Part 80 (2/2)

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 a.s.sumed 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 G.o.d, how they would tear me to pieces! The poor people and the middle-cla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER LXIII

The following afternoon Persis came home from a tango-tea, where she had expected to meet Forbes. Through some misunderstanding he had failed to appear. This left her plans in a decided tangle. He was probably trying to find her by telephone. He would doubtless call up the house. Things were in a mess there, too. An ancient romance in the servants' quarters had resulted in a wedding between the second man and one of the chambermaids. Nichette had been chosen as a bridesmaid and had begged off for the afternoon, as had all of the others that could be spared.

Nichette had long ago been taken into their confidence as a necessary go-between. Persis trembled lest a message from Forbes should fall into inexperienced hands.

To complicate matters Willie had resolved to go to the opera that night and to be on time. He had read an editorial somewhere ridiculing the horseshoe of box-holders for their indifference to overtures and first acts. Willie naturally selected this one evening for his rebuke to the editor. Dinner was to be served an hour earlier than usual.

Harrowed by the multiplex difficulties surrounding an intrigue, Persis was kept waiting at the door a long time in the cold. She was about to rend the tardy footman to pieces when the door was opened by Crofts, the superannuated butler, an heirloom from Enslee's father.

Crofts had long ago reached the age when he was too venerable to wear the Enslee livery. He was an ideal gentleman, respected and loved by all the family and its friends. But as an officer of the household he was deaf, decrepit, and almost useless. Yet he was too much of an inst.i.tution to discharge, and he simply would not retire.

He was permitted to lag superfluous as a sort of butler _emeritus_. At large dinners he hovered about in the offing correcting and directing with a marvelous tact and an infallible memory for the encyclopedic lore of nice service. For a guest to be recognized by his watery old eyes and named by his thin lips was in itself a distinction.

To-day he was blissfully happy. The young upstart servants had flocked to the wedding, and he was called to the helm. When Persis saw him at the door her heart melted, but it also sank.

”Did anybody call?” she asked, and asked several times in _crescendo_.

”Only Mrs. Enslee, ma'am,” he whispered, in his dry, cackling, deaf man's voice.

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