Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/178
She rose, and went into the long, high salon where Doña Carlota was sitting talking to a man in black. The salon, with its three window-doors open on to the terrace, its worn, red floor tiled with old square bricks, its high walls colour-washed a faint green, and the many-beamed ceiling white-washed; and with its bareness of furniture; seemed like part of the out-of-doors, like some garden-arbour put for shade. The sense, which houses have in hot climates, of being just three walls wherein one lingers for a moment, then goes away again.
As Kate entered the room, the man in black rose and shook hands with Doña Carlota, bowing very low and deferential. Then with a deferential sideways sort of bow to Kate, he vanished out of doors.
“Come!” said Doña Carlota to Kate. “Are you sure now you are rested?” And she pulled forward one of the cane rocking-chairs that had poised itself in the room, en route to nowhere.
“Perfectly!” said Kate. “How still it seems here! Except for the drum. Perhaps it is the drum that makes it seem so still. Though I always think the lake makes a sort of silence.”
“Ah, the drum!” cried Doña Carlota, lifting her hand with a gesture of nervous, spent exasperation. “I cannot hear it. No, I cannot, I cannot bear to hear it.”
And she rocked herself in a sudden access of agitation.
“It does hit one rather below the belt,” said Kate. “What is it?”
“Ah, do not ask me! It is my husband.”
She made a gesture of despair, and rocked herself almost into unconsciousness.
“Is Don Ramón drumming?”
“Drumming?” Dona Carlota seemed to start. “No! Oh no! He is not drumming, himself. He brought down two Indians from the north to do that.”
“Did he!” said Kate, non-committal.
But Doña Carlota was rocking in a sort of semi-consciousness. Then she seemed to pull herself together.
“I must talk to somebody, I must!” she said, suddenly straightening herself in her chair, her face creamy and creased, her soft brown hair sagging over her ears, her brown eyes oddly desperate. “May I talk to you?”