Ramón, barefoot, in his white clothes, came for her and took her in silence downstairs into the garden. The zaguán was dark, the rain fell steadily in the twilight, but was abating. All was dark twilight.
Ramón took off his blouse and threw it on the stairs. Then with naked breast he led her into the garden, into the massive rain. Cipriano came forward, barefoot, with naked breast, bareheaded, in the floppy white pantaloons.
They stood barefoot on the earth, that still threw back a white smoke of waters. The rain drenched them in a moment.
‘Barefoot on the living earth, with faces to the living rain,’ said Ramón in Spanish, quietly; ‘at twilight, between the night and the day; man, and woman, in presence of the unfading star, meet to be perfect in one another. Lift your face, Caterina, and say: This man is my rain from heaven.’
Kate lifted her face and shut her eyes in the downpour.
‘This man is my rain from heaven,’ she said.
‘This woman is the earth to me — say that, Cipriano,’ said Ramón, kneeling on one knee and laying his hand flat on the earth.
Cipriano kneeled and laid his hand on the earth.
‘This woman is the earth to me,’ he said.
‘I, woman, kiss the feet and the heels of this man, for I will be strength to him, throughout the long twilight of the Morning Star.’
Kate kneeled and kissed the feet and heels of Cipriano, and said her say.
‘I, man, kiss the brow and the breast of this woman, for I will be her peace and her increase, through the long twilight of the Morning Star.’
Cipriano kissed her, and said his say.
Then Ramón put Cipriano’s hand over the rain-wet eyes of Kate, and Kate’s hand over the rain-wet eyes of Cipriano.
‘I, a woman, beneath the darkness of this covering hand, pray to this man to meet me in the heart of the night, and never deny me,’ said Kate. ‘But let it be an abiding place between us, for ever.’
‘I, a man, beneath the darkness of this covering hand, pray to this woman to receive me in the heart of the night, in the abiding place that is between us for ever.’
‘Man shall betray a woman, and woman shall betray a man,’ said Ramón, ‘and it shall be forgiven them, each of them. But if they have met as earth and rain, between day and night, in the hour of the Star; if the man has met the woman with his body and the star of his hope, and the woman has met the man with her body and the star of her yearning, so that a meeting has come to pass, and an abiding place for the two where they are as one star, then shall neither of them betray the abiding place where the meeting lives like an unsetting star. For if either betray the abiding place of the two, it shall not be forgiven, neither by day nor by night nor in the twilight of the star.’
The rain was leaving off, the night was dark.
‘Go and bathe in the warm water, which is peace between us all. And put oil on your bodies, which is the stillness of the Morning Star. Anoint even the soles of your feet, and the roots of your hair.’
Kate went up to her room and found a big earthenware bath with steaming water, and big towels. Also, in a beautiful little bowl, oil, and a soft bit of white wool.
She bathed her rain-wet body in the warm water, dried and anointed herself with the clear oil, that was clear as water. It was soft, and had a faint perfume, and was grateful to the skin. She rubbed all her body, even among her hair and under her feet, till she glowed softly.
Then she put on another of the slips with the inverted blue flowers that had been laid on the bed for her, and over that a dress of green, hand-woven wool, made of two pieces joined openly together down the sides, showing a bit of the white, full under-dress, and fastened on the left shoulder. There was a stiff flower, blue, on a black stem, with two black leaves, embroidered at the bottom, at each side. And her white slip showed a bit at the breast, and hung below the green skirt, showing the blue flowers.
It was strange and primitive, but beautiful. She pushed her feet into the plaited green huaraches. But she wanted a belt. She tied a piece of ribbon round her waist.
A mozo tapped to say supper was ready.
Laughing rather shyly, she went along to the salon.
Ramón and Cipriano were both waiting, in silence, in their white clothes. Cipriano had his red serape loosely thrown over his shoulders.
‘So!’ said Cipriano, coming forward. ‘The bride of Huitzilopochtli, like a green morning. But Huitzilopochtli will put on your sash, and you will put on his shoes, so that he shall never leave you, and you shall be always in his spell.’
