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 "petite." 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 assumed 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-glass 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 God, 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 embarrassed, 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 cameback, 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 superstitious," 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! nobody ever loved me like that; nobody 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."
Willie eyed her with a cynical stare. "Don't be—er—literary, mother. I remember when I was a little boy how lonely I used to get in this big old house. Poor father was so busy heaping up money I hardly knew him by sight. Once he—er—passed me on the street and didn't speak to me! Then at night you used to give big dinners.I had to eat early and alone up in the—er—nursery. But I used to lie awake for hours, and when the doors opened I could hear laughter. And often there was music. You used to go down to dinner after I had gone to bed."
"But I always stopped in to kiss you good night, didn't I?" the mother urged, in self-defense.
"Sometimes you would forget," Willie sighed. "Then I'd be left there alone with the governess. I didn't want to—er—speak French to a governess. I wanted to—er—talk to my mother. And when you did stop in to kiss me, your lips sometimes used to—er—leave red marks on my cheek."
"Willie!" Mrs. Enslee gasped; but he went on:
"I couldn't put my arms around your neck for fear I'd—er—disarrange your hair, and even that was—er—dyed!"
Mrs. Enslee turned on him in rage. "Willie! How dare you?"
He rounded on her fiercely. "You know it was! You know it was!"
"You little beast!" Mrs. Enslee cried; but Willie laughed maliciously.
"See! See! Now you're showing your—er—real feelings to me."
Mrs. Enslee controlled her pain and her wrath, and implored: "Come, my boy, let's be friends."
"Oh, that's all right, mother," said Willie. "Friends is the word. It's too late for anything else."
"You're in one of your nasty moods, Willie," said Mrs. Enslee, retreating from this hateful situation. "But we were talking of Persis. You must decide about her."
"I have decided."
"You won't marry her, then?"
"Not marry her?" Willie repeated, like a sarcastic echo. "Of course I will. And why not?"
Motives are hard tangles to unravel, especially a mother's toward other women. Perhaps Mrs. Ensleewas really afraid of Persis. Perhaps she wanted to assure herself of the future ability to say, "I warned you." Perhaps it was just motherly jealousy of the new proprietress of Willie's time and attention. In answer to Willie's "Why not?" she insinuated: "People might say she is marrying you for your money."
"Well, what of it? What if she is?" Willie stormed. "What else is there to marry me for? My—er—beauty? What does it matter, so I get her? Why do dukes marry—er—chorus-girls—when they can afford 'em? Because they want 'em! That's why, isn't it? What fools they'd be not to take 'em if they want 'em and can get 'em?"
His mother shrugged his troubles from her shoulders and left him to ferment in his own vinegar. But Willie was not happy. He was getting what he asked for, and it was not what he wanted. Perhaps he had never been truly happy in his whole existence. He had been amused at times, but usually then with a cynical delight in somebody's misfortunes or mistakes.
How could he have been thoroughly happy when he had never been truly well? What health he had was a negation, a convalescence; it was at best a not being sick. He was of a fabric that broke down and wore through constantly. He could understand the definition of happiness as "having a splinter in your finger and getting it out."
But the joy that comes from bounding arteries, glowing skin, a galloping heart, a volcanic desire to laugh because the soul is bursting with laughter, or to sing for mere song's sake, or to be an instrument in the symphonic universe when it is playing one of its mighty ensembles—that cosmic happiness was unknown to Willie Enslee.
When he found a rapture he always found something the matter with it; there was a worm in the apple, a slug in the salad, a fly in the ointment, a flaw in the diamond. And so it was with his one big ambition—Persis. He had won his choice of all the world's women. And now hismother was asking if he thought she loved him, and if people would not question her motives. She was already perhapsing and better-notting.
And he was dreaming dreams that somebody else had a priority in her heart. Of course, dreams were follies. According to some superstitions, they went by contraries. But they are as hard to disbelieve as a convincing play. One may not be sure that Josephine was untrue to Napoleon; but he knows that Mrs. Tanqueray II. had a most inconvenient lover, and that her past spoiled her husband's daughter's future.
So Willie, emerging from the playhouse of his nightmare, wondered who it was that was likely to interrupt his wedding with Persis. He suspected everybody except Forbes. Him he canceled at once from the list, because Forbes had met Persis only a week ago, and had never seen her alone, and had, furthermore, devoted himself to Mrs. Neff. He set Forbes down as a fortune-hunter willing to marry a much older woman of moderate means. He doubted if he were important enough for an invitation to the wedding.
He could not decide upon any other man to fit the faceless vision of his nightmare, that shadowy being who stood up in the dream-cathedral and claimed Persis for his own. He was tempted to ask Persis. But he was not tempted long. Naturally she would deny it; but what if she should confess? Then he would have to give her up. And he wanted her more than anything else on earth.
He resolved that the one safe step was to get Persis safely married at once and take her away from all of her acquaintances. Aboard his yacht would be one secure asylum. When they tired of that they could travel Europe, and the moment any old friend appeared he could decamp with her overnight.
He chuckled triumphantly over this plot, and set about its perfection. He rejoiced to be in a position to compelPersis by way of her father's necessities. The support he had advanced to the "old flub" he could threaten to withdraw unless the wedding were hastened. That would clinch it.
And then he glowed with the imagined scenes of the honeymoon. Persis might not love him as he wished, but he would have her for his own. He would have as much of her as any man could be sure of in possessing a woman. He knew he was not handsome, but he knew handsome men whose homely wives were notoriously false to them. Did he not know of wild romances that had ended in mutual contempt? Did he not know of unpromising beginnings that had ended in happiness? Monogamy was a gamble at best. And at worst he should have Persis for his own for a while.
WHEN Willie's mother left him in the aftermath of his nightmare she went to pay her duty call on Persis, to welcome her formally into the family and proffer her the use of the family name.
There was the most gleaming cordiality on the surface of their meeting, but the depths of both streams were a trifle murky. Willie's mother understood now why her own husband's fierce old mother, known as "Medusa" Enslee, had received her with such constraint on a similar occasion. That mother had had to give up part of her name, too, and step back from being queen to being queen-mother, with endless confusion in the newspapers, the invitations, the correspondence, and the gossip.
