Part 50 (1/2)
He cried out against her self-portrait as a libel. ”Oh, Persis, don't tell me that you are mercenary--a woman with a big heart like yours.”
”I'm not mercenary exactly; I loathe money as money, but I like nice things. I have to have them. I'm trying to be honest with myself and with you--in time--before it's too late. It's hard; but I didn't arrange the world, did I? I didn't choose my own soul, did I? But I've got to get along with what was given me, haven't I? I tell you I'd ruin your life, Harvey. You'd divorce me in a year.”
”Don't talk like that, or you will ruin your own life! There's a big tragedy in store for you, Persis, unless you--”
She was so tortured with disillusion and with the death of her first romance that she grew very hard.
”Well, so long as it isn't the tragedy of being unable to pay my bills and of eating my own cooking I can stand it. I'd rather be unhappy than shabby. But it's growing late; we must get back.”
He aided her to her feet, untied the horses, and offered her his hand for a mounting-block. But she said:
”We can walk quicker here than we can ride.” Taking her bridle in her arm, she set out swiftly. She seemed once more to be running away from something--a shadow of poverty, no doubt. He felt unspeakably sorry for her. Again he was about to offer her back her heart when an abrupt light broke over her face. She paused, laughed, turned to him.
”What a fool I am! My father set my sister up in business as a British peeress and bought her her husband and settled a whacking dower on her.
He can do the same for me and keep the money in this country--and get me a real husband. He could give me enough for us both to live on comfortably.”
”I reckon I could hardly accept that arrangement,” Forbes said, as gently as he might.
”You see!” she cried out. ”You expect me to murder my pride and accept poverty, but you won't accept wealth because you must keep your pride.
You couldn't object to my having the money to spend on myself, could you?”
”No, I could hardly object to that,” he said.
”Well, then, if everything goes right with my father's plans we'll have love and money and all. It will be wonderful--heaven on earth! Kiss me!”
She put up her lips, and he kissed them and found them bitter-sweet.
Then she strode on with a lilting joy, humming a song and putting her horse to his paces to keep up with her. Forbes remembered what Senator Tait had said of her father's impending doom, and her rapture was a heartbreak to him--a final irony.
As they issued from the green cave of the forest and walked down to the State Road to take the saddle, a motor came along. Two men were in it.
The driver stopped the car in front of Persis, and the other man lifted his hat. It disclosed a shock of brindle hair and half of one eyebrow gone.
”Can you tell me if this road leads to Briarcliff?” he asked.
”Yes, I think so,” Persis answered.
”Thank you, Miss Cabot,” he called out, as the car whirred away.
Persis stared after him in amazement. ”Now who was that? How did he know my name?”
”By your pictures in the papers,” Forbes suggested.
”No,” said Persis; ”I've met him somewhere. Oh, I know. He's a reporter on the--some paper. Lord, I hope he didn't misconstrue our being here. I didn't like the grin on his face.”
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
The reporter's fleering smile and his acidulous ”Thank you, Miss Cabot,”
convinced Persis that the man had, with the sophistication reporters learn too well, put the worst possible interpretation on her forest promenade with Forbes. This was all that it needed to turn her disappointment into dismay, her bewilderment into panic. She had lost rhythm with her life and the world.