What Will People Say? Part 91

Persis had told Roake to call the nearest physician. The telephone is the confusion of distance; it mixes near and far hopelessly. So Roake called the family physician, Dr. Thill; caught him dressing for the opera. He promised to "be right over."

Then Roake went back to give Mrs. Enslee this word. He found the woeful spectacle of Persis no longer able to hide her wound, no longer thinking of appearances. Enslee was on his knees sobbing. Crofts, too good a servant to express his emotions noisily, had not fallen to the floor or sunk into a chair; he had turned a little aside and stood waiting the next command; only, rubbing his hands together a little harder than usual, while the tears poured across his eyelids.

Roake tiptoed to him and put his hand on his arm, and whispered, "Mr.

Crofts."

Crofts put his finger to his quivering lips and, beckoning his underling aside, whispered to him: "No word of this to the rest of the house, mind you. We'd best carry Mrs. Enslee to her room. Then we must help the master to his."

They took Persis' chair by the arms dreadfully; but Crofts could not lift his share of the weight. It was necessary to call Chedsey, and to explain things a little to him and to pledge him to silence for the honor of the house. He sickened of his burden and nearly fainted in the little elevator as they crowded into it with their hideously beautiful freight.

Nichette had the bed ready, and Enslee's man was helping her. Also two other chambermaids had gathered to talk of the scream that had shot through the house. Nichette banished the men while she took what care she could of what remained of Persis--so different an office now from what it had always been to Nichette.

Crofts told Roake to see to things below, and Roake and Chedsey went down to the dining-room. Here there were tasks that were not pleasant.

They stared at the ruined graces of the table, the spilled wine and the red-stained flowers, the gla.s.ses shattered and fallen, as if an orgy had preceded there. The cook was told that the rest of the dinner would not be served. The laundress was called from her supper to take away the red table-cloth and the napkin. The housekeeper must know that Roake and Chedsey were not to be charged with the breakage. The kitchen-maid was sent to scrub the marble, and on her knees she must follow the crimson trail to the door of the elevator, and wash that, too.

Before the doctor arrived a dozen people had been told that the mistress of the household had killed herself. It was easy to warn them that loyalty to the family imposed absolute silence. But what money or what threat or plea could ever bribe a loose tongue to keep a secret for somebody else?

Then Dr. Thill came in his motor. He left his huge fur coat on the hall floor, and, das.h.i.+ng up-stairs, flung off his evening coat and his white waistcoat, and rolled back his cuffs. He wrought upon the exquisite bare flesh of Persis and upon the stopped clock of her heart with all his science; yet he could not make her anything but a cadaver.

As he toiled he asked questions. Crofts and Nichette told him what they knew, or thought they knew. Willie was supported in and questioned.

Remorse and fright made him pitiable. Still there remained a fox-like intelligence. He told the doctor what Persis had told Crofts, but he was so full of contradictions and confusion that Dr. Thill quickly suspected the truth. He was enraged and revolted. The cruelty of the murder was bad enough; but the wantonness of destroying so perfect a machine, as he found Persis to be, was more wicked in his eyes.

Still, he was a typical family doctor. People who were dead were outside his province. His clients were the living, and his business to keep them alive and well. He had foiled death-bed revenges, aborted scandals that threatened ruin to the young; risked his life and his liberty for his patients. His trade was fighting the ravages of sin and error; saving people, not destroying them. He felt no call to deliver an Enslee to the electric chair.

He put Willie to bed, jammed bromides into him, and forbade him to talk or to see any one. He telephoned Persis' father and Willie's mother to come at once. He told them as delicately as he could. It was like breaking a thunderbolt gently. Persis' father was stricken frantic. He could not believe that his beautiful, his wonderful girl was dead. He ran to her bedside, lifted her in his arms as if she were again his little child, called to her, wept horribly over her, imagined the truth, and vowed every revenge.

After the first tempests had worn him out he began to feel that it would not comfort her to add scandal to her fate. He loathed the very name of Enslee; but he had profited by it; he was still involved with it financially; it was his daughter's final name. He joined the conspiracy to bury the truth in Persis' grave. To say that she had killed herself was an appeal for mercy; to proclaim that her indignant husband had executed her for her crimes was a d.a.m.ning epitaph. He solaced himself with the thought that it would be her wish.

