CHAPTER XII

CACTUS

Twisted, deformed, and stretching thorny hands To mock the golden beauty of the South, Embodied Evil, set in glowing lands Like some black curse within a lovely mouth, The sullen cactus, lone and brooding, stands. Yet Earth, All-Just, All-Wise, All-Tender, deems Her crippled offspring worthy still to bear The crown of perfect blossoms: as beseems, Some dark misshapen souls, in secret wear The splendid Flower of their silent Dreams!

It was, of course, the tall cactus, to the left of the house, which set me to singing. For a long time it had affronted me. Pallid, sickly, abnormal, flowering suddenly into crimson blossom, it was for me, an actual blot on the lovely landscape gardening of the Palms. But one day I said something of this to Bill, and he said,

"It may start out in ugliness, but it's rooted in strength and ends in beauty, doesn't it?"

This gave me "furiously to think." In an early letter to me, Richard Warren had said something very much the same, not, however, apropos of cactus plants. And here was my matter-of-fact, mocking husband preaching the same doctrine of "beauty everywhere." After that, I tried to make friends with the uncouth cactus, and, as so often happens, grew quite attached to it. Nights, it stood like a sentinel ghost, its deformities softened, and its flowers courageous and gay in the moonlight. My growing sense of comradeship with Bill was materially increased at that half-minute remark of his. We were really quite friendly, by that time, playing together like two children, not much older than Peterkins, and the rather ironic attitude toward me which I had so resented, seemed to lessen, or at least to be less noticeable.

If it hadn't been for Peter--or, if it hadn't been for me--and if Bill hadn't said--

Anyway, our even, sunny life and relationship came to an abrupt end.

On a day when Bill elected to golf with Mr. Howells--Mercedes had developed wonderfully as a gallery of one!--I chose to stay at home and attend to a number of small neglected duties. The day before we had spent near Mariano, with one of the secretaries at the American Legation and his wife. We had had a delightful day, in a most fascinating house, all cool, wide patios, and flat roofs, over which the palms waved. It seemed to me as if I were not in Cuba or even Spain, but somewhere in the Far East. At tea-time, the wife of the Chinese Minister called, a tiny lady, exquisite and low-voiced, looking far too young to be the mother of seven sturdy children, as she proudly assured me she was. To hear her talk of "my boy in Yale" seemed positively absurd. It was, as I have said, a delightful day, but tiring, and I was content to stay at home when the next day dawned, very hot and still.

Peter rode in the morning and chased, hatless, about the grounds in the afternoon. He had made many friends among the _muchachos_. I saw him at luncheon and then, not until after tea. Something, perhaps the very oppressive atmosphere, made me restless and out of sorts. I started about half-past four, to walk aimlessly toward the gates and encountering Peter and Wiggles invited them to accompany me. Afterwards, it occurred to me that Peter seemed very quiet. He walked along beside me, his hands in the pockets of his sailor-suit, with none of his usual flow of general misinformation. But I was preoccupied more so than I had been in weeks. Father had been in my thoughts all day, and back in my brain there were other thoughts--vague and unformed, but curiously disturbing. I was beset with a desire, a longing for something--I knew not what. It was, perhaps, a species of Spring-fever, of wanderlust, which seized upon me and set me to walking now over-fast, now languidly.

We had gone perhaps a half a mile when a strange little sound escaped from Peter's lips. For the first time I looked at his little mouth, a white line stood out against the dark red color.

"It's the heat," I said to myself, and asked him anxiously,

"Do you feel very warm, Peterkins?"

His answer was almost inaudible, and he drooped wearily against my side, as we stood there in the white road, with the distant fringe of mountains almost dancing under quivering waves of heat.

Wiggles, panting, looked at us anxiously, his scrap of a tongue between his crooked teeth.

"We'll go right home," said I, feigning an unconcern I did not feel.

I took his hand and was terrified at the burning touch of it, realizing that the child was ill, perhaps seriously so, and that we were half a mile from home.

Something like despair came over me. It was out of the question that I could carry Peter--he was a tall boy for his age and very heavy. It only remained to put my arm about him and to coax him along, a slow and painful task.

