And then they slid from the saddles and, slipping the bridles to their elbows, walked on with arms about each other's bodies and eyes so mutually engaged that they stumbled like blind folk. At last she sank to the ground at the edge of the brook, and he, instead of helping her up, dropped down at her side.
He took her into his arms again and kissed her and laughed at her.
"I reckon you'll warn me now that the horses are looking."
"No," she said; "but one of them is standing on one of my coat-tails."
So he rose and led the horses to a tree a few paces off and tied them there. When he came back he found her swinging her little boots over a still pool in an alcove of the brook. Its quiet surface mirrored her feet from beneath quaintly. "We're at the antipodes already," he laughed. She put out her hand beggingly.
"It's secluded enough for a smoke. Can you give me a cigarette? I forgot mine." He had nothing but a cigar, and she ventured a puff or two of that, then gave it back and sighed, "I wish we were married and all."
"Why?"
"I'd take off my boots and dip my poor aching feet in that water."
"Why don't you?"
"In the first place, I don't know you well enough to go barefoot before you. In the second, somebody would be sure to come along."
"THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS ME"
"THERE'S THAT OTHER ME DOWN IN THE POOL, WATCHING THIS ME"
"Not here," he urged.
"Well, then, there's that other Me down in the pool watching this Me, and saying, 'Don't make a fool of yourself, honey.'"
"There are two Persises, then?"
"At least a hundred. But there's one down there. Look, you can see her yourself!"
She knelt above the water-glass, and he bent over to gaze. He saw her looking up at him, and his own image looking up close to hers. They smiled and made faces like children. And when he rubbed his cheek against hers the images imitated the foolishness.
"See, they're mocking us," she said. A little breeze wrinkled the mirror, and she cried: "They're frowning! They want us to be sensible! Come along! They'll be missing us at home."
"At home?" he echoed, reprovingly.
"At Willie's, I mean," she corrected. And then she put his hands away and spoke earnestly. "It came mighty near being home to me. I have a confession to make. I ought to have made it before. I have been amazed at myself for not telling you, for taking your love when I had no right to."
He stared at her in terror, and she smiled with pride at his fear and babbled on almost incoherently.
"Don't be afraid—though I'm glad you are. But I hope you won't despise me. But I couldn't seem to help myself. You're really to blame for being so terribly overwhelming. You see, I—I—I've told you how often Willie Enslee proposed to me, and—well, one day—that very day you saw me in my old hat—the first time, you know—well, I had just had a talk with my father, and the poor old boy was all cut up about his—his money matters. He's too nice and sweet to be much of a financier, you know, and—well, I was scared to death, and I thought the world was coming to an end, and I'd better—better get aboard the ark, you know—and I hadn't metyou then, you know, and Willie proposed again, and I—I accepted him."
"You promised to be his wife!" Forbes whispered, chokingly.
"Yes," she answered. "I—you see, I didn't know you. I didn't dream I should ever meet anybody who would—would thrill me—that's the only word—as you did, as you do. I didn't imagine that I should ever love as other people do—insanely, madly, dishonorably—anythingly to be with the one I loved. And I didn't dare give up Willie till I was sure I loved you, and when I was sure I loved you, I—it seemed so hateful even to mention his name. It would have been like—like this."
With her heel she pushed a rock into the water, and it thumped and splashed and curdled the little pool.
"That's the effect his name would have had on our moonlight, and I couldn't tell you then. Will you forgive me, or do you think I'm a hopeless rotter and a sneak?"
He smiled at her mixed vocabulary, and gathered her into his arms. "My love! My Persis! But you'll tell him now, won't you?"
"Oh, now, yes!" she cried, ecstatic as a comforted child. "You are glorious to forgive me so easily, and not be nasty and lecture-y. And see the pool; it's all smooth and clear again."
He looked, and held back the confession he was about to make in his turn. The mention of his poverty would be pushing another rock into the pool. And he wondered if the mirror would clear after that. He could forgive her her betrothal to Enslee because that was of the past; but the lack of money was not a matter for forgiving and forgetting; it was something to endure. It was asking love to accept poverty as a concubine or a mother-in-law.
He kept silent on that score, and they murmured their loves and kissed and laughed with contentedness purling through their hearts, and the world far away. She glancedback at the horses blissfully tearing young leaves from high branches.
"We ought to keep those horses as a souvenir of our engagement. It would be a pity to let any one else ride the dear old brutes, wouldn't it?"
"It would, indeed!" he said.
"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for a song."
"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp. He knew how much horses like these were worth—and saddles, bridles, and stables.
"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should we?" she asked.
"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy plans again, and his heart sickened.
"We mustn't let ourselves get fat. Of all things we must avoid that," she said. "We might have just a little car like Winifred's—to hold only two. I could drive down and get you and bring you home. It would save wear on our limousine—or perhaps we won't get a limousine just yet. If we didn't have a big car it would be a good excuse for not having a lot of people tagging round with us everywhere, wouldn't it? I feel an awful longing for a lot of solitude with just you and me. I suppose we'll have to put up with the United States army. But I want to shake the gang I've been running with—at least for a year or so, till you and I can get acquainted. Will you buy me a little car like Winifred's—a good one? There's no use wasting money on the cheap kind. The good little ones cost as much as the good big ones; but once they're paid for, they don't run up repair bills, and they take you where you're going instead of dying under you half-way there. Will you buy me a little car for just us? You can get a darling for about twenty-five hundred; I was asking Winifred."
