Underneath bewilderment, misunderstanding, the pinpricks of pride, and the smart of old resentments, Ihadbeen happy. It was as if I walked on a strange, new road, toward some unknown goal, some unguessed shelter. There were turnings in the path: dark places: uneven stretches: but always a bird sang, sweetly, in the distance,—the sun cleared the clouds and Adventure waited for me just around the corner. But lately, the ground had fallen away from under my very feet, and left me standing at the edge of an abyss, looking across a chasm of despair, to the far country I would never reach....
Mercedes knocked at my door, and came in.
"You've been away so long," she said, reproachfully. "Wright is going to mass with me, in the Church at Ceube. Won't you come too, Mavis?"
It's Sunday then, I thought, wondering how the days had passed, nameless and unheeded by me—every one bringing me nearer—
"Sure you want me?" I asked, and at her assurance,I got my hat and set out with her and Wright in the car.
Bill drove us down: he didn't come in, but went about other business after he had left us at the little church, solidly built of time and weather stained adobe, red-roofed, and squatly towered.
The small room was filled with people. We squeezed into an already overcrowded pew, and kneeling, I was almost drugged with the clouds of incense, and the hot, close air.
At the altar, the red-robed priest, very old and frail, intoned the ceremonial service. A full-grown altar-"boy," black as his robes, and slippered, swung the heavy censer, and looked over the audience for possible disturbances. They occurred more than once. The brown babies cooed or cried, according to their several temperaments; a mongrel dog ran in and out of the pews, at a late-comer's heels; and here and there, a black-eyed girl looked over her shoulder at some responsive cavalier who stood or knelt with the many worshippers lining the walls.
There was an amazing, almost tangible spirit in the place: a mingling of childlike devotion and equally childlike theatricalism. The people came to the service, like children to a parent, wholly natural, wholly simple, and yet not wholly devoid of a certain dramatic instinct and, above all, keenly sensitive to the sweet-scented vapor, the well-worn lace and vestments of the priest, the solemn intonation of the Mass.
Bright-winged birds flew astonishingly in and out of the open-shuttered windows: the consumptive organ wheezed and muttered: the voices of the people rose with a grave eagerness upon the heavy air. And here and there an adventurous ray of sunshine fell alike on old and young heads, lingered on the gay colors of the girls'dresses, slid like a finger of gold over the red-robed priest at the little altar, and danced across the heavy, smoky rafters of the ceiling.
Mercedes, her lovely face hidden, told her silver and pearl rosary. Wright, after his first moment of embarrassment and instinctive recoil from so much massed humanity, was engrossed in her, in his surroundings. I imagined I saw a picture shaping—a little more tender, a little more serious than anything he had done yet. And I, kneeling in the stuffy chapel with an alien people of a different expression of Faith, felt for the first time in many, many hours, a sense of release, of peace, a cooling touch on my hot and aching heart.
Mass over, the people poured, laughing, talking, gesticulating out into the thick, yellow sunshine. The half-flirtations which had deflected the thoughts of some of the younger worshippers, were renewed and pursued. A young mother sat on the steps of the church and bared her brown breast to her baby's fumbling lips. She looked a deep-eyed Madonna, as she sat there, unconscious of the people around her, a white mantilla framing her face. Her husband, a clean-featured man, taller than the average Cuban, stood behind her, smoking, his coarse white trousers dazzling in the sunshine, his bright purple "American" shirt worn like a smock, after the "dress" regulations of Guayabal on Sunday.
Bill drove up presently, and as usual, the straggling children clustered around the car. He was always dear with children—white or black, brown or yellow. They were instantly his friends.
Wiggles, riding proudly in the front seat, created quite a sensation, and Mercedes, climbing in to hold him in herpretty, primrose-dimity lap, had great difficulty in restraining him.
"Where is his collar, Mavis?" she asked, clutching the frantic dog to her demure, white frills.
"He was uncomfortable with it, in the heat," I answered. "Weren't you, Wigglesworth? So I took it off—"
The car gave a sudden leap—and I knew that Bill had been listening for my answer; knew that he knew that I could not throw innocent Wiggles away, but that, when the mask had fallen from Richard Warren, I had, in a fit of anger, taken away the too-significant collar. It was in my trunk—but sometimes I wondered what had happened to my lucky charm of cool, green jade—flung from my window in a moment of pure rage.
Once, I had looked for it—the day after Mercedes and I had siesta-ed in the palm-grove—not since.
When we had arrived home, Wright drew me mysteriously aside.
"Let me see those last two poems of yours again, will you, Mavis?" he said. "One of the men I was at college with wants me to go in with him on a book-shop and publishing venture—you know, odd books, quaintly bound, and all that sort of thing. He has his eye on a place in Greenwich Village, and just the right, short-haired, but delusively shrewd girl to run it—the shop end, I mean."
"What do you want the verses for?" I asked suspiciously.
Wright grinned.
"If I am to be the Angel in this affair," he said, "how could I employ celestial qualities better than to boost my friends—and incidentally, myself? We can collect yourpoems, publish them in a sufficiently bizarre edition to attract attention—and, without letting Mr. John Denton's solid and conservative firm into the secret—you can astonish your husband, by Christmas, say, with a book of your own."
"But," I argued, "they're not good enough—"
"They're good enough for me," said Wright magnificently, "and it will be rather fun, having a business of this sort to play with. It's one way of revenging myself on those beastly tin-pans."
I grew just a little excited, picturing Bill's astonishment. And I would not be there to hear his criticism. I had a dozen verses or more which Wright had not yet seen: the best, I thought, of all. And, of the poems I had styled "Cuban Pastels," the two he had just spoken of headed the group.
1Havana HarborHued as a peacock's plumage, wide unfurled,The sea dreams, smiling. Far off, toylike, frailA boat drifts to the blue edge of the world,The brilliant sunlight glinting from it's sail.An idle cruiser, sinister and grey,Drifts, out of tune with sunlight and with dreams,While, on the city-wall, the rainbow-sprayScatters to crystal, shot with opal gleams.The shore curves tender as a clasping arm—Like cardboard structures from a clever hand,Bright in the sun, and touched with old-world charm,Unreal, the ragged lines of houses stand.Dim with the Past, a fortress close-guards yetA city whose once-fettered feet are free,To wear, serene as some white-limbed coquette,The gold-and-sapphire anklet of the Sea.
