"Can't we go too?" I begged, in a sudden panic.
"You cannot!" said Uncle John and father in one breath.
I turned a little helplessly to my husband.
"They don't want us!" I said.
"And we don't want them!" he answered smiling. "You and I are going to Cuba. Just as soon as you can get ready. I've been talking to your father and he agrees with me that the absolute change will do you all the good in the world."
"Cuba!"
"Exactly. There is a perfectly good plantation there just waiting for us."
"But...." I said, sparring for time, "I couldn't leave Sarah."
Father laughed outright. "You baby!" he said, caressingly.
"You won't have to," said Bill. "She needs a rest as much as you do. She's coming along—and so is your friend Peter. We can't leave him behind, and Mr. Goodrich has to sail for Spain sooner than he expected. I saw him this morning."
I was too amazed for words. And over my defenceless head the affair was settled. Canada for father and Uncle John; Cuba for Sarah, Peter, Bill, and me. A thousand protests, the old rebellious anger at having my life settled and ordered for me, rushed over me again. But father's eyes were on me and I choked back my resentment.
"Cuba it is!" I said, forcing a smile.
And so, after the maze of packing, of sending Sarah to New York for summer clothes—in the dead of winter!—after the farewells and the blessings and the thought-deadening hurry and bustle—Cuba it was.
CHAPTER IX
It was decided that my husband and I should go to New York by motor, spending the night with his uncle, Peter and Sarah to join us the following day, so that the last packing could be leisurely attended to before we sailed.
I had my farewells with father alone. Dr. Denton went in first and came out looking more moved than I believed possible. If I could have liked him at all, it would have been for his devotion to my father.
I can't write about how dear father was when he told me good-by.
John Denton went up to town with us. I begged him to, and he very naturally attributed my nervousness and pallor to the long strain of my father's illness. He was very good to me.
Leaving my house, in a sense for the first time, and knowing it would be months before I saw it again, I experienced a sinking of the heart that was terrible. Not till then had I realized how much my home meant to me, how much freedom had been mine beneath it's little roof, how lovingly the friendly walls had safeguarded and sheltered me.
At the door, I clung first to Mrs. Goodrich and then, for a long, close moment, to Sarah. She seemed a rock of strength, the last familiar landmark. But strong hands drew me away from her, and presently I was in the closed car, and we were off for New York.
I had very little sensation: only a feeling of greatnumbness and a consciousness that if I could know any emotion it would be that of an infinite despair. I was dimly grateful that I need not go by train. In this, at least, they had humored me. All through the long ride, I sat huddled in the new furs which were Uncle John's wedding gift to me, my eyes closed, and my hand in John Denton's warm clasp. I did not hear what the two men said to one another. Possibly, when they spoke to me, I answered. I do not know.
Something of the terrifying maelstrom of the city traffic penetrated my stupor as we came smoothly into town. It was all so new ... the noise and rush and bewilderment of it. The lights were beginning to flare up all about me: faces seen in the crowds struck at me like a blow. Such hungry, restless, seeking faces.... But here and there, the happy eyes of a girl clinging to a man's arm, or walking alone with her dreams, stood out for me, and brought the tears to my eyes. Wearily I thought, if I could only cry again—for it seemed so long since I had known the release of tears.
I must have fainted when we reached the house, for the next thing I remember is waking up in a great, wide bed, in a huge, high-ceilinged room, with a kindly, round old woman fussing over me.
"You're to lie still, dearie," she said, as I tried to sit up, "and have a bite of supper on a tray. 'Tis the Doctor's orders, ma'am," and she smiled at me with a certain shy sweetness, and tucked a billowy eiderdown quilt more closely about my feet. I discovered then that I was undressed and surrounded by hot-water bottles.
I tried to thank her, but words were difficult. I was so very tired.
Someone knocked.
"It's himself, surely," said the old woman, as she hastened to open, and then stood aside, her hands beneath her apron, to let my husband come in. He thanked her, dismissed her, and came straight to my bedside, where he stood looking down at me.
I drew the clothes tight about my throat and looked at him mutely.
"How do you feel?" he asked, retrieving one of my submerged hands and placing a steady finger on the pulse.
"Tired," I answered, and then, "Oh, Doctor Denton, when will Sarah be here?"
I knew quite well: but something unreasonable in me hoped that I had slept a whole twenty-four hours away and that I would very soon hear her comforting step outside my door.
