CHAPTER XLII

There were not many more dances before Willie, in his new capacity of

Benedick-to-be, declared for early closing hours, and ordered his guests

off to bed, warning them that the next morning the caravan would set out

on its return betimes in order that Persis might "break the news to her

father as soon as he got back." So Willie phrased it, and flattered

himself that it was rather considerate and tactful to put it so.

When good-nights were said, and Forbes had gone to his room, Ten Eyck

came in to smoke a night-cap cigar. His words were congratulatory, but

his intent was sympathetic.

"You looked a bit cut up, old boy," he said, "when Willie, with his

usual tact, exploded the news of his marriage. I hope you weren't hit

too hard. I warned you, you know."

"I know," said Forbes; "I promised you I wouldn't take Miss Cabot

seriously. I--I admit I was surprised. That's all. And it rather shocks

me to think of so--so--of her tying up with a man like Enslee. That's

all."

"It's her own choice," said Ten Eyck. "And it's a good choice. She can't

bankrupt the Enslee estates, and she'll earn all she squanders. Being

the wife of Willie Enslee is not going to be any sinecure, believe me.

"And the sooner she's married to Enslee and beyond your reach, the

better for your peace of mind and the efficiency of the U. S. A. Get

back on the job, Forbesy. You're too important a man to be wasting

yourself even on a siren like Persis. I believe in sirens, and I like to

hear 'em sing; but they don't convince me one little minute, and I drop

anchor at a safe distance from the reef. Promise me you won't let Persis

haunt you. Get yourself a pretty canary and forget the siren, eh what?"

"That's the best of advice," Forbes assented.

He thought that he sounded convinced; but Ten Eyck shook his head and

masked a sigh as a yawn.

"Am I as deadly as all that? And papa always told me that the man who

gives the best of advice might better have saved his breath for blowing

out his candle. Instead of more advice I will now do so. Good night!"

And he closed his door.

Forbes knew that Ten Eyck was right, and told himself so. He told

himself that common decency, self-respect, Persis-respect, and respect

for the rights of a host and a fiance forbade him to keep tryst with

Persis. And having resolved that the one thing he ought not to do was to

sneak down the servants' stairs, he sneaked down the servants'

stairs--after he had put out his light, opened his door delicately, and

waited till he heard Enslee open his door and tiptoe down to the

entrance hall.

As Forbes waited in that least poetic of bowers, the kitchen, he felt

like a thief. He had abundant time for pondering what a destroyer of

dignity love is. But Persis came at last, and so silently and so vaguely

through the moonlight that he could hardly believe her to be more than a

phantom.

She gave him a hand, however, that was warm and human, and when he

caught her in his arms and she yielded rather than struggle, her body

was as real as rose-leaves and lilies, a delight to his embrace; and her

cheek such a sweetmeat to his lips that he dismissed all scruples as

follies beneath contempt.

When she had extricated herself from his clasp she took his hand and led

him through the butler's pantry and its swinging door, across the

moonlit dining-room, through a majestic somber portal into a cave of

black gloom, which was the salon.

"Have you a match?" she whispered. "If you haven't I have."

"I have a cigar-lighter," he whispered.

He snapped the little engine, and a small, blue flame threw a sickly

light that helped them to find a channel through the islands of chairs

and divans and tables, to the lofty hangings masking the windows.

The wee taper gave Forbes a glimpse as well of the place he was in.

This superb chamber had not been opened to the present guests. It was

still in its winter garb, the portraits in shrouds, and chairs and

tables disguised in winding sheets. There was the hint of a mortuary

vault about the place. The walls were of Istrian stone hung with gray

tapestries of unhappy lovers. The floor was of marble devoid of

rugs--they were rolled up against the walls like mummies. The mantel was

a huge carved structure. In this dull light it might have been a funeral

monument. Noises seemed to be repeated here with spooky comment, and to

Forbes the spirit in the air was ominous.

