango in one of its countless forms. It had already made itself an epoch in human history.

Willie Enslee was one of the stubborn minority that refused to dance or go to dances. After a number of vain a.s.sertions of an authority he could not enforce he ceased to concern himself with Persis' whereabouts; she ceased to announce her program in advance or to report it afterward.

The motor-car was another immense enlargement of liberty--and license; it was so easy to outstrip pursuit and outwit espionage. In two hours one could vanish into the wilderness and return without evidence of escape. At distant road-houses and motor-caravansaries the tw.a.n.g of tango music troubled the country midnights.

And so the intrigue of Captain Forbes and Mrs. Enslee prospered and established itself as the habit of their lives; their souls adapted themselves to it. Precautions against discovery became second nature, like precautions against disease and accident. They were bound together in a kind of secret wedlock, what Tibullus called the _furtivi foedera lecti_.

Persis, like another Guenevere, justified herself to herself by the feeling that she was true to one Launcelot; she flirted with no one else; she kept Willie's home in order as best she could; she paid him the tribute of outward devotion and public respect. Above all, she justified herself by her success. So far as she could see, not a human being suspected her love for Forbes, not a breath of scandal had been stirred.

And all the while gossip was busy with them; evidence acc.u.mulated against them grain by grain, as sand-dunes are formed into walls.

Everybody spoke of the intrigue to everybody but those most concerned.

n.o.body warned Persis or rebuked Persis or tattled to Willie. A few fearless persons talked to Persis' father, but he could not believe, or, believing, could not touch so repulsive a topic in his few meetings with his daughter. How could a father accuse his little girl of outrages against a commandment he had been afraid even to mention to her. Several women broached the theme with Willie's mother, who had been suspicious on her own account. She answered the gossips with fervent denials and with vigorous defense of Persis; but she vowed to herself that she would descend upon her daughter-in-law with vengeance. Yet, before Persis'

eyes she could only dissemble; then she would resolve to warn her son, but she feared the terrific possibilities of lighting such a fuse.

Willie was like herself in so many ways, and half of her blood was from the Spanish aristocracy through an international marriage.

Eventually people began to say that somebody must tell Willie, and some day somebody might. Some day he might stumble upon some tryst, or open a letter, or overhear a gossip's careless word.

Ten Eyck heard plenteous scandal, and he was heartbroken. Even his cynicism could not stomach the intrigue. But even his affection could not bring him to protest.

He had intervened once before in such a scandal; but the husband had forgiven his wife because of her beauty and her gaiety, and both of them had thereafter been his bitterest enemies, because he knew and had said too much. Friends who had merely gossiped behind their backs were reinstated to complete favor.

Everybody felt that Persis and Forbes, in their mad gallop across another man's boundary line, were riding for a fall. But everybody was fascinated by the breathlessness of the gallopade, the escapes from disaster. n.o.body cut Persis, omitted her from a list of invitations, or treated her otherwise than as a valued and charming ornament to the world. n.o.body would desert her so long as she kept the saddle, held her head up, and remained attractive.

But should she fall and be dragged in the dirt, then the panic would come; then the majesty of public morals would a.s.sert itself, and her friends would flee from her as if she appeared among them chalk-faced and scaly-handed with leprosy.

Meanwhile the poison of their Judas life was wearing upon their own souls. Forbes was growing restive to be at work again upon his career.

To be the messenger-boy of a woman's summons grew increasingly irksome.

He dreaded an official cognizance of his new career as home-wrecker, and his innate decency was more and more rebellious against the outrages he committed incessantly against his self-respect, his creeds, his codes, his position.

And, last of all, a strange new horror a.s.sailed the basking luxury of Persis. It dawned upon her that in spite of all her precautions nature was about to make the use of her that all this rapture was for. Her physician confirmed her dread, and congratulated her--and her husband!

She dared not ask his aid in foiling her destiny. She dared not ask anybody's aid. Her life of pleasure-hunting had made a coward of her.

And so at length remorse found a lodging even in her voluptuous life.

She understood the fearful responsibility she had a.s.sumed to a future soul. And she groveled in abject self-derision to think that even she could not be sure of her child's legitimacy. So helpless a vessel for nature's chemistry she was that she was not permitted to know even that!

