Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/84

 them. They made way for him, offered him wine, suggesting choice cuts of meat from the fire-blackened hunks which weighted down the bare oak planks.

Yet there were others who, envying his preferment after the manner of the mean in all society, held high heads and passed disparaging remarks. Simon was among these. He stood by the table, legs spread, a cup of wine to his mouth. He broke off his drinking as Henderson passed, wiped his great mustache with the back of his hand, turning eyes red with his long carousal to look after the Yankee in contempt.

"It is the vapor of Don Roberto's body that blows past," he said, with immeasurable disdain.

Henderson made a pretense of taking a bite and a sup among the older men who were neither afraid nor ashamed of him, who had lived too long in drudgery to envy with bitterness one who seemed rising above it. Then he left them, with as little notice as possible, withdrawing to have a few minutes to himself.

Under the slant of the hill, near the gate letting in from the harbor road where the olives grew, there was a bench built around the bole of an ancient live-oak, whose limbs extended far, whose foliage made dusk of noonday, darkness of moonlight. There, in its restful shadow, withdrawn from the noise of the closing celebration, Henderson sat down to ponder his situation once more.

It was coming to the point when he must clear