He made no answer. She turned and looked at him and saw on his face the look she had seen on her father'sthat day—the look a man wears when he cannot buy his beloved what she pleads for. Now, as then, Persis felt ashamed rather than resentful, and she hastened to add:
"If you can't afford it, old boy, say so. You mustn't mind me. My father says I'm a terrible asker. Just say No, and I won't mind. Promise me that, dear. I want to be a good economical housewife to you; and I was only thinking that if we had a little car it would save taking the big car out, and that saves tires and gasolene and general upkeep."
He heard Enslee's words, "It's the upkeep that costs," and they mocked him again. He realized that in persuading this girl to choose him instead of Enslee, who had already chosen her, he was not only robbing her of a yacht, a palace, two or three palaces, half a dozen automobiles, servants, and servants of servants, foreign travel and foreign clothes and jewels—he was not only robbing her of such things, but he was asking her to learn a new way of life, a habit of infinite denial, eternal economy, and meager amusement.
Experience and common sense—for he had them in large measure in his ordinary life—seemed to bend down and say: "Let your sea-gull go. She'll die in your cage, or she'll break it apart."
But she was in his arms. She was leaning against him, flicking his boots with her riding-crop, and loving him, contented utterly. Romance elbowed Reason aside and said: "See how happy she is. It isn't money that makes happiness. You're sitting on the edge of a silly little brook in somebody's backwoods, and you're happy as a king and queen on a throne of gold."
Common Sense grinned: "Suppose it should rain? This is all very well for a while, but what of next winter?"
Reason and Romance wrangled in his head while she was babbling something in her elfin economy about, "So we won't have two cars yet, just one, a nice big 1913 six, with my chauffeur to run it. Father pays him fifteenhundred a year, and that's good pay. Don't you let him wheedle you out of a penny more."
Forbes' heart cried aloud within him: "My God! her very chauffeur gets nearly as much as I do!" This was the spark of resentment that gave him his start. He spoke bitterly, almost glad that she was dazed. And he put her away from him that both might be free. And he savagely kicked a rock into the smiling little pool and watched it grow turbid as he poured out his confession.
"Listen, honey; you've got a wrong idea of my situation. I'm to blame for it, I reckon. I've been meaning to speak about it, but I didn't—for just the same reason that kept you quiet about Enslee. I'm not rich, honey. I didn't tell anybody I was rich, but the idea got started from Ten Eyck's fool joke about seeing me coming out of a big bank. I told him the truth, and now I must tell you. You'll hate me, but you've got to know some time. I'm not rich, honey."
"What of it, dear?" she said, creeping toward him. "I love you for yourself. I never thought you were rich like Willie. I gave up all that gladly."
"But I'm what you would call—a pauper, I suppose. I have only my army pay."
"Isn't that enough?"
"Plenty of couples seem to be happy on it, but they're mostly the sons and daughters of army people. You've been brought up so differently. Wild extravagances for our people would be shabby makeshifts to you."
"Don't you think I'd be able to adapt myself?"
"Would you?"
"I should hope so. How much is your army pay, if you don't mind my asking?"
"As first lieutenant I get a little over two thousand."
"Two thousand a week? Why, that's not bad at all. Why did you frighten me?"
He laughed aloud, and she corrected herself.
"Oh, two thousand a month. That's about twenty-five thousand a year. It isn't much, is it? But we could skimp and scrape, and we'd have each other."
She had given him his death-blow unwittingly.
He smiled dismally, and groaned:
"Two thousand a year with forage."
She stared at him in unbelief. "Two thousand a year with forage! We couldn't eat the forage, could we? They give you a pittance like that for being an officer and a gentleman and a hero?"
"The hero business is the worst paid of all. Look at the firemen."
"But, my dear, two thousand a—why, our chef gets more than that, and our chauffeur nearly as much; and my father's secretary—everybody gets more than that."
"Not everybody. The vast majority of people get much less. But that's what I get."
She had been prepared for self-denial, but this was self-obliteration. If he had told her that he had the yellow fever she could hardly have felt sorrier for him, or more appalled at the prospect of their union. She loved him, perhaps, the more for the pity that welled up in her. She denounced the government for a miser.
"We're better paid than other armies," said Forbes. "Officers in foreign armies are supposed to have private fortunes."
"I don't wonder," she gasped. "And you haven't any?" He shook his head. "No relatives?"
"None that aren't poorer than I am."
She put out her hand and caressed his brow. "Poor boy, it's cruel, it's hateful! Willie Enslee with all that money, and you with two thousand a year! And no prospects for more?"
"Well, I hope to be promoted captain very shortly—any day now I should get my commission. That carries with it twenty-four hundred a year."
She sighed. "The little car I wanted would cost more than that. Well, let it go. Walking is healthier. Itwould save the chauffeur's wages, too. And my maid—I don't know what Nichette would say. But—well, let her go. Let everything go but you."
She clasped her arms round him, and he clutched her tight; but his embrace was like a farewell. She was infinitely pathetic to him. She had so much sophistication, and was so innocent of so much. She kissed him tenderly, but her mood was an elegy.
"That knocks out my wedding plans, too, doesn't it? It was the dream of all my life, the ambition of all my girlhood." And she fell to musing aloud. "Many's the night I've lain awake planning that wedding, and that divine wedding-gown all of ivory satin—with a train a mile long, and with point lace like whipped cream all over it, and the veil floating in a cloud about me. And I was to have counts and barons and things for ushers, and the belles of the season for bridesmaids—all very envious of me. And the cathedral was to be one ocean of flowers and silk ribbons, and—and I was to have at least an archbishop to marry me. And the presents! Oh, they were to have been so glorious that everybody that gave them would be bankrupted for life and hate me; and there were to be no duplicates. And the bridegroom was to be so wealthy that all the bridesmaids would loathe me for winning him. And we were to go away in a private car to a palace built brand new just for me."
