Chapter VIII: Part 8

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.”

CHAP: XI. LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT.

When lunch was over, Ramón went to his room, to sleep for an hour. It was a hot, still afternoon. Clouds were standing erect and splendid, at the west end of the lake, like messengers. Ramón went into his room and closed the window-doors and the shutters, till it was quite dark, save for yellow pencils of light that stood like substance on the darkness, from the cracks of the shutters.

He took off his clothes, and in the darkness thrust his clenched fists upwards above his head, in a terrible tension of stretched, upright prayer. In his eyes was only darkness, and slowly the darkness revolved in his brain, too, till he was mindless. Only a powerful will stretched itself and quivered from his spine in an immense tension of prayer. Stretched the invisible bow of the body in the darkness with inhuman tension, erect, till the arrows of the soul, mindless, shot to the mark, and the prayer reached its goal.

Then suddenly, the clenched and quivering arms dropped, the body relaxed into softness. The man had reached his strength again. He had broken the cords of the world, and was free in the other strength.

Softly, delicately, taking great care not to think, not to remember, not to disturb the poisonous snakes of mental consciousness, he picked up a thin, fine blanket, wrapped it round him, and lay down on the pile of mats on the floor. In an instant he was asleep.

He slept in complete oblivion for about an hour. Then suddenly he opened his eyes wide. He saw the velvety darkness, and the pencils of light gone frail. The sun had moved. Listening, there seemed not a sound in the world: there was no world.

Then he began to hear. He heard the faint rumble of an ox wagon: then leaves in a wind: then a faint tapping noise: then the creak of some bird calling.

He rose and quickly dressed in the dark, and threw open the doors. It was mid-afternoon, with a hot wind blowing, and clouds reared up dark and bronze in the west, the sun hidden. But the rain would not fall yet. He took a big straw hat and balanced it on his head. It had a round crest of black and white and blue feathers, like an eye, or a sun, in front. He heard the low sound of women talking. Ah, the strange woman! He had forgotten her. And Carlota! Carlota was here! He thought of her for a moment, and of her curious opposition. Then, before he could be angry, he lifted his breast again in the black, mindless prayer, his eyes went dark, and the sense of opposition left him.

He went quickly, driftingly along the terrace to the stone stairs that led down to the inner entrance-way. Going through to the courtyard, he saw two men packing bales of bananas upon donkeys, under a shed. The soldiers were sleeping in the zaguan. Through the open doors, up the avenue of trees, he could see an ox-wagon slowly retreating. Within the courtyard there was the sharp ringing of metal hammered on an anvil. It came from a corner where was a smithy, where a man and a boy were working. In another shed, a carpenter was planing wood.

Don Ramón stood a moment to look around. This was his own world. His own spirit was spread over it like a soft, nourishing shadow, and the silence of his own power gave it peace.

The men working were almost instantly aware of his presence. One after the other the dark, hot faces glanced up at him, and glanced away again. They were men, and his presence was wonderful to them; but they were afraid to approach him, even by staring at him. They worked the quicker for having seen him, as if it gave them new life.

He went across to the smithy, where the boy was blowing the old-fashioned bellows, and the man was hammering a piece of metal, with quick, light blows. The man worked on without lifting his head, as the _patrón_ drew near.

“It is the bird?” said Ramón, standing watching the piece of metal, now cold upon the anvil.

“Yes, _Patrón_! It is the bird. Is it right?” And the man looked up with black, bright, waiting eyes.

The smith lifted with the tongs the black, flat, tongue-shaped piece of metal, and Ramón looked at it a long time.

“I put the wings on after,” said the smith.

Ramón traced with his dark, sensitive hand an imaginary line, outside the edge of the iron. Three times he did it. And the movement fascinated the smith.

“A little more slender--so!” said Ramón.

“Yes, _Patrón_! Yes! Yes! I understand,” said the man eagerly.

“And the rest?”

“Here it is!” The man pointed to two hoops of iron, one smaller than the other, and to some flat discs of iron, triangular in shape.

