by Edna Ferber
They were approaching another gate—a wooden one, crossbarred—and a line of fence that stretched away endlessly. On the other side of the fence, facing them, were perhaps fifty men on horseback. They sat like bronze equestrian statues. Erect, vital, they made a dazzling frieze against prairie and sky. Their great hats shaded the dark ardent eyes. Their high-heeled boots were polished to a glitter; narrow, pointed, they fitted like a glove. Their saddles, their hatbands, their belts were hand-tooled. Their costumes lacked, perhaps, the silver, the silks, the embroidery, the braid, but in every basic item this was the uniform that the Mexican charro had worn three hundred years before and that every American cowboy all the way from Montana down to Arizona and Texas had copied from the Mexican.
On either side of the gate they made a single line, reined up side by side like cavalry on parade. Immobile they sat in their saddles, they did not smile, they did not raise a hand in greeting. Only their dark eyes spoke. At the gate, mounted on a splendid palomino, was a man of middle age, dark like the others but with an almost indefinable difference. Authority was in his bearing. Slim and small, he was a figure of striking elegance. Now his horse moved daintily forward with little mincing steps like those of a ballet dancer on her toes. The man swung low in his saddle and opened the gate, he drew up squarely then in the path of the car.
He spoke the greeting. “Viva el señor! Vivan los novios!”
From the men then, like a chant, “Viva el señor! Vivan los novios!”
She tweaked his coat sleeve. “Jordan, what’s it mean—los novios! What do I do?”
But Bick Benedict nodded carelessly to the men, he raised a hand in greeting and gravely he spoke his thanks in the Spanish tongue. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, to Leslie, “They’ve put on a real show for you, honey. Welcome to the bridal couple. Say gracias, will you?”
She was enchanted, she opened the car door, she stepped to the fender and leaned far out. “Thank you!” she called, and her voice was warm and lovely with emotion. “Gracias! Gracias! Thank you for the beautiful welcome!”
“Don’t overdo it please, Leslie.”
“Can’t I blow them a kiss! I’m in love with all of them.”
“Come in and sit down. We’re moving.”
“Especially that beautiful café-au-lait Buffalo Bill.”
“Polo’s got ten grandchildren. He’d be shocked to his Mexican core.”
“Why were they so stern and silent? They hardly looked at us.”
“They saw you all right,” he said as he shifted gears. “They’ll tell their families everything you wore, what you said, how you look. The grapevine will carry it to every barrio, through the ranchitos out to the West Division where our Holgado ranch is, and south to Hermoso and up to La Piedra that’s the North Division and over east to the ——”
“But you told me to say thank you. I thought it was picturesque and wonderful. Did I do something wrong?”
“No. No. Perhaps you overdid it just a little.”
“But you didn’t marry me because I was like the girls you know in Texas. You’d have married one of those if you’d wanted your wife to behave like a Texan.”
Behind them the thunder of hoofs on hard-baked clay. The sun flashed on stirrup and spur, was reflected dartingly in iron and silver. The horsemen spoke together softly as they rode, the one to the other very softly. Now the hoofbeats were like an echo.
“No està mal. Not bad.”
“Sí, pero le faltan carnes. A little thin for my taste.”
“Tuerta?”
“No, you fool. Her eyes are soft and dark like the eyes of a gentle heifer, but with spirit, too, in them. That little flaw in the eye it is a mark of beauty in a woman, very stirring to men.”
Now the car made the last curve in the long drive and there they were at the foot of the great broad stone steps that led to the doorway of the house. She looked up at it. She had hoped that when they actually came upon it the whole thing would vanish miraculously like the mirages she had seen on the road. But now it was real enough, yet about it there hung a ghostly quality in spite of the blinding sun, in spite of the bulk of walls and columns and towers. No one came to the car, no one stood in the doorway, all was quiet, breathless, waiting, like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty. Nothing could be really sinister in sunlight, she said to herself. And aloud. “It’s siesta time, isn’t it? Just like in Ol’ Virginny, though we never paid much attention to it.”
He held out his hand to her, his hand was hard, was crushing. “Neither do we.” He looked up at the house, together they began to mount the steps.
