LIEUTENANT FORBES had known what it was to bivouac in the black of night in Mindanao, surrounded by wild men native to the trees and as stealthy as the dark, and armed with blow-guns, carved, painted, sometimes studded with gems, but emitting poisonous darts. He had stood then trying to peer them out in the gloom, knowing they were there and unable to descry them.
So he stood now gripping his door-knob lest it turn in his hand and betray him. He realized that he and Persis had lingered in a social ambush. They were in no peril of life, but the unknown spy might let loose upon them an envenomed dart from the silent, the sometimes jeweled blow-gun of gossip.
Forbes' eyes fought in vain against a dark that was like a black bandage. He felt sure that it was not Ten Eyck's door that had thudded so slyly shut. But he could not even guess whether it were the door of Enslee or of one of the women.
He waited and waited, hoping that a light would be made, but there was no glimmer along any sill. Even Persis was evidently undressing in the dark, or in the moonlight that must be pouring into her room.
Forbes visioned her there chilled and tired, her sleepy hands fumbling at the sepals of her clothing till she stripped them off and stood glimmering in the blue a moment before she slipped into that creamy nothing he had seen her wear at the window. And then he visioned her with chattering teeth and shivering hands immersingher lonely beauty in the sheets, snow-white, snow-cold, like a nymph returning to her brook in winter-time. He felt immensely sorry that she should be cold and alone.
He wondered if she prayed at her bedside, and thought of her as a nun in one long, white line of beauty, from her brow bent down, to the palms of her little bare feet upturned on the floor. He hoped that she would not pray too long lest she catch cold. And this seemed a kind of sacrilegious thought, like individual communion cups.
All these things he thought as he waited, gripping the door-knob and listening fiercely for a sign of the eavesdropper. And lest she should have been too cold to pray, he prayed for her, that calumny might not be the reward of her innocent love, the sweet surrender she had made of her discretion and her good repute into his keeping.
Yet he feared for her. He doubted that the secret observer would think her free of guile. He did not fear for himself. The man would be regarded at worst as a successful adventurer, but the woman despised for an easy victim or a willing accomplice.
Forbes reproached himself for bringing this blight on Persis. It was he that had dragged her protesting from the house, persuaded her to steal forth, led her into the distance, and kept her while the respectable hours slipped by.
The only atonement he could make was to proclaim as speedily as possible that their love was honest and that they carried the franchise of betrothal. To-morrow he must make sure of her. He closed his door with the utmost caution, and got out of his clothes and into his bed with all possible silence. He was exhausted with the long day of love's anxieties and triumph, and the new anxiety he had stumbled into. He had yet to tell her how far from rich he was. He had yet to persuade her to leave this golden world of hers for the parsimony he offered.
Perhaps her courage or her love would flinch from the sacrifice. Then he could not protect her from the unknown sneerer. Indeed, if the unknown listener were Enslee, Forbes would not stand as the protector of Persis at all, but as a ruthless tempter of another man's love. If it were Ten Eyck, he would have ground for reviling Forbes as one whom he regretted sponsoring, a wolf admitted into the fold in sheep's clothing. Or if it were one of the women—everybody knows what mercy females have for one another.
In the chaos of his perplexities he fell asleep, and did not waken till the whir of the telephone on his wall called him from his slumber. Winifred's voice gruffly informed him that his breakfast was waiting for him.
When, as little later as he could manage, he joined the group already at the table, he tried to read in the "Good morning" of each some telltale hint. Mrs. Neff'sa.m.languor might mask a reproach. Alice's casual glance might mean aversion. Ten Eyck's reproving frown might be a comment on his tardiness or a rebuke for his bad faith. Winifred's curt manner might be merely her way of play-acting a surly cook, and it might represent disgust.
Willie Enslee smiled—smiled! Was it a crafty sneer, or was it simply his stinted hospitality? If Enslee knew that he was clandestine with Enslee's sweetheart, how could Enslee smile? He must eliminate Enslee, at least, from his suspicion.
Persis alone greeted him with heartiness; her blessed and blessing eyes were like kisses on the brow. But Persis did not know that they had been watched. She had closed her door first. How was he to tell her? how put her on her guard?
Forbes ate his breakfast in the mixed humor of a detective and a suspect. He studied the others, and they seemed to study him or to avoid him. He could not settle upon even a theory.
After the breakfast he sought an opportunity for a secret word with Persis. She was told off to the bed-making squad. She was even to do his room! He caught her at the foot of the stairs. She warned him with a gesture, and he broke the news to her without preparation:
"Last night when we were saying good night some one else was in the hall."
Her lips parted in a gasp of terror, and her eyes whitened. "How do you know?" she whispered.
"I heard her—or him."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. I can't even guess," he mumbled.
"Do you think it could have been—All right, Mr. Forbes, I'll be careful of your razor-blades."
This last aloud for the benefit of Mrs. Neff, who came by and spoke with icy severity—was it ironical?
"Chambermaids are not allowed to flirt with customers in this hotel." She went on up; and Persis followed helplessly, leaving Forbes distraught.
Later he saw her at his windows beating his pillows. The intimate implication thrilled him, and he threw her a kiss while pretending to take his cigar from his lips, and she retreated into the embrasure to answer it with a secret waft from her own mouth.
Forbes had hoped to be invited to ride with Persis, and had put on a pair of civilian riding-breeches and his army puttees. But he was ignored in the program for the day, announced by Enslee, who decreed that he and Persis would ride over to the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, by the quietest roads they could find, while the rest were to motor across. They would all have luncheon together and return in the same way. "If that horse of mine doesn't break both of our fool necks," he added.
"What about Persis and her horse's neck?" Ten Eyck asked, speaking Forbes' own uneasy thought.
"Oh, Persis can ride anything," Willie said. "She's a born centaurette, while a horse and I are like oil and water—only oil always stays on top, and I don't."
But Forbes did not feel so sure of Persis as Willie did.He ventured to say as much when she appeared, but she laughed at him:
"Horses are not among my afraids. I've ridden since I graduated from the back of a Great Dane to a Shetland pony. I've got rubber bones; when I fall off I bounce back."
He could make no further protest, and hung about in the futile discomfort of an old woman. There was no reassurance for him in the behavior of the horses, which two stablemen brought up the hill with a difficulty that led Ten Eyck to comment:
"Are those men leading horses, Willie, or flying kites?"
There was a slight break in Willie's laugh as he said: "My horse had better behave or I'll let him find his way home alone. I wish I had a parachute."
Persis was wearing the bowler hat and the coat and breeches and boots Forbes had seen her in that morning in Central Park. He knew how well she rode in the bridle-path, but he feared for her in the motor-swept roads. He told her so, but she laughed again.
