The lazy, sun-steeped days seemed interminable. I had, luckily, a number of things to arrange—another trunk to buy and some sewing to accomplish, with Annunciata's help. And Bill's obvious preoccupation could easily have been laid to the growing unrest in Guayabal. Mr. Crowell, an anxious, nervous, but charming person, had been more than once at "The Palms" to discuss the situation. If it had not been for my husband's sense of responsibility towards the Reynolds, I think that we should have packed up and left Cuba in short order. But he was anxious to stay on for a time longer and see Silas, and what men were loyal to their American employer, through what he hoped would prove a passing phase of revolt—or so he said.
As for me, I went through the days, weighted under a burden of uncertainty and a sorrow without name. Father's miniature, lying open on my night-table, seemed to reproach me: seemed, too, at times, to reproach himself, which was even harder to bear. "I have done my human best for you," the gentle-strong mouth seemed to say. "I have never wanted anything but your happiness, my little Mavis." And the kind, humorous eyes added, "Is it my fault that I must hear you sobbing through these long, unhappy nights?"
No, not his fault. Whose, then? I dared not ask the picture in the little leather case, for I was afraid it might answer.
"It is his fault, Father," I would defend myself mutely. "We might have been content, even happy, in a friendly way, if it had not been for him."
"It was not for Friendship alone that I gave you to him, Daughter," the answer would come, "but for something dearer, bigger, deeper. You were so young and so alien from the world. I had thought that the man to whom we both owe everything would be the one to help you through all that first difficult time: to teach you, finally, Life's loveliest lesson. And I had hoped, prayed even, that you would one day come to be to him what your Mother was to me.... There was not much time," the beloved voice went on, very sadly, "for me to make a decision. It was hard to feel I might have to leave you ... alone ... unsheltered.... How hard, you will never know ... unless some day you are called upon to leave a child of your own...."
"Father!" I begged—"Please—"
"If the mistake was mine," said the voice which still seemed to come from that unsmiling miniature, "I can only ask your forgiveness, Mavis. Even your Father, who loves you beyond all earthly things, was wrong to try and shape your destiny."
"No—no—" I sobbed.
I laid the minature on the table again. The voice in my heart had ceased to speak: There were only the pictured eyes, looking into mine from a little leather case. But for a long time, Father had talked to me so. I read between the lines of his letters and prayed that he should not read between the lying phrases of mine. Was it all lies? "I am happy," I told him again and again: and he, who knew me so well, was convinced, perhaps because, in a certain, curious sense, that much was true.
Underneath bewilderment, misunderstanding, the pinpricks of pride, and the smart of old resentments, I had been happy. It was as if I walked on a strange, new road, toward some unknown goal, some unguessed shelter. There were turnings in the path: dark places: uneven stretches: but always a bird sang, sweetly, in the distance,—the sun cleared the clouds and Adventure waited for me just around the corner. But lately, the ground had fallen away from under my very feet, and left me standing at the edge of an abyss, looking across a chasm of despair, to the far country I would never reach....