What Will People Say? Part 67

"In the first place, Willie," said Persis, "you are the man of the family, and supposed to do the thinking. In the second place, I won't be sworn at."

"I wasn't swearing at you, my love. I was just swearing. Well, if you don't want to go to the polo games, where in--where do you want to go--up to the country place?"

Here was a problem. She was sure that she did not want to be alone in a country house with Willie. That would be worse than the yacht. Since she could not endure either to be alone with him or to go among crowds with him, the dilemma was perfect. Already there was another incompatibility established.

She was mad for diversion, and, being herself a polo player of no small prowess, she was frantic to see the effort of the British team to wrest back the trophy. But a stronger pa.s.sion still was the determination to evade gossip.

She and Willie, therefore, sneaked from their yacht to their house in town. They astounded the servants, and there was much scurrying and whisking.

They dined together alone, though Persis was eager to be in a restaurant where there was music. She was like a child kept in after school. She flattened her nose against a window-pane and stared out at life. After dinner the prospect of an evening with Willie rendered her desperate.

They could at least go to the theater somewhere. n.o.body was in town; they would be quite unnoticed. But when n.o.body is in town the theaters close up. There was nothing they had not seen or had not been warned against. Willie proposed a roof-garden--Hammerstein's.

They went, and beheld a chimpanzee that rode various bicycles, smoked a cigar expertly, and spat with amazing fidelity to the technique of the super-ape; also a British peeress who danced in less clothes than the chimpanzee wore.

Ten Eyck was there. He tried to hide from Persis and Willie, not because he was ashamed to be seen by them, but because he was afraid that Persis and Willie would not want to be seen by him. He had cherished no illusions for the success of the match on its sentimental side, but he had expected them to see the honeymoon through. He kept out of their sight, but they stumbled on him during the intermission, when the audience crowded into a s.p.a.ce at the back of the roof where a patient cow was milked by electricity at an uncowly hour, and where couples rowed boats up and down an almost microscopic lake.

Ten Eyck had not expected Persis and Willie to join this hot and foolish mob. But he felt a hand seize his arm. He turned and looked into Persis'

eyes. She welcomed him as a rescuer, but it was Willie that urged him to sit with them. Ten Eyck's hesitation was misconstrued by Persis. She said:

"Perhaps he is--er--not alone."

"Oh yes, I am," Ten Eyck hastened to say. "I'll join you." And he went with them to an upper box. Even Ten Eyck felt a little shy.

Persis and Willie knew what he was thinking, and they were like a pair of youngsters caught spooning. Only their misdemeanor was that they had been caught not spooning. Ten Eyck ventured to speak.

"So the penance is over already? I thought you two doves were still on the ark."

"We are, officially," said Persis.

Ten Eyck wanted to help them out, so he said:

"What's the matter? Did the yacht puncture a tire or lose a shoe or--"

Willie attempted to carry along the idea by saying:

"It was trouble with the sparker." And he did not understand why Persis blushed and Ten Eyck blurted.

They were rescued from this personal confusion by what would have thrown any audience into a panic ten years before and now was greeted almost with apathy: the appearance of the British peeress in a costume that was hardly more than Eve wore after the eviction. A gauzy s.h.i.+ft was all she had on, with a few wisps of chiffon as opaque as cigarette-smoke.

Shoulders, arms, and all of both legs were as bare as her face.

No policeman interfered, and not a sermon had been preached against her.

Nudity had lost its novelty, and her posturings and curvetings were regarded with as academic a calm as if she were a trick pony or an acrobat. There was much laughter later when a male comedian burlesqued her, with a bosom composed of two toy balloons, one of which escaped, and one of which exploded when he fell on it.

"I think this age will go down in history as the return to nature," Ten Eyck said, struggling for some impersonal topic. "Women in and out of vaudeville have left off more and more of their concealments, till the only way a woman can arouse suspicion now is by keeping something on.

And I can't see that we are any worse--or any better. An onion is an onion, no matter how many skins it has on or off. We'll see bathing-suits on Fifth Avenue next season."

He did not know that the next season was to bring a sudden revolution and divert women from disclosure to the covering of their bodies with chaotic fabrics till they resembled dry-goods counters in disarray.

Philosophizing did not interest Willie. He came always back to the individual. By and by he wrestled with silence, and asked:

"Er--whatever became of that--er--soldier you brought up to the farm?

Stupid solemn fella--Ward--or Lord--or something?"

"Forbes, you mean?" said Ten Eyck, taking pains not to look at Persis.

But he could feel her eager attention in the sudden check of her fan.

"That's it--Forbes. Still at Ellis Island--or is it Ward's?"

"Governor's," said Ten Eyck. "He's been made military attache at the French Emba.s.sy. Sailed for Paris the other day with Senator Tait--and--and Mildred."

Persis' whole body seemed to clench itself like a hand. But Willie, everlastingly oblivious to significant things, driveled on:

"Paris, eh? Racing season's on over there now. How'd you like to run across for the Grand Prix, Persis?"

"Paris is a nice place," said Persis, with a mystic veil about her voice.

And now Ten Eyck looked at her. Their eyes met. His were angry, and hers fell before their prophetic ire. She stammered a little as she said:

"I like London better. We could make the Royal Cup at Ascot if we hurried. My sister could take care of us in the country."

But Ten Eyck slapped his knees impatiently, glared at her, and growled:

"Bluffer! Good night!"

And he was gone without shaking hands.

"What did he mean by bluffer?" said Enslee. "Doesn't he like your sister?"

"Apparently not," said Persis. "And he used to be crazy about her. She threw him overboard for 'Kelly.'"

CHAPTER LIII

Willie had arranged for supper at home. As they left the theater and sped through the streets crowded with uncharacteristic mobs Persis thought longingly of the tango-hunts she had indulged in during the past season. But there was no one to dance with her now. And she realized that she would be impossibly conspicuous as a cafe-hunting bride with a husband who abhorred this whole chapter in the chronicle of diversion.

Alone with Willie in the Enslee palace, which Ten Eyck described as "a sublime junk-shop," Persis was oppressed to melancholia. The air that came in at the windows had a mournful breath. The peculiar aversion for the city, that overtakes New-Yorkers in the late spring seized her and shook her. The mansions neighborly to theirs were boarded up now, with only a caretaker's window alight here and there. There was n.o.body even to summon by telephone as a rescuing third party to make a crowd out of the appallingly tiresome duet with Willie.

"This town is a cemetery," she exclaimed, as she quenched her eighth cigarette stump. "Opening a house here now is like opening a grave in Woodlawn at midnight. You've got to take me away or leave me in Bloomingdale."

"What about Paris?" Willie suggested.

She remembered Ten Eyck's eyes, and said, "Let's make it London."

"I'll get what I can to-morrow. You wouldn't like to cross in the yacht?" he asked, haughtily. "_Isolde's_ all right in the ugliest weather."