Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/161

“No, don’t lean on me, Concha. Stand on your own feet.”

The slight grin of malevolence on Concha’s face, as stood on her own feet. Then:

“Do you have lice in your hair, Niña?”

The question asked with a subtle, Indian insolence.

“No!” suddenly angry. “And now go! Go! Go away from me! Don’t come near me.”

They slunk out, abject So much for educating them.

Kate had from Guadalajara—great excitement. But while the visitors were drinking tea with Kate on the verandah, at the other side of the patio, full in view, Juana, Concha, and Felipa, a cousin of about sixteen, squatted on the gravel with their splendid black hair down their backs, displaying themselves as they hunted in each other’s hair for lice. They wanted to be full in view. And they were it. They wanted the basic fact of lice to be thrust under the noses of those white people.

Kate strode down the verandah.

“If you must pick lice,” she said in a voice to Juana, shaking with anger, “pick them there, in your own place, where you can’t be seen.”

One instant, Juana’s black inchoate eyes gleamed with a malevolent ridicule, meeting Kate’s. The next instant, humble and abject, the four with their black hair down their backs slunk into the recess out of sight.

But it pleased Juana that she had been able to make Kate’s eyes blaze with anger. It pleased her. She felt a certain low power in herself. True, she was a little afraid of that anger. But that was what she wanted. She would have no use for a Niña of whom she was not a bit afraid. And she wanted to be able to provoke that anger, of which she felt a certain abject twinge of fear.

Ah the dark races! Kate’s own Irish were near enough, for her to have glimpsed some of the mystery. The dark races belong to a bygone cycle of humanity. They are left behind in a gulf out of which they have never been able to climb. And on to the particular white man’s levels they never will be able to climb. They can only follow as servants.

While the white man keeps the impetus of his own proud, onward march, the dark races will yield and serve, perforce.