CHAPTER XVII

"What are you two girls whispering about?" asked Wright, coming up behind us on the glassed-in porch of the Country Club.

"It is none of your affairs," responded Mercedes with dignity, "but as you are so rude as to ask, I will tell you that the last affair of the season is to be held at the home of Consuelo Mendez--a ball--next week. And I have asked Mavis if she will let me steal you for the evening--provided you have no objection. It will be amusing, I think, and you will meet many pretty girls."

"As to that, I would not have to leave Guayabal," said Wright politely, "but I am honored that you implore my escort--"

"Implore!" said Mercedes with scorn.

"Be careful," I warned. "She'll withdraw her invitation. And I'm sure you'd have a wonderful time. I shan't go, of course, although Senora Mendez has been gracious enough to include me in the invitation. And Bill declares he is too old for such festivities. But I have told Mercedes she may have you--"

"And welcome?" suggested Wright, tragically.

"I shall stop on at 'The Palms' till then," said Mercedes--"Mavis has asked me. And if you will come into Havana with me the day of the dance, my Mother will be very glad to have you stay with us over that night. For it will be a late party, of course--too late for you to return to Guayabal."

"Bully," said Wright with enthusiasm, "I'd love it. What does one wear?" he asked anxiously.

"Low neck and short sleeves," answered Bill, appearing from the locker rooms.

"Wright thinks," said Mercedes pensively, "that at an affair almost entirely within the Spanish-Cuban set, the gentlemen appear attired as _toreodores_."

Wright looked aggrieved.

"Not at all," he contradicted, "only the Anglo-Saxon fashions for men are utterly devoid of beauty. I wish I had lived some time back--in the satin knee-breeches and lace cuff period."

"But you're bow-legged!" objected Bill insultingly.

"I am not," said Wright indignantly. "Observe!" He thrust out a far from unshapely calf, in tweed knickers. "If my extremities show a slight tendency to bow, it is merely a sign of physical strength, and many years spent in the saddle and on the base-ball diamond."

Said Mercedes to me, in an aside.

"Now, you know, my Mother would never have listened to such a discussion--in Madrid!"

"She would never have had the opportunity," I whispered back.

"To return to the Mendez ball," said Wright, raising his voice, with intent. "I thought a simple flower in my hair or thrust into my waistcoat...."

"You _are_ an ass!" remarked Bill, yawning.

"Perhaps," conceded Wright pleasantly, "but it is a quality which keeps me much in demand."

"You will never," said Bill deliberately, "get very far in your work, old man. For one thing--you have too much money: for another, you take nothing seriously."

"How about yourself?" asked Wright, a little stirred.

Bill glanced at Mercedes, but she smiled at him and nodded.

"I have found out about you, Billy," she said, "So go ahead and talk."

"Who told you?" demanded my husband, not very angrily.

"Partly Wright--I wormed it out of him, after he had let something slip--and, more recently, Mavis."

"Mavis!" said Bill in astonishment.

I did not meet his eyes.

"Why not?" asked Mercedes. "She is bursting with pride in you, naturally. _Cela va sans dire!_ So, after I had probed and begged a little, she let me see the book. It is very wonderful," she ended, with that utter lack of self-consciousness in expressing her emotions and opinions, which, after one was used to it, was rather endearing.

"Well, then, as you're among friends, Billy, I repeat, what about yourself?"

"I have my profession," Bill answered quietly. "I am a doctor--and I love it. It is, perhaps, my vocation--to heal and to mend, and to help. And equally, perhaps, poetry is my avocation."

"Dictionary definition of avocation is 'diversion,'" said Wright, triumphantly.

"And the definition of diversion is 'recreation'!" I put in.

"Exactly," said Bill, "re-creation. To create anew--to refresh. That is, perhaps, the mission of poetry, and applies to the poet as well as to his audience. Poetry is, for me, the language of dreams: the ceaseless search for beauty: something common to all men. For the peasant dreams as well as the inventor: the man of science, as well as the financier and the college professor who thinks of education as something bigger than is contained between the covers of a text-book. And from the soil, the shop, the laboratory, the office and the school-room great songs have been sung,--not all of them in words!"

"The financier dreams?" said Wright, incredulously. "Not much!"

