THE PLUMED SERPENT
THE WORKS OF D. H. LAWRENCE
THIN-PAPER EDITION
THE WHITE PEACOCK
THE TRESPASSER
SONS AND LOVERS
THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
THE RAINBOW
THE LOST GIRL
WOMEN IN LOVE
AARON’S ROD
THE LADYBIRD
KANGAROO
ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND
THE BOY IN THE BUSH
ST. MAWR
THE PLUMED SERPENT
THE WOMAN WHO RODE AWAY
THE VIRGIN AND THE GIPSY
THE MAN WHO DIED
THE LOVELY LADY
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER
LOVE AMONG THE HAYSTACKS
SEA AND SARDINIA
ASSORTED ARTICLES
MORNINGS IN MEXICO
TWILIGHT IN ITALY
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
A MODERN LOVER
THE
PLUMED SERPENT
BY D. H. LAWRENCE
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD
_First published January 1926
Reprinted March 1926, January 1927, February 1928
March 1930, March 1932, October 1933, April 1937_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE WINDMILL PRESS, KINGSWOOD, SURREY
CONTENTS
CHAP: PAGE
I. BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT 7
II. TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA 26
III. FORTIETH BIRTHDAY 52
IV. TO STAY OR NOT TO STAY 77
V. THE LAKE 87
VI. THE MOVE DOWN THE LAKE 106
VII. THE PLAZA 120
VIII. NIGHT IN THE HOUSE 142
IX. CASA DE LA CUENTAS 149
X. DON RAMÓN AND DOÑA CARLOTA 165
XI. LORDS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT 181
XII. THE FIRST WATERS 194
XIII. THE FIRST RAIN 204
XIV. HOME TO SAYULA 221
XV. THE WRITTEN HYMNS OF QUETZALCOATL 236
XVI. CIPRIANO AND KATE 245
XVII. FOURTH HYMN AND THE BISHOP 264
XVIII. AUTO DA FE 287
XIX. THE ATTACK ON JAMILTEPEC 308
XX. MARRIAGE BY QUETZALCOATL 327
XXI. THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH 355
XXII. THE LIVING HUITZILOPOCHTLI 377
XXIII. HUITZILOPOCHTLI’S NIGHT 398
XXIV. MALINTZI 413
XXV. TERESA 422
XXVI. KATE IS A WIFE 443
XXVII. HERE! 456
CHAP: I. BEGINNINGS OF A BULL-FIGHT.
It was the Sunday after Easter, and the last bull-fight of the season
in Mexico City. Four special bulls had been brought over from Spain for
the occasion, since Spanish bulls are more fiery than Mexican. Perhaps
it is the altitude, perhaps just the spirit of the western Continent
which is to blame for the lack of “pep,” as Owen put it, in the native
animal.
Although Owen, who was a great socialist, disapproved of bull-fights,
“We have never seen one. We shall have to go,” he said.
“Oh yes, I think we must see it,” said Kate.
“And it’s our last chance,” said Owen.
Away he rushed to the place where they sold tickets, to book seats, and
Kate went with him. As she came into the street, her heart sank. It was
as if some little person inside her were sulking and resisting. Neither
she nor Owen spoke much Spanish, there was a fluster at the ticket
place, and an unpleasant individual came forward to talk American for
them.
It was obvious they ought to buy tickets for the “Shade.” But they
wanted to economise, and Owen said he preferred to sit among the crowd,
therefore, against the resistance of the ticket man and the onlookers,
they bought reserved seats in the “Sun.”
The show was on Sunday afternoon. All the tram-cars and the frightful
little Ford omnibuses called _Camions_ were labelled _Torero_, and were
surging away towards Chapultepec. Kate felt that sudden dark feeling,
that she didn’t want to go.
“I’m not very keen on going,” she said to Owen.
“Oh, but why not? I don’t believe in them on principle, but we’ve never
seen one, so we shall _have_ to go.”
Owen was an American, Kate was Irish. “Never having seen one” meant
“having to go.” But it was American logic rather than Irish, and Kate
only let herself be overcome.
Villiers of course was keen. But then he too was American, and he too
had never seen one, and being younger, more than anybody he _had_ to
go.
They got into a Ford taxi and went. The busted car careered away down
the wide dismal street of asphalt and stone and Sunday dreariness.
Stone buildings in Mexico have a peculiar hard, dry dreariness.
The taxi drew up in a side street under the big iron scaffolding of
the stadium. In the gutters, rather lousy men were selling pulque and
sweets, cakes, fruit, and greasy food. Crazy motor-cars rushed up and
hobbled away. Little soldiers in washed-out cotton uniforms, pinky
drab, hung around an entrance. Above all loomed the network iron frame
of the huge, ugly stadium.
Kate felt she was going to prison. But Owen excitedly surged to the
entrance that corresponded to his ticket. In the depths of him, he too
didn’t want to go. But he was a born American, and if anything was on
show, he had to see it. That was “Life.”
The man who took the tickets at the entrance, suddenly, as they were
passing in, stood in front of Owen, put both his hands on Owen’s
chest and pawed down the front of Owen’s body. Owen started, bridled,
transfixed for a moment. The fellow stood aside. Kate remained
petrified.
Then Owen jerked into a smiling composure as the man waved them on.
“Feeling for fire-arms!” he said, rolling his eyes with pleased
excitement at Kate.
But she had not got over the shock of horror, fearing the fellow might
paw her.
They emerged out of a tunnel in the hollow of the concrete-and-iron
amphitheatre. A real gutter-lout came to look at their counterslips,
to see which seats they had booked. He jerked his head downwards, and
slouched off. Now Kate knew she was in a trap--a big concrete beetle
trap.