The present Mrs. Enslee felt now a sympathy for the old woman she had hated. But it crowded out the sympathy she should have felt for Persis, who was suffering what she had suffered as a young-woman-afraid-of-her-mother-in-law.
It was bitter for Willie's mother, still beautiful, feeling herself as young as ever, to realize that henceforth she must be the "the elder," or, worse yet, the "old Mrs. Enslee." Perhaps in a year or two a grandmother! It would be just like Persis to hasten that ghastly day.
At present Persis was not thinking of motherhood. She would have called it quite a ghastly day herself—one to be postponed by every ingenuity and subtlety known to American womanhood. She was thinking of her new name.
"You'll be Mrs. Enslee, and I suppose I'll be Mrs. William Enslee, or Mrs. Little Willie, sha'n't I, mama?Do you want me to call you mama, or shall I stick to Mrs. Enslee?"
"As you like, my dear," said Mrs. Enslee, with a little shudder at being "mama" to a strange woman and a rival. Persis rattled on in ill-managed embarrassment.
"It will be pretty mixy with two Mrs. William Enslees, won't it? Like two in a single bed—pardon me! I'll have to be awfully good or awfully careful, sha'n't I, for fear my letters may fall into your hands? But I'll promise not to give away what I find in yours if you won't tell on me."
Mrs. Enslee was rather pleased than offended at this. At least it credited her with the ability to create scandal.
She was like Mrs. Neff in hating to get too old to be suspected.
She smiled at Persis with Spanish coquetry, and offered her aid in the appalling details of announcing the engagement. It was the new mode to use the telephone for the more intimate friends. For others there were letters, calls, advertisements, luncheons, and dinners in all the exquisite degrees of familiarity.
She and Persis were going into business for a while on a large scale—a business for which Persis was peculiarly fitted and in which she developed an extraordinary energy.
When Persis had returned to New York from the Enslee country place to find her father helpless and dejected, the offer of Willie's aid had acted like a magic elixir. It had meant the payment of old bills, or their enlargement, and the opening of new credits. Dealers whom the mercantile agencies had secretly filled with alarm for the Cabot accounts had been subtly reassured.
In place of letters of pathetic appeal for a little something to meet a pay-roll there came letters announcing private views of new importations. Persis' own father called her his loan-broker, and said that she had earned the usual commission; he ordered her to buy new things.He complained of the shabbiness of her hats. Why hadn't she bought the lot she had spoken to him about some time ago? She did at once—and more.
Persis was like a child waking from a bad dream to find that it is Christmas morning and that its stockings are cornucopias spilling over with glittering toys.
And what woman lives that does not find more rapture in shopping with a full purse or an elastic charge-account than in any other earthly or spiritual pleasure?
The barbaric love of beads and red feathers and mirrors has never been civilized out of the sex. The male succeeds in love and elsewhere by what he thinks and makes and gives; the female by what she looks and wears and extracts. The shops are her art-museums, her gymnasiums, her paradises, and the privilege of reveling among them is more voluptuous than any other of her sensualities. Shopping takes the place of exploration. That is her Wanderlust.
And so when Willie Enslee arrived at the Cabot house with all his weapons ready to force Persis to an early marriage, he was astounded—he was even dismayed—to find that she offered no resistance, but greeted his proposal with delight. It was like making ready to besiege and storm a castle and being met half-way there by flower-girls instead of troops. Persis was so instant with acceptance that he took credit to himself. He cherished a pitiful delusion that she wanted to marry him—was actually in a hurry to marry him!
But it was because she had seen in the shops the new things for this year's brides. They were absolutely ravishing! Whatever they are in reality or in retrospect, fashions are always ravishing as they dawn on the horizon. Such beauties brighten as they make their entrance and wither as they take their flight.
To prepare herself for a wedding did not mean—to Persis, at least, whatever it may mean to other women—that she must prepare her soul for a mystic union with astranger soul. It meant that she must prepare her wardrobe for the inspection of all sorts of critics, from the most casual to the most intimate. It meant not only buying a veil and some orange blossoms and a meekly glorious white dress, but it meant outfitting a private department store. It meant preparing for travel and a prolonged campaign known as a honeymoon, rather than entering shyly into obscurity and domestic bliss. It meant not half so much what the groom should think and see as what to show and what to whisper to the bridesmaids, hysterically envious and ecstatically horrified.
Persis' father had nearly bankrupted himself once before over the wedding of Persis' sister into the British peerage, when she ceased to be the beautiful Miss Cabot and became the Countess of Kelvedon, and had the privilege of being nineteenth in the fifty-seven varieties of precedence among British women.
Mr. Cabot had learned nothing from that investment. He encouraged Persis to extravagances she would never have dared even in her present mood. It was like chirruping and taking the whip to a horse that was already running away.
He sent a long cablegram to Persis' sister, insisting that she come over at once for the wedding and bring the Earl and the eight-year-old Viscount of Selden, the six-year-old Honorable Paul Hadham, and the five-year-old Lady Maude Hadham. Persis received at once a brief reply from the Countess:
"Congratulations old girl snooks says awfully glad to be with you if papa pays the freight we are stony. Elise."
"Snooks" was the Earl of Kelvedon. Sometimes Elise called him "Kelly" for short. Papa cabled the freight—and "freight" was beginning to describe his burdens. But he was in for it; yet he felt that, come what come would, he should henceforward lean comfortably on the Enslee Estates.
Persis kept him signing checks till he was tempted to buy one of those ingenious machines by which one signs twenty at a time.
Persis was running amuck among the shops. She was in a torment of delight—a cat in a cosmos of catnip. The equipment of the humblest bride is a matter of supreme effort. To make a Persis Cabot ready to enter the dynasty of the Enslees was a Xerxic invasion.
The wedding-gown, though it was designed and builded with almost the importance of St. Paul's Cathedral, was the least part of the trousseau. Willie was to take her yachting and motoring and touring—perhaps around the world. They were to be presented at court if the Queen forgave the Countess her latest epigram in time. They were to visit capitals, castles, châteaux, gambling-palaces, golf-links, beaches, spas. Costumes and changes of costumes must be constructed for all these; for each costume there must be a foundation from the skin out. If it had been possible, the skin would have been changed as well. They do their best in that direction—these women with their pallor for a gown of one color and their carmine for a gown of another.