“Lay them on the ground.”

The man put the hoops on the ground, one within the other. Then, taking the triangular discs, he placed them with quick, sensitive hands, so that their bases were upon the outer circle, and their apices touched the inner. There were seven. And thus they made a seven-pointed sun of the space inside.

“Now the bird,” said Ramón.

The man quickly took the long piece of iron: it was the rudimentary form of a bird, with two feet, but as yet without wings. He placed it in the centre of the inner circle, so that the feet touched the circle and the crest of the head touched opposite.

“So! It fits,” said the man.

Ramón stood looking at the big iron symbol on the ground. He heard the doors of the inner entrance: Kate and Carlota walking across the courtyard.

“I take it away?” asked the workman quickly.

“Never mind,” Ramón answered quietly.

Kate stood and stared at the great wreath of iron on the ground.

“What is it?” she asked brightly.

“The bird within the sun.”

“Is that a bird?”

“When it has wings.”

“Ah, yes! When it has wings. And what is it for?”

“For a symbol to the people.”

“It is pretty.”

“Yes.”

“Ramón!” said Doña Carlota, “will you give me the key for the boat? Martin will row us out.”

He produced the key from under his sash.

“Where did you get that beautiful sash?” asked Kate.

It was the white sash with blue and brown-black bars, and with a heavy red fringe.

“This?” he said. “We wove it here.”

“And did you make the sandals too?”

“Yes! They were made by Manuel. Later I will show you.”

“Oh, I should like to see!--They are beautiful, don’t you think, Doña Carlota?”

“Yes! Yes! It is true. But whether beautiful things are wise things, I don’t know. So much I don’t know, Señora. Ay, so much!--And you, do you know what is wise?”

“I?” said Kate. “I don’t care very much.”

“Ah! You don’t care!--You think Ramón is wise, to wear the peasants’ clothes, and the huaraches?” For once Doña Carlota was speaking in slow English.

“Oh, yes!” cried Kate. “He looks so handsome!--Men’s clothes are so hideous, and Don Ramón looks so handsome in those!” With the big hat poised on his head, he had a certain air of nobility and authority.

“Ah!” cried Doña Carlota, looking at the other woman with intelligent, half-scared eyes, and swinging the key of the boat. “Shall we go to the lake?”

The two women departed. Ramón, laughing to himself, went out of the gate and across the outer yard, to where a big, barn-like building stood near the trees. He entered the barn, and gave a low whistle. It was answered from the loft above, and a trap-door opened. Don Ramón went up the steps, and found himself in a sort of studio and carpenter’s shop. A fattish young man with curly hair, wearing an artist’s blouse, and with mallet and chisels in his hand, greeted him.

“How is it going?” asked Ramón.

“Yes--well--”

The artist was working on a head, in wood. It was larger than life, conventionalised. Yet under the conventional lines the likeness to Ramón revealed itself.

“Sit for me for half an hour,” said the sculptor.

Ramón sat in silence, while the other man bent over his model, working in silent concentration. And all the time, Ramón sat erect, almost motionless, with a great stillness of repose and concentration, thinking about nothing, but throwing out the dark aura of power, in the spell of which the artist worked.

“That is enough,” he said at last, quietly rising.

“But give me the pose before you go,” said the artist.

Ramón slowly took off his blouse-skirt, and stood with naked torso, the sash with its blue and black bars tight round his naked waist. For some moments he stood gathering himself together. Then suddenly, in a concentration of intense, proud prayer, he flung his right arm up above his head, and stood transfixed, his left arm hanging softly by his side, the fingers touching his thigh. And on his face that fixed, intense look of pride which was at once a prayer.

The artist gazed with wonder, and with an appreciation touched with fear. The other man, large and intense, with big dark eyes staring with intense pride, yet prayerful, beyond the natural horizons, sent a thrill of dread and of joy through the artist. He bowed his head as he looked.

Don Ramón turned to him.

“Now you!” he said.