They dropped down the concrete steps till they were only three tiers
from the bottom. That was their row. They were to sit on the concrete,
with a loop of thick iron between each numbered seat. This was a
reserved place in the “Sun.”
Kate sat gingerly between her two iron loops, and looked vaguely around.
“I think it’s thrilling!” she said.
Like most modern people, she had a will-to-happiness.
“Isn’t it thrilling,” cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness was almost a
mania. “Don’t you think so, Bud?”
“Why, yes, I think it may be,” said Villiers, non-committal.
But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty, while Owen was
over forty. The younger generation calculates its “happiness” in a more
business-like fashion. Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasn’t
going to say he’d got one till he’d got it. Kate and Owen--Kate was
also nearly forty--must enthuse a thrill, out of a sort of politeness
to the great Show-man, Providence.
“Look here!” said Owen. “Supposing we try to protect our extremity on
this concrete--” and thoughtfully he folded his rain-coat and laid it
along the concrete ledge so that both he and Kate could sit on it.
They sat and gazed around. They were early. Patches of people mottled
the concrete slope opposite, like eruptions. The ring just below was
vacant, neatly sanded; and above the ring, on the encircling concrete,
great advertisements for hats, with a picture of a city-man’s straw
hat, and advertisements for spectacles, with pairs of spectacles
supinely folded, glared and shouted.
“Where is the ‘Shade’ then?” said Owen, twisting his neck.
At the top of the amphitheatre, near the sky, were concrete boxes. This
was the “Shade,” where anybody who was anything sat.
“Oh but,” said Kate, “I don’t want to be perched right up there, so far
away.”
“Why no!” said Owen. “We’re much better where we are, in our ‘Sun,’
which isn’t going to shine a great deal after all.”
The sky was cloudy, preparing for the rainy season.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon, and the crowd was filling
in, but still only occupied patches of the bare concrete. The lower
tiers were reserved, so the bulk of the people sat in the midway
levels, and gentry like our trio were more or less isolated.
But the audience was already a mob, mostly of fattish town men in black
tight suits and little straw hats, and a mixing-in of the dark-faced
labourers in big hats. The men in black suits were probably employees
and clerks and factory hands. Some had brought their women, in sky-blue
chiffon with brown chiffon hats and faces powdered to look like white
marshmallows. Some were families with two or three children.
The fun began. The game was to snatch the hard straw hat off some
fellow’s head, and send it skimming away down the slope of humanity,
where some smart bounder down below would catch it and send it skimming
across in another direction. There were shouts of jeering pleasure
from the mass, which rose almost to a yell as seven straw hats were
skimming, meteor-like, at one moment across the slope of people.
“Look at that!” said Owen. “Isn’t that fun!”
“No,” said Kate, her little _alter ego_ speaking out for once, in spite
of her will-to-happiness. “No, I don’t like it. I really hate common
people.”
As a socialist, Owen disapproved, and as a happy man, he was
disconcerted. Because his own real self, as far as he had any left,
hated common rowdiness just as much as Kate did.
“It’s awfully smart though!” he said, trying to laugh in sympathy with
the mob. “There now, see that!”
“Yes, it’s quite smart, but I’m glad it’s not my hat,” said Villiers.
“Oh, it’s all in the game,” said Owen largely.
But he was uneasy. He was wearing a big straw hat of native make,
conspicuous in the comparative isolation of the lower tiers. After a
lot of fidgeting, he took off this hat and put it on his knees. But
unfortunately he had a very definitely bald spot on a sunburnt head.
Behind, above, sat a dense patch of people in the unreserved section.
Already they were throwing things. _Bum!_ came an orange, aimed at
Owen’s bald spot, and hitting him on the shoulder. He glared round
rather ineffectually through his big shell spectacles.
“I’d keep my hat on if I were you,” said the cold voice of Villiers.
“Yes, I think perhaps it’s wiser,” said Owen, with assumed nonchalance,
putting on his hat again.
Whereupon a banana skin rattled on Villiers’ tidy and ladylike little
panama. He glared round coldly, like a bird that would stab with its
beak if it got the chance, but which would fly away at the first real
menace.
“How I detest them!” said Kate.
A diversion was created by the entrance, opposite, of the military
bands, with their silver and brass instruments under their arms.
There were three sets. The chief band climbed and sat on the right,
in the big bare tract of concrete reserved for the Authorities. These
musicians wore dark grey uniforms trimmed with rose colour, and made
Kate feel almost re-assured, as if it were Italy and not Mexico City.
A silver band in pale buff uniforms sat opposite our party, high up
across the hollow distance, and still a third “musica” threaded away
to the left, on the remote scattered hillside of the amphitheatre. The
newspapers had said that the President would attend. But the Presidents
are scarce at bull-fights in Mexico, nowadays.
There sat the bands, in as much pomp as they could muster, but they
did not begin to play. Great crowds now patched the slopes, but there
were still bare tracts, especially in the Authorities’ section. Only
a little distance above Kate’s row was a mass of people, as it were
impending; a very uncomfortable sensation.
It was three o’clock, and the crowds had a new diversion. The bands,
due to strike up at three, still sat there in lordly fashion, sounding
not a note.
“La musica! La musica!” shouted the mob, with the voice of mob
authority. They were the People, and the revolutions had been their
revolutions, and they had won them all. The bands were their bands,
present for their amusement.
But the bands were military bands, and it was the army which had won
all the revolutions. So the revolutions were their revolutions, and
they were present for their own glory alone.
