The morning the Howells' car came to take Mercedes and Wright to
Havana and the Mendez dance, Mrs. Howells came with it. She would not
wait for luncheon, but had a little talk with me while Mercedes, in a
flutter, was collecting her things. It was a very little talk, and
consisted mostly in shruggings of the maternal shoulders, lifting of
the placid, maternal brows, and half-finished phrases, unspoken
questions. And she left, indolently satisfied. The tin-pans had won
her. I foresaw a cloudless sky of courtship for Wright, as far as his
Mercedes' mother was concerned.
Mercedes, promising to "return" Wright on the morrow, was reluctant to
go.
"I've been so happy here," she whispered, as she kissed me good-by.
"You'll never know how happy. And I'm so grateful, Mavis!"
She kissed Bill, too, when her mother's back was turned, the merest
ghost of a caress, brushing his cheek, accompanied by a little giggle
of pure mischief. And he patted her slim shoulders with a tolerant
hand, as he bade her "run along and enjoy her party."
"My aunt!" said Wright to me, tragically, "couldn't you persuade the
old lady to sit in the front seat with that brigand in a general's
uniform who is driving the car?"
I waved them farewell with a sinking at my heart. It was as if Youth
and Gaiety were leaving me, hand in hand, with never a backward
glance.
I did not see Bill again until luncheon an hour later. It was one of
our old-time silent meals, although we talked in a desultory manner,
while the slippered servitors were in the room. Bill passed me salt
after the manner of an ancient monarch handing poison--with deadly
courtesy. I responded with pepper. And after Wing and Fong had left
us, at the end of the meal, I tried desperately to make small talk.
"I miss Mercedes so much," I said, "and Wright too."
No answer.
"It looks like a match," said I presently.
"It does," said Bill, gloomily.
I waited.
"Wright's crazy about her," proffered my husband, after a time,
leaning back in his chair.
"Did he tell you so?" I asked curiously.
"Kept me up one whole night, expatiating on her charms and his extreme
unworthiness," he replied.
I laughed.
"When I think of the things he said about her at first: 'female
leopardess,' and 'did you take him for a lion tamer?'" I said, "it
really is funny."
"A little antagonism at the outset," said Bill, blowing neat rings,
"is very good for the course of true love--sometimes."
I was silent.
"Of course," said Bill, positively growling, "it's a lottery anyway--"
He was so absurd, so little-boyish, so ill-tempered, that I wanted to
mother him. I had seen Peterkins just like that when things went
wrong.--After all, I thought, it must be trying to be even temporarily
bound to a woman you dislike so much.
"Speaking of lotteries," I said lightly, "you haven't heard the
results of the last drawing, have you?"
"No," he answered, "but Silas is counting the hours until the
afternoon when the papers come up--he bought half a dozen tickets from
that chap who rode up here the other day--"
He rose from his chair and called the garage on the phone. By a
miracle, Silas was there, and I heard Bill ask him the number of his
tickets. Then, jotting them down, he called Havana and some mysterious
person and asked for the winning numbers.
As he spoke in rapid Spanish, I was forced to wait until he turned
from the phone to say, "By George, Silas has made a killing!"
I jumped up and was at his elbow when he put the receiver down.
"Oh what is it?" I asked, fairly dancing with excitement.
"Not the big prize," he answered, "but $1500 for all of that--"
"Sarah will die of joy," I began.
"So it's true then," said Bill, interrupting.
"True as true," I answered, "and I think it's splendid."
"I thought there was something afoot," said Bill, "when Silas asked
for a job with me. I was glad to give him one. He can be useful to me
in a hundred ways. He's a corker--"
"They could build a little house at the back of the garden. Father
would be so pleased--" I said, eagerly. "Sarah wouldn't leave me, you
know--"
I stopped.
Bill, with his hat in his hands, turned.
"It will be difficult to arrange that," he said, "as you have made
other plans. And I shall leave Green Hill--so I am afraid," he
concluded evenly, "that a 'little house in the garden'--unless _you_
wish to keep Silas on--wouldn't be quite feasible."
He went out with that, and it was some time before I had pulled myself
together and gone in to tell Sarah the news. I saw her later, flying
in a most indecorous manner toward the garage, and knew that she and
Silas would presently be sitting on the step of the car building
air-castles in Green Hill with their new fortune. Well I knew that one
of them would be reared in the back of my little garden, just as I
thoughtless enough, had one. It wouldn't be fair to hurt Sarah now, I
told myself. I would wait till we were home. Sarah would be sorry--she
liked Bill--but Father would keep both Sarah and Silas on--the place
needed a permanent man-of-all-work....
