Part 65 (2/2)

As Forbes had once surveyed the tide of Fifth Avenue from the upper deck of a motor-bus, so now, from a sky-sc.r.a.ping s.h.i.+p he watched the thronged traffic along the s.p.a.cious avenue of the Hudson River and the broad plaza of the bay.

Among the tugs, noisy and rowdy as newsboys, the waddling ferry-boats, the barges loaded with refuse or freight-trains, the pa.s.senger-boats and excursion-boats, and the merchantmen from many ports, a few yachts picked their way superciliously, their bowsprits like upturned noses, their trim white flanks like skirts drawn aside.

Among these yachts, though Forbes was unaware of it, was the _Isolde_, known to those who know such things as a ridiculously luxurious craft, a floating residence. Persis had christened the yacht at Willie's request, and he had accepted the name as a good omen, since he said: ”I always have a perfect sleep when _Isolde_ is under way.”

Persis, herself now an Isolde wedded to one man and loving another, pa.s.sed the famous sky-line which seemed to continue another Palisades, only fantastically carved and honeycombed with windows. When these cliffs of human fas.h.i.+oning were pulled backward, there was a s.p.a.ce of dancing water, and then Governor's Island, with its moldy old mouse-trap of a fort.

Never dreaming that Forbes was on the liner that had gone down the bay a few moments before, Persis fastened her binocular on the island and tried to pick him out from among the men whom distance rendered lilliputian. She selected some vague promenader and sent him her blessings. If he ever received them he never knew whence they came.

Forbes was groping toward her in thought like a wireless telegrapher trying to reach another and unable to come to accord. Forbes was entering upon the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, and Persis was embarking on another sea equally new to her, for marriage is a kind of ocean to a woman. Maidens struggle toward it and consecrate themselves to it from far inland; they come forth upon the roaring wonder of its cathedral music; the surf flings white flowers at their feet. They venture farther and encounter the first shocks of the breakers, and thereafter the sea lies vast and monotonous with happiness or grief and their interchange. But the prosperity of the voyage is less from without than from within the boat. Persis was not lucky in the captain she had s.h.i.+pped with.

To-day's Persis on the boat was altogether another woman from yesterday's Persis. The toil and fever of preparation, the bacchantic orgies of purchase, the dressing up, the celebration of the festival--these were the joys of the wedding to her, and she had drained them to the full. They left her exhausted and sated. The antic.i.p.ation was over, the realization begun.

In some wiser communities the bride and groom separate for a day or two after the ceremony. But Persis had no such breathing-s.p.a.ce. Persis was delivered to Willie Enslee in a state of f.a.gged-out nerves, muscles, and brain. To him, however, the weeks of preparation had been a mere annoyance, a postponement, a prelude too long, too ornate. And when at last the prize was his he found the fact almost intolerably beautiful.

He possessed Persis Enslee! She had no longer even a name of her own.

Miss Cabot had been merged into the Enslee Estates.

One does not expect to-day the childlike innocence that was revealed or pretended by the brides of other years. Nowadays even their mothers ”tell them things.” And Willie knew that Persis was neither ignorant nor ingenuous. Her gossip, the scandal she knew, the books and plays she discussed, her sophisticated att.i.tude toward people and life had long ago proved that, whatever she might be, she was not without knowledge.

She knew as much as Mildred Tait, and her talk was nearly as free, but always from the cynical, the flippant, or the shocked point of view.

Willie did not expect to initiate an ignoramus into any unheard-of mysteries. He expected at most a certain modest reluctance and confusion. He was dumfounded to be met with icy horror and shuddering recoil. After the first repulse the terror with which she cringed away from his caresses enhanced her the more.

He imputed it to a native purity. He believed--and it was true--that she had come through all the years and temptations and the dangerous environments with her body and her soul somehow protected to this great event. It was a kind of purity. But not what he thought it.

Persis' creed--if she had thought much about it--would have been the creed of many a woman: that love sanctifies all that it inspires; and that unchast.i.ty is what Rahel Varnhagen defined it--intercourse without love, whether legalized or not.

If Persis had married the man she loved, the man whose touch was like a flame, she would still have been terrified; but love would have hallowed the conquest, changed fright into ecstasy, and glorified surrender.

Willie's touch had always chilled her clammily. What she saw in his eyes now offended her utterly, filled her with loathing and with panic as before a violation. But after this first rebellion she regained control of her fears and reasoned coldly with herself. When she had said ”Yes”

to Willie's courts.h.i.+p, and when she had made her affirmations in the church, she had given him her I. O. U. She was not one to repudiate a gambling loss. She forbore resistance, but she could not mimic rapture.

Yet rapture was part of the bargain. Soul and flesh could not pay the obligation her mind had so lightly incurred.

And now it was Enslee that recoiled, strangely smitten with an awe, a reverence for her and her integrity. ”You are a saint,” he murmured, ”an angel, and I am a brute. You are too good, too wonderful!”

Persis was startled at being treated with reverence. It was perhaps the first time she had ever been held sacred. She accepted this tribute in lieu of the others, and they left the hotel as they had entered it, still bachelor and maid, though they wore the same name.

But she was alone upon the ocean now, and she feared her husband more than before. She found him somewhat ridiculous in his uniform, with his yachting-cap a trifle top-heavy for his slim skull. Yet he was the owner; his flag and his club pennant were fluttering aloft. And Persis felt sure that he had repented of his mercy and was ashamed of his asceticism.

He ogled her as he paced the unstable deck, and found her more beautiful than ever, clad in a trim white suit and curled up in her chair like a purring kitten, the sun sifting over her through the awning like a golden powder. And he knew that she was his. He paused at her side and mellowed her cheek, pinched the lobe of her ear, and pursed his lips to kiss her red lips. She winced, then frowned, and shook her head.

”Why not?” he demanded.

”The crew is watching,” she explained. And he retorted:

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