CHAPTER XIII

After a long time, I heard a knock at my door.

"May I speak with you, Mavis, just for a moment?" said my husband.

I steadied my voice with an effort.

"I can't imagine that you have anything of interest to tell me," I answered, "Isn't it time you went to Havana to meet Mr. Penny?"

There was an exclamation, and suddenly the door was flung open and Bill came in.

"Look here," he said, "we've got to have this thing out once and for all."

I was standing, my wet handkerchief in a tight, hard wad in my hand.

"Please leave my room," I said coldly.

"Not till I've said what I want to. I'm sorry you found out--about the book. I was going to tell you--later. But now that you have, we can't ignore it. It was the merest coincidence that I met you before your first letter came. And I was deep in it, before I realized that you were bound to dislike me, as I really am,--and then I couldn't tell you. Things you said in your letters made it absolutely impossible for me. And for reasons of my own, I had preserved my incognito very carefully. Only Uncle John knew, and Wright and my Mother--and--your Father--"

Father! And his mother! The little "red-haired, blue-eyed" lady who had written to me: to whom I had confided my admiration for her son!

Minute by minute, shame was flooding me: shame and a terribly tired feeling.

"Does your mother know--?" I asked.

"That we are married? No," he answered, "I had reasons for not telling her just yet. She knows I am in Cuba, of course. You have never asked me about my people so I hardly thought it worth while to mention her to you--under the circumstances."

"I'm sorry it has turned out as it has," he said, after a pause. "You don't understand--"

I could agree with him there.

"I'm afraid not," I said.

He lifted his shoulders ever so slightly, a gesture of defeat.

"Please--" he said, but something in my eyes stopped him. His face grew very hard.

"I think," he said, "that you are making a mountain out of a molehill. A range of mountains. Because I wrote a few verses that struck your fancy: because you did not like the actual, flesh-and-blood author: because I preferred to hide behind my nom-de-plume, and because you choose to honor Richard Warren with your friendly regard--" he shrugged again, "and because, perhaps foolishly, I want to be liked for what I am, and not for what I set down on paper--I preferred to play what I fancied was a very charming little game--and now you accuse me of having cheated."

"I have nothing of the sort," I answered. "But did it not occur to you, during your 'little game' that you were playing with an opponent wholly innocent of the fact that she was playing blindfolded, and that the cards were--stacked?"

We both heard the car drive up to the front door.

"Well," he said, "my cards are on the table now, Mavis."

"The car is waiting," I said. "You had best go. As far as I am concerned, the game is over. Richard Warren, as I knew him, never existed,--only a very clever young doctor who amused himself at my expense. Here," I said, turning to the open drawer, "are your letters. Take them, please. They would make good reading of the type which is called 'light fiction.'"

"Careful," said Bill, under his breath, and his hand shot out and caught my arm, "careful, Mavis! You are going just a little too far."

I twisted my arm away.

"And you--?" I asked furiously, "and--_you_?"

"I beg your pardon," he said, and the clear flame of anger leaped into the steel-blue eyes.

The door closed behind him. I stood for a moment, quite still, rubbing the bruised place on my arm which his fingers had made.

Richard Warren's letters lay on the floor. I caught them up, hurried to the living room. There was a burning log on the hearth, and under Bill's hostile eyes, as he gathered up his hat and gloves, I put the sheets in the fire.

They writhed, shot high in flame, and blackening, fell to ashes. Something in me cried out at that--they had been so dear, so dear.

"Have you my letters?" I asked him, rising and dusting off my hands.

"No," he replied, "I never keep letters."

It was the one redeeming fact that had come to my knowledge that day. I mentioned this, and went past him, into my own room again.

It seemed to me that, in an hour's space, I had lived many years and grown very old.

