Part 40

This was the dragon of Mexico, that Ramón had to fight. Montes, the President, had it to fight the same. And it shattered his health. Cipriano also had it up against him. But he succeeded best. With his drums, with his dances round the fire, with his soldiers kept keen as knives he drew real support from his men. He grew stronger and more brilliant.

Ramón also, at home in his own district, felt the power flow into him from his people. He was their chief, and by his effort and his power he had almost overcome their ancient, fathomless resistance. Almost he had _awed_ them back into the soft mystery of living, awed them until the tension of their resistant, malevolent wills relaxed. At home, he would feel his strength upon him.

But away from home, and particularly in the city of Mexico, he felt himself bled, bled, bled by the subtle, hidden malevolence of the Mexicans, and the ugly negation of the greedy, mechanical foreigners, birds of prey forever alighting in the cosmopolitan capital.

While Ramón was away, Kate stayed with Teresa. The two women had this in common, that they felt it was better to stand faithfully behind a really brave man, than to push forward into the ranks of cheap and obtrusive women. And this united them. A certain deep, ultimate faithfulness in each woman, to her own man who needed her fidelity, kept Kate and Teresa kindred to one another.

The rainy season had almost passed, though throughout September and even in October occasional heavy downpours fell. But the wonderful Mexican autumn, like a strange, inverted spring, was upon the land. The waste places bloomed with pink and white cosmos, the strange wild trees flowered in a ghostly way, forests of small sunflowers shone in the sun, the sky was a pure, pure blue, the floods of sunshine lay tempered on the land, that in part was flooded with water, from the heavy rains.

The lake was very full, strange and uneasy, and it had washed up a bank of the wicked water-hyacinths along all its shores. The wild-fowl were coming from the north, clouds of wild ducks like dust in the high air, sprinkling the water like weeds. Many, many wild fowl, grebe, cranes, and white gulls of the inland seas, so that the northern mystery seemed to have blown so far south. There was a smell of water in the land, and a sense of soothing. For Kate firmly believed that part of the horror of the Mexican people came from the unsoothed dryness of the land and the untempered crudity of the flat-edged sunshine. If only there could be a softening of water in the air, and a haze above trees, the unspoken and unspeakable malevolence would die out of the human hearts.

Kate rode out often with Teresa to see the fields. The sugar-cane in the inner valley was vivid green, and rising tall, tall. The peons were beginning to cut it with their sword-like machetes, filling the bullock-wagons, to haul the cane to the factory in Sayula. On the dry hill-slopes the spikey tequila plant--a sort of maguey--flourished in its iron wickedness. Low wild cactuses put forth rose-like blossoms, wonderful and beautiful for such sinister plants. The beans were gathered from the bean-fields, some gourds and squashes still sprawled their uncanny weight across the land. Red chiles hung on withering plants, red tomatoes sank to the earth. Some maize still reared its flags, there was still young corn to eat on the cob. The banana crop was small, the children came in with the little wild yellow tejocote apples, for making preserves. Teresa was making preserves, even with the late figs and peaches. On the trees, the ponderous mango trees, some fruit was again orange-yellow and ripe, but the most still hung in strings, heavy and greenish and dropping like the testes of bulls.

It was autumn in Mexico, with wild duck on the waters, and hunters with guns, and small wild doves in the trees. Autumn in Mexico, and the coming of the dry season, with the sky going higher and higher, pure pale blue, the sunset arriving with a strange flare of crystal yellow light. With the coffee berries turning red on the struggling bushes under the trees, and bougainvillea in the strong light glowing with a glow of magenta colour so deep you could plunge your arms deep in it. With a few hummingbirds in the sunshine, and the fish in the waters gone wild, and the flies, that steamed black in the first rains, now passing away again.

Teresa attended to everything, and Kate helped. Whether it was a sick peon in one of the little houses, or the hosts of bees from the hives under the mangoes, or the yellow, yellow bees-wax to be made into little bowlfuls, or the preserves, or the garden, or the calves, or the bit of butter and the little fresh cheeses made of strands of curd, or the turkeys to be overlooked: she saw to it along with Teresa. And she wondered at the steady, urgent, efficient _will_ which had to be exerted all the time. Everything was kept going by a heavy exertion of will. If once the will of the master broke, everything would break, and ruin would overtake the place almost at once. No real relaxation, ever. Always the sombre, insistent will.

Ramón arrived home one evening in November, from a long journey to Sonora. He had come overland from Tepic, and twice had been stopped by floods. The rains, so late, were very unusual. He was tired and remote-seeming. Kate’s heart stood still a moment as she thought: He goes so remote, as if he might go away altogether into death.