“Would it sound too sickening and coy if I asked you to carry me through the doorway, just for luck?” And she smiled. “Of course I’m a big girl——”
He stared at her incredulously, he saw that her lips were trembling. His hands were on her shoulders, he swung her around and picked her up in his arms as if she had been a child, and so up the steps, across the broad veranda and through the doorway, her arm about his neck, her cheek against his. He pretended to be panting as they came into the shade of the huge entrance hall, dim after the glare outside. They were laughing, and the sound echoed against the high grey walls. Her arm went more tightly about his neck, he still held her in his arms. He bent his head impetuously and they kissed long and silently.
Like a vast flue the great doors east and west drew the prevailing wind from the Mexican Gulf. “Oh, it’s cool!” she said inadequately. He tipped her to her feet and she staggered a little and leaned against him and looked about her, blinking with the sudden change from glare to shade. Then she saw against the grey-white background the six flags of Texas, draped and brilliant in a burst of color upon the wall that faced them. The Spanish flag, the French flag, the Mexican flag, the flag of the Republic of Texas, the flag of the Confederacy, the flag of the United States of America.
No sound disturbed the utter silence of the enormous room. Yet Leslie had a feeling that on the other side of every door and wall there were ears listening, listening. They stood in the middle of the great hall like tourists, Leslie thought. Or like guests who have mistaken the time at which they were expected. “The flags,” she said. “Against the wall like that. They’re history, alive. They’re so lovely. Gay like the flags in the cathedral at St. Denis.”
“What’s going on here!” yelled Bick. He clapped his hands. “Tomas! Vincente! Lupe! Petra!” Then, in a great bawl that topped all the rest, “Luz! Luz, what the hell is this! Come out here before I come and get you.”
From nowhere there appeared a little plump woman. Until this moment Leslie had not been aware that she had pictured this older sister of Jordan’s as a tall dark woman—swarthy, almost—with straight black hair and straight black brows. But this Luz who came toward them was a pink-cheeked bustling little body in a pink ruffled dress and a bright red hat. Thick plaits of grey-white hair and, in unexpected contrast, very black eyes that gave the effect of having been mistakenly placed in a face meant for blue eyes. Their hard brightness startled the beholder like sudden forked lightning in a sunny summer sky.
Her voice was shrill and high, she walked with a little clatter and rush of short steps, here were the smallest feet Leslie had ever seen.
“Jurden! Stop that bawling like a calf’s just been branded.” Her manner was brisk, not to say hearty. She kissed her brother on the cheek, a mere peck. She came to Leslie. “Howdy, Miss Lynnton,” said Luz Benedict. “Excuse my being late.” An added flush suffused the pink rouged cheek.
Bick Benedict put one hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Now Luz, don’t you go roweling Leslie first thing. This is Mrs. Jordan Benedict, and don’t you forget it.”
9
“We looked for you a week ago,” said Luz. She took Leslie’s hand in a grip of steel and smiled up at her.
“But we didn’t plan to come sooner,” Leslie said. “What made you think we did?”
“I didn’t figure Bick would stay away. All the spring work to be done. I
t’s the worst time of the year to be away. The big spring roundup.”
“But this is—was—our honeymoon!”
“No honeymoon’s as important as roundup at Reata.”
Leslie felt suddenly inadequate in an argument involving the relative importance of a honeymoon and a roundup. She was mildly amused to hear herself saying, “Yes, it must seem so to all but the two involved.” She stood with her arm through Bick’s, she turned to smile at him tenderly, she was startled to see that he apparently had heard none of this exchange, he was staring at the big doorway through which they had just entered. There was the sound of a motor in the drive.
“Jett!” yelled Bick, and released his arm with a jerk as he started toward the door. “Jett! Come on in here.”
“Don’t you want to see the house?” Luz said hurriedly. “Let me show you the house.” She grasped Leslie’s arm firmly.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” said Leslie. “But I’ll wait. I’d rather wait for my—for Jordan.”
