He sobbed like a lonely girl, his eyes hid in the crook of his left arm, his elbow on the table, his little hand clenching and unclenching. His tears brought tears to Persis. It was the first time she had ever felt sorry for Willie; had ever realized that a weak man does not select his weaknesses, though he must endure their consequences. She had often justified herself by the plea that she had not chosen her own soul, but must get along with it. That defense was her husband"s, too.
The swinging door thudded softly, and Willie raised himself in his chair, but he could not quell the buffets of his sobs, and he dared not put his handkerchief to his eyes. And so Crofts, bending close to remove the crab-sh.e.l.ls, noted the grief-crumpled face and the drench of tears; his mind went back to the time when Willie Enslee was a child and wept in a high chair in his nursery. Before he could suppress it the old man had let slip the query:
"Why, Master Willie, you"re not crying?"
Willie, with splendid presence of mind, answered:
"Nonsense, you old fool, it"s that deviled crab. There was so much cayenne pepper in it, it w-went to my eyes."
Crofts was desolated.
"Oh, I am sorry, sir. The chef shall hear of it, sir. And the roast now--shall I carve it, or will you?"
Willie looked drearily across at Persis. "Do you want any roast?"
She frowned with aversion. "I couldn"t touch it."
And Willie shook his head to Crofts. "We"ll skip the roast. What follows that? Be quick about it!"
Crofts lowered his voice, as if a game-warden might be listening, for it was after the season had closed. "There is a pheasant, sir--sent down from your own run, sir. It is braised, _financiere_. I"m sure you"ll like it. You may have to wait a little, seeing as you didn"t eat the roast; but it"s worth waiting for, sir."
The old man was pleading both for the honor of his menu and for the welfare of his master. Willie nodded curtly, and the roast, that had ridden in so royally on its silver palanquin with its retinue of cutlery and its hot plates, was removed in disgrace.
Once more husband and wife were abandoned to themselves. But now Persis looked with new eyes at the heap of misery collapsed in the opposite chair. All these years Willie had tried to win her love with gifts, with splendors, with caresses, prayers, compliments, and with weak experiments in tyranny. And he had failed dismally. Finally his failure and his shame had crushed him into abjection.
And now her heart went out to him with a melting tenderness. But now she was unworthy to approach him. Now it was she that must plead:
"I"m awfully sorry for you, Willie. You haven"t had a fair deal. I never realized what a rotter I"ve been till now. But if you"ll let me, I"ll try again; I"ll try hard, really, honestly, Willie. The only man I ever seemed to care for has taken himself out of my life. He hates me as you hate me. I haven"t much of anything to live for now except to try to square things with you. I"ll do better by you. I"ll be on the level with you after this. Honestly I will. We"ll find happiness yet."
"Happiness!"
Even at this belated hour the world"s ambition was so dear to him that he was wrung with longing.
"It might have been possible if I hadn"t found you out. I was a fool to trust you so blindly, but I was a happy fool. I didn"t know how happy I was till I learned how unhappy I can be. Oh, Persis, how could you--how could you? You seemed so clean and so cold and so proud, and you"ve let that man make as big a fool of you as you"ve made of me."
She took her lashings meekly, hoping thereby to achieve some atonement.
"I know, I know," she confessed. "But we can keep other people from knowing. We don"t have to tell all the world, do we?"
Again the vision of stalking gossip enraged him. "The world--ha! It always knows everything before the husband suspects anything. I"ve said that about so many other fools I"ve known. Now it"s my turn. Here we sit at dinner in this ruined home as if everything were all right. Think of it! After what I saw and heard I"m sitting here trying to persuade a pack of flunkeys that you have been a good wife to me!"
"It"s hideous, I know, Willie. I"ll go away to-morrow. You can divorce me if you want to. I won"t resist. It will be horrible to drag your name through the yellow papers. But I won"t resist--unless you think you might let our life run along as before until gossip has starved to death? We"ll be no worse than the rest, Willie. Every family has its skeleton in the closet. The worst gossips have the worst skeletons.
Let"s fight it out together, Willie, won"t you? Please!"
She stretched one importunate hand across the table to him, but he stared at her with glazed eyes. "And go on like this the rest of our lives? Sitting at table like this every day, facing each other and knowing what we know? Knowing what other people know of us? Keep up the ghastly pretense till we grow old?"