Cipriano tied round her waist a narrow woollen sash of white wool, with white, terraced towers upon a red and black ground. And she stooped and put on his small, dark feet the huaraches of woven red strips of leather, with a black cross on the toes.
‘One more little gift,’ said Ramón.
He made Kate put over Cipriano’s head a blue cord bearing a little symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the snake in silver and the bird in blue turquoise. Cipriano put over her head the same symbol, but in gold, with a bird in black dull jet, and hanging on a red cord.
‘There!’ said Ramón. ‘That is the symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star. Remember the marriage is the meeting-ground, and the meeting-ground is the star. If there be no star, no meeting-ground, no true coming together of man with the woman, into a wholeness, there is no marriage. And if there is no marriage, there is nothing but an agitation. If there is no honourable meeting of man with woman and woman with man, there is no good thing come to pass. But if the meeting come to pass, then whosoever betrays the abiding place, which is the meeting-ground, which is that which lives like a star between day and night, between the dark of woman and the dawn of man, between man’s night and woman’s morning, shall never be forgiven, neither here nor in the hereafter. For man is frail and woman is frail, and none can draw the line down which another shall walk. But the star that is between two people and is their meeting-ground shall not be betrayed.
‘And the star that is between three people, and is their meeting-ground, shall not be betrayed.
‘And the star that is between all men and all women, and between all the children of men, shall not be betrayed.
‘Whosoever betrays another man, betrays a man like himself, a fragment. For if there is no star between a man and a man, or even a man and a wife, there is nothing. But whosoever betrays the star that is between him and another man, betrays all, and all is lost to the traitor.
‘Where there is no star and no abiding place, nothing is, so nothing can be lost.’
CHAPTER XXI
The Opening of the Church
Kate went back to her house in Sayula, and Cipriano went back to his command in the city.
‘Will you not come with me?’ he said. ‘Shall we not make a civil marriage, and live in the same house together?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I am married to you by Quetzalcoatl, no other. I will be your wife in the world of Quetzalcoatl, no other. And if the star has risen between us, we will watch it.’
Conflicting feelings played in his dark eyes. He could not bear even to be the least bit thwarted. Then the strong, rather distant look came back.
‘It is very good,’ he said. ‘It is the best.’
And he went away without looking back.
Kate returned to her house, to her servants and her rocking-chair. Inside herself she kept very still and almost thoughtless, taking no count of time. What was going to unfold must unfold of itself.
She no longer feared the nights, when she was shut alone in her darkness. But she feared the days a little. She shrank so mortally from contact.
She opened her bedroom window one morning, and looked down to the lake. The sun had come, and queer blotty shadows were on the hills beyond the water. Way down at the water’s edge a woman was pouring water from a calabash bowl over a statuesque pig, dipping rapidly and assiduously. The little group was seen in silhouette against the pale, dun lake.
But impossible to
stand at her open window looking on the little lane. An old man suddenly appeared from nowhere, offering her a leaf full of tiny fish, charales, like splinters of glass, for ten centavos, and a girl was unfolding three eggs from the ragged corner of her rebozo, thrusting them imploringly forward to Kate. An old woman was shambling up with a sad story, Kate knew. She fled from her window and the importunity.
At the same instant the sound that always made her heart stand still woke on the invisible air. It was the sound of drums, of tom-toms rapidly beaten. The same sound she had heard in the distance, in the tropical dusk of Ceylon, from the temple at sunset. The sound she had heard from the edge of the forests in the north, when the Red Indians were dancing by the fire. The sound that wakes dark, ancient echoes in the heart of every man, the thud of the primeval world.
Two drums were violently throbbing against one another. Then gradually they were slowing down, in a peculiar uneven rhythm, till at last there was only left one slow, continual, monotonous note, like a great drop of darkness falling heavily, continually, dripping in the bright morning.
