What Will People Say? Part 90

"What have I done? What have I done?"

"You've killed me, that's all," she answered, with a curious amus.e.m.e.nt.

"It was such a funny thing for you to do, so old-fas.h.i.+oned."

There is a strange fact about wounds in the heart. If they are not so deep that they flood the lungs and smother out life they inspire a wild desire to talk, a fluttering garrulity.

So Persis, now, with that madly st.i.tching shuttle in her breast, and that red seepage from her side, had unnumbered things to say. She chattered desperately, disjointedly:

"Oh, I suppose it had to come. It's what I get for trying to run things my own way. And now the tango-shop's closed up. But it's so funny that you should be the one to--and with a knife! You didn't mar my face, anyway. I thank you for that much. I'd hate to have my face hidden at the funeral. I should hate to make an ugly cor--"

Her lips refused the awful word as a thing unclean, abominable. Her body and all the voluptuous company of her senses felt panic-stricken at the thought of dissolution. She moaned and struggled with her chair.

"No, no, not that! What have I to do with death? I'm not ready to die.

I'm not ready to die."

Willie got up and ran to her left side, but shrank back from what was there, and moved cautiously round on the slippery floor, crying: "You're too beautiful to die, too beautiful! You'll not die! The doctors will save you!"

"They must come very soon, then," Persis said, "for I'm bleeding--oh, so fast." She looked down along her side and complained: "See, my gown is quite ruined. And it was such a pretty gown. I'm afraid of my blood. How it gushes! Will it never stop? And it hurts! Willie, it hurts!"

In a long writhe of pain she gathered the table-cloth about her left side as if to stanch its flow. There was a rattle of falling gla.s.ses and a c.h.i.n.k of tumbled silver as she moaned: "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" And she turned her head this way and that, panting as one pursued, bewildered, utterly at a loss. "Oh, what shall I do? I don't want to die. It's an awful thing to die--just now of all times, with no chance to make good the wrong I've done."

"You can't die; I won't let you die. You're too beautiful to die,"

Willie protested, and then turned to pleading: "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to strike you, Persis, at all. It was just my hand. It wasn't me that stabbed you, Persis. I couldn't hurt you, Persis."

"Oh, that's all right, Willie. I understand. I understand things better now, with so few minutes more to live. It is you that must forgive me. I haven't been a good wife to you, Willie. And he--he, of all men!--said I wasn't worth fighting for! Faithless to you--faithless to him! But oh, G.o.d knows, most faithless to myself. And now I must die for it."

"You are too beautiful to die! I won't let you die! You can't die!"

"But I must, boy. Don't hate me too much. I didn't mean to harm you.

Some day--long after--you'll forgive me, won't you?"

"Oh, if you only won't die I'll forgive you anything."

"That's awfully nice of you, Willie," she said, with almost a smile. "I wonder if G.o.d will be as polite? They--they usually pray for dying people, don't they? I'm afraid they'll never get a doctor in time, to say nothing of a preacher. So you'd better pray for me, Willie."

The idea was so ridiculously tragic that she laughed; but he would not so far surrender her as to pray. He sobbed:

"You've got to live! I don't know a single prayer. You mustn't die, I tell you. You've got to live!" And he wept his little heart out as he knelt at her side, and, clinging to her hand, mumbled it with kisses.

She wept, too; moaned, and dreaded the black Beyond, which she must voyage prayerless. Still she must talk. From her silence came a frail, thin voice like a far-off cry.

"It's growing very dark, Willie--very dark! And I'm drifting, I wonder where? Can you hear my voice away off there? Better throw me a kiss, and wish me bon voyage! for this--is the last--of Persis. Poor Persis!"

Something of old habit reminded her of the gossip that would break into storm at her death. This spurred her heart to strive again. She clutched at the table and at Willie's arm and shoulder, and held herself erect as with claws, while she babbled:

"Willie, Willie, I've just thought. They'll try you for--for murder. The newspapers--the newspapers! Oh, my poor father! And they'll put you in jail! That mustn't happen to you--not to one of your family!--not through me!--no--no, it just mustn't! You must run--run--run!"

Enslee s.h.i.+vered at the future, and would have fled if he could have found the strength to rise from his knees.

And then the swinging door puffed softly, sardonically, and on the tapestries Tristram and Isoud looked at each other and then at her and shook their heads in pity.

Crofts, who had neither heard nor been told, came in with that eminent champagne in a dingy and ancient bottle.

He went behind the screen to untwist the wires and rub away the spider-webs. Then he came forward toward Willie's place to pour the first few drops there, according to the rite, before he filled Persis'

gla.s.s. He had eased out the cork, and the soul of the wine was frothing forth into the swathing cloth when he blinked at the empty chair; then his eyes went across to Persis. He stared at her in mute amazement. She stared at him. She beckoned.

He put the bottle on the table and shuffled toward her.

She motioned him nearer with a limp and tremulous hand, and he bent down to hear her tiny voice.

"Crofts, come closer--listen to me--do you hear?" He nodded.

"Perfectly?" He nodded, wringing his dry old hands.

"Well," she began, "I must tell you--and you must remember. Mr. Enslee and I had a--a little quarrel--and I--I lost my temper--you know--and seized the knife and--and stabbed myself."

The old man did nothing unbecoming to his caste, but he stood doddering and longed to die in place of that beautiful youth. She beckoned him nearer again, and spoke in a strangled voice: "Remember, I did it--myself! Re-mem--"

Her head fell forward, her exquisite chin rested in her bosom. Her body collapsed upon itself, and only the arms of the chair and the table kept it from rolling out on the floor.

But as if even this last ugliness of att.i.tude were intolerable to her, she fought against the chair and the table, and pushed and slid backward till her head was erect. And she was whispering courage to herself, hoa.r.s.ely:

"Come--come--Persis!"

She seemed to be trying to die like a thoroughbred, a good loser.

And then her head rolled back in the billows of her hair, with the jeweled crown pointing downward and her eyes staring upward. Her wan, pouting, parted lips and the long arch of her perfect throat were themselves a prayer for mercy, offering up beauty as its own undoing and its own excuse.

She was dead.

THE AFTERMATH

I

We cannot live to ourselves alone, nor die so. If a man or a dog crawl off to perish in a wilderness, immediately death sets in motion a great activity. On the ground ants muster, flies drum and pound; in the earth worms make haste upward. On the empty sky a speck appears, wings gather, buzzards are overhead. In the bushes eyes peer, paws are lifted and set down with caution; coyotes, hyenas arrive. A city of scavengery is founded and begins to flourish.

Persis had said, "This is the last of Persis." As if there were ever the last of anybody or anything.

Of Persis it was almost the beginning. People were to hear of her now who had never known of her existence. She who had never done anything ambitious or earnest in any large sense was to become the cause of world-wide debate. The newspapers she dreaded so much were to give her head-lines above panics, wars, and empires.

When Persis screamed at the horror and the shame of being knifed, and Roake appeared, and she told him that she was ill, he believed her. He dispersed the servants. They knew, as servants always know, that a quarrel had been raging; but family quarrels were the staple of their lives, and they suspected nothing unusual.