It was cloudy again, with lightning beating about on the horizons. But all was very still. She said good-night early, and wandered down her own side of the terrace, to the look-out at the end, which looked on to the lake. Everything was dark, save for the intermittent pallor of lightning.

And she was startled to see, in a gleam of lightning, Teresa sitting with her back to the wall of the open terrace, Ramón lying with his head in her lap, while she slowly pushed her fingers through his thick black hair. They were as silent as the night.

Kate gave a startled murmur and said:

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were here.”

“I wanted to be under the sky!” said Ramón, heaving himself to rise.

“Oh, _don’t_ move!” said Kate. “It was stupid of me to come here. You are tired.”

“Yes,” he said, sinking again. “I am tired. These people make me feel I have a hole in the middle of me. So I have come back to Teresa.”

“Yes!” said Kate. “One isn’t the Living Quetzalcoatl for nothing. Of course they eat holes in you.--Really, is it worth it?--To give yourself to be eaten away by them.”

“It must be so,” he said. “The change has to be made. And some man has to make it. I sometimes wish it wasn’t I.”

“So do I wish it. So does Teresa. One wonders if it isn’t better to be just a man,” said Kate.

But Teresa said nothing.

“One does what one must. And after all, one is always just a man,” he said. “And if one has wounds--à la guerre comme à la guerre!”

His voice came out of the darkness like a ghost.

“Ah!” sighed Kate. “It makes one wonder what a man is, that he must needs expose himself to the horrors of all the other people.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Man is a column of blood, with a voice in it,” he said. “And when the voice is still, and he is only a column of blood, he is better.”

She went away to her room sadly, hearing the sound of infinite exhaustion in his voice. As if he had a hole, a wound in the middle of him. She could almost feel it, in her own bowels.

And if, with his efforts, he killed himself?--Then, she said, Cipriano would come apart, and it would be all finished.

Ah, why should a man have to make these efforts on behalf of a beastly, malevolent people who weren’t worth it! Better let the world come to an end, if that was what it wanted.

She thought of Teresa soothing him, soothing him and saying nothing. And him like a great helpless, wounded thing! It was rather horrible, really. Herself, she would have to expostulate, she would have to try to prevent him. Why should men damage themselves with this useless struggling and fighting, and then come home to their women to be restored!

To Kate, the fight simply wasn’t worth one wound. Let the beastly world of man come to an end, if that was its destiny, as soon as possible. Without lifting a finger to prevent it.--Live one’s own precious life, that was given but once, and let the rest go its own hellish way.

She would have _had_ to try to prevent Ramón from giving himself to destruction this way. She was willing for him to be ten Living Quetzalcoatls. But not to expose himself to the devilish malevolence of people.

Yet he would do it. Even as Joachim had done. And Teresa, with her silence and her infinitely soft administering, she would heal him far better than Kate, with her expostulation and her opposition.

“Ah!” said Kate to herself. “I’m glad Cipriano is a soldier, and doesn’t get wounds in his _soul_.”

At the same time, she knew that without Ramón, Cipriano was just an instrument, and not ultimately interesting to her.

In the morning, Teresa appeared alone to breakfast. She seemed very calm, hiding her emotions in her odd, brown, proud little way.

“How is Ramón?” said Kate.

“He is sleeping,” said Teresa.

“Good! He seemed to me almost done up, last night.”

“Yes.”--The black eyes looked at Kate, wide with unshed tears and courage, and a beautiful deep, remote light.

“I _don’t_ believe in a man’s sacrificing himself in this way,” said Kate. “And I _don’t_.”

Teresa still looked her full in the eyes.

“Ah!” she said. “He doesn’t sacrifice himself. He feels he must do as he does. And if he must, I must help him.”

“But then you are sacrificing yourself to _him_, and I don’t believe in that either,” said Kate.

“Oh, no!” replied Teresa quickly, and a little flush burned in her cheek, and her dark eyes flashed. “I am not sacrificing myself to Ramón. If I can give him--sleep--when he needs it--that is not sacrifice. It is--” She did not finish, but her eyes flashed, and the flush burned darker.

“It is love, I know,” said Kate. “But it exhausts you too.”

“It is not simply love,” flashed Teresa proudly. “I might have loved more than one man: many men are lovable. But Ramón!--My soul is with Ramón.”--The tears rose to her eyes. “I do not want to talk about it,” she said, rising. “But you must not touch me there, and judge me.”

She hurried out of the room, leaving Kate somewhat dismayed. Kate sighed, thinking of going home.

But in an hour Teresa appeared again, putting her cool, soft, snake-like little hand on Kate’s arm.

“I am sorry if I was rude,” she said.

“No,” said Kate. “Apparently it is I who am wrong.”

