CHAPTER VIII

The last word had been written in my Diary. Wearily, I stood erect and brushed the loosened hair from my eyes. The house was very still; in all my life I had never been so utterly alone. I turned from my desk, and, as I did so, caught a glimpse of my face in the wall-mirror. That was not I--that white-faced girl, with the frightened eyes and shaken mouth.

"Mavis...."

I saw the mirrored eyes grow dark, the tremulous mouth straighten into lines of control before I left my curiously impersonal scrutiny of myself and opened the door for my husband.

"Well?"

"Your father is awake," said Bill, very tall and broad-shouldered on the threshold. "I have been trying to persuade him to have a nurse, but he won't listen to me."

"Sarah is better than any hospital graduate," I answered, "and I am quite strong enough to be with him now."

"As you wish," he answered gently. "But I think you over-estimate your strength, my dear."

I walked past him into the hall.

"Sarah has prepared the guest room for you," I said. "It is next door to father."

"Thank you."

He walked with me to the door of the sick-room, stood aside and let me enter alone. Father was still conscious, he knew me, tried to raise his hand. I put mine over it and sat for the rest of the afternoon by his bed. Sometimes he seemed to sleep, and I watched him with a passion of sorrow and love unlike anything I had ever known. All his defences were down, all his barriers of reserve. He was like a child, and, I thought, quietly happy and at peace. It is difficult to set down on paper how I yearned over him as the slow hours dragged by. But when Sarah came to relieve me and I rose, stiff and cramped from long sitting, I was conscious that, somehow, I had come to grips with myself, had seen for the first time what I owed to my father, had realized fully his sacrifice and his unfailing thought of me. It was as if we had talked together, we two, a long intimate hour. And I knew then, as never before, that I owed him not duty nor obedience, for those are unloving words, but tenderness and endless gratitude. If before he left me forever, my marriage was the one thing to bring him peace, then no matter how mistaken his love for me had been in that instance, I had been more than right to do for him as he wished. The fact that in so doing I had probably ruined two lives, was of minor consideration.

Two days went by. On the evening of the second, the doctors held out very little hope that my father would live through the night. I watched with them until morning. I had no tears left. I had come to a place where no tears were, a place too deep to be stirred by emotion or even grief.

As the dawn came in, pale and cold, Dr. McAllister turned from the bed and took his hand from father's wrist. He looked old and grey--dear Doctor Mac, but his eyes were radiant.

"He'll pull through!" he said simply.

All about me was a singing darkness. Through it I heard a voice say sharply, "Look to the lassie, Bill!" and felt strong arms around me. Before I lost complete consciousness I remember putting up my hand to brush something wet from my face. Tears? Not _my_ tears.

"Don't cry," I said childishly. "It hurts father to see people cry."

When I woke again it was bright daylight. I was in my own room on my own bed. My husband was sitting, his hands between his knees, beside me.

For a moment I stared at him. Then, as knowledge flashed through me like a terrifying tide,

"Father?" I questioned, very low.

"He's all right, Mavis," said Dr. Denton quietly. "The danger is past--thank God!"

I put out my hand, gropingly, and he took it firmly into his.

"Cry now," he said gently. "It will help."

Then, in a rush, came the healing, peace-giving tears.

* * * * *

It was not until ten days later, when father, marvellously recuperating, sat up for the first time and demanded his "children" about him that I faced the fact that what was done could not be undone, and that I was confronted by the finality of marriage.

"Well, you two," said father weakly, but with a tiny glimmer of mischief in his eyes, "it looks as if I had hurried you before the altar under false pretences. What are you going to do about it--now that I've fooled you by living?"

Beneath his half-laughter, I heard a note of anxiety, of doubt. And the resolution rose up strong and compelling within me that never, as long as I lived, should father know what he had done. It was the only way in which I could pay my debt.

"Play the game, Mavis," I said to myself, and smiled straight into father's eyes.

Bill, sitting beside me, drew a long breath. Was it relief? I glanced at him quickly and knew that for one moment we agreed.

"You old matchmaker," I said, "were you so afraid that I would never find a husband? Was it quite necessary to frighten us all to pieces in order that I should wear a wedding ring?"

Father laughed.

"Then," he asked, "It's all right--with you two?"

I turned to Bill and saw him nod once before I spoke.

"It's all right," I said, "and we're all happy."

"Thank God!" said father under his breath.

I could not bear the look on his face, and slipped blindly, without excuse, from the room.

It was the following week that John Denton came down to be with us, and hatched his plans with father. They called us in, Bill and me, and laid their schemes before us.

"We have decided," said father, very thin and pale in his armchair, "that children are best left alone, without old people to disturb them. I'm quite all right. In two weeks I shall be younger and better than I have been in twenty years. And I want you and Bill to go away, Mavis. It's time you had your honeymoon, cloudless and solitary, as all honeymoons should be. Old John here has been talking his camp in Canada to me, for an hour steady. And I'm persuaded. I'll get you infants out of the house, and then John and I and that marvelous man-servant of his who is cook and nurse and valet in one person will travel by easy stages and spend a month rusticating in the big woods.

"Can't we go too?" I begged, in a sudden panic.

"You can _not_!" said Uncle John and father in one breath.

I turned a little helplessly to my husband.

"They don't want us!" I said.

"And we don't want them!" he answered smiling. "You and I are going to Cuba. Just as soon as you can get ready. I've been talking to your father and he agrees with me that the absolute change will do you all the good in the world."

"Cuba!"

"Exactly. There is a perfectly good plantation there just waiting for us."

"But...." I said, sparring for time, "I couldn't leave Sarah."

Father laughed outright. "You baby!" he said, caressingly.

"You won't have to," said Bill. "She needs a rest as much as you do. She's coming along--and so is your friend Peter. We can't leave him behind, and Mr. Goodrich has to sail for Spain sooner than he expected. I saw him this morning."

I was too amazed for words. And over my defenceless head the affair was settled. Canada for father and Uncle John; Cuba for Sarah, Peter, Bill, and me. A thousand protests, the old rebellious anger at having my life settled and ordered for me, rushed over me again. But father's eyes were on me and I choked back my resentment.

"Cuba it is!" I said, forcing a smile.

And so, after the maze of packing, of sending Sarah to New York for summer clothes--in the dead of winter!--after the farewells and the blessings and the thought-deadening hurry and bustle--Cuba it was.