She set her foot in the stirrup, flung her leg across the saddle, and warned the groom away. While Willie got one foot in the stirrup and went hopping hither and yon in pursuit of it with the other, Persis was getting acquainted with her own mount, humoring him in his school-boy hilarity, and sharply repressing any malicious mischief.
The moment Willie was aboard the two horses whirled and charged down the winding road in a mad gallopade. And Forbes' heart galloped in his breast as he wondered if he should ever see her alive again. He had felt this same fear for her that first day on the Avenue, when her motor shot forward so wildly. He was always feeling afraid for her.
THE motor passengers were in no haste to be gone, and they loitered, watching the mad riders on their breakneck descent, now hidden, now revealed again by a swerve of the road, a jut of hillside, or a group of trees.
Forbes was sure at every vanishing that they would never come into view. But they always did, and getting their horses in hand at last, finished the hill with sobriety, trotted across the granite bridge, and turned to wave good-by.
They were as small as dolls on toys where they jogged along the distant high-road. A tiny motor-cycle, whose thumping flight was faintly audible even at such a distance, whizzed round a curve and almost cut the horses' feet from under them. The animals lifted their hoofs well out of danger, but they came to earth again out of the cloud of dust, and Forbes dared to resume the business of breathing.
He saw that Enslee was a well-schooled rider who annoyed his horse a good deal, yet ruled him somehow. But Persis was perfect to the saddle, part of the horse, as fearless and as expert in her smart gear as any cowgirl of the plains.
Forbes watched her till the last curve blotted her from his sight, and yearned after her like a child left behind from a picnic. He looked at his own riding-costume ruefully, and said that he would better change. But the others would not wait for him. Mrs. Neff urged:
"They're very becoming. Keep 'em on. You've got good legs, and you make Willie look like a wishbone."
Enslee had sent his own driver and his own car to take them to the club, and with an unusual thoughtfulness had ordered the robe-rack filled with lilacs. And so they rode behind a screen of purple beauty, and breathed in a spicy air filtered through flowers.
Forbes continued his search for a clue to last night's eavesdropper in the manner of his fellow-passengers. They were all in high spirits, which might be in any one's case either ghoulish glee or innocence. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Neff's enthusiasm was owing to her knowledge that Senator Tait was at the Country Club; but she did not tell Forbes lest her daughter hear. Alice was rapturous in the knowledge that Stowe Webb had arranged before she left New York to be at the club against just such an opportunity as this; but she did not explain to Forbes lest her mother hear. Winifred was buoyant because Ten Eyck had promised her a few sets of tennis, and she saw herself already whole ounces leaner. And Ten Eyck was cheerful because the world usually amused Ten Eyck when the weather was fit. And to-day, as old Gower put it, "The weder was merie and faire ynough."
Merry and fair enough for any wight, and the scenery wonderful. After a few swift miles of country whose old walls, well-groomed meadows, and shapely forests gave a look of England, the land rose higher and higher, till the car swung out at last on a height commanding a river in the utmost contrast with England's stream. As Ten Eyck put it, "The Thames and the Hudson are as much alike as a pearl necklace and an anchor-chain." The water came down between its hills in tremendous calm, and the Palisades opposite were no longer sheer cliffs, but a congress of ponderous masses like reclining gods along a banquet board.
The homes responded, of necessity, to the scene. In place of the ballroom levels and exquisite parks along the reaches of the Thames, with its flat punts and itshouseboats moored in shady niches, these lawns sloped and rolled in massive sweeps, fronting a mighty stream.
Forbes' heart could not rise to the bigness of the scene; it was too much tossed between the hope that the next turn might reveal Persis, spick and span on a glossy horse, and the fear that some of these countless whizzing, hooting motors might frighten the beast into panic and hurl her under the swarming wheels.
Ten Eyck seemed to note the anxiety that kept his eyes shuttling this way and that, for he remarked, as if quite casually:
"Small chance of meeting Persis and Willie here. They said they'd try to keep off the busiest roads, and Willie has probably got himself lost somewhere in the twists and turns of Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is just where Willie belongs, all right; he is the most headless headless horseman that ever threw a pumpkin. I'll bet he turns up late to luncheon and makes a spectacular entrance on the back of his neck."
Ten Eyck was as nearly right as a prophet is required to be.
The car reached its destination without encountering Persis or Willie. More majestic than the usual country club, that of Sleepy Hollow was approached by a stately entrance gate. The road wound between broad lawns, where children played among tropical thickets of veteran rhododendrons tall as trees, and studded with flowers as big and brilliant as Chinese lanterns. The club-house was a pile of creamy brick, tall and spacious as a hotel. The servants were in livery, some of them already in summer white, with dark collars and lapels—"to distinguish them from the members," said Ten Eyck.
Ten Eyck and Winifred offered Forbes a racquet in their tennis game, but he preferred to be alone with his loneliness. He accepted Ten Eyck's suggestion, however, that he might care to go round the links, and Ten Eyck procured him a bag of clubs and a caddy, promising himample time for at least nine holes before Persis could arrive.
Mrs. Neff, meanwhile, had vanished with Alice. She had learned that Senator Tait was on the golf-course, and had dragged Alice forth. Mrs. Neff loathed walking, but to-day she announced a determination to reform. Alice went along with double reluctance. She lost her chance to get word to Stowe Webb, who did not know she was coming, and she feared she might find him on the links in some spot exposed to her mother's far-sweeping vision.
Forbes, left to his own devices, and feeling like a dolt for golfing in horse costume, dawdled about marveling at the luxury of the club and the splendor of the views that met the eye everywhere within or without its walls. At length he reached the golf-grounds squired by a lean little caddy, who might almost have crawled into the bag of sticks and passed for one of them.
With the usual luck of beginners and re-beginners at a game, Forbes did his best work at the start. His first drive from the first tee drew such a white arc across the sky that even the caddy was moved to an exclamation of applause, hitched his sack on his shoulder, and set off in search of the ball with vicarious pride.
The ball waited for Forbes in a position so good as to be almost suspicious. It was an ideal brassy lie; but Forbes, thinking now of his form, just missed it with surprising nicety, and sent gouts of turf flying. According to the rules, he was to replace them; and, according to custom, he affected not to see them. His score mounted rapidly while he mauled the air and the grass around the ball, and when he finally got away he had lost his temper and the respect of the caddie irretrievably.
As he worked his way up a steep ridge green and vast as the back of a tidal wave he saw at the top of the height a bunker thrusting out into the sky like the comb on the top of a Spanish woman's head. He paused for his approach, to let two women clear the way. He recognized Mrs. Neff and Alice, but they did not see him. Mrs. Neff seemed to be in a mood of displeasure. There was vexation in her very heels.