He was so fascinated with watching her soul in debate with itself that he did not speak. He just held her fast and listened. She went on:
"It was a silly dream. It's not the ceremony that counts—it's the long life after. Love's the main thing, isn't it?"
He lifted her gauntleted hand to his cheek and said nothing. She was silent a long while. Then she pondered aloud again: "I wonder what sort of a poor man's wife I'll make. I'm afraid I'll be an awful failure. You know, we were poor once—yes. My father got squeezedin a corner, and nearly went bankrupt. Oh, but mother and I had to skimp and scrape! I had to turn my old gowns, give up our box at the opera, sell my saddle-horses. We couldn't go to dinners or receptions because we couldn't return them. We sat at home and received—indignant creditors. Oh, the bills, the bills—my God, the bills!
"At the end of a year father found a man who was unbusinesslike enough to put him on his feet again. It was Willie Enslee, of course. We had money once more; we could hold our heads high, snub those who snubbed us, get even with those who had patronized us, or—ugh! insulted us with their sympathy. Oh, money is a great thing, isn't it? It was like coming out of a cave again into the sunlight. I used to say I would face anything rather than poverty again.
"And think of it, Harvey, when we were at our poorest we were spending thirty or forty thousand a year. And we called it poverty. But you and I—two thousand a year—and forage!
"Why, Harvey, it would take you a year and a half of work to pay for the little car I wanted—if we did without a big car and didn't spend a cent on clothes or theaters or the opera or taxies or the seaside or Europe or entertaining people or servants' wages, and—and ate only the forage. We couldn't have a chauffeur. I couldn't have my maid. I couldn't have any friends—what should I do? I couldn't have anything! Those two horses I wanted would cost a year of your salary. My dressmaker's bills are four or five times as much, and at that I never have anything to wear. Why, Harvey, it's frightful! I never knew what money meant before. I don't see how we could ever manage it. I don't see how."
She put his arms away as if they irked her and hampered her breath. She was breathing hard. Merely to imagine a life devoid of everything she had always found about her was like a suffocation. She was understandinghow a fish must feel when it is drawn from the water and flung to stifle on dry pebbles. She suffered such dismay as overwhelms a rat in the bell of an air-pump when the experimenter begins to create a vacuum.
She had seen poverty and its wreckage, and her mind was filled with pictures, not from the charming homes of moderate means, but from the slums that she had visited once and avoided thereafter as a nightmare. She had had friends who had gone into bankruptcy and slunk off into obscurity to hide its penalties. One very dear woman, whose husband lapsed from affluence to mediocrity, had written a few little notes, calmly taken an overdose of a headache powder, stretched herself out on her mortgaged chaise-longue and fallen asleep over an unusually sedative novel. Persis had received one of the notes.
Good-by, Persis dear. You know the situation, and you at least will understand. Would it be too much trouble for you to have a little talk with the undertaker man and have things as nicely managed as possible? Don't let them treat me too shabbily, will you? I couldn't rest easily even There. You understand, don't you?
Good-by, Persis dear. You know the situation, and you at least will understand. Would it be too much trouble for you to have a little talk with the undertaker man and have things as nicely managed as possible? Don't let them treat me too shabbily, will you? I couldn't rest easily even There. You understand, don't you?
Persis had understood, and, being in funds at the time, had seen all conducted with taste and even with a little splendor.
To every one his or her especial cowardice. Persis, so brave in so many ways, was afraid of creepy things like caterpillars and creditors and poverty. They spoiled for her everything that they touched, flower or ceremony or future.
She was silent a long while. Forbes longingly set his arms about her; but she did not respond; her hands were idly rolling her riding-crop up and down the shin of her boot, for she was thinking hard.
Forbes felt that he clung to the mere clothes of her soul. Herself was already gone from him. Yet he loved her sothat he found her not unworthy nor selfish nor craven, but infinitely precious and beautiful, difficult to win and wear.
A great many shining throngs of water went down the brook, making all the conversation there was, before Persis began to flog her boots with her riding-crop. She wanted to groan, but as was her custom in torment, smiled instead; and, having something of tragic solemnity to utter, put it forth with a plucky flippancy:
"Well, old boy, I'm afraid all bets are off."
FORBES had been recruiting strength to tell her that he released her; but she anticipated him by jilting him first—and in sporting terms. He stared at her, but he could not see the tears raining down in her heart. He heard her, but was deaf to the immense regret in the little words she added:
"You're pretty poor, aren't you?"
His very forehead was drenched with red shame at such comment from her. She could see how she had hurt his pride, and she put on the solemnity he expected her to wear.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Harvey, I implore you! I love you all the more for being just your glorious self. You've paid me the greatest honor I ever had—or shall have. You asked me to be your wife, and you are willing to divide up your pitiful little income with me. You'd give it all to me. You'd run into debt till you smothered. But it wouldn't work out. Mother was right: 'People can do without love easier than without money.'"
"Not people with hearts like yours," he ventured at last to put in as a feeble objection.
"Oh, I'm afraid of this heart of mine," she answered. "If it had any sense it wouldn't have fallen in love with you—you of all men. I knew you weren't really terribly rich, but I didn't think you were so pitifully, cruelly poor."
The epithet reiterated stung him like a whip in the face. He protested impatiently:
"I'm not really poor. Army officers have many ways of saving expenses. I might not give you princely luxuries, Persis, but I'd make your life happy."
His resistance gave her something to fight, and her resentment at fate welcomed it.
"Me happy at an army post? With nothing but poker for you and gossip for me? No, thank you!"
