Mavis of Green Hill Part 37

I grew very remorseful: my feelings toward Mercedes Howells had been anything but "kind and sweet." They had been distinctly critical and almost unfriendly. For the first time, I did not resent her easy use of my husband's given name: for the first time I realized the old truth that to know people is to like them.

I gave the narrow, high-bred hand a little squeeze.

"Don't be silly, child," I said lightly. "And tell me more about your American impressions."

"You sound just like the reporter who came on the boat, my first trip North," said Mercedes, with a little giggle. "Such a nice young man!

But the things he put in the paper about me! 'Beautiful Spanish-American heiress screams with delight at the first glimpse of her father's country.' I didn't really scream," she explained conscientiously, "but I talked more than I should have. Father wrote me quite an angry letter about it. He is very well known," she added, without pride, "and it annoyed him. He says no woman can hold her tongue, anyway! But how was I to know that the nice young man was a reporter?"

I had a vision of Mercedes, hands flying, eyes everywhere, babbling and bubbling for the _New York Press_. It was too amusing. No wonder Mr. Howells had been 'annoyed.'

"Go on," I said encouragingly.

"The girls I went home with," she said, after a while, "they lived in wonderful houses and had such beautiful clothes. But I didn't like them, somehow. You see, at home we are very strictly brought up. After a girl is out, she has some freedom, of course, and, after she marries, it is quite different--she can do as she likes. And until Father had insisted upon my being educated in the States, my Mother had had all the care of me. And I was brought up as the Spanish girls are, as my Mother was in her own Madrid. These American girls I visited thought of nothing but good times. They spoke no language but their own--"

"How many do you speak, Mercedes?" I interrupted, curiously.

"English, Spanish, French, of course," she answered, "and a little smattering of Italian and German. I had governesses until I was ten, and then I went to the convent. And much emphasis was laid on languages."

I suppressed a gasp, and she went on.

"It was from them--my college friends--that I learned that it is easy to deceive one's parents. And that it is quite right and proper to have as many cavaliers as one can. 'Scalp-hunting' they called it--"

I thought of Mercedes' not inadept efforts along the line of scalps, and thinking, asked,

"But haven't Spanish girls--and girls all over the world--very much the same ambitions along that line?"

Mercedes knitted her brows, and as she looked at me, I was startled, for, for the first time, I saw in her a very definite resemblance to her father. There was a strength of jaw there, to which the rounded, soft chin had blinded me: a certain Northern keenness in the Southern eyes.

"Why yes," she answered, "but it is--to marry that they--shall I say--hunt? But it was not that with my New York friends. They had no desire to marry: many of them told me that they would hate being tied down, that they disliked children. No, it was not to marry--but merely to play and to be amused--"

I laughed.

"It's the motive then," I said, "that makes the difference in your eyes?"

"Of course," she said frankly. "To marry, to have a family, to be mistress in one's own home, that is--"

"The legitimate ambition of every woman," I concluded for her.

"Si, Senora," she answered, laughing in spite of herself.

"But," I argued, "you must have met other American girls whose interest was not solely centered in the fine art of flirtation."

"I understood them--those you speak of, even less!" said Mercedes guilelessly. "My roommate was such a one. She wanted to be an engineer just fancy! And she was so pretty too!"

"An engineer!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, for even to my American mind this was an unusual ambition for my s.e.x to harbor. "And she had no use for men, too?" I asked.

"That was just it," said Mercedes, in obvious wonderment. "She had any number of men friends: corresponded with them, saw them at dances: they even called upon her at college. But a flirt she was not. They were her friends, she said. And she was like another boy with them. I went to her home once, a little town in Ma.s.sachusetts, and I could not understand her at all. She was like a sister to her mother, a son to her father, and a comrade to her dance-partners. It was too amazing!"

There was the whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l, I thought. She could understand but not condone the promiscuous flirtations of her American sisters: but the girl who was comrade to a man, and friend, and who looked on him as such, and not as an extra "scalp" or a possible husband, was beyond her comprehension.

"But," I argued, "returning to the b.u.t.terflies, surely, Mercedes, you have quite as much freedom now as any American girl. And, forgive me, my dear, but you employ it in much the same manner."

Her glance was mischievous and rather child-like.

"That has only been since my return home," she said. "Mother is not pleased, but Father says, 'let her go ahead.' And--as to what you say, I am trying very hard to be American now."

"Not the comrade sort, such as your mechanical roommate?" I suggested.

She regarded me in amazement.

"But most of the men I meet are Cubans," she stated. "Do you think _they_ would understand it--if I could be like that little Mary Adams?"

I considered, shook my head.

"Of course not," she said, answering her own question. "They would laugh and shrug--and be, perhaps, disagreeable. They can accept such a manner in an American girl. They do not like it, or comprehend it, but some of them have learned their lesson. And they must respect it.

But--in a Spanish girl--it would be unthinkable. Besides," she added frankly, "I couldn't--"

She was right. Temperamentally unfit, emotionally too highly developed.

"And--as to the flirting," she said shyly, "I--I like to attract people. I like to make them laugh and say nice things. And perhaps my American friends have taught me something of their methods."

"And your motive--?" I asked.

She stretched her graceful arms wide. Her hair had a blue sheen in the shaded light of the verandah and her skin was magnolia-white.

"I haven't any!" said Mercedes frankly.

"Not even a small gold band in the perspective?" I said.

She looked down at her ringless hands: at the heap of fragrant linen lying in her lap.

"This is to be part of my trousseau," she answered, indirectly, "part of what you call a 'Hope Chest.' All girls of my cla.s.s sew a great deal and lay it all away until they marry. And, after all, I am not like my New York cousins, for where they say 'perhaps--when I get tired of playing,' I say, 'someday, when I meet the right man.' And so, you see, I am not like my Mother's people either--not quite. For they say, 'someday when my parents are satisfied--and let us hope it will be soon!'"

I didn't wonder that Bill--that the men found her charming. The mixture of innocence and sophistication, the innate and the acquired worldliness was really delicious.

"Do you talk to many people like this?" I asked curiously.

"Of course not," she answered, wide-eyed. "I know of no one who would understand. There are times," she admitted, with a little sigh, "When I really do not understand myself."

At the luncheon table I found myself looking at Mercedes, half as if she were a stranger, half as if she were an old friend.

"I envy you and Bill, Mavis," she said, once, when Fong had left the room, "you have so much to make you happy. He's a very lucky man."

I smiled. It was not a subject on which I wished to be interrogated.

"And you," she went on, "are a lucky girl. He's awfully fine, that husband of yours."

She played for a moment with her tea-spoon, and looked at me, rather pathetically.