Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/152

 Santa Anna wharf he carried their luggage up to a taxi cab in the Calle San Pedro and received their last instructions.

“Larry,” said Sheila, who had suddenly remembered James' capacity for possibilities, “you'd better row alongside the Dulcinea and give them an address here in case Mr. Corder should send any cable or message—there's never any knowing what he might do. Tell them the Hotel Mercedes.”

“I'll tell them, miss,” said Larry, and the taxi started.

Havana dies every day about half past eleven and revives about five—at least upper-class Havana; the negroes, the Chinese, and the lower-class natives don't seem to mind the heat. It was beginning to revive now, and Sheila, as they drove, was filled with wonder at the size of the place.

Even in the 'eighties Havana was a fine city. Now, modernized, Americanized and festooned at night with electrics blazing against the stars, Havana is a city to be seen.

You can smell it also.

Out of the Calle San Pedro by way of the great tobacco factory fronting the sea and passing the cathedral, the cab drove into the courtyard of a palatial hotel. A man in white with a blue band on his cap and the word “Mercedes” on it was opening thé door and inviting them to descend; behind him the white-marble steps led to the hotel entrance, which showed vaguely sketched against the cool interior the fronds of palms in pots and tree ferns in tubs.

It was like one of the hotels you see sometimes on the stage in those spectacular productions so dear to the heart of Mr. Cochran and the London public. It didn't seem quite real, the ladies of the chorus seemed just to have vacated those steps down which at any moment Mr. Berry might come to the delight of a full house.

Sheila got out, Dicky paid the driver in English money and a second hall porter, a pure-black negro, took their luggage.

Now this luggage, a suit case of Dicky's, and a big attaché case, very much battered, belonging to Sheila, was quite in keeping with the Baltrum and their expedition, up to this; but it was not in keeping with the Mercedes and it came to Sheila as she followed the luggage up the steps that their “wardrobes,” to use a good old term, were not in keeping either. She was wearing a white drill coat and skirt, bought at Teneriffe, and a Panama that had cost twelve pesetas; Dicky was to match as far as material and color went, but “ready made” was written on his garments as on Sheila's.

No, they did not match their surroundings; but the hotel did not mind; a languid woman with marcelled hair, in a plate-glass office with an electric fan above her and a great block of ice near by diffusing its coolness as a flower its scent, received them without the lift of an eyebrow, presented them with the hotel register to sign, allocated their rooms and handed them over to a chocolate-colored boy who led them to the lift.

“I say,” said Dicky, as they sat half an hour later in the lounge having tea, “what's your room like?”

“Gorgeous.”

“Mine's got a marble bathroom off it and what the bill will be, Heaven only knows. Well, there's no use bothering, let's enjoy ourselves while we can.”

He helped himself to cakes, and Sheila, as she sipped her tea, looked about her. This sudden change from Crab Cay and the cabin of the Baltrum to supercivilization was the strangest experience of her life; it was the off season in Havana, but the Mercedes is never empty. People from Matanzas and Santiago, cigar and sugar plutocrats, American business men and South Americans from Brazil and the River Plate came here in summer as in winter, bringing their wives and children with them. There were three or four family groups in the lounge; women elegantly dressed and covered with jewels, men manicured and barbered; the sons of Mary served by the sons of Martha in the form of negro attendants bearing aloft trays of colored drinks, coffee, cigars, and cigarettes; while from the dance room beyond the inevitable band made itself heard, a gadfly voice floating above the palms and flowers, the cigarette smoke and the atmosphere of ease and wealth.

It was strange.

Sheila felt lost. Crab Cay and Turtle Island seemed homely and warm to the heart compared with this. These men and women belonged to another creation and these surroundings to another world of which she knew next to nothing. It was as though the gold were showing a new phase of itself, something quite new, something that repelled her. For the faces of these men and women, their forms and attitudes, their