_Musica pagada toca mal tono._
Spasmodically, the insolent yelling of the mob rose and subsided. _La
musica! La musica!_ The shout became brutal and violent. Kate always
remembered it. _La musica!_ The band peacocked its nonchalance. The
shouting was a great yell: the degenerate mob of Mexico City!
At length, at its own leisure, the band in grey with dark rose facings
struck up: crisp, martial, smart.
“That’s fine!” said Owen. “But that’s really good! And it’s the first
time I’ve heard a good band in Mexico, a band with any backbone.”
The music was smart, but it was brief. The band seemed scarcely
to have started, when the piece was over. The musicians took their
instruments from their mouths with a gesture of dismissal. They played
just to say they’d played, making it as short as possible.
_Musica pagada toca mal tono._
There was a ragged interval, then the silver band piped up. And at last
it was half-past three, or more.
Whereupon, at some given signal, the masses in the middle, unreserved
seats, suddenly burst and rushed down on to the lowest, reserved seats.
It was a crash like a burst reservoir, and the populace in black Sunday
suits poured down round and about our astonished, frightened trio. And
in two minutes it was over. Without any pushing or shoving. Everybody
careful, as far as possible, not to touch anybody else. You don’t elbow
your neighbour if he’s got a pistol on his hip and a knife at his
belly. So all the seats in the lower tiers filled in one rush, like the
flowing of water.
Kate now sat among the crowd. But her seat, fortunately, was above one
of the track-ways that went round the arena, so at least she would not
have anybody sitting between her knees.
Men went uneasily back and forth along this gangway past the feet,
wanting to get in next their friends, but never venturing to ask. Three
seats away, on the same row, sat a Polish bolshevist fellow who had met
Owen. He leaned over and asked the Mexican next to Owen if he might
change seats with him. “No,” said the Mexican. “I’ll sit in my own
seat.”
“_Muy bien, Señor, muy bien!_” said the Pole.
The show did not begin, and men like lost mongrels still prowled back
and forth on the track that was next step down from Kate’s feet. They
began to take advantage of the ledge on which rested the feet of our
party, to squat there.
Down sat a heavy fellow, plumb between Owen’s knees.
“I hope they won’t sit on _my_ feet,” said Kate anxiously.
“We won’t let them,” said Villiers, with bird-like decision. “Why don’t
you shove him off, Owen? Shove him off?”
And Villiers glared at the Mexican fellow ensconced between Owen’s
legs. Owen flushed, and laughed uncomfortably. He was not good at
shoving people off. The Mexican began to look round at the three angry
white people.
And in another moment, another fat Mexican in a black suit and a little
black hat was lowering himself into Villiers’ foot-space. But Villiers
was too quick for him. He quickly brought his feet together under the
man’s sinking posterior, so the individual subsided uncomfortably on to
a pair of boots, and at the same time felt a hand shoving him quietly
but determinedly on the shoulder.
“No!” Villiers was saying in good American. “This place is for my
_feet_! Get off! You get off!”
And he continued, quietly but very emphatically, to push the Mexican’s
shoulder, to remove him.
The Mexican half raised himself, and looked round murderously at
Villiers. Physical violence was being offered, and the only retort was
death. But the young American’s face was so cold and abstract, only
the eyes showing a primitive, bird-like fire, that the Mexican was
nonplussed. And Kate’s eyes were blazing with Irish contempt.
The fellow struggled with his Mexican city-bred inferiority complex. He
muttered an explanation in Spanish that he was only sitting there for a
moment, till he could join his friends--waving his hand towards a lower
tier. Villiers did not understand a word, but he reiterated:
“I don’t care what it is. This place is for my _feet_, and you don’t
sit there.”
Oh, home of liberty! Oh, land of the free! Which of these two men was
to win in the struggle for conflicting liberty? Was the fat fellow
free to sit between Villiers’ feet, or was Villiers free to keep his
foot-space?
There are all sorts of inferiority complex, and the city Mexican has
a very strong sort, that makes him all the more aggressive, once it
is roused. Therefore the intruder lowered his posterior with a heavy,
sudden bounce on Villiers’ feet, and Villiers, out of very distaste,
had had to extricate his feet from such a compression. The young man’s
face went white at the nostrils, and his eyes took on that bright
abstract look of pure democratic anger. He pushed the fat shoulders
more decisively, repeating:
“Go away! Go away! You’re not to _sit_ there.”
The Mexican, on his own ground, and heavy on his own base, let himself
be shoved, oblivious.
“Insolence!” said Kate loudly. “Insolence!”
She glared at the fat back in the shoddily-fitting black coat, which
looked as if a woman dressmaker had made it, with loathing. How could
any man’s coat-collar look so home-made, so _en famille_!
Villiers remained with a fixed, abstract look on his thin face, rather
like a death’s head. All his American will was summoned up, the bald
eagle of the north bristling in every feather. The fellow _should not_
sit there.--But how to remove him?
The young man sat tense with will to annihilate his beetle-like
intruder, and Kate used all her Irish malice to help him.
“Don’t you wonder who was his tailor?” she asked, with a flicker in her
voice.
Villiers looked at the femalish black coat of the Mexican, and made an
arch grimace at Kate.
“I should say he hadn’t one. Perhaps did it himself.”
“Very likely!” Kate laughed venomously.
It was too much. The man got up and betook himself, rather diminished,
to another spot.
“Triumph!” said Kate. “Can’t you do the same, Owen?”
Owen laughed uncomfortably, glancing down at the man between his knees
as he might glance at a dog with rabies, when it had its back to him.