1Havana Harbor
Hued as a peacock's plumage, wide unfurled,The sea dreams, smiling. Far off, toylike, frailA boat drifts to the blue edge of the world,The brilliant sunlight glinting from it's sail.An idle cruiser, sinister and grey,Drifts, out of tune with sunlight and with dreams,While, on the city-wall, the rainbow-sprayScatters to crystal, shot with opal gleams.The shore curves tender as a clasping arm—Like cardboard structures from a clever hand,Bright in the sun, and touched with old-world charm,Unreal, the ragged lines of houses stand.Dim with the Past, a fortress close-guards yetA city whose once-fettered feet are free,To wear, serene as some white-limbed coquette,The gold-and-sapphire anklet of the Sea.
2Morro CastleAn old fortress, wrapped in magic sleep,The city's crouching watchdog, fronts the sea,And locks stone lips on tales of dungeon-keep;On legends of dead terrors, buried deep;And gives no hint of once-screamed, strangled plea,Choked to swift silence in the torture cell,In ages dark with bloody sweat of pain....Ah! if the Morro ghosts could walk again,What whispered horror could those bruised throats tell,Wrung by the cruel, long hands of Ancient Spain!
2Morro Castle
An old fortress, wrapped in magic sleep,The city's crouching watchdog, fronts the sea,And locks stone lips on tales of dungeon-keep;On legends of dead terrors, buried deep;And gives no hint of once-screamed, strangled plea,Choked to swift silence in the torture cell,In ages dark with bloody sweat of pain....Ah! if the Morro ghosts could walk again,What whispered horror could those bruised throats tell,Wrung by the cruel, long hands of Ancient Spain!
I gave the verses to Wright, after luncheon,—all of them. He could do with them as he liked, I said. Revise, correct, re-group. I was tired of singing songs, but I did not tell him that. In my heart I thought I would be glad to have my verses, bound and shut in a little book. They would remind me of Cuba, and of other things, when I was too old, too armoured by time, to feel the hurt of remembering. I would keep my Diary, too, against that distant day. Time, I had read, heals all. It was pleasant to think that sometime the ache in my breast would be stilled. But I thought perhaps I would miss it, it would grow to be part of me after a while—
Mercedes, looking in on me from the flowers screening the verandah where I sat, asked coaxingly,
"Coming walking with us, Mavis!"
"Us?" I inquired.
"Wright, and Billy, and me."
I shook my hand.
"I think not," I answered. "I have some letters to write."
"Billy said you wouldn't come," said she, pouting.
"Did he?"
For a moment I was inclined to reconsider, but the delight of proving my husband wrong would not have atoned for an hour of his society. And well I knew that Wright and Mercedes would, eventually, wander off or get surprisingly lost, or accomplish one of the fifty odd things which they managed so ingenuously, and which would rid them of even the most friendly chaperonage.
Mercedes waited.
"Bill is right," I said, "as always. I think I'll not go, Mercedes, if you and Wright don't mind."
"Not at all," she said generously, "only," and here her voice grew wistful, "only the time is getting so short, Mavis. In two days I'll be going to Havana for the Mendez dance—and to stay. And then, before we know it, you will be going home again."
"But you're following shortly," I reminded her.
"With my family!" she added.
"Won't your Mother consider lending you to me for a while this summer?" I asked. "I shall be—" and almost I had said "so very lonely" before I thought. I stopped.
"Shall be what?" asked Mercedes, coming up the steps and dropping to my feet, on a crimson cushion.
"So very glad to see you," I answered, and truly.
"I wonder," said Mercedes.
"That's not very nice of you," I accused her.
"I didn't mean—what you said," she hastened to explain. "I only meant—I wonder if Wright would wait over and go up with us? It is so dull," she went on, "just travelling with the family, and Father likes him so much. What do you think, Mavis?"
Mavis thought that without Wright's pleasant, obtusepresence, that homeward voyage would be a nightmare. But she did not say so.
"I'm sure he'd love to," I answered, smiling into the pretty, eager face, "especially if you ask him—very nicely."
Mercedes laid her flushed cheek for a minute against my knees. Through the thin fabric of my gown I could feel the warmth of it.
"You like Wright, don't you?" she asked, a little anxiously. "And he's Billy's best friend—?"
I put my hand on her smooth, heavy hair. A scent, as of youth and flowers and sunshine came to me from the polished coils of it. Wright was a very fortunate young person.
"I'm very fond of him, Silly," said I, "and Bill adores him. There, is that recommendation enough?"
She jumped up, in a whirl of skirts, and kissed me impetuously: held me a moment in the clasp of her strong, young arms, and then, her high heels clicking on the tiles, ran into the house.
"More than enough," she called over her shoulder.
But when, charmingly hatted, dragging the point of a butterfly sunshade after her, she went down the path between Bill and Wright, there was no sign of her recent agitation on that smooth, creamy cheek.
Left alone, I sighed a little, and looked ahead. They had fallen in love so wholeheartedly, so gaily, those two. I pictured them, if all went well, going through life like the Princess and Prince in the fairy-tale, living "happily forever after." She could love, I knew, that feather-brained, big-hearted little friend of mine. She was young, too, younger than her years, an astonishing thing in Southern women. She would be easily assimilated,would adapt herself gracefully. And it was patent that she thought Wright head and shoulders above the average cut of men. She had told me so, without knowing it, over and over again. And Wright, diffident, sensitive Wright, under his absurdities and his worldly airs? He would cherish her, I knew, and be good to her all his life: invest her with a never-failing glamour, make her his model and his sovereign lady: write madrigals about her: worship at her tiny feet. It was a very pretty little Romance....
They would never have pain in their love, I thought: never know undreamed of depths of agony and self-knowledge: never know secret shrines despoiled, the altars overthrown, desecrated....
I heard Peter's voice in the living room, and Sarah's asking where I was. I called to them and went in.
