CHAPTER LXII

Never, it seems, has human ingenuity been able to devise a scheme of

guardianship that human ingenuity could not thwart. Seeing that seraglio

walls, and yashmaks, and eunuchs, and bow-strings, and scarlet letters,

and pillories, and divorce courts, and gossips have failed to scare

fidelity into the disloyal, perhaps the modern honor system is as good

as any. But the honor system is not infallible; and not all the spies of

Mrs. Grundy can coerce from without those who are not coerced from

within their own hearts.

For those who are willing to devote themselves to deceit and make an

industry of other people's property, opportunities have always been

infernally provided. Persis and Forbes did not find it difficult to be

alone. Solitudes seemed to be created suddenly in crowds, chances to

escape and to creep back undetected seemed to be brandished in their

faces. The unabated plague of the tango explained their presence at all

sorts of hours at all sorts of places. There were morning classes in new

steps; between the courses of luncheon at numerous restaurants in and

out of town there were dances, and these were prolonged till tea, and

after that till dinner, and on until whatever hour of closing the

individual cabareteer had arranged with the police. The private

hostesses seemed to vie with the restaurateurs.

The dancing frenzy had shown no signs of passing. It had developed into

a revolution that swept the world. Dancers who were yesterday unknown,

to-day were wealthy. A dancer and his wife had grown to such dimensions

of fame that influential people rented them a house on Fifth Avenue,

where lessons could be given at all hours. A girl who had danced in a

restaurant became a national figure and hired a hall. The clergy and the

editors fought in vain; the Kaiser and the Pope were unheeded; all the

nations danced; even the Japanese caught the contagion. New steps

abounded, became so complex that it was not easy to change partners. The

turkey-trot was laughably obsolete. Everything and everybody was

influenced by the tango in one of its countless forms. It had already

made itself an epoch in human history.

Willie Enslee was one of the stubborn minority that refused to dance or

go to dances. After a number of vain assertions of an authority he could

not enforce he ceased to concern himself with Persis' whereabouts; she

ceased to announce her program in advance or to report it afterward.

The motor-car was another immense enlargement of liberty--and license;

it was so easy to outstrip pursuit and outwit espionage. In two hours

one could vanish into the wilderness and return without evidence of

escape. At distant road-houses and motor-caravansaries the twang of

tango music troubled the country midnights.

And so the intrigue of Captain Forbes and Mrs. Enslee prospered and

established itself as the habit of their lives; their souls adapted

themselves to it. Precautions against discovery became second nature,

like precautions against disease and accident. They were bound together

in a kind of secret wedlock, what Tibullus called the _furtivi foedera

lecti_.

Persis, like another Guenevere, justified herself to herself by the

feeling that she was true to one Launcelot; she flirted with no one

else; she kept Willie's home in order as best she could; she paid him

the tribute of outward devotion and public respect. Above all, she

justified herself by her success. So far as she could see, not a human

being suspected her love for Forbes, not a breath of scandal had been

stirred.

And all the while gossip was busy with them; evidence accumulated

against them grain by grain, as sand-dunes are formed into walls.

Everybody spoke of the intrigue to everybody but those most concerned.

Nobody warned Persis or rebuked Persis or tattled to Willie. A few

fearless persons talked to Persis' father, but he could not believe, or,

believing, could not touch so repulsive a topic in his few meetings with

his daughter. How could a father accuse his little girl of outrages

against a commandment he had been afraid even to mention to her. Several

women broached the theme with Willie's mother, who had been suspicious

on her own account. She answered the gossips with fervent denials and

with vigorous defense of Persis; but she vowed to herself that she would

descend upon her daughter-in-law with vengeance. Yet, before Persis'

eyes she could only dissemble; then she would resolve to warn her son,

but she feared the terrific possibilities of lighting such a fuse.

Willie was like herself in so many ways, and half of her blood was from

the Spanish aristocracy through an international marriage.

Eventually people began to say that somebody must tell Willie, and some

day somebody might. Some day he might stumble upon some tryst, or open a

letter, or overhear a gossip's careless word.

