Kate had been in Sayula ten days before she had any sign
from Don Ramón. She had been out in a boat on the lake,
and had seen his house, round the bend of the western
point. It was a reddish-and-yellow two-storey house with a
little stone basin for the boats, and a mango grove between
it and the lake. Among the trees, away from the lake, were
the black adobe huts, two rows, of the peons.
The hacienda had once been a large one. But it had been
irrigated from the hills, and the revolutions had broken all
the aqueducts. Only a small supply of water was available.
Then Don Ramón had had enemies in the Government. So
that a good deal of his land was taken away to be divided
among the peons. Now, he had only some three hundred
acres. The two hundred acres along the lake shore were
mostly lost to him. He worked a few acres of fruit land
round the house, and in a tiny valley just in the hills, he
raised sugar cane. On the patches of the mountain slope,
little patches of maize were to be seen.
But Doña Carlota had money. She was from Torreon,
and drew still a good income from the mines.
A mozo came with a note from Don Ramón: might he
bring his wife to call on Kate.
Doña Carlota was a thin, gentle, wide-eyed woman, with
a slightly startled expression, and soft, brownish hair. She
was pure European in extraction, of a Spanish father and
French mother: very different from the usual stout, overpowdered,
ox-like Mexican matron. Her face was pale,
faded, and without any make-up at all. Her thin, eager
figure had something English about it, but her strange,
wide brown eyes were not English. She spoke only Spanish—or
French. But her Spanish was so slow and distinct and
slightly plaintive, that Kate understood her at once.
The two women understood one another quickly, but were
a little nervous of one another. Doña Carlota was delicate
and sensitive like a Chihuahua dog, and with the same
slightly prominent eyes. Kate felt she had rarely met a
woman with such a doglike finesse of gentleness. And the
two women talked. Ramón, large and muted, kept himself
in reserve. It was as if the two women rushed together to
unite against his silence and his powerful, different significance.
Kate knew at once that Doña Carlota loved him, but with
a love that was now nearly all will. She had worshipped
him, and she had had to leave off worshipping him. She had
had to question him. And she would never now cease from
questioning.
So he sat apart, a little constrained, his handsome head
hanging a little, and his dark, sensitive hands dangling
between his thighs.
“I had such a wonderful time!” Kate said suddenly to
him. “I danced a dance round the drum with the Men of
Quetzalcoatl.”
“I heard,” he said, with a rather stiff smile.
Doña Carlota understood English, though she would not
speak it.
“You danced with the men of Quetzalcoatl!” she said
in Spanish, in a pained voice. “But, Señora, why did you
do such a thing? Oh why?”
“I was fascinated,” said Kate.
“No, you must not be fascinated. No! No! It is not
good. I tell you, I am so sorry my husband interests himself
in this thing. I am so sorry.”
Juana was bringing a bottle of vermouth: all that Kate
had to offer her visitors, in the morning.
“You went to see your boys in the United States?”
said Kate to Doña Carlota. “How were they?”
“Oh, better, thank you. They are well; that is, the
younger is very delicate.”
“You didn’t bring him home?”
“No! No! I think they are better at school. Here—here—there
are so many things to trouble them. No! But
they will come home next month, for the vacation.”
“How nice!” said Kate. “Then I shall see them. They
will be here, won’t they?—on the lake?”
“Well!—I am not sure. Perhaps for a little while. You
see I am so busy in Mexico with my Cuna.”
“What is a Cuna?” said Kate; she only knew it was the
Spanish for cradle.
It turned out to be a foundlings’ home, run by a few
obscure Carmelite sisters. And Doña Carlota was the
director. Kate gathered that Don Ramón’s wife was an
intense, almost exalted Catholic. She exalted herself in the
Church, and in her work for the Cuna.
“There are so many children born in Mexico,” said Doña
Carlota, “and so many die. If only we could save them,
and equip them for life. We do a little, all we can.”
It seemed, the waste, unwanted babies could be delivered
in at the door of the Cuna, like parcels. The mother had
only to knock, and hand in the little living bundle.
“It saves so many mothers from neglecting their babies,
and letting them die,” said Doña Carlota. “Then we do
what we can. If the mother doesn’t leave a name, I name
the child. Very often I do. The mothers just hand over
a little naked thing, sometimes without a name or a rag to
cover it. And we never ask.”