The artist was afraid. He seemed to quail. But he met Ramón’s eyes. And instantly, that stillness of concentration came over him, like a trance. And then suddenly, out of the trance, he shot his arm aloft, and his fat, pale face took on an expression of peace, a noble, motionless transfiguration, the blue-grey eyes calm, proud, reaching into the beyond, with prayer. And though he stood in his blouse, with a rather pudgy figure and curly hair, he had the perfect stillness of nobility.

“It is good!” said Ramón, bowing his head.

The artist suddenly changed; Ramón held out his two hands, the artist took them in his two hands. Then he lifted Ramón’s right hand and placed the back of it on his brow.

“Adios!” said Ramón, taking his blouse again.

“Adios, señor!” said the artist.

And with a proud, white look of joy in his face, he turned again to his work.

Ramón visited the adobe house, its yard fenced with cane and overshadowed by a great mango tree, where Manuel and his wife and children, and two assistants, were spinning and weaving. Two little girls were assiduously carding white wool and brown wool under a cluster of banana trees: the wife and a young maiden were spinning fine, fine thread. On the line hung dyed wool, red, and blue, and green. And under the shed stood Manuel and a youth, weaving at two heavy hand-looms.

“How is it going?” called Don Ramón.

“_Muy bien! Muy bien!_” answered Manuel, with that curious look of transfiguration glistening in his black eyes and in the smile of his face. “It is going well, very well, _Señor_!”

Ramón paused to look at the fine white serape on the loom. It had a zigzag border of natural black wool and blue, in little diamonds, and the ends a complication of blackish and blue diamond-pattern. The man was just beginning to do the centre--called the _boca_, the mouth: and he looked anxiously at the design that was tacked to the loom. But it was simple: the same as the iron symbol the smith was making: a snake with his tail in his mouth, the black triangles on his back being the outside of the circle: and in the middle, a blue eagle standing erect, with slim wings touching the belly of the snake with their tips, and slim feet upon the snake, within the hoop.

Ramón went back to the house, to the upper terrace, and round to the short wing where his room was. He put a folded serape over his shoulder, and went along the terrace. At the end of this wing, projecting to the lake, was a square terrace with a low, thick wall and a tiled roof, and a coral-scarlet bignonia dangling from the massive pillars. The terrace, or loggia, was strewn with the native palm-leaf mats, _petates_, and there was a drum in one corner, with the drum-stick upon it. At the far inner corner, went down an enclosed stone staircase, with an iron door at the bottom.

Ramón stood a while looking out at the lake. The clouds were dissolving again, the sheet of water gave off a whitish light. In the distance he could see the dancing speck of a boat, probably Martin with the two women.

He took off his hat and his blouse, and stood motionless, naked to the waist. Then he lifted the drum-stick, and after waiting a moment or two, to become still in soul, he sounded the rhythmic summons, rather slow, yet with a curious urge in its strong-weak, one-two rhythm. He had got the old barbaric power into the drum.

For some time he stood alone, the drum, or tom-tom, lifted by its thong against his legs, his right hand drumming, his face expressionless. A man entered, bareheaded, running from the inner terrace. He was in the white cotton clothes, snow white, but with a dark serape folded on his shoulder, and he held a key in his hand. He saluted Ramón by putting the back of his right hand in front of his eyes for a moment, then he went down the stone stairway and opened the iron door.

Immediately men were coming up, all dressed alike, in the white cotton clothes and the huaraches, each with a folded serape over his shoulder. But their sashes were all blue, and their sandals blue and white. The sculptor came too, and Mirabal was there, also dressed in the cotton clothes.

There were seven men, besides Ramón. At the top of the stairs, one after another, they saluted. Then they took their serapes, dark brown, with blue eyes filled with white, along the edges, and threw them down along the wall, their hats beside them. Then they took off their blouses, and flung them on their hats.

