I had been asleep for several hours, I fancy, that first night in
Cuba, when I awoke to see the moonlight, like a living presence in my
room. Across the floor it lay in long, level bars of light. Not the
iron barriers at my window could keep it out. Silver it was, and never
still, but quivering as if a heart shook it. The scent of flowers came
to me, and far off in what was probably the native quarter, I heard a
throbbing instrument touched very softly, and the sound of singing. It
was all so strange, I could scarcely believe myself awake. And
presently, in nightgown and bare feet, I went across the cool tiles to
the windows and looked out.
The earth was silver under my eyes and the tall palms delicately
feathered with light. The singing died away to half a sob. The smell
of growing things was heavy and sweet on the air. It was all sheer
beauty.
A little song began to weave itself in my brain. I had made songs
before: almost too shy to set down on paper they were. But here, in
Cuba, where everything seemed softness and release, I wondered if
perhaps I could not sing with a stronger voice, and shape my songs
with pen and ink. What was it Richard Warren had said about poets? And
then, suddenly I knew that it was the thought of him which had taken
me out of sleep and sent me trembling to the window, with my breast
bare to the wonderful night. I knew that, once and for all, all beauty
must be inextricably woven with the thought of him who had signed
himself my "lover."
It was then that I became aware that something was hurting me
cruelly--something cold and hard and forbidding. I crept back to bed
with the marks of the bars across my breast.
In the morning I woke to find Peter sitting crosslegged on my bed
saying solemnly,
"They're blue! They're grey! No, they're open and they're brown!"
Wide awake now, I caught him to me, cuddled him close and then asked
wildly,
"Oh-h, Peter!--what's that?"
Not far from my window a raucous voice was saying, "Bring me my
coffee! Coffee! Norah! Hurry up!"
"Perhaps it's Uncle Bill!" said Peter, open-mouthed.
"Of course it isn't, Peter," I said quite crossly, and climbed out of
bed.
From my window, in the full, dazzling sunlight, I could see where the
kitchen made an L, and the screened kitchen porch from which that
terrifying voice emanated.
"Hurry!" it was saying. "Gol dern! Coffee! Coffee!"
"Why, Peter," I cried, "it's a macaw! A beauty! I've never seen one
before--only pictures! Hurry and get dressed and let's go out and say
good-morning to him!"
Sarah, apparently at home, and certainly composed, but rather too
communicative as to the habits of "heathen," appeared, to help me
dress and to hustle Peter into his own room. But before I was ready, a
knock came at the door, and on its heels, Norah, bearing fragrant
coffee and hot, brown rolls.
"Good morning, and it's never _up_ ye are!" she said in astonishment,
setting the tray down on a little table which she spread with a white
cloth.
"Doesn't one get up in Cuba?" I asked, laughing, as, in a negligee, I
sat down to my breakfast.
"Not yet," she answered, "it's coffee ye have in bed, and then at
eleven-thirty a real, big breakfast-lunch. Tea's at four, and dinner's
at eight--unless ye'd rather it was different, ma'am," she added
hastily.
"Not at all," I assured her, "I think it's a delightful arrangement.
When in Cuba...." I began gaily.
"Smoke Cubebs!" finished another voice, and my husband's dark head
appeared in the open doorway. "Good morning, Mavis. How did you
sleep?"
"Beautifully," I told him, just a little bit embarrassed as his tall,
bathrobed figure wandered unconcernedly in.
"Another cup," he said to Norah, with a side-glance at me and a
careless, "with your permission."
I nodded--I couldn't very well do anything else, with Sarah there, and
Norah beaming, and Peter dashing in to shriek loudly for milk.
In the general tumult, the macaw had started again,
"Norah!" it squawked. "Coffee! Coffee!"
"For heaven's sake," I said, "what sophisticated sort of a bird is
that?"
"That's Arthur," said Norah proudly, and disappeared. Later, I left
Bill and Peter exchanging pleasantries over the breakfast table and
went to the kitchen porch to watch Arthur being fed bread, lavishly
sopped in coffee, from a spoon. He was an utterly gorgeous bird,
yellow and blue, and "a great talker," as Norah informed me. Me,
however, he regarded for some time with a glassy eye, and merely
reiterated his desire for strong drink.
Returning, I found my room empty and closing the door, proceeded,
with mixed emotions, to dress.
Last night ... the moonlight and the surge of regret and longing which
had threatened to drown me, seemed very far away. And it was mentally
on tip-toe that I joined a white flannelled Bill for my first stroll
about my temporary domain.
We were alone, Peter having long since appropriated the services of
Silas and gone forth with him to view the country.
