Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/78

 tion. There he must stand, let it be minutes or hours, hot sun of noonday or chill wind of midnight, until Don Roberto appeared.

Don Roberto did not speak English. He let it be known that the sound of it was distasteful to him, a discordant grinding of coarse consonants not fit for either the ear of God or man. Spanish was the one language worthy the ear of a caballero; but since Henderson made such lame going at it, they would speak French between them, seeing that the yanqui had been given some of the advantages of gentlemen of more enlightened lands to the extent of tutelage in that next most godly tongue.

The fact that Henderson would have been a gentleman in his own land, counted by his station in society, no other qualification being necessary in Don Roberto's world, gave the young Mexican added pleasure in his attendant. That pleasure came from his power to abase one whom he knew, in the core of such manhood and courage as nature had given him, to be a better man than himself.

Manhood seemed scarcely to have hardened upon Don Roberto yet, although he was a year or two older than Henderson. There was the softness of boyishness in his face, the petulance of adolescence in his lips. Only his eyes seemed mature. These were dark and heavy-lidded, languorously oriental, as his father's were. When he rode, or sat alone in a meditative way that seemed his inheritance, he held his lids half shut; yellowish