Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/121

the sand; the fleecy green willow trees and pepper-trees, and the villas in foliage and flowers, hanging magenta curtains of bougainvillea, red dots of hibiscus, pink abundance of tall oleander trees; occasional palm-trees sticking out.

The boat was steering round a stone jetty, on which, in black letters, was painted an advertisement for motor-car tyres. There were a few seats, some deep fleecy trees growing out of the sand, a booth for selling drinks, a little promenade, and white boats on a sandy beach. A few women sitting under parasols, a few bathers in the water, and trees in front of the few villas deep in green or blazing scarlet blossoms.

“This is very good,” thought Kate. “It is not too savage, and not over civilised. It isn’t broken, but it is rather out of repair. It is in contact with the world, but the world has got a very weak grip on it.”

She went to the hotel, as Don Ramón had advised her.

“Do you come from Orilla? You are Mrs Leslie? Don Ramón Carrasco sent us a letter about you.”

There was a house. Kate paid her boatmen and shook hands with them. She was sorry to be cut off from them again. And they looked at her with a touch of regret as they left. She said to herself:

“There is something rich and alive in these people. They want to be able to breathe the Great Breath. They are like children, helpless. And then they’re like demons. But somewhere, I’ believe, they want the breath of life and the communion of the brave, more than anything.”

She was surprised at herself, suddenly using this language. But her weariness and her sense of devastation had been so complete, that the Other Breath in the air, and the bluish dark power in the earth had become, almost suddenly, more real to her than so-called reality. Concrete, jarring, exasperating reality had melted away, and a soft world of potency stood in its place, the velvety dark flux from the earth, the delicate yet supreme life-breath in the inner air. Behind the fierce sun the dark eyes of a deeper sun were watching, and between the bluish.ribs of the mountains a powerful heart was secretly beating, the heart of the earth.

Her house was what she wanted; a low L-shaped, tiled building with rough red floors and deep verandah, and the other two sides of the patio completed by the thick, dark