We had covered the first half of the distance when I heard a car behind us, and turned hopefully to hail it. And when the long green body shot clearly into sight, I was suddenly faint with relief. Bill, coming back early from the club! Bill, at the wheel, his hat off, and the wind blowing his dark hair.

The car stopped.

"Mavis! It's too hot for you and Peter to be out. I didn't play--what's the matter?"

I lifted Peter in my arms.

"It's Peter, Bill," I said. "He's--ill."

In two minutes I was in the back seat with the half-delirious boy in my arms, and Bill was urging the car to her utmost speed, and we were suddenly home.

Between them, Bill and Sarah got Peter into bed. I was too frightened to be of any use. I kept thinking of the little Reynolds boy who had died of fever in that very house ... and of Peter's mother. But I didn't dare think of her long, because I could see her eyes so plainly as they looked when she said,

"You'll take good care of Peter for me, won't you, Mavis?"

Good care of Peter! For a week I had hardly thought of him. I kissed him mornings and nights, gave him his lessons, listened to his chatter, not really heeding. And I had been away so much, drunken with my new freedom, my strength, blooming like a plant in the climate that tried so many other people sorely: utterly wrapped up in my own sensations and impressions.

I went softly into the room Peter shared with Sarah. It was a different boy tossing on the bed, with that curious flush, the groping hands, talking incessantly, incoherently.

Bill, bending over him, looked up as I came in. His face was strange to me too. No, not quite. I had seen that intense, almost grim, look on that face once before--as I came out of a dark hour of agony and looked, for the first time, into two steel-blue eyes.

"Oh, what is it?" I asked very low. "Is he dangerously ill?"

"A touch of sun," he answered. "Yes, he's pretty sick."

There was nothing I could do. All that night I went in and out of the room, glad if they would let me bring them little things: water, a glass, a spoon.

It made matters worse to find Nora praying loudly in the kitchen, and Silas, his lean face all broken up into soft lines of anxiety and sorrow, watching up with her.

The news spread, in some indeterminable fashion. During the night, a number of the men on the plantation came to the door to ask for news. Peter had endeared himself to half Guayabal--

About three o'clock in the morning, worn out, I went into the bathroom for something for Bill. As I did not reappear with it he came to look for me presently, and found me, huddled against the wall, my hands at my throat, an abject picture of cowardice and fright.

I was not alone in the room. A few yards away from me, on the tiled floor, a spider was sprawling, regarding me with almost human, terribly malicious eyes. The creature was as large as a tea-cup, black, horribly spotted with red, it's many legs twitching with vicious life.

"Are you ill?" Bill asked as I pointed with a shaking hand to the spider, which at the sound of another step had taken itself quickly to another corner of the room.

My husband put his arm about me, and conducted me safely to my own room,

"You poor child!" was all he said, and closed the door into the bathroom. A few minutes later I heard him occupied in there, with what seemed, or sounded, like a golf-club. There was a scuffle. Once I heard Bill curse, and then finally silence.

Presently, my door opened and Bill came in.

"I've disposed of your visitor," he said, quite cheerfully. "Nasty mess. And Peter is better. He'll be all right, I'm sure, only we shall have to be very careful of him after this. And now, I want you to go to bed or I shall have another patient on my hands."

I went to bed; but not until the rain came, about five, and Peter's room became quiet, did I fall into a troubled sleep.

It was past noon before I woke. Sarah looking very tired came in with some coffee and the assurance that Peter was out of all danger and was sleeping quietly with the fever broken.

"Oh, Sarah," I said, "you haven't had any sleep."

"Dr. Denton sent me to bed at five," she answered, "but he never took his own clothes off until about eight. I slept in the guest room, the other side of Peter's, and when I woke, about seven, again, I got some coffee for him from Norah. And he left me with Peter then, and went into his own room."

"Is he asleep now?" I asked getting out of bed.

"No, for I heard the water running in his bath, half an hour ago."

While I was dressing I heard Bill in Peter's room. Heard too, with what gratitude, Peter's own normal voice, weak but sane again.