Thinking the pathway clear, Forbes mumbled "Fore," and, picking the ball up neatly in his iron, sent it over the edge of the bunker with a hurdler's economy of gap. And just as it escaped the top a head arose, followed by a pair of shoulders.
Forbes shrieked anex post facto"Fore!" but it was drowned in the snort of pain and rage from the man, whose left shoulder-blade stopped the ball.
As Forbes ran forward with abject apologies a glaring face peered over the bunker and roared out:
"Damn it, man! Where do you think you—Why, it's you! Harvey, my boy!"
"Senator Tait!" Forbes cried, darting for one corner of the bunker as Senator Tait dashed for the other. They paused, turned back, and made for the opposite ends, stopped short foolishly in the middle, and laughingly clasped hands over the ledge.
"I'll come round," said Forbes; and the Senator met him, put his arms about him, and hugged him with a fatherly roughness. After he had told Forbes how much he had grown and how fine he was, and Forbes had exclaimed how young the Senator looked, the Senator hugged him again.
"I can't believe that you are yourself. The first time I saw you was in your father's arms; you were about half an hour old, and your father said you were very handsome. I couldn't see it at the time, but you've improved. I wish he could see you now. I was with him, you know, when his horse fell with him and—"
"Yes, I know," Forbes murmured. "You were his best friend—our best friend."
"It's a shame that we've lost sight of each other. We mustn't any more. Life's too short to waste in not seeing people we love. I must say, though, I'm rather hurt atyour not looking me up before. Mrs. Neff has just told me you've been in town nearly a week."
"I—I've been very busy," Forbes stammered.
"So I hear, you young scoundrel!" Tait growled, jovially. "You're at the heartbreaking, heartaching age, and no time to spend on old duffers like me when young beauties are drooping on every bough. But what's this Mrs. Neff tells me about your being rich? I hadn't heard it. I hadn't expected it, either, for your father was a better fox-hunter than a financier. What did you do—invent some new explosive—or a new gun?"
Forbes smiled bitterly and explained the foolish mistake, too foolish to correct at first, and later embarrassing.
The Senator stared at him a moment searchingly with a tender inquisition, then said:
"Unless you're golf-hungry, let's send the caddies back and have a talk."
"By all means," Forbes agreed; and even as he cast his glance about in search of his caddy he looked farther to see if Persis were not visible somewhere from this Pisgah height. He was fond of the old man, but he loved the young woman.
FORBES' caddy was standing by the ball, and came in with it, cannily claimed his pay and tip for the full course, and hurried back with the Senator's caddy to pick up other fares. They took both the golf-bags with them to put away.
Tait and Forbes strolled aside from the traffic of the golf-course and found a quiet seat in the shade.
"And now tell me," the Senator said; "but first have a cigar?"
He took out a portly wallet stuffed with brown backs, the famous cigars made expressly for him in Havana. Forbes accepted one and sniffed its bouquet.
"It's a shame to waste these in the open air," he said, and sprung a cigar-lighter he carried, holding the flame to Tait, who waived it with a sigh:
"Doctor's orders."
"Then I won't."
"Go on; I carry them for my friends. I love to see others enjoy what I can't. Well, I will smoke just one to celebrate the prodigal's return." And he took a cigar from the case as tenderly as if it were forbidden ambrosia. As Forbes made a light again, he asked:
"What's this about doctor's orders? You're the kind of picture that goes with the testimonials—after taking."
"I'm a hollow sham, my boy; bad heart, bad liver, fat and sluggish, ordered to Carlsbad, but I hate to go. May have to," he puffed. "Did you see my daughter Mildred at the club-house?"
"No, I don't think so. I don't suppose I'd know her. She was a little tike in short skirts when I saw her last."
"She's a big woman now—regular old maid—fanatic on charities—fine mind—great heart. Thinks too much about the poor and the downtrodden to be very cheerful company; but somebody ought to look after 'em, I suppose. She's one of those hotheads that are trying to make the world over. Sounds hopeless, but they do get a lot done. She thinks poverty is no more necessary than slavery was. And she says the same of the oldest profession in the world.
"Good Lord, Harvey, what that child knows! Her mother to her dying day never heard of half the things that young spinster discusses, and has never had a flirtation so far as I know. Her conversation is really what has turned my hair white. Things that used to be kept for the medical books or smoking-room conversation she tosses off glibly, earnestly, and—to me! And spends my money, too, on scientific rescue work among women who—whew! And to think her mother and I didn't dare to tell her things! Now she tells 'em to me! She knows more about the seamy side than I do. But she's wonderful, Harvey. I'm afraid of her, but I do admire and love her. Women like her make these mad tango-trotters look pretty cheap."
Forbes resented the unintended criticism on the wonderful soul the tango mania had enabled him to meet and know so well so soon. He murmured something formulaic about his eagerness to see Mildred, and then he added, with a little hint of raillery:
"You congratulated me on my wealth. Am I to congratulate you the same way for your success with little Miss Neff?"
The Senator stared at him. "My success with little Miss Neff? What do you mean? Who's little Miss Neff? Alice?"
"Yes."
"The girl that was just here with her mother?"
"Yes."
"What success should I have with her?"
Forbes was confused, and tried to back out, but Tait would know, and Forbes at last explained: "Alice says that her mother is trying to marry her off to you."
Tait's eyes popped, and his mouth gaped stupidly, then he swore with sonority, and blurted out: "Do you mean that that old harridan of a Cornelia Neff has gone mad enough to—Why, Alice is younger than Mildred! I thought of her as a little tot. I tweaked her cheek and told her how sweet she was, and never dreamed she'd grown up yet. So that's why Cornelia has been so hospitable to me. I had a kind of sneaking fear that she wanted to add me to her own regiment of husbands. But it's her daughter, eh? Well, I'll be double—Is Alice in on the game, too?"
"Oh no; Alice is crazy to marry Stowe Webb."
"Poor old Jim Webb's boy, eh?" Forbes nodded. "Well, why doesn't she?"
"He has no money."
"Oh, she's one of those."
"He hasn't even a job."
The Senator puffed like an unmufflered cut-out, and he frowned like a pirate, then he began to chuckle in the manner of a pirate ordering the plank put over the side.
"He hasn't a job, eh? Well, I'll get him one. I'll pay that old lady in her own coin. Make a fool out of me, will she? Well, we'll see what an old politician can do to countermine an old lady."
"Speaking of politics," said Forbes, "the papers are full of the possibility of your being an ambassador somewhere. Is there anything in it?"
