'Way down on the lev-eeIn old Alabam-y,There's daddy and mam-my,There's Ephraim and Sam-myOn a moon-light night.
'Way down on the lev-eeIn old Alabam-y,There's daddy and mam-my,There's Ephraim and Sam-myOn a moon-light night.
Forbes felt Mrs. Neff's presence in front of him. Her wiry arms clutched him and danced him away. She was chattering reproaches because he had not taken her advice and captured Persis for himself. And her unwitting irony ran on against the words that Alice and Ten Eyck were singing as they danced:
Watch them shuf-flin' along,See them shuf-flin' along.Go take your best—gal—real—pal,Go down to the lev-ee,I said to the lev-ee,And join that shuf-flin' throng.Hear that mu-sic and song.It's simply great—O mate.Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for theRobert E. Lee.
Watch them shuf-flin' along,See them shuf-flin' along.Go take your best—gal—real—pal,Go down to the lev-ee,I said to the lev-ee,And join that shuf-flin' throng.Hear that mu-sic and song.It's simply great—O mate.Waitin' on the levee, waitin' for theRobert E. Lee.
Forbes felt a ribaldry in the whole situation, an intolerable contumely. He watched Persis darting here and there as Willie urged her. The little whelp could not keep time to the music, and his possession of Persis was as grotesque as the presence of a gargoyle on a cathedral. But cathedrals are thick with gargoyles, and life is full of such pairings.
For the second dance Forbes demanded Persis, and she granted him the privilege with some terror; the look on his face had alarmed her.
The music now celebrated "dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil! dancing at the Devil's ball." There was a fiend raging in Forbes' heart, and something infernal in the frenzy with which he whipped Persis this way and that.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he groaned. "Why didn't you warn me? The last I knew was that you and I were to be married. And suddenly that man speaks up and claims you. And you don't deny it. What in God's name does it mean?"
"Not so loud, my love!"
"'My love?'" he quoted. "You can call me that?"
"You're not going to make a scene, are you?" she whispered, trembling in his arms.
"A scene!" he laughed. "Is that your greatest terror in life?"
"One of them."
"You intended to marry him, and you let me kiss you! Were you simply making a fool of me?"
("At the Devil's ball, at the Devil's ball.")
"No, Harvey, no! I love you. It is you that were making a fool of me. I can explain, but I don't think you would understand."
("I saw the cute Mrs. Devil, so pretty and fat.")
"When will you explain?"
"The first chance I get."
("Dressed in a beautiful fireman's hat.")
"To-night?"
"I don't dare. Willie is going to stand guard, as he said he would. Seeing you dancing with Mrs. Neff, he was just telling me what a joke it would be to lock you out. He's going to pretend to go to bed. Then he's going to slip down-stairs, lock the front door, and wait till you and Mrs. Neff come back. Isn't it ridiculous?"
("Dancing with the Devil; oh, the little Devil!")
"Everything on earth is ridiculous, but nothing is so ridiculous as I am."
"Don't say that, dear."
"'Dear!'" he echoed, bitterly. "When do I see you, I say?"
("Dancing at the Devil's Ball.")
"There's no chance."
"Then I'll make one. I'll—I'll come to your room."
"Oh, in Heaven's name, are you mad? Or do you think I am? Mrs. Neff's room adjoins mine. She could hear the softest whisper."
"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 rôle to play; but he was bent upon making a last appeal to her before they returned to town on the morrow. He whispered his assent 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, passing 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 vowedto help her defeat Mrs. Neff's match-making plot by giving Stowe Webb a position she became a mænad 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.
THERE were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of Benedick-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, andI 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 assented.
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 fiancé 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. Fornow 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 driveyou 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 class. He's always telling about some poor fellow getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his class. 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—'"
"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She shook her head.
"But my brain says, 'Think of the long, long future!' A woman spends so little of her married life with her husband. It's the long days that count, the days she spends with other women, with rivalries, jealousies, with economy, economy, economy. That's what I'm afraid of. Economy would play the devil with me, Harvey. Two thousand a year and forage! I'm afraid of it."
"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"
"Then I shall probably learn to hate him."
"And to love somebody else?"
"I shall never love anybody but you, Harvey. I've never told anybody else my real mind as I have you, for I am trained to conceal—always to conceal."
"But don't conceal from yourself the failure you are going to make of your life. No woman can play false to her heart and prosper. I beg you not to despise my love."
"Despise your love!" she cried. "It's myself I despise. Ah, Harvey, try to understand me."
"I can't! I can only warn you."