“Apparently not yet, unfortunately,” he said, with some constraint,
turning his nose away again from the Mexican, who was using him as a
sort of chair-back.
There was an exclamation. Two horsemen in gay uniforms and bearing
long staffs had suddenly ridden into the ring. They went round the
arena, then took up their posts, sentry-wise, on either side the tunnel
entrance through which they had come in.
In marched a little column of four toreadors wearing tight uniforms
plastered with silver embroidery. They divided, and marched smartly in
opposite directions, two and two, around the ring, till they came to
the place facing the section of the Authorities, where they made their
salute.
So this was a bull-fight! Kate already felt a chill of disgust.
In the seats of the Authorities were very few people, and certainly no
sparkling ladies in high tortoise-shell combs and lace mantillas. A few
common-looking people, bourgeois with not much taste, and a couple of
officers in uniform. The President had not come.
There was no glamour, no charm. A few commonplace people in an expanse
of concrete were the elect, and below, four grotesque and effeminate
looking fellows in tight, ornate clothes were the heroes. With
their rather fat posteriors and their squiffs of pigtails and their
clean-shaven faces, they looked like eunuchs, or women in tight pants,
these precious toreadors.
The last of Kate’s illusions concerning bull-fights came down with
a flop. These were the darlings of the mob? These were the gallant
toreadors! Gallant? Just about as gallant as assistants in a butcher’s
shop. Lady-killers? Ugh!
There was an Ah! of satisfaction from the mob. Into the ring suddenly
rushed a smallish, dun-coloured bull with long flourishing horns. He
ran out, blindly, as if from the dark, probably thinking that now he
was free. Then he stopped short, seeing he was not free, but surrounded
in an unknown way. He was utterly at a loss.
A toreador came forward and switched out a pink cloak like a fan not
far from the bull’s nose. The bull gave a playful little prance, neat
and pretty, and charged mildly on the cloak. The toreador switched the
cloak over the animal’s head, and the neat little bull trotted on round
the ring, looking for a way to get out.
Seeing the wooden barrier around the arena, finding he was able to look
over it, he thought he might as well take the leap. So over he went
into the corridor or passage-way which circled the ring, and in which
stood the servants of the arena.
Just as nimbly, these servants vaulted over the barrier into the arena,
that was now bull-less.
The bull in the gangway trotted inquiringly round till he came to an
opening on to the arena again. So back he trotted into the ring.
And back into the gangway vaulted the servants, where they stood again
to look on.
The bull trotted waveringly and somewhat irritated. The toreadors waved
their cloaks at him, and he swerved on. Till his vague course took him
to where one of the horsemen with lances sat motionless on his horse.
Instantly, in a pang of alarm, Kate noticed that the horse was thickly
blindfolded with a black cloth. Yes, and so was the horse on which sat
the other picador.
The bull trotted suspiciously up to the motionless horse bearing the
rider with the long pole; a lean old horse that would never move till
Doomsday, unless someone shoved it.
O shades of Don Quixote! Oh four Spanish horsemen of the Apocalypse!
This was surely one of them.
The picador pulled his feeble horse round slowly, to face the bull, and
slowly he leaned forward and shoved his lance-point into the bull’s
shoulder. The bull, as if the horse were a great wasp that had stung
him deep, suddenly lowered his head in a jerk of surprise and lifted
his horns straight up into the horse’s abdomen. And without more ado,
over went horse and rider, like a tottering monument upset.
The rider scrambled from under the horse and went running away with his
lance. The old horse, in complete dazed amazement, struggled to rise,
as if overcome with dumb incomprehension. And the bull, with a red
place on his shoulder welling a trickle of dark blood, stood looking
around in equally hopeless amazement.
But the wound was hurting. He saw the queer sight of the horse half
reared from the ground, trying to get to its feet. And he smelled blood
and bowels.
So rather vaguely, as if not quite knowing what he ought to do, the
bull once more lowered his head and pushed his sharp, flourishing horns
in the horse’s belly, working them up and down inside there with a sort
of vague satisfaction.
Kate had never been taken so completely by surprise in all her life.
She had still cherished some idea of a gallant show. And before she
knew where she was, she was watching a bull whose shoulders trickled
blood goring his horns up and down inside the belly of a prostrate and
feebly plunging old horse.
The shock almost overpowered her. She had come for a gallant show. This
she had paid to see. Human cowardice and beastliness, a smell of blood,
a nauseous whiff of bursten bowels! She turned her face away.
When she looked again, it was to see the horse feebly and dazedly
walking out of the ring, with a great ball of its own entrails hanging
out of its abdomen and swinging reddish against its own legs as it
automatically moved.
And once more, the shock of amazement almost made her lose
consciousness. She heard the confused small applause of amusement from
the mob. And that Pole, to whom Owen had introduced her, leaned over
and said to her, in horrible English:
“Now, Miss Leslie, you are seeing Life! Now you will have something to
write about, in your letters to England.”
She looked at his unwholesome face in complete repulsion, and wished
Owen would not introduce her to such sordid individuals.
She looked at Owen. His nose had a sharp look, like a little boy who
may make himself sick, but who is watching at the shambles with all his
eyes, knowing it is forbidden.
Villiers, the younger generation, looked intense and abstract, getting
the sensation. He would not even feel sick. He was just getting the
thrill of it, without emotion, coldly and scientifically, but very
intent.
And Kate felt a real pang of hatred against this Americanism which is
coldly and unscrupulously sensational.
“Why doesn’t the horse move? Why doesn’t it run away from the bull?”
she asked in repelled amazement, of Owen.
Owen cleared his throat.
“Didn’t you see? It was blindfolded,” he said.