The children were not all kept in the Home. Only a small
number. Of the others, some decent Indian woman was
paid a small sum to take the child into her home. Every
month she must come with the little one to the Cuna, to
receive her wage. The Indians are so very rarely unkind to
children. Careless, yes. But rarely, rarely unkind.
In former days, Doña Carlota said, nearly every well-born
lady in Mexico would receive one or more of these foundlings
into her home, and have it brought up with the family. It
was the loose, patriarchal generosity innate in the bosoms of
the Spanish-Mexicans. But now, few children were adopted.
Instead, they were taught as far as possible to be carpenters
or gardeners or house-servants, or, among the girls, dressmakers,
even school-teachers.
Kate listened with uneasy interest. She felt there was so
much real human feeling in this Mexican charity: she was
almost rebuked. Perhaps what Doña Carlota was doing was
the best that could be done, in this half-wild, helpless
country. At the same time, it was such a forlorn hope, it
made one’s heart sink.
And Doña Carlota, confident as she was in her good works,
still had just a bit the look of a victim; a gentle, sensitive,
slightly startled victim. As if some secret enemy drained
her blood.
Don Ramón sat there impassive, listening without heeding;
solid and unmoving against the charitable quiver of his
wife’s emotion. He let her do as she would. But against
her work and against her flow he was in silent, heavy, unchanging
opposition. She knew this, and trembled in her
nervous eagerness, as she talked to Kate about the Cuna,
and won Kate’s sympathy. Till it seemed to her that there
was something cruel in Don Ramón’s passive, masked poise.
An impassive male cruelty, changeless as a stone idol.
“Now won’t you come and spend the day with me while
I am here with Don Ramón?” said Doña Carlota. “The
house is very poor and rough. It is no longer what it used
to be. But it is your house if you will come.”
Kate accepted, and said she would prefer to walk out. It
was only four miles, and surely she would be safe, with
Juana.
“I will send a man to come with you,” said Don Ramón.
“It might not be quite safe.”
“Where is General Viedma?” asked Kate.
“We shall try to get him out when you come,” replied
Doña Carlota. “I am so very fond of Don Cipriano, I have
known him for many years, and he is the god-father of my
younger son. But now he is in command of the Guadalajara
division, he is not very often able to come out.”
“I wonder why he is a general?” said Kate. “He seems
to me too human.”
“Oh, but he is very human too. But he is a general;
yes, yes, he wants to be in command of the soldiers. And
I tell you, he is very strong. He has great power with his
regiments. They believe in him, oh, they believe in him.
He has that power, you know, that some of the higher
types of Indians have, to make many others want to follow
them and fight for them. You know? Don Cipriano is like
that. You can never change him. But I think a woman
might be wonderful for him. He has lived so without
any woman in his life. He won’t care about them.”
“What does he care about?” asked Kate.
“Ah!” Doña Carlota started as if stung. Then she
glanced quickly, involuntarily at her husband, as she added:
“I don’t know. Really, I don’t know.”
“The Men of Quetzalcoatl,” said Don Ramón heavily,
with a little smile.
But Doña Carlota seemed to be able to take all the ease
and the banter out of him. He seemed stiff and a bit stupid.
“Ah, there! There! There you have it! The Men of
Quetzalcoatl—that is a nice thing for him to care about!
A nice thing, I say,” fluttered Doña Carlota, in her gentle,
fragile, scolding way. And it was evident to Kate that she
adored both the men, and trembled in opposition to their
wrongness, and would never give in to them.
To Ramón it was a terrible burden, his wife’s quivering,
absolute, blind opposition, taken in conjunction with her
helpless adoration.
A man-servant appeared at nine o’clock one morning, to
accompany Kate to the hacienda, which was called Jamiltepec.
He had a basket, and had been shopping in the
market. An elderly man, with grey in his moustache, he had
bright young eyes and seemed full of energy. His bare feet
in the huaraches were almost black with exposure, but his
clothes were brilliantly white.