But there were breakers ahead--bitter waters. I was to be spared
nothing--nothing--to the final humiliation.
There was a letter from Father when the mail came in. It isn't
necessary to set it down here. Suffice it to say that something I had
said in my last letter about his never-failing generosity to me, had
called forth a denial that "the bit of pin-money--to make you feel
independent, dear!" amounted to anything. And then a word about the
income Bill had settled on me: "I think you should know, Mavis," he
concluded, "although I am breaking word with Bill. He told me he
didn't want your small, unworldly head to be bothered with money
matters. But it is time that you learned to be practical--"
He mentioned the little allowance he had insisted on making me: it
would hardly have paid for my shoes. And eventually it was clear to me
that the money in the bank ... my clothes ... my lovingly purchased
gifts for my friends ... Sarah's wages ... my many extravagances since
coming to Cuba ... everything, everything had come from the one source
... Bill. And I, more ignorant than any child about the value of
money, had not even asked, except once. And then he had lied to me,
had told me it was my money, my Father's money, and all the time I had
been living on charity. How well he knew me, that he took the chance
that I would not ask Father for a definite statement of what allowance
he was making me!
I was overwhelmed with shame and dismay. It seemed as if this were the
proverbial last straw. "They make gold out of straws, don't they?" my
sick brain inquired childishly. It was hard to think coherently.
I went to the telephone and called the garage. Silas answered. I
managed, somehow, to congratulate him on the lottery drawing before I
asked him to find Dr. Denton, please, and ask him to come up to the
house, if he were not too busy. I wished to speak to him.
Ten full, wretched minutes I endured before he came.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked, bursting in precipitately.
Mutely, I gave him the letter.
He read it, and crumpled the sheets in his hand.
Instantly on the defensive,
"Well?" he said.
"Was there any reason to lie to me?" I counter-questioned, quietly.
"You must have known that, sooner or later, I would know ... if not
now, then when I saw Father again."
I think my eyes warned him that this was a time for very plain
speaking.
"I had hoped," he answered, after a little pause, "to persuade your
Father to bear me out in what I believed a harmless enough
conspiracy.--After all," he added, breaking my persistent silence, "it
would be difficult to explain to your Father that you refused to let
me support you."
"I am sorry," I said, rather more gently than I felt, "to have been
more of a burden on you than I knew. Had I known, had I for one
instant dreamed that I would be dependent on you, I would never have
consented to this arrangement. This may sound very foolish, I know,
and I see now how impossible it all would have been,--but this is how
I felt, and you, I think, knew."
He nodded, eyes on mine.
"Yes," said he.
"You have had a very pretty revenge," I told him, each word dropping
like a cold, little stone into the hush of the big room. "You must
have laughed, often, to yourself. No doubt it has been very amusing,
waiting for the bubble to break. If you will make me out a statement,
as nearly as you can, of just how much I am indebted to you, I will
try to repay you little by little."
I felt the absurdity of the situation, the utter arrogance and
futility of my words as I spoke them. But I had to speak.
"Please--" he flung out a protesting hand, "why do you fret yourself
with trifles? Are you not willing to make some further sacrifice for
your Father? When the time comes for us to separate, I had
hoped--after all, it would be only the usual thing to do--to make you
an allowance."
"Did you intend to consult me about it?" I asked, furiously.
He hesitated.
"Please answer," I said.
At my tone, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.
"I am waiting," I announced, with dangerous patience.
"Well--I admit the situation seemed difficult, but it was in the
future," he answered finally, "and I thought, perhaps--"
"Never mind. You would have gone out of my life with the amusing
knowledge that you had a hold on me, to a certain extent? It was well
planned," I said, growing colder and colder minute by minute, until in
the sunny warmth of the windows I shivered uncontrollably. "But you
must have thought me even more of an imbecile than I am. I owe you," I
ended, "a large sum of money. When we are separated, when Father gets
used to that fact, and when he realizes how well I am, how strong,
there will be some sort of work for me somewhere, I am sure, that will
both occupy my time, and enable me to repay you."
"Work?" said Bill, and then, under his breath, "My God!"
He was angry, I knew--hurt, I felt. And I was glad.
"I am not a--charity patient, Dr. Denton!" I said, and left the room.