She caught a twitch of anger in his brows, and she grew harsher:
"Look here! Would you give up your career for me?"
"A woman can't ask a man to give up his career," he answered; and she retorted with the spirit of her time:
"Then why should she give up hers for him?"
He looked an old-fashioned surprise. "And have you a career?"
"Of course I have. Every woman has; and nowadays a woman has got to look out for herself and her future, or she'll get left at the post."
"And what career have you?" he asked, amazed.
"Marriage. It's the average woman's main business in life, Harvey. If she fails in that she fails in everything."
"Then you think the poor have no right to marry?"
"Oh no, I'm not such a fool as that. There are people with simple tastes who can be happy on nothing a year—sweet domestic women who love to manage and cook and sweep and mend and sew. There are lots of unhappy rich women who would be thoroughly contented if they were the wives of laboring-men. But that doesn't happen to be my type. I can't help it. I grow positively sick at the sight of a needle. Even fancy stitching hurts my eyes. And I can't help that. There are lots of poor women who are making their homes hells because they have no money. They'd be angels if they didn't have to economize. Some people, rich and poor, take a sensuous delight in watching a bank account grow, and they get more thrill out of saving a penny than out of getting something more beautiful for it.
"But I'm not one of those. I'm a squanderer by nature. I hate to be denied things. I loathe counting the cost ofthings. I can't endure to see some one else wearing better things than I've got on. I want to throttle a woman who has a later hat than mine. Oh, I may be a bad one, Harvey, but it isn't my fault. I am what I was born to be. I've got to marry money, Harvey. I've just got to."
He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. "Oh, Persis, don't tell me that you are mercenary—a woman with a big heart like yours."
"I'm not mercenary exactly; I loathe money as money, but I like nice things. I have to have them. I'm trying to be honest with myself and with you—in time—before it's too late. It's hard; but I didn't arrange the world, did I? I didn't choose my own soul, did I? But I've got to get along with what was given me, haven't I? I tell you I'd ruin your life, Harvey. You'd divorce me in a year."
"Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life! There's a big tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you—"
She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death of her first romance that she grew very hard.
"Well, so long as it isn't the tragedy of being unable to pay my bills and of eating my own cooking I can stand it. I'd rather be unhappy than shabby. But it's growing late; we must get back."
He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered her his hand for a mounting-block. But she said:
"We can walk quicker here than we can ride." Taking her bridle in her arm, she set out swiftly. She seemed once more to be running away from something—a shadow of poverty, no doubt. He felt unspeakably sorry for her. Again he was about to offer her back her heart when an abrupt light broke over her face. She paused, laughed, turned to him.
"What a fool I am! My father set my sister up in business as a British peeress and bought her her husband and settled a whacking dower on her. He can do the same for me and keep the money in this country—and get mea real husband. He could give me enough for us both to live on comfortably."
"I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement," Forbes said, as gently as he might.
"You see!" she cried out. "You expect me to murder my pride and accept poverty, but you won't accept wealth because you must keep your pride. You couldn't object to my having the money to spend on myself, could you?"
"No, I could hardly object to that," he said.
"Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's plans we'll have love and money and all. It will be wonderful—heaven on earth! Kiss me!"
She put up her lips, and he kissed them and found them bitter-sweet. Then she strode on with a lilting joy, humming a song and putting her horse to his paces to keep up with her. Forbes remembered what Senator Tait had said of her father's impending doom, and her rapture was a heartbreak to him—a final irony.
As they issued from the green cave of the forest and walked down to the State Road to take the saddle, a motor came along. Two men were in it. The driver stopped the car in front of Persis, and the other man lifted his hat. It disclosed a shock of brindle hair and half of one eyebrow gone.
"Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so," Persis answered.
"Thank you, Miss Cabot," he called out, as the car whirred away.
Persis stared after him in amazement. "Now who was that? How did he know my name?"
"By your pictures in the papers," Forbes suggested.
"No," said Persis; "I've met him somewhere. Oh, I know. He's a reporter on the—some paper. Lord, I hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I didn't like the grin on his face."
THE reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous "Thank you, Miss Cabot," convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters learn too well, put the worst possible interpretation on her forest promenade with Forbes. This was all that it needed to turn her disappointment into dismay, her bewilderment into panic. She had lost rhythm with her life and the world.
She thrust one boot into its stirrup, swung the other across the saddle, and jerked her horse's head impatiently. Her temper threw his motor machinery out of gear, and he found himself with at least two too many feet. He bolted and sidled in a ragged syncopated gait, snorting and flinging his head angrily. She could not get him into meter with himself or her, or with the horse that Forbes brought clattering alongside.
At first she had felt infinitely sorry for Forbes and indignant only at the fate that made him poor. As she rode her fretful horse she began to feel infinitely sorry for herself and indignant at Forbes. He had permitted her to think that he had ample means. He had encouraged her to love him seriously. Her resentment was the fierce resentment people feel when those they love and idealize do not live up to the standards set for them.
Forbes had come into her life like a bull sauntering into a china shop. A moment before his entrance everything was arranged, orderly, exquisite, and formal—a little cold, perhaps, but charmingly definite. Now everything was crashing about her. She must walk warily among the fragments or she would suffer.
Persis was an orderly soul, and had not suspected that she was also a passionate one. She was more like Forbes than either of them understood. For all the deep intensity of his nature, training had made him first the soldier. In battle he was the fiery warrior; but battles were infrequent, and almost all his days had been spent in acquiring and instilling precision, exactness in the manual of arms, rectitude in the lines of drill formations, perfection in uniform and equipment, in the company books and reports—everywhere.
