Part 17

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.