Ramón left the drum, and sat down on his own serape, that was white with the blue and black bars, and the scarlet fringe. The drummer sat down and took the drum. The circle of men sat cross-legged, naked to the waist, silent. Some were of a dark, ruddy coffee-brown, two were white, Ramón was of a soft creamy brown. They sat in silence for a time, only the monotonous, hypnotic sound of the drum pulsing, touching the inner air. Then the drummer began to sing, in the curious, small, inner voice, that hardly emerges from the circle, singing in the ancient falsetto of the Indians:

“Who sleeps--shall wake! Who sleeps--shall wake! Who treads down the path of the snake shall arrive at the place; in the path of the dust shall arrive at the place and be dressed in the skin of the snake--”

One by one the voices of the men joined in, till they were all singing in the strange, blind infallible rhythm of the ancient barbaric world. And all in the small, inward voices, as if they were singing from the oldest, darkest recess of the soul, not outwards, but inwards, the soul singing back to herself.

They sang for a time, in the peculiar unison like a flock of birds that fly in one consciousness. And when the drum shuddered for an end, they all let their voices fade out, with the same broad, clapping sound in the throat.

There was silence. The men turned, speaking to one another, laughing in a quiet way. But their daytime voices, and their daytime eyes had gone.

Then Ramón’s voice was heard, and the men were suddenly silent, listening with bent heads. Ramón sat with his face lifted, looking far away, in the pride of prayer.

“There is no Before and After, there is only Now,” he said, speaking in a proud, but inward voice.

“The great Snake coils and uncoils the plasm of his folds, and stars appear, and worlds fade out. It is no more than the changing and easing of the plasm.

“_I always am_, says his sleep.

“As a man in a deep sleep knows not, but is, so is the Snake of the coiled cosmos, wearing its plasm.

“As a man in a deep sleep has no to-morrow, no yesterday, nor to-day, but only _is_, so is the limpid, far-reaching Snake of the eternal Cosmos, Now, and forever Now.

“Now, and only Now, and forever Now.

“But dreams arise and fade in the sleep of the Snake.

“And worlds arise as dreams, and are gone as dreams.

“And man is a dream in the sleep of the Snake.

“And only the sleep that is dreamless breathes _I Am_!

“In the dreamless Now, _I Am_.

“Dreams arise as they must arise, and man is a dream arisen.

“But the dreamless plasm of the Snake is the plasm of a man, of his body, his soul, and his spirit at one.

“And the perfect sleep of the Snake _I Am_ is the plasm of a man, who is whole.

“When the plasm of the body, and the plasm of the soul, and the plasm of the spirit are at one, in the Snake _I Am_.

“I am Now.

“Was-not is a dream, and shall-be is a dream, like two separate, heavy feet.

“But Now, I Am.

“The trees put forth their leaves in their sleep, and flowering emerge out of dreams, into pure I Am.

“The birds forget the stress of their dreams, and sing aloud in the Now, I Am! I Am!

“For dreams have wings and feet, and journeys to take, and efforts to make.

“But the glimmering Snake of the Now is wingless and footless, and undivided, and perfectly coiled.

“It is thus the cat lies down, in the coil of Now, and the cow curves round her nose to her belly, lying down.

“In the feet of a dream the hare runs uphill. But when he pauses, the dream has passed, he has entered the timeless Now, and his eyes are the wide I Am.

“Only man dreams, dreams, and dreams, and changes from dream to dream, like a man who tosses on his bed.

“With his eyes and his mouth he dreams, with his hands and his feet, with phallos and heart and belly, with body and spirit and soul, in a tempest of dreams.

“And rushes from dream to dream, in the hope of the perfect dream.

“But I, I say to you, there is no dream that is perfect, for every dream has an ache and an urge, an urge and an ache.

“And nothing is perfect, save the dream pass out into the sleep, I Am.

“When the dream of the eyes is darkened, and encompassed with Now.

“And the dream of the mouth resounds in the last I Am.

“And the dream of the hands is a sleep like a bird on the sea, that sleeps and is lifted and shifted, and knows not.

“And the dreams of the feet and the toes touch the core of the world, where the Serpent sleeps.

“And the dream of the phallos reaches the great I Know Not.

“And the dream of the body is the stillness of a flower in the dark.

“And the dream of the soul is gone in the perfume of Now.