Persis had to have a going-to-the-altar gown, and a going-away gown, and going-to-bed gowns, getting-up gowns, going-motoring costumes, and going-in-swimming suits, dinner-gowns, house-gowns, tea-gowns, informal theater-gowns, opera-gowns, race-track togs, yachting flannels. And these were of numberless schools of architecture from train-gowns to tub frocks and smocks, from lingerie dresses to semi-tailored one-piece and two-piece suits, coats, and coatees, and coat-dresses, and sport-coats, opera wraps, rain slip-ons.
And there were colors to choose from that made the rainbow look like a study in sepia. And there were fabrics of strange names—crêpe, tulle, serge, taffeta, brocade, charmeuse, paillette, jet, batiste, voile—what not?
And there were the underpinnings to all these—thestockings and garters, the corsets and chiffon corset-covers and combinations, chemi-pantalons and petticoats. And there were the accessories—hats, caps, bonnets, gloves, fans, parasols, veils, jabots, collars, aigrettes, boots, shoes, slippers, powders, paints, cerates, massage-cream—ad infinitum. And in every instance there must be a choice.
The complexity of a woman's wardrobe! A man is fitted out in a small haberdashery and a tailoring establishment, a hat shop and a shoe store. For woman they build Vaticans of merchandise in order that she may make an effect on—other women!
Persis had so many dresses to try on that she had two pneumatic images made of her form to stand in her stead. She had the servants' tongues hanging out from running errands. Delivery-wagon drivers and messenger-boys kept the area doorbells ringing early and late.
There was so much mail to send out that she hired two secretaries. Ten Eyck called on her just once, and was used as telephone-boy, package-opener, stenographer, change-purse, box-lifter, memorandum-maker, doorbell-answerer, gift-cataloguer till he was exhausted.
"How does a man ever dare to marry one of you maniacs?" he said. "Marriage isn't a sacrament with you; it's a massacre. They have a money macerator at the mint that destroys old greenbacks. Why don't they get a couple of brides to do the work? A wedding costs as much as a small war."
Persis might have retorted that wars were quite as foolish a waste as fashions, and not half so pretty. A new style in projectiles, the latest fabric of armor plate, the mode in airships—these things, too, come and go, cost fortunes, and are soon mere junk. But Persis' head was too full of other things, and her mouth too full of pins, to make any answer to Ten Eyck.
If Forbes had called he might have seen that Persis was a great general, or at least a great quartermaster, equipping not an army with one uniform, but one poorlittle frantic body with an army of uniforms. And Forbes would have been glad to take that body without a shift to its back and wrap it in one of his own overcoats and ride away with it. But for Willie she must loot Paris.
Still it was her career. Forbes would not give up his for her; why should she give up hers for him?
If Forbes had been leading his company to war he would have felt sorry for Persis, bitterly sorry to leave her, afraid for her; but he would still have gone, as men have always gone. He would not have been immune to bugles or the gait-quickening thrup of drums. He might have hummed love songs to her, but "Dixie" would still have thrilled him. He would not have neglected his uniform or his tactics. He would not have skulked from a charge or dodged a shell on her account.
That was his trade. This was hers. And Persis was as happy as a man is when he is going into battle. She was happy because she was busy and because she was buying, exercising choice, spurning, pillaging among cities of beautiful things. She dozed standing while skirts were draped; at night she simply fell into bed and was asleep; her maid drew her skirts from her hips and her stockings from her legs as if she were dead. But the next morning she woke without being called, and began the day with new ferocity of attack.
She had not forgotten Forbes. The thought of him hovered about her heart. She paused now and then, with hand on cheek and eyes far away, thinking of him so intently that the saleswoman had to speak twice to her, or the dressmaker to lift her arms into the position he wanted for the try-on.
Sometimes she woke from dreams in which she seemed to feel Forbes' arms about her. As she woke they were withdrawn, as if he fled. She would weep a little and lick the salt from her lips and find her tears very bitter. She would pout at Fate and muse: "Why couldn't it have beenHarvey instead of Willie? Oh, what a pitiful sacrifice I am making of my life!"
But her anger or despair in these humors was not half so intense as her despair at finding that some color could not be matched or that a color chosen in electric light was wrong in the daylight, or her anger because some tradesman failed to keep his word or some caller came to wish her well at a busy time, when true well-wishing would have shown itself in keeping out of the way.
A president could hardly have given more thought to selecting his cabinet than Persis gave to the choice of her bridesmaids, those lieutenants who must stand by in the same uniform like moving caryatides. There was the enormously important subject of their costume to debate. Since the livery that suited one style of beauty was loathsome on another, there was no little politics to play.
Persis invited the four elect to a luncheon at her club, and by having her ideas clear and enforcing them in a delicately adamant tone she managed to close the session in two hours. It was good work, and it was necessary; for the bridesmaids' costumes must be ready in time for the photographs.
She managed the luncheon so well that she finished it ahead of the time she had told her chauffeur to call for her. She left the bridesmaids all talking at once, for she had an appointment with one of her dressmakers. As she came down the steps of the quaintly colonial Colony Club she found no taxi in sight. She would not wait to have one summoned. The brief walk would do her good. She set out briskly down Madison Avenue and turned into Twenty-ninth Street to cross to Fifth Avenue.
This brought her to one of the few churchyards in almost grassless New York—the pleasant green acre of the Church of the Transfiguration, known to theatrical history as "The Little Church Around the Corner," and to the elopement industry as another Gretna Green.
As she approached it a taxicab drew up at the curb,and Stowe Webb and Alice Neff bounced out, almost bowling Persis over, as usual. Both had a much dressed-up look, and Alice carried a little bouquet.
Persis was in a hurry, but she scented excitement. When the two lovers had apologized for their Juggernautical haste she asked, with the demurest of smiles:
"And what are you children doing in this dark alley?"
"Oh, we're just—just—" Alice stammered.
"Does your mother know you're out?"
"Naturally not," Alice smiled, more cheerfully.
