Chapter 4

Harboro adopted the plan, immediately after his marriage, of walking to his work in the morning and back to his home in the evening. It was only a matter of a mile or so, and if you kept out of the sun of midday, it was a pleasant enough form of exercise. Indeed, in the morning it was the sort of thing a man of varied experiences might have been expected to enjoy: the walk through Eagle Pass, with a glimpse of the Dolch hotel bus going to meet the early train from Spofford Junction, and a friendly greeting from an occasional merchant, and then the breezy passage across the Rio Grande bridge, spanning the meandering waters which never bore vessels of any sort to the far-off sea, and finally the negotiation of the narrow street in Piedras Negras, past the plaza and the bull-ring, and countless little wine-shops, and the market, with its attractively displayed fruits and vegetables from nobody knew where.

But it is not to be denied that his practice of making this journey to and fro afoot was not without its prejudicial result. The people of quality of either side of the river rarely ever set foot on the bridge, or on those malodorous streets of Piedras Negras which lay near the river. Such people employed a _cochero_ and drove, quite in the European style, when business or pleasure drew them from their homes. There was an almost continuous stream of _peones_ on the bridge in the mornings and evenings: silent, furtive people, watched closely by the customs guard, whose duties required him on occasion to examine a suspicious-appearing Mexican with decidedly indelicate thoroughness. And all this did not tend to make the bridge a popular promenade.

But Harboro was not squeamish, nor did he entertain slavish thoughts of how people would feel over a disregarded custom. He liked simplicity, and moreover he felt the need of exercise now that his work kept him inactive most of the time. He was at an age when men take on flesh easily.

Nevertheless, people weren't favorably impressed when they looked down from their old-fashioned equipages on their ride between the two republics, and caught a glimpse of the chief clerk marching along the bridge railing--often, as likely as not, in company with some chance laborer or wanderer, whose garb clearly indicated his lowly estate.

And when, finally, Harboro persuaded Sylvia to accompany him on one of these walks of his, the limits of his eccentricity were thought to have been reached. Indeed, not a few people, who might have been induced to forget that his marriage had been a scandalous one, were inclined for the first time to condemn him utterly when he required the two towns to contemplate him in company with the woman he had married, both of them running counter to all the conventions.

The reason for this trip of Harboro's and Sylvia's was that Harboro wanted Sylvia to have a new dress for a special occasion.

It happened that two or three weeks after his marriage Harboro came upon an interesting bit of intelligence in the Eagle Pass _Guide_, the town's weekly newspaper. It was a Saturday afternoon (the day of the paper's publication), and Harboro had gone up to the balcony overlooking the garden. He had carried the newspaper with him. He did not expect to find anything in the chronicles of local happenings, past or prospective, that would interest him. But there was always a department of railroad news--consisting mainly of personal items--which had for him the quality of a letter from home.

Sylvia was down-stairs at work in the dining-room, directing the efforts of old Antonia. Perhaps I should say that she was extraordinarily happy. I doubt very much if she had come to contemplate the married state through Harboro's eyes; but she seemed to have feared that an avalanche would fall--and none had fallen. Harboro had manifested an unswerving gentleness toward her, and she had begun to "let down," as swimmers say, with confidence in her ability to find bottom and attain the shore.

When at length she went up to the balcony to tell Harboro that supper was ready, she stood arrested by the pleasantly purposeful expression in his eyes. She had learned, rather creditably, to anticipate him.

"You are to have a new dress," he announced.

"Yes.... Why?"

"I see here"--he tapped the paper on his knee--"that they're getting ready for their first dance of the winter at the Mesquite Club."

She forgot herself. "But _we're_ not invited!" she said, frankly incredulous.

"Why no, not yet. But we shall be. Why shouldn't we be?"

Her hand went to her heart in the old wistful way. "I don't know ... I just thought we shouldn't be. Those affairs are for ... I've never thought they would invite me to one of their dances."

"Nonsense! They've invited me. Now they'll invite _us_. I suppose the best milliners are across the river, aren't they?"

She seemed unwilling to meet his eyes. "I believe some women get their dresses made over there, and wear them back to this side--so they needn't pay any duty. That is, if they're to be handsome dresses."

"Well, this is going to be a handsome dress."

She seemed pleased, undeniably; yet she changed the subject with evident relief. "Antonia will be cross if we don't go right down. And you must remember to praise the _enchalades_. She's tried with them ever so hard." This wasn't an affectation on Sylvia's part. She was a good-hearted girl.

"It's to be a handsome dress," repeated Harboro an hour later, when they had returned to the balcony. It was dusk now, and little tapers of light were beginning to burn here and there in the desert: small, open fires where Mexican women were cooking their suppers of dried goat's meat and _frijoles_.

Said Sylvia: "If only.... Does it matter so much to you that they should invite us?"

"It matters to me on your account. Such things are yours by right. You wouldn't be happy always with me alone. We must think of the future."

Sylvia took his hand and stroked it thoughtfully. There _were_ moments when she hungered for a bit of the comedy of life: laughter and other youthful noises. The Mexican _bailes_ and their humble feasts were delightful; and the song of the violins, and the odor of smoke, and the innocent rivalries, and the night air. But the Mesquite Club....

"If only we could go on the way we are," she said finally, with a sigh of contentment--and regret.