Mavis of Green Hill Part 27

I closed the drawer--spent, unsatisfied. The thing was halting and superficial. It did not seem possible that there were people who could find release in words, or peace in beauty.

I had not reread Richard Warren's letters since my marriage. And this was a night I dared not read them, for all that my resolve weakened.

For, in some inexplicable way, he had become very real to me--in Cuba.

And I knew that he could not be anyone save himself, could not be anything save strong and fine and understanding.

I took my trouble into Peter's room and sat with it for a long time, by his bedside. But it was Dawn, before, in my cool, deep alcove, I had ceased tossing and slept.

CHAPTER XI

A week slipped by before we returned the Howells' call. Then, one brilliant morning, I drove with Bill into Havana and together we transacted some embarra.s.sing monetary business at the bank. After which I expressed a desire to go shopping. The sidewalks were quite impa.s.sable: so narrow that, for the most part, the pedestrians, unhurried, strolled in the hardly wider streets. The shops held me, fascinated. And I was not a little annoyed at the manner in which Bill conducted my purchases--here a gorgeous feather fan, there a piece of lace: and in another spot a deadly and lovely bit of Toledo workmans.h.i.+p, executed with rare finesse on the hilt of a stiletto.

Yet, I too, was determined not to return to Green Hill without a trunk laden with gifts for my dear people there. Once, I slipped away from my husband, who was deep in conversation ... of a political nature, judging from the volubility of the shop-keeper who engaged his attention ... and, entering a store some five or six houses away, I tried out my absurd and garbled knowledge of Spanish, with terrifying results. For the little lady who guarded the delicate linens flooded me with such an impressive flow of wholly unintelligible syllables, that, baffled, I beat an ignominious retreat, followed by her to the very door. On the street I met Bill, hatless and disturbed out of all proportion.

"Please never do that again, Mavis," he commanded, taking my arm. "I am not willing to have you roam the streets of Havana alone."

I drew my arm away.

"I am quite capable of taking care of myself," I said with frigidity, "especially in broad daylight."

"This is not Green Hill," he answered enigmatically, "nor yet New York."

I started to reply, but a glance from a pa.s.sing dark-eyed individual, immaculately attired in white, quelled me. I had never before encountered anything quite so sweeping, so totally inventorying, so insolent. I had the immediate sensation that I was in one of those nightmare dreams, in which one walks upon a public highway, quite unclothed. Unconsciously, I cast a rea.s.suring glance at my lavender linen, and breathed again. I must have gasped, for Bill looked from my blazing cheeks to the wayfaring gentleman. Something belligerent came into his eyes, and then he looked into mine, lifting his brows.

"You see?" he remarked.

It was plain that I had seen. I said nothing, but hastened my steps.

"Where did you leave your hat?" I asked sweetly.

We retrieved the object and went to where we had left the car, driving to a restaurant, high over the harbor, where, on the second floor, we lunched deliciously, on palatable creatures sinisterly named Morro crabs, and other delicacies. A gun boat lay, far off, at rest on the blue waters, and here and there the black funnels of steamers lifted darkly against a burning sky. People at neighboring tables bowed to my companion. Several came over to us and were presented to me: a ruddy-faced Englishman, of military bearing, and with an ineffable air of detachment from his surroundings: a member of the American Legation, a lean, bearded man, with an unamerican name and a dark face, reminding me of an ancient Spanish n.o.bleman whose picture I had once seen: a fair-haired, attractive boy, and others whom I have forgotten. And the meal could hardly have been termed a tete-a-tete. I was heartily glad of it.

Until the calling hour came, we amused ourselves with a survey of the crowded districts of the city. An appalling number of tourists pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed us, obviously bent on the same idle occupation. Pretty girls in bright sweaters and tennis-shoes: fat mothers, similarly clad: and patient, bored men, silent or loquacious, chewing black Cuban cigars, following their women folk in and out the shops. And on the broader thoroughfares, I saw the Cuban women driving in open victorias, powdered and wonderfully dressed, regarding the "touristen"

with slightly cynical, always beautiful, eyes.

The Howells' great house, a stone structure on the Vadado, was a revelation of formal and chilling luxury. As we waited for Mrs. Howell to come to us in the drawing-room, Bill murmured under his breath,

"'I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls!' Isn't it amazing?"