Kate was glad to be walking. The one depressing thing
about life in the villages was that one could not walk out
into the country. There was always the liability to be held
up or attacked. And she had walked already, as far as
possible, in every direction, in the neighbourhood of the
village, accompanied usually by Ezequiel. Now she was
beginning to feel a prisoner.
She was glad, then, to be setting off. The morning was
clear and hot, the pale brown lake quite still, like a phantom.
People were moving on the beach, in the distance tiny, like
dots of white: white dots of men following the faint dust
of donkeys. She wondered often why humanity was like
specks in the Mexican landscape; just specks of life.
They passed from the lake shore to the rough, dusty road
going west, between the steep slope of the hills and the bit
of flat by the lake. For almost a mile there were villas,
most of them shut up fast, some of them smashed, with
broken walls and smashed windows. Only flowers bloomed
in masses above the rubble.
In the empty places were flimsy straw huts of the natives,
haphazard, as if blown there. By the road under the hill,
were black-grey adobe huts, like boxes, and fowls running
about, and brown pigs or grey pigs spotted with black
careered and grunted, and half naked children, dark orange-brown,
trotted or lay flat on their faces in the road, their
little naked posteriors hunched up, fast asleep. Already
asleep again.
The houses were many of them being re-thatched, or the
tiled roofs were being patched by men who assumed a
great air of importance at having undertaken such a task.
They were pretending to hurry, too, because the real rains
might begin any day. And in the little stony levels by the
lake, the land was being scratch-ploughed by a pair of oxen
and a lump of pointed wood.
But this part of the road Kate knew. She knew the fine
villa on the knoll, with its tufts of palms, and the laid-out
avenues that were laid out, indeed, as the dead are, to
crumble back again. She was glad to be past the villas,
where the road came down to the lake again, under big
shady trees that had twisted, wriggly beans. On the left
was the water, the colour of turtle doves, lapping the pale
fawn stones. At a water-hole of a stream in the beach, a
cluster of women were busily washing clothes. In the
shallows of the lake itself two women sat bathing, their
black hair hanging dense and wet. A little further along, a
man was wading slowly, stopping to throw his round net
skilfully upon the water, then slowly stooping and gathering
it in, picking out the tiny, glittery fish called charales.
Strangely silent and remote everything, in the gleaming
morning, as if it were some distant period of time.
A little breeze was coming from the lake, but the deep
dust underfoot was hot. On the right the hill rose precipitous,
baked and yellowish, giving back the sun and the
intense dryness, and exhaling the faint, dessicated, peculiar
smell of Mexico, that smells as if the earth had sweated itself
dry.
All the time strings of donkeys trotted laden through the
dust, their drivers stalking erect and rapid behind, watching
with eyes like black holes, but always answering Kate’s
salute with a respectful Adios! And Juana echoed her
laconic Adiosn! She was limping, and she thought it horrible
of Kate to walk four miles, when they might have struggled
out in an old hired motor-car, or gone in a boat, or even
ridden donkey-back.
But to go on foot! Kate could hear all her criada’s
feelings in the drawled, sardonic Adiosn! But the man
behind strode bravely and called cheerfully. His pistol was
prominent in his belt.
A bluff of yellow rock came jutting at the road. The road
wound round it, and into a piece of flat open country. There
were fields of dry stone, and hedges of dusty thorn and
cactus. To the left the bright green of the willows by the
lake-shore. To the right the hills swerved inland, to meet
the sheer, fluted sides of dry mountains. Away ahead, the
hills curved back at the shore, and a queer little crack or
niche showed. This crack in the hills led from Don Ramón’s
shore-property to the little valley where he grew the sugar
cane. And where the hills approached the lake again, there
was a dark clustering of mango trees, and the red upper-storey
of the hacienda house.
“There it is!” cried the man behind. “Jamiltepec,
Señorita. La hacienda de Don Ramón!”
And his eyes shone as he said the name. He was a proud
peon, and he really seemed happy.
“Look! How far!” cried Juana.
“Another time,” said Kate, “I shall come alone, or with
Ezequiel.”
“No, Niña! Don’t say so. Only my foot hurts this
morning.”
“Yes. Better not to bring you.”
“No, Niña! I like to come, very much!”