"Mischief's brewing. I've got to know."
"Can you keep a secret?"
"That's my other name—Inviolate."
Alice hesitated, then took a precaution. "Cross your heart and hope to swallow fish-hooks?"
Persis drew an X over her heart, and vowed: "I am full of fish-hooks."
Alice looked up and down the street cautiously, then spoke in a whisper of awesome solemnity: "Well, then, Stowe and I have given mama the slip, and we're going to—to—"
"Get a chocolate-sundae with two spoons!"
Alice bridled with indignation. "Certainly not! We're not children! We are going to run away and be married."
Persis nodded her head gravely. "That was what I was afraid you were going to say. But why this haste?"
"Well, you see, Stowe has just got a job—umm-humm! It's a terribly important post—secretary to Ambassador Tait."
"Ambassador?"
"Yes; the Senator is going to France, and Stowe is to help him out."
The young secretary spoke in, trying not to look as important as he felt: "I simply can't endure the thought of leaving Alice all alone over here. So we're going to get married."
"Fine!" said Persis, with subtlety. "I suppose you get a whopping big salary."
"Indeed he does!" said Alice. "Twelve hundred a year! It's wonderful for a beginning."
Persis suppressed her emotions at the talk of salary. She hated the word; but she exclaimed, "Wonderful!" Then she turned to Stowe to ask: "Does the Senator know you're going to bring a bride along?"
"No; we're going to surprise him."
Persis thought of her appointment. It was vitally important, but she felt a call to duty. She thought it was rather good of her to heed it. She bundled the two young people back into the waiting taxicab in spite of their protests.
"Take us for a little drive, Stowe," she said. "I want a word with you. Tell the man to go down Washington Square way. You're not so likely to meet her mother."
STOWE obeyed reluctantly, and the taxicab groaned on its way. Persis set Stowe on the small flap-seat and turned so that she could skewer him and Alice with one look.
"Now, Alice," she began, "let's be sensible." Alice looked appealingly at Stowe, but Persis objected. "Don't look at him—look at me. First, who's going to support you children when you are married?"
They answered like a chorus: "Why, he is (I am), of course."
"Alice, dear, how much has your mother been allowing you for pin-money—say, five thousand a year?"
"Oh, she claims it's more than that. We had an awful row the first of last month."
Persis looked very innocent and school-girlish as she said: "And Mr. Webb gets twelve hundred?"
"Yes."
"Now, Alice, I'm very backward in mathematics, so you'll have to tell me: if one person cannot live on five thousand a year, do you think two persons will be perfectly comfortable on twelve hundred?"
"Oh, but I'll economize!" Alice protested. "It will be a pleasure to do without things—if I have Stowe."
"Yes," Persis sniffed, "almost anything we're not used to is pleasant for a novelty; but in time I should fancy that even economy would cease to be a luxury. And where in Paris do you plan to live on your twelve hundred?"
"At a hotel, to begin with," Stowe suggested.
"Oh, you'll eat your cake first, eh? Not a bad idea; you're sure of getting it, then."
"Then we can get such ducks of flats in Auteuil."
"The Harlem of Paris," Persis sneered, then grew more amiable. "A duck of an apartment is all very well, my dear, for those who have wings; but climbing stairs—ugh! Four flights of stairs six times a day—that's twenty-four flights. Seven times twenty-four is—help!"
"One hundred and sixty-eight, I believe," said Stowe, after a mental twist.
"Bravo! You're a regular wizard at mathematics," said Persis. "One hundred and sixty-eight flights of stairs a week, and fifty-two times one hundred and sixty-eight is how much? Quick!"
"You've got me there. I fancy I could do it with a piece of chalk and a blackboard."
"Well, it's a million, I'm sure," Persis summed it. "Think of that! a million flights of stairs the first year of marriage! What love could survive it? And how many rooms is your sky-parlor going to have?"
"Seven and bath."
"On twelve hundred a year?" Persis gasped. "Aren't you going to eat anything?"
"Well, we could manage with two."
"Two rooms!" Persis gasped again. "And your mother's house has thirty! Two rooms? Why, where will the servants sleep?"
"We sha'n't have any servants," Alice averred, stoutly.
And her husband-to-be protested: "No, Alice, I'll never let you soil your pretty hands with work."
Persis pressed the point. "But really, now, what about food?"
"You can do Wonders with a chafing-dish," said Alice.
"And a chafing-dish can do wonders with a stomach," said Persis. "Bread and cheese—that is to say, Welsh rabbits—and kisses as a steady diet?" She shook her head.
Alice made another try. "Well, everybody says you can buy almost everything in cans."
"Including ptomaines. Oh, children, you don't know what's in store for you."
"Of course we shall have hardships," Stowe confessed; "but nothing can be worse than this uncertainty, this separation."
"Oh yes, it can, Stowe!" Persis cried. "There are harder things to bear than the things we lose, and they are the things we can't lose."
"The things we can't lose?" said Stowe; "that means me, I suppose?"
"Oh, Alice, come back to earth," Persis urged, with all her might. "Think how tired you'll get of living in a dark little pigeonhole away up in the air, with no neighbors but working-people. And when your pretty gowns are worn out, and you lose your pretty looks and your pretty figure and your fresh color—for those are expensive luxuries—and when you see that your husband is growing disappointed in you because the harder you work for him the homelier and duller you become—that's a woman's fate, Alice: to alienate a man by the very sacrifices she makes to bind him closer; and when—"
"Oh, don't tell me any more whens," Alice whimpered. "What do I care? I want Stowe. He needs me. We are unhappy away from each other."
Persis shook her head like a sibyl. "Be careful that you don't find yourselves more unhappy together. For some day you'll grow bitter. You'll remember what you gave up. You'll begin to remind him of it—to nag—and nag—oh, the unspeakable vulgarity of it! And then you'll ruin Stowe's career—just as it's beginning. The Senator doesn't want a secretary with a wife. You'll always be in the way. Stowe will have to be leaving you all the time or fretting over you. You'll hamper his usefulness, and check his career, and grind him down to poverty, break his spirit."
"Oh, I don't want to do that!" Alice wept. "I mustn't do that!"