So Persis had acquired from infancy the rituals of household service, the proprieties and their observance, the arrangement of ceremonies, social book-keeping. And now she was discovering what a disorganizer love is, what an anarch among plans, what a smasher of china.
Before the advent of Forbes she had almost given up the expectation of love. Then out of nothing the fates evoked this man. If he had confessed even a pittance of twenty-five thousand a year, that would have meant at worst "love in a cottage"—cottage being an elastic word. Friends of hers owned cottages of palatial dimensions. But two thousand a year—with a prospect of twenty-four hundred a year! She simply could not imagine it.
She tried to mask her anger under an unusually cheerful manner. She spoke with approval of the landscape, chattered vivaciously about everything, and all the while was burning with resentment. It was small wonder that Forbes felt the blight of her wrath when the very horses knew of it. The most determined politeness can never imitate the fine flower and bouquet of genuine enthusiasm. But what could Forbes say to set things right? The one effective speech would have been a declaration of independent means, a smiling disclaimer of poverty: "I was only joking; I am really very rich."
That would have re-established theentente. But that was the one thing Forbes could not say. He rode on at Persis' side, a silent and dejected prisoner of circumstances, a spy captured in the enemy's camp in the enemy's uniform.
Eventually they reached the Enslee place—the mountain that was Enslee's, with the stately pleasure dome he had decreed there. The majesty of it belittled Forbes still more. The beauty of it shamed him.
They trotted across the granite bridge and urged the horses to the ascent.
The horses plodded doggedly up and up, and the beauty of every spot as they reached it wore away Persis' anger. It was difficult to feel a bitterness against anybody, even against the fates, when they permitted some aromatic shrub to throw an almost visible veil of perfume about her, and another to dandle before her eyes a smiling throng of blossoms almost audibly singing like clustered cherubim. The mere dapple of shadow and sun-splash was felicity, and the white road that curved among its lawns was voluptuously sinuous, like a tawny Cleopatra on a green divan or one of Titian's high-hipped Venuses.
The gardening was formal, the swards were shaved, the trees seemed to have been whisk-broomed, the shrubs had been curled and scented; but they were beautiful, and only wealth could have collected them or kept them at their best. And above them all loomed the house, a château of stately charm enthroned in beauty.
Forbes saw how good it was, and coveted it. But it was as if Naboth, the soldier, had envied David, the King, his garden. Persis also saw how good it was, and she could possess it all, become the châtelaine of this place.
She spoke her thought aloud:
"It's this sort of thing, Harvey, that I love and need—beautiful things and plenty of them."
"I understand," Forbes groaned.
"If only you could get them for us!"
"If only I could!"
A little farther she checked her horse, whose trunk was heaving like a bellows. It was in a little colonnade oftrees with an arched roof of green leaves in more than Gothic confusion. Birds were everywhere, fluting, fighting, and building.
"Listen to them, Harvey," Persis murmured, with a kind of sad joy, as he reined in alongside. "It's their courtship-time, too. And the male bird is the better dressed of the two."
Forbes noted how sweet her throat was as it arched back; and the under surface of her chin, how beautiful. They were no longer his to admire, and bitterness came into his heart. His smile was close to a sneer as he said:
"The males put on their Sunday best and pour out their finest songs, and the lady bird chooses, they say, the one that wears the best clothes."
She gave him a look that was both rebuking and rebuked, and urged her horse along. But a little later her response to beauty filled her again with the contentment of repletion, and she checked her horse by the marble-walled pool, whose surface was broken and circled here and there by gleaming red fish with lacy fins and tails; they were darting and leaping in acrobatic ecstasies.
"They're making love, too, I suppose," Persis said, a trifle anxiously.
And he was still aggrieved enough to answer: "And the fish ladies also select the gentleman with the most gold."
She stared at him a moment, hurt and shamed. Then she flung back at him:
"Then you oughtn't to blame us—us other females for making the wisest choice we can. It must be a law of nature."
"It must be," he sighed, so humbly that she regretted her victory. She would have put out her hand to comfort him, but she saw above them Willie Enslee leaning across the balustrade. She lifted her horse into a jog-trot, and they rode into the court, where a chauffeur waited to take the horses to the stable.
Willie greeted them in his whiniest tone.
"Where on earth were you? We've been home for ages."
"We got off the main road," Persis said, as she climbed the steps, followed by Forbes, "and the horses were tired and—"
"I was awfully anxious. I was about to start out to look for you."
"There was no occasion to be anxious."
"Besides, your father telephoned you."
"My father! Is he back in New York?"
"No; he telephoned from Chicago. He was just leaving on the twenty-hour train. He couldn't wait till you got back."
"What did he have to say?"
"Lots." Willie looked uneasily at Forbes, as if he were in the way.
"I'll be changing for dinner," Forbes said, with uncomfortable haste.
"You'd better be cooking the dinner," Willie said. "Winifred is counting on your soldierly experience to help her out."
So Forbes went to the kitchen to salute and report for duty. As he entered the house he looked back to see Enslee leading Persis toward the marble steps to the little temple where he proposed regularly.
Forbes' heart thudded heavily in his breast. He felt helpless to protest or intervene in any way. Persis was up at auction. He had bidden her in under a misapprehension of the upset price, and she was put back for sale again.
AS she mounted the steps with Willie, Persis felt something of Forbes' regret. She was a slave on the block, and the man she wanted for owner was crowded from the mart.
"What did father have to say?" she asked, in a dull tone already despairing.
"I—I—it wasn't very pleasant."
"Hand it to me."
"He said to break it to you gently."
"Well, speak up, Willie. Break it! For the Lord's sake, break it!"
