The patio, with its arched corredors, cool as a grotto under flooding greenery, the bird song, and exotic flowers; flame of the arbol de fuego; glimpses in the crypt-like kitchen of a criada down on her knees rubbing tortilla paste on a stone metate; the soft stealth with which Maria moved around the table on nude feet; all these helped to deepen those profound impressions. And while he watched Lee’s small hands fluttering like butterflies over the breakfast things, and gained confirmatory glimpses of the polished whiteness of her arms, came still others.
Two brown girls, who stood twisting their skirts in the gateway, moved forward at Lee’s word.
“They wish to take my advice about following their lovers to the wars,” she summed for him their Spanish. “I explained the risks of hunting them among twenty thousand revolutionists, and advised them to wait till they came home. But they say that is too indefinite. They may be killed, and there is no one to marry them here but the ancianos, and they already have wives. So they are going—to join the rag and bobtail in the wake of the revolution.”
After the next client, a wrinkled old woman, had followed the girls out, Lee burst out in merry laughter. “She was telling me of a miracle that occurred at the funeral of her brother, who worked for William Benson. It appears that he had only his dirty cotton calzones to be buried in, so his wife begged a worn white suit from Mr. Benson. The poor old fellow had been reduced by sickness to a rack of bones, and you could have rolled him in it like a blanket. And here came the miracle! The weather, you know, was exceedingly hot last week, and instead of burying him at once they waited till some relatives from a distance had arrived. And when the coffin was opened for them to take a last look—lo! the miracle!
“‘For Saint Joseph,’ she said, just now, ‘had wrought a most wonderful thing, señorita. Whereas Refugio had lain in the señor’s clothes like a nut in a withered shell, he was now so large and handsome they fitted him like his skin!’”
He laughed so heartily she was drawn on to tell him more, and pleased herself thereby as much as him. For to be really happy, a girl must have exercise for her tongue, and with all their genuine devotion the Three offered but a limited field for conversation. Naturally laconic, their communications touched principally upon flocks and herds; and holding, as they did, the traditional frontier viewpoint concerning Mexicans—to wit, that they ranked in the scale of creation below the Gila monster—they shared neither her affection for, nor understanding of, her brown retainers.
But Gordon, with his quick and reciprocal feeling, made an ideal listener. From the “miracle” she ran on with anecdotes and happenings, some quaint, others amusing, several tragic, that revealed with a vividness beyond the power of description the mixture of love and treachery, simplicity and savagery, ignorance and idealism, religious faith and gross superstition, that go into the making of a Mexican. While she talked and he listened, there was established a community of feeling which was destined to produce immediate results.
“What is it, Maria?” Pausing, she looked up at the criada who had just carried the prisoners their breakfast.
“They wish to speak to me,” she translated the girl’s answer, “alone. They say it is very important.”
“Better let me go with you.” Gordon rose. “I can wait outside.”