“And the dream of the spirit lapses, and lays down its head, and is still with the Morning Star.

“For each dream starts out of Now, and is accomplished in Now.

“In the core of the flower, the glimmering, wakeless Snake.

“And what falls away is a dream, and what accrues is a dream. There is always and only Now, Now and I Am.”

There was silence in the circle of men. Outside, the sound of the bullock-wagon could be heard, and from the lake, the faint knocking of oars. But the seven men sat with their heads bent, in the semi-trance, listening inwardly.

Then the drum began softly to beat, as if of itself. And a man began to sing, in a small voice:

“The Lord of the Morning Star
Stood between the day and the night:
As a bird that lifts its wings, and stands
With the bright wing on the right
And the wing of the dark on the left,
The Dawn Star stood into sight.

Lo! I am always here!
Far in the hollow of space
I brush the wing of the day
And put light on your face.
The other wing brushes the dark.
But I, I am always in place.

Yea, I am always here. I am Lord
In every way. And the lords among men
See me through the flashing of wings.
They see me and lose me again.
But lo! I am always here
Within ken.

The multitudes see me not.
They see only the waving of wings,
The coming and going of things.
The cold and the hot.

But ye that perceive me between
The tremors of night and the day,
I make you the Lords of the Way
Unseen.

The path between gulfs of the dark and the steeps of the light;
The path like a snake that is gone, like the length of a fuse to
ignite
The substance of shadow, that bursts and explodes into sight.

I am here undeparting. I sit tight
Between wings of the endless flight,
At the depths of the peace and the fight.

Deep in the moistures of peace,
And far down the muzzle of the fight
You shall find me, who am neither increase
Nor destruction, different quite.

I am far beyond
The horizons of love and strife.
Like a star, like a pond
That washes the lords of life.”

“Listen!” said Ramón, in the stillness. “We will be masters among men, and lords among men. But lords of men, and masters of men we will not be. Listen! We are lords of the night. Lords of the day and night. Sons of the Morning Star, sons of the Evening Star. Men of the Morning and the Evening Star.

“We are not lords of men: how can men make us lords? Nor are we masters of men, for men are not worth it.

“But I am the Morning and the Evening Star, and lord of the day and the night. By the power that is put in my left hand, and the power that I grasp in my right, I am lord of the two ways.

“And my flower on earth is the jasmine flower, and in heaven the flower Hesperus.

“I will not command you, nor serve you, for the snake goes crooked to his own house.

“Yet I will be with you, so you depart not from yourselves.

“There is no giving, and no taking. When the fingers that give touch the fingers that receive, the Morning Star shines at once, from the contact, and the jasmine gleams between the hands. And thus there is neither giving nor taking, nor hand that proffers nor hand that receives, but the star between them is all, and the dark hand and the light hand are invisible on each side. The jasmine takes the giving and the receiving in her cup, and the scent of the oneness is fragrant on the air.

“Think neither to give nor to receive, only let the jasmine flower.

“Let nothing spill from you in excess, let nothing be reived from you.

“And reive nothing away. Not even the scent from the rose, nor the juice from the pomegranate, nor the warmth from the fire.

“But say to the rose: Lo! I take you away from your tree, and your breath is in my nostrils, and my breath is warm in your depths. Let it be a sacrament between us.

“And beware when you break the pomegranate; it is sunset you take in your hands. Say: I am coming, come thou. Let the Evening Star stand between us.

“And when the fire burns up and the wind is cold and you spread your hands to the blaze, listen to the flame saying: Ah! Is it thou? Comest thou to me? Lo, I was going the longest journey, down the path of the greatest snake. But since thou comest to me, I come to thee. And where thou fallest into my hands, fall I into thine, and jasmine flowers on the burning bush between us. Our meeting is the burning bush, whence the jasmine flowers.

“Reive nothing away, and let nothing be reived from you. For reiver and bereaved alike break the root of the jasmine flower, and spit upon the Evening Star.

“Take nothing, to say: _I have it!_ For you can possess nothing, not even peace.