"Sit down, won't you?" He led her to a bench in the temple. "I hardly know where to begin."
"Begin at the ending."
"Well, you see, your poor governor—"
"Has lost all his money?"
"Well, yes—in a way."
"It's getting to be rather a habit with the poor old boy, isn't it? Is he smashed up badly?"
"Pretty badly."
"The house in town and the country place will have to go?"
"I'm afraid so."
"The cars and the horses—my car, too?"
"Looks like it."
"Then I needn't worry about it's being a last year's model," she laughed. Willie stared at her admiringly.
"Gad, but you're a good loser."
"I try to be; an easy winner, an easy loser. I'm awfullysorry for father, though. Did you—did you tell him anything?"
"I told him we were engaged."
She shivered and mumbled, "What did he say to that?"
"He seemed immensely relieved. He said, 'God bless her.' His voice was very faint, but I think that's what he said."
"Perhaps he said, 'God help her.'"
"Maybe he did," Willie sighed. "Anyway, we're to meet him in town to-morrow."
He stared at her with hungry eyes, and his little lean fingers crept toward the exquisite hand of hers that lay supine, relaxed, with upturned fingers like the petals of an open rose. He took that flower in his hands timidly. She looked down into his famished eyes and smiled pitifully—perhaps a little for him, certainly for herself.
He overestimated the tenderness in her gaze and squeezed her fingers in his. She winced and drew her hand away.
"I'm awfully sorry I hurt you," he said.
"It was this ring again," she explained, though she had not meant to say the "again."
"My ring? Our ring?" he murmured, with such joy that her sportsmanship compelled a last effort at playing fair.
"Under the circumstances," she said, "I think I'd better return it to you—with thanks for the loan."
"I don't want it back!" he gasped. "I won't have it back."
"You didn't agree to marry a beggar."
"I want to marry you—just you," he pleaded. "The engagement stands."
"You're terribly polite, but I can't—not for charity."
"Charity—bosh!" he stormed. "I can't get along without you. You couldn't get along without a lot of money, Persis. If—if you'll let the engagement standI'll put your father on his feet again. I'll—I'll do anything."
"How put him on his feet? I thought he was smashed?"
"He went to Chicago to raise a lot of money. He couldn't. He's coming back to face the music. It's a funeral march unless—unless—well, I could take up his obligations. I don't understand it very well myself, to say nothing of explaining it to you. But I've got a lot of money, and money is what your father's enemies want. He'll be all right if he's tided over the shallow places. So for my sake and your governor's, let me announce the engagement."
"Think what people would say. It looks so hideously mercenary on my part."
"We can prove that we were engaged before this thing threatened. Everybody will have to confess it's a true love match on both sides. Please, please, Persis! pretty please!"
She resigned herself to all the shames she foresaw, and sighed:
"All right, Willie, it will brace Dad up a bit."
"Is he the only one you think of?" Willie pouted. "Haven't you a word of—of love for me?" He wrung her hands in his little claws again, and they set her nerves on edge. She wanted to shriek her detestation of her plight; but she controlled herself enough to keep down her feelings. She could not, however, mimic love where she felt loathing—the best she could do was to mumble:
"We can't very well play a love scene up here before everybody, can we? I may feel more enthusiastic when I've had a bath and a change of costume."
She broke from him and hurried down the steps. He overtook her half-way to plead:
"Let me announce our engagement now—to the people here."
"Not now," she pleaded; "not here!" And she ran on. But he followed chuckling. He had a great dramatic idea.
THAT was an extraordinary dinner. The famished aristocracy hovered about the kitchen porch like waifs, pleading for the privilege of assisting. Ten Eyck wanted to scour the cake-dish or put raisins in something. He and the rest were set to work dusting the palatial dining-hall and bringing forth the best Enslee plate. Willie stood by and warned them to be careful. He was in so triumphant a humor that he felt nearly like breaking something himself.
When at last the board was decked, the candelabra alight, fresh flowers lavished everywhere, and chairs arranged, the guests were ravenous.
"Do we dress for dinner?" said Ten Eyck. Winifred threw a boiled potato at him. It grazed Mrs. Neff, who swore splendidly and was prepared to respond with a mop when disarmed.
It was one of the necessities of the feast that the entire body of guests should be also the corps of waiters. The service would have appalled the shabbiest butler. There were woeful collisions at the deadly swinging doors; wine-glasses that had been made in Bohemia and monogrammed there were splintered. A wonderful soup-tureen of historic associations was juggled and lost. It fell on a venerable rug of every color except spilled soup. The tureen was picked up empty and badly dented.
But nothing could check the riot. There were battles around the serving-tables in the kitchen and the pantry and at the sideboard. Those who got their plates filled rushed to their places like fed dogs dispersing each with its bone.
Winifred was exhausted by her long day's work. She made no pretense of toilet, but followed her viands in and slumped into her chair with sleeves rolled up, knees apart, and the general collapsed look of cooks.
Forbes had taken off his coat for his kitchen work. Winifred would not let him put it on again.
"My butler and footmen eat with their livery on the back of their chairs," she said. "We'll make this a regular banquet in the servants' hall."
The idea pleased everybody but Willie. They had all happened into the servants' dining-rooms during the meals of those weary ministers, so now they sprawled and gobbled and chattered in the best imitation they could improvise.
"Our own people are probably eating at our own tables at home," said Mrs. Neff, "and passing scandal with every plate."
"There's the one thing missing to make this a true servant's soirée," said Ten Eyck—"a lot of down-stairs gossip. I am now Willie's man: 'Whatever do you suppose I turned up this morning whilst I was unpacking the mahster's bag after his trip to Philadelphia—a receipted bill for five-and-twenty dollars for Mr. and Mrs. William Jones, one night's lodging, so 'elp me!'"