"Well, my old friend the President has written me a few letters and whispered it in my ear, but I don't want to go. I'm too old. I like my own country and my own slippers. Foreign languages and foreign cooking and all that would play the devil with me. I don't want to go."
Forbes laughed at the spectacle of a big, rich man pouting like a reluctant child against having a sweetmeat forced on him.
"Then why are you going?" he grinned.
"How did you know I was?"
"Because you said you didn't want to. We only say, 'I don't want to' when we're just about to."
Tait looked at him in surprise. Forbes was not the type from whom one expects epigrams and generalizations. That was among his chief attractions. Tait laughed sheepishly.
"Well, I'll tell you, Harvey. There's just one reason—I'm worried about Mildred. She's getting in too deep with her crusades and causes. She's done enough. She mustn't lose her own life as a woman—a wife—a mother. I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that that's a woman's first business, as a man's first business is to build a home and keep it. Afterward all the charity and uplift they can do is legitimate and worthy. But first pay your debts, I say, before you make donations. Now I can't pry Mildred loose from her clubs and committees. No marrying young man will go near her. There's no encouragement to the pink nonsense of love in an atmosphere of tenement-house needs, tuberculosis exhibits, and the harrowing statistics of white slavery.
"I got an idea that if I went abroad as an ambassador she'd have to go along to take care of me and run the social end of the embassy. She'd have to dress up and give dinners, and go places and dance and meet cheerful people, and—well, who knows? Anyway, my last business on this earth is leaving my only child provided for, and I'm worried because—because—well, I'm too fat around the heart, and my neck is too thick, and the doctor tells me to be ready. You understand?
"My father went that way. He had to be very careful of his health, and one day, when he was about to go out in the rain, my mother told him he must wear his rubbers.He bent over to pull on an overshoe, and—he just went on over and sprawled out on the rug—dead."
He stared off into space, and seemed not to be a venerable old man any more, but a lonely orphan with the sad eyes of boyhood in the presence of death.
Forbes knew what it means for a man to think of the death of his first great man, his father; and his hand wrung the Senator's. Tait looked up, smiled sadly, and returned the pressure with his big, soft fingers.
"I wish I had a son to leave her with, Harvey; then I'd feel better, but my only boy—well, he married the wrong woman, and she drove him to the dogs, deceived him and tormented him, and—finally he had to make her divorce him. And he loved her in spite of it—he was ashamed of his love; but he couldn't kill it; she couldn't kill it; drink couldn't kill it. But the two of them killed him. Oh, Lord, Harvey, it's a cruel world, and we're so helpless! I could have done so much for my boy; but I couldn't help him in the one way he needed help. I couldn't make the woman over.
"Don't repeat his mistake, Harvey. Don't let a pretty face and a fascinating body blind you to a bad, selfish heart. Don't let yourself love the wrong woman. You can do a good deal with your heart if you hold a tight rein on it and keep it on the right road. There are fine enough women on the straight road, just as beautiful, just as passionate with the right man. If only—"
He paused, looked at Harvey, who was looking everywhere but at the Senator. He was searching the landscape for Persis, and he was as restless among his own thoughts as the young usually are when the old are commenting on the helplessness of life. The young know so much better. It is the young who have theories of the universe and who expect to carry out their hopes; it is the old scientists who are bewildered and who merely observe and accept.
But Tait did not notice Forbes' inattention. Rummaging among the confusions of his own griefs, he had come upon a bright hope. What if Forbes should be the man to win Mildred away from her avocations back to the main business of love? He was such a youth as even Mildred could hardly ignore or despise. He had little money, but Tait had more than enough for the two, and he had made many a poor man rich.
He smiled. He felt like apologizing to Mrs. Neff for stealing a hint from her. Why should not old men engage in the pleasant chess-game of match-making, too? What better task could he undertake than making this beloved son of his old comrade the husband of his own beloved daughter?
The idea was so exhilarating that it almost leaped from his heart. But he was politician enough to realize that such a plan would be frustrated in advance by premature publication. This was a benevolent conspiracy that must be kept dark.
He studied Forbes with admiring affection. His heart went out to him as to a son, or, better yet, a son-in-law. He put a hand on Forbes' shoulder to claim him just as Forbes started with a sudden elation, just as a light broke forth in his eyes.
Tait followed the line of Forbes' gaze and made out a man and a woman on horseback turning in at the gate marked "Exit Only." That was like Willie Enslee. If any gate could excite his interest as an entrance it would be one marked "Exit Only." Tait could not see who it was; he hastily got out his distance-glasses and put them on. But a glowing wall of rhododendrons and cedars concealed the riders by the time his great tortoise-shell spectacles hobgoblined his eyes.
Forbes spoke. "Sha'n't we stroll back to the club-house? I'm expected there for luncheon."
"By all means," said Tait. "And I want you to meet Mildred again."
"I'd love to," said Forbes, absently. He said nothingmore, but strode on so rapidly down the steep slope that Tait had to take his arm for support and to hold him back.
"You're visiting at the Enslees', Mrs. Neff tells me," the old man panted.
"Yes."
"Excuse my fatherly familiarity, but how can you afford to gad with those wild asses?"
"I can't."
"What's her name?" Tait laughed.
"I may be able to tell you later, and I may not."
"Well, my boy, I don't know who she is, but I bet she isn't worth it—not if she trails with the Enslee pack."
"Oh, but she is beautiful—she is wonderful."
"You must be hit damned hard."
"Am."
And then, not heeding the connotation, he exclaimed, as Persis emerged from the eclipsing shrubbery:
"There's only one woman can ride like that."
Tait stared again, and now he made her out. Instantly, with the exultance one feels over a secret some one else lets slip, he cried: "Oho, my boy, that's the woman who keeps you here! Mrs. Neff hinted at it, but I wouldn't believe it till I had it from you." His gloating sank again to fatherly solicitude as he pleaded earnestly: "For God's sake, boy, don't love her! Of all women don't love Persis Cabot! She's the most heartless of them all."
Forbes was tempted to ask him how he could accept a reputation as a proof of character, but he was still calm enough to pay Tait's white hair the homage of silence. Tait, feeling the import of his silence, grew uneasy, and demanded:
"Harvey, it's not possible that you love her—actually love her?"
"Is it possible not to?"
"But you've not known her long."
"No, but I've known her well. Do you know her?"
"Yes, and I knew her mother. Once I thought I loved her mother. But I had less money—when I proposed to her than I have now—Heaven be praised!"
"Heaven be praised?"
"Yes, for she might have married me. Harvey, a certain part of the society here is like a big aquarium. The people are all fish—the men goldfish, the women catfish. Their blood is cold—Lord, how cold! Just look at their eyes! Hard eyes, hard hearts. They despise sincerity; they laugh at honest emotion."
