Kindling to the romance of it all, he took stealthy note, as they rode on, of the lithe muscular figure, which was as extraordinary in its balanced strength as the calm power of the quiet brown face. When memory drew a vivid contrast between Sebastien and his early training in the sober atmosphere of the English commercial boarding-school Seyd wondered, and finally put his wonder into words.
“Didn’t you find the transition from Manchester rather sudden? It must have been like plunging head first into a romance.”
“Romance?” For the first time that morning, for matter of that, in all their intercourse, Sebastien laughed outright. “Oh, you Anglo-Saxons! Romance is a creature of your own dreamy idealism. We do not know it. We are passionate, nervous, hysterical, gross, materialistic, but for all our heat we see life more clearly than you. It would be better for us if we did not. For where in the mirror of your imaginings you see your strength enormously magnified our clearer perceptions show our weaknesses. Even at the point of death you neither see nor accept defeat. But we, cowering before it, are swept the quicker away.” Just as on that other occasion when he stood talking beside their fire on the rim of the Barranca, this came out of his quiet with volcanic heat. Dropping as quickly into his usual calm, he finished, “No, I did not find it romantic—merely amusing.”
Nettled a little by his amused contempt, Seyd quickly retorted: “I fail to see how you can claim to have no ideals? You who are striving with all your might against the American invasion?”
Sebastien shrugged. “Racial aversion—backed up by the instinct of self-preservation. Even cattle will band together against the wolves. But remove the danger and the bulls fall at once fighting for command of the herd. Before Díaz we had sixty-five rulers in sixty years, very few of whom died in their beds. Once remove his iron hand from our throats and we shall go at it again, revolution upon revolution, for the sole purpose of satisfying some man’s personal ambition, lust, or individual greed. No, señor, we are individualists in the extreme. We have nothing in our makeup to correspond to the racial ideal that makes you Northmen subordinate personal interest to the general good. And because of our lack you will eventually rule us.”
“Yet you strive against it?”
“For the one reason, as I told you, that the weaker wolf declines to be eaten. Individually, I find it amusing. I would much prefer shooting gringo soldiery to hanging Mexican bandits.”
“And the General—Don Luis?”
Once again Sebastien laughed. “That old revolutionist? He would deny all I have said as rank heresy, though he himself is its most startling example. He would say that he was for Mexico, but Mexico, to him, is Mexico with a García for president. Selfish to the backbone, every one of us.”
In a phrase he had described Don Luis, and, while he could not but smile at its truth, Seyd was just a little startled by the keen intelligence and flashing intuition. Even after allowing for advantages of travel and education the man’s sharp reasoning and originality were remarkable. Like a clear black pool his mind sharply reflected all that passed over it, and always the conception stood out as under a lightning flash.
“No, señor,” he went on, after a pause, “we are individualists, and as such can only obtain happiness by following our own bent. If we are held back for a while by Porfirio, be sure that sooner or later we shall return with greater zest to our ancient pastime of cutting each other’s throats.”
His uncanny intelligence, too, threw sinister lights on everything they passed. “I told you we were gross,” he said, indicating a youth and a brown girl who were flirting through the barred windows of an adobe ranch house. “The proof—the bars. With us love is a passion; the ideal exists only in our songs.”
Shortly thereafter they rode out on the rim overlooking the Barranca, and the necessity of riding in single file down the zigzag staircases brought an end to their talk. Neither did he begin it again as they crossed the bottom flat to the inn. Coming after a long silence, the invitation which he delivered at last, as they rode into the patio, came as a greater surprise.
“I feel certain, señor, that my cousin will wish you to lunch with us.”
Because another trait in Sebastien’s nature was not revealed until, a few minutes later, he knocked at Francesca’s door, Seyd failed to see that which, after all, was perhaps even more surprising. As he entered in response to her call she rose and stood, one hand resting on the small altar where burned a tiny taper; and as he stood looking at her across the length of the room the inquiry in her wide eyes became touched with fear.
“It is you?” she broke the silence. “They told me that you spent last night here. How was it that I did not meet you on the way?”
“Simply because I had happened to turn in at the Rancho del Río to look at some cattle. But I overtook the mozo you sent back with the horse for the gringo. Also I called in at the jacal of Miguel, the vaquero of San Ángel, where I found Maria, his woman, just returned. She was rejoicing over a supernatural visitation. It seems that while she and Miguel were away the Virgin Guadalupe abode in their house, and even honored Maria by putting on her best fiesta clothes. In proof thereof she showed me a silver peso that the Virgin left tied up in one corner
