Mavis of Green Hill Part 31

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 circ.u.mstances."

"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 s.p.a.ce, 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 _menage-a-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 s.h.i.+rk 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 pa.s.sed 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.