Part 77 (1/2)
CHAPTER LIX
In the exceeding industry of the days following the death of Amba.s.sador Tait, Captain Forbes found no chance to see Mrs. Enslee. Their meeting would have been perilous. The Amba.s.sador had received his death-stroke in their presence.
Physicians, police, reporters, all demanded minute descriptions of the event, and from the first Forbes blurred the account so that Persis should not be drawn into it. He emphasized the strenuous diplomatic labors of the last week and the final afternoon. He italicized the presence of Mr. Enslee at the moment of death, which came, he said, without immediate explanation. He described how the Amba.s.sador's father had died--just died while pulling on his overshoes.
He lied about the last words of the Amba.s.sador in spirit at least, for it was sadly incomplete truth to say that the Amba.s.sador, after discussing trivial matters, had said, ”Mr. Enslee, I must tell you good night,” and fallen to the floor.
Yet the account was not questioned. Enslee was too befuddled to know or, when the shock sobered him, to remember. Persis could be trusted to keep silent. In fact, she retired from view ”prostrated with the shock.” It was explained that the Amba.s.sador had been a cla.s.smate of her father's, an old friend of the family's.
The story was telegraphed and cabled about the world. As usual, every newspaper published a minutely circ.u.mstantial account with a pretendedly _verbatim_ statement of the last words, and, as usual, the accounts were as discrepant mutually as they were commonly remote from the truth.
The idea that the Amba.s.sador's death might be concerned with an intrigue between Mrs. Enslee and Captain Forbes occurred perhaps only to one mind on earth, and that the too-sophisticated brain of a reporter in New York, a brindle-haired man with half of one eyebrow gone. He could not confirm his suspicion even enough for publication, so he hid it in the cellar of his soul, alongside the memory of seeing Persis Cabot walk out of a lonely forest with a man he afterward learned to be Forbes.
When this reporter--Hallard, his name was--was comfortably drunk he would discuss New York society's rotten state of morals, usually with a horrified barkeeper, forgetting his own morals and that of his cla.s.s and of the other cla.s.ses low and middle that he knew well enough. He would add: ”There's lovely li'l lady growin' a peach of a scan'al--um-m, a pippin!--swee' li'l dynamite bomb. Story's going to break some day, and I'm lovely li'l feller's goin' to break it.”
But he would not tell the name. He was holding that in trust for whatever newspaper should be employing his fanatic loyalty at the time of the break. And he was waiting, listening, following.
Persis had been soft-hearted enough to feel the pity of the Amba.s.sador's death. She had wept a little for her stricken enemy, and she suffered some acute stabs of repentance as the instrument of his a.s.sa.s.sination.
But regret was mingled with the lilt of victory and successful evasion--even with blasphemous prayers of grat.i.tude to the Lord for saving her from exposure in the matter. She had fallen on her knees to pour out this thanksgiving, and piously or impiously promised her Lord not to be indiscreet again.
One's G.o.d is apt to be one's ideal servant magnified. As the daughters of joy in old Florence used to keep a votive Mary in their rooms and pray to it for success in their offices, so Persis whispered to her heaven words of praise and grat.i.tude for aid in escaping the consequences of her mad whim to nestle in Forbes' arms.
She went to the Amba.s.sador's funeral, partly as a tribute of awesome esteem, partly as good sportsmans.h.i.+p toward a beaten adversary, and chiefly because it would have been conspicuous to stay away when almost every other American in Paris was sure to be there. She compelled Willie to go along, an unwilling and unwitting chaperon.
She saw Forbes in the church, but at a distance, and noted with a gush of pity how haggard and lonely he seemed. She hoped that not all of his grief was for his dead friend. She longed to go to him with comfort, but she ventured only a nod from afar and one of her slow, sweet, tender smiles.
Forbes had been kept intensely active at the Emba.s.sy, where the Consul took over the interrupted duties of the Amba.s.sador's office, but left to Forbes the personal details of the funeral ceremony, the closing up of the house, and the arrangements for getting Mildred back to New York.
The Amba.s.sador's body was to be taken home to America on board a war-s.h.i.+p proffered by the French Republic.
For three days Forbes was too grimly busy and too grief-stricken to feel more than a longing to see Persis; an impossible desire without impulse to achieve it.
Mildred was, for once, demanding help instead of giving it. The loss of her father was a devastation in her soul. She clung to Forbes as to a brother. Had Persis seen her in his arms she might have felt a jealousy; but not if she could have seen Forbes' heart. That was filled only with a sense of shame. He felt that in denying Mildred his love he had robbed the old man of his last great wish. At times he reproached himself with the very murder of his best friend, the murder of a great statesman, the n.o.ble father of a n.o.ble woman. And the motive of the a.s.sa.s.sination was his obstinate devotion to another man's wife!
People have a genius for remorse as for other emotions, and Forbes was of those who can mercilessly indict their own souls. Storms of self-condemnation were succeeded by storms of longing. About him hovered the tantalizing beckoning vision of Persis. He was mad to see her. He kept alternately vowing that he would not go near her and wondering when he should.
At first he dared not make an effort to see her, because he feared to involve her and because he had not a moment he could call his own. He was burdened with tasks of every sort, and in and out of his office he was beset with correspondents like sparrows demanding crumbs of news to cable to America. He had no leisure of his own except the black hours when he sank into his bed.
He would trudge to his room so exhausted, so drowsy, that he could hardly get his clothes off. The moment he lay down he was the prey to a swarm of black emotions that swooped about him like bats in a cave, swooped and shot and chittered, swept him with their vile wings and fastened their claws in his hair. He reproached himself with every wickedness and worthlessness from hideous ingrat.i.tude to murder and adultery that dared not take what it l.u.s.ted for.
Sleepless nights and restless days wore him out until the funeral, an affair of great pomp and enormous impressiveness. When he saw Persis in the church her beauty was overwhelming in the black costume she wore under the shadow of a black hat.
Somehow, after the funeral ceremony, the prayers, and the long ritual, with which the church formally restored the soul to the heaven from which it emigrated and the body to the earth of which it was made, there came a great relief to Forbes--the restful word ”Finis.”
That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt the relaxation of a burden removed. She almost collapsed into sleep at the table, and her maid supported her to her room. She had wept herself out.