"Oh, don't warn me! Don't lecture me! Just love me! Let's not think of the future—it's always full of tragedy. If we married in all our love, we should meet so much unhappiness! The most loving love matches I've known have burned out—ended in divorces and open scandal, or scandal concealed like ostriches for everybody to see and laugh at. Two people fall in love and meet opposition and run away together to a preacher. Then they have nobody to oppose them, so they oppose each other. And by and by they run away from each other and don't meet till they get to a divorce court in some small town to avoid the notoriety."
"And you think that you will escape that by marrying without love?"
"Yes. Because I don't expect love. I sha'n't expect Willie to be a romantic saint, and then hate him for not living up to my specifications."
"But yourself—your body—you will give that to him?"
She closed her eyes and turned ghastly white as she whispered: "I suppose so. That's the usual price a woman pays, isn't it?"
He flung her from him as something unclean, common, cheap.
From the huddle she was in she whispered:
"I understand. I—I don't blame you."
There was a sort of burlesque saintliness about her meekness that nauseated him. He did not realize that she forgave him because his rage seemed a proof of his love. She would have forgiven him with bruised lips if he had struck her in the face.
He loathed himself for his vicious wrath, but he almost loathed her more for compelling it. Yet when she got to her feet and stood clinging to the velvet curtain, and mumbled:
"It was better that this happened before we were married, wasn't it? And now that you are cured of loving me I may go, mayn't I?"
He stared at her; his lips parted to utter words he could not find; he put out his hands, and she went back to his arms. And she cried a little, not forgetting even in her grief to sob stealthily lest some one hear. And he understood that, too, and hated her for her eternal vigilance. Even while he kissed the brackish tears from her cheeks and eyes he hated her for being so beautiful and so wise, so full of passion and so discreet.
She wept but a little while, and then she was quiet, reclining against him in silence and meditating.
And he pondered the mystery of his own behavior. A sense of duty and a sense of honor had always guided his acts hitherto. This woman acted upon him like the drug that doctors use for controlling violent patients and the criminal insane; it leaves the senses all alive but annuls the power of motion.
Here he was, convinced to the very depths of his soul that it was abominable to embrace the betrothed of another, yet he did not take his arms from about her, he did not put her away from him. Instead, he held her fast even when she made to go. And yet he blamed her.
This much at least he accomplished in the long silence: he ceased to blame Persis and accused himself, tried himself before the tribunal of his own soul, and denounced himself as guilty of treason to himself and her and the laws of the world. But he did not put her from him.
And now, having condemned himself, he followed the usual program and forgave himself. He bent down and kissed her forehead and her hair, and tightened his arms about her. She did not answer his kiss. Once more he felt, as in the sunlight by the brook, that he held only the shell of her, while her soul—that other man's soul of her—was gone voyaging.
But now it was in the cold of night, in the dark chill ofa room long closed up like a grave and her body was the only warmth in the room, or in the world for him. It seemed to glow like an ember breathing rosily in ashes.
And now gradually desire grew imperious, the angry, sullen desire of Tristan seeing his Isolde given to another man to wife. He burned with resentment at the ill-treatment accorded him by the fates, who saved his love and her love for this mockery, this money-infected, money-paralyzed romance. His wrath rose in revolt against a world where such a sarcasm was possible. The laws of the world became suspect with the mercy of the world. The pangs of disprized love were so bitter that he began to claim revenge, revenge especially on her.
He clenched his arms about her with a new and different ardor—no longer the sacred fervor of a lover who protects his affianced from himself, but the outlaw that raids and desecrates.
She understood and was afraid and fought against him, but her mutinous love fought for him. And nature, and the moonlight, and the scented breeze purring at the window fought for him. All her beauty clamored to surrender. She was already lost when some last impulse of horror cried out against the irreparable profanation. Even as her arms went round him she murmured:
"Help me! Harvey, help me!"
IN the panic of her soul there was just honor enough awake to raise that prayer, and in the fury of his there was just honor enough left to answer it. It was the one irresistible appeal she could have made—the cry of "Help!" that never falls in vain on the ears of a man unless he has become a beast—or a god.
Mysteriously the almost stifled cry released from the dungeon of Forbes' soul all the powers of decency; they took possession of him anew. His senses and his muscles obeyed, and he was now so pure-hearted a defender of Persis' integrity that he resisted even the little moan of almost regret that escaped her tormented soul when he let her go.
The aftermath of the ordeal was an ague of reaction. The blood seemed to flow backward into her heart. She was overwhelmed with the terror one feels for a disaster narrowly escaped, and with shame for the realization that the credit was none of hers.
Forbes did not take her in his arms, but contented himself with closing out the breeze that seemed to have turned colder now, and with wrapping about her quivering shoulders the heavy velvet of the curtain.
Whatever other flaws she had, Persis was not marred by self-conceit. Even her nobler motives she tended to reinterpret from some cynical point of view. When she was calmer she spoke with that intelligence of hers that always chilled Forbes' idealizing heart.