"Tomorrow," he answered, and added with a suspicion of a smile, "but I thought we were agreed that Doctor Denton, as a form of address, is taboo, under the circumstances."
"William, then," I said, with a great weariness in my heart.
"Could you manage Bill?" he asked. "I have unpleasant associations with my full name: it always reminds me of the woodshed, and my father's strong right hand."
Absurdly enough, I heard my own voice saying solemnly:
"Father called me William, Mother called me Will, Sister called me Willie, but the fellers called me Bill."
I stopped suddenly, wondering if I were going quitemad. But there was reassuring laughter in the eyes bent upon me.
"Exactly," he said, gravely.
I attempted to laugh. It was a very poor effort, and ended in tears.
Dr. Denton sat down on the bed and took me into his arms, pressing my head against his shoulder. I didn't care. I cried there very comfortably, for a long time.
"It's all right," I heard his voice saying, coming, so it seemed, from a great distance. "It's all right. You'll feel lots better for it, Mavis."
After a while, I dried my eyes and lay back against the pillows again. The intolerable burden about my heart had eased a little, in some miraculous manner.
"And now," announced my husband, "Mrs. Cardigan is going to bring you some supper. After that, she will make you comfortable for the night, and you are to drink what I send you. Uncle John sends his love and the demand that you pour his coffee for him in the morning, or, if you do not feel strong enough, you are to stay in bed, he says, and he will come up and pour yours! And I shall be next door to you, if you want anything in the night. But I am sure that you are going to sleep soundly."
He rose and looked down on me once more.
"Good night," he said. "Sleep well."
"Good night," I answered, "Dr.—B-B-Bill!"
His eyes twinkled, just for a moment.
"Good night," he responded, "Miss—M-M-Mavis!"
He opened the door for Mrs. Cardigan and her tray, stood aside, waved to me once, and was gone. All the way down the hall I heard him singing: "Youare old, Father William" in a pleasant, gay baritone.
Suddenly I realized I was hungry.
I awoke the following morning feeling almost happy. There was a wonderful sense of adventure in looking out of my windows over the grey city streets, in hearing the hurrying footsteps go past me. So many people! So many sorrows and joys passing beneath my window, so many eager feet going out to meet the day! I felt very small, almost insignificant, very unimportant.
"It's like an angel you're looking today, Mrs. Denton!" said Mrs. Cardigan amiably, as she brought me my breakfast, with Uncle John following hard on her heels.
"And it's blushing she is!" added the honest creature in amazement.
Uncle John laid his hand on the shoulder of the old woman who had been nurse and housekeeper and almost-mother to him for thirty years.
"Run off with you, Mary," he said, laughing. "Mrs. Denton isn't used to blarney!"
"And her with the fine young husband!" said Mrs. Cardigan in obvious astonishment as she backed to the door.
Uncle John looked at me with laughing eyes: but I could not meet his glance.
The rest of the day is more or less of a blur to me now. Sarah came, with Peter and Wiggles. It was a matter for debate, which of the two last mentioned was the more excited. But it is certain that Peter talked more. His ideas of Cuba were wonderful and strange, and it was only by dint of dire threats of being left on the dock that we finally persuaded him to go to bed.
The following morning, February tenth, with the thermometer flirting with zero, we sailed for Cuba.
Sarah and I had connecting cabins: and I bribed a blonde, friendly steward to let me conceal Wiggles behind locked doors and thus keep him with us. On the other side of me, Dr. Denton was housed with Peter. All the cabins were full of flowers and fruit and books, and I am sure that, although I may have concealed it better, I was quite as excited as Peter and the pup.
It was, they tell me, a rough passage. Somehow, I didn't seem to mind. To lie in a deck-chair, muffled to the eyes, and to watch the ocean seemed all that I wanted in life. I never tired of it. Grey and green and blue, as the fog or the sun caught it, there was never anything as wonderful as my first sight of the sea. I was even glad of the storms that delayed us longer than usual. For, even beyond Cape Hatteras, we had wind, and snow and cold. And then came a day when, little by little, people began to crawl greenly up from their cabins, shed their sweaters, and take an interest in life. Sarah among them. Poor dear, she had succumbed almost before we left the dock! Every dip of the boat, every rising and falling swell was met by her with the gloomy announcement that she wanted to die. Once, when I peered in at her, I found my husband sitting by her berth and answering quite gravely, her innumerable questions as to how they conducted burials at sea. Were they conducted "with decent Christian rites?" she was demanding weakly.