It was strange, I thought, as I discussed with Sarah the preliminaries of packing, how much I seemed to know about Love. I, who had never known, nor felt any save my Father's and that of my few, placid friends ... and perhaps that Love that is all dream-stuff. And in my heart was a voice which questioned and which I dared not answer. "How do youknow?" it said to me. "How do you know?"
I closed my ears to it and drew Peter into my lap.
"Will you be glad to go home?" I asked him.
"Well," said Peter, considering, "there's—Silas."
"So there is," I assented.
"Couldn't he come with us?" asked Peter, coaxingly. "He could sleep in my room—"
I looked at Sarah, for appreciation of this. Lean, long Silas lodging in Peter's small nest. And I looked twice. Sarah, her head bent over an armful of my gowns, was—blushing!I couldn't believe my eyes. I might have fancied the Rock of Gibraltar moved to such soft symptoms of complexion, before Sarah.
"Why, Sarah!" I said, in amazement.
The difficult red crept up to her honest eyes. She raised them and met mine, and what I saw there was very beautiful.
I put Peter off my lap.
"Run out and play for a while, dear," I said, "before tea."
And then,
"Sarah?"
"He's a good man, Miss Mavis," she answered, clutching the gowns to her, ruinously—my careful Sarah! "And we're neither of us so young, nor so flighty that we wouldn't know our own minds. Mr. Reynolds has written him that he has a buyer for the place, and we thought that when things was settled down here, Silas could come up North to Green Hill—and—"
"But, Sarah," I cried out, in childish dismay, "I can't lose you—I can't—"
She put the gowns on a nearby chair and touched my hair with her faithful old hand.
"Indeed, Miss Mavis," she said earnestly, "not for a hundred Silases would I leave you: But Silas spoke to the Doctor about a place—and the Doctor said he needed a man to drive for him, and so, if you want us, we could both stay on. No one could take care of you," she said, jealously, "except me."
"Does the Doctor know—about you?" I asked.
"Silas didn't tell him—and I was going to wait until we got home. It come all at once," she explained, "but Silas thinks maybe he's guessed—"
And I had been so blind—so blind to the times when Sarah walked out with Silas, for "a breath of air": so blind to the long silences in the kitchen of an evening, under Norah's cordial, Irish eyes.
"It's wonderful!" I said, at last. "Silas is a lucky man. I'm awfully happy for you, Sarah."
"You ain't angry?" she asked timidly. "You don't think it's foolishness—at my age?"
"I think it's beautiful," I said, and as she turned to go, I put out a hand to draw her near, to kiss her. The only mother I had ever known, faithful, self-sacrificing, tender—I was glad that her old age would be sheltered and made happy for her.
After she had gone, I sat for a long time in silence. The voices of the others, their steps on the path, aroused me. And, as I went out obediently to Wright's hail, I thought of Mercedes—and now Sarah—each with her love-story and her pride: the enchanting, spoiled young daughter of America and Spain with her poet, and the elderly woman, austere as her own New England, her shoulders bent in my service, with a good man of her own kind—. Well, Father was left to me, thank God—but—
I felt terribly lonely.
CHAPTER XIX
The morning the Howells' car came to take Mercedes and Wright to Havana and the Mendez dance, Mrs. Howells came with it. She would not wait for luncheon, but had a little talk with me while Mercedes, in a flutter, was collecting her things. It was a very little talk, and consisted mostly in shruggings of the maternal shoulders, lifting of the placid, maternal brows, and half-finished phrases, unspoken questions. And she left, indolently satisfied. The tin-pans had won her. I foresaw a cloudless sky of courtship for Wright, as far as his Mercedes' mother was concerned.
Mercedes, promising to "return" Wright on the morrow, was reluctant to go.
"I've been so happy here," she whispered, as she kissed me good-by. "You'll never know how happy. And I'm so grateful, Mavis!"
She kissed Bill, too, when her mother's back was turned, the merest ghost of a caress, brushing his cheek, accompanied by a little giggle of pure mischief. And he patted her slim shoulders with a tolerant hand, as he bade her "run along and enjoy her party."
"My aunt!" said Wright to me, tragically, "couldn't you persuade the old lady to sit in the front seat with that brigand in a general's uniform who is driving the car?"
I waved them farewell with a sinking at my heart. It was as if Youth and Gaiety were leaving me, hand in hand, with never a backward glance.
I did not see Bill again until luncheon an hour later. It was one of our old-time silent meals, although we talked in a desultory manner, while the slippered servitors were in the room. Bill passed me salt after the manner of an ancient monarch handing poison—with deadly courtesy. I responded with pepper. And after Wing and Fong had left us, at the end of the meal, I tried desperately to make small talk.
"I miss Mercedes so much," I said, "and Wright too."
No answer.
"It looks like a match," said I presently.
"It does," said Bill, gloomily.
I waited.
"Wright's crazy about her," proffered my husband, after a time, leaning back in his chair.
"Did he tell you so?" I asked curiously.
"Kept me up one whole night, expatiating on her charms and his extreme unworthiness," he replied.
I laughed.
"When I think of the things he said about her at first: 'female leopardess,' and 'did you take him for a lion tamer?'" I said, "it really is funny."
"A little antagonism at the outset," said Bill, blowing neat rings, "is very good for the course of true love—sometimes."
I was silent.
"Of course," said Bill, positively growling, "it's a lottery anyway—"
He was so absurd, so little-boyish, so ill-tempered, that I wanted to mother him. I had seen Peterkins just like that when things went wrong.—After all, I thought, it must be trying to be even temporarily bound to a woman you dislike so much.
"Speaking of lotteries," I said lightly, "you haven't heard the results of the last drawing, have you?"
"No," he answered, "but Silas is counting the hours until the afternoon when the papers come up—he bought half a dozen tickets from that chap who rode up here the other day—"
He rose from his chair and called the garage on the phone. By a miracle, Silas was there, and I heard Bill ask him the number of his tickets. Then, jotting them down, he called Havana and some mysterious person and asked for the winning numbers.
As he spoke in rapid Spanish, I was forced to wait until he turned from the phone to say, "By George, Silas has made a killing!"
I jumped up and was at his elbow when he put the receiver down.
"Oh what is it?" I asked, fairly dancing with excitement.
"Not the big prize," he answered, "but $1500 for all of that—"
"Sarah will die of joy," I began.