"I can't tell you how grateful I am, Harvey, and how ashamed. I didn't know I was so—so hopelessly likeother people. I didn't know I could forget myself so completely. But I've learned my lesson. I've had my scare. And I must keep away from the edge of the cliff. We mustn't meet alone this way any more, Harvey. I love you too well, and I don't want to go altogether to the bad, do I? It isn't that I'm good; I'd love to be good, but I'm afraid I wasn't meant to be. But I must be sensible. I mustn't be a fool. A woman risks too much, Harvey. It's too hideously unfair. The consequences would be nothing at all to you—and might be utter destruction to me. I told you there were a hundred Persises in me. And now I've seen one of them face to face that I never knew was there. I've got to starve her to death. We mustn't meet alone any more, must we?"
He could not say anything without saying too much. So he simply shook his head and pressed her hand, and, rising, led her from the niche of peril. With his free hand he found his cigar-lighter and snapped it; but it would not flame, and they stumbled through an archipelago of furniture, jostling together, more afraid of contact with each other than of any other danger.
They walked into the wall, but, groping, found at last the door and entered the dining-room again. The moonlight was gone, and the first tide of daybreak was seeping through the windows. There was no rose-color in this dawn. It promised to be a gray day.
They hurried to the kitchen and came back indeed to life in its most material surfaces, a chill, drab light beating upon pots and pans.
They bade each other good night and good-by there; but their embrace was appropriately matter-of-fact, galvanized ware upon cold iron. They tiptoed wearily up the service stairway and into the main corridor above.
Here, too, there was daylight like dirty pond water. Persis went stealthily to the railing of the stairway, and, glancing down, beckoned to Forbes, who moved to her side and peered where she pointed.
He saw that Willie Enslee, exhausted by his vigil, had fallen asleep on a sumptuous divan. The divan would have honored a palace, and Willie's pajamas were of silk, and his bathrobe was of brocaded silk. But after all it was Willie Enslee that was in them. And he slept with his little eyes clenched and his mouth ajar. And a cold cigarette was stuck to his lower lip.
Forbes was impelled to taunt her with a whispered: "There is your husband. Go to him!"
But when he looked at her she was so wan and pitiful that he could not be as pitiless as the wan daylight was. She was making an advance payment on her price; and she was shivering and lonely. So he kissed her icy hands and whispered to her how beautiful she was and a sorrowful "God bless you!" and sneaked back into his room, his bachelor room.
Had he paused as once before to throw her another kiss, he would have found her with her arms stretched out to him pleading for rescue from the vision she had seen and the unspoken taunt she had understood. But he did not look back, and she dared not knock at his door. The click of his lock frightened her, and she fled to her room like a ghost surprised by the morning.
WHEN Forbes shut the door upon Persis (and unwittingly shut out her little gesture of appeal to come back, be stronger than she was, and rescue her from herself in spite of herself) he looked from his room upon a world that was just the colorless color of the glass in his window.
There was a menace of rain in the sky, and the dawn was a colorless affair, neither night nor morning. The day woke like a sleeper that has not rested well.
As a mere formality Forbes took off his clothes and lay down. Life was colorless ahead of him. The woman who had fascinated him utterly had utterly disappointed him. She loved Forbes, but not his penury; she would marry Enslee's money, but not Enslee. She wanted success in life—called it her "career"!
Men, he knew, put their careers first, made everything subservient to success, asked their women to kowtow to it. Perhaps women were going to do the same thing. Perhaps they had been all these centuries hunting success and disguising the materialism of their ambition under more romantic words, aided in their deceit by the numberless gallantries of authors. Perhaps Persis was not different from millions of women, except for being frank where the others were hypocrites, more or less intentionally.
This thought softened his heart toward Persis, and he regretted it. He did not want to think softly of Persis any more. It unnerved his resolution, and uncertainty and irresolution were terrific strains on a man of action and precision. If he could renounce Persis with contempt he would be able to close that incident and resumethe progress of life. But to find in every beauty of hers something of ugliness, and to find in every cruelty of hers something to respect and something to pity, was the paralysis of decision.
How could he hate her when he loved her so madly, and was so unhappy out of her sight? How was he to endure it that she should marry another man, and how was he to prevent it?
He tossed between sleeping and waking, between condemnation of Persis and acquittal, between resolutions to cut her out of his heart and his life, and resolutions to win her yet. Eventually he heard people stirring about the house, and he rose drearily.
The shower-bath gave forth a lukewarm drizzle that neither stimulated nor soothed him. Outside, rain was falling lazily in a gray air that hid the hills and gardens as if the sky, too, were a curtained shower-bath.
