Mavis of Green Hill Part 36

"Do men tire of life?" he counter questioned, gallantly, and I knew a swift admiration for his histrionic powers. For his voice went a little deep, quite suddenly, and the hand over mine shook.

"Nice answer," said Wright critically, "quite emotional, but open to argument. Of course men tire of life. Some of them commit suicide, some of them drink, others get married! The remedy is entirely according to temperament."

"Horrid man!" said Mercedes, pouting. And answering amiably, "Am I not?" Wright guided her to the bridge table, having persuaded her at dinner that, with him as partner, she could trump his ace to her heart's content.

As we followed them, Bill said, very low,

"Remember--not to go out alone, Mavis."

"I'll remember," I answered, non-committally, and we sat down to the cards.

It was interesting to observe that Mercedes, her previous a.s.sertions to the contrary, played a much better game than any of us, excepting, perhaps, Bill.

So, after all, it had been from choice and not lack of knowledge, that she had not joined the game the night of the dinner. Which looked as if someone else had been manoeuvering besides myself. But I forgave her. She was so pretty that one could not expect her to always play quite "according to Hoyle."

CHAPTER XVI

I arrived in the kitchen the following morning, to discuss luncheon with Norah, and found the entire kitchen-force ma.s.sed at the screened-door, watching Mercedes coquetting with Arthur. There was a temptation to draw an a.n.a.logy between the brilliantly-plumaged, addle-pated bird and the decorative girl who stood at the cage-door, poking her white fingers perilously through the wiring and cooing to him in softest Spanish. It must be admitted, that weeks of painstaking effort on my part to win Arthur to a display of friendliness toward me, had resulted in nothing. But ten minutes with Mercedes had proved his undoing: the bird was positively maudlin. I came out to the cage, and at once the half-closed orbs of Arthur underwent an unflattering change. He opened them to their widest and bleakest and said, hoa.r.s.ely sarcastic, "Pretty darling! Darling! Bow-wow-wow! Carramba!" at which Mercedes exclaimed delightedly,

"Oh, isn't he clever! Who taught him that?"

"The swearing, or the pet names?" I answered, stooping to say goodmorning to Wiggles, "I haven't the remotest idea."

"Billy?" suggested my guest, touching her perfectly dressed hair with highly manicured finger-tips.

"Possibly," I answered. "He invariably barks and then swears at me, before luncheon."

"Billy or Arthur?" inquired Mercedes with interest.

I laughed.

"Have you seen either of the men this morning?" I asked. "I heard them go out early."

"They went to Crowell's," she answered. "I saw them off. They will not be back before tea, Billy told me."

I tried to look as if I had heard these plans before, and merely forgotten them for a moment.

"How nice!" I said, insincerely, "We will have a nice, long day together--with no disturbing male element," I added maliciously.

"I will like that too," said Mercedes, with great unexpectedness. "You never let me talk to you alone, Mavis, and" she finished with a funny little undercurrent of wistfulness in her pretty voice, "I have no friends my own age--women friends, I mean."

I had grown to be a little annoyed at my guest, but somehow, her simple statement opened up a vista before me which I had not dreamed existed. The child seemed, after all, hungry for companions.h.i.+p. It was out of the question that she should find it with her own indolent mother, who treated her as if she were half plaything and half infant; or with her father, whose att.i.tude toward her was a curious commingling of affectionate despotism and anxiety: and the basis on which she met all her many men-satellites was not one guaranteed to produce comrades.h.i.+p.

I put my arm through hers and took her into the kitchen with me. After my inconsiderable domestic task was completed, we went out on the verandah together, armed with sewing. Mercedes sewed beautifully, an art which her early convent education had taught her, and I took a real aesthetic pleasure in watching the smooth, dark head, bent over the fine linen in her lap.

"What are you making?" I asked her, idly.

She exhibited the very feminine garment: exquisitely embroidered and sewn with the most exact and even of tiny st.i.tches.

"I wish I could sew like that," I said, enviously, "but I should think you would ruin your eyes."

She raised to mine the tremendous pools of liquid darkness in question.

"But no," she said. "All Spanish girls are clever with the needle. The Sisters taught me when I was very young."

I had been, with the Howells, to one of the convents near Havana, and I recalled now the sweet, patient faces of the nuns, and the marvelous work they showed us. Some of it lay in one of my trunks now, a present to Mrs. Goodrich from Bill and me. The thought of Mercedes behind the austere cloister walls was incongruous.

"Were you long with the nuns?" I asked her.

"Seven years," she answered, and then, amazingly, "I was very happy there--for a long time I wanted to take the veil, but Father was simply horrified at the idea."

I was somewhat horrified myself.

"I can't imagine it," I said flatly.

"Why?"

I didn't answer for a moment, and she went on,

"But I know why--you think me very light and frivolous, do you not, Mavis?"

"It would be difficult," I answered cautiously, "to imagine you as a nun!"

"They are good women," she said, and was silent.

Suddenly I realized that I knew very little more about this girl than I had known on the boat coming down to Havana, and yet, I had been with her almost constantly ever since.

"Didn't you care for college?" I inquired, rather diffidently.

Her great eyes lighted up.

"It was wonderful--in some ways--" she said slowly, "so many girls, of all cla.s.ses, gathered together. At first I could not understand. At home, you know, one is very careful whom one knows. It is changing a little now. I remember I was scandalized, my first months at college, to find that the President of the Senior cla.s.s was a waitress in one of the campus houses--actually waiting on the table! It was too incredible! I wrote home, and Mother begged Father to send for me at once. She was even more shocked than I! But Father laughed, she said, and told her it would do me good. He said it was high time that a little of my American blood came to the fore. Later I learned that this girl, the Senior President, had practically worked her way through the four years of college. She was the daughter of a very poor man--a peasant, we would call him. And yet there was hardly a girl in that great college who would not have given everything she had for the respect and admiration and love which that quiet, plain-featured girl had won and held from students and faculty alike."

"You too?" I asked.

"I, too," said Mercedes simply. She bent her head a little lower over the white fabric in her lap and went on, not quite clearly. "I was not very popular. Some liked me, yes. They even asked me to their homes for the shorter vacations. But they liked me because I was 'different': because it was 'smart' to say that they had a Spanish-American girl as a friend: or because I was pretty and bright and did not care much to study. But I made no real friends.h.i.+ps."

I was, by now, very interested. Here was a cross-section of life that I had no knowledge of. A feeling of sympathy stirred in me: this gay, alien little creature, with the blood of two widely dissimilar nations warring in her, coming fresh from her convent to the democratic freedom of an American college. I said,

"Tell me a little about it all, Mercedes. I only know college-life second hand, for, as perhaps Bill has told you, I was a helpless invalid for eleven years. But I was fortunate in my friends, although I had few of my own age, and in a Father who was my greatest playfellow and my most understanding comrade."

The quick, facile tears rose to the big eyes. She pulled her chair a little closer and laid her warm, vibrant hand on mine.

"I didn't know," she said. "I'm so sorry. Billy told me that you had been ill--but I didn't dream.--You're wonderful, Mavis," she said, "delicate and lovely as an orchid. I always feel clumsy and too highly-colored beside you. And you have been so kind and sweet--"