Everybody glanced at Willie, but he giggled. "You flatter me."
Alice, with the sophistication that young women have apparently always had except in fiction, put up her hand reprovingly to Ten Eyck.
"No depravity, no depravity! Remember my young mother is present. Now I'm our second man talking to my maid: 'My Missus, for all she's so crool to her darling dorter Aluss, do you knaow the hour she come in lawst night? Nao? Four o'clock this mornin', she did! Strike me if she didn't!'"
Mrs. Neff smiled and retaliated: "Now I'm Alice's Hibernian maid: 'At that the ould shrew had nothin'on Miss Aluss. Whilst her mother was toorkey-trattin', wasn't the darlin' child after tahkin' four dollars' worth of baby-tahk over the telephone to that young bosthoon of a Stowe Webb.'"
"How on earth did you find out?" said Alice.
Mrs. Neff's answer was further revelation of the domestic secret service: "It's a nice little colleen, Aluss is, and pays me liberal for smooglin' notes in and out of the house. And then the ould woman pays me still more liberal to bring the notes to her first. It's a right careful mother she is."
Alice stared in horror, and Mrs. Neff tee-hee'd like a malicious little girl. Winifred came to Alice's rescue with a cross-fire:
"Now I'm Mrs. Neff's secretary talking to my little niece's governess."
"Help, help!" cried Mrs. Neff. "No fair, Winifred. I had to discharge the cat. If you dare, I'll give an imitation of your laundress talking to—"
"I surrender," said Winifred, hastily.
"Go on," said Ten Eyck. "As Connie Ediss sang, 'It all comes out in the wash.'"
Mrs. Neff put up her hand. "As official duenna of this family, I think we'd better change the game or put out the lights."
"That's a fine idea!" said Ten Eyck. "A game of tag in the dark."
"Not in my dark!" said Willie, sternly, with a calm incisiveness that surprised everybody and ended the project before it was begun.
Ten Eyck complained: "We came here to be rid of the spying servants, and we've been more respectable than ever."
"Crowds are almost always respectable," said Mrs. Neff, "unless they're drunk."
"Everybody is almost always respectable," said Ten Eyck. "Even the worst of us only sin for a few minutesat a time. A murder takes but a moment, and thieves are notorious loafers. This talk of a life of sin is mostly rot, I think. Sin is a spasm, not a life."
"It's the remorse and the atonement that make up the life," said Mrs. Neff.
"Good Lord, how funereal we are," said Persis, "talking about sin and spasms and remorse when the flowers are blooming and the moonlight is pounding on the windows! We ought to be—"
"Washing the dishes," said Winifred, rising. "Come on, the all of youse, clear up this mess and get into the suds. Persis and Mrs. Neff and Alice are the dish-washing squad to-night, and Willie and Murray can wipe them dry."
"We haven't had our smoke yet," protested Mrs. Neff. A respite was granted for this.
Everybody smoked but Alice.
"What's the matter with you, Alice?" said Winifred. "Sore throat?"
Alice shrugged her shoulders and answered, "Ask my awful mother."
Mrs. Neff flicked the ashes off her cigarette. "My father always used to tell my brothers that tobacco wouldn't hurt them if they didn't smoke till they were twenty-one. I think it applies to women also."
"Great heavens!" said Winifred, pretending to put away her cigarette, "I've ruined my life. No wonder I'm wasting away."
"Eighteen is the legal age for women," said Ten Eyck.
Winifred resumed her cigarette with a mock childishness. "Then I can just qualify. I was eighteen last—"
"Last century, my dear?" Mrs. Neff cooed.
"For that you can scrub the pots and pans, darling," Winifred crooned. "And I was going to let you off with the wine-glasses. Another crack like that and I'll have you stoking the range."
"I am a martyr in the cause of truth," Mrs. Neff groaned. "Come on; let's get it over with."
Winifred was a sharp taskmaster, and so bulky that none of the women dared to disobey. Nor the men either. Forbes was for helping Persis and saving her delicate hands, but Winifred would not have him in the pantry at all:
"The little snojer cooked the dinner, and he gets a furlough. If I could trust the rest of you I'd walk with him in the moonlight and let him hold my dainty white mitt in his manly clasp."
Forbes was banished, and spent his exile pacing up and down smoking and peering in at the window, where Persis, aproned and wet-armed and with a speck of soot on her nose, buried her jeweled fingers in greasy dish-water, and smoked the while her customary cigarette. She was more fascinating than ever to Forbes, whose mind kept ringing the domestic chimes.
When the kitchen and dining-room chores were done to the satisfaction of Winifred, who demanded as much of her amateur scullions as she would have demanded of her own servants, they were all exhausted. Returning to the living-room, they sprawled in those inelegant attitudes that tired laborers assume. Their minds were jaded with their muscles.
"I never understood before why my servants are so snappy at night," said Mrs. Neff. "If anybody speaks to me I'll cry."
"Pull down your skirts, at least, mother," said Alice.
"They're too far away," sighed Mrs. Neff. "And nobody's interested in my old legs."
Alice, with the fierce decency of the young, rose wearily, bent down, put her mother's ankles together, and covered them with the skirt.
"Isn't it odd," sighed Mrs. Neff, "how we pretend that old people must go along to chaperon the young? It ought to be the other way about."
Alice was too tired to get up. She sank on the floor and laid her head on her mother's knee. And Mrs. Neff put out a thin, white hand upon the girl's soft hair.