As I walked the deck with him, braced against the salt wind, my hair flying under my fur cap,
"You shouldn't tease Sarah!" I said indignantly.
"Shouldn't I?" he asked, forcibly restraining Peter from going over the rail—shouting, "I see a mermaid, Aunt Mavis!" "Perhaps not. But to the good sailor,seasickness is always a matter, inexplicable and humorous."
"By the way, I'm glad," he continued, "that you've stood the trip so well. It would be a pity," said he pensively, "to have injected into the romance of a honeymoon the very mundane element of mal-de-mer...."
I turned on my heel to leave him, but reckoned without the tremendous wave which swung lazily up to the boat, smote it, held it suspended a breathless moment, and then let it down again with unparalleled suddenness. My husband's arm intervened between me and the rail, checking my mad career in mid-air.
"Steady on," he said. "We've not reached tropical waters yet."
There was nothing to do but take his proffered arm and walk on, in haughty silence.
We sat at the Captain's table, and for the greater part of the trip we and the Captain sat there alone. No, not quite alone, for at the Captain's right sat the prettiest girl I have ever seen. We met her the first day out, and it was not long before she had attached herself to our party. Peter, always susceptible to beauty, caused me not a few pangs of jealousy before the trip was over. And Miss Mercedes Howell, for such was her mismated name, seemed to find much in common with my husband. She had thought at first, she confided to me naïvely, that the Doctor and I must be brother and sister despite the passenger list, and at all events, we must have been married a long, long time—was it not so, dear Mrs. Denton?
On my stately assurance that I had been married less than a week, her enormous black eyes flew open to their widest. I changed the subject.
Miss Howell, so her vivacious chatter informed us, was returning to Havana after a period of college. I gathered that by the edict of the faculty she had gone through Vassar in two years instead of the prescribed four.
"Oh, but it was dull," she told us at the table, with melting, melancholy eyes. "No young men! Nothing! Just stupid books and rules—rules—rules!! It was like prison! Imagine!"
And she looked brightly about the board for sympathy. If I had a momentary sense of sympathy, it was for the faculty, but evidently my husband and the Captain felt otherwise.
Mercedes, as she insisted I should call her, extending the courtesy to the entire family, and, as a matter of course, addressing me as Mavis and the remainder of the party as Peter and Bill, was the daughter of a wealthy American, settled in Cuba with a Spanish wife. She was twenty, and on returning to Cuba, was to make her debut. I was tremendously interested by her vivid account of Cuban Society, and went to bed each night with my head a whirl of horse races, and parties and country clubs and motor trips.
Her chaperone being confined to her cabin, Mercedes found that, after I had retired it was quite providential that she should keep "Billy" pleasantly occupied on deck until such time as she should elect to go to bed. I must say that my husband advanced no serious objections. And when we parted on the docks at Havana, Mercedes escaped from her wan and weary attendant long enough to assure us all of her undying affection and to impart to us the pleasing information that Guayabal, whither we were bound, was quite near Havana, and thatwe could expect to see her often. I am afraid I was not very cordial. She was rather a dear, and superlatively, almost superfluously, pretty, but she made my head ache, and beside her youth and effervescence I felt curiously old.
Entering the harbor was something I shall never forget. The blue water and the sun on the white and mauve and pink houses, and the shining fortress of Morro castle rising up from the bay. Bill told me something of its history, as we leaned over the rail and watched the approach. And a sense of horror took hold of me, in the warmth and sunlight, as I thought of the torture chamber and the silenced screams of the prisoners....
And that is why, I suppose, my first impression of Cuba was one of beauty and cruelty, warmth and color and the dark, swift treachery of by-gone ages.
The landing, the inspection, the docks, passed in a blur. Sarah, pale and miserable, sat on a trunk with Peter and watched her alien surroundings with unfriendly eyes. But it was not long before we were hustled away and into a long, luxurious open car, driven by a lean, hawk-eyed person who greeted us in an unmistakable Yankee twang, bless him, and seemed unfeignedly glad to see us.