“But can’t it _smell_ the bull?” she asked.
“Apparently not.--They bring the old wrecks here to finish them off.--I
know it’s awful, but it’s part of the game.”
How Kate hated phrases like “part of the game.” What do they mean,
anyhow! She felt utterly humiliated, crushed by a sense of human
indecency, cowardice of two-legged humanity. In this “brave” show she
felt nothing but reeking cowardice. Her breeding and her natural pride
were outraged.
The ring servants had cleaned away the mess and spread new sand. The
toreadors were playing with the bull, unfurling their foolish cloaks
at arm’s length. And the animal, with the red sore running on his
shoulder, foolishly capered and ran from one rag to the other, here and
there.
For the first time, a bull seemed to her a fool. She had always been
afraid of bulls, fear tempered with reverence of the great Mithraic
beast. And now she saw how stupid he was, in spite of his long horns
and his massive maleness. Blindly and stupidly he ran at the rag, each
time, and the toreadors skipped like fat-hipped girls showing off.
Probably it needed skill and courage, but it _looked_ silly.
Blindly and foolishly the bull ran ducking its horns each time at the
rag, just because the rag fluttered.
“Run at the _men_, idiot!” said Kate aloud, in her overwrought
impatience. “Run at the men, not at the cloaks.”
“They never do, isn’t it curious!” replied Villiers, with cool
scientific interest. “They say no toreador will face a cow, because
a cow always goes for _him_ instead of the cloak. If a bull did that
there’d be no bull-fights. Imagine it!”
She was bored now. The nimbleness and the skipping tricks of the
toreadors bored her. Even when one of the banderilleros reared himself
on tiptoe, his plump posterior much in evidence, and from his erectness
pushed two razor-sharp darts with frills at the top into the bull’s
shoulder, neatly and smartly, Kate felt no admiration. One of the darts
fell out, anyway, and the bull ran on with the other swinging and
waggling in another bleeding place.
The bull now wanted to get away, really. He leaped the fence again,
quickly, into the attendants’ gangway. The attendants vaulted over into
the arena. The bull trotted in the corridor, then nicely leaped back.
The attendants vaulted once more into the corridor. The bull trotted
round the arena, ignoring the toreadors, and leaped once more into the
gangway. Over vaulted the attendants.
Kate was beginning to be amused, now that the mongrel men were skipping
for safety.
The bull was in the ring again, running from cloak to cloak, foolishly.
A banderillero was getting ready with two more darts. But first another
picador put nobly forward on his blindfolded old horse. The bull
ignored this little lot too, and trotted away again, as if all the time
looking for something, excitedly looking for something. He stood still
and excitedly pawed the ground, as if he wanted something. A toreador
advanced and swung a cloak. Up pranced the bull, tail in air, and with
a prancing bound charged--upon the rag, of course. The toreador skipped
round with a ladylike skip, then tripped to another point. Very pretty!
The bull, in the course of his trotting and prancing and pawing, had
once more come near the bold picador. The bold picador shoved forward
his ancient steed, leaned forwards, and pushed the point of his lance
in the bull’s shoulder. The bull looked up, irritated and arrested.
What the devil!
He saw the horse and rider. The horse stood with that feeble
monumentality of a milk horse, patient as if between the shafts,
waiting while his master delivered the milk. How strange it must have
been to him when the bull, giving a little bound like a dog, ducked its
head and dived its horns upwards into his belly, rolling him over with
his rider as one might push over a hat-stand.
The bull looked with irritable wonder at the incomprehensible medley
of horse and rider kicking on the ground a few yards away from him.
He drew near to investigate. The rider scrambled out and bolted. And
the toreadors running up with their cloaks, drew off the bull. He went
caracoling round, charging at more silk-lined rags.
Meanwhile an attendant had got the horse on its feet again, and was
leading it totteringly into the gangway and round to the exit, under
the Authorities. The horse crawled slowly. The bull, running from
pink cloak to red cloak, rag to rag, and never catching anything, was
getting excited, impatient of the rag game. He jumped once more into
the gangway and started running, alas, on towards where the wounded
horse was still limping its way to the exit.
Kate knew what was coming. Before she could look away, the bull had
charged on the limping horse from behind, the attendants had fled,
the horse was up-ended absurdly, one of the bull’s horns between his
hind legs and deep in his inside. Down went the horse, collapsing in
front, but his rear was still heaved up, with the bull’s horn working
vigorously up and down inside him, while he lay on his neck all
twisted. And a huge heap of bowels coming out. And a nauseous stench.
And the cries of pleased amusement among the crowd.
This pretty event took place on Kate’s side of the ring, and not far
from where she sat, below her. Most of the people were on their feet
craning to look down over the edge to watch the conclusion of this
delightful spectacle.
Kate knew if she saw any more she would go into hysterics. She was
getting beside herself.
She looked swiftly at Owen, who looked like a guilty boy spell-bound.
“I’m going!” she said, rising.
“Going!” he cried, in wonder and dismay, his flushed face and his bald
flushed forehead a picture, looking up at her.
But she had already turned, and was hurrying away towards the mouth of
the exit-tunnel.
Owen came running after her, flustered, and drawn in all directions.
“Really going!” he said in chagrin, as she came to the high, vaulted
exit-tunnel.
“I must. I’ve got to get out,” she cried. “Don’t you come.”
“Really!” he echoed, torn all ways.
The scene was creating a very hostile attitude in the audience. To
leave the bull-fight is a national insult.
“Don’t come! Really! I shall take a tram-car,” she said hurriedly.
“Really! Do you really think you’ll be all right?”
