spasms of voluptuousness and its lifelong lustful enjoyment of its own
isolated, isolated individuality. Voluptuously to enjoy a contact. Then
with a lustful feline gratification, to break the contact, and roam
alone in a sense of power. Each time, to seize a sort of power, purring
upon her own isolated individuality.
She knew so many women like that. They played with love and intimacy
as a cat with a mouse. In the end, they quickly ate up the love mouse,
then trotted off with a full belly and a voluptuous sense of power.
Only sometimes the love-mouse refused to be digested, and there was
lifelong dyspepsia. Or, like Cipriano, turned into a sort of serpent,
that reared and looked at her with glittering eyes, then slid away into
the void, leaving her blank, the sense of power gone out of her.
Another thing, she had observed, with a touch of horror. One after
the other, her women “friends,” the powerful love-women, at the age
of forty, forty-five, fifty, they lost all their charm and allure,
and turned into real grimalkins, greyish, avid, and horrifying,
prowling around looking for prey that became scarcer and scarcer. As
human beings they went to pieces. And they remained these grey-ribbed
grimalkins, dressed in elegant clothes, the grimalkin howl even passing
into their smart chatter.
Kate was a wise woman, wise enough to take a lesson.
It is all very well for a woman to cultivate her ego, her
individuality. It is all very well for her to despise love, or to love
love as a cat loves a mouse, that it plays with as long as possible,
before devouring it to vivify her own individuality and voluptuously
fill the belly of her own ego.
“Woman has suffered far more from the suppression of her ego than from
sex suppression,” says a woman writer, and it may well be true. But
look, only look at the modern women of fifty and fifty-five, those who
have cultivated their ego to the top of their bent! Usually, they are
grimalkins to fill one with pity or with repulsion.
Kate knew all this. And as she sat alone in her villa, she remembered
it again. She had had her fling, even here in Mexico. And these men
would let her go again. She was no prisoner. She could carry off any
spoil she had captured.
And then what! To sit in a London drawing-room, and add another to all
the grimalkins? To let the peculiar grimalkin-grimace come on her face,
the most weird grimalkin-twang come into her voice? Horror! Of all the
horrors, perhaps the grimalkin women, her contemporaries, were the most
repellent to her. Even the horrid old tom-cat men of the civilised roof
gutters, did not fill her with such sickly dread.
“No!” she said to herself. “My ego and my individuality are not worth
_that_ ghastly price. I’d better abandon some of my ego, and sink some
of my individuality, rather than go like that.”
After all, when Cipriano touched her caressively, all her body
flowered. That was the greater sex, that could fill all the world with
lustre, and which she dared not think about, its power was so much
greater than her own will. But on the other hand when she spread the
wings of her own ego, and sent forth her own spirit, the world could
look very wonderful to her, when she was alone. But after a while, the
wonder faded, and a sort of jealous emptiness set in.
“I must have both,” she said to herself. “I must not recoil against
Cipriano and Ramón, they make my blood blossom in my body. I say
they are limited. But then one must be limited. If one tries to be
unlimited, one becomes horrible. Without Cipriano to touch me and limit
me and submerge my will, I shall become a horrible, elderly female.
I ought to _want_ to be limited. I ought to be _glad_ if a man will
limit me with a strong will and a warm touch. Because what I call my
greatness, and the vastness of the Lord behind me, lets me fall through
a hollow floor of nothingness, once there is no man’s hand there, to
hold me warm and limited. Ah yes! Rather than become elderly and a bit
grisly, I will make my submission; as far as I need, and no further.”
She called a man-servant, and set off down the lake in a row-boat.
It was a very lovely November morning, the world had not yet gone
dry again. In the sharp folds of the steep mountain slopes to the
north-east, the shadows were pure corn-flower blue. Below was the
lingering delicacy of green, already drying. The lake was full still,
but subsided, and the water-hyacinth had drifted away. Birds flew low
in the stillness. It was very full and still, in the strong, hot light.
Some maize-fields showed sere stubble, but the palo blanco flowers were
out, and the mesquite bushes were frail green, and there were wafts of
perfume from the little yellow flower-balls, like cassia.
“Why should I go away!” said Kate. “Why should I see the ’buses on the
mud of Piccadilly, on Christmas Eve, and the crowds of people on the
wet pavements, under the big shops like great caves of light? I may
as well stay here, where my soul is less dreary. I shall have to tell
Ramón I am sorry for the things I said. I won’t carp at them. After
all, there is another kind of vastness here, with the sound of drums,
and the cry of Quetzalcoatl.”
Already she could see the yellow and reddish, tower-like upper story of
Jamiltepec, and the rich, deep fall of magenta bougainvillea, from the
high wall, with the pale spraying of plumbago flowers, and many loose
creamy-coloured roses.
“Estan tocando!” said her boatman quietly, looking up at her with dark,
pregnant eyes.
He had heard already the sound of the light drum, at Jamiltepec. The
boat rowed softly: and there came a sound of a man’s voice singing in
the morning.