"But Persis has soft eyes," Forbes broke in, "and a warm heart."
"Has she?" Tait sighed, feeling that the siren had already sung Forbes' wits away. "Well, maybe, in the moonlight. But she'll soon freeze. Now, if she had been born poor—"
"But, Senator, the rich can't all be bad," Forbes complained.
"The rich are no worse than anybody else as a class," said Tait. "My father and mother were rich, and they were as good and sweet and simple as any poor people that ever lived. They were like Romeo and Juliet. The Montagues and Capulets were both rich. But if young Mr. Montague had been poor we might have had a different story. Or, if you had only gone into finance."
"It's too late for me to dream of money. I'm a soldier."
"And it's too late for you to dream of Persis Cabot, not merely because she's wealthy. One class is as good as another; it's the set that counts. And she gallops with the rich runaways. Their life is one long stampede. There are rich women who toil like slaves for the poor, who lead lives of earnestness and purity, who respond to every appeal, and make organized charity possible. But there are others, rich and poor, that never think of anybody but themselves, never have real pity except forthemselves, never toil or fret except for their own amusement. And those people gravitate together into colonies and cliques. Don't run with that pack, Harvey."
He was not the first man of eld that had warned youth against beauty. Nor was he the last that shall fail to be heeded. He tried another tack.
"I understand that Willie Enslee expects to marry her."
"She doesn't expect to marry him."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, I have my reasons for believing that she doesn't love him."
"Nobody ever accused her of that, but—well, does she think what Mrs. Neff thinks—that you have money?"
Forbes did not answer except with a blush. The Senator spared him any pressure on that point. He said, simply:
"Enslee has a lot of money—more than her father has. In fact, her father is in a very bad plight."
"How do you know?"
"I am about six bank directors, Harvey, and a few other things. Her father is about to be forced into involuntary bankruptcy; her father's pet railroad may go into receiver's hands to-day or to-morrow."
"Poor Persis!" Forbes groaned. "Poor Persis!"
There was such anguish in his tone that the Senator gripped his arm hard and murmured:
"Do you care so much for her?"
Forbes stopped short and stared into the old man's eyes. "A man like me loves once, and loves hard. If I lost her, my life wouldn't be worth the snap of my finger." And he added in a raucous voice, "Or the click of a trigger."
The Senator leaned heavily on him and closed his eyes in a wince of pain. He had heard his own dead son speak just that way.
When he opened his eyes he saw that Forbes was smiling glowingly.
"Look at her, Senator! She's so beautiful! I can't let Enslee have her! Look at him! He's as afraid of his horse as his horse is ashamed of him. What's he up to now? Rein him in, you fool! He'd drive a hobbyhorse into hysterics. And now he's sent Persis' horse in the air! What's the matter with him? Why doesn't he—"
But the fault was not Enslee's, nor was he so bad a rider as an expert like Forbes might think. As the event proved, even Persis could not control her mount in the face of what was happening unseen by Forbes. A chauffeur, relying on the fact that he was on the exit road, was driving a big red six at high speed along the curves. He had not seen Enslee and Persis till he was almost into them. He swung aside so sharply that he almost capsized, and ran into something sharp enough to rip open a shoe.
This was just one too many automobiles for the horses Persis and Enslee rode. They had been curbed and scolded and kept in hand all morning; but to have a dragon leap at them from the cedar-trees was too much. They went frantic, dancing erect, and threshing the air with their fore hoofs. And then the tire exploded like a cannon, and they went mad. They feared nothing but what was behind them; nothing could hurt them but their terror.
They crashed through cedars and rhododendrons, and plunged across the lawn to the clear space of the golf-links. Forbes saw the demon look in the white eyes of Persis' horse. He had seen mustangs in that humor shake off their tormentors and tear them wolfishly with their fangs.
"He's got the bit in his teeth!" he groaned. "He'll kill her! My God, he'll kill her! She can't hold him! I've got to get him somehow."
He had a fierce impulse to meet the horse, leap at him, catch him by the bridle and the nose and smother himto a standstill. But Tait had seen a policeman killed trying to stop a horse so, and he flung his arms about Forbes.
"No, you won't!" he gasped. "You can't stop him! I won't let you risk your life—not for that woman."
"Let me go! Let me go!" Forbes pleaded, unwilling to use his strength against the old man. But Tait clung to him, seized him anew as Forbes wrenched his hand loose; fell to his knees, but still held fast and was dragged along, moaning:
"My boy, I love you like a son. You sha'n't risk your life—not for her!"
Then suddenly his clutch relaxed; his fingers opened; he rolled forward on his face, his white hair fluttering in the grass.
And Forbes, hardly knowing that he was released, felt himself free, and ran with all his might to intercept the plunging monster, who came snorting his rage, flinging his huge barrel this way and that, and shaking the white saliva from his mouth.
PERSIS met equine wrath with female rage. The fiercer the horse plunged the harder she beat him with the crop, the more bloodthirstily she stabbed his sides with her keen-spurred heels. Her hair flung looser and looser, and at length set free her hat, and then shook out its own tortoise-shell moorings and flew to the winds. She sawed at the horse's head, stabbed him with the spurs, railed at him with shrill voice, and fought him as a Valkyr might have fought her charger panic-stricken at the noise of battle.
Even the old man, who lay on the ground clutching at his heart, could not but feel a thrill at the wild beauty of the girl; her long hair flowed and writhed smokily, her face was the more commandingly beautiful for the very merciless hate that fired it; her girlish body in her boyish costume was strangely alive. Her thighs gripped the horse's sides visibly like arches of steel. All this beauty Forbes saw also, and more, for he saw with the eyes of idolatry; and yet more again, for his beloved was in mortal danger. He ran in a frenzy of fear and determination. As he and the horses met on their converging paths Persis shrieked to him: "Keep away! Keep away!"
None the less he leaped for the bridle with both hands flung out. But she would not let him endanger himself. She threw all the power of both her arms and her weight on the farther bridle, dragging the horse's head aside till he swerved out of Forbes' reach.
Forbes sprawled on the turf; but at least he had notbeen struck by the hoofs or knees of the horse. And then the horse came down in turn, thrown out of his stride and with his head brought round so sharply that he came down on his shoulder and almost broke his neck.
Persis went through the air like a pinwheel, and those who witnessed the affair gave up her and the horse for dead. But she clung to the bridle, and got up on all fours. For once Persis was awkward. She and Forbes met and stared like quadrupeds, and the horse rolled over on his belly and stared too.