Persis knew the room well, and remembered it as she had first seen it

glowing with color, flooded with sunlight, and crowded with gorgeous

people; she did not feel the oppression that weighed on Forbes.

To her it was a clandestine romance--the sort of poetic encounter she

had read about in ever so many books. Her heart was beating with terror

of discovery and ecstasy of adventure. When she gained the window she

reached up and persuaded the hangings back on gently tinkling rings. A

well of moonlight was revealed--a broad, padded seat in front of a tall

mullioned window. Within the window was a smaller window, and she swung

this back.

Into the dreary air of the unvisited room flowed a little brook of

perfumed breeze scented with the lilacs it streamed across. It shook

with all gentleness the hair about Persis' face and the soft lace around

her throat. For now she was not in boyish riding-duds with collar and

cravat, but in the exquisite trifle of a silken house gown she had put

on for dinner.

She was so beautiful in Forbes' eyes that the very faults he had found

in her seemed to enhance her. The absence of utility and reliability and

other homely virtues seemed to leave her the unmarred unity of futile,

fragile loveliness. But this was the fantasy of the moment only. She had

no sooner spoken than she was committed to something more than a vision

for the eyes.

She smiled at him, and he gathered her up into his arms once more and

gave and took a blindly sweet kiss from her smiling lips.

When he released her from this constraint she sighed luxuriously:

"Well, Harvey, it seems as if all the happiness in the world had to be

sneaked, doesn't it?"

Instantly he realized again the dishonesty of their communion.

"Is that your creed?" he groaned.

"It's my experience. Stolen fruit, you know--"

"I hate stolen fruit. I want to have the right to own--you."

"You do--pretty nearly."

"I want everybody to know it. I want you to be my wife. It's not too

late, if you love me."

"Oh, there's no question of that, for I do love you. You are--it's funny

how hard it is to find new expressions for anything you really mean,

isn't it? All I can think of is the same old comic-paper line: you are

the only man I ever loved. But--oh, Lord, if you only had a little more

money! For I sha'n't have any, Harvey. My father can't give me any. I've

just found that out. He can't get enough to save himself. I can get

enough for us both if I take Willie.

"It's horrible talk, Harvey, but it's business. It's for your sake as

much as mine. If I married you I'd drive you mad. I'd rather have you

hate me lovingly, as you do now, than have you hate me loathingly, as

you would if I became a millstone round your neck. You'd be faithful and

work hard and try to love me, but I'd be simply unendurable.

"My brother--you haven't met him; he's loafing through college--he knows

more about sport than he does about books. He's always talking about

prize-fighters and class. He's always telling about some poor fellow

getting knocked senseless because he strayed out of his class. I

remember one brilliant welterweight champion who lasted only one round

with a broken-down heavyweight. My brother said the welterweight got

what was coming to him because he hadn't intelligence enough to stay

where he belonged. I'm trying to do that. I'm horribly tempted just to

fling everything to the winds and run away with you. I'm starving for

your love. My heart says, 'Put love before everything else--'"

"Obey your heart!" Forbes broke in, at last. She shook her head.

"But my brain says, 'Think of the long, long future!' A woman spends so

little of her married life with her husband. It's the long days that

count, the days she spends with other women, with rivalries, jealousies,

with economy, economy, economy. That's what I'm afraid of. Economy would

play the devil with me, Harvey. Two thousand a year and forage! I'm

afraid of it."

"So you will marry this rich man. And then?"

"Then I shall probably learn to hate him."

"And to love somebody else?"

"I shall never love anybody but you, Harvey. I've never told anybody

else my real mind as I have you, for I am trained to conceal--always to

conceal."

"But don't conceal from yourself the failure you are going to make of

your life. No woman can play false to her heart and prosper. I beg you

not to despise my love."

"Despise your love!" she cried. "It's myself I despise. Ah, Harvey, try

to understand me."

"I can't! I can only warn you."

