Chapter 6

Harboro would have made you think of a bear in a toy-shop when he sat down in the tiny front room of Madame Boucher's millinery establishment. He was uncomfortably, if vaguely, conscious of the presence of many hats, displayed on affairs which were like unfinished music-racks.

He had given Madame Boucher certain instructions--or perhaps liberties would be a better word. Mrs. Harboro was to be shown only the best fabrics, he told her; and no pains were to be spared to make a dress which would be a credit to madame's establishment. Madame had considered this, and him, and had smiled. Madame's smile had impressed him curiously. There had been no co-operation between lips and eyes. The eyes had opened a little wider, as if with a stimulated rapaciousness. The lips had opened to the extent of a nicely achieved, symmetrical crescent of teeth. It made Harboro think of a carefully constructed Jack-o'-Lantern.

Sylvia had asked him if he wouldn't help in making a choice, but he had looked slightly alarmed, and had resolutely taken a seat which afforded a view of the big _Casa Blanca_ across the way: an emporium conducted on a big scale by Germans. He even became oblivious to the discussion on the other side of the partition, where Sylvia and madame presently entered upon the preliminaries of the business in hand.

The street was quite familiar to him. There had been a year or so, long ago, when he had "made" Piedras Negras, as railroaders say, twice a week. He hadn't liked the town very well. He saw its vice rather than its romance. He had attended one bullfight, and had left his seat in disgust when he saw a lot of men and women of seeming gentility applauding a silly fellow whose sole stock in trade was an unblushing vanity.

His imagination travelled on beyond the bull-pen, to the shabby dance-halls along the river. It was a custom for Americans to visit the dance-halls at least once. He had gone into them repeatedly. Other railroaders who were his associates enjoyed going into these places, and Harboro, rather than be alone in the town, had followed disinterestedly in their wake, and had looked on with cold, contemplative eyes at the disorderly picture they presented: unfortunate Mexican girls dancing with cowboys and railroaders and soldiers and nondescripts. Three Mexicans, with harp, violin, and 'cello had supplied the music: the everlasting national airs. It seemed to Harboro that the whole republic spent half its time within hearing of _Sobre las Olas_, and _La Paloma_, and _La Golondrina_. He had heard so much of the emotional noises vibrating across the land that when he got away from the throb of his engine, into some silent place, it seemed to him that his ears reverberated with flutes and strings, rather than the song of steam, which he understood and respected. He had got the impression that music smelled bad--like stale wine and burning corn-husks and scented tobacco and easily perishable fruits.

He remembered the only woman who had ever made an impression upon him down in those dance-halls: an overmature creature, unusually fair for a Mexican, who spoke a little English, manipulating her lips quaintly, like a child. He recalled her favorite expression: "My class is very fine!" She had told him this repeatedly, enunciating the words with delicacy. She had once said to him, commiseratingly: "You work very hard?" And when he had confessed that his duties were onerous, she had brightened. "Much work, much money," she had said, with the avidity of a boy who has caught a rabbit in a trap. And Harboro had wondered where she had got such a monstrously erroneous conception of the law of industrialism.

The picture of the whirling figures came back to him: the vapor of dust in the room, the loud voices of men at the bar, trying to be heard above the din of the music and the dancing. There came back to him the memory of a drunken cowboy, nudging the violinist's elbow as he played, and shouting: "Give us _Dixie_--give us a white man's tune"--and the look of veiled hatred in the slumbrous eyes of the Mexican musician, who had inferred the insult without comprehending the words.

He recalled other pictures of those nights: the Indian girls who might be expected to yell in the midst of a dance if they had succeeded in attracting the attention of a man who usually danced with some one else. And there were other girls with a Spanish strain in them--girls with a drop of blood that might have been traced back a hundred years to Madrid or Seville or Barcelona. Small wonder if such girls felt like shrieking too, sometimes. Not over petty victories, and with joy; but when their hearts broke because the bells of memory called to them from away in the barred windows of Spain, or in walled gardens, or with the shepherd lovers of Andalusia.

If you danced with one of them you paid thirty cents at the bar and got a drink, while the girl was given a check good for fifteen cents in the trade of the place. The girls used to cash in their checks at the end of a night's work at fifty cents a dozen. It wasn't quite fair; but then the proprietor was a business man.

"My class is very fine!" The words came back to Harboro's mind. Good God!--what had become of her? There had been a railroad man, a fellow named Peterson, who was just gross enough to fancy her--a good chap, too, in his way. Courageous, energetic, loyal--at least to other men. He had occasionally thought that Peterson meant to take the poor, pretentious creature away from the dance-halls and establish her somewhere. He had not seen Peterson for years now.

... Sylvia emerged from behind the thin partition, sighing and smiling. "Did it seem very long?" she asked. "It's hard to make up your mind. It's like taking one color out of the rainbow and expecting it to look as pretty as the whole rainbow. But I'm ready now."

"Remember, a week from Wednesday," called Madame Boucher, as Harboro and Sylvia moved toward the door.

Harboro looked at Sylvia inquiringly.

"For the try-on," she explained. "Yes, I'll be here." She went out, Harboro holding the door open for her.

Out on the sidewalk she almost collided with a heavy man, an American--a gross, blond, good-natured creature who suddenly smiled with extreme gratification. "Hello!--_Sylvia!_" he cried. He seized her by the hand and drew her close.

Harboro stood on the door-step and looked down--and recognized Peterson.