I slipped on a frock hastily and went in to them. Of the two, I thought that Bill looked the worst, very white and drawn.

After luncheon when Wing had disappeared in the pantry, Bill told me that Peter had had a very close call.

"I don't like to blame anyone, of course," he said, with knitted brows, "but if Sarah didn't have sense enough--well, Silas has lived in Cuba long enough to have known that the heat yesterday was sufficient to knock out a strong man, much less a little boy, if he became over-tired."

"I'm afraid it was my fault," I answered, slowly, "Peter was riding all morning and romping all afternoon. And then I took him for a walk--"

"Did you know then that he had been playing hard all day?" Bill asked me.

"Why, yes," I said honestly, "but I was thinking about something else, and--"

Bill's hand went out in an impatient gesture.

"Didn't _you_ feel the heat?" he asked.

"I suppose so," I answered, "but I had been in the house all day--"

"And Peter hadn't!" he finished for me, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought.

I was silent.

"It's incredible," said my husband, with extreme irritation, "that you shouldn't have noticed."

"But--" I began, and stopped. It was true. I hadn't noticed; and it was equally true that the fact was incredible.

Conscious of my guilt, I was still able to be resentful of my husband's tone.

"Do you think for a minute--" I began indignantly, with no clear idea of how I was going to finish: so perhaps it was just as well that I was interrupted.

"I don't think anything at all," he said, "but I _know_ that I shouldn't have gone away. Had I known the day was going to turn out such a scorcher, I would have stayed."

His tone implied that what he should have known was that I was not fit to be trusted alone. I didn't like the implication, and I said so.

After which, at the end of ten minutes, I had positively flounced from the room, after the manner of our grandmothers, and left him sitting there.

I didn't see him again until dinner. It was not a particularly joyful meal.

During the rather silent progress of dinner, I had the grace to be rather ashamed of some of the things I had said. In the cooler light of reason, I looked on a number of the statements I had made and found them unconvincing.

Our sporadic conversation was of trivial things. Not until Wing had departed kitchenward, and Bill lighted his after-luncheon cigarette, was our late unpleasantness alluded to.

"Mavis," said my husband, with a hint of the old, ironic smile I had not seen in many weeks, and which immediately alienated me from him, "I'm afraid that we were both a little tired and over-wrought this morning. And for anything I said which may have offended you, I am quite ready to ask your pardon. However, it is, perhaps, just as well that I understand the way you feel about me. I am, admittedly then, a 'brute': and I have 'presumed' to criticize you, unfairly and without cause--or so you have said. Let that pass. The most important thing is that you are becoming bored with this solitary confinement, and it so happens that it is within my power to offer you more congenial companionship. I had a letter this morning from Wright Penny--you recall him, do you not? He is in Santiago, and proposes to come to Havana and run out to see us. If it is agreeable to you, I shall wire him to come on prepared to stay, and to return North with us when we go. Would you like that?"

Seven times seven little devils entered into me then, and I clasped my hands on the table and made my eyes round with pleasure.

"I would be delighted," I said, sincerely enough. "I liked Mr. Penny--what little I saw of him. And I am sure that he would be a congenial house-guest."

"Our first," remarked Bill, with a wholly wicked grin. And I felt as if we had slipped back several months, to a time when enmity was the only possible thing between us, and our weeks of pleasant comradeship were the shadow of a dream.

There must be, I thought, a very real antagonism for one another in our natures: for otherwise, so deep and unspoken a breach could not have been made in ten minutes of foolish anger.

"Wright says," Bill continued, "that he hesitates to intrude upon our 'happy honeymoon hours.' A pretty alliteration. It is not necessary, I hope, to inform him of his mistake."

"He may have eyes--" I suggested.

"Being a poet," he objected, "he is probably myopic."

I ignored this.

"I must find him some pretty girls to play with," I said idly.

"Mercedes," said Bill, "might fit the case."

I was conscious of a sudden flare of anger.

"Bobby Willard's little sister," I said, "seems more Mr. Penny's type. She is very gentle and lovely."

"Meow?" said my husband, with a rising inflection.