"If he didn't, he wouldn't be where he is," answered Bill. "If the engineer didn't dream, the bridges would not be swung over the boiling rivers of strange countries, or the railroad tracks laid through the virgin jungle and the ageless desert--"

I had a curious sensation, listening to that even, low voice. It was as if, for the first time, I had heard Richard Warren speak.

"I guess you're right," said the other man, after a moment of silence.

"Of course I am," answered Bill. "And so, the poets dream dreams too, and try to interpret other men's dreams: those which are built in brick and stone: materialized into steel: founded in a huge office building. The grim reality of war stands for dreams sometimes. Many inarticulate poets have gone singing to the bayonet thrust. Once, a handful of people dreamed of Liberty; and the United States was their expression of that dream."

Someone drew a deep breath. It was I, perhaps.

Bill looked over at me, shaking the ash from his cigarette. And for a moment I forgot the feud between us: forgot that we were very soon to go our separate ways: forgot a number of things that I had known and I remembered only the songs that Richard Warren had sung for the world.

"It was a dream, too," said Mercedes, "which made Cuba free!"

We were grave, as, together, we four had never been through the sunny, idle days. I had the oddest feeling that between us all lay something unspoken, unnamed, intangible, as if, too, for the moment, we were closely knit together, completely _en rapport_.

"Well," said Wright easily, swinging the conversation back to its starting place, "It's all very well to talk. And perhaps you are more serious than I, Bill. Mind, I don't altogether admit it--but you tune your lyre to a deeper key than I do mine. I can't claim to be a poet: a versifier, yes...."

"You do yourself an injustice," I said warmly, for Wright's somewhat exotic pen-name had long since come into my knowledge and I had seen some of his magazine verse.

"You've a gift," said my husband, "not lightly to be disregarded. But you're too versatile--you paint better than you write, and there's a lot in the old parable of the talents. And, by George, you've no honest right to your talent if, in some way, you do not use it for the good of your fellow-men."

"That's what I tell him," broke in Mercedes, in a little earnest note, and blushed a rosy red.

The links were almost deserted, and the tea-hour long past. Realizing that it would be late before we reached home, I rose, reluctantly. For there had been a spirit around the table which could not easily be recaptured--and I regretted its passing.

"The tourists have practically all left," said Mercedes, on the way to the car. "Very few are here still. And the residents have already begun to go North."

"You'll practise again this year?" asked Wright of Bill, as the car drove off, and I heard my husband answer,

"That depends very much on Mavis."

"Is he to poetize or administer pills?" asked Wright, turning to me.

"Both, I hope," I answered casually. "Good doctors may not be as rare as good poets, but the combination is remarkable."

"I should think," said Mercedes, with candour, "that you would be awfully jealous...."

"Grateful lady patients?" asked Wright.

She nodded.

"I've not had the opportunity yet," I answered. "Since I've known him Bill hasn't had many patients except me--"

"Quite a serious case," remarked Wright solemnly, "one that demands incessant medical attention."

Bill laughed.

"If Mavis can stand for irregular hours and cold meals," he said, "I'll start in again when our vacation is over."

"You needn't rub it into me that I don't have to work for a living," said Wright. "Look at you, taking a year off, careless-like. 'Tisn't decent--for a doctor. I can't help it that my late lamented uncle made tin-pans successfully--and that I was his only living relative. He didn't approve of me at all," he concluded modestly, "and he thought my verses immoral, but he couldn't leave it all to charity, you know--"

"I've never lacked having more money than I needed," said Bill, as we drove through the hot, quiet night, "but I've been glad of it. If it didn't provide me with an added incentive to work, it at least allowed me to do a good deal that I otherwise could not have done."

"The Denton Free Clinic, for instance," said Wright. But Bill did not answer.

For just a second I was hurt that he hadn't told me. And then I remembered how little I knew about the man who was my husband.

Mercedes, in the front seat with Bill, asked him a question. Under the cover of their voices Wright said to me,

"I shouldn't chaff Bill like that. I don't suppose that there is another medico of his age in New York who has done so much charity-doctoring. There are districts where the people have absolutely canonized him."

"He never tells me about that side of it," I said.