The tall windmill fan for drawing up water from the lake
was spinning gaily. A little valley came down from the
niche in the hills, and at the bottom a little water running.
Towards the lake, where this valley flattened out, was a
grove of banana plants, screened a little from the lake
breeze by a vivid row of willow-trees. And on the top of the
slope, where the road ran into the shade of mango trees, were
the two rows of adobe huts, like a village, set a little back
from the road.
Women were coming up between the trees, on the patch
from the lake, with jars of water on their shoulders; children
were playing around the doors, squatting with little naked
posteriors in deep dust; and here and there a goat was
tethered. Men in soiled white clothes were lounging, with
folded arms and one leg crossed in front of the other, against
the corner of a house, or crouching under the walls. Not
by any means dolce far niente. They seemed to be waiting,
eternally waiting for something.
“That way, Señorita!” called the man with the basket,
running to her side and indicating the smoother road sloping
down between some big trees, towards the white gate of the
hacienda. “We are here!”
Always he spoke with pleased delight, as if the place were
a wonder-place to him.
The big doors of the zaguan, the entrance, stood open,
and in the shade of the entrance-way a couple of little
soldiers were seated. Across the cleared, straw-littered
space in front of the gates two peons were trotting, each
with a big bunch of bananas on his head. The soldiers said
something, and the two peons halted in their trotting, and
slowly turned under their yellow-green load, to look back at
Kate and Juana and the man Martin, approaching down the
road. Then they turned again and trotted into the courtyard,
barefoot.
The soldiers stood up. Martin, trotting at Kate’s side
again, ushered her into the arched entrance, where the
ox-wagons rumbling through had worn deep ruts. Juana
came behind, making a humble nose.
Kate found herself in a big, barren yard, that seemed
empty. There were high walls on the three sides, with sheds
and stables. The fourth side, facing, was the house, with
heavily-barred windows looking on to the courtyard, but
with no door. Instead, there was another zaguan, or passage
with closed doors, piercing the house.
Martin trotted ahead to knock on the closed doors. Kate
stood looking round at the big yard. In a shed in one
corner, four half-naked men were packing bunches of bananas.
A man in the shade was sawing poles, and two men
in the sun were unloading tiles from a donkey. In a corner
was a bullock wagon, and a pair of big black-and-white oxen
standing with heads pressed down, waiting.
The big doors opened, and Kate entered the second
zaguan. It was a wide entrance way, with stairs going up
on one side, and Kate lingered to look through the open iron
gates in front of her, down a formal garden hemmed in with
huge mango trees, to the lake, with its little artificial harbour
where two boats were moored. The lake seemed to give
off a great light, between the dark walls of mango.
At the back of the newcomers the servant woman closed
the big doors on to the yard, then waved Kate to the stairs.
“Pass this way, Señorita.”
A bell tinkled above. Kate climbed the stone stairs. And
there above her was Doña Carlota, in white muslin and with
white shoes and stockings, her face looking curiously yellow
and faded by contrast. Her soft brown hair was low over
her ears, and she held out her thin brownish arms with
queer effusiveness.
“So, you have come! And you have walked, walked all
the way? Oh, imagine walking in so much sun and dust!
Come, come in and rest.”
She took Kate’s hands and led her across the open terrace
at the top of the stairs.
“It is beautiful here,” said Kate.
She stood on the terrace, looking out past the mango
trees at the lake. A distant sailing canoe was going down
the breeze, on the pallid, unreal water. Away across rose the
bluish, grooved mountains, with the white speck of a village:
far away in the morning it seemed, in another world, in
another life, in another mode of time.
“What is that village?” Kate asked.
“That one? That one there? It is San Ildefonso,” said
Doña Carlota, in her fluttering eagerness.
“But it is beautiful here!” Kate repeated.
“Hermoso—si! Si, bonito!” quavered the other woman
uneasily, always answering in Spanish.
The house, reddish and yellow in colour, had two short
wings towards the lake. The terrace, with green plants on
the terrace wall, went round the three sides, the roof above
supported by big square pillars that rose from the ground.
Down below, the pillars made a sort of cloisters around the
three sides, and in the little stone court was a pool of water.
Beyond, the rather neglected formal garden with strong sun
and deep mango-shade.