The bright color came to my cheeks.

"Not at all," I said indignantly. "I like Mercedes Howell very much. But--"

Bill raised an eyebrow, smiled at the glowing end of the cigarette in his hand and said nothing.

He got up from the table and went toward the door.

"Have Miss Willard out here by all means," he said, "but she's milk and water. For my own amusement, in my own humble opinion, Mercedes is more stimulating to the Tired Business Man."

He stopped to light another cigarette.

"Of course," he said, through the first breath of smoke, "Wright will naturally suspect you of match-making. All young, happily married women have that benign tendency."

I was stricken dumb with sudden hatred, and before my lips could open again, Bill, with Wiggles at his heels, went out into the sunshine, whistling the challenging song from the first act of "Carmen."

I went to my room and wrote a letter, which, however, I was destined never to send, to Richard Warren.

Peter's convalescence kept me occupied for several days. He had a number of sympathetic callers, from Annunciata to the Howells. I told Mercedes that I would expect her out often to amuse our impending poet, and she preened her bright plumage a little and vowed that a new man would be a "God-send," looking at Bill the while. At which, with that long-drawn "Me-ow!" still ringing in my ears, I asked her and her parents to join us at dinner the night following Mr. Penny's expected arrival.

On the morning of that arrival Bill tossed over to me a letter from Uncle John Denton.

"There are messages in it for you," he said, and opened his long-stale New York _Times_.

I read the letter, and, as I returned it to the envelope, saw a second sheet which I had not noticed. Uncle John often sent me little enclosures in Bill's letters. Innocently I drew it out, unfolded it, and started to read.

"Damn!" said my husband without apology, reaching my side in two long steps, "I thought I had taken that out. Give it to me, Mavis!"

But I had already read enough.

"Have you unmasked 'Richard Warren' for Mavis yet?" wrote Uncle John, "and how does she like being the wife of her favorite poet? When are we to have the manuscript of the new volume? You're long overdue now, you miserable creature!"

"Give it to me!" said Bill.

I handed the note to him without a word. I couldn't have spoken, had my life depended on it.

He followed me to the door of my room.

"Mavis!" he said once or twice.

I put my hand on the latch.

"Don't speak to me!" I said.

In my room, I sat down by the window and tried to think what it all meant. For a time, I was incapable of directed thought. My dream came to me, the dream I had had so long ago, that nightmare in which my unknown poet had changed to the semblance of the man I had met and disliked on meeting, William Denton. So it was true then! After a little, I thought of my letters, my silly, fragile girl-dreams, written for the One, mercilessly exposed to the eyes of the Other. In my desk drawer lay yet another letter, unmailed, thank God! A letter in which I had said I wanted him back, wanted the comfort and the understanding his letters had brought me once again. Fool--fool and blind! And all the time, this talented trickster had known and laughed: had written me the friendly, lovely letters with his tongue in his cheek: had even spoken to me of love!

I went over to the drawer and took out my Diary. All lies! Some day I must burn it. But not yet. It was like a living thing to me. The little blue book fell open and certain words leaped out at me: "Diary, I have found him.... I've the heart and brain and beautiful spirit of him, and all day long his name makes a happy spot in my consciousness. Richard Warren! Richard Warren!..."

I closed the book and laid it back with the letters. A great sheaf of thin, typewritten pages ... all lies....

Uncle John had been in the plot then: and Wright Penny. It was very clear to me now.

I took from my neck the jade lucky-charm which "Richard Warren" had sent me and flung it out of the window. Wiggles, prowling beneath, barked happily and set out to retrieve it. Even Wiggles was not mine! Nothing I had had was mine!

I laid my head on the desk and cried bitterly. It's hard to see the dreams go: to watch the castle you have builded on the shifting sands crumble and fall. These things had meant so much to me, ill and prisoned, and had continued to make a little, inner life for me, after the physical prison doors had opened.

If only by a miracle I could have been back in Green Hill, in my rose-grey room, never to walk again, and with Richard Warren's letters coming to me, out of the Unknown.

Then I remembered ... there was no Richard Warren.