CHAPTER XVIII

A day or so went by, devoid of any particular incident. If Bill and I spoke to each other at all, it was to discuss our plans for leaving Cuba. The Goodriches were returning shortly from Europe: Father sent a homesick-for-me cable from Green Hill: the weather was beginning to grow very warm: in short, a hundred and one things warned us that the Spring were better spent in the North. We fixed our departure for a day not two weeks distant, and Bill went into Havana to book our passage. Even in public we had dropped the pretence of marital banter. But Wright and Mercedes, apparently absorbed in each other, did not notice: or, if they did, kept each his and her own counsel, as far as I knew.

The lazy, sun-steeped days seemed interminable. I had, luckily, a number of things to arrange--another trunk to buy and some sewing to accomplish, with Annunciata's help. And Bill's obvious preoccupation could easily have been laid to the growing unrest in Guayabal. Mr. Crowell, an anxious, nervous, but charming person, had been more than once at "The Palms" to discuss the situation. If it had not been for my husband's sense of responsibility towards the Reynolds, I think that we should have packed up and left Cuba in short order. But he was anxious to stay on for a time longer and see Silas, and what men were loyal to their American employer, through what he hoped would prove a passing phase of revolt--or so he said.

As for me, I went through the days, weighted under a burden of uncertainty and a sorrow without name. Father's miniature, lying open on my night-table, seemed to reproach me: seemed, too, at times, to reproach himself, which was even harder to bear. "I have done my human best for you," the gentle-strong mouth seemed to say. "I have never wanted anything but your happiness, my little Mavis." And the kind, humorous eyes added, "Is it my fault that I must hear you sobbing through these long, unhappy nights?"

No, not his fault. Whose, then? I dared not ask the picture in the little leather case, for I was afraid it might answer.

"It is _his_ fault, Father," I would defend myself mutely. "We might have been content, even happy, in a friendly way, if it had not been for him."

"It was not for Friendship alone that I gave you to him, Daughter," the answer would come, "but for something dearer, bigger, deeper. You were so young and so alien from the world. I had thought that the man to whom we both owe everything would be the one to help you through all that first difficult time: to teach you, finally, Life's loveliest lesson. And I had hoped, prayed even, that you would one day come to be to him what your Mother was to me.... There was not much time," the beloved voice went on, very sadly, "for me to make a decision. It was hard to feel I might have to leave you ... alone ... unsheltered.... How hard, you will never know ... unless some day you are called upon to leave a child of your own...."

"Father!" I begged--"Please--"

"If the mistake was mine," said the voice which still seemed to come from that unsmiling miniature, "I can only ask your forgiveness, Mavis. Even your Father, who loves you beyond all earthly things, was wrong to try and shape your destiny."

"No--no--" I sobbed.

I laid the minature on the table again. The voice in my heart had ceased to speak: There were only the pictured eyes, looking into mine from a little leather case. But for a long time, Father had talked to me so. I read between the lines of his letters and prayed that he should not read between the lying phrases of mine. Was it all lies? "I am happy," I told him again and again: and he, who knew me so well, was convinced, perhaps because, in a certain, curious sense, that much was true.

Underneath bewilderment, misunderstanding, the pinpricks of pride, and the smart of old resentments, I _had_ been 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 her pretty, 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 your poems, 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.

1 HAVANA HARBOR

Hued as a peacock's plumage, wide unfurled, The sea dreams, smiling. Far off, toylike, frail A 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-spray Scatters 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 yet A city whose once-fettered feet are free, To wear, serene as some white-limbed coquette, The gold-and-sapphire anklet of the Sea.

2 MORRO 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, obtuse presence, 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 you _know_?" 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.