The Plumed Serpent

THE WHITE PEACOCK THE TRESPASSER SONS AND LOVERS THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER THE RAINBOW THE LOST GIRL WOMEN IN LOVE AARON’S ROD THE LADYBIRD KANGAROO ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND THE BOY IN TH...

She looked at Owen. His nose had a sharp look, like a little boy who may make himself sick, but who is watching at the shambles with all his eyes, knowing it is forbidden.

“Oh by the way, how did you get on? Rather mean of us to let you go all alone like that,” he said, as he hung poised in the open doorway.

“Exactly!” cried Henry. “When they forget all about the Patria and Mexico and all that stuff, they’re as nice a people as you’d find. But as soon as they get national, they’re j...

It was a blow, really. To be forty! One had to cross a dividing line. On this side there was youth and spontaneity and “happiness.” On the other side something different: reserv...

All a confusion of contradictory gleams of meaning, Quetzalcoatl. But why not? Her Irish spirit was weary to death of definite meanings, and a God of one fixed purport. Gods sho...

“Yes! In a way. My father was one of the overseers on the hacienda. When I was a little boy I came running to my father, when the Bishop was there, with something in my hands--s...

Kate could not look at the stones of the National Museum in Mexico without depression and dread. Snakes coiled like excrement, snakes fanged and feathered beyond all dreams of d...

He paused, smiling, breathing deeply, and explained that now he was rowing against stream. This wider river flowed out of the lake, full and heavy. See! even as he rested a mome...

Loosening his blanket, he listened tensely in the moonlight. And came the _thud! thud! thud!_ of a machete striking with lust in a human body, then the strange voice of José: “_...

If there is one social instinct more dreary than all the other social instincts in the world, it is the Mexican. In the centre of Kate’s red-tiled salon were two crescents: a bl...

Everybody was quite still; the expectant hush deepened to a kind of dead, night silence. The naked-shouldered men sat motionless, sunk into themselves, and listening with the da...

The voice finished singing, only the drum kept on. Suddenly the drum gave a rapid little shudder, and there was silence. And immediately the hands were loosened, the dance broke...

There were two kitchens, the one next the dining-room, belonging to Kate, and the narrow little shed under the banana trees, belonging to the servants. From her verandah Kate lo...

Kate’s family was increased, without her expecting it. One day there arrived from Ocotlan a beautiful ox-eyed girl of about fifteen, wrapped in her black cotton rebozo, and some...

“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.

Ramón stood a while looking out at the lake. The clouds were dissolving again, the sheet of water gave off a whitish light. In the distance he could see the dancing speck of a b...

“Ah!” he said. “You want to teach me! But to me it is different. Each man has two spirits in him. The one is like the early morning in the time of rain, very quiet, and sweet, m...

“The earth is alive. But he is very big, and we are very small, smaller than dust. But he is very big in his life, and sometimes he is angry. _These people, smaller than dust_,...

“But remember,” he said to her, with southern logic, “you do not love, save with your will. I don’t like the love you have for your god: it is an assertion of your own will. I d...

This country would have its victim. America would have its victim. As long as time lasts, it will be the continent divided between Victims and Victimisers. What is the good of t...

By the time the church bells clanged for sunset, the market had already begun. On all the pavements round the plaza squatted the Indians with their wares, pyramids of green wate...

For the sun and the moon are alive, and watching with gleaming eyes. And the earth is alive, and ready to shake off his fleas. And the stars are ready with stones to throw in th...

Sitting on the seat beside Kate, Ramón was sad with the sense of heaviness and inadequacy. His third Hymn was angry and bitter. Carlota almost embittered his soul. In Mexico, tu...

“Not beyond any man,” said Don Ramón. “A Catholic Church is a church of all the religions, a home on earth for all the prophets and the Christs. A big tree under which every man...

Oh, if there is one thing men need to learn, but the Mexican Indians especially, it is to collect each man his own soul together deep inside him, and to abide by it. The Church,...

The people from the shore had seen the tree of smoke with its trunk of flame. Now they heard the heavy firing of the rockets, they looked again, exclaiming, half in dismay, half...

She saw the hills and lower slopes inland swimming in gold light like lacquer. The black huts of the peons, the lurid leaves of bananas showed up uncannily, the trees green-gold...

She went to change, and they set off to Jamiltepec. Cipriano made her a little uneasy, sitting beside him. He made her physically aware of him, of his small but strong and asser...

In the uncanny flashing of his eyes she saw a gladness that frightened her a little. His touch on her hand was uncannily soft and inward. His words said nothing; would never say...

Cipriano tied round her waist a narrow woollen sash of white wool, with white, terraced towers upon a red and black ground. And she stooped and put on his small, dark feet the h...

The voice sank again to a moan, the white hands clutched the breast, and the woman in black began to work her way forward on her knees, through the throng of women who pressed a...

The elder boy hung his head and was crying too. Ramón had the little, perplexed frown of pain on his brow. He looked from side to side, as if for some issue. Then he gathered hi...

And as the dance went on, Cipriano felt his strength increase and surge inside him. When all his limbs were glistening with sweat, and his spirit was at last satisfied, he was a...

“The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death. Blue is the breath of Quetzalcoatl. Red is Huitzilopochtli’s blood. But the grey dog belongs to the ash of the world. The Lords of L...

“To the church,” he said. “It is mine to-night. I am Huitzilopochtli: but I cannot be it alone,” he added with quick, wistful, watchful smile, as if all his flesh were flickerin...

He had glanced round the room, at the different attractive things from different parts of the world, and at the cigarette ends in the agate bowl: the rather weary luxury and dis...

“Ah, yes, men are like that, when they are merely men. When a man is _warm_ and brave--then he wants the woman to give him her soul, and he keeps it in _his_ womb, so he is more...

And he, in his dark, hot silence would bring her back to the new, soft, heavy, hot flow, when she was like a fountain gushing noiseless and with urgent softness from the volcani...

“How do you know that Ramón needs submission from a woman?” she said. “How do you know? He has not asked any submission from you.--And you are wrong. He does not ask submission...

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