“Nought is possessible, neither gold, nor land nor love, nor life, nor peace, nor even sorrow nor death, nor yet salvation.

“Say of nothing: It is mine.

“Say only: It is with me.

“For the gold that is with thee lingers as a departing moon, looking across space thy way, saying: Lo! We are beholden of each other. Lo! for this little while, to each other thou and I are beholden.

“And thy land says to thee: Ah, my child of a far-off father! Come, lift me, lift me a little while, that poppies and wheat may blow on the level wind that moves between my breast and thine! Then sink with me, and we will make one mound.

“And listen to thy love saying: Beloved! I am mown by thy sword like mown grass, and darkness is upon me, and the tremble of the Evening Star. And to me thou art darkness and nowhere. Oh thou, when thou risest up and goest thy way, speak to me, only say: The star rose between us.

“And say to thy life: Am I thine? Art thou mine? Am I the blue curve of day around thine uncurved night? Are my eyes the twilight of neither of us, where the star hangs? Is my upper lip the sunset and my lower lip the dawn, does the star tremble inside my mouth?

“And say to thy peace: Ah! risen, deathless star! Already the waters of dawn sweep over thee, and wash me away on the flood!

“And say to thy sorrow: Axe, thou art cutting me down!

“Yet did a spark fly from out of thy edge and my wound!

“Cut then, while I cover my face, father of the Star.

“And say to thy strength: Lo, the night is foaming up my feet and my loins, day is foaming down from my eyes and my mouth to the sea of my breast. Lo, they meet! My belly is a flood of power, that races in down the sluice of bone at my back, and a star hangs low on the flood, over a troubled dawn.

“And say to thy death: Be it so! I, and my soul, we come to thee, Evening Star. Flesh, go thou into the night. Spirit, farewell, ’tis thy day. Leave me now. I go in last nakedness now to the nakedest Star.”

CHAP: XII. THE FIRST WATERS.

The men had risen and covered themselves, and put on their hats, and covered their eyes for a second, in salute before Ramón, as they departed down the stone stair. And the iron door at the bottom had clanged, the doorkeeper had returned with the key, laid it on the drum, and softly, delicately departed.

Still Ramón sat on his serape, leaning his naked shoulders on the wall, and closing his eyes. He was tired, and in that state of extreme separateness which makes it very hard to come back to the world. On the outside of his ears he could hear the noises of the hacienda, even the tinkle of tea-spoons, and the low voice of women, and later, the low, labouring sound of a motor-car struggling over the uneven road, then swirling triumphantly into the courtyard.

It was hard to come back to these things. The noise of them sounded on the outside of his ears, but inside them was the slow, vast, inaudible roar of the cosmos, like in a sea-shell. It was hard to have to bear the contact of commonplace daily things, when his soul and body were naked to the cosmos.

He wished they would leave him the veils of his isolation awhile. But they would not: especially Carlota. She wanted him to be present to her: in familiar contact.

She was calling: “Ramón! Ramón! Have you finished? Cipriano is here.” And even so, in her voice was fear, and an over-riding temerity.

He pushed back his hair and rose, and very quickly went out, as he was, with naked torso. He didn’t want to dress himself into everyday familiarity, since his soul was unfamiliar.

They had a tea-table out on the terrace, and Cipriano, in uniform, was there. He got up quickly, and came down the terrace with outstretched arms, his black eyes gleaming with an intensity almost like pain, upon the face of the other man. And Ramón looked back at him with wide, seeing, yet unchanging eyes.

The two men embraced, breast to breast, and for a moment Cipriano laid his little blackish hands on the naked shoulders of the bigger man, and for a moment was perfectly still on his breast. Then very softly, he stood back and looked at him, saying not a word.

Ramón abstractly laid his hand on Cipriano’s shoulder, looking down at him with a little smile.

“Que tal?” he said, from the edge of his lips. “How goes it?”