"Then wait—wait!" Persis pleaded. "Marriage is risky enough when there is no worry about money. But when the bills come in at the door love flies out at the window."
Stowe seized Alice's hands with ardor. "Don't listen to her, Alice."
"But I'm frightened now," Alice wailed. "It's for your sake, Stowe. We mustn't—not yet. And now may I please go home where I can cry my eyes out."
Persis in triumph called the address to the chauffeur. Stowe Webb, in the depths of dejection, left the cab and stared after it with eyes of bitter reproach.
Alice's tears were standing out like orient pearls impaled on eyelashes as she said good-by to Persis at her own curb.
"You hate me now," said Persis, "but you'll be very glad this happened some day."
"I don't hate you," said Alice. "I know you're terribly wise; but I—I wish you hadn't come along."
Persis laughed tenderly. "It's only for your happiness, Alice darling. Well, good-by!"
Persis felt that she had done an honest day's work of Samaritan wisdom, and ordered the cab to make haste to her dressmaker. A he-dressmaker it was, who, like a fashionable doctor, found it profitable to behave like a gorilla and abuse his clients. He turned on Persis and stormed up and down his show-room. He threatened to throw out all her costumes. She bore with him as meekly as if she were a ragged seamstress pleading for a job instead of the bride-elect of an Enslee.
When she had thus appeased his wrath he changed his tune to a rhapsody. She was to be the most beautiful bride that ever dragged a train up an aisle, and she should drag the most beautiful train that ever followed a maid to the altar and a wife away.
PERSIS was not the only busy person in New York. Willie was kept on the jump preparing his share of the performance. The ushers were to be chosen, and their gifts, and a dinner given to them; and his list of friends to receive announcements and invitations must be made up, and the bride's gift selected, and the itinerary of the honeymoon arranged, his yacht put into commission, and a dinner of farewell to bachelorhood accepted and endured.
He hardly caught a glimpse of Persis all this while, and when he heard her voice on the telephone it was only to receive some new list of chores. He missed the billing and cooing that he knew belonged to these conversations. His heart ached to be assured of Persis' love; but she was incapable of even imitating the amorous note with him. When he pleaded for tendernesses she put him off as best she could by blaming her brusqueness on her overwork, as one who does not wish to sign oneself "Yours faithfully" or "affectionately" or even "truly" writes "Yours hastily."
But Willie's incessant prayer for love harassed her. It was a phase of him that had been unimportant hitherto. And it alarmed her a little. It would have given her greater uneasiness if she had not had so many other matters to worry her, if she had not had so many fascinating excitements to divert her.
Forbes was busy, too. Senator Tait had easily arranged his appointment as military attaché. He had his duties to learn in this capacity. He had to polish up his French and take lessons in conversation and composition, andlearn what he could about the French military establishment and procedure. And he had to make ready for a long residence abroad.
To him, too, preoccupation was an opiate for suffering. Ambition and pride were resuming their interrupted sway. So long as he was busy he counted Persis as one of the tragedies of his past, and his love of her as a thing lived down and sealed in the archives of his heart.
But when he had an hour of leisure or of sleeplessness, she came back to him like a ghost with eery beauty and uncanny charm. He found her in nearly every newspaper, too. The announcement of her engagement brought forth a shower of portraits. There were articles about the alliance between the two families of Enslee and Cabot, about the bride's style of beauty, her recipes for beauty, silly accounts of interviews she never gave, beauty secrets she never used, exercises she never took, opinions on matters on which she had never thought. She was caught by camera-bogies on every shopping expedition, at the steeplechases, at the weddings of other people—everywhere. There were moving pictures of her; pictures of her in her babyhood, her girlhood, in old-fashioned costumes and poses. Women began to copy her hats, her coiffures, her costumes. An alert merchant with a large amount of an unsalable material on hand named it "Persis pink," and women fought for it. It became a household word, or, its substitute nowadays, a newspaper word.
Forbes was dumfounded at the publicity of Persis. He was tempted to believe that she had gone mad and hired a press-agent. But a woman who marries a rich enough man needs no booming to-day. The whisper of her engagement starts the avalanche. She becomes as public as a queen or a politician or a criminal.
The incessant encounter with Persis' beauty in every newspaper, morning and evening and Sunday, and in the illustrated weeklies, kept Forbes' wound open. He could not escape her. It was like being a prisoner at a windowwhere she was always passing. She smiled at him everywhere, and always with the shadow of the Enslee name imminent above her.
On the morning of the day he sailed, as he held his newspaper between his coffee and his cigar, certain head-lines leaped up and shouted at him from the top of a column with a roar as of apocalyptic trumpets. He hastened to his room to be alone while he read the chronicle of what was already past.