"This is Silas, Mavis," my husband informed me, "chauffeur extraordinary, Jack-of-all-trades, and overseer-in-particular to my friend, Harry Reynolds. And this, Silas," he said, quite impressively, "is Mrs. Denton!"
I shook hands and presented Sarah, who brightened visibly at the home-touch, and after we were settled, with Peter and Wiggles and innumerable bags stowed in thefront seat with Silas, I drew a deep breath and watched Havana slide by, gay with color, its narrow streets crowded, under a heavenly blue sky.
We ran along the low sea-wall, and passing parks and wonderful stone edifices which seemed too fairy-like to be called houses, we were soon leaving the outskirts far behind us. Before us stretched a long, wide, white road, thick with fine, sharp dust.
"We're climbing," said my husband, "you'll notice the change of air soon, for Guayabal is in a mountain district."
I hardly heard him. I was too busy watching the various family groups as we went through the villages. It was all so incongruous: here, a marvellous house that might have belonged to some foreign Prince—there, huddled at its very gate, a cluster of huts, thatched, and sun-baked; and brown babies all over the landscape, very naked, very dirty and, from a distance at least, wholly enchanting. And then the trees! The tall, royal palms, with the afternoon wind in them!
"Oh-h!" I said, as we passed a clump of wonderful scarlet blossoms, "what is it?"
Sarah was exclaiming too, sitting perfectly upright and rigid beside me.
"Hibiscus," answered our companion. "You'll find lots of it where we are going."
The villages went by. A crimson sun was glowing over the palms, and almost before I had seen it, it was gone, and a violet after-glow was coloring distant hilltops. I clasped my hands in my lap and wondered if ever there had been anything as lovely and remote. And it was with a sense of absolute shock that I heardand saw Silas snap on the lights of the car and realized that now the after-glow had gone and that the heavy Southern night had closed in around us.
"Why, there isn't any twilight," I said, in childish disappointment.
"Not here," answered my husband, "Nature strikes suddenly and swiftly in the tropics. She has no halftones, no compromise...."
Even in the dark I could feel his glance at me. I said nothing.
When we entered the village of Guayabal and drove up the winding roadway through the gates and into the drive, the stars were shining. Very close they seemed, and tremendous—"as big as dinner plates," as Sarah put it to me afterwards, with obvious disapproval. And they were warm, almost fragrant, I fancied, unlike our cold, high, impersonal stars of the North. They frightened me....
The lights shone out from a low, long house as the car stopped under a portico. Two smiling Chinese housemen were standing, ready to take our bags, and my heart sank as I thought of what Sarah—who contributes so religiously to foreign missions—must be thinking. It was with relief, therefore, that I saw the unmistakable Hibernian face of the cook at the door. The domestic staff consisted then, of Wing and Fong and Norah; and I blessed the Reynolds, that, in assembling their household Lares and Penates, they had included something white and clean and very cordial to preside over the kitchen, for I feared for Sarah's peace of mind....
Peter, tired and perhaps somewhat frightened by the strangeness and by the yellow hands raised to lift him down from the car, whimpered a little, and my husband,jumping out, took the child in his arms and turned to me,
"Welcome," he said, with a certain dignity, "to the Palms."
It was the loveliest house. Even Sarah was moved to favorable comment, and Wiggles went quite mad. We entered through a screened, tile-floored verandah, lamp-lighted, and bright with wicker-ware, to an enormous room. The walls were panelled in dark wood, the floor red-tiled, the ceiling raftered, and it was wide and high and long beyond my wildest dreams of any room. There were tables and books and myriad comfortable chairs all about, and at the far end, a huge fireplace, wherein a little red fire burned comfortably. For as the night came, so came the sudden amazing chill after the day's heat, and I found the warmth and sight of the fire very gratifying. The room was living and dining room in one, Norah explained to me, and showed me hard by the pantry door, the table laid for two. And after my first curiosity had subsided, she took me to my room.
It was many-windowed, and all the windows were barred. Three red steps led up to the alcove where a great bed was set, under an age-old crucifix. And it was gay with chintz and dimities, while against my windows a bourginvilla vine whispered in the wind.
Peter and Sarah were next door, with a bath between, and across the way, my stranger-husband had his own room and bath, as big and odd and delightful as mine. I could hardly sit down or let Sarah brush my hair or even wash the dust of the journey from me for excitement.
