What Will People Say? Part 94

With every weapon in the vast armory of newspaperdom Hallard waged his battle. The political ambition of the district-attorney finally yielded to the coercion. An order was obtained from the court commanding the officials of the cemetery to unseal the tomb where Persis' body had been stored until the great monument Enslee had commissioned could be made ready to weigh her down irretrievably.

Forbes, having regained his courage in his absence in the wilderness, was seized with a mad desire to gaze upon his beloved's face once more and to whisper to her a prayer that she forgive him for abandoning her in her desolation and her peril. Ten Eyck used every plea to dissuade him; but, failing, determined to go with him.

Permission to be present at the exhumation was secured with little difficulty, and the two men joined the group of court officials and the six experts who were to decide from examination whether or not Persis could have inflicted the fatal wound upon herself.

VI

And so Persis came back again to the world in a mockery of resurrection, back again from the sodden earth to the light of day that had blessed her beauty and not known her sin.

Forbes waited her reappearance in a frenzy of anxiety. It was to him a kind of holy tryst that he must keep at any cost.

Slowly the casket was raised; one by one the screws in the coffin-lid were removed, and at last the board was removed from over the white, white face. Some impulse of protection led Ten Eyck to thrust Forbes back until he himself had taken the first look. He gazed and groaned at the havoc death had wrought in all that beauty. When Forbes pressed forward, Ten Eyck whirled and clapped his hands over Forbes' eyes and dragged him aside, whispering huskily:

"Don't look! In G.o.d's name keep the memory of her as she was."

Forbes suffered himself to be led aside. He and Ten Eyck waited at a distance while the tests were made. The knife was closed in the icy fingers, and the exquisite arms moved here and there. Over the cold and silent body the experts wrangled. And the upshot of the desecration was that they could not agree; three of the jurors declared that Persis could not have reached so far around to set the knife in her side; and three that she could have done it, whether she did or not.

Persis, wherever she was, kept her secret. And Willie, abiding the decision in a stupor of terror, thanked G.o.d and her for their silence.

The newspapers had much to say of this last phase of the Enslee mystery.

They summed up again all the old scandals, and then they, too, went silent. Their readers grew weary of the juggle of facts and falsehoods.

The mishaps of other lovers furnished them with unfailing supply of the old mistakes that are the eternal news. Forbes, who had withheld his resignation from the army at Ten Eyck's bidding, was received back into his place, shorn of his ambitions, his youth, and his pride.

Often and often when he is alone he takes from its hiding shelter a little nightcap of ribbons and laces and shakes his head with vain regret.

He thinks of Persis always as she was that morning when the filmy cap fell from her lawless curls. He cannot but feel that there was something elect in her, something divinely beautiful, however thwarted for this world.

But then he loved her, he could forgive her anything. If G.o.d loved her, could he not do as much?

When the skies are clouded he remembers her wise little saying, "Behind the blinds there are always eyes." He wonders if there are eyes behind the clouds and beyond the sun. And if there are, and if they are the seeing eyes of perfect understanding, What do those people say?

THE END