What had almost been a tragedy was turned to a farce by coincidence. If all the corpses in the last act of Hamlet should rise and stare at one another—as they do when the curtain is down—audiences might roar as the golfers and the club servants and members roared at this spectacle.
Willie, meanwhile, had vanished over the hill like the headless horseman Ten Eyck had likened him to.
After the first automatic recovery Persis was overtaken by a wave of terror she had had no time to feel. She turned ashen about the mouth, and a queasy feeling sickened her. Her elbows gave way, and she sank to the ground.
Senator Tait came up with difficulty, forgetting that he had been, perhaps, nearer death on that green battle-field than any other of the fallen. He heard Forbes wailing, as he gathered Persis into his arms and strengthened his own weak knees:
"Persis, my darling, my angel, speak to me! Are you dead?"
Persis opened her eyes with a flash. She began to realize that she had been very conspicuous. "Of course I'm not dead. But what's worse, my hair's down. I must be a sight! And my breeches are torn. Oh, Lord, why wasn't I killed romantically? Turn your backs at once."
The two men stared all the more, but she released herself from Forbes' arms, rose to her feet with some twinges of evident pain, and put up her hair with what few hairpins remained of her store, and borrowed a pin from the Senator's lapel to mend a rip that let one exquisite knee escape to view. A caddy came running up with her hat, and she thanked him.
"Come along," she said; "I feel as if I were on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House."
The horse got clumsily to his feet, all the battle knocked out of him, and followed weakly till she handed him over to a groom.
Eager to escape the stares that met her and the sympathy and felicitations that greeted her, she walked so rapidly that the Senator dropped back. She found herself alone with Forbes, and she murmured:
"You were wonderful to try to save me as you did."
"As I didn't," he groaned. "You wouldn't let me."
"No, I don't want you ever to risk anything for me, Harvey. But I'm just as grateful—and more than that. If there weren't so many people looking on do you know what I'd say?"
"What?"
"Kiss me." The words came so unexpectedly that he forgot their subjunctive mode. He took them to be in the imperative, and came near obeying. He checked himself in time, and said:
"How soon shall I be able to call you mine before all the world?"
"Do you wish that?"
"Madly! It is my one great wish."
She breathed deeply and caressed him with a delicious smile, and murmured:
"It is mine, too."
And then Ten Eyck and Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice, and others of her acquaintance, crowded round, summoned by the flying rumor of the incident. At length some one exclaimed:
"But where's Willie?"
"Good Lord," Persis gasped, "I forgot all about him."
Some one else who had been on the links described Willie's disappearance over the brow of the hill. He had been still attached to the horse when last heard from. But his prospects were reported to be poor.
By the time Persis had reached the club-house and had undergone the ministrations of a maid, who was also a seamstress, Willie came limping up on the terrace, where Persis was seated with the others.
"Oh, there you are, my dear," Willie drawled. "And not a bit hurt, not a hair turned, so far as I can make out, eh? And here I've been worrying myself sick over you—simply sick."
"Well, I'll go out and break a few bones if it would make you feel any easier," Persis answered. "But what happened to you? Where's your horse?"
"Well, I'll tell you. It was like this. You see, that beast I was on went galumphing up the hill playing the deuce with putting-greens, until he came to that big bunker at the top, you know—you know the one I mean—at the top there—the big bunker?"
"Yes, I know."
"Well, he refused it."
"What did you do?"
"I took it alone."
"Where's your horse?"
"I don't know. I hope to God he breaks a leg or rips himself open on barbed wire or something."
There was a vindictive ferocity in his voice that surprised Forbes.
The luncheon, which Ten Eyck had commanded, was announced just then, and they all adjourned to the dining-room. Forbes resented Enslee's habit of "my-dear"-ing Persis, but took solace from the thought that he should soon confound his rival with the news of his own triumph.
Suddenly, in his joy at being near to Persis, he remembered that he had neglected Senator Tait, after promising to meet his daughter. He did not venture to leave his own table; but as soon as the luncheon was eaten, and while Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Persis sneaked off somewhere for their after-coffee cigarettes, he sought out Tait and found him with a tall and self-reliant girl whom he introduced as Mildred.
Forbes made the usual remarks one makes to a little girl one meets again as a grown woman. She had indeed changed from the shy and leggy little minx to this robust, ample-bosomed bachelor girl with the sorrows of the world on her shoulders and pity and courage warring in her resolute eyes.
Recalling what the Senator had said of her appalling lore, Forbes was at some loss for words. He said, at last, the obvious thing, waving his hand toward the great park and the panorama of river and headland spread out beyond:
"Wonderful, isn't it?"
But Mildred, instead of an equally commonplace answer, sighed: "I suppose it is, but I—somehow I can't take much pleasure in beautiful things like these. I keep thinking how the poor kiddies and their worn-out mothers in the tenements would love to see it—and never will. And when I think how much money it costs to build and keep up this place I can't help saying to myself: 'How many loaves of bread this would buy for hungry waifs! how many pairs of shoes! how many lives it could save!' I see this big lawn all overrun with little newsboys and factory-girls and sick men and women."
Senator Tait shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Forbes.
"Isn't she hopeless?"
"She's very splendid," Forbes said, with admiration and also a little awe. The father felt this in Forbes' manner, and it strengthened his resolution to rescue his daughter from her rescue work.
Mildred had not yet learned the exact point where nobility becomes offensive because it is too consistent and too insistent. She had not yet learned that charity, like art, must conceal itself, and that grandeur of soul unchecked by tact provokes only resentment.
But she was young and radiant with unfocused love, and she had seen too much wretchedness. The people whose miseries she relieved did not resent her, but adored her. She was tactful enough with them.
Forbes was ashamed of himself for feeling a little chilled by Mildred's irrepressible enthusiasm for sorrow. He blamed himself, not her. But when Persis returned he thanked heaven for beauty untroubled by any deeper concerns than its own loveliness, and for a heart that inspired desire for itself rather than pity for the submerged myriads.
He bade the Senator and his daughter as cordial a good-by as he could, and promised to meet the Senator as soon as possible in town. Then he forgot them both, for when Enslee's automobile swept up to the club-house door, Enslee's two horses were also brought up, and he imagined Persis riding away again on that dangerous beast with that dangerous escort.
Enslee stared at the horses in disgust. "There are those brutes of mine, and not a bit hurt, either—worse luck. I'll have 'em both sold to somebody who'll work 'em hard and beat 'em harder."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," said Persis. "If you don't want them I'll take them."
"And get your neck broken, eh?" Enslee snarled. "Oh no, you won't. Look at that beast! I'll have his throat cut for him."