Peter, soon undressed and sitting up in bed with a big bowl of bread and milk, was trying heroically to keep hiseyes open. I heard his prayer, answered half a thousand questions as best I could, left him sleeping quietly, and went in search of my—host.
I found him, in a dinner jacket, at the piano, playing something very softly, and with his eyes half-closed. When he heard my step on the tiles, he jumped up.
"I didn't know you played," I said politely, glad that Sarah had persuaded me to change, and conscious of how very becoming the new mauve voile must be.
"I have a number of accomplishments," he answered irritatingly.
I stood for a moment, by the fireplace, the mantel high above my head.
"This is a wonderful house," I said, trying to make conversation. "Tell me something about it."
Dr. Denton drew two big chairs close to the fire and for half an hour told me of his friend, Harry Reynolds, and his delicate little wife, of how they had come to Cuba and built this place of dreams and sent for Silas from Vermont to come and take care of it.
"It is only about a hundred acres," said my companion, "mostly in sugar cane. But Reynolds has plenty of money and they were very happy here. When the youngest boy died of fever, Mrs. Reynolds couldn't stand it any longer. The place had too many associations. So they left, last summer, keeping the servants on, for Harry had to make several flying trips back and forth. And he was glad to let us have the house for a time, until he decided what to do with it. His wife swears she will never come here again: and yet, they are reluctant to sell it. I have spent a number of happy holidays here and so ... well, it was all most opportune and providential ...and I am convinced that the climate will be admirable for you."
He was speaking in his professional tone, and I, nervous and ill-at-ease, was glad to talk of my returning health and of other prosaic matters.
"When you are rested," he said, "in a day or two, we must go into Havana—you will want an account opened there at one of the banks."
That reminded me of something that had been troubling me.
"But it is not my money," I began rather abruptly, and stopped.
"It is," he assured me, "Your father has been very generous with you and you need feel under no obligations to me—unless you object to having me play the host a little until—later."
I didn't know what to answer, and blessed Fong's sleek black head, as slippered and silent, he slid in to announce dinner.
Norah had outdone herself for the "new Missis." And it was pleasant in the softly lighted room, with the candles burning on the table, shining across delicate old china and worn silver.
My husband exerted himself to be amusing. Our talk was all give and take, and there were even laughter awaking echoes in the room.
Dinner over, after I had made a face over the strong Cuban, and Bill—it was still so difficult to call him that—had sent out word to Norah that hereafter we would drink the sort of beverage I had been accustomed to, he went to the piano again, and with a little snub-nosed pipe between his teeth, sang ridiculous Bab ballads andplayed enchanting snatches of melody while, with Wiggles on my lap, I dreamed before the fire.
Father would have loved it.... I missed him terribly.
The music stopped.
"Mavis...." he was beside me, something in his hand. I turned, startled.
"I didn't give you a wedding present," he said, half-smiling, "but before we left I had just time to have this made for you."
I took the small, black leather case from his hand and opened it. My father's face looked back at me, wonderfully living. Almost it seemed as if the gentle, strong mouth would smile and speak.
"I had it painted before—before the tide turned," said Bill, "from the picture he gave me."
I closed my hands upon the miniature and my eyes against the tears.
"You are very good," I said falteringly. "I—you couldn't have given me anything I could have cared for more."
He stood, his broad shoulders squared against the mantel, and looked at me gravely.
"I hope," he said and stopped. Then, very evenly, he went on, "I hope you will try to be happy here, Mavis."
Happy! A sudden revulsion of feeling came over me. What use had I for happiness? I had been almost stupefied, like an animal in the sun, dreaming vaguely before the fire. But now....
"I will try to be—content," I told him.
His eyes hardened, grew keen and cold again.
"Thank you," he said, not quite sincerely.
We were silent a moment, until Silas came in to getthe orders for the following day. I hardly heard the voices, talking so near me. It mattered so little what they, or anyone, said. I thought of Green Hill, of Peter asleep near me.... I thought of father, in his big woods, his old strength coming back to him ... and I thought of the letter that had reached me on my wedding day ... my first love letter. I had not answered it. For me, no "lyric hour" could exist. No, nor not even the dream of one. Uncle John, I thought, would have told Richard Warren by now that I was married. Mrs. William Denton....
My thoughts blurred into a half-dream. I was on a ship. Somewhere Mercedes Howell was standing. I heard her calling from far off, "Billy, Billy!"