She drew back her rejected hand with a sigh, but pleaded on: "It"s not very pretty, that"s true; but let"s be good sports and play the game. We tried marriage without love, for you knew I didn"t really love you, Willie. You knew it and complained of it. But you married me. I tried to do what was right. I ran away from him in France, and I tried to love you and unlove him. But you can"t turn your heart like a wheel, you know. We"ve married and failed. But nearly everybody else has failed one way or another, Willie. n.o.body gets what he wants out of life. Let"s play the game through. You said to me once--do you remember?--you said, "Gad, Persis, but you"re a good loser." And I"ve lost a little, too, Willie. I"ve had a pretty hard day of it, too. Let"s be good losers, Willie; let"s try it again, won"t you? Won"t you, please?"
She sat with hands clasped, and thrust them out to him and prayed to him as if he were an ugly little idol. But contrition did not seem to render her more attractive in his eyes. It hardened his heart against her.
"When I look at you I can only think what you"ve been to that man; where you"ve gone, what you"ve done. You sit there half naked now, ready to go to the opera, to expose your body before the mob--my body--my wife"s body. You show it in public--and you dance it in public with anybody--with him! The first time you saw him you were dressed like that, and you danced with him that loathsome tango. You taught him how.
And he has taught you how to be his wife--not mine.
"You"ve set everybody laughing at me. They"re all saying I was a blind, infatuated fool before. Now you want them to fasten that filthy word "complacent" on me. You want me to overlook what you have done and what you"ve brought me to. I"m just to say: "Well, Persis, you"ve had your lover and your fling, and you"re tired of each other, so come home and welcome, and don"t worry over what"s past. It"s a mere trifle not worth discussing. What"s the Seventh Commandment between friends?"
She was trying to silence him, but he had not heeded the return of Crofts till the pheasant was placed before him in all its garnishment, and the plates and the carving-fork and the small game-knife. He was ashamed, not of what he had said of her, but of his own excitement.
"Is the knife sharp?" he asked, for lack of other topic.
"Oh yes, sir," said Crofts. "I steeled it myself."
Willie began anew, groping in his tormented brain for something to dispel the silence. The result was a dazed query:
"By the way, my dear, what"s the opera to-night?"
"Carmen," she said.
He brightened. "Oh, of course. That"s the opera where the fellow kills the girl who betrays him, isn"t it?"
"Yes."
"With a knife like this, eh?" And with a fierce absent-mindedness he made a quick slash in the air. The knife was small and curved a little, and it fitted his hand like a dagger. He chuckled enviously. "Ah, he was the wise boy, that Don Jose. He knew how to treat faithless women. He knew how to talk to "em. A knife in the back--that"s all they can understand."
Crofts was too anxiously trying to avoid spilling a drop of the wine he was pouring to heed the warning gestures of Persis. She felt that the breaking-point of Willie"s self-control had been reached. She must dismiss the audience. She spoke hastily:
"Willie, my dear--my dear! Won"t you send for some champagne--or sherry.
I hate this red wine, and, besides, we"ve skipped the roast."
"Oh yes," Willie agreed, with abrupt calm. "Crofts, down in the--er--wine-cellar in the farthest end--you"ll find laid away by itself one bottle of--er--L"ame de Rheims--one bottle, the last of its ancient and--er--honorable name. Bring that here."
As Crofts stumbled out on his long journey, Willie commented, ominously:
"It"s a good time to say good-by to that vintage!"
His roving eyes discovered Roake standing aloof. Willie snapped his fingers and yelped at him:
"Get out! And stay out!"
Roake withdrew in haste, and Enslee muttered:
"I"m sick of seeing so many people standing around, staring, smirking, listening, thinking about me. I wish I were on a desert island."
He sat forward to the pheasant, set the fork into it, and paused with the knife motionless. Suddenly there were beads of sweat on his forehead, and he was panting hard; then he groaned:
"My G.o.d, he took my revolver away from me!"
His eyelids seemed to squeeze his eyes in anguish. When he opened them they were bloodshot and so fierce that they seemed to be crossed. He laughed.
"I was too weak to kill your soldier. But I think I"m just about strong enough to pay you up. Carmen got her reward with a knife, and you"re no better than she was."