Mavis of Green Hill Part 39

"Well, then, as you're among friends, Billy, I repeat, what about yourself?"

"I have my profession," Bill answered quietly. "I am a doctor--and I love it. It is, perhaps, my vocation--to heal and to mend, and to help. And equally, perhaps, poetry is my avocation."

"Dictionary definition of avocation is 'diversion,'" said Wright, triumphantly.

"And the definition of diversion is 'recreation'!" I put in.

"Exactly," said Bill, "re-creation. To create anew--to refresh. That is, perhaps, the mission of poetry, and applies to the poet as well as to his audience. Poetry is, for me, the language of dreams: the ceaseless search for beauty: something common to all men. For the peasant dreams as well as the inventor: the man of science, as well as the financier and the college professor who thinks of education as something bigger than is contained between the covers of a text-book.

And from the soil, the shop, the laboratory, the office and the school-room great songs have been sung,--not all of them in words!"

"The financier dreams?" said Wright, incredulously. "Not much!"

"If he didn't, he wouldn't be where he is," answered Bill. "If the engineer didn't dream, the bridges would not be swung over the boiling rivers of strange countries, or the railroad tracks laid through the virgin jungle and the ageless desert--"

I had a curious sensation, listening to that even, low voice. It was as if, for the first time, I had heard Richard Warren speak.

"I guess you're right," said the other man, after a moment of silence.

"Of course I am," answered Bill. "And so, the poets dream dreams too, and try to interpret other men's dreams: those which are built in brick and stone: materialized into steel: founded in a huge office building. The grim reality of war stands for dreams sometimes. Many inarticulate poets have gone singing to the bayonet thrust. Once, a handful of people dreamed of Liberty; and the United States was their expression of that dream."

Someone drew a deep breath. It was I, perhaps.

Bill looked over at me, shaking the ash from his cigarette. And for a moment I forgot the feud between us: forgot that we were very soon to go our separate ways: forgot a number of things that I had known and I remembered only the songs that Richard Warren had sung for the world.

"It was a dream, too," said Mercedes, "which made Cuba free!"

We were grave, as, together, we four had never been through the sunny, idle days. I had the oddest feeling that between us all lay something unspoken, unnamed, intangible, as if, too, for the moment, we were closely knit together, completely _en rapport_.

"Well," said Wright easily, swinging the conversation back to its starting place, "It's all very well to talk. And perhaps you are more serious than I, Bill. Mind, I don't altogether admit it--but you tune your lyre to a deeper key than I do mine. I can't claim to be a poet: a versifier, yes...."

"You do yourself an injustice," I said warmly, for Wright's somewhat exotic pen-name had long since come into my knowledge and I had seen some of his magazine verse.

"You've a gift," said my husband, "not lightly to be disregarded. But you're too versatile--you paint better than you write, and there's a lot in the old parable of the talents. And, by George, you've no honest right to your talent if, in some way, you do not use it for the good of your fellow-men."

"That's what I tell him," broke in Mercedes, in a little earnest note, and blushed a rosy red.

The links were almost deserted, and the tea-hour long past. Realizing that it would be late before we reached home, I rose, reluctantly. For there had been a spirit around the table which could not easily be recaptured--and I regretted its pa.s.sing.

"The tourists have practically all left," said Mercedes, on the way to the car. "Very few are here still. And the residents have already begun to go North."

"You'll practise again this year?" asked Wright of Bill, as the car drove off, and I heard my husband answer,

"That depends very much on Mavis."

"Is he to poetize or administer pills?" asked Wright, turning to me.

"Both, I hope," I answered casually. "Good doctors may not be as rare as good poets, but the combination is remarkable."

"I should think," said Mercedes, with candour, "that you would be awfully jealous...."

"Grateful lady patients?" asked Wright.

She nodded.

"I've not had the opportunity yet," I answered. "Since I've known him Bill hasn't had many patients except me--"

"Quite a serious case," remarked Wright solemnly, "one that demands incessant medical attention."

Bill laughed.

"If Mavis can stand for irregular hours and cold meals," he said, "I'll start in again when our vacation is over."

"You needn't rub it into me that I don't have to work for a living,"

said Wright. "Look at you, taking a year off, careless-like. 'Tisn't decent--for a doctor. I can't help it that my late lamented uncle made tin-pans successfully--and that I was his only living relative. He didn't approve of me at all," he concluded modestly, "and he thought my verses immoral, but he couldn't leave it all to charity, you know--"

"I've never lacked having more money than I needed," said Bill, as we drove through the hot, quiet night, "but I've been glad of it. If it didn't provide me with an added incentive to work, it at least allowed me to do a good deal that I otherwise could not have done."

"The Denton Free Clinic, for instance," said Wright. But Bill did not answer.

For just a second I was hurt that he hadn't told me. And then I remembered how little I knew about the man who was my husband.

Mercedes, in the front seat with Bill, asked him a question. Under the cover of their voices Wright said to me,

"I shouldn't chaff Bill like that. I don't suppose that there is another medico of his age in New York who has done so much charity-doctoring. There are districts where the people have absolutely canonized him."

"He never tells me about that side of it," I said.

"I don't suppose he would," answered Wright. "You get to know these things by chance. But he had a streak in him--even at Princeton--that made him different from the rest of us. And men who were with him at Johns Hopkins could tell you tales--"

"Bridge tonight?" said Mercedes.

I jumped. My thoughts had been very far away, filling in gaps.

"You'll have to play with me," said Wright. "I understand all your signals, Mercedes!"

"But you don't profit by them," she answered, as we came within sight of the house.

I played a wretched game that evening. I couldn't keep my mind on the cards. It was off--back at the Country Club again, listening to a poet talk of poets: it was wondering a little about the "Denton Free Clinic": and, in consequence, I revoked twice, to the extreme amus.e.m.e.nt of our opponents.

"Haven't come to the point where you swear at your wife at the bridge-table, have you Bill?" asked Wright, as he carefully took the penalty.

"No," replied my husband, "that's a form of indoor sport I could never quite understand. It doesn't seem fair--for she couldn't swear back."

"Oh, couldn't I?" said I with ardour.

"I shan't give you the opportunity," he answered. "And now, if you please, one no trump."

The game broke up rather early. I was tired and wanted to go to bed.

Wright and Mercedes, with the excuse that they were keenly interested in astronomy, walked out on the verandah. I told them good-night.