The re-evoked past is frightening, and if it be re-evoked to overwhelm the present, it is fiendish. Kate felt a real terror of the sound of a tom-tom. It seemed to beat straight on her solar plexus, to make her sick.
She went to her window. Across the lane rose a tall garden-wall of adobe brick, and above that, the sun on the tops of the orange-trees, deep gold. Beyond the orange garden rose three tall, handsome, shaggy palm-trees, side by side on slim stems. And from the very top of the two outer palms rose the twin tips of the church towers. She had noticed it so often; the two ironwork Greek crosses seeming to stand on the mops of the palms.
Now in an instant she saw the glitter of the symbol of Quetzalcoatl in the places where the cross had been; two circular suns, with the dark bird at the centre. The gold of the suns — or the serpents — flashed new in the light of the sun, the bird lifted its wings dark in outline within the circle.
Then again the two drums were speeding up, beating against one another with the peculiar uneven savage rhythm, which at first seems no rhythm, and then seems to contain a summons almost sinister in its power, acting on the helpless blood direct. Kate felt her hands flutter on her wrists, in fear. Almost, too, she could hear the heart of Cipriano beating; her husband in Quetzalcoatl.
‘Listen, Niña! Listen, Niña!’ came Juana’s frightened voice from the veranda.
Kate went to the veranda. Ezequiel had rolled up his mattress and was hitching up his pants. It was Sunday morning, when he sometimes lay on after sunrise. His thick black hair stood up, his dark face was blank with sleep, but in his quiet aloofness and his slightly bowed head Kate could see the secret satisfaction he took in the barbarous sound of the drums.
‘It comes from the Church!’ said Juana.
Kate caught the other woman’s black, reptilian eyes unexpectedly. Usually, she forgot that Juana was dark, and different. For days she would not realize it. Till suddenly she met that black, void look with the glint in it, and she started inwardly, involuntarily asking herself: ‘Does she hate me?’
Or was it only the unspeakable difference in blood?
Now, in the dark glitter which Juana showed her for one moment, Kate read fear, and triumph, and a slow, savage nonchalant defiance. Something very inhuman.
‘What does it mean?’ Kate said to her.
‘It means, Niña, that they won’t ring the bells any more. They have taken the bells away, and they beat the drums in the church. Listen! Listen!’
The drums were shuddering rapidly again.
Kate and Juana went across to the open window.
‘Look! Niña! The Eye of the Other One! No more crosses on the church. It is the Eye of the Other One. Look! How it shines! How nice!’
‘It means,’ said Ezequiel’s breaking young voice, which was just turning deep, ‘that it is the church of Quetzalcoatl. Now it is the temple of Quetzalcoatl; our own God.’
He was evidently a staunch Man of Quetzalcoatl.
‘Think of it!’ murmured Juana, in an awed voice. She seemed like a heap of darkness low at Kate’s side.
Then again she glanced up, and the eyes of the two women met for a moment.
‘See the Niña’s eyes of the sun!’ cried Juana, laying her hand on Kate’s arm. Kate’s eyes were a sort of hazel, changing, grey-gold, flickering at the moment with wonder, and a touch of fear and dismay. Juana sounded triumphant.
A man in a white serape, with the blue and black borders, suddenly appeared at the window, lifting his hat, on which was the sign of Quetzalcoatl, and pushing a little card through the window.
The card said: Come to the church when you hear the one big drum; about seven o’clock. — It was signed with the sign of Quetzalcoatl.
‘Very well!’ said Kate. ‘I will come.’
It was a quarter to seven already. Outside the room was the noise of Juana sweeping the veranda. Kate put on a white dress and a yellow hat, and a long string of pale-coloured topaz that glimmered with yellow and mauve.
The earth was all damp with rain, the leaves were all fresh and tropical thick, yet many old leaves were on the ground, beaten down.
‘Niña! You are going out already! Wait! Wait! The coffee. Concha! quick!’
There was a running of bare feet, the children bringing cup and plate and sweet buns and sugar, the mother hastily limping with the coffee. Ezequiel came striding along the walk, lifting his hat. He went down to the servants’ quarters.