There was something in his voice like the edge of a knife, and it made Forbes' blood run cold. Enslee had unsuspected streaks of viciousness. But Persis was used to this quality of his nature, and it did not alarm her. When he said, "Hop into the car, Persis; I'll send a groom over for the nags," Persis shook her head, and answered:
"I propose to show my horse who is master. He can't spill me all over the landscape and get away with it. You ride home in the car, and I'll go back as I came."
"And a pretty fool you'll make of me," Enslee wrangled. "Besides, I haven't ridden much lately; I'm saddle-sore."
"I've been riding every morning in the Park," Persis insisted. "I'll lead your horse back, unless—" She hesitated and looked at Forbes, who leaped at the cue.
"I'd be glad to ride him, if you don't object, Mr. Enslee."
Enslee stared at Forbes, saw nothing ulterior in his eyes, and yielded with a bad grace.
"Oh, all right. Go ahead. Only don't sue me for damages if you get pitched under an auto."
"I won't," Forbes laughed, elated beyond belief by the unimaginable luck of riding at Persis' stirrup for miles and miles.
And so they mounted. Persis' horse was humbled beyond struggle; but Enslee's big black had lately tossed his rider over his head. He tested the seat of his new visitor. Forbes was a West-Pointer, a cavalryman, and the horse had not made more than one pirouette before he understood that he was bestridden by one whom it was best to obey.
Willie tried at first to keep the motor back with the horses, but Persis ordered him to go about his business, and turned off the hard track to a soft road.
And now at last they were free, Forbes and Persis, cantering along a plushy road, a lovers' lane that mounted up and up till they paused at the height to give the horses breath.
Back of them the Hudson spread its august flood between mountainous walls. Before them the road dipped into the deep forest seas of Sleepy Hollow.
"IS it possible that we're actually alone?" Forbes gloated, turning in his saddle to take her in in her brisk, youthful beauty.
"I shouldn't exactly call it alone up here on the mantelpiece of the world in broad daylight," Persis smiled. "But it's nice, isn't it?"
"Wonderful, to be riding with you!"
"I'm immensely happy," she said. "Even the horses know the difference. This morning they hated each other. They wouldn't trot in rhythm or alongside, and they fought like snapping-turtles. Now look at them nuzzle and flirt. Ouch! that's my game knee you're colliding with. It would be better if I rode side-saddle. There were advantages in old-fashioned ways. You ride splendidly, don't you?"
"Do I?" he said. "As you told me the first time I met you, I'm glad you like me."
"I more than that, now."
"More than like me?"
"Umm-humm!"
"Love me?"
"Umm-humm!"
"If I could only brush away all of these houses and people and take you in my arms! If this were only a Sahara or Mojave!"
"I doubt if there's a desert where nobody is peeking. They used to tell me that God was looking when no one else was."
"Well, He would understand."
"Maybe He would see too much. But the human beings don't understand. And they're everywhere. Oh, Lord, I'm so sick of other people's eyes and ears. All my life I've had them on me—servants', nurses', maids', waiters', grooms', footmen's! Sometimes I think I'd love to live on a desert island. Couldn't you buy me a desert island somewhere—a thoroughly equipped desert island with hot and cold water and automatic cooking?"
"I'll see if there's one in the market."
"It would be a fine addition to the same old town and country house and yacht. Had you thought where you will have your—our country place?"
"Er—no, I hadn't."
"Shall you have to be at your post much? Are the office-hours very strict?"
"Pretty strict. We'd have to live on Governor's Island, you know."
"Really? In one of those little houses?" He nodded. "I saw them there once when they gave a lawn fête. I never dreamed I'd live in one of them. They aren't very commodious, are they?"
"That depends."
"Nichette—she's my maid—would make an awful row, and my chauffeur—I suppose we could keep him? He expects to marry Nichette."
"Does he?"
"If they can stop fighting long enough to get married. Does a garage go with the house we should occupy there?"
"I doubt it."
"No garage!" she exclaimed. "How should we manage? It's rather awkward getting to the Island, too, as I remember—a ferry or something. I don't suppose you could arrange to live up-town and do your army work by telephone on rainy days?"
"I'm afraid not."
His heart was thumping. She grew more exquisite as she grew more fairy-like in her visions. He could not tellher the truth—not yet—not, at least, till they had passed through the woods ahead, where there was a promise of opportunity for at least a moment's embrace, at least one hasty kiss.
They jogged on in silence awhile, she pondering like a solemn child, he longing to give her the toys she kept imagining. They drew into the thicket, shady and soft with a breeze that wandered about murmuring "Woo! woo!" and leaves that whispered "Kiss! kiss!" and a deep forest voice that mumbled "Love!"
No one was visible ahead. He turned and stared back. They were shut in by a projecting hill that seemed to close after them like a door. He leaned sidewise with arm outstretched to enfold her waist. But with a quick lift of her hand and a scratch of the spur she carried her horse aside and ahead.
"You mustn't!" she warned. "Really!"
"But no one can see us."
"So we thought in the dark hall. And there was some one there. Do you know who it was?"
"I haven't been able to find out."
"I have!" She spoke triumphantly.
"Who was it, in Heaven's name?"
"Who would be your last guess?"
"Enslee."
"Why?"
"Because he smiled; because he let me ride with you."
"That shows how much a man's reasoning power is worth. That was just who it was."
"Why do you think so?"
"I know so. He told me."
Forbes was dazed; he marveled aloud: "And yet he smiled? He let me ride with you?"
She laughed. "Willie is such an idiot! He knew it was you; but he never dreamed that the woman was me. He thought the woman was Mrs. Neff or Winifred. That's why he smiled at you."
Forbes chuckled a moment, then flushed, as Persis went on:
"He could only hear our whispers, you know, and you can't distinguish whispers. He thought it was a great joke. He laughed his head off. And I laughed too. It was delicious. It came near being serious, though. What do you suppose? He heard the door open below and thought it was a burglar. He had a revolver and a flashlight. The flash wouldn't work—thank the Lord! So he was going to shoot first and then call, 'Who's there!' That would have been nice, wouldn't it? Then he heard our—our kisses. He didn't shoot. He kept quiet, smothering his snickers. He could only judge by the closing of the door who was who. He recognized your door, and he got mine mixed. But you're not laughing."
"It doesn't seem very funny to me," Forbes admitted. "My love for you is no joke. I don't enjoy sneaking about in dark halls and having you mistaken for some other woman."
She stared at him, and her mischief turned to a deep tenderness. She rode closer and put her free hand on his bridle-hand. "How right you are! That's the way I want you to feel, the way I want you to love me." And then she laughed again. "What do you suppose Willie told me? To-night he's going to wait till you sneak out with your lady bird, and then he's going to lock the door and make you beg for admission. That'll be nice, eh?"
