What Will People Say? Part 77

CHAPTER LIX

In the exceeding industry of the days following the death of Amba.s.sador Tait, Captain Forbes found no chance to see Mrs. Enslee. Their meeting would have been perilous. The Amba.s.sador had received his death-stroke in their presence.

Physicians, police, reporters, all demanded minute descriptions of the event, and from the first Forbes blurred the account so that Persis should not be drawn into it. He emphasized the strenuous diplomatic labors of the last week and the final afternoon. He italicized the presence of Mr. Enslee at the moment of death, which came, he said, without immediate explanation. He described how the Amba.s.sador's father had died--just died while pulling on his overshoes.

He lied about the last words of the Amba.s.sador in spirit at least, for it was sadly incomplete truth to say that the Amba.s.sador, after discussing trivial matters, had said, "Mr. Enslee, I must tell you good night," and fallen to the floor.

Yet the account was not questioned. Enslee was too befuddled to know or, when the shock sobered him, to remember. Persis could be trusted to keep silent. In fact, she retired from view "prostrated with the shock." It was explained that the Amba.s.sador had been a cla.s.smate of her father's, an old friend of the family's.

The story was telegraphed and cabled about the world. As usual, every newspaper published a minutely circ.u.mstantial account with a pretendedly _verbatim_ statement of the last words, and, as usual, the accounts were as discrepant mutually as they were commonly remote from the truth.

The idea that the Amba.s.sador's death might be concerned with an intrigue between Mrs. Enslee and Captain Forbes occurred perhaps only to one mind on earth, and that the too-sophisticated brain of a reporter in New York, a brindle-haired man with half of one eyebrow gone. He could not confirm his suspicion even enough for publication, so he hid it in the cellar of his soul, alongside the memory of seeing Persis Cabot walk out of a lonely forest with a man he afterward learned to be Forbes.

When this reporter--Hallard, his name was--was comfortably drunk he would discuss New York society's rotten state of morals, usually with a horrified barkeeper, forgetting his own morals and that of his cla.s.s and of the other cla.s.ses low and middle that he knew well enough. He would add: "There's lovely li'l lady growin' a peach of a scan'al--um-m, a pippin!--swee' li'l dynamite bomb. Story's going to break some day, and I'm lovely li'l feller's goin' to break it."

But he would not tell the name. He was holding that in trust for whatever newspaper should be employing his fanatic loyalty at the time of the break. And he was waiting, listening, following.

Persis had been soft-hearted enough to feel the pity of the Amba.s.sador's death. She had wept a little for her stricken enemy, and she suffered some acute stabs of repentance as the instrument of his a.s.sa.s.sination.

But regret was mingled with the lilt of victory and successful evasion--even with blasphemous prayers of grat.i.tude to the Lord for saving her from exposure in the matter. She had fallen on her knees to pour out this thanksgiving, and piously or impiously promised her Lord not to be indiscreet again.

One's G.o.d is apt to be one's ideal servant magnified. As the daughters of joy in old Florence used to keep a votive Mary in their rooms and pray to it for success in their offices, so Persis whispered to her heaven words of praise and grat.i.tude for aid in escaping the consequences of her mad whim to nestle in Forbes' arms.

She went to the Amba.s.sador's funeral, partly as a tribute of awesome esteem, partly as good sportsmans.h.i.+p toward a beaten adversary, and chiefly because it would have been conspicuous to stay away when almost every other American in Paris was sure to be there. She compelled Willie to go along, an unwilling and unwitting chaperon.

She saw Forbes in the church, but at a distance, and noted with a gush of pity how haggard and lonely he seemed. She hoped that not all of his grief was for his dead friend. She longed to go to him with comfort, but she ventured only a nod from afar and one of her slow, sweet, tender smiles.

Forbes had been kept intensely active at the Emba.s.sy, where the Consul took over the interrupted duties of the Amba.s.sador's office, but left to Forbes the personal details of the funeral ceremony, the closing up of the house, and the arrangements for getting Mildred back to New York.

The Amba.s.sador's body was to be taken home to America on board a war-s.h.i.+p proffered by the French Republic.

For three days Forbes was too grimly busy and too grief-stricken to feel more than a longing to see Persis; an impossible desire without impulse to achieve it.

Mildred was, for once, demanding help instead of giving it. The loss of her father was a devastation in her soul. She clung to Forbes as to a brother. Had Persis seen her in his arms she might have felt a jealousy; but not if she could have seen Forbes' heart. That was filled only with a sense of shame. He felt that in denying Mildred his love he had robbed the old man of his last great wish. At times he reproached himself with the very murder of his best friend, the murder of a great statesman, the n.o.ble father of a n.o.ble woman. And the motive of the a.s.sa.s.sination was his obstinate devotion to another man's wife!

People have a genius for remorse as for other emotions, and Forbes was of those who can mercilessly indict their own souls. Storms of self-condemnation were succeeded by storms of longing. About him hovered the tantalizing beckoning vision of Persis. He was mad to see her. He kept alternately vowing that he would not go near her and wondering when he should.

At first he dared not make an effort to see her, because he feared to involve her and because he had not a moment he could call his own. He was burdened with tasks of every sort, and in and out of his office he was beset with correspondents like sparrows demanding crumbs of news to cable to America. He had no leisure of his own except the black hours when he sank into his bed.