‘Ezequiel says — !’ Juana came crying. When suddenly a soft, slack thud seemed to make a hole in the air, leaving a gap behind it. Thud! — Thud! — Thud! — rather slowly. It was the big drum, irresistible.
Kate rose at once from her coffee.
‘I am going to the church,’ she said.
‘Yes, Niña — Ezequiel says — I am coming, Niña — ’
And Juana scuttled away, to get her black rebozo.
The man in the white serape with the blue and black ends was waiting by the gate. He lifted his hat, and walked behind Kate and Juana.
‘He is following us!’ whispered Juana.
Kate drew her yellow shawl around her shoulders.
It was Sunday morning, sailing-boats lined the water’s edge, with their black hulls. But the beach was empty. As the great drum let fall its slow, bellowing note, the last people were running towards the church.
In front of the church was a great throng of natives, the men with their dark serapes, or their red blankets over their shoulders; the nights of rain were cold; and their hats in their hands. The high, dark Indian heads! — Women in blue rebozos were pressing along. The big drum slowly, slackly exploded its note from the church-tower. Kate had her heart in her mouth.
In the middle of the crowd, a double row of men in the scarlet serapes of Huitzilopochtli with the black diamond on the shoulders, stood with rifles, holding open a lane through the crowd.
‘Pass!’ said her guard to her. And Kate entered the lane of scarlet and black serapes, going slow and dazed between watchful black eyes of the men. Her guard followed her. But Juana had been turned back.
Kate looked at her feet, and stumbled. Then she looked up.
In the gateway of the yard before the church stood a brilliant figure in a serape whose zig-zag whorls of scarlet, white, and black ran curving, dazzling, to the black shoulders; above which was the face of Cipriano, calm, superb, with the little black beard and the arching brows. He lifted his hand to her in salute.
Behind him, stretching from the gateway to the closed door of the church, was a double row of the guard of Quetzalcoatl, in their blankets with the blue and black borders.
‘What shall I do?’ said Kate.
‘Stand here with me a moment,’ said Cipriano, in the gateway.
It was no easy thing to do, to face all those dark faces and black, glittering eyes. After all, she was a gringuita, and she felt it. A sacrifice? Was she a sacrifice? She hung her head, under her
yellow hat, and watched the string of topaz twinkling and shaking its delicate, bog-watery colours against her white dress. Joachim had given it her. He had had it made up for her, the string, in Cornwall. So far away! In another world, in another life, in another era! Now she was condemned to go through these strange ordeals, like a victim.
The big drum overhead ceased, and suddenly the little drums broke like a shower of hail on the air, and as suddenly ceased.
In low, deep, inward voices, the guard of Quetzalcoatl began to speak, in heavy unison:
‘Oyé! Oyé! Oyé! Oyé!’
The small, inset door within the heavy doors of the church opened and Don Ramón stepped through. In his white clothes, wearing the Quetzalcoatl serape, he stood at the head of his two rows of guards, until there was a silence. Then he raised his naked right arm.
‘What is God, we shall never know!’ he said, in a strong voice, to all the people.
The Guard of Quetzalcoatl turned to the people, thrusting up their right arm.
‘What is God, you shall never know!’ they repeated.
Then again, in the crowd, the words were re-echoed by the Guard of Huitzilopochtli.
After which there fell a dead silence, in which Kate was aware of a forest of black eyes glistening with white fire.
‘But the Sons of God come and go.
They come from beyond the Morning Star;
And thither they return, from the land of men.’
It was again the solemn, powerful voice of Ramón. Kate looked at his face; it was creamy-brown in its pallor, but changeless in expression, and seemed to be sending a change over the crowd, removing them from their vulgar complacency.
The Guard of Quetzalcoatl turned again to the crowd, and repeated Ramón’s words to the crowd.
‘Mary and Jesus have left you, and gone to the place of renewal.
And Quetzalcoatl has come. He is here.
He is your lord.’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 463