"That means I can't be with you to-night."
"It seems so."
"And you won't let me kiss you now?"
"But we couldn't go spooning about in the daylight, could we? Not even if we were an old married couple, could we?"
"I suppose not. But when—when are we going to be an old married couple?"
"Whenever you say," she said, with a shy down-look. "We'd have to announce our engagement, I suppose, andthen it would take a long time to get my clothes made."
"Would it?"
"Yes. I haven't a thing. I'm in perfect rags. And besides, a bride ought to begin new. Isn't it thrilling to be talking of such things! Am I blushing as red as I feel?"
"You're like a rose on fire."
"I feel deliciously a ninny. Can you get away from your hateful army for a good long honeymoon, do you suppose?"
"I don't know. Where would you like to go?"
"The Riviera isn't bad. A trip around the world would be pleasant."
"Wouldn't it!" he groaned. "But I'm afraid I couldn't."
"I suppose the country would be afraid to let you get so far away, with all this talk about trouble with the Mexicans. Oh, well, it doesn't matter so long as we are together, does it?"
"Do you feel that way?" he asked, hungrily.
"Terribly. I love you—I love you hideously much. Watch out! Will you never learn that somebody's always looking?—a whole picnic this time."
They were nearing Pocantico Lake. In a thicket on its shores a wagon-load of villagers had finished its basket-lunch and scattered in a rather dreary effort at inexpensive happiness.
Among the trees the wagon waited pitifully to take them back from their dingy cheer to their dull homes. It was rendered only the more pitiful by a strip of red-white-and-blue bunting. A coat of paint would have become it better.
While the horses cropped the grass soberly a pack of substantial wives cleared away such part of the débris of the banquet as was not scattered about the ground.
As Forbes and Persis rounded the turn that disclosedthe revelers a homely couple evidently in search of a less populous nook severed a highly unromantic-looking clasp. It was hard to see how either took much pleasure from the other. The man was in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat askew; the girl, shapeless and freckled, in a shapeless freckled dress. They squinted their eyes against the sun, gaped at the tailor-made couple on the varnished horses, and stumbled in the roadside gully to let them pass.
"Isn't it ghastly?" Persis whispered. "They were trying to spoon—just as we were. And we both broke up both of us. It makes love rather a silly, shabby spectacle, doesn't it?"
"I don't think so," Forbes said. "I should say that instead of their making love shabby, love covered them with a little glory."
"That's a much prettier way to put it. But shabby people—oh Lord! Look at that family, dear! If that's wedded bliss, give me chloroform."
It was a doleful exhibit on the edge of the woods: a fat, paunchy, sweaty man was taking his picnic in carrying a squally, messy baby. Alongside him a bunchy woman with stringy hair waddled in answering stupidity, hanging to her husband's suspenders.
"You can't tell which of them's going to have the next one," Persis commented, before she caught herself. "Forgive me, I didn't realize how it would sound."
Forbes laughed sheepishly. "It was what I was thinking, too."
As they rode on she shuddered. "What an odious thing to be like that! Suppose you lost your job in the army and we got very poor, and I had to take in washing, and we had a lot of children; should we be like that, do you think?—should we?"
"You could never be anything that was not beautiful!" Forbes exclaimed, partly because he believed it to be unquestionable truth and partly to quell her ferocious repugnance for anything that was ugly and tawdry.
"Perhaps that awful man told that awful woman the same thing," she groaned, "and believed it! Come on; let's run away from it." She lifted her horse to a gallop and fled so fast that Forbes, for all the authority and help he gave his horse, could not overtake her, since hers was the better mount. As he followed, lumbering and scolding his black beast, he felt that she was indeed too fleet, too elusive for him ever to capture and keep.
But at length she relented, and reined in till he came abeam. Then she urged her horse on again, and they galloped in the mad swoop of a cavalry charge with boots griding together. She forgot her wounded knee, and he forgot his doubts of her.
There were narrow escapes, unexpected swerves round loitering wagons or deliberate wayfarers. Once she rode up a shelving bank to give him room to avoid a mangy canine landlord so earnestly attempting to evict a family of tenants from his left ear that he paid no heed to the risk of his own life or hers.
"If we ride fast on levels, we can take more time later," she said; "then they won't wonder at our being so late."
She was always thinking of what other people would think. He wished that she would forget the eternal audience, the unbroken spectators, now and then. And yet it was intelligent. It was wise. Only he loved her more when she was uttering those childish plans of hers for a life in which the funds were to be taken from a fairy purse automatically replenished as fast as it was depleted.
Yet he feared both of the women she was: the cautious and forethoughtful who might in all wisdom refuse his penury, and the spoiled demander who might resent it.
They trotted now into a park-like domain with roads branching out on either side. At the edge of each of them stood a sign-board warning against trespass and signed with the resounding name of the richest man on earth.
"They say he's worth a hundred or two hundred million dollars," Persis called across to Forbes.
"That ought to be enough," said Forbes. "It's more than we shall have." And he smiled at the comparison. Persis sighed:
"If he could lend us just one million for a few years we could make good use of it."
"I might ask him," said Forbes. "I'll send a boy over for it to-night."
He said it lightly, yet there was a sardonic bitterness in his smile. He understood for the moment why the established poor become so eager to take away from men who were once poor the wealth they have somehow amassed.
It seemed to Forbes that he would never reach the limit of this man's acres. But at last he escaped from the oppression of some one else's success. They cantered through a little village, and crossed rusty railroad-tracks into another ocean of sparsely settled country. It amazed Forbes to find so much wilderness so close to so vast a metropolis. There were long stretches where the woods on either side had a look of the primeval. He felt a longing to explore some of these leafy jungles. He told her his whim, and it was hers.
By and by they came to a grass-matted road that lost itself in ferns and undergrowth. Forbes looked at Persis. Her eyes consented. He laid his bridle-hand on the left side of his horse's mane and shifted his weight a trifle. And his horse shouldered hers into the jungle. Heads bent low, the horses mounted with cautious hoofs till the ferns were brushing their saddle-girths. The prattle of a brook somewhere lured them farther, and they pressed on into a fog of leaves and crackling boughs and flowers. Birds cried warnings and shot through the branches, bearing news of the invasion. Others in sentimental oblivion did not budge, but sat still and went on sawing the air with silver phrases shrilly sweet.
Suddenly the brook was visible, rushing here and there through the woods and making noises that were rapture just to hear. And with that music of water and woods, and that multitudinous beauty about them, they gazed only into each other's eyes, inclined together, and locked arms and breasts and lips in close embrace. They clung together till the soulless horses, nibbling here and there, sundered them.