“Perfectly. You stay. Goodbye! I can’t smell any more of this stink.”
He turned like Orpheus looking back into hell, and wavering made
towards his seat again.
It was not so easy, because many people were now on their feet and
crowding to the exit vault. The rain which had sputtered a few drops
suddenly fell in a downward splash. People were crowding to shelter;
but Owen, unheeding, fought his way back to his seat, and sat in his
rain-coat with the rain pouring on his bald head. He was as nearly in
hysterics as Kate. But he was convinced that this was life. He was
seeing LIFE, and what can an American do more!
“They might just as well sit and enjoy somebody else’s diarrhœa” was
the thought that passed through Kate’s distracted but still Irish mind.
There she was in the great concrete archway under the stadium, with the
lousy press of the audience crowding in after her. Facing outwards, she
saw the straight downpour of the rain, and a little beyond, the great
wooden gates that opened to the free street. Oh to be out, to be out of
this, to be free!
But it was pouring tropical rain. The little shoddy soldiers were
pressing back under the brick gateway, for shelter. And the gates were
almost shut. Perhaps they would not let her out. Oh horror!
She stood hovering in front of the straight downpour. She would have
dashed out, but for the restraining thought of what she would look like
when her thin gauze dress was plastered to her body by drenching rain.
On the brink she hovered.
Behind her, from the inner end of the stadium tunnel, the people were
surging in in waves. She stood horrified and alone, looking always out
to freedom. The crowd was in a state of excitement, cut off in its
sport, on tenterhooks lest it should miss anything. Thank goodness the
bulk stayed near the inner end of the vault. She hovered near the outer
end, ready to bolt at any moment.
The rain crashed steadily down.
She waited on the outer verge, as far from the people as possible. Her
face had that drawn, blank look of a woman near hysterics. She could
not get out of her eyes the last picture of the horse lying twisted on
its neck with its hind-quarters hitched up and the horn of the bull
goring slowly and rhythmically in its vitals. The horse so utterly
passive and grotesque. And all its bowels slipping on to the ground.
But a new terror was the throng inside the tunnel entrance. The big
arched place was filling up, but still the crowd did not come very near
her. They pressed towards the inner exit.
They were mostly loutish men in city clothes, the mongrel men of a
mongrel city. Two men stood making water against the wall, in the
interval of their excitement. One father had kindly brought his little
boys to the show, and stood in fat, sloppy paternal benevolence above
them. They were pale mites, the elder about ten years old, highly
dressed up in Sunday clothes. And badly they needed protecting from
that paternal benevolence, for they were oppressed, peaked and a bit
wan from the horrors. To those children at least bull-fights did
not come natural, but would be an acquired taste. There were other
children, however, and fat mammas in black satin that was greasy and
grey at the edges with an overflow of face-powder. These fat mammas
had a pleased, excited look in their eyes, almost sexual, and very
distasteful in contrast to their soft passive bodies.
Kate shivered a little in her thin frock, for the ponderous rain had
a touch of ice. She stared through the curtain of water at the big
rickety gates of the enclosure surrounding the amphitheatre, at the
midget soldiers cowering in their shoddy, pink-white cotton uniforms,
and at the glimpse of the squalid street outside, now running with
dirty brown streams. The vendors had all taken refuge, in dirty-white
clusters, in the pulque shops, one of which was sinisterly named: _A
Ver que Sale_.
She was afraid more of the repulsiveness than of anything. She had been
in many cities of the world, but Mexico had an underlying ugliness, a
sort of squalid evil, which made Naples seem debonair in comparison.
She was afraid, she dreaded the thought that anything might really
touch her in this town, and give her the contagion of its crawling sort
of evil. But she knew that the one thing she must do was to keep her
head.
A little officer in uniform, wearing a big, pale-blue cape, made his
way through the crowd. He was short, dark, and had a little black beard
like an imperial. He came through the people from the inner entrance,
and cleared his way with a quiet, silent unobtrusiveness, yet with the
peculiar heavy Indian momentum. Even touching the crowd delicately with
his gloved hand, and murmuring almost inaudibly the _Con permiso!_
formula, he seemed to be keeping himself miles away from contact. He
was brave too: because there was just the chance some lout might shoot
him because of his uniform. The people knew him too. Kate could tell
that by the flicker of a jeering, self-conscious smile that passed
across many faces, and the exclamation: “General Viedma! Don Cipriano!”
He came towards Kate, saluting and bowing with a brittle shyness.
“I am General Viedma. Did you wish to leave? Let me get you an
automobile,” he said, in very English English, that sounded strange
from his dark face, and a little stiff on his soft tongue.
His eyes were dark, quick, with the glassy darkness that she found so
wearying. But they were tilted up with a curious slant, under arched
black brows. It gave him an odd look of detachment, as if he looked
at life with raised brows. His manner was superficially assured,
underneath perhaps half-savage, shy and farouche, and deprecating.
“Thank you so much,” she said.
He called to a soldier in the gateway.
“I will send you in the automobile of my friend,” he said. “It will be
better than a taxi. You don’t like the bull-fight?”
“No! Horrible!” said Kate. “But do get me a yellow taxi. That is quite
safe.”
“Well, the man has gone for the automobile. You are English, yes?”
“Irish,” said Kate.
“Ah Irish!” he replied, with the flicker of a smile.
“You speak English awfully well,” she said.
“Yes! I was educated there. I was in England seven years.”
“Were you! My name is Mrs Leslie.”
“Ah Leslie! I knew James Leslie in Oxford. He was killed in the war.”
“Yes. That was my husband’s brother.”
“Oh really!”