I awoke suddenly. Silas had gone and my husband was standing near me,
"You called me, Mavis," he was saying.
I looked at him, at the great, strange room, confused and half asleep.
"I was dreaming," I said, and then, "a nightmare."
"Oh, I see!" he laughed a little. "You look like a child," he said slowly, "with the firelight on your yellow hair and that flush in your cheeks."
I rose, tumbling Wiggles unceremoniously to the floor.
"Good-night," I said.
"Good-night," he answered, his hands deep in his pockets, and then, as I turned, "Sleep well, my little Make-Believe-Wife!"
CHAPTER X
I had been asleep for several hours, I fancy, that first night in Cuba, when I awoke to see the moonlight, like a living presence in my room. Across the floor it lay in long, level bars of light. Not the iron barriers at my window could keep it out. Silver it was, and never still, but quivering as if a heart shook it. The scent of flowers came to me, and far off in what was probably the native quarter, I heard a throbbing instrument touched very softly, and the sound of singing. It was all so strange, I could scarcely believe myself awake. And presently, in nightgown and bare feet, I went across the cool tiles to the windows and looked out.
The earth was silver under my eyes and the tall palms delicately feathered with light. The singing died away to half a sob. The smell of growing things was heavy and sweet on the air. It was all sheer beauty.
A little song began to weave itself in my brain. I had made songs before: almost too shy to set down on paper they were. But here, in Cuba, where everything seemed softness and release, I wondered if perhaps I could not sing with a stronger voice, and shape my songs with pen and ink. What was it Richard Warren had said about poets? And then, suddenly I knew that it was the thought of him which had taken me out of sleep and sent me trembling to the window, with my breast bare to the wonderful night. I knew that, once and for all, all beauty must be inextricably woven with the thought of him who had signed himself my "lover."
It was then that I became aware that something was hurting me cruelly—something cold and hard and forbidding. I crept back to bed with the marks of the bars across my breast.
In the morning I woke to find Peter sitting crosslegged on my bed saying solemnly,
"They're blue! They're grey! No, they're open and they're brown!"
Wide awake now, I caught him to me, cuddled him close and then asked wildly,
"Oh-h, Peter!—what's that?"
Not far from my window a raucous voice was saying, "Bring me my coffee! Coffee! Norah! Hurry up!"
"Perhaps it's Uncle Bill!" said Peter, open-mouthed.
"Of course it isn't, Peter," I said quite crossly, and climbed out of bed.
From my window, in the full, dazzling sunlight, I could see where the kitchen made an L, and the screened kitchen porch from which that terrifying voice emanated.
"Hurry!" it was saying. "Gol dern! Coffee! Coffee!"
"Why, Peter," I cried, "it's a macaw! A beauty! I've never seen one before—only pictures! Hurry and get dressed and let's go out and say good-morning to him!"
Sarah, apparently at home, and certainly composed, but rather too communicative as to the habits of "heathen," appeared, to help me dress and to hustle Peter into his own room. But before I was ready, a knock came at the door, and on its heels, Norah, bearing fragrant coffee and hot, brown rolls.
"Good morning, and it's neverupye are!" she saidin astonishment, setting the tray down on a little table which she spread with a white cloth.
"Doesn't one get up in Cuba?" I asked, laughing, as, in a negligée, I sat down to my breakfast.
"Not yet," she answered, "it's coffee ye have in bed, and then at eleven-thirty a real, big breakfast-lunch. Tea's at four, and dinner's at eight—unless ye'd rather it was different, ma'am," she added hastily.
"Not at all," I assured her, "I think it's a delightful arrangement. When in Cuba...." I began gaily.
"Smoke Cubebs!" finished another voice, and my husband's dark head appeared in the open doorway. "Good morning, Mavis. How did you sleep?"
"Beautifully," I told him, just a little bit embarrassed as his tall, bathrobed figure wandered unconcernedly in.
"Another cup," he said to Norah, with a side-glance at me and a careless, "with your permission."
I nodded—I couldn't very well do anything else, with Sarah there, and Norah beaming, and Peter dashing in to shriek loudly for milk.
In the general tumult, the macaw had started again,
"Norah!" it squawked. "Coffee! Coffee!"
"For heaven's sake," I said, "what sophisticated sort of a bird is that?"
