Harboro had telephoned to see if an appointment could be made—to a madame somebody whose professional card he had found in the Guide. And he had been assured that monsieur would be very welcome on a Sunday.
Sylvia was glad that it was not on a weekday, and that it was in the forenoon, when she would be required to make her first public appearance with her husband. The town would be practically deserted, save by a few better-class young men who might be idling about the drug-store. They wouldn’t know her, and if they did, they would behave circumspectly. Strangely enough, it was Sylvia’s conviction that men are nearly all good creatures.
As it fell out it was Harboro and not Sylvia who was destined to be humiliated that day—a fact which may not seem strange to the discerning.
They had got as far as the middle of the Rio Grande bridge without experiencing anything which marred the general effect of a stage set for a Passion Play—but with the actors missing; and then they saw a carriage approaching from the Mexican side.
Harboro knew the horses. They were the General Manager’s. And presently he recognized the coachman. The horses were moving at a walk, very slowly; but at length Harboro recognized the General Manager’s wife, reclining under a white silk sunshade and listening to the vivacious chatter of a young woman by her side. They would be coming over to attend the services in the Episcopal church in Eagle Pass, Harboro realized. Then he recognized the young woman, too. He had met her at one of the affairs to which he had been invited. He recalled her as a girl whose voice was too high-pitched for a reposeful effect, and who created the impression that she looked upon the social life of the border as a rather amusing adventure.
You might have supposed that they considered themselves the sole occupants of the world as they advanced, perched on their high seat; and this, Harboro realized, was the true fashionable air. It was an instinct rather than a pose, he believed, and he was pondering that problem in psychology which has to do with the fact that when people ride or drive they appear to have a different mental organism from those who walk.
Then something happened. The carriage was now almost at hand, and Harboro saw the coachman turn his head slightly, as if to hear better. Then he leaned forward and rattled the whip in its place, and the horses set off at a sharp trot. There was a rule against trotting on the bridge, but there are people everywhere who are not required to observe rules.
Harboro paused, ready to lift his hat. He liked the General Manager’s wife. But the occupants of the carriage passed without seeing him. And Harboro got the impression that there was something determined in the casual air with which the two women looked straight before them. He got an odd feeling that the most finely tempered steel of all lies underneath the delicate golden filigree of social custom and laws.
He was rather pleased at a conclusion which came to him: people of that kind really did see, then. They only pretended not to see. And then he felt the blood pumping through the veins in his neck.
“What is it?” asked Sylvia, with that directness which Harboro comprehended and respected.