He began to pack his suit-cases. As he was folding one of his coats there dropped from its inside pocket a mesh of beribboned lace. It surprised him by its inappropriateness. He picked it up, and it was the nightcap that had fallen from her tousled hair as she looked from the window into that wonderful dawn of day before yesterday. What a liar that dawn had been! It was illustrious and spendthrift of promises. To-day's dawn was the fulfilment. That was romance, this was truth. The nightcap itself was but a snare, a broken snare.
He flung it angrily back to the floor and went on packing his bachelor things to take back into his bachelor future. The little cap lay huddled—as she had crouched when he flung her out of his arms. She had whispered, "I understand." It seemed also not to reproach him. But it was very beautiful. He could not leave it there for some servant to find. Especially not, as she had prophesied just such a result and he had promised to keep it secret. He picked it up. It was fragrant and pink and silken and lacy—as she was.
He rebuked himself for venting his spite on an inanimate object, a nightcap of all things! Thence he was led to reproach himself for condemning Persis. She, too, was knitted and bow-knotted together with the sole purpose of being exquisite. As well blame the nightcap for not being a helmet as blame Persis for not being a heroine.
He found himself caressing the cap and murmuring to it. He folded it tenderly and slipped it into the suit-case. Then he took it out and put it in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. It seemed to nestle there, and he felt a lurch in his heart, as if Persis had just crept back into it and curled up to sleep. He buttoned them in, Persis and the nightcap, and, closing his suit-cases, carried them down-stairs as one does in a hotel where there are no bell-boys.
He found Willie Enslee staring at him, rubbing his eyes. Willie had wakened only a moment before, had realized the hour with bewilderment, had tried the front door and found it still locked. He was just wondering where Forbes and Mrs. Neff had spent the night when Forbes walked down the stairs and said "Good morning!" but with a queer tone and an odd something in his eyes.
Willie drowsily answered "G'maw!" and stared harder, for Mrs. Neff came down the steps after Forbes. She was sneezing so violently that she had to cling to the banister-rail to keep from sneezing herself into space.
She did not see Willie; but her appearance and her sneeze confirmed his theory. He backed out through a side door and made his way through the kitchen and up the stairway there to his own room. His mind was still fumbling with the riddle of how Forbes and Mrs. Neff got in.
He wondered what he should tell Persis when she asked him what had happened during his night-watch. He had promised her great things from his practical joke. But she never asked him, and he was so greatly relieved that he never broached the subject himself.
Breakfast was served more slipshoddily than before.Even the novelty of the experience had gone. Henceforward Winifred was converted to the vital importance of servants.
Persis was the last to appear. Mrs. Neff greeted her with:
"Persis, your eyes are all red. Have you been cry-cr-cry-ing-g-gk!" She finished with an almost decapitating sneeze. It gave Persis a hint.
"I caught cold, too," she said. "The change in the weather."
The explanation sufficed to satisfy Mrs. Neff and to convince Forbes that Persis was dangerously apt at concealments.
When the breakfast was eaten the dishes were washed and dried at Winifred's direction. But when it came to what Forbes called "policing the camp," it was unanimously voted to leave that to the gardener and his wife, or to the caretaker on his return.
The three automobiles rolled up through the rain, all shipshape for the storm, with tops hooded and side-curtains buttoned down snugly.
Forbes remembered that other rain with Persis in the taxicab. How much better the opportunity here, with the world shut out from view and two hours' cruise ahead. But he was again consigned to Mrs. Neff's car, and it was Willie Enslee who had Persis and the opportunity. Forbes could not follow even the flutter of her veil. All he could see ahead was the shoulder of Mrs. Neff's chauffeur and the windshield studded and streaked with rain.
There was no landscape to divert the mind, only his imagination of the courtship Willie would be paying to his newly announced fiancee. Forbes pictured the privileges he would exact, and Persis would not deny. And he gnashed his teeth in wrath. In the cave of Mrs. Neff's car Alice had nothing to say. She was thinking too eagerly ahead. Mrs. Neff had nothing to say. She was wondering what Alice was so cheerful about.
And so the car pushed south, with no passing scenery to indicate progress, only the bumps and teeterings, the swerves and slitherings, and the nauseating belches of noise made by the horn. Eventually the wheels ceased to run upon irregular ground and glided on asphalt. This must be New York.
At Seventy-second Street they turned off Broadway and crossed Central Park. At the eastern gate Mrs. Neff's chauffeur checked his car alongside a whale-like mass, from which Willie Enslee's voice was heard shrilly calling through the rain:
"Good-by, Mrs. Neff! Good-by Alice! Good-by Mr. Wa—er—Forbes. Awfully glad you could come. See you again. Go on to Miss Cabot's house." This last to his own driver.