"It's a nice little girl, sometimes," she sighed.
"And it would be a nice little mother," said Alice, "if—"
"Don't say it, my child. He's not the man for you at all. I know best. I'm thinking of your happiness." Alice shrugged a skeptical comment.
Her mother went on: "Do you remember how you had all the chocolate creams you wanted—once? You couldn't look at one for a year after. Well, living on love alone is like trying to live on chocolate creams alone. And he couldn't afford even to keep you in chocolate creams."
Alice made no answer. She sat studying her own thoughts.
Forbes felt a sudden kinship with Alice's absent lover and beloved, this Stowe Webb, whose crime was lack of money. He imagined that Persis' mother had told her the same cold things that Alice was hearing now. He began to believe that many daughters must hear such financial talk against love from their mothers. He had heard so many married women scoff at love as a delusion. He wondered if, after all, it were not really man, rather than woman, who is the romantic animal.
"Men," he pondered, "write the great poems and the great romances, paint the great pictures, fight the great fights against nature and ignorance and oppression and poverty. They compose the great music, supply the demand for love songs and love stories, and build the places to love in. Then they lay their wealth and ambition and achievement at the feet of little women, and each little woman selects from those that gather at her feet the one that she thinks will dress her best and house her best and give her the best time."
He had read much in books, written chiefly by gallant gentlemen whose flattery was greater than their accuracy, that woman was a slave, a toy, a plaything, a victim of man's cruelty. Now he began to believe that in the vast bulk of instances the reverse was true. The little womenset their feet on the men's necks and rode upon their shoulders, and when they were displeased pulled the men's hair, poked fingers into their eyes, or abandoned them entirely.
He felt again what he had felt when he studied Fifth Avenue and its womankind; for every woman's finery some man pays. Woman was the grasping sex, the exacting, yet extravagant sex. The eternal feminine was the eternal calculatrix.
He had wondered what these women paid for what they got from men. He believed now that he had found the answer. They paid with their bodies, their kisses, the encircling of arms, the cooing of tender words. In return for so much money they granted permission to spend yet more.
He studied Persis; how beautiful she was, how soft and gracile, how apt to endearments! Yet she held herself at a price, at a high price, and called it pride, self-protection. What was it but self-exploitation?
Yet what man ever desired an object less because it was beyond his means? Persis was certainly no less adorable to Forbes because he could not buy her. He would have to get along without her. But, having once held her in his arms while she held him in hers, he would never cease to desire her. Like the father of a spendthrift child, he rather felt ashamed of himself for being incompetent to meet her demands, than contemned her for making them.
After a while of silent meditation Mrs. Neff spoke up, briskly:
"There's only one thing that would rest me, and that's a tango. Where are those records we bought this afternoon?"
On the homeward way the motor party had passed a shop where disks were kept, and had bought up the entire visible supply of latter-day tunes to replace the dances of yesteryear. There was general agreement that it was high time to turkey-trot again.
"I'll run the machine," said Winifred. "Bob Fielding isn't here, and I'll be true to his memory for a dance or two."
"I choose to dance with Major General Forbes," said Mrs. Neff, "unless he's otherwise engaged."
"Before we dance," said Willie, "I have an announcement to make. Ladies and gentlemen, so to speak"—he cleared his throat and ran his fingers round inside his tight collar—"I am about to—er—give birth—er—to an after-dinner speech—my first and only."
"Hear! Hear!"
"Some time ago Miss Persis—er—Cabot, whom you all know, did me the—er—unspeakable honor of consenting to become Mrs. William—er—Enslee. Circumstances rendered it—er—advisable to defer—er—the publication of the glorious—er—news, so to speak. But Miss Cabot has to-night given me—er—permission to announce—"
"I have not!" Persis broke in; but Willie put up his hand.
"Order in the court—er! Anyway, now you know the worst. You behold in me the happiest man on—er—earth."
There was a round of applause, and Ten Eyck proposed "three lusty chahs and a tigress for the—er—bride and—er—groom—er."
Forbes felt as if a shell full of shrapnel had burst at his feet. Military instinct brought his heels together, and he stood as erect as Dreyfus did when they tore the buttons from his tunic and snapped his sword in two before him. He stared at the revel that broke out around Persis and Enslee. In his eyes it had something of the hideousness of savages dancing. It was a torture dance, and he was the man at the stake.
FORBES tried to smile, but his muscles seemed unable to support his lips. He heard much noise, yet distinguished nothing till he seemed to wake suddenly at finding Willie Enslee smirking up at him.
"You haven't congratulated me, Mr. Ward—er—Forbes."
Forbes seized Enslee's small hand and wrung it, and said in a tone more fitted to condolence:
"I do congratulate you, indeed, and Miss Cabot, I—I congratulate her."
He tried to look at her, but Willie was clinging to his hand and driveling on: "I want to thank you for—er—at least trying to save her when her horse bolted this morning. They told me you were—er—quite splendid, and I take it as a—er—personal favor."
"Don't mention it, please."
"And now let's—er—dance," said Willie. "I will dance with the blushing bride, if you don't mind. Let 'er go, Winifred."
Winifred set off the Victrola, and a blare of nasal cacophony broke from the machine imitating a steamboat whistle; then ensued a negroid music of infinite inappropriateness to Forbes' tragic mood. He saw the woman who loved him, and whom he loved, tagged and claimed by a contemptible pygmy, the accidental inheritor of wealth. He saw his beautiful Persis in the fellow's incompetent arms and her body drooping over him as if he had carried her off in a kind of burlesque rape of the Sabines. The music was not Wagnerian epopee, nor werethe words something from Sophokles; it was a romping ditty about