What Will People Say? Part 44

But the fault was not Enslee's, nor was he so bad a rider as an expert like Forbes might think. As the event proved, even Persis could not control her mount in the face of what was happening unseen by Forbes. A chauffeur, relying on the fact that he was on the exit road, was driving a big red six at high speed along the curves. He had not seen Enslee and Persis till he was almost into them. He swung aside so sharply that he almost capsized, and ran into something sharp enough to rip open a shoe.

This was just one too many automobiles for the horses Persis and Enslee rode. They had been curbed and scolded and kept in hand all morning; but to have a dragon leap at them from the cedar-trees was too much. They went frantic, dancing erect, and thres.h.i.+ng the air with their fore hoofs. And then the tire exploded like a cannon, and they went mad. They feared nothing but what was behind them; nothing could hurt them but their terror.

They crashed through cedars and rhododendrons, and plunged across the lawn to the clear s.p.a.ce of the golf-links. Forbes saw the demon look in the white eyes of Persis' horse. He had seen mustangs in that humor shake off their tormentors and tear them wolfishly with their fangs.

"He's got the bit in his teeth!" he groaned. "He'll kill her! My G.o.d, he'll kill her! She can't hold him! I've got to get him somehow."

He had a fierce impulse to meet the horse, leap at him, catch him by the bridle and the nose and smother him to a standstill. But Tait had seen a policeman killed trying to stop a horse so, and he flung his arms about Forbes.

"No, you won't!" he gasped. "You can't stop him! I won't let you risk your life--not for that woman."

"Let me go! Let me go!" Forbes pleaded, unwilling to use his strength against the old man. But Tait clung to him, seized him anew as Forbes wrenched his hand loose; fell to his knees, but still held fast and was dragged along, moaning:

"My boy, I love you like a son. You sha'n't risk your life--not for her!"

Then suddenly his clutch relaxed; his fingers opened; he rolled forward on his face, his white hair fluttering in the gra.s.s.

And Forbes, hardly knowing that he was released, felt himself free, and ran with all his might to intercept the plunging monster, who came snorting his rage, flinging his huge barrel this way and that, and shaking the white saliva from his mouth.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Persis met equine wrath with female rage. The fiercer the horse plunged the harder she beat him with the crop, the more bloodthirstily she stabbed his sides with her keen-spurred heels. Her hair flung looser and looser, and at length set free her hat, and then shook out its own tortoise-sh.e.l.l moorings and flew to the winds. She sawed at the horse's head, stabbed him with the spurs, railed at him with shrill voice, and fought him as a Valkyr might have fought her charger panic-stricken at the noise of battle.

Even the old man, who lay on the ground clutching at his heart, could not but feel a thrill at the wild beauty of the girl; her long hair flowed and writhed smokily, her face was the more commandingly beautiful for the very merciless hate that fired it; her girlish body in her boyish costume was strangely alive. Her thighs gripped the horse's sides visibly like arches of steel. All this beauty Forbes saw also, and more, for he saw with the eyes of idolatry; and yet more again, for his beloved was in mortal danger. He ran in a frenzy of fear and determination. As he and the horses met on their converging paths Persis shrieked to him: "Keep away! Keep away!"

None the less he leaped for the bridle with both hands flung out. But she would not let him endanger himself. She threw all the power of both her arms and her weight on the farther bridle, dragging the horse's head aside till he swerved out of Forbes' reach.

Forbes sprawled on the turf; but at least he had not been struck by the hoofs or knees of the horse. And then the horse came down in turn, thrown out of his stride and with his head brought round so sharply that he came down on his shoulder and almost broke his neck.

Persis went through the air like a pinwheel, and those who witnessed the affair gave up her and the horse for dead. But she clung to the bridle, and got up on all fours. For once Persis was awkward. She and Forbes met and stared like quadrupeds, and the horse rolled over on his belly and stared too.

What had almost been a tragedy was turned to a farce by coincidence. If all the corpses in the last act of Hamlet should rise and stare at one another--as they do when the curtain is down--audiences might roar as the golfers and the club servants and members roared at this spectacle.

Willie, meanwhile, had vanished over the hill like the headless horseman Ten Eyck had likened him to.

After the first automatic recovery Persis was overtaken by a wave of terror she had had no time to feel. She turned ashen about the mouth, and a queasy feeling sickened her. Her elbows gave way, and she sank to the ground.

Senator Tait came up with difficulty, forgetting that he had been, perhaps, nearer death on that green battle-field than any other of the fallen. He heard Forbes wailing, as he gathered Persis into his arms and strengthened his own weak knees:

"Persis, my darling, my angel, speak to me! Are you dead?"

Persis opened her eyes with a flash. She began to realize that she had been very conspicuous. "Of course I'm not dead. But what's worse, my hair's down. I must be a sight! And my breeches are torn. Oh, Lord, why wasn't I killed romantically? Turn your backs at once."

The two men stared all the more, but she released herself from Forbes'

arms, rose to her feet with some twinges of evident pain, and put up her hair with what few hairpins remained of her store, and borrowed a pin from the Senator's lapel to mend a rip that let one exquisite knee escape to view. A caddy came running up with her hat, and she thanked him.

"Come along," she said; "I feel as if I were on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House."

The horse got clumsily to his feet, all the battle knocked out of him, and followed weakly till she handed him over to a groom.

Eager to escape the stares that met her and the sympathy and felicitations that greeted her, she walked so rapidly that the Senator dropped back. She found herself alone with Forbes, and she murmured:

"You were wonderful to try to save me as you did."

"As I didn't," he groaned. "You wouldn't let me."

"No, I don't want you ever to risk anything for me, Harvey. But I'm just as grateful--and more than that. If there weren't so many people looking on do you know what I'd say?"

"What?"

"Kiss me." The words came so unexpectedly that he forgot their subjunctive mode. He took them to be in the imperative, and came near obeying. He checked himself in time, and said:

"How soon shall I be able to call you mine before all the world?"

"Do you wish that?"

"Madly! It is my one great wish."

She breathed deeply and caressed him with a delicious smile, and murmured:

"It is mine, too."

And then Ten Eyck and Winifred and Mrs. Neff and Alice, and others of her acquaintance, crowded round, summoned by the flying rumor of the incident. At length some one exclaimed:

"But where's Willie?"

"Good Lord," Persis gasped, "I forgot all about him."

Some one else who had been on the links described Willie's disappearance over the brow of the hill. He had been still attached to the horse when last heard from. But his prospects were reported to be poor.

By the time Persis had reached the club-house and had undergone the ministrations of a maid, who was also a seamstress, Willie came limping up on the terrace, where Persis was seated with the others.

"Oh, there you are, my dear," Willie drawled. "And not a bit hurt, not a hair turned, so far as I can make out, eh? And here I've been worrying myself sick over you--simply sick."

"Well, I'll go out and break a few bones if it would make you feel any easier," Persis answered. "But what happened to you? Where's your horse?"

"Well, I'll tell you. It was like this. You see, that beast I was on went galumphing up the hill playing the deuce with putting-greens, until he came to that big bunker at the top, you know--you know the one I mean--at the top there--the big bunker?"

"Yes, I know."

"Well, he refused it."

"What did you do?"

"I took it alone."