Mrs. Neff and Alice cried in unison: "Good-by! Had lovely time! See you soon!"
And out of space came the disembodied voice of Persis as from a grave: "Good-by, Mrs. Neff! By-by, Alice! Good-by, Mr. Forbes!"
"Good-by, P—Miss Cabot!" he called. Her voice trailed away as if it were her soul going to death, and his voice followed with an ache of despair in it. Mrs. Neff caught the pathos hovering over the cries like overtones sounding above and beyond a tone of music. She said:
"Too bad you let Willie take her away from you; it's not too late yet if you've any ambition."
Forbes smiled dully, and Alice said:
"Mother, you do say the most tactless things!"
"I had set my heart on that love-match," sighed Mrs. Neff.
"Better begin at home," said Alice, with unusual cheer.
Mrs. Neff changed the subject. "We'll get out at our house, if you don't mind, and the man can take you to your hotel."
"That's mighty kind of you," said Forbes. He helped them to alight, promised to call, and re-entered the car.
On his way to the hotel he pondered what Mrs. Neff had said. It cheered him until he realized she was still assuming that he had a respectable income. If she had known the truth she would have thought him as unfit for Persis as she thought Stowe Webb unfit for Alice. She would have approved Persis' theory that such a wedding was impossible.
It is doleful travel that takes one home from an unaccomplished errand—only Forbes was not returning even to his home. His home was as shifty as a Methodist minister's. At present it was a hotel, and after that the army post.
And now those duties which he had dreaded so to resume became in his mind a refuge. He had spent a few wild days pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp of a woman's whim through a moonlit marsh, never sure which turn it would take, sure only that it would not be where he expected it to be.
After such a maddening recreation there was a kind of heaven in the thought of living according to a rigid program. At such an hour a bugle would exclaim and drums would ruffle, and the day's work would begin. At such an hour a roll-call would be due, or a sick-call, or a guard-mount call, or a headquarters call. Certain books were to be inspected and corrected; certain men were to be taught to do certain things exactly so. If there were ever a doubt, the answer was printed in a book, or in an order numbered and dated.
Everything was gloriously impersonal and objective, accurate and material.
Forbes understood the spirit of old convicts who, after cursing their penitentiaries for years, are let out into the world's turmoil, and by and by return, pleading to be let in again.
Only yesterday he had been trying to concoct schemes for postponing the date of his return to duty; now he was resolved to anticipate it.
He paid his bill at the hotel—with further erosion of the bank-account—and took the Subway and the ferry to Governor's Island.
The first sentinel he encountered recognized him for an officer by his shoulders and his carriage; and, halting on his post at just the right distance, faced outward and presented arms with decorative rigidity. As Forbes' hand went to the brim of his derby hat it felt a vizor there, and his heart went up in thanks. And his eyes went to the colors!—the little piece of wrinkling sky in the corner and the red stripes swimming in luxurious curves.
Next Forbes noted a doting smile half hidden by a saluting hand. It was a sergeant who had served with him in the Philippines; the very man Forbes had been shouting to when the bullet passed through his cheek; the very sergeant who had carried him half a mile to a field hospital in a rain of sun that beat upon the head like a thug's sandbag. That was man's work. Forbes returned the salute and shook the hand of the sergeant. As he remembered, he had got the sergeant out of some woman scrape. Why should good soldiers always be so easily defeated by women?
And next he met two officers he had known in West Point and in Cuba and at Manila. The small army of the United States seemed hardly more than a large club.
One of these officers, Major Chatham, dragged Forbes to his home for dinner—as pretty a home as a man could wish, with as pretty a wife and two children. And they had a maid to wait on them—and they kept a little automobile, too, the major being his own chauffeur. They seemed happy. Perhaps it was only manners, but the wife seemed as happy as a lark—or, rather, a canary. And yet Forbes could see how she differed from Persis. And he was glad that he had not brought a sea-gull down there for a mate.
He left, after his first cigar, on a pretext of unpacking. In the late twilight the sea-gulls that swung and tilted anddipped about the bay like little air-yachts did not seem so desirable, after all. He declared himself emancipated and contented. He thrust his head high and bulged his chest and walked soldierly.
And so he prospered till he was alone in his quarters, and the dark closed in and he turned on the light, and set about the establishment of his effects with all the fanatic neatness and order a West Point training could give a man.
He put his coats and overcoats on the hangers, and the trousers in their holders, flat and creased, and set his shoes out in rows, and the boxes of belts and spurs, and the sword-cases, and the various hat-boxes. He took off his civilian coat and waistcoat—and found in the inside pocket that perfumed nightcap.
