What Will People Say? A Novel

by Rupert Hughes

There would be resentment enough, but belated, when the consequences of that impious sacrifice were reaped, when nature demanded restitution and scoffed at the mortgage. If this night's rite were ever heard of it would be cried out against, the celebrants would be shunned, banished.

None of this is to say that faith should not be kept, however rashly pledged, or that people should make a virtue of refusing to pay the debts they run and repudiating the laws that shelter them.

Persis' earlier crime did not justify or cancel the latter, but added another to it. She had entered with open eyes into her compact with Enslee; she auctioned herself off; he was the highest bidder, and she knocked herself down. She was in honor bound to stay sold. But the very readiness to commit that infamy, the yielding to that temptation, was instruction for the next. Easy bind, easy break.

Her only safety was in keeping away from Forbes. That was the Ambassador's wisdom. He feared the very proximity of Persis and Forbes. He foresaw that, while nature would hold cheap the laws of mankind, mankind would not accept nature as an excuse for lawlessness.

In spite of him Persis and Forbes were reunited. The withes that marriage had bound about her were as nothing to the great changes it had made in her soul. It had taken away the enormous power that exists in maidenhood, with its self-awe and its fierce defense of integrity. That instinct of self-preciousness that had made Persis hide her lips from Forbes' kisses on a far-off day was annulled, for her lips had been Willie Enslee's for more than half a year. Her body had been his toy. He had schooled her to maturity, made a woman of the girl.

And now in the presence of the bridegroom selected by nature and love what protection had she? She had no harem walls to inclose her, no guardians to keep the suitor away or to threaten exposure. She had lost the fawn-like girlishness that would take flight; there was no nun-spirit within her now to cry "Help me!"

What remorse there was was the man's. He blamed himself for overpowering where he was overpowered and decoyed. With the traditional mistake of the man he accused himself of a ruthless conquest when he was really the prey of ancient guile and wile. And this again is not to blame Persis. She was herself the mere puppet of world-old impulses along the wires of sense. She was a victim, too. But her remorse was hardly remorse at all, rather amazement or dismay. It was Forbes that condemned himself for dishonor.

Man is the maker of laws, the upholder of laws, the punisher of those who violate the majesty of the law.

But law for law's sake has little or no meaning for woman. She has her own codes and reads them within. The complex tissue of her loves and hates is her attorney, always plaintiff or defendant, not often referee. She has her glories, and perhaps they are greater than any of man's; but the creation of laws and constitutions and codes is not one of them. She is timid, she is brave, she is merciful, she is ruthless. She may reproach herself for indiscretion, for folly, for misplaced trust, for misguided emotion; but did any woman ever honestly reproach herself for a breach of honor as honor? A disloyalty to religion, yes; to faith, yes; to love, oh yes; but to honor?

Persis was dumfounded at the completeness of her success by surrender and at its rashness. She was afraid that Forbes might despise her; but she felt also the barbaric primeval perfection of the triumph of nature. She had achieved her destiny. She had been female to the male of her choice. She would fight the consequences; she would deny the fact, but she felt that she could never regret it.