“Yes, I think you are,” said Teresa. “You think there is only love. Love is only such a little bit.”

“And what is the rest?”

“How can I tell you if you do not know?--But do you think Ramón is no more to me than a lover?”

“A husband!” said Kate.

“Ah!” Teresa put her head aside with an odd impatience. “Those little words! Those little words! Nor either a husband.--He is my life.”

“Surely it is better for one to live one’s own life!”

“No! It is like seed. It is no good till it is given. I know. I kept my own life for a long time. As you keep it longer, it dies. And I tried to give it to God. But I couldn’t, quite. Then they told me, if I married Ramón and had any part in the Quetzalcoatl heresy, my soul would be damned.--But something made me know it was not true. I even knew he needed my soul.--Ah, Señora--” a subtle smile came on Teresa’s pale face--“I have lost my soul to Ramón.--What more can I say!”

“And what about his soul?”

“It comes home to me--_here_!” She put her hand over her womb.

Kate was silent for a time.

“And if he betrays you?” she said.

“Ah, Señora!” said Teresa. “Ramón is not just a lover. He is a brave man, and he doesn’t betray his own blood. And it is his soul that comes home to me.--And I would struggle to my last breath to give him sleep, when he came home to me with his soul, and needed it,” she flashed. Then she added, murmuring to herself: “No, thank God! I have not got a life of my own! I have been able to give it to a man who is more than a man, as they say in their Quetzalcoatl language. And now it needn’t die inside me, like a bird in a cage.--Oh, yes, Señora! If he goes to Sinaloa and the west coast, my soul goes with him and takes part in it all. It does not let him go alone. And he does not forget that he has my soul with him. I know it.--No, Señora! You must not criticise me or pity me.”

“Still!” said Kate. “It still seems to me it would be better for each one to keep her own soul, and be responsible for it.”

“If it were possible!” said Teresa. “But you can no more keep your own soul inside you for yourself, without its dying, than you can keep the seed of your womb. Until a man gives you his seed, the seed of your womb is nothing. And the man’s seed is nothing to him.--And until you give your soul to a man, and he takes it, your soul is nothing to you.--And when a man has taken your whole soul.--Ah, do not talk to me about betraying. A man only betrays because he has been given _a part_, and not the whole. And a woman only betrays because only the part has been taken from her, and not the whole. That is all about betrayal. I know.--But when the whole is given, and taken, betrayal can’t exist. What I am to Ramón, I am. And what he is to me, he is. I do not care what he does. If he is away from me, he does as he wishes. So long as he will always keep safe what I am to him.”

Kate did not like having to learn lessons from this little waif of a Teresa. Kate was a woman of the world, handsome and experienced. She was accustomed to homage. Other women usually had a slight fear of her, for she was powerful and ruthless in her own way.

Teresa also feared her a little, as a woman of the world. But as an intrinsic woman, not at all. Trenched inside her own fierce and proud little soul, Teresa looked on Kate as on one of those women of the outside world, who make a very splendid show, but who are not so sure of the real secret of womanhood, and the innermost power. All Kate’s handsome, ruthless female power was second-rate to Teresa, compared with her own quiet, deep passion of connection with Ramón.

Yes, Kate was accustomed to looking on other women as inferiors. But the tables were suddenly turned. Even as, in her soul, she knew Ramón to be a greater man than Cipriano, suddenly she had to question herself, whether Teresa was not a greater woman than she.

Teresa! A greater woman than Kate? What a blow! Surely it was impossible!

Yet there it was. Ramón had wanted to marry Teresa, not Kate. And the flame of his marriage with Teresa she saw both in his eyes and in Teresa’s. A flame that was not in Kate’s eyes.

Kate’s marriage with Cipriano was curious and momentary. When Cipriano was away, Kate was her old individual self. Only when Cipriano was present, and then only sometimes, did the connection overwhelm her.

When Teresa turned and looked at her with this certain flame, touched with indignation, Kate quailed. Perhaps for the first time in her life she quailed and felt abashed: repentant.

Kate even knew that Teresa felt a little repugnance for her: for the foreign white woman who talked as cleverly as a man and who never gave her soul: who did not believe in giving her soul. All these well-dressed, beautiful women from America or England, Europe, they all kept their souls for themselves, in a sort of purse, as it were.

Teresa was determined that Kate should leave off treating her, very, very indefinably, as an inferior. It was how all the foreign women treated the Mexican women. Because the foreign women were their own mistresses! They even tried to be condescending to Ramón.

But Ramón! He could look at them and make them feel small, feel really nothing, in spite of all their money and their experience and their air of belonging to the ruling races. The ruling races! Wait! Ramón was a challenge to all that. Let those rule who can.