And then he wanted Persis! He thirsted and hungered for her. He fevered for her. He called himself names, reasoned, laughed, cursed, tried to read, to write; but "Persis! Persis! Persis!" ran among his thoughts like a tune that can neither be seized nor forgotten. He put out the light, flung up the curtain and the window, and a soft breeze moving from the ocean up the bay seemed to pause like a serenader and croon her name. The torch of the Statue of Liberty glowed like a chained star, and it seemed to be that planet which was Persis and which he could not reach.
Only last night she was in his arms, in his power, and so afraid of him that she cried to him for help from her love; and he had given her up—given her back to herself!
He had kept her pure that Enslee might take her intact! His nobility seemed very cheap to him now. He repented his virtue. If he had taken her then he could have kept her for his own. Now that she had escaped she would never risk the danger again. She had told him so. And she could be very wise, very cold, very resolute.
That night was a condensed eternity. The next morning's duties were performed in a kind of somnambulism.
The second day brought his commission as captain. He glanced over it listlessly and tossed it aside.
For years he had fretted for this document, focused his ambitions on it, upbraided a tardy government for withholding it so long. And now that it was here he sneered at the accolade of it. The increase of pay was a mere sarcasm; it brought him no nearer his planet than going to the roof and standing on tiptoe would have done. The commandant congratulated him. His fellow-officers wrung his hand. He was no longer to be called "Mr. Forbes," but "Captain Forbes." He had a title. But what was the good of it? It did not even make him a rival of Enslee, whose only title was "Little Willie."
Now and then the profundity of his gloom was quickened with resolutions to seek Persis, to storm her home and carry her off. Perhaps that was what she was waiting for. He had often read that women love to be overmastered. Then his pride would revolt. It was not his way of courtship.
But at least he would telephone her. Then he remembered the fruitless effort he had made to discover her number—that mystical "private wire." Ten Eyck would know it. He would call up Ten Eyck. With the receiver off the hook and Central asking, "Number, please?" he grew afraid and answered, "Never mind." He dared not invite another of Ten Eyck's fatherly lectures.
Besides, if Persis cared enough for him to grant him an interview she would seek it herself. But perhaps she had called up the hotel and found him gone. Perhaps she was afraid to call up the post and have him summoned. Women do not like to call up men's organizations; it is like visiting them.
No! she had undoubtedly crossed him off her books, as he ought to cross her off his. He ought to write the word "Dropped" under her name, as under that of a soldier who was out of the service.
And so he tossed hope and despair like a mad jugglerwho cannot rest. On the third day, when he came from the parade-ground, he was informed that he had been wanted on the telephone. He was to call up such a number. "Yes, sir, it was a lady's voice, sir."
It must be Persis. No, it might be an operator in a hotel. It might be her maid. It might be anybody. It proved to be the telephone-girl in the office of Senator Tait.
In a moment, by the occult influence of the telephone, the unknown woman vanished and Senator Tait's soul was in communication with his. The genial heart seemed to quiver in the air.
"That you, Harvey?"
"Yes. Hello, Senator."
"You sound mighty doleful, my boy. Anything the matter?"
"No, I'm all right."
"Are you sure you're not dead? You disappeared so completely I thought you might be. You sound as if you wished you were."
"Oh no, I'm all right."
"Can't you come up to the house for dinner to-night?"
He realized that this would mean meeting Mildred—and dressing in his evening things. He did not want to put on his evening things. They had danced with Persis last. He did not want to meet any woman. He was in mourning. All this flashed through his mind while he was inventing an excuse of official duty.
"To-morrow night, then?"
"Terribly sorry. I can't get off."
"How about lunch? At the club—to-morrow."
"I'd like that."
"I have something to discuss with you."
"I'll be there! At one?"
"Fine! One o'clock. Metropolitan Club. Do you know where it is?"
"I'll find it."
"Good! Perhaps Mildred can be there."
"Fine!" His voice wavered. He was trapped. He had not guessed that the club would have an annex. The Senator felt the constraint across the wire. It hurt him, but he laughed.
"Cheer up! Maybe she can't come!"
"Oh, I—I hope she can. She's—I'd love to see her, I assure you."
"All right. Don't worry. Good-by."
The Senator was laughing, but there was a wounded pride in his voice. Forbes hung up the telephone, feeling a cad and an ingrate.
THE next forenoon, having obtained the privilege of absence, Forbes crossed from Governor's Island to Manhattan Island, took the Subway from South Ferry to Fifty-ninth Street, and, entering Central Park, kept along its southernmost path till he reached the Plaza, where he paused a moment to admire Saint-Gaudens' statue of General Sherman, a gilded warrior on a gilded horse squired by a gilded girl—Victory or Peace or something, he was not sure just what.
