What Will People Say? Part 63

"Yes; the Senator is going to France, and Stowe is to help him out."

The young secretary spoke in, trying not to look as important as he felt: "I simply can't endure the thought of leaving Alice all alone over here. So we're going to get married."

"Fine!" said Persis, with subtlety. "I suppose you get a whopping big salary."

"Indeed he does!" said Alice. "Twelve hundred a year! It's wonderful for a beginning."

Persis suppressed her emotions at the talk of salary. She hated the word; but she exclaimed, "Wonderful!" Then she turned to Stowe to ask: "Does the Senator know you're going to bring a bride along?"

"No; we're going to surprise him."

Persis thought of her appointment. It was vitally important, but she felt a call to duty. She thought it was rather good of her to heed it.

She bundled the two young people back into the waiting taxicab in spite of their protests.

"Take us for a little drive, Stowe," she said. "I want a word with you.

Tell the man to go down Was.h.i.+ngton Square way. You're not so likely to meet her mother."

CHAPTER XLVIII

Stowe obeyed reluctantly, and the taxicab groaned on its way. Persis set Stowe on the small flap-seat and turned so that she could skewer him and Alice with one look.

"Now, Alice," she began, "let's be sensible." Alice looked appealingly at Stowe, but Persis objected. "Don't look at him--look at me. First, who's going to support you children when you are married?"

They answered like a chorus: "Why, he is (I am), of course."

"Alice, dear, how much has your mother been allowing you for pin-money--say, five thousand a year?"

"Oh, she claims it's more than that. We had an awful row the first of last month."

Persis looked very innocent and school-girlish as she said: "And Mr.

Webb gets twelve hundred?"

"Yes."

"Now, Alice, I'm very backward in mathematics, so you'll have to tell me: if one person cannot live on five thousand a year, do you think two persons will be perfectly comfortable on twelve hundred?"

"Oh, but I'll economize!" Alice protested. "It will be a pleasure to do without things--if I have Stowe."

"Yes," Persis sniffed, "almost anything we're not used to is pleasant for a novelty; but in time I should fancy that even economy would cease to be a luxury. And where in Paris do you plan to live on your twelve hundred?"

"At a hotel, to begin with," Stowe suggested.

"Oh, you'll eat your cake first, eh? Not a bad idea; you're sure of getting it, then."

"Then we can get such ducks of flats in Auteuil."

"The Harlem of Paris," Persis sneered, then grew more amiable. "A duck of an apartment is all very well, my dear, for those who have wings; but climbing stairs--ugh! Four flights of stairs six times a day--that's twenty-four flights. Seven times twenty-four is--help!"

"One hundred and sixty-eight, I believe," said Stowe, after a mental twist.

"Bravo! You're a regular wizard at mathematics," said Persis. "One hundred and sixty-eight flights of stairs a week, and fifty-two times one hundred and sixty-eight is how much? Quick!"

"You've got me there. I fancy I could do it with a piece of chalk and a blackboard."

"Well, it's a million, I'm sure," Persis summed it. "Think of that! a million flights of stairs the first year of marriage! What love could survive it? And how many rooms is your sky-parlor going to have?"

"Seven and bath."

"On twelve hundred a year?" Persis gasped. "Aren't you going to eat anything?"

"Well, we could manage with two."

"Two rooms!" Persis gasped again. "And your mother's house has thirty!

Two rooms? Why, where will the servants sleep?"

"We sha'n't have any servants," Alice averred, stoutly.

And her husband-to-be protested: "No, Alice, I'll never let you soil your pretty hands with work."

Persis pressed the point. "But really, now, what about food?"

"You can do Wonders with a chafing-dish," said Alice.

"And a chafing-dish can do wonders with a stomach," said Persis. "Bread and cheese--that is to say, Welsh rabbits--and kisses as a steady diet?"

She shook her head.

Alice made another try. "Well, everybody says you can buy almost everything in cans."

"Including ptomaines. Oh, children, you don't know what's in store for you."

"Of course we shall have hards.h.i.+ps," Stowe confessed; "but nothing can be worse than this uncertainty, this separation."

"Oh yes, it can, Stowe!" Persis cried. "There are harder things to bear than the things we lose, and they are the things we can't lose."

"The things we can't lose?" said Stowe; "that means me, I suppose?"

"Oh, Alice, come back to earth," Persis urged, with all her might.

"Think how tired you'll get of living in a dark little pigeonhole away up in the air, with no neighbors but working-people. And when your pretty gowns are worn out, and you lose your pretty looks and your pretty figure and your fresh color--for those are expensive luxuries--and when you see that your husband is growing disappointed in you because the harder you work for him the homelier and duller you become--that's a woman's fate, Alice: to alienate a man by the very sacrifices she makes to bind him closer; and when--"

"Oh, don't tell me any more whens," Alice whimpered. "What do I care? I want Stowe. He needs me. We are unhappy away from each other."

Persis shook her head like a sibyl. "Be careful that you don't find yourselves more unhappy together. For some day you'll grow bitter.

You'll remember what you gave up. You'll begin to remind him of it--to nag--and nag--oh, the unspeakable vulgarity of it! And then you'll ruin Stowe's career--just as it's beginning. The Senator doesn't want a secretary with a wife. You'll always be in the way. Stowe will have to be leaving you all the time or fretting over you. You'll hamper his usefulness, and check his career, and grind him down to poverty, break his spirit."

"Oh, I don't want to do that!" Alice wept. "I mustn't do that!"