The rest of that day is a blank to me now. If I had suffered before, I
suffered a thousand-fold now. I could not look at the miniature. I was
even angry with Father--dearest Father, who had done his "human best"
for me. I hated myself, I hated life, I wanted to die. To be laughed
at; to have had my little defiances and independences met with the
secret thought "the very clothes on her back were bought with my
money"; to have been fooled and fooled again, to his heart's content;
to have lived on the bounty of a man who despised me, hurt and wounded
me at every turn--it was unbearable.
When I was home again, when the tangle finally became unraveled, I
would go to Uncle John. I would ask him frankly what to do; tell him
the whole, bitter little story; ask him to find work for me--reading
proof, correcting manuscript, scrubbing floors--I didn't care. There
were business schools, I thought vaguely--and cursed the years of
invalidism which had kept from me so much knowledge of the world, so
unfitted me to cope with it, once I was on my material feet.
Father need never know. He would think it a whim, would be, I
imagined, even a little proud, would believe, even, that I sought to
distract myself after the wreck of my married life. Other women had
done the same thing.
I thought of the city as I had seen it: the crowds and the loneliness
and the bleakness of the streets: the hurrying, uncaring people--I had
read of girls in the city; the indignities of the boarding house; the
strain and the demand and the difficult way that lies before the
untrained wage-earner--
Mavis of Green Hill in a New York office! I laughed aloud at the
thought, and the sound of my own voice frightened me.
I couldn't cry. Somehow, I hadn't a tear left. I could only clench and
unclench my hands on the lap of the little mauve gown which William
Denton had bought for me--I wondered if Mrs. Goodrich knew. It had
been she who had attended to all my purchases before I left Green
Hill, who had gone into town with my measurements and returned with
two trunks full of everything I needed, and assured me that the "bill
was taken care of."
What a fool I had been!
I did not go out to tea. Sarah brought me something in my room. I told
her I had a headache. It was the truth. And through my closed door I
could hear Bill's voice asking for me. Mr. Crowell was there; he had
ridden over some time before. I sent my regrets and stayed in my room.
At dinner I hardly spoke. I was too conscious of the clothes I wore,
the food I ate. The one burdened me, the other choked me.
Bill, which was unusual, talked nervously all through the meal, about
everything and nothing. Even through the dull sense of impotence and
anger that possessed me, I could see that he was ill-at-ease, excited,
waiting for something--waiting, perhaps, for me to reopen the last
painful chapter. He could wait, I thought.
We had just been served with salad, when Fong came in, brushed Wing
aside, and bent over Bill, saying something very low.
A little gleam of some inner excitement came into the steel-blue eyes.
He flung down his napkin.
"Tell Juan to wait," he said, and rose.
"I beg your pardon," he said formally to me, "but I am afraid that you
must eat your dinner alone. Someone has come up from the village to
see me."
"Juan?" I asked. "Is Annunciata ill again?"
"No, no," he was clearly impatient and started from the room.
"Shall I have Norah save some dinner for you?" I asked, mechanically.
"Don't bother," he said, hesitated, and then, suddenly crossing the
room in four strides, he was beside me. I felt his hand on my hair and
stiffened under the unaccustomed touch. The hand dropped to his side.
"Don't think so badly of me, Mavis," he said, "even if you have been a
'charity patient'--do you know the Bible meaning of Charity?"
Before I could speak, he was gone. He had not changed for dinner, a
real innovation, and was in riding things. I heard the ring of the
little spurs he wore on the tiles, and the sound of a closing door.
"The Bible meaning of Charity?" But that was--that was--Love. What did
he mean--a love-patient?
I sat, my hands under my chin, while Wing came and went with the
untasted food. A love-patient?
Something terribly sweet and keen pierced my heart. It couldn't be.
Love wasn't like that--cruel and wounding and hurting. Love "suffereth
long and is kind." That was in the Bible too. "Love suffereth long and
is kind--seeketh not its own--beareth all things, believeth all
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth."
The big tears ran down my cheeks. "_Love never faileth._"
If it was true then--"Oh, God, let it be true!" I prayed, mutely. If
it were true then, how blind I had been! Sacrifice--patience--hope--.
Would he have done so much for someone he despised--even for revenge?
I began to remember--
There were voices outside--loud, excited, almost hysterical--Was Bill
there? I waited for him in my chair. I had not moved. He would find me
as he had left me. Perhaps he had come back to tell me what he had
meant. Charity--Love.