“Come, you will need to rest!” said Doña Carlota.
“I would like to change my shoes,” said Kate.
She was shown into a high, simple, rather bare bedroom
with red-tiled floor. There she changed into the shoes and
stockings Juana had carried, and rested a little.
As she lay resting, she heard the dulled thud-thud of the
tom-tom drum, but, save the crowing of a cock in the distance,
no other sound on the bright, yet curiously hollow
Mexican morning. And the drum, thudding with its dulled,
black insistence, made her uneasy. It sounded like something
coming over the horizon.
She rose, and went into the long, high salon where Doña
Carlota was sitting talking to a man in black. The salon,
with its three window-doors open on to the terrace, its worn,
red floor tiled with old square bricks, its high walls colour-washed
a faint green, and the many-beamed ceiling whitewashed;
and with its bareness of furniture; seemed like part
of the out-of-doors, like some garden-arbour put for shade.
The sense, which houses have in hot climates, of being just
three walls wherein one lingers for a moment, then goes away
again.
As Kate entered the room, the man in black rose and
shook hands with Doña Carlota, bowing very low and deferential.
Then with a deferential sideways sort of bow to
Kate, he vanished out of doors.
“Come!” said Doña Carlota to Kate. “Are you sure
now you are rested?” And she pulled forward one of the
cane rocking-chairs that had poised itself in the room, en
route to nowhere.
“Perfectly!” said Kate. “How still it seems here!
Except for the drum. Perhaps it is the drum that makes
it seem so still. Though I always think the lake makes a
sort of silence.”
“Ah, the drum!” cried Doña Carlota, lifting her hand
with a gesture of nervous, spent exasperation. “I cannot
hear it. No, I cannot, I cannot bear to hear it.”
And she rocked herself in a sudden access of agitation.
“It does hit one rather below the belt,” said Kate.
“What is it?”
“Ah, do not ask me! It is my husband.”
She made a gesture of despair, and rocked herself almost
into unconsciousness.
“Is Don Ramón drumming?”
“Drumming?” Doña Carlota seemed to start. “No!
Oh no! He is not drumming, himself. He brought down
two Indians from the north to do that.”
“Did he!” said Kate, non-committal.
But Doña Carlota was rocking in a sort of semi-consciousness.
Then she seemed to pull herself together.
“I must talk to somebody, I must!” she said, suddenly
straightening herself in her chair, her face creamy and
creased, her soft brown hair sagging over her ears, her brown
eyes oddly desperate. “May I talk to you?”
“Do!” said Kate, rather uneasy.
“You know what Ramón is doing?” she said, looking at
Kate almost furtively, suspiciously.
“Does he want to bring back the old gods?” said Kate
vaguely.
“Ah!” cried Doña Carlota, again with that desperate,
flying jerk of her hand. “As if it were possible! As if it
were possible! The old gods! Imagine it, Señora! The old
gods! Why what are they? Nothing but dead illusions.
And ugly, repulsive illusions! Ah! I always thought my
husband such a clever man, so superior to me! Ah, it is
terrible to have to change one’s idea! This is such nonsense.
How dare he! How dare he take such nonsense
seriously! How does he dare!”
“Does he believe in it himself?” asked Kate.
“Himself? But, Señora—” and Doña Carlota gave a
pitiful, pitying smile of contempt. “How could he! As
if it were possible. After all he is an educated man! How
could he believe in such nonsense!”
“Then why does he do it?”
“Why? Why?” There was a tone of unspeakable
weariness in Doña Carlota’s voice. “I wish I knew. I
think he has gone insane, as Mexicans do. Insane like
Francisco Villa, the bandit.”
Kate thought of the pug-faced notorious Pancho Villa in
wonder, unable to connect him with Don Ramón.
“All the Mexicans, as soon as they rise above themselves,
go that way,” said Doña Carlota. “Their pride
gets the better of them. And then they understand nothing,
nothing but their own foolish will, their will to be very,
very important. It is just the male vanity. Don’t you
think, Señora, that the beginning and the end of a man is his
vanity? Don’t you think it was just against this danger
that Christ came, to teach men a proper humility. To teach
them the sin of pride. But that is why they hate Christ so
much, and His teaching. First and last, they want their
own vanity.”