Ten Eyck heard plenteous scandal, and he was heartbroken. Even his

cynicism could not stomach the intrigue. But even his affection could

not bring him to protest.

He had intervened once before in such a scandal; but the husband had

forgiven his wife because of her beauty and her gaiety, and both of them

had thereafter been his bitterest enemies, because he knew and had said

too much. Friends who had merely gossiped behind their backs were

reinstated to complete favor.

Everybody felt that Persis and Forbes, in their mad gallop across

another man's boundary line, were riding for a fall. But everybody was

fascinated by the breathlessness of the gallopade, the escapes from

disaster. Nobody cut Persis, omitted her from a list of invitations, or

treated her otherwise than as a valued and charming ornament to the

world. Nobody would desert her so long as she kept the saddle, held her

head up, and remained attractive.

But should she fall and be dragged in the dirt, then the panic would

come; then the majesty of public morals would assert itself, and her

friends would flee from her as if she appeared among them chalk-faced

and scaly-handed with leprosy.

Meanwhile the poison of their Judas life was wearing upon their own

souls. Forbes was growing restive to be at work again upon his career.

To be the messenger-boy of a woman's summons grew increasingly irksome.

He dreaded an official cognizance of his new career as home-wrecker, and

his innate decency was more and more rebellious against the outrages he

committed incessantly against his self-respect, his creeds, his codes,

his position.

And, last of all, a strange new horror assailed the basking luxury of

Persis. It dawned upon her that in spite of all her precautions nature

was about to make the use of her that all this rapture was for. Her

physician confirmed her dread, and congratulated her--and her husband!

She dared not ask his aid in foiling her destiny. She dared not ask

anybody's aid. Her life of pleasure-hunting had made a coward of her.

And so at length remorse found a lodging even in her voluptuous life.

She understood the fearful responsibility she had assumed to a future

soul. And she groveled in abject self-derision to think that even she

could not be sure of her child's legitimacy. So helpless a vessel for

nature's chemistry she was that she was not permitted to know even that!

And she could not so much as be sure whether she even wished it to be

love's child or the law's.

The treachery to her own child was so hideous that she would have killed

herself had she not dreaded to add murder to suicide. She longed to pour

out her woes to Forbes, but she could not bring herself to confess her

degradation. He only knew that somehow all the rapture was gone from

their union. It had lost even that compensation.

The thought came to Forbes that there was but one way to make their life

livable--to make it frank and public. Persis must enter the divorce

court, and as soon as possible after marry him. That sort of solution

for such intrigues had been much practised of late. It had become so

fashionable that protest was losing its vigor.

He opened the subject to Persis. She shrank from it with revulsion. She

could not tell him her secret even then; but it was a mighty argument to

herself against such a step. She gave other reasons cogent enough in her

opinion.

"Anything but divorce, Harvey. I'd rather die than go through it. Willie

couldn't do the polite thing. He is a Catholic, you know, and his

mother's Spanish blood boils at the divorce habit."

"Then if he won't give it, you can take it, anyway."

"But suppose he should fight. Suppose he should set detectives going

back over our trail or bribe the servants. Look at this morning's

papers--the ghastly head-lines about Mrs. Tom Corliss--her photographs!

Did you read the testimony of the maid at that big hotel? Suppose Willie

should get hold of that bellboy who was so insolent to us--the one we

didn't dare rebuke and had to tip so heavily. Did you read Mrs. Tom's

love letters yesterday? Only one paper dared to print them all. Mrs.

Neff said everybody bought it specially. Mrs. Neff laughed till she

cried.

"Wouldn't you rather die than go through with it? And, my God, how they

would tear me to pieces! The poor people and the middle-class people

push through the divorce court in droves--eighty divorces were granted

in two hours the other day, Murray Ten Eyck was telling me, and only one

paper mentioned it--in a paragraph! But if Mrs. Tom Corliss gets the

front page, what wouldn't they give to Mrs. Willie Enslee?"

Forbes said no more. Somehow he was reminded of the time when he was

dancing with Persis, and the rose light was suddenly changed to green.

There was a charnel odor in the air.