“It is,” she answered. “Rather a bad joke.”
Slowly he formed a dim idea of her precise life, with a rather tyrannous father who was fond of her in the wrong way, and brothers who had bullied her and jeered at her for her odd ways and appearance, and her slight deafness. The governess who had mis-educated her, the loneliness of the life in London, the aristocratic but rather vindictive society in England, which had persecuted her in a small way, because she was one of the odd border-line people who don’t and can’t, really belong. She kept an odd, bright, amusing spark of revenge twinkling in her all the time. She felt that with Jack she could kindle her spark of revenge into a natural sun. And without any compunction, she came to tell him.
He was tremendously amused. She was a new thing to him. She was one who knew the world, and society, better than he did, and her hatred of it was purer, more twinkling, more relentless in a quiet way. Her way was absolutely relentless, and absolutely quiet. She had gone further along that line than himself. And her fearlessness was of a queer, uncanny quality, hardly human. She was a real border-line being.
“All right,” he said, making a pact with her. “By Christmas we’ll ask you to come and see us in the North-West.”
“By Christmas! It’s a settled thing?” she said, holding up her forefinger with an odd, warning, alert gesture.
“It’s a settled thing,” he replied.
“Splendid!” she answered. “I believe you’ll keep your word.”
“You’ll see I shall.”
She rose. The horses, quieted down, were caught and saddled and brought round. She glanced from her blue-grey mare to his red stallion, and gave her odd, squirrel-like chuckle.
“What a contretemps,” she said. “It’s like the sun mating with the moon.” She gave him a quick, bright, odd glance: some of the coolness of a fairy.
“Is it!” he exclaimed, as he lifted her into the saddle. She was slim and light, with an odd, remote reserve.
He mounted his horse.
“We go different ways for the moment,” she said.
“Till Christmas,” he answered. “Then the moon will come to the sun, eh? Bring the mare with you. She’ll probably be in foal.”
“I certainly will. Goodbye, till Christmas. Don’t forget. I shall expect you to keep your word.”
“I will keep my word,” he said. “Goodbye till Christmas.”
He rode away, laughing and chuckling to himself. If Mary had been a fiasco, this was a real joke. A real, unexpected joke.
His horse travelled with quick, strong, rhythmic movement, inland, away from the sea. At the last ridge he turned and saw the pale-blue ocean full of light. Then he rode over the crest and down the silent grey bush, in which he had once been lost.
THE END
THE PLUMED SERPENT
First published in 1926, Lawrence began writing The Plumed Serpent while living in Taos, New Mexico, two years previously. The original working title was Quetzalcoatl, a reference to the cult of the plumed serpent in Mexico. The novel has a contemporary setting during the period of the Mexican Revolution. It opens with a group of tourists visiting a bullfight in Mexico City. One of them, Kate Leslie, departs in disgust and encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general. Later she meets his friend, an intellectual landowner Don Ramon, and travels to Sayula, a small town set on a lake. Ramon and Cipriano are leading a revival of a pre-Christian religion and Kate becomes drawn into their cult.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER 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 economize, 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 motorcars 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 betw
een 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 mid-way 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 reassured, 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 ‘música’ 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 música! La música!’ 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.
Música pagada toca mal tono.
Spasmodically, the insolent yelling of the mob rose and subsided. La música! La música! The shout became brutal and violent. Kate always remembered it. La música! The band peacocked its nonchalance. The shouting was a great yell: the degenerate mob of Mexico City!
At length, at its own leisure, the bands 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.
Música 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 ow
n 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 a 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?
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 424