Kate had often thought so herself. Her own final conclusion
about men was that they were the vanity of vanities,
nothing but vanity. They must be flattered and made
to feel great: Nothing else.
“And now, my husband wants to go to the other extreme
of Jesus. He wants to exalt pride and vanity higher than
God. Ah, it is terrible, terrible! And foolish like a little
boy! Ah, what is a man but a little boy who needs a nurse
and a mother! Ah, Señora, I can’t bear it.”
Doña Carlota covered her face with her hand, as if swooning.
“But there is something wonderful, too, about Don
Ramón,” said Kate coaxingly: though at the moment she
hated him.
“Wonderful! Ah yes, he has gifts. He has great gifts!
But what are gifts to a man who perverts them!”
“Tell me what you think he really wants,” said Kate.
“Power! Just power! Just foolish, wicked power. As
if there had not been enough horrible, wicked power let
loose in this country. But he—he—he wants to be beyond
them all. He—he—he wants to be worshipped. To be
worshipped! To be worshipped! A God! He, whom I’ve
held, I’ve held in my arms! He is a child, as all men are
children. And now he wants—to be worshipped—!” She
went off into a shrill, wild laughter, covering her face with
her hands, and laughing shrilly, her laughter punctuated by
hollow, ghastly sobs.
Kate sat in absolute dismay, waiting for the other woman
to recover herself. She felt cold against these hysterics, and
exerted all her heavy female will to stop them.
“After all,” she said, when Doña Carlota became quiet,
her face in her hands, “it isn’t your fault. We can’t be
responsible, even for our husbands. I know that, since my
husband died, and I couldn’t prevent him dying. And then—then
I learned that no matter how you love another person,
you can’t really do anything, you are helpless when it comes
to the last things. You have to leave them to themselves,
when they want to die: or when they want to do things
that seem foolish, so, so foolish, to a woman.”
Doña Carlota looked up at the other woman.
“You loved your husband very much—and he died?”
she said softly.
“I did love him. And I shall never, never love another
man. I couldn’t. I’ve lost the power.”
“And why did he die?”
“Ah, even that was really his own fault. He broke his
own soul and spirit, in those Irish politics. I knew it was
wrong. What does Ireland matter, what does nationalism
and all that rubbish matter, really! And revolutions!
They are so, so stupid and vieux jeu. Ah! It would have
been so much better if Joachim had been content to live
his life in peace, with me. It could be so jolly, so lovely.
And I tried and tried and tried with him. But it was no
good. He wanted to kill himself with that beastly Irish
business, and I tried in vain to prevent him.”
Doña Carlota stared slowly at Kate.
“As a woman must try to prevent a man, when he is
going wrong,” she said. “As I try to prevent Ramón. As
he will get himself killed, as surely as they all do, down to
Francisco Villa. And when they are dead, what good is it
all?”
“When they are dead,” said Kate, “then you know
it’s no good.”
“You do! Oh, Señora, if you think you can help me
with Ramón, do help me, do! For it means the death either
of me or him. And I shall die, though he is wrong. Unless
he gets killed.”
“Tell me what he wants to do,” said Kate. “What
does he think he wants to do, anyhow?—Like my husband
thought he wanted to make a free Ireland and a great Irish
people. But I knew all the time, the Irish aren’t a great
people any more, and you can’t make them free. They are
only good at destroying—just mere stupid destroying. How
can you make a people free, if they aren’t free. If something
inside them compels them to go on destroying!”
“I know! I know! And that is Ramón. He wants to
destroy even Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, for this people.
Imagine it! To destroy Jesus and the Blessed Virgin! the
last thing they’ve got!”
“But what does he say himself, that he wants to do?”
“He says he wants to make a new connection between
the people and God. He says himself, God is always God.
But man loses his connection with God. And then he can
never recover it again, unless some new Saviour comes to
give him his new connection. And every new connection
is different from the last, though God is always God. And
now, Ramón says, the people have lost God. And the
Saviour cannot lead them to Him any more. There must
be a new Saviour with a new vision. But ah, Señora, that
is not true for me. God is love, and if Ramón would only
submit to love, he would know that he had found God. But
he is perverse. Ah, if we could be together, quietly loving,
and enjoying the beautiful world, and waiting in the love of
God! Ah, Señora, why, why, why can’t he see it? Oh,
why can’t he see it! Instead of doing all these—”
The tears came to Doña Carlota’s eyes, and spilled over
her cheeks. Kate also was in tears, mopping her face.