"I don't suppose he would," answered Wright. "You get to know these things by chance. But he had a streak in him--even at Princeton--that made him different from the rest of us. And men who were with him at Johns Hopkins could tell you tales--"

"Bridge tonight?" said Mercedes.

I jumped. My thoughts had been very far away, filling in gaps.

"You'll have to play with me," said Wright. "I understand all your signals, Mercedes!"

"But you don't profit by them," she answered, as we came within sight of the house.

I played a wretched game that evening. I couldn't keep my mind on the cards. It was off--back at the Country Club again, listening to a poet talk of poets: it was wondering a little about the "Denton Free Clinic": and, in consequence, I revoked twice, to the extreme amusement of our opponents.

"Haven't come to the point where you swear at your wife at the bridge-table, have you Bill?" asked Wright, as he carefully took the penalty.

"No," replied my husband, "that's a form of indoor sport I could never quite understand. It doesn't seem fair--for she couldn't swear back."

"Oh, couldn't I?" said I with ardour.

"I shan't give you the opportunity," he answered. "And now, if you please, one no trump."

The game broke up rather early. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Wright and Mercedes, with the excuse that they were keenly interested in astronomy, walked out on the verandah. I told them good-night.

"You'll stay to chaperone the Irresponsibles?" I asked my husband.

"Gladly," he said, "and discreetly--from a distance."

There was something so comfortable and lovable about him that night that I suddenly wanted to tell him I was sorry that we had quarrelled, sorry that the barrier had arisen between us. But I couldn't. In one way, however, I might make amends. I said,

"I've grown awfully fond of Mercedes. I hope she will come North sometime--for the summer, perhaps. I think I misjudged her cruelly for a while."

The steel-blue eyes grew warm.

"She's a very nice child," said Bill, "and I knew you'd find it out before long. You didn't give her a chance at first. But I'm glad you like her, Mavis, for you can do her a lot of good."

"How?" I asked curiously.

"Well, for one thing, you're pretty well balanced--most of the time. And for another, you have had the advantage of a unique and splendid upbringing. And for another, you are--unless given certain circumstances--most uncommonly sweet."

He said it in a very matter-of-fact tone: and looked at his watch as he spoke--not at me. I was absurdly embarrassed.

"Are--are you a 'certain circumstance'?" I asked daringly, and escaped to my room before he could answer. I heard him start to follow me, but apparently he thought better of it. But long after I was in bed, I heard a foot-fall under my windows, the smell of a pipe drifted in through the flower-scent, and the sound of a baritone voice singing softly,

"Who is Sylvia--who is she--?"

"Is she kind as she is fair--?"

I lay for some time, listening, and finally, as the footsteps turned away and the song grew fainter, I laid my hot cheek to the pillow and slept, dreamlessly, until morning.

But when morning came, it all seemed very far away--that talk at the Country Club--and the steps below my window. Wright was in his silliest mood, and Mercedes and he kept up a running fire of foolishness. Bill was preoccupied, almost abrupt. He left us directly after lunch, on one of his now daily visits to the Crowell plantation. And Mercedes disappeared with Wright at the same time. Where they were, I do not know to this day.

I had tea alone: Peter was with Sarah, and after tea I went out restlessly and walked, stopping at old Manuel's and at Annunciata's. It was growing dark before I turned homewards again, and there was a strange lingering light in the sky which drew my attention. A great, sulphur-colored cloud, murky and ominous, not like any cloud I had ever seen. I hurried on and had reached the gates before the wind came. A rush, a tearing at trees and bushes, a tremendous sweep of hot, choking dust and air. I could hardly keep my feet, and struggled, step by step, head down, almost defenceless in the face of the storm. The wind had risen, apparently, without warning. And yet, looking back on it afterwards, I realized that, had I been a little more familiar with the vagaries of Cuban climate, I would have noticed the curious hush, the absolute stillness, expectant and breathless, which lay over Guayabal just before the storm broke. Nearing the house, I heard a tremendous crash, voices, and the sound of hurrying foot-steps. The wind was increasing in volume, and I fairly stumbled up the steps, almost falling. When my hand was finally on the door, it was wrenched open with violence, and I saw Bill on the threshold, very white, with burning blue eyes.