When I heard the car drive off, I went out on the verandah with Peter and played with him for a time before I dressed. I wanted to look my prettiest for Mr. Penny. And I blessed a kindly Providence that he was to interrupt my wholly impossible _ménage-à-deux_. And one determination I made: as soon as I returned to Green Hill, I would take steps to be free again. Father would soon get used to the idea: it would hurt him, of course, but someone is always being hurt. Travel--perhaps Father would take me to the Continent. But never again to the tropics. I had had enough of their soft, friendly ways and their treachery. When it was necessary that Uncle John Denton be told of the predestined fiasco of my marriage, I for one, would not shirk it. Bill was his nephew, but I was the daughter of his dearest friend, and he had cared for me since I was a baby. Sometimes, quite recently, I had fancied that he had cared, too, for my mother. But at all events, he would not be angry with me when he knew. Of that much I was certain.

It was a very cordial and sparkling hostess who met her guest and her husband at the door. I had put on the little white voile which, of all my daytime frocks, I thought the most becoming. I had dressed my hair high and thrust a wonderful orchid through my mauve belt. My cheeks were burning and I had a moment of stage-fright as I heard the wheels of the car on the drive. It would not be easy to carry it off, to hide my hurt and my shame--but pride helps wonderfully, always, in any situation, and I was quite satisfied with the girl who looked back at me from the long mirror in the living-room, as I passed it on my way to the verandah. But although all the stains of crying had gone from my eyes and left them bright, they were different eyes than the ones which had read the first lines of Uncle John's letter. Brown eyes, and big--but with all the dreams washed from them. Perhaps it was better so.

"A very hearty welcome, Mr. Penny," I said, smiling, as our slight, blonde guest untangled himself from his bags and jumped to the step, "it's good to see you again."

"For heaven's sake, Mrs. Denton," he expostulated, not heeding my greeting, but taking both my hands in his, "don't ruin my first impression of this ripping place and of this miraculous You by pinning that awful label on me. Do you think," he begged, "that you could manage 'Wright'?"

"In fair exchange for 'Mavis,'" I answered, smiling.

"You're on!" he said, dropping my hands after a vigorous clasp, "that is to say, if Bill has no objection."

Bill turned from a colloquy with Wing and Silas and waved benevolently in our direction.

"Not an objection," he answered gaily. "Mavis has me trained. Her word is, naturally, my law."

If that was the tone he wished to adopt, I was convinced that here, at least, was a game which two could play.

"Bill is a very satisfactory husband," I confided to Wright, pleasantly. "He and I have discovered the best basis possible for matrimony."

"What's that?" asked Wright, as we went into the living-room. "Lord, you lucky people, what a wonderful house!"

"Isn't it?" I said, and then, answering the question, "A mutual platform of Liberty, Independence and--"

"Love!" said Wright, triumphantly.

"How did you guess it?" asked Bill, following his guest.

I laughed, a little hysterically, and bade Bill show Wright to his room. After which, with a sense of having scored, I waited for the men near the dining-table, luncheon having been announced.

"We're late today," I said, as we all sat down. "I postponed the sacred meal a little to allow you to arrive."

"It's only one-thirty," objected Wright, looking at his watch.

"I know, but one does things differently in Guayabal," I said, explaining our usual routine.

"Some life!" said the newly initiated. "Suits me. Let's stay on here forever. I imagine," he went on, turning to include us both in his remark, "that nothing could have been more perfect for the _lune de miel_."

Bill was silent, but I agreed hastily.

"And now tell us about Santiago," I said.

The recital occupied most of the conversational part of the meal pleasantly enough.

"See my pretty senoritas?" asked Bill, passing the cigarettes.

"Cuban?" inquired Wright, taking one. "That's good--I've developed a passion for them. No, not a senorita. All I saw were at least ninety and weighed a ton."

"I've got just the girl for you!" said Bill and I, simultaneously.

Wright laughed.

"The same one?" he asked, with interest.

"No, our tastes differ," I answered, "the one I have in mind is little and round and brown-haired. She's delightful."

"And mine," said Bill, "is just the right height, just the right shape, and as dark-haired and creamy-skinned as a Spanish princess. She is half Spanish, too, which means--temperament."