"So it's true then," said Bill, interrupting.
"True as true," I answered, "and I think it's splendid."
"I thought there was something afoot," said Bill, "when Silas asked for a job with me. I was glad to give him one. He can be useful to me in a hundred ways. He's a corker—"
"They could build a little house at the back of the garden. Father would be so pleased—" I said, eagerly. "Sarah wouldn't leave me, you know—"
I stopped.
Bill, with his hat in his hands, turned.
"It will be difficult to arrange that," he said, "as you have made other plans. And I shall leave Green Hill—so I am afraid," he concluded evenly, "that a 'little house in the garden'—unlessyouwish to keep Silas on—wouldn't be quite feasible."
He went out with that, and it was some time before I had pulled myself together and gone in to tell Sarah the news. I saw her later, flying in a most indecorous manner toward the garage, and knew that she and Silas would presently be sitting on the step of the car building air-castles in Green Hill with their new fortune. Well I knew that one of them would be reared in the back of my little garden, just as I thoughtless enough, had one. It wouldn't be fair to hurt Sarah now, I told myself. I would wait till we were home. Sarah would be sorry—she liked Bill—but Father would keep both Sarah and Silas on—the place needed a permanent man-of-all-work....
But there were breakers ahead—bitter waters. I was to be spared nothing—nothing—to the final humiliation.
There was a letter from Father when the mail came in. It isn't necessary to set it down here. Suffice it to say that something I had said in my last letter about his never-failing generosity to me, had called forth a denial that "the bit of pin-money—to make you feel independent, dear!" amounted to anything. And then a word about the income Bill had settled on me: "I think you should know, Mavis," he concluded, "although I am breaking word with Bill. He told me he didn't want your small, unworldly head to be bothered with money matters. But it is time that you learned to be practical—"
He mentioned the little allowance he had insisted onmaking me: it would hardly have paid for my shoes. And eventually it was clear to me that the money in the bank ... my clothes ... my lovingly purchased gifts for my friends ... Sarah's wages ... my many extravagances since coming to Cuba ... everything, everything had come from the one source ... Bill. And I, more ignorant than any child about the value of money, had not even asked, except once. And then he had lied to me, had told me it was my money, my Father's money, and all the time I had been living on charity. How well he knew me, that he took the chance that I would not ask Father for a definite statement of what allowance he was making me!
I was overwhelmed with shame and dismay. It seemed as if this were the proverbial last straw. "They make gold out of straws, don't they?" my sick brain inquired childishly. It was hard to think coherently.
I went to the telephone and called the garage. Silas answered. I managed, somehow, to congratulate him on the lottery drawing before I asked him to find Dr. Denton, please, and ask him to come up to the house, if he were not too busy. I wished to speak to him.
Ten full, wretched minutes I endured before he came.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked, bursting in precipitately.
Mutely, I gave him the letter.
He read it, and crumpled the sheets in his hand.
Instantly on the defensive,
"Well?" he said.
"Was there any reason to lie to me?" I counter-questioned, quietly. "You must have known that, sooner or later, I would know ... if not now, then when I saw Father again."
I think my eyes warned him that this was a time for very plain speaking.
"I had hoped," he answered, after a little pause, "to persuade your Father to bear me out in what I believed a harmless enough conspiracy.—After all," he added, breaking my persistent silence, "it would be difficult to explain to your Father that you refused to let me support you."
"I am sorry," I said, rather more gently than I felt, "to have been more of a burden on you than I knew. Had I known, had I for one instant dreamed that I would be dependent on you, I would never have consented to this arrangement. This may sound very foolish, I know, and I see now how impossible it all would have been,—but this is how I felt, and you, I think, knew."
He nodded, eyes on mine.
"Yes," said he.
"You have had a very pretty revenge," I told him, each word dropping like a cold, little stone into the hush of the big room. "You must have laughed, often, to yourself. No doubt it has been very amusing, waiting for the bubble to break. If you will make me out a statement, as nearly as you can, of just how much I am indebted to you, I will try to repay you little by little."
I felt the absurdity of the situation, the utter arrogance and futility of my words as I spoke them. But I had to speak.
"Please—" he flung out a protesting hand, "why do you fret yourself with trifles? Are you not willing to make some further sacrifice for your Father? When the time comes for us to separate, I had hoped—after all,it would be only the usual thing to do—to make you an allowance."
"Did you intend to consult me about it?" I asked, furiously.
He hesitated.
"Please answer," I said.
At my tone, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.
"I am waiting," I announced, with dangerous patience.
"Well—I admit the situation seemed difficult, but it was in the future," he answered finally, "and I thought, perhaps—"
"Never mind. You would have gone out of my life with the amusing knowledge that you had a hold on me, to a certain extent? It was well planned," I said, growing colder and colder minute by minute, until in the sunny warmth of the windows I shivered uncontrollably. "But you must have thought me even more of an imbecile than I am. I owe you," I ended, "a large sum of money. When we are separated, when Father gets used to that fact, and when he realizes how well I am, how strong, there will be some sort of work for me somewhere, I am sure, that will both occupy my time, and enable me to repay you."
"Work?" said Bill, and then, under his breath, "My God!"
He was angry, I knew—hurt, I felt. And I was glad.
"I am not a—charity patient, Dr. Denton!" I said, and left the room.
The rest of that day is a blank to me now. If I had suffered before, I suffered a thousand-fold now. I could not look at the miniature. I was even angry with Father—dearest Father, who had done his "humanbest" for me. I hated myself, I hated life, I wanted to die. To be laughed at; to have had my little defiances and independences met with the secret thought "the very clothes on her back were bought with my money"; to have been fooled and fooled again, to his heart's content; to have lived on the bounty of a man who despised me, hurt and wounded me at every turn—it was unbearable.
When I was home again, when the tangle finally became unraveled, I would go to Uncle John. I would ask him frankly what to do; tell him the whole, bitter little story; ask him to find work for me—reading proof, correcting manuscript, scrubbing floors—I didn't care. There were business schools, I thought vaguely—and cursed the years of invalidism which had kept from me so much knowledge of the world, so unfitted me to cope with it, once I was on my material feet.