MISS PERSIS CABOTWEDS WM. ENSLEEHEAD OF THE FAMOUS HOUSEMARRIED AT ST. THOMAS'SYESTERDAY AFTERNOONReception at Bride's HomeEarl and Countess of Kelvedon among Distinguished Guests.Church a Mass of Bloom.The marriage of William Enslee, the present head of the great dynasty of Enslee, and Miss Persis Cabot, the famous beauty, daughter of an equally distinguished family, was celebrated at 4:30 yesterday afternoon in St. Thomas's Church, Fifty-third Street and Fifth Avenue. This was the largest and most brilliant wedding of the season.The chancel of the church was banked with rambler roses and white daisies, against a background of camellia-trees and towering palms, and the way to the altar was marked with bay and orange trees. The altar was a mass of bridal roses under an immense trellis of trailing smilax.While the guests were arriving a recital was given by an orchestra, which played several selections at the bride's request, including the "Evening Star" from "Tannhäuser," the prelude to "Lohengrin," the gavotte from "Mignon," and Simonetti's "Madrigale."The ushers who seated the guests included the bride's brother, LeGrand Cabot, Murray Ten Eyck, Robert Gammell Fielding, and Ives Erskine.The full vested-choir service was used for the ceremony, andBarnby's "O Perfect Love" was played as the processional. The bride walked down the nave with her father, who gave her in marriage, being preceded by the ushers, bridesmaids, matron, maid of honor, and flower-bearers. The bride wore a robe of heavy white satin, the skirt being draped with long motifs of old family lace and finished with a square train, which was edged with clusters of orange blossoms. The bodice was cut low and square in front, of lace and chiffon, with a deep collar of rose point lace of square and distinctive cut at the back. Her tulle veil was arranged about her head in cap effect, held by a coronet of orange blossoms. Her only ornament was a superb necklace of diamonds, the gift of the bridegroom.She carried a cluster bouquet of white orchids, an ivory prayer-book that was also carried by her mother at her wedding, and a Valenciennes handkerchief.The Countess of Kelvedon, the bride's sister, was matron of honor. She wore a costume of soft white charmeuse, with an overskirt drapery effect of green chiffon, almost as deep in color as jade-green, and the upper part of her gown was a combination of satin and white chiffon, with a V opening at the neck. Her round leghorn hat was encircled with jade-green satin, and topped at the side with bows of green ribbon and pink roses. Her only ornament was a solitaire diamond suspended on an invisible platinum chain, and she carried a bouquet of Mme. Chatenay roses.Her two little children were the flower-bearers, the tiny Honorable Paul Hadham and the exquisite little Lady Maude Hadham.The four bridesmaids, the Misses Winifred Mather, Emma Gay, Lois Twombly, and Frances Iselin, also wore gowns that were a charming combination of white and green. Wide panels of green chiffon fell from the back of the shoulders to the hem of the ankle-length skirts of charmeuse, which disclosed white slippers with large rhinestone buckles. The green chiffon crossed the shoulders in fichu effect, and the elbow-length sleeves were edged with bands of green. Their leghorn hats of brown straw were trimmed with green satin and white chiffon, and faced with black velvet, with upright bows of green at the side. They each carried bouquets of roses, sweet-peas, and field-daisies, tied with pink satin streamers, and their ornaments were locket watches, the gift of the bride.The ceremony was performed by the rector of the church, assisted by....Twenty-five hundred invitations were sent out for the wedding. The church was quite full, and the residence of the bride'sparents, where the wedding reception was held, was crowded to its utmost. Mr. and Mrs. Enslee received congratulations in the Cabot drawing-room. A collation was served in the....Some of the wedding-gifts were shown in rooms on the third floor. They were....After the reception Mr. and Mrs. Enslee will leave almost immediately for a honeymoon cruise on Mr. Enslee's yacht. They will tour Europe later.Among those invited to the wedding were....
MISS PERSIS CABOTWEDS WM. ENSLEE
HEAD OF THE FAMOUS HOUSEMARRIED AT ST. THOMAS'SYESTERDAY AFTERNOON
Reception at Bride's Home
Earl and Countess of Kelvedon among Distinguished Guests.Church a Mass of Bloom.
The marriage of William Enslee, the present head of the great dynasty of Enslee, and Miss Persis Cabot, the famous beauty, daughter of an equally distinguished family, was celebrated at 4:30 yesterday afternoon in St. Thomas's Church, Fifty-third Street and Fifth Avenue. This was the largest and most brilliant wedding of the season.
The chancel of the church was banked with rambler roses and white daisies, against a background of camellia-trees and towering palms, and the way to the altar was marked with bay and orange trees. The altar was a mass of bridal roses under an immense trellis of trailing smilax.
While the guests were arriving a recital was given by an orchestra, which played several selections at the bride's request, including the "Evening Star" from "Tannhäuser," the prelude to "Lohengrin," the gavotte from "Mignon," and Simonetti's "Madrigale."
The ushers who seated the guests included the bride's brother, LeGrand Cabot, Murray Ten Eyck, Robert Gammell Fielding, and Ives Erskine.
The full vested-choir service was used for the ceremony, andBarnby's "O Perfect Love" was played as the processional. The bride walked down the nave with her father, who gave her in marriage, being preceded by the ushers, bridesmaids, matron, maid of honor, and flower-bearers. The bride wore a robe of heavy white satin, the skirt being draped with long motifs of old family lace and finished with a square train, which was edged with clusters of orange blossoms. The bodice was cut low and square in front, of lace and chiffon, with a deep collar of rose point lace of square and distinctive cut at the back. Her tulle veil was arranged about her head in cap effect, held by a coronet of orange blossoms. Her only ornament was a superb necklace of diamonds, the gift of the bridegroom.
She carried a cluster bouquet of white orchids, an ivory prayer-book that was also carried by her mother at her wedding, and a Valenciennes handkerchief.
The Countess of Kelvedon, the bride's sister, was matron of honor. She wore a costume of soft white charmeuse, with an overskirt drapery effect of green chiffon, almost as deep in color as jade-green, and the upper part of her gown was a combination of satin and white chiffon, with a V opening at the neck. Her round leghorn hat was encircled with jade-green satin, and topped at the side with bows of green ribbon and pink roses. Her only ornament was a solitaire diamond suspended on an invisible platinum chain, and she carried a bouquet of Mme. Chatenay roses.
Her two little children were the flower-bearers, the tiny Honorable Paul Hadham and the exquisite little Lady Maude Hadham.
The four bridesmaids, the Misses Winifred Mather, Emma Gay, Lois Twombly, and Frances Iselin, also wore gowns that were a charming combination of white and green. Wide panels of green chiffon fell from the back of the shoulders to the hem of the ankle-length skirts of charmeuse, which disclosed white slippers with large rhinestone buckles. The green chiffon crossed the shoulders in fichu effect, and the elbow-length sleeves were edged with bands of green. Their leghorn hats of brown straw were trimmed with green satin and white chiffon, and faced with black velvet, with upright bows of green at the side. They each carried bouquets of roses, sweet-peas, and field-daisies, tied with pink satin streamers, and their ornaments were locket watches, the gift of the bride.
The ceremony was performed by the rector of the church, assisted by....
Twenty-five hundred invitations were sent out for the wedding. The church was quite full, and the residence of the bride'sparents, where the wedding reception was held, was crowded to its utmost. Mr. and Mrs. Enslee received congratulations in the Cabot drawing-room. A collation was served in the....
Some of the wedding-gifts were shown in rooms on the third floor. They were....