In his present humor of misogyny he wondered why it was thought to be necessary to put a woman in everything. Of all the campaigns where she was lacking, surely the March to the Sea was among her most conspicuous absences. But he admired the lean warrior with the doffed hat and the splendid stride of the big horse—a very different horse from the Park horses he found, with their tan-clad grooms clustered at the mounting-blocks near by.
Toward this starting-point fat women with looped-up skirts and top-hats and little knock-kneed girls in breeches were hurrying. He smiled with the superiority of a cavalry officer.
Among the living caricatures were a few expert riders. Suddenly Forbes' heart shivered and raced with a feeling that a certain one of them might be Persis. Surely there could not be another back so trim, another grip so firm. But it was his longing that created the resemblance, for as the horse whirled and loped away he caught sight of the woman's profile. It was less like Persis' profile than like the horse's!
But the moment's agitation had gone like an earthquake through his calmed soul. It shook down the towers of resolution and independence and sickened him with the instability of his poise.
He would have turned back from his engagement, but he had not even the strength for that much action. He crossed the Avenue to where the Metropolitan Club stood four square in its gray and white dignity. As he passed through the carved and colonnaded entrance-court a motor-car deposited two women at the door of the annex.
He feared that one of them might be Mildred; but he was unnecessarily alarmed. Mildred had pleaded official duties. She had shown the same reluctance Forbes had revealed. Perhaps she saw through her father's motives. But the old Senator was willing to wait. He was a born compromiser, a genius at making fusions out of factions.
When Forbes entered the club and asked for Tait, the doorman consulted the roster-board, and, finding a cribbage peg opposite the Senator's name, sent a page for him. He was not far to fetch, and he was in a humor of Falstaffian heartiness. He came upon Forbes' foggy mood like a morning sun. He was just what Forbes needed.
He clapped his arm across Forbes' shoulder, and, as he registered him in the guest-book, wrote the new word "Captain" large, and pointed to it; then dragged Forbes to the cigar-case and commanded "the biggest cigar there is, one with a solid-gold wrapper." He treated the forlorn victim of a woman's jilt as a notable worthy of notable entertainment. It was the lift that the prodigal son got when he slunk home and was met with a bouquet instead of blame.
He led Forbes into the great central hall, with its white-marble cliffs and its red-velveted double stairway mounting like a huge St. Andrew's cross, placed him on a settle where a platoon of men might have sat a-knee, and gave the bell a royal bang. He recommended a special cocktail, and joined Forbes in it in joyous disobedience of his physician's warning.
When the cocktail arrived Forbes gave him the army toast of "How!" and Tait answered "Happy days!" On the way up to the dining-room he led Forbes through the building, pausing before the crimson opulence of the two reading-rooms; the lounging-room, with its windows commanding Fifth Avenue; the card-rooms, deserted battle-fields now; the board-rooms, where committees gathered to settle huge financial destinies, the solemn library walled solid with books.
Forbes wondered at the almost complete absence of other people in the club; but Tait explained that most of the members were hard-working millionaires who lunched down-town "or took their dinner-pails with them," some of them hardly stopping to eat a sandwich from a desk leaf.
On the top floor their luncheon awaited them at a table by the window. As Forbes drew his napkin across his knee he gazed down at the corner of the Park and the lake where white swans drifted like the toy sloops of children. From this height the hills and curving walks looked miniature as a Japanese garden.
When the clam-shells were emptied they were replaced with chicken, a second waiter served rice, and a third curry. It was strangely comforting to be well served with choice food in a beautiful room above a beautiful scene. He felt that in places like this wealth justified itself—wealth the upholsterer, the caterer, the artist, the butler.
Forbes looked down at a shuffling vagrant slouching across the Plaza. He felt sorry for that man, and yet was glad that he was here instead of there. He wished that he himself might belong to this delightful place they called the "Millionaire's Club." He longed for riches, especially as they would mean Persis. He remembered what she had said: "The rich can get anything that the poor have, but the poor can't get what the rich have." The rich Enslee could even get Persis.
He sat musing bitterly, forgetting that he had a host, and unaware that the host was looking at him with sad affection, not resenting his listlessness, but hoping to relieve it. Remembering Forbes' father, Tait knew that he must move warily about that sensitive Forbes pride, as swift to strike an awkward hand as a caged tiger that greets an unwelcome caress with a wound.
Tait hesitated to open his real business. He began obliquely.
"Well, I've just fired the first gun in my war with Mrs. Neff."
"Yes?" said Forbes, drearily.