"That's Arthur," said Norah proudly, and disappeared. Later, I left Bill and Peter exchanging pleasantries over the breakfast table and went to the kitchen porch to watch Arthur being fed bread, lavishly sopped in coffee, from a spoon. He was an utterly gorgeous bird, yellow and blue, and "a great talker," as Norah informed me. Me, however, he regarded for some time with a glassy eye, and merely reiterated his desire for strong drink.
Returning, I found my room empty and closingthe door, proceeded, with mixed emotions, to dress.
Last night ... the moonlight and the surge of regret and longing which had threatened to drown me, seemed very far away. And it was mentally on tip-toe that I joined a white flannelled Bill for my first stroll about my temporary domain.
We were alone, Peter having long since appropriated the services of Silas and gone forth with him to view the country.
The sun was very hot, and I tilted my parasol low over my face. Through avenues of palms we walked to the big, red-roofed garage, and on to the little orange grove behind the out-buildings. Beyond, the cane fields stretched, green and tall and waving. Figures, stunted, wiry, moved in the fields ... far off I saw a patient donkey stand, his back loaded with long lengths of cane tips. It was all hot and still, clear-cut and unreal to look at.
Silas, Peter and one of the natives came toward us, Peter rapt at the tremendous flow of Cuban-Spanish which surged above his small blonde head. They stopped to speak to us, Bill growing suddenly foreign and gesticulating as he answered the bent brown man's greetings.
"That's Juan," he told me, as we moved off. "Great old character. He has a daughter whom he adores, a girl who must be sixteen now, I should judge. He used to beat her unmercifully...."
"Horrible creature!" I said, with a shudder, my mind flashing back to that beautiful, sinister fortress rising, towered, from the sea, a symbol and a reminder....
Bill pushed his panama back from his broad forehead and whistled.
"I don't know," he said thoughtfully.... "After all, he beat her to keep her good."
A peacock, tail unfurled, minced colorfully toward us, down the white pathway.
"To keep her good!" I repeated scornfully, "with whipping?"
"I'm not advocating it," he answered quickly, "but his motives are unquestionably admirable. And there's a Spanish proverb, you may recall—it runs, tersely, 'A woman, a dog, and a chestnut-tree, the more you beat them, the better they be!'"
Wiggles, his eyes on the stately departing peacock, pranced down the path toward us, and, deflected by my whistle from his original, doubtless destructive purpose, leaped gaily at my ruffles.
"Did you hear that, Wiggles?" I asked him. "This is decidedly no place for you!"
But Wiggles, rolling happily in the grass, merely snorted.
A gong sounded from the house, and we went in to lunch.
About two o'clock, I was attacked by an overpowering languor. Twice, no less, I yawned in Peter's face, in the midst of his thrilling description of "babies an' ladies an' gentlemen, all brown, Aunt Mavis!"
"Siesta, now!" remarked my husband briskly. "Both of you! Off to bed!"
"Bed!" I said, "in the middle of the day!" Peter, but recently released from the burden of an afternoon nap, protested.
"Custom of the country," said Bill. "No getting around it. Couldn't if you wanted to. Even Arthur is asleep."
I listened. We were on the verandah, and all about us was a stillness which was almost audible. On the white road beyond our gates I saw a pair of oxen, toiling patiently up the hill. Even the birds were quiet, only now and then a sleepy chirping drifted down the hot air. It seemed as if a veil had been drawn over the land. My eyelids felt freighted, and I was very tired.
"Bed!" said Bill firmly.
I left Peter to his tender mercies and went indoors. My room was cool, and sweet with flower perfume. Sarah, yawning, came when I rang, and unhooked my frock. As I lay down on the bed, I heard her say something, bitterly, about "an unhealthy climate," but if she said more, I do not know what it was, for I was fast and dreamlessly asleep.
It was Arthur who woke me, making the day hideous with his laughter. "Mother's darling!" he announced, unctuously. "Pretty Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
I turned over and felt for my watch. Four o'clock! It was incredible. And equally beyond belief, the fact that I was hungry again!
I bathed and dressed, and then, wonderfully rested, went out on the verandah. Fong and Wing appeared as if by magic and laid the tea-table with iced tea, tiny round tomato sandwiches, and delectable frosted cakes. And also, as if answering some compelling summons, Peter, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, strolled out from the direction of Bill's room. It was quite apparent that both of them had been asleep.