Her boatman lifted an oar, as a signal to the house. And as the boat
rounded the curve into the basin, a man-servant in white clothes came
running down to the little jetty. In the changeless sunshine was a
scent, perhaps of dattura and of roses, and an eternal Mexican silence,
which the noise of the drum, and the voice of singing, did not disturb.
“Is Don Cipriano here?” asked Kate.
“Està!” murmured the man, with a slight motion towards Ramón’s balcony,
whence the singing came. “Shall I say you have come?”
He did not lift his voice above the murmur.
“No!” said Kate. “I shall sit here in the garden a while, before I come
up.”
“Then I will leave open the door,” said the man, “and you can come up
when you will.”
Kate sat on a seat under a big tree. A creeping plant, with great
snake-like cords and big sulphur-and-brown trumpet flowers, hung above.
She listened to the singing. It was Ramón, teaching one of the singers.
Ramón had not a very good voice. He sang quietly, as if to the inner
air, with very beautiful, simple expression. But Kate could not catch
the words.
“Ya?” said Ramón, when he had finished.
“Ya, Patrón!” said the man, the singer.
And he began, in his strong, pure voice that caught at the very bowels,
to sing another of the Hymns.
“My way is not thy way, and thine is not mine.
But come, before we part
Let us separately go to the Morning Star,
And meet there.
I do not point you to my road, nor yet
Call: “Oh come!”
But the Star is the same for both of us,
Winsome.
The good ghost of me goes down the distance
To the Holy Ghost.
Oh you, in the tent of the cloven flame
Meet me, you I like most.
Each man his own way forever, but towards
The hoverer between;
Who opens his flame like a tent-flap,
As we slip in unseen.
A man cannot tread like a woman,
Nor a woman step out like a man.
The ghost of each through the leaves of shadow
Moves as it can.
But the Morning Star and the Evening Star
Pitch tents of flame
Where we foregather like gypsies, none knowing
How the other came.
I ask for nothing except to slip
In the tent of the Holy Ghost
And be there in the house of the cloven flame,
Guest of the Host.
Be with me there, my woman
Be bodily there.
Then let the flame wrap round us
Like a snare.
Be there along with me, oh men!
Reach across the hearth,
And laugh with me while the woman rests
For all we are worth.”
The man had sung this hymn over several times, halting and forgetting,
his pure, burning voice faltering out; then the low, rather husky voice
of Ramón, with a subtler intensity, coming in, as if heard from the
centre of a shell; then again the sudden ripping sound of the true
singer’s tenor, going like a flame through the blood.
Her mozo, a man-servant, had followed her into the garden, and sat at a
distance on his heels, under a tree, with his back to the trunk, like
a crouching shadow clothed in white. His toes spread dark and hard, in
his open huaraches, and the black braid of his hat-string hung against
his dark cheek. For the rest he was pure white, the white cotton tight
on his thighs.
When the singing had finished above, and the drum was silent, and even
the voices speaking in low tones, were silent, her mozo looked up at
Kate, with his black hat-string dangling at his chin, his black eyes
shining, and a timid sort of smile on his face.
“Està muy bien, Patróna?” he said shyly. “It is good, isn’t it,
Mistress?”
“It is very good,” she replied, with the infallible echo. But there
were conflicting feelings in her breast, and the man knew it.
He looked so young, when he smiled that gay, shy, excited little smile.
Something of the eternal child in him. But a child that could harden in
an instant into a savage man, revengeful and brutal. And a man always
fully sex-alive, for the moment innocent in the fulness of sex, not in
the absence. And Kate thought to herself, as she had thought before,
that there were more ways than one of “becoming again as a little
child.”
But the man had a sharp, watchful look in the corner of his eye: to see
if she were feeling some covert hostility. He wanted her to acquiesce
in the hymn, in the drum, in the whole mood. Like a child he wanted her
to acquiesce. But if she were going to be hostile, he would be quick to
be first in the hostility. Her hostile judgment would make a pure enemy
of him.
Ah, all men were alike!
At that moment the man stood up, with soft suddenness, and she heard
Cipriano’s voice from the balcony above:
“What is it, Lupe?”
“Està la Patróna,” answered the servant.
Kate rose to her feet and looked up. She saw the head and the naked
shoulders of Cipriano above the parapet of the balcony.
“I will come up,” she said.
And slowly she went through the great iron gates into the passage-way.
Lupe, following, bolted the doors behind her.
On the terrace above she found Ramón and Cipriano both with their upper
bodies naked, waiting for her in silence. She was embarrassed.
“I waited to hear the new hymn,” she said.
“And how does it seem to you?” said Ramón, in Spanish.
“I like it,” she said.
“Let us sit down,” said Ramón, still in Spanish. He and she sat in the
cane rocking-chairs: Cipriano stood by the wall of the terrace.
She had come to make a sort of submission: to say she didn’t want to go
away. But finding them both in the thick of their Quetzalcoatl mood,
with their manly breasts uncovered, she was not very eager to begin.