Father need never know. He would think it a whim, would be, I imagined, even a little proud, would believe, even, that I sought to distract myself after the wreck of my married life. Other women had done the same thing.
I thought of the city as I had seen it: the crowds and the loneliness and the bleakness of the streets: the hurrying, uncaring people—I had read of girls in the city; the indignities of the boarding house; the strain and the demand and the difficult way that lies before the untrained wage-earner—
Mavis of Green Hill in a New York office! I laughed aloud at the thought, and the sound of my own voice frightened me.
I couldn't cry. Somehow, I hadn't a tear left. I could only clench and unclench my hands on the lap of the little mauve gown which William Denton hadbought for me—I wondered if Mrs. Goodrich knew. It had been she who had attended to all my purchases before I left Green Hill, who had gone into town with my measurements and returned with two trunks full of everything I needed, and assured me that the "bill was taken care of."
What a fool I had been!
I did not go out to tea. Sarah brought me something in my room. I told her I had a headache. It was the truth. And through my closed door I could hear Bill's voice asking for me. Mr. Crowell was there; he had ridden over some time before. I sent my regrets and stayed in my room.
At dinner I hardly spoke. I was too conscious of the clothes I wore, the food I ate. The one burdened me, the other choked me.
Bill, which was unusual, talked nervously all through the meal, about everything and nothing. Even through the dull sense of impotence and anger that possessed me, I could see that he was ill-at-ease, excited, waiting for something—waiting, perhaps, for me to reopen the last painful chapter. He could wait, I thought.
We had just been served with salad, when Fong came in, brushed Wing aside, and bent over Bill, saying something very low.
A little gleam of some inner excitement came into the steel-blue eyes. He flung down his napkin.
"Tell Juan to wait," he said, and rose.
"I beg your pardon," he said formally to me, "but I am afraid that you must eat your dinner alone. Someone has come up from the village to see me."
"Juan?" I asked. "Is Annunciata ill again?"
"No, no," he was clearly impatient and started from the room.
"Shall I have Norah save some dinner for you?" I asked, mechanically.
"Don't bother," he said, hesitated, and then, suddenly crossing the room in four strides, he was beside me. I felt his hand on my hair and stiffened under the unaccustomed touch. The hand dropped to his side.
"Don't think so badly of me, Mavis," he said, "even if you have been a 'charity patient'—do you know the Bible meaning of Charity?"
Before I could speak, he was gone. He had not changed for dinner, a real innovation, and was in riding things. I heard the ring of the little spurs he wore on the tiles, and the sound of a closing door.
"The Bible meaning of Charity?" But that was—that was—Love. What did he mean—a love-patient?
I sat, my hands under my chin, while Wing came and went with the untasted food. A love-patient?
Something terribly sweet and keen pierced my heart. It couldn't be. Love wasn't like that—cruel and wounding and hurting. Love "suffereth long and is kind." That was in the Bible too. "Love suffereth long and is kind—seeketh not its own—beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth."
The big tears ran down my cheeks. "Love never faileth."
If it was true then—"Oh, God, let it be true!" I prayed, mutely. If it were true then, how blind I had been! Sacrifice—patience—hope—. Would he have done so much for someone he despised—even for revenge? I began to remember—
There were voices outside—loud, excited, almost hysterical—Was Bill there? I waited for him in my chair. I had not moved. He would find me as he had left me. Perhaps he had come back to tell me what he had meant. Charity—Love.
The door flew open and Sarah burst in. She was crying. I saw that at once, and wanted to say to her,
"So you have heard? It isn't true, Sarah, it wasn't charity, after all, it was love—"
But she came straight to me and caught desperately at my hands,
"Miss Mavis,—the cane—it's been set afire—Silas is down there, and Dr. Denton—"
Then I awoke.
"Dr. Denton!" I had her by the shoulders, I was shaking her—"Not Dr. Denton!"
"Yes, Miss Mavis. Juan crept up here to warn him. But those devils fired the cane while he was in this very house. Fields of it in flame, and Silas there—"
She was in a chair now, her apron twisted between her work-worn fingers, the sobs taking her by the throat.
Funny that she could cry like that, I thought, watching her. I must give her something to make her stop—if Bill were here—
Bill! Bill!
I must have screamed. Sarah, her arms around me, was herself in a minute, had herself in hand.
"There, there," she said soothingly. "They'll be all right, I am sure. You're to be calm, Miss Mavis, and not take on so."
Calm! With the Far Country just within reach—and the fire sweeping across the cane-fields.
I put her away from me.
"Go to the kitchen, Sarah dear," I said very quietly, "and wait for news. Have Wing and Fong gone too?"
She nodded.
"I'll wait here," I said. "I had better get out the Doctor's kit and all the first-aid things. Someone may be burned—"
She sobbed at that, but turned and went to the kitchen.
I went into Bill's room.
For a minute I did nothing—only touched the things on his bureau—his brush, his comb—
A little snap-shot of me stood there. Of me, in a wheel-chair—I had forgotten that—
I opened a leather case which stood on the bureau, it had his initials on it, and a small key lay beside it. Opened it and saw my letters to Richard Warren. They were tossed together, as if he had been reading them. He had told me that he never kept letters.
Somehow, I found the first-aid things and the little emergency case. They were on the table by his bed. And then, taking them into the living-room, I called out to Sarah to find some linen and tear it into sheets—we had very little gauze in the house.
My hands on the first-aid kit, I sat down to think. It was too bad Wright was not here. He would not lose his head. But Mercedes would. I was glad she was in Havana. Suddenly I laughed to think of them, dancing at the Mendez ball—
Sarah came in, her hands full of an old sheet.
"Any news?" I asked, steadily.
"It's going fast," she said dully. "You can see it—"
I went to the window. The whole sky was crimson. I saw the smoke wreathing up through the flame, fancied that I heard shouts—strained my eyes for the sight ofa tall, lean figure. He would come soon, I knew, and tell me that it had been a nightmare, that he was safe, that he had been in no danger—
I looked around. Sarah had gone out, quietly. No one was there.
Softly I went across the room, opened the door, and slipped like a ghost into the menacing night.
