"In your own words, Captain. I write shorthand. Just dictate to me the whole story of your acquaintance with Mrs. Enslee and your reasons for believing that her husband killed her; and I'll not change a word. You can read it, and sign it, and take affidavit that it's the truth, so help you—"
Forbes dropped into a chair, discredited, his bluff called. All the lofty motives and compulsions of chivalry took on an ugly look. Sir Launcelot was an adulterer and a welcher.
The hideously altered face of things shattered him so that Hallard felt merciful.
"I'm sorry, Captain; but you see how it is. You see why reporters get a little hard, why our mouths sag. We don't publish the truth oftener because people won't tell it to us. The truth isn't the pure white lady in a nice clean well that the painters represent her: the truth is a kind of a worm-eaten turnip that comes out of the ground with a lot of dirt on it. We don't print all we find out by a long shot. If we did this old town would make for the woods, and the people in the woods would run to cover in town. I'd be glad to drop this affair right here; but, don't you see, I can't. The Enslees are too big to overlook. There'll be an army of reporters on the job, with their little flashlights poking everywhere. The police will fall in line later. There'll be editorials on the wickedness of society. Society—if there is such a thing—isn't any wickeder than anybody else. The middle classes are rotten, and the lower classes are putrid. But society makes what old Horace Greeley called 'mighty interesting reading.'
"The name of Enslee is going to be a household word, because when an Enslee sins it's like sinning in the grandstand. I saw something like this coming a year ago. I thought it might simmer down; but it's broken bigger than I ever dreamed. You're in for it, Captain. The Great American People is going to rise on the bleachers and holler for blood. It will forget all about you the minute something else happens. Take your medicine, Captain. It will be somebody else's turn soon, for most of us are doing the tango on a thin crust of ashes over a crater. But it's the face-cards that the two-spots like to read about. The minute somebody else that's prominent pops through we'll let you alone. But you're in for it, Captain—'way in. Better crawl under my umbrella and give me the story."
He meant it well, but it was impossible for Forbes to accept his philosophy or his counsel. To Forbes he was a slimy reptile with a hellish mission. Forbes told him so, denied all that he had said, defied him, and turned him out. And now he had leisure to understand the full meaning of it all. First, his grief for Persis broke his heart open. He mourned her as a sweetheart, a betrothed, a wife; mourned her with an intolerable aching and rending and longing, and with an utter remorse because of his last words to her. When she was afraid and distraught he had heaped condemnation on her! And who was he to reproach her? Had he not pursued her, overwhelmed her, made and kept her his? And then to discard and desert her, knock aside her pleading hands and leave her in the clutch of the maniac who had threatened them both! He had taken Enslee's revolver away—as if that were the only weapon in the world!
Never had Persis seemed so beautiful to Forbes as he remembered her now, cowering under his wrath, pleading for pity, rushing to protect him even then, and falling in a white swoon at his feet, as if already dead. And even then he had spat on her and left her!
IV
THE next morning's papers, without exception, gave the death of Mrs. Enslee "under mysterious circumstances" the doubtful honor of the front page, right-hand column. In some of them the account bridged several columns. The head-lines ranged from calm statements to blatant balderdash.