Mrs. Enslee was first and last Willie's mother. Her thought was of him; her heart was his advocate alone. She committed herself utterly to his defense.

Dr. Thill was ready to give a certificate that Persis had died of heart-failure. Even the story of suicide would attract the noisy attention of the journals. He left the matter in abeyance for the moment. The needful thing was a few hours of saving peace and silence.

He would be glad even to postpone the news from the next morning's to the next evening's papers.

But little things thwart great schemes.

II

One of the Enslee housemaids, who had been flirting with the brindle-haired reporter Hallard, remembered in the midst of the panic that he was to take her that night to a moving-picture theater. He would be loitering in the area now. She ran out bareheaded to explain that she could not keep her engagement. When he asked why, she told him falteringly that there had been a death in the family. She apologized for permitting such an affair to interfere with her promised evening out, but he gasped:

"A death in the Enslee family! Gosh, I've spent so many dismal hours on death-watches that it's great to have you slip me a nice little ready-made death like this. Whose was it? Who died?"

The maid felt that she had a clue now to Mr. Hallard's profession: from his cheerful reception of such news he must be an undertaker. She explained that it was Mrs. Willie Enslee who was dead.

"My G.o.d! the young one?" he cried, afire with the news possibilities.

"Yes; she killed herself."

This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew greedy as a miser.

"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters called at the house?"

"n.o.body; only the doctor."

Hallard looked at his watch. He had time to build up a big story, which was good; but there was time enough for the other papers also to arrive on the ground, which was bad.

"Why did she kill herself?"

"n.o.body knows. She had a terrible quar'l with Mr. Enslee, though."

"What about?"

"n.o.body could find out."

Hallard thought hard. The name of Forbes occurred to him, for he remembered the time he had seen Forbes with Persis.

"Did Captain Forbes call to-day?"

The maid stared. "Ain't you a wonder! How did you know?"

"Did they quarrel about him?"

"n.o.body knows they did, but all of us feels sure they did."

Hallard bade his inamorata good night with genuine affection. She had been worth while.

He went to the door of the house and reached it just as Persis' father arrived in his car and was helped up the steps. Hallard tried to push in with him, but was thrust out. He sent his card in, and it was returned to him.

Dr. Thill threw up his hands in despair at the card. Reporters seemed to be as ubiquitous as microbes. But he realized that it was now necessary to make a formal announcement to the papers. He wrote out for Hallard a statement, and had the housekeeper telephone it to a press bureau, that "Mrs. William Enslee, during a period of mental aberration, committed suicide at her home at seven-thirty o'clock, in the presence of her husband. Mr. Enslee is prostrated with the shock." It was a simple announcement.

Meanwhile Hallard, rebuffed at the front door and at the tradesman's entrance, and rebuffed by telephone when he called up from a booth in the nearest drug-store, was trembling with the opportunities almost within his reach. His was the ecstasy of the writer of tragedies who exults in every new horror that he can inflict on his characters. Only, the Hallards are dealing in real lives, and not feigned.

Hallard's scent for news quickened at the thought of Forbes. Easily enough he learned the name of Forbes' hotel. He hurried there and sent up his card, with a penciled note: "Would appreciate expert opinion regard to probable fate Philippine Islands in case of war with j.a.pan."

III

The card found Forbes not yet recovered from the hurricane of pa.s.sion that had swept through his heart. He was dumfounded at what he had done and said; at his ruthless cruelty, his revulsions from love to hate and back again; at the supreme insolence of his treatment of the husband he had wronged.

He found Enslee's little silver-handled revolver in his pocket and tossed it on the table. He felt that he ought to turn it against himself in self-execution. It was too weak an instrument for such a business. He got out his own big army revolver. But he was not of the type that is capable of suicide, any more than Persis was.

He began to pack his things for his return to hard service away from the frivolities of the city. The sight of his uniforms made him the soldier once more. He grew homesick for the brisk salute of his soldiers, the gruff and wholesome joviality of fellow-officers, the n.o.ble reality of his chosen career.