He caught me by the arm and pulled me into the room.

"Where have you been?" he said, furiously.

"Walking," said I, the ruins of my hat in my hand.

He made a sound in his throat, half-anger, half-impotence.

"The roof of the garage has blown off," he said. "It's a nice little storm. I have been looking for you all over the plantation. No one had any idea where you were. I found Wright and sent Mercedes in the house--she's had rather a narrow escape--from a falling tree. She's all right, but hysterical--"

"I must go to her at once," I said, starting off.

The long arm shot out and I was pulled close to the tall, lean figure.

"Just a minute," said Bill. "Mercedes is all right, as I said. Sarah is with her. But I want to ask you this ... quite aside from the danger you ran, in a wind like this, why did you disobey my express wishes and go out--alone--away from the house?"

Then I remembered.

"I--" said I, and was silent.

Bill dropped my arm.

"I suppose," he said with bitterness, "it was because I asked you not to. Very well, I've learned my lesson. You knew that Guayabal is in a very unsettled state: you knew that Crowell had had trouble on his plantation: I told you there had been threats--demonstrations. I asked you not to run any risks. That is why, I suppose, when the opportunity arose, you deliberately ignored my wishes."

"You are very unjust," I said, fighting back the tears.

"I hope so," said Bill quietly, "but I'm afraid not. It seems as if we couldn't have a whole day of peace and friendliness under the same roof. I've tried my best, Mavis, to be as little in your way as possible--to make the best of a trying situation. But at every turn you manage to antagonize me and to rebel against me. I might have known--"

He turned away and lighted a cigarette with fingers which shook.

"I'm sorry," I said, steadying my voice with an effort, "if I have annoyed you. I did not go out this afternoon with such intention."

I would have stopped there, but the lift of his shoulders angered me until I finally lost all control of myself.

"I'll not be a burden to you long," I said. "As soon as we are home again I will release you from your responsibilities. I have wanted to spare Father, but I see that I can't--you go too far. I don't know how such things are done, but it shouldn't be very difficult to obtain an annulment of our marriage. The whole thing has been a ghastly mistake ... an impulse I have regretted ever since. But it's not too late," I said, with my head held very high, "to rectify that mistake."

I walked past him into my own room. Somehow the pride that had always come to my rescue was missing now. I was just hurt--hurt, and unhappy and very lonely. To speak to me so! To look at me so, out of those steel-blue eyes! It was not just; it was not anything but deliberate cruelty!

Once having said that I would make myself free, the thing crystalized for me as it had never done before. Of course, I had meant all along to separate from my temporary husband. That was understood at the outset. But it had seemed a long way off, indefinitely vague. And now that my decision was spoken, it loomed very near. Irrevocable. I shrank, in anticipation, from the publicity of it, the questions, the prying eyes. Wright would wonder and grieve--and Mercedes--and I? I hardly knew. On Father's sorrow and self-reproach I dared not dwell. Now I had nothing left.

I rose and bathed my eyes. They were swollen from crying and my throat ached abominably. And then, with a tremendous effort, I opened my door and went out to find Mercedes.

She was in her room, shaken but quite recovered, and full of gratitude to Wright for seeing her danger and pulling her away just in time.

"Where were you?" she asked anxiously. "You weren't hurt, were you? You look dreadfully, Mavis!"

Hurt? Yes, I was hurt beyond healing. But Mercedes must not know.

"I was in no danger," I said, evasively. "I came in just as the storm was beginning."

"You heard the roof go then?" she asked. "Wasn't it awful? It is a wonder Bill wasn't killed--he was just driving the car in...."

"Bill?" I said, stupidly.

"What's the matter? Didn't he tell you? You're white as a sheet!"

She jumped up from the bed and put her arms about me.

"Mavis, are you faint? Let me call Bill!"

"Please don't," I said. "I'm all right now."

The dreadful dizziness had passed: my ears stopped singing and the room assumed its normal aspect again.

"If you don't mind," I said, "I'll lie down beside you for a bit. Please don't tell anyone. I'm nervous, I suppose, and upset."

And so, it was in Mercedes Howells' arms that I finally cried myself into calmness. And Mercedes, suddenly tender and very gentle, never asked why, and, bless her heart, never told.