“How small the world is!” said Kate.
“Yes indeed!” said the general.
There was a pause.
“And the gentlemen who are with you, they are--?”
“American,” said Kate.
“Ah Americans! Ah yes!”
“The older one is my cousin--Owen Rhys.”
“Owen Rhys! Ah yes! I think I saw in the newspaper you were here in
town--visiting Mexico.”
He spoke in a peculiar quiet voice, rather suppressed, and his quick
eyes glanced at her, and at his surroundings, like those of a man
perpetually suspecting an ambush. But his face had a certain silent
hostility, under his kindness. He was saving his nation’s reputation.
“They did put in a not very complimentary note,” said Kate. “I think
they don’t like it that we stay in the Hotel San Remo. It is too poor
and foreign. But we are none of us rich, and we like it better than
those other places.”
“The Hotel San Remo? Where is that?”
“In the Avenida del Peru. Won’t you come and see us there, and meet my
cousin and Mr Thompson?”
“Thank you! Thank you! I hardly ever go out. But I will call if I
may, and then perhaps you will all come to see me at the house of my
friend, Señor Ramón Carrasco.”
“We should like to,” said Kate.
“Very well. And shall I call, then?”
She told him a time, and added:
“You mustn’t be surprised at the hotel. It _is_ small, and nearly
all Italians. But we tried some of the big ones, and there is such a
feeling of lowness about them, awful! I can’t stand the feeling of
prostitution. And then the cheap insolence of the servants. No, my
little San Remo may be rough, but it’s kindly and human, and it’s not
rotten. It is like Italy as I always knew it, decent, and with a bit of
human generosity. I do think Mexico City is evil, underneath.”
“Well,” he said, “the hotels are bad. It is unfortunate, but the
foreigners seem to make the Mexicans worse than they are, naturally.
And Mexico, or something in it, certainly makes the foreigners worse
than they are at home.”
He spoke with a certain bitterness.
“Perhaps we should all stay away,” she said.
“Perhaps!” he said, lifting his shoulders a little. “But I don’t think
so.”
He relapsed into a slightly blank silence. Peculiar how his feelings
flushed over him, anger, diffidence, wistfulness, assurance, and an
anger again, all in little flushes, and somewhat naïve.
“It doesn’t rain so much,” said Kate. “When will the car come?”
“It is here now. It has been waiting some time,” he replied.
“Then I’ll go,” she said.
“Well,” he replied, looking at the sky. “It is still raining, and your
dress is very thin. You must take my cloak.”
“Oh!” she said, shrinking. “It is only two yards.”
“It is still raining fairly fast. Better either wait, or let me lend
you my cloak.”
He swung out of his cloak with a quick little movement, and held it up
to her. Almost without realising, she turned her shoulders to him, and
he put the cape on her. She caught it round her, and ran out to the
gate, as if escaping. He followed, with a light yet military stride.
The soldiers saluted rather slovenly, and he responded briefly.
A not very new Fiat stood at the gate, with a chauffeur in a short
red-and-black check coat. The chauffeur opened the door. Kate slipped
off the cloak as she got in, and handed it back. He stood with it over
his arm.
“Goodbye!” she said. “Thank you ever so much. And we shall see you on
Tuesday. Do put your cape on.”
“On Tuesday, yes. Hotel San Remo. Calle de Peru,” he added to the
chauffeur. Then turning again to Kate: “The hotel, no?”
“Yes,” she said, and instantly changed. “No, take me to Sanborn’s,
where I can sit in a corner and drink tea to comfort me.”
“To comfort you after the bull-fight?” he said, with another quick
smile. “To Sanborn’s, Gonzalez.”
He saluted and bowed and closed the door. The car started.
Kate sat back, breathing relief. Relief to get away from that beastly
place. Relief even to get away from that nice man. He was awfully
nice. But he made her feel she wanted to get away from him too. There
was that heavy, black Mexican fatality about him, that put a burden
on her. His quietness, and his peculiar assurance, almost aggressive;
and at the same time, a nervousness, an uncertainty. His heavy sort of
gloom, and yet his quick, naïve, childish smile. Those black eyes, like
black jewels, that you couldn’t look into, and which were so watchful;
yet which, perhaps, were waiting for some sign of recognition and of
warmth! Perhaps!
She felt again, as she felt before, that Mexico lay in her destiny
almost as a doom. Something so heavy, so oppressive, like the folds of
some huge serpent that seemed as if it could hardly raise itself.
She was glad to get to her corner in the tea-house, to feel herself in
the cosmopolitan world once more, to drink her tea and eat strawberry
shortcake and try to forget.
CHAP: II. TEA-PARTY IN TLACOLULA.
Owen came back to the hotel at about half-past six, tired, excited, a
little guilty, and a good deal distressed at having let Kate go alone.
And now the whole thing was over, rather dreary in spirit.
“Oh, how did you get on?” he cried, the moment he saw her, afraid
almost like a boy of his own sin of omission.
“I got on perfectly. Went to Sanborn’s for tea, and had strawberry
shortcake--so good!”
“Oh, good for you!” he laughed in relief. “Then you weren’t _too_
much overcome! I’m so glad. I had such awful qualms after I’d let
you go. Imagined all the things that are supposed to happen in
Mexico--chauffeur driving away with you into some horrible remote
region, and robbing you and all that--but then I _knew_ really you’d
be all right. Oh, the time I had--the rain!--and the people throwing
things at my bald patch--and those horses--wasn’t that horrible?--I
wonder I’m still alive.” And he laughed with tired excitement, putting
his hand over his stomach and rolling his eyes.