“Bien! Muy bien!” said Cipriano, still gazing into the other man’s face with black, wondering, childlike, searching eyes, as if he, Cipriano, were searching for _himself_, in Ramón’s face. Ramón looked back into Cipriano’s black, Indian eyes with a faint, kind smile of recognition, and Cipriano hung his head as if to hide his face, the black hair, which he wore rather long and brushed sideways, dropping over his forehead.

The women watched in absolute silence. Then, as the two men began slowly to come along the terrace to the tea-table, Carlota began to pour tea. But her hand trembled so much, the teapot wobbled as she held it, and she had to put it down and clasp her hands in the lap of her white muslin dress.

“You rowed on the lake?” said Ramón abstractedly, coming up.

“It was lovely!” said Kate. “But hot when the sun came.”

Ramón smiled a little, then pushed his hand through his hair. Then, leaning one hand on the parapet of the terrace wall, he turned to look at the lake, and a sigh lifted his shoulders unconsciously.

He stood thus, naked to the waist, his black hair ruffled and splendid, his back to the women, looking out at the lake. Cipriano stood lingering beside him.

Kate saw the sigh lift the soft, quiescent, cream-brown shoulders. The soft, cream-brown skin of his back, of a smooth, _pure_ sensuality, made her shudder. The broad, square, rather high shoulders, with neck and head rising steep, proudly. The full-fleshed, deep chested, rich body of the man made her feel dizzy. In spite of herself, she could not help imagining a knife stuck between those pure, male shoulders. If only to break the arrogance of their remoteness.

That was it. His nakedness was so aloof, far-off and intangible, in another day. So that to _think_ of it was almost a violation, even to look at it with prying eyes. Kate’s heart suddenly shrank in her breast. This was how Salome had looked at John. And this was the beauty of John, that he had had; like a pomegranate on a dark tree in the distance, naked, but not undressed! Forever still and clothe-less, and with another light about it, of a richer day than our paltry, prying, sneak-thieving day.

The moment Kate had imagined a knife between his shoulders, her heart shrank with grief and shame, and a great stillness came over her. Better to take the hush into one’s heart, and the sharp, prying beams out of one’s eyes. Better to lapse away from one’s own prying, assertive self, into the soft, untrespassing self, to whom nakedness is neither shame nor excitement, but clothed like a flower in its own deep, soft consciousness, beyond cheap awareness.

The evening breeze was blowing very faintly. Sailing boats were advancing through the pearly atmosphere, far off, the sun above had a golden quality. The opposite shore, twenty miles away, was distinct, and yet there seemed an opalescent, spume-like haze in the air, the same quality as in the filmy water. Kate could see the white specks of the far-off church towers of Tuliapan.

Below, in the garden below the house, was a thick grove of mango trees. Among the dark and reddish leaves of the mangoes, scarlet little birds were bustling, like suddenly-opening poppy-buds, and pairs of yellow birds, yellow underneath as yellow butterflies, so perfectly clear, went skimming past. When they settled for a moment and closed their wings, they disappeared, for they were grey on top. And when the cardinal birds settled, they too disappeared, for the outside of their wings was brown, like a sheath.

“Birds in this country have all their colour below,” said Kate.

Ramón turned to her suddenly.

“They say the word _Mexico_ means _below this_!” he said, smiling, and sinking into a rocking chair.

Doña Carlota had made a great effort over herself, and with eyes fixed on the tea-cups, she poured out the tea. She handed him his cup without looking at him. She did not trust herself to look at him. It made her tremble with a strange, hysterical anger: she, who had been married to him for years, and knew him, ah, knew him: and yet, and yet, had not got him at all. None of him.

“Give me a piece of sugar, Carlota,” he said, in his quiet voice.

But at the sound of it, his wife stopped as if some hand had suddenly grasped her.

“Sugar! Sugar!” she repeated abstractedly to herself.

Ramón sat forward in his rocking-chair, holding his cup in his hand, his breasts rising in relief. And on his thighs the thin linen seemed to reveal him almost more than his own dark nakedness revealed him. She understood why the cotton pantaloons were forbidden on the plaza. The living flesh seemed to emanate through them.