"Tea?" I asked my husband, as his tall figure loomed up behind Peter.
"Certainly!" he said. "It's a necessity in Cuba, not a mere excuse for sociability."
All about us the birds were singing again, and the palms looked new washed.
"It looks as if it had rained," I said in amazement.
"Probably has," said Bill lazily, "Often does afternoons."
What a country!
That night, I made my first little song. There was a thought somewhere, back in my brain, a thought of moonlight and bars and a far-off singing. But it was not clear yet. So, instead, I set to paper the first eight lines that Cuba had made for me.
FantasieThe palms are listening to PanAcross the Terrace of the Night,A Peacock-Moon, aloof and white,Spreads wide a silver fan.The gilded stars with laughter pass,For I have caught an eerie sound,The Peacock droops ... just now, I foundA silver feather in the grass!
Fantasie
The palms are listening to PanAcross the Terrace of the Night,A Peacock-Moon, aloof and white,Spreads wide a silver fan.
The gilded stars with laughter pass,For I have caught an eerie sound,The Peacock droops ... just now, I foundA silver feather in the grass!
And so the days passed in blur of color and scent: of sun and sleep.
Peter grew tanned, and so did I. It was life in a fairy tale, and would have seemed quite perfect—if—. But I had grown to believe that nothing was ever perfect. Perhaps it were wise so, else we should all be loath even more to leave life. And the rift in the lute could not wholly ruin the music.
We had been there a week, I imagine, before Mercedes Howell descended upon us. She came apparelled marvellously,in a highly horse-powered chariot, and brought with her, as was eminently proper, her parents.
Mrs. Howell, née Dolores Maria Cortez, was that pathetic thing, a woman who had once been very beautiful. It was not hard to trace that beauty now, in the high, clean-cut nose, the great languid eyes, the tiny, full, red mouth. But her beauty was clouded with flesh, and her face a mask of powder. She sat on the verandah drinking "pina fria," with her tiny, arched feet on a footstool, and murmured polite accented thanks for the care we had taken of her dear child. I glanced at Bill, over a tray of cakes, but he was looking at Mercedes. So I turned, with a quickened heartbeat, to Mr. Howell. I found him charming, a tall, silent man, brown from the sun, and very lined. He listened eagerly, I fancied, to my chatter of home and snow and the quiet ebb and flow of life in a New England village. But Cuba had marked him for her own. One saw that. And one saw, too, his restless eyes moving from wife to daughter, questioning and troubled.
Mrs. Howell, before she left, asked us to some day attend the races with her. I told her I was not well, not yet up to the excitement of crowds.... But Bill, looking up quickly from his low-voiced conversation with Mercedes, said,
"Perhaps I can persuade Mrs. Denton, dear lady. It is something she surely should not miss."
Our glances met—crossed blades and stayed. Mine was hurt, I know. It was cruel of him, in that insufferably self-assured tone, to brush aside my wishes. When our guests had gone, I told him so.
"But," he said, at the doorway, "what you need more than anything, is contact with people, and to be taken outof yourself. You have never seen anything of the sort before, and you will not have the opportunity again. And the Howells are very good people to tie up to. They have lived here many years and have not wholly discarded the picturesque viewpoints and customs of the country, while at the same time, entering into the life of the American set."
"I didn't come here for society," I said, "and I don't want to be bothered ... by anyone. Go alone to the races, if you will, but I shall not."
He shrugged.
"Very well," he said.
Two days later, Bill drove the car into Havana, where he joined the Howells in a luncheon party and went afterwards to the races with them. I wondered if they would not think it very strange ... under the circumstances. And then I reflected that an extra man, married or bachelor, is welcome almost anywhere. And during my brief betrothal Bill had declared himself "quite free."
I didn't care, of course, where he went or with whom. It was none of my business. And it was the loneliness and the longing for things that could never be mine, which oppressed me and made me spend my sleepless afternoon siesta on a tear-damp pillow.
When Bill came home that night, I harkened politely to his account of his outing, and then went early to my room. The poem which had made itself mine during my first night in Cuba was clamoring to be written. And so I wrote it, at my table under the window, conscious that no words in so unskilled a hand could set down my feeling of imprisonment and regret.
Finished, I laid it in the drawer where my diary and the letters from Richard Warren were. It was a childishthing, but I had made it, and it belonged to me ... and to one other.