Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/29

 A not very new Fiat stood at the gate, with a chauffeur in a short red-and-black check coat. The chauffeur opened the door. Kate slipped off the cloak as she got in, and handed it back. He stood with it over his arm.

“Goodbye!" she said. "Thank you ever so much. And we shall see you on Tuesday. Do put your cape on.”

“On Tuesday, yes. Hotel San Remo. Calle de Peru,” he added to the chauffeur. Then turning again to Kate:

“The hotel, no?”

“Yes,” she said, and instantly changed. "No, take me to Sanborn’s, where I can sit in a corner and drink tea to comfort me.”

“To comfort you after the bull-fight?" he said, with another quick smile. "To Sanborn’s, Gonzalez.”

He saluted and bowed and closed the door. The car started.

Kate sat back, breathing relief. Relief to get away from that beastly place. Relief even to get away from that nice man. He was awfully nice. But he made her feel she wanted to get away from him too. There was that heavy, black Mexican fatality about him, that put a burden on her. His quietness, and his peculiar assurance, almost aggressive; and at the same time, a nervousness, an uncertainty. His heavy sort of gloom, and yet his quick, naive, childish smile. Those black eyes, like black jewels, that you couldn’t look into, and which were so watchful; yet which, perhaps, were waiting for some sign of recognition and of warmth! Perhaps!

She felt again, as she felt before, that Mexico lay in her destiny almost as a doom. Something so heavy, so oppressive, like the folds of some huge serpent that seemed as if it could hardly raise itself.

She was glad to get to her corner in the tea-house, to feel herself in the cosmopolitan world once more, to drink her tea and eat strawberry shortcake and try to forget.