“Oh, Jordan and Jett are everlastingly jangling about something. Come on.” It was plain that she was anxious to be off. The sound of the men’s voices rose in argument. Leslie glimpsed this Jett Rink in the doorway now—a muscular young fellow with a curiously powerful bull-like neck and shoulders. He wore the dust-colored canvas and the high-heeled boots of the region, his big sweat-stained hat was pushed back from his forehead and you saw his damp dark curls. His attitude, his tone were belligerent. About twenty, Leslie decided. She decided, too, that he was an unpleasant young man.
“She wanted for him to go, not me. It was her doing. I don’t like for Dimodeo to drive the big car any more’n you do. Ever time he does I got to spend two days patching her up.”
“You’ll do as I say.”
“Tell that to Madama. How am I going to know what to do? Her hauling one way and you another. Tell me who’s boss around here and I’ll do like they say.”
Leslie turned away, annoyed at the boy’s hard insolence. Her eyes had become accustomed now to the dimness of the great hall. Through open double doors she glimpsed other rooms, they seemed as vast as this. She looked about her, interestedly. Luz Benedict had disappeared. Madama. The boy Jett had called her Madama. Funny, her going off like that.
Glancing about, she smiled as she thought of the first line of the letter she would write to her father tonight or tomorrow. Dear Papa, do you remember when I was about ten the time you took me to the Natural History Museum in New York? Well, that’s where I’m living now, only it’s been moved to Texas.
Everywhere on the walls were the mounted heads of deer, of buffalo, of catamounts, coyotes, mountain lions; the vicious tusked faces of javelina or wild hog, red fox, grey fox, and two sad-eyed Longhorns whose antlered spread and long morose muzzle dwarfed all the other masks. In the space not occupied by these mortuary mementos were large gold-framed paintings of cows (Herefords) of Longhorns (extinct) of sky and prairies and prairie and sky—of all that which the sun-tortured eye could see if it so much as peered through a crack in a window blind in this land of cattle and sun and sky and burning hot prairie.
Through the wide door at the rear she saw the patio and a glimpse of green, she walked toward it inhaling a deep breath as she walked, feeling suddenly shut in and stifling. As she went she said, aloud, socially, “Oh, how lovely, there’s a terrace do let me see that,” though there was no one to hear her. Oleanders in tubs stood disconsolately about, the white walls under the glare of the sun glared back gold at their tormentor. Leslie sank for a moment into one of the big wicker chairs and sprang up with a little screech. It was like sitting on a bed of red-hot coals. She began to know why Texans never sat out of doors, why they sought the dim shade of inner rooms.
She came back into the hall and stood there and now Bick joined her, he took her hand. “Leslie! I thought you’d gone upstairs with Luz.”
“I was waiting for you.”
“You must be hot and tired. Where’s Luz?”
“She was very nice, she wanted to show me the house.” Suddenly she had a horrible feeling that she was going to cry—she who so rarely wept even when a child. She raised her swimming eyes and looked at him. “I waited for you. I want my husband to show me his house.”
“Of course, my darling, of course. Things have kind of gone loco around here while I’ve been gone. Luz can get the whole place in a——”
The tap-tap-tap of Luz Benedict’s little feet sounded on the stone floor. “Oh, there you are, Bick! Going off and leaving this poor little bride of yours alone. She wouldn’t come with me. Come on, Bick. You show her the house. I’ll tag along.”
Leslie was to become accustomed to the clatter of men’s high-heeled boots on these tiled floors, and the clank and jingle of spurs and the creak of leather. Texas sounds. Everywhere the creak of leather. The staccato tap-tap of Luz Benedict’s little heels were to stay in her mind long after they had ceased forever. She and Bick went hand in hand but Luz chattered and clattered close behind them. “And this is the big room and that there is the little sitting room and this is the library and this is the music room and over there is the dining room and that is the men’s den.”
And “How wonderful!” Leslie exclaimed. “How interesting!” as they walked through the dim vast rooms. Everything was on a gargantuan scale, as though the house had been built and furnished for a race of giants. Chairs were the size of couches, couches the size of beds. There were chairs of cowhide with fanciful backs fashioned from horns. Luz was displaying the monolithic rooms as a hostess guides a guest whose stay is so temporary that all must be crowded into a brief time.