“Aren’t you drenched?” she said.
“Drenched!” he replied. “Or at least I was. I’ve dried off quite a lot.
My rain-coat is no good--I don’t know why I don’t buy another. Oh, but
what a time! The rain _streaming_ on my bald head, and the crowd behind
throwing oranges at it. Then simply _gored_ in my inside about letting
you go alone. Yet it was the only bull-fight I shall _ever_ see. I came
then before it was over. Bud wouldn’t come. I suppose he’s still there.”
“Was it as awful as the beginning?” she asked.
“No! No! It wasn’t. The first was worst--that horse-shambles. Oh, they
killed two more horses. And _five_ bulls! Yes, a regular butchery. But
some of it was very neat work; those toreadors did some very pretty
feats. One stood on his cloak while a bull charged him.”
“I think,” interrupted Kate, “if I knew that some of those toreadors
were going to be tossed by the bull, I’d go to see another bull-fight.
Ugh, how I detest them! The longer I live the more loathesome the human
species becomes to me. _How_ much nicer the bulls are!”
“Oh, quite!” said Owen vaguely. “Exactly. But still there was some very
skilful work, very pretty. Really very plucky.”
“Yah!” snarled Kate. “Plucky! They with all their knives and their
spears and cloaks and darts--and they know just how a bull will behave.
It’s just a performance of human beings torturing animals, with those
common fellows showing off, how smart they are at hurting a bull. Dirty
little boys maiming flies--that’s what they are. Only grown-up, they
are bastards, not boys. Oh, _I_ wish I could be a bull, just for five
minutes. Bastard, that’s what I call it!”
“Well!” laughed Owen uneasily. “It is rather.”
“Call that manliness!” cried Kate. “Then thank God a million times that
I’m a woman, and know poltroonery and dirty-mindedness when I see it.”
Again Owen laughed uncomfortably.
“Go upstairs and change,” she said. “You’ll die.”
“I think I’d better. I feel I might die any minute, as a matter of
fact. Well, till dinner then. I’ll tap at your door in half an hour.”
Kate sat trying to sew, but her hand trembled. She could not get the
bull-ring out of her mind, and something felt damaged in her inside.
She straightened herself, and sighed. She was really very angry, too,
with Owen. He was naturally so sensitive, and so kind. But he had the
insidious modern disease of tolerance. He must tolerate everything,
even a thing that revolted him. He would call it Life! He would feel he
had _lived_ this afternoon. Greedy even for the most sordid sensations.
Whereas _she_ felt as if she had eaten something which was giving her
ptomaine poisoning. If _that_ was life!
Ah men, men! They all had this soft rottenness of the soul, a strange
perversity which made even the squalid, repulsive things seem part of
_life_ to them. Life! And what is life? A louse lying on its back and
kicking? Ugh!
At about seven o’clock Villiers came tapping. He looked wan, peaked,
but like a bird that had successfully pecked a bellyful of garbage.
“Oh it was GREAT!” he said, lounging on one hip. “GREAT! They killed
_seven_ BULLS.”
“No calves, unfortunately,” said Kate, suddenly furious again.
He paused to consider the point, then laughed. Her anger was another
slight sensational amusement to him.
“No, no calves,” he said. “The calves have come home to be fattened.
But several more horses after you’d gone.”
“I don’t want to hear,” she said coldly.
He laughed, feeling rather heroic. After all, one must be able to look
on blood and bursten bowels calmly: even with a certain thrill. The
young hero! But there were dark rings round his eyes, like a debauch.
“Oh but!” he began, making a rather coy face. “Don’t you want to hear
what I did after! I went to the hotel of the chief toreador, and saw
him lying on his bed all dressed up, smoking a fat cigar. Rather like a
male Venus who is never undressed. So funny!”
“Who took you there?” she said.
“That Pole, you remember?--and a Spaniard who talked English.
The toreador was great, lying on his bed in all his get-up,
except his shoes, and quite a crowd of men going over it all
again--_wawawawawa!_--you never heard such a row!”
“Aren’t you wet?” said Kate.
“No, not at all. I’m perfectly dry. You see I had my coat. Only my
head, of course. My poor hair was all streaked down my face like
streaks of dye.” He wiped his thin hair across his head with rather
self-conscious humour. “Hasn’t Owen come in?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s changing.”
“Well I’ll go up. I suppose it’s nearly supper time. Oh yes, it’s
_after_!” At which discovery he brightened as if he’d received a gift.
“Oh by the way, how did you get on? Rather mean of us to let you go all
alone like that,” he said, as he hung poised in the open doorway.
“Not at all,” she said. “You wanted to stay. And I can look after
myself, at my time of life.”
“We-ell!” he said, with an American drawl. “Maybe you can!” Then
he gave a little laugh. “But you _should_ have seen all those men
rehearsing in that bedroom, throwing their arms about, and the toreador
lying on the bed like Venus with a fat cigar, listening to her lovers.”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Kate.
Villiers disappeared with a wicked little laugh.
And as she sat her hands trembled with outrage and passion. A-moral!
How could one be a-moral, or non-moral, when one’s soul was revolted!
How could one be like these Americans, picking over the garbage of
sensations, and gobbling it up like carrion birds. At the moment, both
Owen and Villiers seemed to her like carrion birds, repulsive.
She felt, moreover, that they both hated her first because she was a
woman. It was all right so long as she fell in with them in every way.
But the moment she stood out against them in the least, they hated her
mechanically for the very fact that she was a woman. They hated her
womanness.
And in this Mexico, with its great under-drift of squalor and heavy
reptile-like evil, it was hard for her to bear up.