He would trudge to his room so exhausted, so drowsy, that he could hardly get his clothes off. The moment he lay down he was the prey to a swarm of black emotions that swooped about him like bats in a cave, swooped and shot and chittered, swept him with their vile wings and fastened their claws in his hair. He reproached himself with every wickedness and worthlessness from hideous ingrat.i.tude to murder and adultery that dared not take what it l.u.s.ted for.

Sleepless nights and restless days wore him out until the funeral, an affair of great pomp and enormous impressiveness. When he saw Persis in the church her beauty was overwhelming in the black costume she wore under the shadow of a black hat.

Somehow, after the funeral ceremony, the prayers, and the long ritual, with which the church formally restored the soul to the heaven from which it emigrated and the body to the earth of which it was made, there came a great relief to Forbes--the restful word "Finis."

That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt the relaxation of a burden removed. She almost collapsed into sleep at the table, and her maid supported her to her room. She had wept herself out.

Forbes envied her nothing but her fluency in weeping. He carried about with him the ache of the tears a man feels but cannot release, the unshed tears that scratch the eyes like blown grit. He longed to be a boy again and cry his heart out as he had cried when his father was brought home dead. He longed to weep stormily as he had wept when the boy he was had been denied some luxury he greatly desired--honey, or a staying home from school, or some wild animal for a pet.

The thought of Persis came to him now with the charm of all three--honey, truancy to duty, and danger. He lifted the telephone from the rack to ask her permission to call. He put it down again, his heart beating as if he had touched a snake. He went out into the air.

It was a typical, sharp, wet winter night in Paris, the chill going with a peculiar directness straight to the marrow of the bones and freezing the body from within outward. Forbes had buffeted blizzards and the still, grim, icy airs of Dakota when the mercury seemed to crowd into the bulb of the thermometer to keep warm. But he wondered if he had ever been so cold in his life as he was now, when the thermometer had not reached even the zero of the French centigrade.

Paris was not Paris. The sidewalks were not peopled with tables, and the restaurants were deserted within. There were few people abroad, for the audiences were at this hour in the theaters and the home-keepers were at home. n.o.body loitered in the streets but a few miserables, and they were wretchedly cold.

Forbes was so desperately lonely that he resolved to call upon Persis, even if he had to talk to her husband. He walked to the Meurice, but dared not turn in; he went on by. Later he was back again. Three times his courage--or his cowardice--failed him. The last time he stopped short as if he heard a sudden "Halt!"

Willie Enslee was just stepping into a car with two other men, violently American and manifestly bent on finding in Paris what Paris manufactures for American visitors.

Willie paused and cast his eyes along the street idly while he waited for the other two to precede him. Forbes stepped behind a shelter till Willie vanished.

Forbes, the brave, the upright, found himself dodging to escape Willie's fishy eyes, found himself chuckling over Willie's blindness. Then he cursed himself for a reptile. He turned away from the hotel and started back to his apartment, groaning to himself, "The woman doesn't live that can make a sneak of me."

CHAPTER LX

When he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled about and hurried back to the hotel; asked for Monsieur _et_ Madame Enslee; sent up his card; wished he had it back; received a summons to come up; cursed the slowness of the Parisian _ascenseur_; wished it would fall and kill him; moved toward Persis' door as to his execution; and was ushered in by Nichette, who was cloaked and bonneted for an evening out. She left him a moment, then came back and rattled off a string of French, from which he gleaned that he was _voulez-vous'd_ to seat himself and attend a little moment. Then Nichette left him and hastened to the corner of the street, where a little waiting _piou-piou_ s.h.i.+vered in his uniform.

The hostility Forbes read in Nichette's look was merely her impatience at being kept a few moments longer from her sergeant after having been detained an hour by a quarrel of the Enslees--a quarrel ending in a defiant announcement from Willie that he was going to see the wickedest show he could find in Paris, and from Persis an hilarious "_Bonne chance!_ I hope you find somebody to take you off my hands for a while!"

This had horrified Willie as a sacrilege, and he had regretted his vow.

But in the court of the hotel he found two Americans who had typically arrived in Paris, and bibulously prepared for a night of social investigation without having taken the trouble to learn a word of French, the distinction of coins, or the system of cab fares and tips.

They welcomed Enslee as a life-saver, embraced him, and bade him confirm their worst suspicions of Paris.

This Forbes did not know, and he misinterpreted Nichette's brusquerie.

His own thoughts were brusque. He loathed himself, and hated Persis and blamed her as if she had cast down a net from her window and dragged him to her feet.

He paced the lavishly furnished reception-room of the suite and resolved to escape before it was too late. The thought of the cold loneliness of the streets, of the town, of the world, held him back. He was unutterably forlorn. He sank into a chair and clenched his hands together.

Then he heard Persis' voice. It came through the glistening portieres masking the doors to the room adjoining, a kind of living-room. Music and welcome and all of Persis' beauty were in the little hospitable words:

"Come in here, Harvey, won't you? I can't budge, and I'm all by myself."

Wondering where she was and how he should find her, he pushed through the curtains timidly, as timidly as Joseph entering Potiphar's wife's boudoir.

He found Persis cuddled up on a chaise longue of gold and satin. She was almost lost in a jumble of parcels and toys and knickknacks. She had been writing addresses, and the fingers she gave into his were smudged with ink.

She sat like a sultana, with her feet curled under her. She wore a light confection of a house-gown of some astonis.h.i.+ngly attractive hue, with plentiful display of white lace and arms and bosom and a good deal of stocking. She wore a boudoir-cap fetchingly awry.