Leslie was weary, warm, her face was burning, her eyes smarted. The three ascended the great stone stairway now. Leslie put a hand on the balustrade and it seemed damp to the touch. She was to learn many things about this pseudo-Spanish palace of stone and concrete and iron that was foreign to the Texas land and that had been rejected by it. The elements had turned upon it to destroy it. The battle was constant, day after day, summer and winter. In a norther the concrete would break out in a cold sweat. Patches of mold followed the spring rains. Fungi sprang up in dark places, shoes in closets were covered with a slippery white mildew. Plumbing rusted. There seemed forever to be a tap-tapping and clink-clinking as workmen busied themselves with leaky roof, sprung floor, cracked wall, burst pipe.
Fifty bedrooms Bick had said in his argument with Mrs. Lynnton. Leslie had assumed that this was a figure of speech. Now it seemed to her that there were acres of dull bare bedrooms with their neat utility beds and their drab utility chests of drawers and one armchair and one straight chair and a drab utility table and an electric light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. A hotel. A big, bare unattractive hotel with no guests. A terrible thought occurred to Leslie.
“Have they ever been filled—all these rooms?”
“My yes!” Luz shrilled happily. “And then some. Times we had ’em sleeping in cots out here in the hall. Sitting-room couches too. Bick, remember that time of the big rodeo in Viento, Kale Beebe blew in late and stepping a little high, laid down on the big tapestry sofa with his spurs on and must have been riding nightmares all night because in the morning the sofa was ribbons and the stuffing all over him like a store Santa Claus.”
Luz clattered on down the hall, she pointed briskly to a big room whose door stood open. Two Mexican women and a man were bending over open suitcases which Leslie recognized as Jordan’s.
“That’s Bick’s room,” Luz said breezily. She marched on down the hall, turned right, turned left. “And this,” she said, “is your room.”
There was the fraction of a moment of utter silence. Then Leslie began to laugh. She laughed as helplessly as one does who has been under fearful strain and then Bick too was laughing, they laughed leaning against each other, the tears streaming with their laughter; they laughed as two people laugh who love each other and who have been apart in spirit and now suddenly are brought together again by the stupendous absurdity o
f the situation at which they are laughing. And oh! they whooped, and ugh! they groaned in a pain of combined laughter and relief.
The black eyes stared at them, the pink face was rigid with the resentment of one who does not share the joke.
Bick wiped his eyes, he patted Luz’s shoulder. “Look, sis, Leslie and I are married. We’re having these two big front connecting rooms where the breeze’ll get us, one for a bedroom and one a kind of sitting room where we can sit and talk if we want to.”
“Away from me, I suppose.”
“Why no, honey, we don’t mean——”
“Yes,” said Leslie then, with terrible distinctness. “Away from anyone when we want to be. When we want to talk together.” Then, at the look on the woman’s face, “Not secrets, Luz. Just husband and wife talk.” Poor dear, she doesn’t know.
“Get Lupe and one of the other girls,” Bick said hastily. “They’ll fix us up. I hope those trunks get here. They could unpack while we’re eating supper.”
“Supper!” Leslie repeated rather faintly.
“Supper’s at six,” Luz announced firmly. “How’d you like a cup of coffee right now? I clean forgot, with Bick yapping at Jett.”
“Oh, I’d love it. But could it be tea?”
“Tea!” Doubtfully.
“Or coffee, if it’s—coffee will be wonderful.” She realized now that she had vaguely envisaged a tea table on their arrival, with hot tea for the wise and a pitcher of cold lemonade for the foolish, and little thin sandwiches and a deceptively plain-looking pound cake. And decanters for the men. That was tea at the Lynntons’ when you were hot and tired and thirsty at five or at six.
Bick now pressed a wall button. “That’ll fetch somebody. Leslie, I’m going to take a look at the ruin that’s gone on while I’ve been away…. Now Luz, don’t you get sore again…. The girls will help with your things, Leslie…I’ll see you at supper. Anything you need, just tell Luz.”
He was gone. “Well now,” said Luz, and settled herself in a chair, “the girls will fix you up in a jiffy. I hope you didn’t bring too much fussy stuff. We’re plain folks out here. I ain’t got enough clothes to dust a fiddle.”