Mavis of Green Hill Part 29

We had covered the first half of the distance when I heard a car behind us, and turned hopefully to hail it. And when the long green body shot clearly into sight, I was suddenly faint with relief. Bill, coming back early from the club! Bill, at the wheel, his hat off, and the wind blowing his dark hair.

The car stopped.

"Mavis! It's too hot for you and Peter to be out. I didn't play--what's the matter?"

I lifted Peter in my arms.

"It's Peter, Bill," I said. "He's--ill."

In two minutes I was in the back seat with the half-delirious boy in my arms, and Bill was urging the car to her utmost speed, and we were suddenly home.

Between them, Bill and Sarah got Peter into bed. I was too frightened to be of any use. I kept thinking of the little Reynolds boy who had died of fever in that very house ... and of Peter's mother. But I didn't dare think of her long, because I could see her eyes so plainly as they looked when she said,

"You'll take good care of Peter for me, won't you, Mavis?"

Good care of Peter! For a week I had hardly thought of him. I kissed him mornings and nights, gave him his lessons, listened to his chatter, not really heeding. And I had been away so much, drunken with my new freedom, my strength, blooming like a plant in the climate that tried so many other people sorely: utterly wrapped up in my own sensations and impressions.

I went softly into the room Peter shared with Sarah. It was a different boy tossing on the bed, with that curious flush, the groping hands, talking incessantly, incoherently.

Bill, bending over him, looked up as I came in. His face was strange to me too. No, not quite. I had seen that intense, almost grim, look on that face once before--as I came out of a dark hour of agony and looked, for the first time, into two steel-blue eyes.

"Oh, what is it?" I asked very low. "Is he dangerously ill?"

"A touch of sun," he answered. "Yes, he's pretty sick."

There was nothing I could do. All that night I went in and out of the room, glad if they would let me bring them little things: water, a gla.s.s, a spoon.

It made matters worse to find Nora praying loudly in the kitchen, and Silas, his lean face all broken up into soft lines of anxiety and sorrow, watching up with her.

The news spread, in some indeterminable fashion. During the night, a number of the men on the plantation came to the door to ask for news.

Peter had endeared himself to half Guayabal--

About three o'clock in the morning, worn out, I went into the bathroom for something for Bill. As I did not reappear with it he came to look for me presently, and found me, huddled against the wall, my hands at my throat, an abject picture of cowardice and fright.

I was not alone in the room. A few yards away from me, on the tiled floor, a spider was sprawling, regarding me with almost human, terribly malicious eyes. The creature was as large as a tea-cup, black, horribly spotted with red, it's many legs twitching with vicious life.

"Are you ill?" Bill asked as I pointed with a shaking hand to the spider, which at the sound of another step had taken itself quickly to another corner of the room.

My husband put his arm about me, and conducted me safely to my own room,

"You poor child!" was all he said, and closed the door into the bathroom. A few minutes later I heard him occupied in there, with what seemed, or sounded, like a golf-club. There was a scuffle. Once I heard Bill curse, and then finally silence.

Presently, my door opened and Bill came in.

"I've disposed of your visitor," he said, quite cheerfully. "Nasty mess. And Peter is better. He'll be all right, I'm sure, only we shall have to be very careful of him after this. And now, I want you to go to bed or I shall have another patient on my hands."

I went to bed; but not until the rain came, about five, and Peter's room became quiet, did I fall into a troubled sleep.

It was past noon before I woke. Sarah looking very tired came in with some coffee and the a.s.surance that Peter was out of all danger and was sleeping quietly with the fever broken.

"Oh, Sarah," I said, "you haven't had any sleep."

"Dr. Denton sent me to bed at five," she answered, "but he never took his own clothes off until about eight. I slept in the guest room, the other side of Peter's, and when I woke, about seven, again, I got some coffee for him from Norah. And he left me with Peter then, and went into his own room."

"Is he asleep now?" I asked getting out of bed.

"No, for I heard the water running in his bath, half an hour ago."

While I was dressing I heard Bill in Peter's room. Heard too, with what grat.i.tude, Peter's own normal voice, weak but sane again.

I slipped on a frock hastily and went in to them. Of the two, I thought that Bill looked the worst, very white and drawn.

After luncheon when Wing had disappeared in the pantry, Bill told me that Peter had had a very close call.

"I don't like to blame anyone, of course," he said, with knitted brows, "but if Sarah didn't have sense enough--well, Silas has lived in Cuba long enough to have known that the heat yesterday was sufficient to knock out a strong man, much less a little boy, if he became over-tired."

"I'm afraid it was my fault," I answered, slowly, "Peter was riding all morning and romping all afternoon. And then I took him for a walk--"

"Did you know then that he had been playing hard all day?" Bill asked me.

"Why, yes," I said honestly, "but I was thinking about something else, and--"

Bill's hand went out in an impatient gesture.

"Didn't _you_ feel the heat?" he asked.

"I suppose so," I answered, "but I had been in the house all day--"

"And Peter hadn't!" he finished for me, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought.

I was silent.

"It's incredible," said my husband, with extreme irritation, "that you shouldn't have noticed."

"But--" I began, and stopped. It was true. I hadn't noticed; and it was equally true that the fact was incredible.

Conscious of my guilt, I was still able to be resentful of my husband's tone.

"Do you think for a minute--" I began indignantly, with no clear idea of how I was going to finish: so perhaps it was just as well that I was interrupted.

"I don't think anything at all," he said, "but I _know_ that I shouldn't have gone away. Had I known the day was going to turn out such a scorcher, I would have stayed."

His tone implied that what he should have known was that I was not fit to be trusted alone. I didn't like the implication, and I said so.

After which, at the end of ten minutes, I had positively flounced from the room, after the manner of our grandmothers, and left him sitting there.

I didn't see him again until dinner. It was not a particularly joyful meal.

During the rather silent progress of dinner, I had the grace to be rather ashamed of some of the things I had said. In the cooler light of reason, I looked on a number of the statements I had made and found them unconvincing.