"Yes," said Tait, positively. "Just before you came young Stowe Webb was here—nice young fellow. I sent for him, and said to him: 'Young man, Miss Alice Neff, whom I believe you know'—he blushed like a house afire—'tells me,' I said, 'that her mother objects to you because you have no money.' He flashed me a look of amazement, and I said: 'If you need money, why don't you make it?' And he said: 'How can I?' 'Why, money is growing on bushes everywhere,' I said, 'just waiting to be picked off; poor men are getting rich every day,' I said; and he said: 'Yes, and rich men are getting poor. My family is one of the bushes, and we've been pretty well picked. My father left me nothing but his blessing, and I can't pawn that,' he said. 'Still, I'm not dead yet,' he said. 'I'll show you all some day.' And I said: 'There must be something in any man that a good girl loves and believes in. And any girl that's worth having is worth working for, and if she really wants you she'll wait for you.' And then I lowered my voice about an octave and growled, 'I wonder if you have the grit to go out in this hard old world and work for that girl and—and earn her?' He said, 'You bet I have!' So I said: 'Well, I know where there's a job you might get; it's small salary and a lot of work at first, and by and by a little more salary and much harder work; and you won't be able tosee her often; perhaps not at all for a long while; but eventually, if she'll wait, you'll be able to support her as well as any girl needs to be supported who has love in the bargain. Do you want that job, young man?' I said, glaring at him. And he said: 'Lead me to it!'"
Forbes listened with eagerness and envy. The portrait of Alice, who would wait till her lover worked his way up to a competence, contrasted sharply with Persis, who would not accept the competence Forbes already had. He asked, with an effort at enthusiasm:
"And what is the job?"
"I'm going to make him my secretary, at twelve hundred a year, at first. He won't be worth it, and I'll have to do all my own work for a while; but I'll give him his chance. I won't pamper him. I'll test him out—and her, too. If they can't stand the test they wouldn't last long in the battle of matrimony."
"Your secretary?" said Forbes. "Does he know any law?"
"I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a diplomat—in Paris."
"Splendid!" cried Forbes, reaching across to squeeze his hand. "I congratulate the country—and France. I envy you Paris. I've never been there."
"How would you like to go?"
"How should I like to be a major-general?"
Tait opened his lips to say something important, then stammered, and said instead:
"Waiter, give Captain Forbes some more of that curry. It's good here, isn't it?"
"Splendid," said Forbes, who had hardly touched what was on his plate.
Senator Tait shifted uncomfortably, made to speak, pursed his lips, eyed Forbes, and then said, with abrupt irrelevance:
"I was wrong, I see, about old Cabot."
"Were you?" Forbes mumbled, with a sudden flush at the broaching of that dangerous theme.
"Yes, I said that he was to be closed up, forced into involuntary bankruptcy, and all that."
"Wasn't he?" said Forbes, weakly.
"No, he got money and credit and a new start—from the Enslee estates. There is a rumor that his daughter is to marry Willie Enslee. I thought that perhaps you—did you—did you hear anything of it—from Enslee?"
Tait made an elaborate pretense of indifference and showed a violent interest in the leg of a chicken. Forbes turned curry-color with shame as he answered: "Yes, Enslee announced the engagement himself—the very day I saw you last."
His head drooped as if his neck could no longer hold it up. Tait noted his harrowed look and broke out angrily:
"Don't be cut up, my boy, just because she's fool enough to marry a bigger fool than herself."
"Oh, please!" Forbes protested. He could have struck a younger man in Persis' defense, but he could only appeal to so old a man as Tait. Tait, however, persisted:
"You ought to be glad to be revenged so neatly."
Forbes was in desperate case; he laughed bitterly. "Revenge is a little late. My life is ruined. I might as well put an end to it."
The old man stared at the tragic face, the brow corded with veins, the eyes fanatic with despair. He could not believe that so brilliant an officer could kill himself. And yet men did kill themselves—several thousand every year. When Forbes' father was a young man courting the fickle young beauty who was later to become the so steadfast wife and the mother of Forbes, they had quarreled, and Forbes' father had been frantic with grief, had threatened self-destruction. Tait himself had taken the revolver away from him and helped to lift him across the dark waters of jealousy. It startled him to see the father'sblack despair repeated in the son. He felt that he must repeat the rescue.
Yet, as humanity is constituted, tragedy becomes grotesque when it is repeated. He felt a certain helpless amusement at finding the son just as desperate as the father had been. He had laughed the elder Forbes out of his gloom. He attempted to ridicule the son free of the same obsession. He spoke in a low tone surcharged with an anxiety whose exaggeration was too dolorous to catch.
"You say that you can't stand the loss of Miss Cabot, and you might as well commit suicide?"
"I might as well."
"I'll tell you, Harvey, let's commit suicide together!" Forbes' haggard glance showed that he was not yet awake to the old man's parody of his solemnity.
"Do you mean it?" Forbes asked.
"Yes," Tait murmured; "all good Americans go to Paris when they die—let's go to Paris."
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 attaché, 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 nobody 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. Nobody 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.