V
The plaza became a very definite habit to Eustace and myself. At home, we could never have loitered day after day in a park, doing nothing, but in Mexico one could. The other idlers were always interesting. Some amusing little incident was always happening. Yet nothing ever seemed to disturb the prevailing restful calm.
Herminia and Lolita were always there at eight.
They were slender little girls, with the delicately molded features and the immense dark eyes characteristic of their race. They were adept, too, in the use of those eyes—as all Spanish girls are adept—yet if, to a casual observer they appeared flirtatious, they proved upon further acquaintance—as all Spanish girls prove—to be quite the most shy, and modest, and altogether circumspect little misses to be found anywhere in the world.
For some inexplicable reason, the Spanish señorita has been most inaccurately portrayed in our fiction and drama as a wild vampire, modeled after the operatic Carmen, until the average American pictures her as a fiery adventuress who lifts one shoulder higher than the other and curls her sensuous lips into a sinister smile destined to wreck the life of every passing bullfighter.
THE MEXICAN SEÑORITA HAS ALWAYS BEEN PORTRAYED IN OUR FICTION AS A WILD VAMPIRE
In real life, the Mexican maiden—and one might include her sisters of Spanish ancestry—is, with all her mischievous smiling—the most timid, sedate and well-behaved little miss that can be found anywhere. She lives at home in semi-seclusion. She never appears in public without a chaperon, except possibly to stroll with another maiden to the shops or the plaza. She is at all times guarded against the machinations of wicked males—who are always assumed to be predatory animals until they indicate very definitely that they intend marriage, and who are by no means to be trusted even then—and she never meets a man except where others are present or when the window-bars afford insulation for her virtue.
In the more cosmopolitan centers, where the daughters of the wealthier families have been educated abroad, and where parents have adopted a foreign viewpoint, this close guardianship is often relaxed. But in the smaller city, like Mazatlán, the señorita is still the victim of a social system carefully designed to protect her against a race of men whose mind dwells almost exclusively on sex.
The Mexican—even more than most of his brothers of Spanish ancestry—while he publicly extols women as the most exquisite handiwork of God, privately regards them as instruments exclusively for the gratification of natural instincts. Although he may talk eloquently of love, he is incapable of any infatuation which is not based primarily upon sex appeal. But, since he is a jealous creature, and since he knows that his brothers, like himself, would take advantage of any opportunity for seduction, he demands that his wife be a model of unquestionable propriety.