I walked at first. Then ran. The plants and trees caught at my dress. They wanted to hold me back. I shook myself free and went on. Nearer and nearer. How much smoke there was! The whole last crop gone. Thousands of arrobas of sugar, gone in a breath! Good, loyal Juan, I thought, as I went on, stumbling, falling once to my knees. My dress was ruined. Bill will buy me another, I said aloud. Not Charity—Love.
Suddenly I was in the midst of it. The flame and the smoke, the hurrying figures, black with soot and sweat, digging the trenches that might save the cane.
"Bill!"
My own voice pierced through the smoke and crackle. I was going on. I would not stop until I had found him.
Was that Bill, blackened, a figure in a dream, his shirt burned away from one bare shoulder. There were red marks on his shoulder—
He didn't hear me? Didn't he want to? Was he angry? I was sorry I had been so foolish, but I hadn't known that he cared. Why hadn't he told me? Or had he tried to, and I wouldn't listen?
"Bill!"
A spark on my dress—a glare and a flame. I was part of the roaring and the smoke and the crimson glare about me, beating at the little, licking, red tongues with ineffectual hands.
Death then? But I wanted to live! It wasn't fair!
Bill!
His arms about me, his bare hands crushing out the flames, his agonized voice in my ears—
"Mavis! My darling!—"
I was safe. I tried to put my arms around his neck, but they fell weakly to my side. He took my hands in his and clasped them where they belonged. I was lifted, borne swiftly through the night.
Crimson flame and smoke—a roaring—a voice pleading with me to raise my head, to answer, only to speak—.
Darkness....
CHAPTER XX
Once, in the night, I awoke—fully. Before that, there had been periods of half-stupor, and then, a deep, restful sleep. But just for a minute, I was wide-awake, abnormally conscious.
"Bill?"
He was sitting beside the bed. The light was very dim. His hand was on my bandaged hand which was lying over the sheet.
"Dearest?"
"You're all right?"
"I'm well," he said, "and you will be much better in the morning. Close the dear eyes now, and sleep."
"You won't go away?"
"Never. Go to sleep, Mavis."
In the morning he was still there, sleeping, wrapped in his funny, fuzzy bathrobe, in a big chair close to the bed. His hand was still on mine.
I looked for a long minute at his tired face. One eyebrow was burned almost all off. There were marks of burns on his face. And he was smiling in his sleep.
I felt so rested, so very well, except for a languor and a weakness. My hands pained me. Both, I was amused to discover, were bandaged. There was a little burn on my arm.
Through water and fire—
"Good morning!" said Bill, smiling at me.
I closed my eyes against the look in his. It was beautifulto have him look at me so, but I could not bear it.
"G-Good morning," said I, and felt the hot color flood my face. From the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair I was blushing.
It was very early. The sudden tropical dawn was only a few minutes old. There was a riot of bird-song outside the window, and a wonderful, dew-washed breeze blowing through the room.
"Mavis?" said Bill.
He was on his knees beside the bed. I put out one bandaged hand and clumsily touched his hair.
"Do you know what you've done?" he asked.
"Been a fool, as usual," I suggested, looking ruefully at the bandages.
"Sweet little fool," he said, in that new, deep voice. "Mavis, how could you, you frightened me almost to death—?"
I thought of those leaping flames, the angry, crimson sky, and shuddered.
"I'm sorry," I said meekly.
He gave a little low laugh under his quickened breath.
"You love me!" announced my husband arrogantly, beginning, as usual, at the wrong end.
"Why so I do!" I admitted in a small voice.
His arms went around me, gently, closely, and I shut my eyes under the touch of his lips on their lids. The dawn-birds were singing—in the room: in my heart.
"I love you," said Bill, and kissed my mouth.
I lay quite still then, between tears and laughter.
"It has taken you," I said, "a very long time to find it out!"
"It took me," he contradicted pleasantly, "about three minutes. From the very first—darling."
"Me, too!" said I, in utter astonishment. It was true. From the very first. I had fought a good fight, I thought, as I lay there in my utter content, against this heavenly surrender. I pity men who never know this wonderful release of self.
Followed a half-hour of the most ridiculous cross-examination:
"When did you first—?"
"Do you remember—?"
"How could you say—?"
"Whose girl are you, Mavis? Tell me!"
And all the rest of the eternal litany of lovers.
Sarah, peeped in to see how I was. Silas, I discovered from her beaming countenance, was all right. I had forgotten to ask. It was with assumed enthusiasm that I heard that a portion of the cane had been saved. It really didn't matter—not to me. Nothing mattered. Only Bill, and my sense of Harbor in the Far Country of my dreams—
"Such a nice fire!" I said, happily, my face on Bill's one unscarred shoulder.
"You little wretch!"
He kissed me again.
Norah arrived with a very early breakfast. I twisted in Bill's hold. To no avail. Bar, again, such strong bars, so tender, so utterly protective.
"What's the matter?"
"Norah—"
"But," said Bill in triumph, after the door had been shut behind the smiling woman, "after all, Mavis, we're married!"
"Why, so we are!"
I sat up in bed and stared at him.
"It's not fair!" said I, hotly.
"What?"
"We've not even been engaged," I said, "or anything. I don't like it!"
"Don't you, honestly?"
I shook my head, and then nodded, violently.
"You darling!" said my new Bill. "You lovely little thing. I adore you—"
"Why didn't you tell me so before?" I asked, in what was a deplorably peevish tone.
"Tell you! And get my face slapped! You were the prickliest small porcupine, for all your soft ways—rather not! But Gosh," said Bill, "it was hard—"
"You might have saved us a lot of trouble," said I reproachfully.
He got to his feet and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Might I? I didn't know, you see. I had had your repeated assurance that you regarded me as dirt under your little feet. How could I tell you?"
"You were awfully stupid!" said I, with keen satisfaction.
But he was kissing my finger-tips, protruding stiffly through the neat bandaging.
"Dear little hands!" he said. "Oh, Mavis—if anything had happened to you—"
"If anything had happened toyou—!" said I, and for a moment we looked at each other in a sort of blind horror. Presently he smiled.
"But we're as right as rain!" said he. "We're young, all life before us—and we love each other—Thank God!" he ended, on a deep, grave note.