The door flew open and Sarah burst in. She was crying. I saw that at
once, and wanted to say to her,
"So you have heard? It isn't true, Sarah, it wasn't charity, after
all, it was love--"
But she came straight to me and caught desperately at my hands,
"Miss Mavis,--the cane--it's been set afire--Silas is down there, and
Dr. Denton--"
Then I awoke.
"Dr. Denton!" I had her by the shoulders, I was shaking her--"Not Dr.
Denton!"
"Yes, Miss Mavis. Juan crept up here to warn him. But those devils
fired the cane while he was in this very house. Fields of it in flame,
and Silas there--"
She was in a chair now, her apron twisted between her work-worn
fingers, the sobs taking her by the throat.
Funny that she could cry like that, I thought, watching her. I must
give her something to make her stop--if Bill were here--
_Bill! Bill!_
I must have screamed. Sarah, her arms around me, was herself in a
minute, had herself in hand.
"There, there," she said soothingly. "They'll be all right, I am sure.
You're to be calm, Miss Mavis, and not take on so."
Calm! With the Far Country just within reach--and the fire sweeping
across the cane-fields.
I put her away from me.
"Go to the kitchen, Sarah dear," I said very quietly, "and wait for
news. Have Wing and Fong gone too?"
She nodded.
"I'll wait here," I said. "I had better get out the Doctor's kit and
all the first-aid things. Someone may be burned--"
She sobbed at that, but turned and went to the kitchen.
I went into Bill's room.
For a minute I did nothing--only touched the things on his bureau--his
brush, his comb--
A little snap-shot of me stood there. Of me, in a wheel-chair--I had
forgotten that--
I opened a leather case which stood on the bureau, it had his initials
on it, and a small key lay beside it. Opened it and saw my letters to
Richard Warren. They were tossed together, as if he had been reading
them. He had told me that he never kept letters.
Somehow, I found the first-aid things and the little emergency case.
They were on the table by his bed. And then, taking them into the
living-room, I called out to Sarah to find some linen and tear it into
sheets--we had very little gauze in the house.
My hands on the first-aid kit, I sat down to think. It was too bad
Wright was not here. He would not lose his head. But Mercedes would. I
was glad she was in Havana. Suddenly I laughed to think of them,
dancing at the Mendez ball--
Sarah came in, her hands full of an old sheet.
"Any news?" I asked, steadily.
"It's going fast," she said dully. "You can see it--"
I went to the window. The whole sky was crimson. I saw the smoke
wreathing up through the flame, fancied that I heard shouts--strained
my eyes for the sight of a tall, lean figure. He would come soon, I
knew, and tell me that it had been a nightmare, that he was safe, that
he had been in no danger--
I looked around. Sarah had gone out, quietly. No one was there.
Softly I went across the room, opened the door, and slipped like a
ghost into the menacing night.
I walked at first. Then ran. The plants and trees caught at my dress.
They wanted to hold me back. I shook myself free and went on. Nearer
and nearer. How much smoke there was! The whole last crop gone.
Thousands of arrobas of sugar, gone in a breath! Good, loyal Juan, I
thought, as I went on, stumbling, falling once to my knees. My dress
was ruined. Bill will buy me another, I said aloud. Not Charity--Love.
Suddenly I was in the midst of it. The flame and the smoke, the
hurrying figures, black with soot and sweat, digging the trenches that
might save the cane.
"Bill!"
My own voice pierced through the smoke and crackle. I was going on. I
would not stop until I had found him.
Was that Bill, blackened, a figure in a dream, his shirt burned away
from one bare shoulder. There were red marks on his shoulder--
He didn't hear me? Didn't he want to? Was he angry? I was sorry I had
been so foolish, but I hadn't known that he cared. Why hadn't he told
me? Or had he tried to, and I wouldn't listen?
"Bill!"
A spark on my dress--a glare and a flame. I was part of the roaring
and the smoke and the crimson glare about me, beating at the little,
licking, red tongues with ineffectual hands.
Death then? But I wanted to live! It wasn't fair!
Bill!
His arms about me, his bare hands crushing out the flames, his
agonized voice in my ears--
"Mavis! My darling!--"
I was safe. I tried to put my arms around his neck, but they fell
weakly to my side. He took my hands in his and clasped them where they
belonged. I was lifted, borne swiftly through the night.
Crimson flame and smoke--a roaring--a voice pleading with me to raise
my head, to answer, only to speak--.
Darkness....