And she could not so much as be sure whether she even wished it to be love's child or the law's.

The treachery to her own child was so hideous that she would have killed herself had she not dreaded to add murder to suicide. She longed to pour out her woes to Forbes, but she could not bring herself to confess her degradation. He only knew that somehow all the rapture was gone from their union. It had lost even that compensation.

The thought came to Forbes that there was but one way to make their life livable--to make it frank and public. Persis must enter the divorce court, and as soon as possible after marry him. That sort of solution for such intrigues had been much practised of late. It had become so fashionable that protest was losing its vigor.

He opened the subject to Persis. She shrank from it with revulsion. She could not tell him her secret even then; but it was a mighty argument to herself against such a step. She gave other reasons cogent enough in her opinion.

"Anything but divorce, Harvey. I'd rather die than go through it. Willie couldn't do the polite thing. He is a Catholic, you know, and his mother's Spanish blood boils at the divorce habit."

"Then if he won't give it, you can take it, anyway."

"But suppose he should fight. Suppose he should set detectives going back over our trail or bribe the servants. Look at this morning's papers--the ghastly head-lines about Mrs. Tom Corliss--her photographs!

Did you read the testimony of the maid at that big hotel? Suppose Willie should get hold of that bellboy who was so insolent to us--the one we didn't dare rebuke and had to tip so heavily. Did you read Mrs. Tom's love letters yesterday? Only one paper dared to print them all. Mrs.

Neff said everybody bought it specially. Mrs. Neff laughed till she cried.

"Wouldn't you rather die than go through with it? And, my G.o.d, how they would tear me to pieces! The poor people and the middle-cla.s.s people push through the divorce court in droves--eighty divorces were granted in two hours the other day, Murray Ten Eyck was telling me, and only one paper mentioned it--in a paragraph! But if Mrs. Tom Corliss gets the front page, what wouldn't they give to Mrs. Willie Enslee?"

Forbes said no more. Somehow he was reminded of the time when he was dancing with Persis, and the rose light was suddenly changed to green.

There was a charnel odor in the air.

CHAPTER LXIII

The following afternoon Persis came home from a tango-tea, where she had expected to meet Forbes. Through some misunderstanding he had failed to appear. This left her plans in a decided tangle. He was probably trying to find her by telephone. He would doubtless call up the house. Things were in a mess there, too. An ancient romance in the servants' quarters had resulted in a wedding between the second man and one of the chambermaids. Nichette had been chosen as a bridesmaid and had begged off for the afternoon, as had all of the others that could be spared.

Nichette had long ago been taken into their confidence as a necessary go-between. Persis trembled lest a message from Forbes should fall into inexperienced hands.

To complicate matters Willie had resolved to go to the opera that night and to be on time. He had read an editorial somewhere ridiculing the horseshoe of box-holders for their indifference to overtures and first acts. Willie naturally selected this one evening for his rebuke to the editor. Dinner was to be served an hour earlier than usual.

Harrowed by the multiplex difficulties surrounding an intrigue, Persis was kept waiting at the door a long time in the cold. She was about to rend the tardy footman to pieces when the door was opened by Crofts, the superannuated butler, an heirloom from Enslee's father.

Crofts had long ago reached the age when he was too venerable to wear the Enslee livery. He was an ideal gentleman, respected and loved by all the family and its friends. But as an officer of the household he was deaf, decrepit, and almost useless. Yet he was too much of an inst.i.tution to discharge, and he simply would not retire.

He was permitted to lag superfluous as a sort of butler _emeritus_. At large dinners he hovered about in the offing correcting and directing with a marvelous tact and an infallible memory for the encyclopedic lore of nice service. For a guest to be recognized by his watery old eyes and named by his thin lips was in itself a distinction.

To-day he was blissfully happy. The young upstart servants had flocked to the wedding, and he was called to the helm. When Persis saw him at the door her heart melted, but it also sank.

"Did anybody call?" she asked, and asked several times in _crescendo_.

"Only Mrs. Enslee, ma'am," he whispered, in his dry, cackling, deaf man's voice.