"Thank God!" said I, and put my arms up to him.
When he raised his head, his eyes were shining.
"My beloved wife!" said Bill.
I put him from me for a moment—looked into his eyes.
"Please," I said, very low, "it's all so new—and a little terrifying. I—I didn't know I could feel like this. Will you let us go on just as we are—for a little while—? Perhaps I'm silly—but—I can't help it. Please," I begged, "won't you let me get a little used to you—?"
His eyes were very tender now.
"Of course," he said. "You know that."
"A real engagement!" said I happily.
"That's the best thing, after all," said Bill, laughing, "married first, and then engaged for the rest of one's life!"
He held me very closely.
"I'll cherish you always," he said, "all my life long. I've wanted you so—Mavis. You'll never know. God bless you, my dearest!"
"Father," I said in my heart, "you were right: you knew. I'm so happy—"
And my heart answered me.
"Where are you going?" said I, sternly, to my husband, as he laid me back on my pillows and turned away.
"Outside," said he, with the old, impish grin, "to dance a fandango on the lawn! And, incidentally, to put on some clothes and pretend an intelligent interest—which I don't in the least experience—in Harry Reynolds destroyed sugar-crop. Bless those incendiary natives!" he added, piously.
"Back soon?" I asked.
"Don't look at me like that!" said Bill severely, "or I won't be able to go! As your physician I forbid youto endanger my pulse. It is hardly normal now. Try and rest, dear, and when I come back I want to see more steady color in your cheeks. You've had a pretty bad shock, Mavis—"
"I should say I have!" I said, in tones I vainly tried to infuse with self-pity. "How about yourself?"
He blew me a kiss—just a mean, tiny one—and vanished without answering, but poked his head in at the door immediately after, to ask, seriously,
"Shall I bring you a statement of your indebtedness to me when I return, Mrs. Denton?"
"I wish I'd cost you more," said I, crossly. "You just wait—I'm going to buy a trousseau when I get to New York that will put you in the poor-house. I'm afraid," said I primly, "that I must ask you to wait for your settlement, Doctor."
"I'll keep you so in debt," he declared, "that you will never be able to struggle out, and you'll pay me in love, young person, for every sleepless night I've spent, and every swear I've sworn behind closed doors, and for every time I've wanted to take you in my arms and kiss you till you cried for mercy—"
"I think—I shouldn't have cried," I said, reflectively.
He was back in the room again.
"For heaven's sake," said I, extricating myself with some difficulty, "what will people think—door open and everything?"
But it was fully ten minutes before he really went.
I closed my eyes, and with Father's miniature under my pillow, tried to sleep. So happy—so happy! It was hard to lie still and think. So I didn't think. I kissed the ring on my finger, under the bandages, half a dozen times, and slept, at last, drifting from dream into dream.
Life was very wonderful. And the Love that had suffered and strayed was the most perfect, at the last. For all the times I had hurt him, how I would repay my husband, with depth on depth of devotion. I would make it up to him—
Through water and fire....
CHAPTER XXI
The boat pulled slowly away from the docks. Standing at the rail, I could plainly see the brilliant feather on Mercedes' little French hat, nodding in the breeze. A fleck of white was in her hand, now fluttering frantically, now at her eyes. Wright, beside her, was gesticulating like a semaphore, and not far away, Silas was straining his keen eyes to catch the last glimpse of his Sarah. Presently the docks faded into a vari-colored blur, and Bill pulled me away from the rail.
"Good-by, Cuba!" I said, waving my hand for the last time, as I turned.
"You're not crying?" he asked, teasingly.
"No," I dried my eyes a little defiantly, "but I have loved it so. Color and warmth and sunshine," I said, watching the soft pastel shades of the shore line, where Morro Castle stood, dazzling in the light, its stone feet set in blue waters, "and I hated to leave, somehow—"
"We'll go back," said he. "No, don't go below. Sarah will unpack and settle for you. I bribed the steward to give us these chairs. Sit down, darling, and let me tuck you up."
Obediently, I sat, and he sprawled his long length beside me, cupping his pipe in his hands, to shield the match flare from the wind.
"But," I argued, "it won't be like going back to 'The Palms.' I'll hate the nasty people who are going to buy it—do you suppose they'll buy Arthur, too?"
"Do you want him?" asked Bill.
I turned my hand so that the light fell on the big, new diamond on my finger. Bill had bought it in Havana, two days after the fire. It was my engagement ring, he said, and I had gotten up more than once in the last few nights to admire it by candle or moonlight. It was like a drop of dew. I told him that when he gave it to me, and he had added "on a white flower," and had kissed the finger he slipped it on.
"Want Arthur? I think not. He'd be the scandal of Green Hill, and perhaps he'd not thrive away from Guayabal—"
"Shall I buy 'The Palms'?" asked Bill, pushing his cap back from his forehead, so that the sun fell across his face.
"Are you crazy?" I demanded.
"Possibly."
He slipped his hand under the rug across my knees and took mine.
"What do you think?" he asked, gravely.
"I think you are," said I. "Such extravagance! Delusions of grandeur. But, anyway, I'd rather we built our own house—"
"So would I," said Bill, with satisfaction.
"Couldn't we add to the Green Hill house?" I asked, "an office for you—and more rooms? Do you mind?" I said. "So much of me is in that house. I don't want to forget those years—. And I was born there. My Mother came there as a bride—and I think Father will want us to live there always—unless," I added careful, "you have other plans, Doctor Denton?"
Bill laughed.
"No. When we get home, if your Father is willing,I'll turn you loose with painters and carpenters and decorators—as long as I may always smoke, even in the 'best parlour' and as long as you don't banish me and my bottles to the garage—for we'll have to have a garage, you know, and I've spoken to Silas about that little house in the garden. There's lots of room."
"Chintz," I said dreamily, "creton,—lots of it—and another fireplace—and oodles of bookshelves. Bill, may I dig in the garden next summer?"
"I shouldn't wonder," he answered cheerfully. "You're really remarkably strong—beyond my wildest hopes. I was amazed to see how soon you recovered from the effects of the fire—"
I looked at the little scars on my hands. They would go, eventually, I knew. Bill had said so. I was a little sorry.