“You did not sleep?” Teresa said to Kate.

“Not very well,” said Kate.

“No, you look as if you had not slept very well.--Under your eyes.”

Kate smoothed the skin under her eyes, querulously.

“One gets that look in Mexico,” she said. “It’s not an easy country to keep your youth in.--You are looking well.”

“Yes, I am very well.”

Teresa had a new, soft bloom on her dark skin, something frail and tender, which she did not want to have to defend against another woman.

“I think I will go home now Ramón has come,” said Kate.

“Oh, why? Do you wish to?”

“I think I’d better.”

“Then I will go with you to Sayula. In the boat, no?”

Kate put her few things together. She had slept badly. The night had been black, black, with something of horror in it. As when the bandits had attacked Ramón. She could see the scar in his back, in the night. And the drumming crash of falling water, menacing and horrible, seemed to keep up for hours.

In her soul, Kate felt Teresa’s contempt for her way of wifehood.

“I have been married too,” Kate had said. “To a very exceptional man, whom I _loved_.”

“Ah, yes!” said Teresa. “And he died.”

“He wanted to die.”

“Ah, yes! He wanted to die.”

“I did my level best to prevent him from wearing himself out.”

“Ah, yes, to prevent him.”

“What else could I have done?” flashed Kate in anger.

“If you could have given him your life, he would not even have wanted to die.”

“I _did_ give him my life. I loved him--oh, you will never know.--But he didn’t _want_ my soul. He believed I should keep a soul of my own.”

“Ah, yes, men are like that, when they are merely men. When a man is _warm_ and brave--then he wants the woman to give him her soul, and he keeps it in _his_ womb, so he is more than a mere man, a single man. I know it. I know where my soul is. It is in Ramón’s womb, the womb of a man, just as his seed is in my womb, the womb of a woman. He is a man, and a column of blood. I am a woman, and a valley of blood. I shall not contradict him. How can I? My soul is inside him, and I am far from contradicting him when he is trying with all his might to do something that _he_ knows about. He won’t die, and they won’t kill him. No! The stream flows into him from the heart of the world: and from me.--I tell you, because you saved his life, and therefore we belong to the same thing, you and I and he--and Cipriano. But you should not misjudge me. That other way of women, where a woman keeps her own soul--ah, what is it but weariness!”

“And the men?”

“Ah! if there are men whose souls are warm and brave, how they comfort one’s womb, Caterina!”

Kate hung her head, stubborn and angry at being put down from her eminence.--The slave morale! she said to herself. The miserable old trick of a woman living just for the sake of a man. Only living to send her soul with him, inside his precious body. And to carry his precious seed in her womb! Herself, apart from this, nothing.

Kate wanted to make her indignation thorough, but she did not quite succeed. Somewhere, secretly and angrily, she envied Teresa her dark eyes with the flame in them and their savage assurance. She envied her her serpent-delicate fingers. And above all, she envied her, with repining, the comfort of a living man permanent in her womb. And the secret, savage indomitable pride in her own womanhood, that rose from this.

In the warm morning after the rain, the frogs were whirring frantically. Across the lake, the mountains were blue black, and little pieces of white, fluffy vapour wandered low across the trees. Clouds were along the mountain-tops, making a level sky-line of whitish softness the whole length of the range. On the lonely, fawn-coloured water, one sail was blowing.

“It is like Europe--like the Tyrol to-day,” said Kate wistfully.

“Do you love Europe very much?” asked Teresa.

“Yes, I think I love it.”

“And must you go back to it?”

“I think so. Soon! To my mother and my children.”

“Do they want you very much?”

“Yes!” said Kate, rather hesitant. Then she added: “Not _very_ much, really. But I want them.”

“What for?--I mean,” Teresa added, “do you long for them?”

“Sometimes,” said Kate, the tears coming to her eyes.

The boat rowed on in silence.

“And Cipriano?” Teresa asked timidly.

“Ah!” said Kate shortly. “He is such a stranger to me.”

Teresa was silent for some moments.

“I think a man is always a stranger to a woman,” said Teresa. “Why should it not be so?”

“But you,” said Kate, “haven’t any children.”

“Ramón has.--And he says: ‘I cast my bread upon the waters. It is my children too. And if they return to me after many days, I shall be glad.’--Is it not the same for you?”

“Not quite!” said Kate. “I am a woman, I am not a man.”

“I, if I have children,” said Teresa, “I shall try to cast my bread upon the waters, so my children come to me that way. I hope I shall. I hope I shall not try to fish them out of life for myself, with a net. I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal. Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own course.--Morning brings more than love. And I want to be true to the morning.”

CHAP: XXVI. KATE IS A WIFE.