"Oh, don't warn me! Don't lecture me! Just love me! Let's not think of

the future--it's always full of tragedy. If we married in all our love,

we should meet so much unhappiness! The most loving love matches I've

known have burned out--ended in divorces and open scandal, or scandal

concealed like ostriches for everybody to see and laugh at. Two people

fall in love and meet opposition and run away together to a preacher.

Then they have nobody to oppose them, so they oppose each other. And by

and by they run away from each other and don't meet till they get to a

divorce court in some small town to avoid the notoriety."

"And you think that you will escape that by marrying without love?"

"Yes. Because I don't expect love. I sha'n't expect Willie to be a

romantic saint, and then hate him for not living up to my

specifications."

"But yourself--your body--you will give that to him?"

She closed her eyes and turned ghastly white as she whispered: "I

suppose so. That's the usual price a woman pays, isn't it?"

He flung her from him as something unclean, common, cheap.

From the huddle she was in she whispered:

"I understand. I--I don't blame you."

There was a sort of burlesque saintliness about her meekness that

nauseated him. He did not realize that she forgave him because his rage

seemed a proof of his love. She would have forgiven him with bruised

lips if he had struck her in the face.

He loathed himself for his vicious wrath, but he almost loathed her more

for compelling it. Yet when she got to her feet and stood clinging to

the velvet curtain, and mumbled:

"It was better that this happened before we were married, wasn't it? And

now that you are cured of loving me I may go, mayn't I?"

He stared at her; his lips parted to utter words he could not find; he

put out his hands, and she went back to his arms. And she cried a

little, not forgetting even in her grief to sob stealthily lest some one

hear. And he understood that, too, and hated her for her eternal

vigilance. Even while he kissed the brackish tears from her cheeks and

eyes he hated her for being so beautiful and so wise, so full of passion

and so discreet.

She wept but a little while, and then she was quiet, reclining against

him in silence and meditating.

And he pondered the mystery of his own behavior. A sense of duty and a

sense of honor had always guided his acts hitherto. This woman acted

upon him like the drug that doctors use for controlling violent patients

and the criminal insane; it leaves the senses all alive but annuls the

power of motion.

Here he was, convinced to the very depths of his soul that it was

abominable to embrace the betrothed of another, yet he did not take his

arms from about her, he did not put her away from him. Instead, he held

her fast even when she made to go. And yet he blamed her.

This much at least he accomplished in the long silence: he ceased to

blame Persis and accused himself, tried himself before the tribunal of

his own soul, and denounced himself as guilty of treason to himself and

her and the laws of the world. But he did not put her from him.

And now, having condemned himself, he followed the usual program and

forgave himself. He bent down and kissed her forehead and her hair, and

tightened his arms about her. She did not answer his kiss. Once more he

felt, as in the sunlight by the brook, that he held only the shell of

her, while her soul--that other man's soul of her--was gone voyaging.

But now it was in the cold of night, in the dark chill of a room long

closed up like a grave and her body was the only warmth in the room, or

in the world for him. It seemed to glow like an ember breathing rosily

in ashes.

And now gradually desire grew imperious, the angry, sullen desire of

Tristan seeing his Isolde given to another man to wife. He burned with

resentment at the ill-treatment accorded him by the fates, who saved his

love and her love for this mockery, this money-infected, money-paralyzed

romance. His wrath rose in revolt against a world where such a sarcasm

was possible. The laws of the world became suspect with the mercy of the

world. The pangs of disprized love were so bitter that he began to claim

revenge, revenge especially on her.

He clenched his arms about her with a new and different ardor--no longer

the sacred fervor of a lover who protects his affianced from himself,

but the outlaw that raids and desecrates.

She understood and was afraid and fought against him, but her mutinous

love fought for him. And nature, and the moonlight, and the scented

breeze purring at the window fought for him. All her beauty clamored to

surrender. She was already lost when some last impulse of horror cried

out against the irreparable profanation. Even as her arms went round him

she murmured:

"Help me! Harvey, help me!"