“It’s no good!” she said, sobbing. “I know it’s no
good, no matter what we do. They don’t want to be happy
and peaceful. They want this strife and these other false,
horrible connections. It’s no good whatever we do! That’s
what’s so bitter, so bitter!”
The two women sat in their bent-wood rocking-chairs and
just sobbed. And as they sobbed, they heard a step coming
along the terrace, the faint swish of the sandals of the
people.
It was Don Ramón, drawn unconsciously by the emotional
disturbance of the two women.
Doña Carlota hastily dabbed her eyes and her sniffing
nose, Kate blew her nose like a trumpet, and Don Ramón
stood in the doorway.
He was dressed in white, dazzling, in the costume of the
peons, the white blouse jacket and the white, wide pantaloon
trousers. But the white was linen, slightly starched,
and brilliant, almost unnatural in its whiteness. From under
his blouse, in front, hung the ends of a narrow woollen sash,
white, with blue and black bars, and a fringe of scarlet.
And on his naked feet were the plaited huaraches, of blue
and black strips of leather, with thick, red-dyed soles. His
loose trousers were bound round the ankles with blue, red
and black woollen braids.
Kate glanced at him as he stood in the sun, so dazzlingly
white, that his black hair and dark face looked like a hole in
the atmosphere. He came forward, the ends of his sash
swinging against his thighs, his sandals slightly swishing.
“I am pleased to see you,” he said, shaking hands with
Kate. “How did you come?”
He dropped into a chair, and sat quite still. The two
women hung their heads, hiding their faces. The presence
of the man seemed to put their emotion out of joint. He
ignored all the signs of their discomfort, overlooking it with
a powerful will. There was a certain strength in his presence.
They all cheered up a bit.
“You didn’t know my husband had become one of the
people—a real peon—a Señor Peon, like Count Tolstoy
became a Señor Moujik?” said Doña Carlota, with an
attempt at raillery.
“Anyway it suits him,” said Kate.
“There!” said Don Ramón. “Give the devil his dues.”
But there was something unyielding, unbending about
him. He laughed and spoke to the women only from a
surface self. Underneath, powerful and inscrutable, he made
no connection with them.
So it was at lunch. There was a flitting conversation,
with intervals of silence. It was evident that Ramón was
thinking in another world, in the silence. And the ponderous
stillness of his will, working in another sphere, made the
women feel overshadowed.
“The Señora is like me, Ramón,” said Doña Carlota.
“She cannot bear the sound of that drum. Must it play
any more this afternoon?”
There was a moment’s pause, before he answered:
“After four o’clock only.”
“Must we have that noise to-day?” Carlota persisted.
“Why not to-day like other days!” he said. But a
certain darkness was on his brow, and it was evident he
wanted to leave the presence of the two women.
“Because the Señora is here: and I am here: and we
neither of us like it. And to-morrow the Señora will not be
here, and I shall be gone back to Mexico. So why not spare
us to-day! Surely you can show us this consideration.”
Ramón looked at her, and then at Kate. There was anger
in his eyes. And Kate could almost feel, in his powerful
chest, the big heart swelling with a suffocation of anger.
Both women kept mum. But it pleased them, anyhow,
that they could make him angry.
“Why not row with Mrs Leslie on the lake!” he said,
with quiet control.
But under his dark brows was a level, indignant anger.
“We may not want to,” said Carlota.
Then he did what Kate had not known anyone to do
before. He withdrew his consciousness away from them as
they all three sat at table, leaving the two women, as it
were, seated outside a closed door, with nothing more
happening. Kate felt for the time startled and forlorn, then
a slow anger burned in her warm ivory cheek.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I can start home before then.”
“No! No!” said Doña Carlota, with a Spanish wail.
“Don’t leave me. Stay with me till evening, and help me
to amuse Don Cipriano. He is coming to supper.”