"Were you?" I asked. "But I had a very good doctor, and wonderful medicine—"
He kissed me, to the horror of a passing elderly couple.
"Then," said I, straightening my cap, "you'll practise in Green Hill, after all? People will say you'll be burying yourself there—"
"Let 'em," said Bill. "I shall have time, at last, for all the things I want to do. Time, ambition and encouragement. We'll have a laboratory—away from the house, so your little nose won't be offended and turn up even more—"
"It doesn't," said I, one hand to the insulted feature.
"It does. Don't contradict. I love it!—A laboratory," he went on, "and I can work again on that cancer-cure—"
"Oh, Bill," I said, "isn't it wonderful? To think thatperhaps you can bring a blessing to all the world, and I may help—a little—"
We were silent for a while—such a comfortable, understanding silence.
"Aunt Mavis," said Peter, appearing suddenly on deck, "Sarah has gone to bed!"
"Is she ill?" I asked, viewing the water, which was like blue glass.
"Not yet," said Peter gravely, "but she says she's taking no chances!"
"Poor Sarah!" I said, as Bill laughed. "Stay here with your uncle, Peterkins, and I'll go and see if I can do anything for her."
When I returned, I found my young charge and my husband hanging perilously over the rail, watching the antics of the flying-fish.
"Aren't they pretty?" I asked, joining them, "like tiny, colored aeroplanes."
We watched for some time in silence, and then Peter growing sleepy, for we had gotten up very early that morning, Bill tucked him into a rug in a chair, and we left him asleep almost instantly, to walk the deck until luncheon.
"I've got a scheme," said Bill. "Want to hear?"
"Uh-huh!" said I.
"New York first. Uncle John's, or, if you'd rather, a hotel. Your Dad will meet us. We'll ship Sarah on to Green Hill with Peter, to get the house in order and to look after the boy until the Goodriches return. When is it—ten days? And after you've gone on that shopping orgy you threatened me with, I'll have one of the men bring my car down from Green Hill and we'll motor. Would you like that?"
"Oh, Bill, where?" I asked, skipping a little, and collapsing up against his side as the boat rolled.
"Cape Cod, I thought, if you'd care about it. There's a dear old inn at Provincetown—I know you'd love it. We could go there, for a week or so—it's so early yet we'd have the place to ourselves. And then, early in May, back to Green Hill and settle for the summer. What do you think?"
"I think you're a darling!" I answered, brazenly, and with just the effect I had calculated. And after we had told each other several times that no one in the world could be as happy and as much in love as we were—and firmly believed it, too I—Bill said suddenly,
"I cabled Mother from Cuba—and wrote her. She will meet us in New York."
"For heaven's sake," said I, "do you think she'll like me?"
"Can't tell," said Bill, solemnly, "she's odd. But, after all, it isn't as if you were a stranger. You've corresponded with her, you know, and she made you some bed-socks. That's a bond."
"But that was Richard Warren's mother," I said, not quite convinced.
"She's mine too. Funny, isn't it? I think you've committed bigamy."
"Is she really little and blue-eyed and red-haired?" I asked, "or was that poetic license?"
"Honest truth. She's the prettiest thing in the world—except you. And I've written her all about it."
"Did she know that I didn't know you were you?" I asked somewhat incoherently. But he understood. That was one of the nice things about Bill—recently, anyway. He was the Person Who Understood.
He nodded.
"Yes, but she didn't know everything—not that we were married."
"Why?" I asked, curiously.
He smiled down at me, very big, very protective.
"Why, you see," said Bill gently, "she knew that I loved you. And she'd got to love you too. After all, she has a weakness for me, and an unbounded faith in my choice. And so—well, I didn't want to disappoint her—didn't want her to know how matters stood—that we weren't quite happy. So I waited. After a while, I grew afraid that she would have to be told after all—"
"Please, don't," I said hastily. "What did you write her?"
"Cabled first: 'Married Mavis. Meet us in New York at Uncle John's as soon as you can.' And then, I wrote and sent it by someone who was sailing sooner. She will break the trip from California in Chicago, she has cousins there. I hope the letter will catch her."
"I've never had a mother," I said, the least bit wistfully.
"You have one now," said Bill.
Cuba had long since disappeared. I closed my eyes for a second to keep the memory of all we had left clear and vivid. The Palms—the cane, as it had looked before the fire, emerald-green and graceful—the red soil of Guayabal and the long, white roads—the mountains in the distance—the palm-trees, straight as arrows, with their rustling tops—my own orchids, little lavender balloons—peacocks and ox-carts—naked brown babies creeping in the sun—sunlight on adobe and thatch—and Arthur, screaming raucously for his morning coffee.
No, I would never forget.
The trip passed like a dream. Peter found some American children to play with on the boat, and romped with them under the watchful eyes of a correct English nurse. Sarah, with Wiggles, kept to her cabin. And Bill and I, exchanging polite platitudes with the people at our table, were left very much to ourselves. And the voyage was calm, totally unlike the one we had taken so many months before.
It was on the boat that I read some of Richard Warren's new poems, part of the new volume. And, sitting in a sheltered corner of the deck, I watched my husband write the dedication across a white sheet of paper:
"To my wife."
"I'm very proud," said I, a little tremulously. "They are beautiful. Wright knew. He said they were bigger and finer than the others. But," I added, "after all, I fell in love withThe Lyric Hour, Bill."
"But these," said Bill, "are your own."
And so they were.
"Now," he said, "suppose you show me what you were so careful to hide from me in Cuba?"
"Did Wright—?" I began indignantly, "What do you mean?"
"No, Wright didn't. But I guessed. Have I written for nothing all these years? I'm a sleuth when it comes to a fellow-craftsman. Besides, there's this—"
He drew a crumpled sheet from his inner pocket. I snatched at it.
"That old thing!" said I, with scorn. "Where did you find it?"
"I couldn't account for your inky little hands and your fits of abstraction," he answered, "solely by an explanationof your love for letter-writing and your dislike of me."
"Where did you find it, Creature?" I demanded again.
"In Wright's pocket. Old coat, on a chair—I was looking for a match."
"Doesn't sound plausible," said I, spreading out the blotted paper. Bill read with me, over my shoulder.