They made her feel like an intruder. She did not pause to realise that
she _was_ one.
“We don’t meet in your Morning Star, apparently, do we!” she said,
mocking, but with a slight quaver.
A deeper silence seemed suddenly to hold the two men.
“And I suppose a woman is really _de trop_, even there, when two men
are together.”
But she faltered a bit in the saying. Cipriano, she knew, was baffled
and stung when she taunted him.
Ramón answered her, with the gentleness that could come straight out of
his heart: but still in Spanish:
“Why, Cousin, what is it?”
Her lip quivered, as she suddenly said:
“I don’t really want to go away from you.”
Ramón looked swiftly at Cipriano, then said:
“I know you don’t.”
But the gentle protective tone of his voice only made Kate rebel again.
She brimmed over with sudden tears, crying:
“You don’t really want me.”
“Yes, I want you!--Verdad! Verdad!” exclaimed Cipriano, in his low,
secret, almost muttering voice.
And even amid her tears, Kate was thinking to herself: _What a fraud I
am! I know all the time it is I who don’t altogether want them. I want
myself to myself. But I can fool them so that they shan’t find out._
For she heard the hot, phallic passion in Cipriano’s voice.
Then came the voice of Ramón, like a chill:
“It is you who don’t want,” he said, in English this time. “You needn’t
commit yourself to _us_. Listen to your own best desire.”
“And if it tells me to go away?” she flashed, defiant through the end
of her tears.
“Then go! Oh certainly go!”
Suddenly her tears came afresh.
“I knew you didn’t really want me,” she wept.
Then Cipriano’s voice said, with a hot, furtive softness of persuasion:
“You are not his! He would not tell you!”
“That is very true,” said Ramón. “Don’t listen to me!”
He spoke in Spanish. And Kate glanced up sharply through her tears, to
see him going quietly, but swiftly, away.
She wiped her face, suddenly calm. Then she looked with wet eyes at
Cipriano. He was standing erect and alert, like a little fighting male,
and his eyes glowed black and uncannily as he met her wet, limpid
glance.
Yes, she was a bit afraid of him too, with his inhuman black eyes.
“You don’t want me to go, do you?” she pleaded.
A slow, almost foolish smile came over his face, and his body was
slightly convulsed. Then came his soft-tongued Indian speech, as if all
his mouth were soft, saying in Spanish, but with the “r” sound almost
lost:
“_Yo! Yo!_”--his eyebrows lifted with queer mock surprise, and a little
convulsion went through his body again. “_Te quiero mucho! Mucho te
quiero! Mucho! Mucho!_ I like you very much! Very much!”
It sounded so soft, so soft-tongued, of the soft, wet, hot blood, that
she shivered a little.
“You won’t let me go!” she said to him.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation, spelling, and italicization have
been standardized. Except for the errors listed below and the
standardization, spelling has been retained as originally published.
The following printer errors has been changed:
Page 12: “fellow esconced between” “fellow ensconced between”
Page 22: “came owards Kate” “came towards Kate”
Page 31: “wih a dead laugh” “with a dead laugh”
Page 63: “herself from wordly” “herself from worldly”
Page 65: “carressive, speaking” “caressive, speaking”
Page 80: “off into banalties” “off into banalities”
Page 88: “Orilla is an hoted” “Orilla is an hotel”
Page 93: “little handfulls from the” “little handfuls from the”
Page 100: “thunder annd wings” “thunder and wings”
Page 102: “go with Quetzacoatl.” “go with Quetzalcoatl.”
Page 126: “a torquoise ornament” “a turquoise ornament”
Page 143: “streets aften ten” “streets after ten”
Page 146: “horrible, horrrible” “horrible, horrible”
Page 155: “head, stupified and” “head, stupefied and”
Page 169: “posteriors hutched up” “posteriors hunched up”
Page 193: “my eyes twilight” “my eyes the twilight”
Page 210: “rest you head” “rest your head”
Page 216: “like a streeet lamp” “like a street lamp”
Page 256: “curiosly heavy with” “curiously heavy with”
Page 258: “_Halálá!_ he said.” “_Holálá!_ he said.”
Page 268: “One most disentangle” “One must disentangle”
Page 312: “Holà! You there!” “Holá! You there!”
Page 354: “Cipriona put over her” “Cipriano put over her”
Page 356: “acting an the helpless” “acting on the helpless”
Page 361: “stood a hugh dark figure” “stood a huge dark figure”
Page 390: “circling with sauve” “circling with suave”
Page 391: “ignominous drab uniform” “ignominious drab uniform”
Page 393: “black head aginst his” “black head against his”
Page 395: “living Hutzilopochtli” “living Huitzilopochtli”
Page 403: “began to clear” “began to sing clear”
Page 414: “in the electric fl” “in the electric flow”
Page 423: “soft, senuous brutality” “soft, sensuous brutality”
Page 432: “same, whover was in” “same, whoever was in”