Part 64 (1/2)
”Then wait--wait!” Persis pleaded. ”Marriage is risky enough when there is no worry about money. But when the bills come in at the door love flies out at the window.”
Stowe seized Alice's hands with ardor. ”Don't listen to her, Alice.”
”But I'm frightened now,” Alice wailed. ”It's for your sake, Stowe. We mustn't--not yet. And now may I please go home where I can cry my eyes out.”
Persis in triumph called the address to the chauffeur. Stowe Webb, in the depths of dejection, left the cab and stared after it with eyes of bitter reproach.
Alice's tears were standing out like orient pearls impaled on eyelashes as she said good-by to Persis at her own curb.
”You hate me now,” said Persis, ”but you'll be very glad this happened some day.”
”I don't hate you,” said Alice. ”I know you're terribly wise; but I--I wish you hadn't come along.”
Persis laughed tenderly. ”It's only for your happiness, Alice darling.
Well, good-by!”
Persis felt that she had done an honest day's work of Samaritan wisdom, and ordered the cab to make haste to her dressmaker. A he-dressmaker it was, who, like a fas.h.i.+onable doctor, found it profitable to behave like a gorilla and abuse his clients. He turned on Persis and stormed up and down his show-room. He threatened to throw out all her costumes. She bore with him as meekly as if she were a ragged seamstress pleading for a job instead of the bride-elect of an Enslee.
When she had thus appeased his wrath he changed his tune to a rhapsody.
She was to be the most beautiful bride that ever dragged a train up an aisle, and she should drag the most beautiful train that ever followed a maid to the altar and a wife away.
CHAPTER XLIX
Persis was not the only busy person in New York. Willie was kept on the jump preparing his share of the performance. The ushers were to be chosen, and their gifts, and a dinner given to them; and his list of friends to receive announcements and invitations must be made up, and the bride's gift selected, and the itinerary of the honeymoon arranged, his yacht put into commission, and a dinner of farewell to bachelorhood accepted and endured.
He hardly caught a glimpse of Persis all this while, and when he heard her voice on the telephone it was only to receive some new list of ch.o.r.es. He missed the billing and cooing that he knew belonged to these conversations. His heart ached to be a.s.sured of Persis' love; but she was incapable of even imitating the amorous note with him. When he pleaded for tendernesses she put him off as best she could by blaming her brusqueness on her overwork, as one who does not wish to sign oneself ”Yours faithfully” or ”affectionately” or even ”truly” writes ”Yours hastily.”
But Willie's incessant prayer for love hara.s.sed her. It was a phase of him that had been unimportant hitherto. And it alarmed her a little. It would have given her greater uneasiness if she had not had so many other matters to worry her, if she had not had so many fascinating excitements to divert her.
Forbes was busy, too. Senator Tait had easily arranged his appointment as military attache. He had his duties to learn in this capacity. He had to polish up his French and take lessons in conversation and composition, and learn what he could about the French military establishment and procedure. And he had to make ready for a long residence abroad.
To him, too, preoccupation was an opiate for suffering. Ambition and pride were resuming their interrupted sway. So long as he was busy he counted Persis as one of the tragedies of his past, and his love of her as a thing lived down and sealed in the archives of his heart.
But when he had an hour of leisure or of sleeplessness, she came back to him like a ghost with eery beauty and uncanny charm. He found her in nearly every newspaper, too. The announcement of her engagement brought forth a shower of portraits. There were articles about the alliance between the two families of Enslee and Cabot, about the bride's style of beauty, her recipes for beauty, silly accounts of interviews she never gave, beauty secrets she never used, exercises she never took, opinions on matters on which she had never thought. She was caught by camera-bogies on every shopping expedition, at the steeplechases, at the weddings of other people--everywhere. There were moving pictures of her; pictures of her in her babyhood, her girlhood, in old-fas.h.i.+oned costumes and poses. Women began to copy her hats, her coiffures, her costumes. An alert merchant with a large amount of an unsalable material on hand named it ”Persis pink,” and women fought for it. It became a household word, or, its subst.i.tute nowadays, a newspaper word.
Forbes was dumfounded at the publicity of Persis. He was tempted to believe that she had gone mad and hired a press-agent. But a woman who marries a rich enough man needs no booming to-day. The whisper of her engagement starts the avalanche. She becomes as public as a queen or a politician or a criminal.
The incessant encounter with Persis' beauty in every newspaper, morning and evening and Sunday, and in the ill.u.s.trated weeklies, kept Forbes'
wound open. He could not escape her. It was like being a prisoner at a window where she was always pa.s.sing. She smiled at him everywhere, and always with the shadow of the Enslee name imminent above her.
On the morning of the day he sailed, as he held his newspaper between his coffee and his cigar, certain head-lines leaped up and shouted at him from the top of a column with a roar as of apocalyptic trumpets. He hastened to his room to be alone while he read the chronicle of what was already past.
MISS PERSIS CABOT WEDS WM. ENSLEE
HEAD OF THE FAMOUS HOUSE MARRIED AT ST. THOMAS'S YESTERDAY AFTERNOON
Reception at Bride's Home