"Very interesting," said Wright. "Bring 'em both on. But I like amber-colored hair and brown eyes myself. Did you corner the market on the combination, Bill?"

"Of course," answered Bill gravely, "there aren't two like Mavis. That mould was broken."

"Lucky for me," agreed Wright, sighing. "I want to stay a carefree bachelor. I'm susceptible enough, Lord knows,--and very guileless. But my appearance protects me, as well as a certain modesty, not to say timidity, of manner. I've not your looks, nor your way with the wimmin, you handsome bridegroom," he concluded affectionately, smiling at Bill.

"Do tell me," I asked, leaning back in my great, carved chair, quite conscious that it served as an effective background for my hair, "about Bill's past. I can't get a word out of him on the subject."

There was a spark of admiration in the glance Bill shot me--an involuntary tribute.

"Wait till we're alone," whispered Wright, mysteriously. "I could a tale unfold--! Enough to turn your hair grey. Broken hearts all over the place--he just stepped on 'em. Anonymous letters, begging for a lock of hair or an old glove! There have been times when your husband, Madame, has been forced to assume a disguise!"

"You colossal idiot," said Bill amiably.

"Don't listen to him, Mavis," urged Bill's best friend. "Listen to me instead!"

"I'm willing to be convinced," I answered. "And now that you're both on your second cigarette, shall we walk about the place a little? Bill," I went on, turning to him, very sweetly, "would you mind running to my room and getting my big, lavender shade hat--? It's right on the bureau."

For a moment I thought that he would shake me. I knew he wanted to. But, instead, he swung obediently away and took his revenge in a careless "All right, dear!" as he went off.

"Isn't he a peach!" mused Wright aloud, watching admiringly the broad-shouldered figure across the room.

"You've known him long?" I asked, in order to avoid answering.

"Roommates at Princeton," he replied. "Those were the good old days! There never was a more popular man in college than old Bill! I basked in reflected glory all the time. He was always the King Pin among us, whether it was football, or writing skits, or drumming the piano."

"You must have a lot in common," I suggested, "especially your poetry--"

Wright's round, blue eyes grew rounder than ever.

"He's told you!" he gasped.

"Certainly," I said, smiling to cover the pain in my heart, "did you think he could keep it from me? Besides, I half-guessed it all the time."

"I told Bill that," said my guest, triumphantly, and then, as Bill emerged from my room, gingerly carrying the hat, as if it were a species of lavender lydite, "Well Richard Warren, I suppose by now your wife is your severest critic!"

The hat fluttered from Bill's grasp. I shrieked. But he caught it again deftly.

"Here you are," he said, handing it to me, and went on, "My kindest critic, you mean, but--my critic always."

"What do you think of the new book?" asked Wright of me, as stopping only to collect Peterkins, we went from the house, down the long avenue of palms. "I've only seen a bit, but I tell him it's better than the first--surer, more mature, bigger in every way."

"She hasn't seen it," answered Bill, hastily. "I don't want her to for a while yet."

"Oh," Wright nodded understandingly, "I see."

Just what he saw was beyond me, but I said, with a little sigh,

"I'm so impatient--"

"You couldn't be that," said my husband, "not even when it comes to my new book."

"Very pretty," observed Wright, regarding us both, impartially.

"Isn't she?"

This was too much. I turned the conversation in the direction of our coming dinner party and to a discussion of hibiscus-bloom. But all through that afternoon through the banter, the sparkling surface talk, of dinner that night, through the hours before I fell asleep, I was trying to adjust myself to the fact that it was, after all, Bill who had written _The Lyric Hour_; who had so beautifully said so many true and lovely things: who was a very high-hearted poet.

