Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/17

 And in another moment, another fat Mexican in a black suit and a little black hat was lowering himself into Villiers’ foot-space. But Villiers was too quick him. He quickly brought his feet together under the man’s sinking posterior, so the individual subsided uncomfortably on to a pair of boots, and at the same time felt a hand shoving him quietly but determinedly on the shoulder.

“No!” Villiers was saying in good American. “This place is for my feet! Get off! You get off!”

And he continued, quietly but very emphatically, to push the Mexican’s shoulder, to remove him.

The Mexican half raised himself, and looked round murderously at Villiers. Physical violence was being offered, and the only retort was death. But the young American’s face was so cold and abstract, only the eyes showing a primitive, bird-like fire, that the Mexican was nonplussed. And Kate’s eyes were blazing with Irish contempt.

The fellow struggled with his Mexican city-bred inferiority complex. He muttered an explanation in Spanish that he was only sitting there for a moment, till he could join his friends—waving his hand towards a lower tier. Villiers did not understand a word, but he re-iterated:

“I don’t care it is. This place is for my feet, and you don’t sit there.”

Oh, home of liberty! Oh, land of the free! Which of these two men was to win in struggle for conflicting liberty? Was the fat fellow free to sit between Villiers’ feet, or was Villiers free to keep his foot-space?

There are all sorts of inferiority complex, and the city Mexican has a very strong sort, that makes him all the more aggressive, once it is roused. Therefore the intruder lowered his posterior with a heavy, sudden bounce on Villiers’ feet, and Villiers, out of very distaste, had had to extricate his feet from such a compression. The young man’s face went white at the nostrils, and his eyes took on that bright abstract look of pure democratic anger. He pushed the fat shoulders more decisively, repeating:

“Go away! Go away! You’re not to sit there.”

The Mexican, on his own ground, and heavy on his own base, let himself be shoved, oblivious.

“Insolence!” said Kate loudly. “Insolence!”

She glared at the fat back in the shoddily-fitting black