Mavis of Green Hill Part 32

"How did you guess it?" asked Bill, following his guest.

I laughed, a little hysterically, and bade Bill show Wright to his room. After which, with a sense of having scored, I waited for the men near the dining-table, luncheon having been announced.

"We're late today," I said, as we all sat down. "I postponed the sacred meal a little to allow you to arrive."

"It's only one-thirty," objected Wright, looking at his watch.

"I know, but one does things differently in Guayabal," I said, explaining our usual routine.

"Some life!" said the newly initiated. "Suits me. Let's stay on here forever. I imagine," he went on, turning to include us both in his remark, "that nothing could have been more perfect for the _lune de miel_."

Bill was silent, but I agreed hastily.

"And now tell us about Santiago," I said.

The recital occupied most of the conversational part of the meal pleasantly enough.

"See my pretty senoritas?" asked Bill, pa.s.sing the cigarettes.

"Cuban?" inquired Wright, taking one. "That's good--I've developed a pa.s.sion for them. No, not a senorita. All I saw were at least ninety and weighed a ton."

"I've got just the girl for you!" said Bill and I, simultaneously.

Wright laughed.

"The same one?" he asked, with interest.

"No, our tastes differ," I answered, "the one I have in mind is little and round and brown-haired. She's delightful."

"And mine," said Bill, "is just the right height, just the right shape, and as dark-haired and creamy-skinned as a Spanish princess.

She is half Spanish, too, which means--temperament."

"Very interesting," said Wright. "Bring 'em both on. But I like amber-colored hair and brown eyes myself. Did you corner the market on the combination, Bill?"

"Of course," answered Bill gravely, "there aren't two like Mavis. That mould was broken."

"Lucky for me," agreed Wright, sighing. "I want to stay a carefree bachelor. I'm susceptible enough, Lord knows,--and very guileless. But my appearance protects me, as well as a certain modesty, not to say timidity, of manner. I've not your looks, nor your way with the wimmin, you handsome bridegroom," he concluded affectionately, smiling at Bill.

"Do tell me," I asked, leaning back in my great, carved chair, quite conscious that it served as an effective background for my hair, "about Bill's past. I can't get a word out of him on the subject."

There was a spark of admiration in the glance Bill shot me--an involuntary tribute.

"Wait till we're alone," whispered Wright, mysteriously. "I could a tale unfold--! Enough to turn your hair grey. Broken hearts all over the place--he just stepped on 'em. Anonymous letters, begging for a lock of hair or an old glove! There have been times when your husband, Madame, has been forced to a.s.sume a disguise!"

"You colossal idiot," said Bill amiably.

"Don't listen to him, Mavis," urged Bill's best friend. "Listen to me instead!"

"I'm willing to be convinced," I answered. "And now that you're both on your second cigarette, shall we walk about the place a little?

Bill," I went on, turning to him, very sweetly, "would you mind running to my room and getting my big, lavender shade hat--? It's right on the bureau."

For a moment I thought that he would shake me. I knew he wanted to.

But, instead, he swung obediently away and took his revenge in a careless "All right, dear!" as he went off.

"Isn't he a peach!" mused Wright aloud, watching admiringly the broad-shouldered figure across the room.

"You've known him long?" I asked, in order to avoid answering.

"Roommates at Princeton," he replied. "Those were the good old days!

There never was a more popular man in college than old Bill! I basked in reflected glory all the time. He was always the King Pin among us, whether it was football, or writing skits, or drumming the piano."

"You must have a lot in common," I suggested, "especially your poetry--"

Wright's round, blue eyes grew rounder than ever.

"He's told you!" he gasped.

"Certainly," I said, smiling to cover the pain in my heart, "did you think he could keep it from me? Besides, I half-guessed it all the time."

"I told Bill that," said my guest, triumphantly, and then, as Bill emerged from my room, gingerly carrying the hat, as if it were a species of lavender lydite, "Well Richard Warren, I suppose by now your wife is your severest critic!"

The hat fluttered from Bill's grasp. I shrieked. But he caught it again deftly.

"Here you are," he said, handing it to me, and went on, "My kindest critic, you mean, but--my critic always."

"What do you think of the new book?" asked Wright of me, as stopping only to collect Peterkins, we went from the house, down the long avenue of palms. "I've only seen a bit, but I tell him it's better than the first--surer, more mature, bigger in every way."

"She hasn't seen it," answered Bill, hastily. "I don't want her to for a while yet."

"Oh," Wright nodded understandingly, "I see."

Just what he saw was beyond me, but I said, with a little sigh,

"I'm so impatient--"

"You couldn't be that," said my husband, "not even when it comes to my new book."

"Very pretty," observed Wright, regarding us both, impartially.

"Isn't she?"

This was too much. I turned the conversation in the direction of our coming dinner party and to a discussion of hibiscus-bloom. But all through that afternoon through the banter, the sparkling surface talk, of dinner that night, through the hours before I fell asleep, I was trying to adjust myself to the fact that it was, after all, Bill who had written _The Lyric Hour_; who had so beautifully said so many true and lovely things: who was a very high-hearted poet.

No matter how little of his real self he had shown me in his letters, regardless of the obvious misfit of his poems and his living personality, he had written those poems: they were his. And they must have sprung from some eternal and true fount of beauty in his nature, or else all books lied and all the poets who ever lived to gladden the world with their songs were tricksters and jesters, with a command of rythmical English and no more. I could not believe that. And so, I must believe that my husband had written truly and sung faithfully, from his heart. And that is what I could not understand, could not reconcile with him, himself. He had hurt me, had wounded my pride beyond endurance: I hated him, I wished myself free of his mere presence: but I was, in the last a.n.a.lysis, forced to admit his genius, and forced to acknowledge his power. Richard Warren had never existed, not the Richard Warren I had built up from a slender volume of verse and a drawer-full of letters. But William Denton did exist, very solidly, and for me, distastefully. And William Denton had written _The Lyric Hour_.

It may not be difficult, given certain conditions, to hate a poet, but it seemed too bad.