No matter how little of his real self he had shown me in his letters, regardless of the obvious misfit of his poems and his living personality, he had written those poems: they were his. And they must have sprung from some eternal and true fount of beauty in his nature, or else all books lied and all the poets who ever lived to gladden the world with their songs were tricksters and jesters, with a command of rythmical English and no more. I could not believe that. And so, I must believe that my husband had written truly and sung faithfully, from his heart. And that is what I could not understand, could not reconcile with him, himself. He had hurt me, had wounded my pride beyond endurance: I hated him, I wished myself free of his mere presence: but I was, in the last analysis, forced to admit his genius, and forced to acknowledge his power. Richard Warren had never existed, not the Richard Warren I had built up from a slender volume of verse and a drawer-full of letters. But William Denton did exist, very solidly, and for me, distastefully. And William Denton had written _The Lyric Hour_.

It may not be difficult, given certain conditions, to hate a poet, but it seemed too bad.

* * * * *

The following night our very informal dinner took place. We had asked some other people, to make up a party of ten, and so we had quite a formidable array of "valor and beauty" around the long, refectory table. Mr. and Mrs. Howells and their daughter, the Chinese Minister and his wife, Bobby Willard and his sister Ruth, Wright, Bill and myself, all rather diplomatically placed, made up the group. It was a rather amusing, and incidentally, an excellent meal. Over the massed orchids on the table, I could see Wright almost feverishly attentive alternately, to Ruth Willard in pale-blue on his left, and to Mercedes, in an amazing frock of black lace, a cluster of orange flowers at her girdle, seated between him and my husband. At my end of the table I had Mr. Howells and the courteous gentleman from the Orient. And Mrs. Howells, at Bill's right, watched indolently her daughter's radiant progress and applied herself, mutely, to the business of eating. In consequence, Mercedes, during the greater part of the meal, drove tandem; and it was really pretty to watch--only, by the salad course, it had grown monotonous.

After dinner we had two tables of bridge. Fortunately, I played rather a good game, Father having taught me patiently, in order to provide one more time-killer, during my shut-inism. As we were ten, two were left to play the piano, to sit out on the verandah, to stroll about the grounds. I had cleverly manoeuvered that Wright and Ruth be left, but something went wrong, and Bill, announcing that he did not care to play, was joined by Mercedes, who insisted that the only rule she knew was "not to trump her partner's ace." I fancied, however, that she was well equipped with the finesse instinct.

"And even that I often forget," she said, laughing. "Me, I have so little use for rules!"

So it eventually and naturally came about that Bill and Mercedes stayed out of the game, joined now and then by whoever was dummy.

For a while they remained at the far end of the room, at the piano--Bill, black and white in his dinner clothes, dreaming over the keys, Mercedes, leaning on the piano, her huge orange feather fan at her lips, singing snatches of Spanish songs from behind its shelter, her dark eyes glowing. It was, I was forced to admit to Mrs. Howells, playing at my table, a pretty picture, softened and romantic in the flicker of fire light which shone over the two and danced on the mahogany case of the Steinway.

Later, they went out: Wright followed them presently, in his momentary freedom as dummy, for "a breath of air and a cigarette."

I made a Grand Slam.

Wright, returning, to take his place, paused to regard the score over my shoulder, and to whisper,

"Is that the girl Bill picked out for me? What does he take me for, a lion-tamer?"

"Hush!" I said, conscious of Mrs. Howells' proximity. But she was criticizing her husband's last play and did not hear us.

It was twelve o'clock before our guests left. Mercedes, in a gorgeous black and orange cloak, seemed reluctant to depart.

"I've had _such_ a wonderful evening!" she told me, "and Billy was _so_ entertaining!"

I had always disliked the schoolgirl manner of talking in exclamations and italics.

Wright, bidding me good-night, remarked, with mock gravity,

"I'm going to buy a whip and a gun tomorrow, Mavis! That Howells girl needs a dressing down."

"Dressing down?" I asked, not a little maliciously, recalling with inner amusement, Mercedes' somewhat revealing gown.

But if Wright did not understand me, as I hoped he would not, my husband did, and his inevitable "Meow!" followed me into my room and lingered there for some time.

War to the knife--!