The sun was very hot, and I tilted my parasol low over my face.
Through avenues of palms we walked to the big, red-roofed garage, and
on to the little orange grove behind the out-buildings. Beyond, the
cane fields stretched, green and tall and waving. Figures, stunted,
wiry, moved in the fields ... far off I saw a patient donkey stand,
his back loaded with long lengths of cane tips. It was all hot and
still, clear-cut and unreal to look at.
Silas, Peter and one of the natives came toward us, Peter rapt at the
tremendous flow of Cuban-Spanish which surged above his small blonde
head. They stopped to speak to us, Bill growing suddenly foreign and
gesticulating as he answered the bent brown man's greetings.
"That's Juan," he told me, as we moved off. "Great old character. He
has a daughter whom he adores, a girl who must be sixteen now, I
should judge. He used to beat her unmercifully...."
"Horrible creature!" I said, with a shudder, my mind flashing back to
that beautiful, sinister fortress rising, towered, from the sea, a
symbol and a reminder....
Bill pushed his panama back from his broad forehead and whistled.
"I don't know," he said thoughtfully.... "After all, he beat her to
keep her good."
A peacock, tail unfurled, minced colorfully toward us, down the white
pathway.
"To keep her good!" I repeated scornfully, "with whipping?"
"I'm not advocating it," he answered quickly, "but his motives are
unquestionably admirable. And there's a Spanish proverb, you may
recall--it runs, tersely, 'A woman, a dog, and a chestnut-tree, the
more you beat them, the better they be!'"
Wiggles, his eyes on the stately departing peacock, pranced down the
path toward us, and, deflected by my whistle from his original,
doubtless destructive purpose, leaped gaily at my ruffles.
"Did you hear that, Wiggles?" I asked him. "This is decidedly no place
for you!"
But Wiggles, rolling happily in the grass, merely snorted.
A gong sounded from the house, and we went in to lunch.
About two o'clock, I was attacked by an overpowering languor. Twice,
no less, I yawned in Peter's face, in the midst of his thrilling
description of "babies an' ladies an' gentlemen, all brown, Aunt
Mavis!"
"Siesta, now!" remarked my husband briskly. "Both of you! Off to bed!"
"Bed!" I said, "in the middle of the day!" Peter, but recently
released from the burden of an afternoon nap, protested.
"Custom of the country," said Bill. "No getting around it. Couldn't if
you wanted to. Even Arthur is asleep."
I listened. We were on the verandah, and all about us was a stillness
which was almost audible. On the white road beyond our gates I saw a
pair of oxen, toiling patiently up the hill. Even the birds were
quiet, only now and then a sleepy chirping drifted down the hot air.
It seemed as if a veil had been drawn over the land. My eyelids felt
freighted, and I was very tired.
"Bed!" said Bill firmly.
I left Peter to his tender mercies and went indoors. My room was cool,
and sweet with flower perfume. Sarah, yawning, came when I rang, and
unhooked my frock. As I lay down on the bed, I heard her say
something, bitterly, about "an unhealthy climate," but if she said
more, I do not know what it was, for I was fast and dreamlessly
asleep.
It was Arthur who woke me, making the day hideous with his laughter.
"Mother's darling!" he announced, unctuously. "Pretty Arthur! Arthur!
Arthur!"
I turned over and felt for my watch. Four o'clock! It was incredible.
And equally beyond belief, the fact that I was hungry again!
I bathed and dressed, and then, wonderfully rested, went out on the
verandah. Fong and Wing appeared as if by magic and laid the tea-table
with iced tea, tiny round tomato sandwiches, and delectable frosted
cakes. And also, as if answering some compelling summons, Peter,
bright-eyed and red-cheeked, strolled out from the direction of Bill's
room. It was quite apparent that both of them had been asleep.
"Tea?" I asked my husband, as his tall figure loomed up behind Peter.
"Certainly!" he said. "It's a necessity in Cuba, not a mere excuse for
sociability."
All about us the birds were singing again, and the palms looked new
washed.
"It looks as if it had rained," I said in amazement.
"Probably has," said Bill lazily, "Often does afternoons."
What a country!
That night, I made my first little song. There was a thought
somewhere, back in my brain, a thought of moonlight and bars and a
far-off singing. But it was not clear yet. So, instead, I set to paper
the first eight lines that Cuba had made for me.
_Fantasie_
The palms are listening to Pan
Across the Terrace of the Night,
A Peacock-Moon, aloof and white,
Spreads wide a silver fan.
The gilded stars with laughter pass,
For I have caught an eerie sound,
The Peacock droops ... just now, I found
A silver feather in the grass!