Before I could answer, our hostess swept in, accompanied, almost preceded, by an overpowering wave of perfume. I had no time to reply, but found myself nodding at him in sympathetic appreciation. All through the somewhat stilted conversation which followed, the stately tea, and the meteoric appearance of Mercedes, as chatty and brilliant as some tropical bird, I seemed to cling to the solidity and confident familiarity of my husband as the one real thing in an unreal room.

But, leaving, I was forced to confess to myself the real friendliness and cordiality of these alien people towards me, a stranger at their imposing gates.

It was Mercedes who explained to me that the feminine quality of Havana did not go a-shopping in sport clothes.

"You would not do it," she said, "on your Fifth Avenue. We do not do it here. It is not the custom. We wear our smartest gowns and our highest-heeled shoes."

She made an entrancing little moue at the thought of sweaters and rubber soles. And, with a feeling of commiseration toward my comfortably sport-clad compatriots, das.h.i.+ng through Havana streets, lavish of exclamation and of purse I was foolishly glad that something had prompted me to look my coolest and prettiest before setting forth on the expedition.

I remember that day well, for it was on the same evening, back once more in the palm-enclosed gardens of my new home, that Juan, the native workman appeared, shortly after dinner, a broad-brimmed hat clutched to his sunken chest, his face working oddly, demanding to speak to the doctor.

I heard scattered words--"fiebre" and "agonia," and the name "Annunciata" repeated again and again. And, finally, when Bill rose with a quiet, brief sentence, I caught a long-drawn "ah-h" and "Dios!

muchisimas gracias, Senor!" from the old man.

"Juan's daughter is ill," Bill told me quickly. "I'm going with him.

Shan't be long. Go to bed, Mavis, you look done up. It's been a long day."

Stopping only to get his hat and an emergency case, he was gone with the excited, anxious old man, and I was alone in the big room.

Something he had said to me, far back in what now seemed the past ages, came to me vaguely, something about the "poetry of healing." And I pondered upon it for a long time, till a falling log roused me, and I went to bed. But not until I heard a familiar step on the path did I consider sleeping. I slipped on a negligee and went to my door. He was coming toward me, tired, I thought, and troubled.

"Bill!" I called softly.

He stopped a moment, peering into the dim light which streamed through the half-open door into the narrow, long hall which separated our rooms.

"Mavis!" and then, reproachfully. "Why aren't you in bed?"

"You've been gone hours," I said, conscious of a childish petulance.

"How is she?"

With a hand on the latch of his own door, he considered me. I must have looked a sight, half-asleep, my hair in braids down my thinly-clad back. But if he thought so, he did not say it.

"All right now," he answered. "But she was a pretty sick girl. And, of course, they had applied home-made remedies, liberally sprinkled with superst.i.tion! It looked like a case of ptomaine to me. Anyway, she'll be on the road to recovery--and more beatings--tomorrow. It was," he concluded with a smile, "a rather disconcerting evening. Half a dozen people praying all over the place, and, when I left, kissing my hands!

Lucky I've had some experience in dealing with the natives before this."

"I'm glad," I said. "Poor old Juan!"

"It was nice of you to wait up," said Bill suddenly. "Thanks!"

I became acutely conscious of the hour and of my appearance.

"I--I was interested," I said lamely.

"Yes, that's it," he answered, a smile lighting up his worn face, "it's not often that you--honor me."

It was on the tip of my tongue to reply, "my interest is solely in old Juan and his daughter." But I didn't. It didn't seem quite fair, and wasn't strictly true.

"Good-night," I said, withdrawing, "I'm glad she's all right."

From his closing door his words floated back to me,

"_Buenas noches, cara mia!_"

Annunciata recovered, and to Sarah's outspoken disapproval I had her come often to the house. She sewed excellently, and embroidered even better, and I was glad to be able to give her small odds and ends of work to do. She was a lovely thing: rounded, and supple, with a clear, creamy-brown skin. But chancing one day to observe her mother on the road below the house I was smitten with a prophetic horror for Annunciata's future. For the woman, who could not have been more than thirty-five was as bent and gnarled as a Northerner of sixty, wrinkled like a monkey and with something of that creature's patient, if malicious wisdom in her eyes. I began to realize that Juan, too was according to our standards a man still in his early prime. I was confused by such an ordering of Nature. I said something of this to Bill but he only answered, knocking the ashes from his pipe.