After the reception Mr. and Mrs. Enslee will leave almost immediately for a honeymoon cruise on Mr. Enslee's yacht. They will tour Europe later.
Among those invited to the wedding were....
The paper dropped from Forbes' hand. The irrevocable was accomplished. She was Enslee's, body and soul and name.
FORBES had not been invited to Persis' wedding. She had debated the matter feverishly and resolved that it was the lesser slight to leave him out of the twenty-five hundred who received the double-enveloped engravings. There was a certain distinction in being omitted, and she knew that he could not account it an oversight. She had been tempted to write him a letter. She scrawled off a dozen and tore them up in turn. What she had to say could not be put on paper. Besides, it would be hideously indiscreet.
But Forbes was present in her thoughts. He was the chief wedding guest in her soul. He seemed to kneel between her and the groom and try to shoulder him away. This added a last terror to the multitude of her frights—frights ranging in importance from a fear that she might kneel on her veil and pull it askew to nameless terrors of the bridegroom.
There had been a lilt of gaiety in trying on the bridal robe for the rehearsals and the posings before the camera. But when she made her final entrance into the snowy costume it seemed to be entering into the shroud of maidenhood. The journey to the church was like a ride in her hearse, only that the progress through the streets was difficult because of a crowd so dense that mounted policemen could hardly push and trample lane enough for her to reach the awning.
And under the narrow canopy a rabble jostled her and peered into her face, even plucked at her robes, as if she had been a French princess on her way to the guillotine.The rabble inside the church was hardly less insolently inquisitive for being better dressed.
The preliminaries of the march; the whispered instructions and warnings; the corrected blunders; the stupidity of her father, made a child by the shame that sweeps over a father at delivering his girl-child to a man to possess; the sudden grief of her sister, the Countess; Persis' almost overpowering tempest of desire to flee from the church and run to Forbes for refuge—a whirlpool of emotions and memoranda and impressions.
And then the march beginning, the organ blaring, the ushers setting forth, and her sister and the children and the maids of honor; herself clinging to her father's arm, which trembled so that she rather supported him than he her; the arrival at the altar, where Willie was standing, a sick green from church-fright; the waiting priests, the rites, the hush of the throng to hear the answers; the strange piping tone of Willie's voice; the odd sound of her own.
Now she was filled with a realization of the awe of this great deed, a realization so vivid and so new that it seemed to be her first understanding of it. While she was kneeling in the prayer her thoughts were not soaring aloft, but swirling with thoughts of Forbes and memories of his embraces, a sense of his arms clasping her now so that she could hardly breathe, a wondering if his eyes and thoughts were on her, and where her nightcap was, and a swooning recollection of her cry of "Help me, Harvey!" a frightful impulse to leap to her feet and cry again to him to help her—then sick shudders at the blasphemy of such thoughts amid the sacraments at her husband's side—for Willie was already her husband, she wore his ring. He had kissed her. They were standing up again. They were signing something. They were leaving the church. It was over. It was just beginning. She was no longer her own; nor her father's. Her father could not protect her from this man at her side. Nobody could. Thepolice and the judges and the laws were drawn up to keep her his.
Everybody was congratulating her, everybody was smiling, everybody was grinning to think that the marriage was not yet consummated. Back of all the gorgeousness and the glitter and the music and the sacrament waited the hideous profanation, the grossness, the violation of all that was precious and secret and holy.
She had a blurred sense of returning to the carriage and to the house, and of the mob there, the clatter of tongues, the price-mark appraisal of gifts, the swinish greediness about the buffet, the smirking repetition of the same banalities, the lines of drifting hands, the faces that floated up like melons on a stream and spoke and sometimes kissed her. But what did it matter who kissed her now? They were Willie's cheeks and Willie's lips. She was all Willie's, now and for evermore.
Eventually, when she was white-mouthed with fatigue and eager to swoon out of the pandemonium, some one took pity on her, and she was spirited away to her room and her bridal livery taken from her. The weight of the veil and the train had been greater than she knew. The blossoms were lifted from her head, and in their place a little black straw hat with a frill of black tulle was pinned. And in place of her white satin a simple Callot gown of sage-green cloth was fastened about her girlhood the last time.
She looked to be only a smart young woman, but she was now truly in the robe of sacrifice. They whispered about her and called her "Mrs. Enslee" with immemorial mischief; but it was still Persis Cabot that slipped from the house and met Willie, still a bachelor. They hurried into the limousine and sped to that clandestine meeting in the hotel suite where they were to tarry till the morrow. And then the yacht was to take them on a long cruise across an ocean of bliss to the unknown continent beyond the honeymoon.
And now the crowdless silence seemed to ring in her ears. She had heard so much noise and suffered so many stares and vibrated to so many excitements that the abrupt hush left her dizzy as on the edge of an unexpected abyss. It was like one of Beethoven's symphonies, where sound is piled on sound and speed on speed till the storm sweeps toward an intolerable climax, and just as the thunder and the lightning are to come there is instead a complete hush; and then a little oboe voice twanging.
She had been swept and spun in a maelstrom, an eternal crash! crash! crash! Then suddenly she was alone in a room with this little man. She heard the thud of the door like a coffin lid. She heard the lock click; she saw him peering at her with a fox-like slyness. He was whipping off his coat and waistcoat and fumbling at his scarf. And his words were in his whining, oboe voice:
"Well, that's over. And, thank God, I can get out of this damned collar before it chokes me!"
That was his first comment on their solitude! But it was better than the love speeches he tried to make next.
She sank into a chair; but he was wrapping his arms about her. He was trying to say pretty things, and making a complete fiasco. He was kissing her with ownership, and she dared not turn her lips from his, though all her soul was averted.
He was tugging at her hatpins and pulling her hair naggingly. She rose, controlling her impatience, and spoke with a meekness that amazed her:
"Nichette is there. She will—help me."
He grinned peevishly.
"Nichette, eh? I thought we were to be alone—for once? Well, send her away—as soon as you can."
He spoke already with command, and she said, with that sick meekness:
"All right, Willie."
She slunk away and was afraid to meet the eyes of Nichette. And even Nichette wept at her ministrations.And then she sent Nichette away. At the door Nichette paused to stare through eyes of water, then ran back and clasped Persis and kissed her, and ran out and closed the door.