And so the days passed in blur of color and scent: of sun and sleep.
Peter grew tanned, and so did I. It was life in a fairy tale, and
would have seemed quite perfect--if--. But I had grown to believe that
nothing was ever perfect. Perhaps it were wise so, else we should all
be loath even more to leave life. And the rift in the lute could not
wholly ruin the music.
We had been there a week, I imagine, before Mercedes Howell descended
upon us. She came apparelled marvellously, in a highly horse-powered
chariot, and brought with her, as was eminently proper, her parents.
Mrs. Howell, nee Dolores Maria Cortez, was that pathetic thing, a
woman who had once been very beautiful. It was not hard to trace that
beauty now, in the high, clean-cut nose, the great languid eyes, the
tiny, full, red mouth. But her beauty was clouded with flesh, and her
face a mask of powder. She sat on the verandah drinking "pina fria,"
with her tiny, arched feet on a footstool, and murmured polite
accented thanks for the care we had taken of her dear child. I glanced
at Bill, over a tray of cakes, but he was looking at Mercedes. So I
turned, with a quickened heartbeat, to Mr. Howell. I found him
charming, a tall, silent man, brown from the sun, and very lined. He
listened eagerly, I fancied, to my chatter of home and snow and the
quiet ebb and flow of life in a New England village. But Cuba had
marked him for her own. One saw that. And one saw, too, his restless
eyes moving from wife to daughter, questioning and troubled.
Mrs. Howell, before she left, asked us to some day attend the races
with her. I told her I was not well, not yet up to the excitement of
crowds.... But Bill, looking up quickly from his low-voiced
conversation with Mercedes, said,
"Perhaps I can persuade Mrs. Denton, dear lady. It is something she
surely should not miss."
Our glances met--crossed blades and stayed. Mine was hurt, I know. It
was cruel of him, in that insufferably self-assured tone, to brush
aside my wishes. When our guests had gone, I told him so.
"But," he said, at the doorway, "what you need more than anything, is
contact with people, and to be taken out of yourself. You have never
seen anything of the sort before, and you will not have the
opportunity again. And the Howells are very good people to tie up to.
They have lived here many years and have not wholly discarded the
picturesque viewpoints and customs of the country, while at the same
time, entering into the life of the American set."
"I didn't come here for society," I said, "and I don't want to be
bothered ... by anyone. Go alone to the races, if you will, but I
shall not."
He shrugged.
"Very well," he said.
Two days later, Bill drove the car into Havana, where he joined the
Howells in a luncheon party and went afterwards to the races with
them. I wondered if they would not think it very strange ... under the
circumstances. And then I reflected that an extra man, married or
bachelor, is welcome almost anywhere. And during my brief betrothal
Bill had declared himself "quite free."
I didn't care, of course, where he went or with whom. It was none of
my business. And it was the loneliness and the longing for things that
could never be mine, which oppressed me and made me spend my sleepless
afternoon siesta on a tear-damp pillow.
When Bill came home that night, I harkened politely to his account of
his outing, and then went early to my room. The poem which had made
itself mine during my first night in Cuba was clamoring to be written.
And so I wrote it, at my table under the window, conscious that no
words in so unskilled a hand could set down my feeling of imprisonment
and regret.
Finished, I laid it in the drawer where my diary and the letters from
Richard Warren were. It was a childish thing, but I had made it, and
it belonged to me ... and to one other.
_Nocturne_
The moonlight slips in silence through the bars,
The iron bars which lend a strange romance
To my wide windows, open to the stars,
Which, like gold fire-flies, imprisoned, dance
Caught in the dark mantilla of the Night;
That flowing veil of jewelled, enchanting lace
From careless, faery finger-tips flung light
To veil the tropic Moon's pale, ardent face.
My windows give on gardens dim, a-gleam
And freshly fragrant with night-growing things,
On gardens where the sleeping flowers dream
Till, cradled on the errant wind's cool wings
Their little souls are wafted to far lands,
While all their dreams like incense, float and rise
To where some garden goddess with white hands,
Gems with bright dew her nurslings' sleep-kissed eyes.
In shadowed groves, with brilliant moon, blood-stained,
A bird is sobbing for a distant star,
In golden longing for the Unattained....
While at some window, pleading, a guitar
Touched by brown fingers, throbs in serenade.
And still the moonbeams fling a silvern dart,
Straight through my window's iron barricade....
Thus Love steals, silent, to the prisoned heart,
And, smiling, with a mockery divine
Slips softly to some unguessed, secret shrine,
To set the Altar Fires flaming high!
* * * * *
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.