And Persis waited for her husband. Her thoughts were bitter. She was utterly ashamed. It was not the beautiful shame of a bride whose lover knocks at her door. She was understanding her bargain. She had kept herself for Willie Enslee. She had fought off lovers and love and fled from her own heart that she might be worthy of Willie Enslee and his money! Her body was no longer a shrine. She had rented it to the highest bidder. And the tenant had arrived.
AS Forbes had once surveyed the tide of Fifth Avenue from the upper deck of a motor-bus, so now, from a sky-scraping ship he watched the thronged traffic along the spacious avenue of the Hudson River and the broad plaza of the bay.
Among the tugs, noisy and rowdy as newsboys, the waddling ferry-boats, the barges loaded with refuse or freight-trains, the passenger-boats and excursion-boats, and the merchantmen from many ports, a few yachts picked their way superciliously, their bowsprits like upturned noses, their trim white flanks like skirts drawn aside.
Among these yachts, though Forbes was unaware of it, was theIsolde, known to those who know such things as a ridiculously luxurious craft, a floating residence. Persis had christened the yacht at Willie's request, and he had accepted the name as a good omen, since he said: "I always have a perfect sleep whenIsoldeis under way."
Persis, herself now an Isolde wedded to one man and loving another, passed the famous sky-line which seemed to continue another Palisades, only fantastically carved and honeycombed with windows. When these cliffs of human fashioning were pulled backward, there was a space of dancing water, and then Governor's Island, with its moldy old mouse-trap of a fort.
Never dreaming that Forbes was on the liner that had gone down the bay a few moments before, Persis fastened her binocular on the island and tried to pick him out from among the men whom distance rendered lilliputian.She selected some vague promenader and sent him her blessings. If he ever received them he never knew whence they came.
Forbes was groping toward her in thought like a wireless telegrapher trying to reach another and unable to come to accord. Forbes was entering upon the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and Persis was embarking on another sea equally new to her, for marriage is a kind of ocean to a woman. Maidens struggle toward it and consecrate themselves to it from far inland; they come forth upon the roaring wonder of its cathedral music; the surf flings white flowers at their feet. They venture farther and encounter the first shocks of the breakers, and thereafter the sea lies vast and monotonous with happiness or grief and their interchange. But the prosperity of the voyage is less from without than from within the boat. Persis was not lucky in the captain she had shipped with.
To-day's Persis on the boat was altogether another woman from yesterday's Persis. The toil and fever of preparation, the bacchantic orgies of purchase, the dressing up, the celebration of the festival—these were the joys of the wedding to her, and she had drained them to the full. They left her exhausted and sated. The anticipation was over, the realization begun.
In some wiser communities the bride and groom separate for a day or two after the ceremony. But Persis had no such breathing-space. Persis was delivered to Willie Enslee in a state of fagged-out nerves, muscles, and brain. To him, however, the weeks of preparation had been a mere annoyance, a postponement, a prelude too long, too ornate. And when at last the prize was his he found the fact almost intolerably beautiful. He possessed Persis Enslee! She had no longer even a name of her own. Miss Cabot had been merged into the Enslee Estates.
One does not expect to-day the childlike innocence that was revealed or pretended by the brides of other years. Nowadays even their mothers "tell them things." AndWillie knew that Persis was neither ignorant nor ingenuous. Her gossip, the scandal she knew, the books and plays she discussed, her sophisticated attitude toward people and life had long ago proved that, whatever she might be, she was not without knowledge. She knew as much as Mildred Tait, and her talk was nearly as free, but always from the cynical, the flippant, or the shocked point of view.
Willie did not expect to initiate an ignoramus into any unheard-of mysteries. He expected at most a certain modest reluctance and confusion. He was dumfounded to be met with icy horror and shuddering recoil. After the first repulse the terror with which she cringed away from his caresses enhanced her the more.
He imputed it to a native purity. He believed—and it was true—that she had come through all the years and temptations and the dangerous environments with her body and her soul somehow protected to this great event. It was a kind of purity. But not what he thought it.
Persis' creed—if she had thought much about it—would have been the creed of many a woman: that love sanctifies all that it inspires; and that unchastity is what Rahel Varnhagen defined it—intercourse without love, whether legalized or not.
If Persis had married the man she loved, the man whose touch was like a flame, she would still have been terrified; but love would have hallowed the conquest, changed fright into ecstasy, and glorified surrender.
Willie's touch had always chilled her clammily. What she saw in his eyes now offended her utterly, filled her with loathing and with panic as before a violation. But after this first rebellion she regained control of her fears and reasoned coldly with herself. When she had said "Yes" to Willie's courtship, and when she had made her affirmations in the church, she had given him her I. O. U. She was not one to repudiate a gambling loss. She forbore resistance, but she could not mimic rapture. Yet rapturewas part of the bargain. Soul and flesh could not pay the obligation her mind had so lightly incurred.
And now it was Enslee that recoiled, strangely smitten with an awe, a reverence for her and her integrity. "You are a saint," he murmured, "an angel, and I am a brute. You are too good, too wonderful!"
Persis was startled at being treated with reverence. It was perhaps the first time she had ever been held sacred. She accepted this tribute in lieu of the others, and they left the hotel as they had entered it, still bachelor and maid, though they wore the same name.
But she was alone upon the ocean now, and she feared her husband more than before. She found him somewhat ridiculous in his uniform, with his yachting-cap a trifle top-heavy for his slim skull. Yet he was the owner; his flag and his club pennant were fluttering aloft. And Persis felt sure that he had repented of his mercy and was ashamed of his asceticism.
He ogled her as he paced the unstable deck, and found her more beautiful than ever, clad in a trim white suit and curled up in her chair like a purring kitten, the sun sifting over her through the awning like a golden powder. And he knew that she was his. He paused at her side and mellowed her cheek, pinched the lobe of her ear, and pursed his lips to kiss her red lips. She winced, then frowned, and shook her head.
"Why not?" he demanded.
"The crew is watching," she explained. And he retorted:
"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 God 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 passion 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 assume:
"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 God's sake play something or quit."