Hideous black lizards and horned toads crawl and hop amid this desolation; and the deadly little sidewinder rattlesnake lies basking in the blaze of sunshine, which it distils into venom. Sometimes the level plain is broken up into savage ridges and awful canons, along whose arid bottoms no water streams. As you stagger through their chaotic bottoms, you see vast boulders poised overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver of earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they come crashing and splintering in destruction down. Along the sides of these acclivities extend long, level lines and furrows, marks of where the ocean flowed ages ago. But sometimes the hills are but accumulations of desert dust, which shift slowly from place to place under the action of the wind, melting away here to be re-erected yonder; mounding themselves, perhaps, above a living and struggling human being, to move forward, anon, leaving where he was a little heap of withered bones. A fearful place is this broad abyss, where once murmured the waters of a prehistoric sea. Let us return to the cool and fragrant security of the general's ranch.
At right angles to the main body of the house extend two wings, thus forming three sides of a square, the interior of which is the court-yard. Here the business of the establishment is conducted. It is the liveliest spot on the premises; though it is liveliness of a very indolent sort. The veranda built around these sides is twenty feet in breadth, paved with tiles that have been worn into hollows by innumerable lazy footsteps, mostly shoeless, for this side of the house is frequented chiefly by the servants of the place, who are Mexican Indians.
Ancient wooden settles are bolted to the walls; from hooks hang Indian baskets of bright colors; in one corner are stretched raw hides, which serve as beds. Small brown children, half naked, trot, clamber, and crawl about. Black-haired, swarthy women squat on the tiled floor, pursuing their vocations, or, often, doing nothing at all beyond continuing a placid organic existence. Boys and men saunter in and out of the court-yard, chatting or calling in their musical patois; once in a while there is a thud and clatter of hoofs, a rider arriving or departing. It is an entertaining scene, charming in its monotony of small changes and evolutions; you can sit watching it in a half-doze for twenty years at a stretch, and it may seem only as many minutes, or vice versa.
Most of the rooms in the wings are used for the kitchens and other servants' quarters; but one large chamber is devoted to a special purpose of the general's own: it is a museum; the Curiosity-Room, he calls it. It is lighted by two windows opening on opposite sides, one on the court-yard, the other on an orange grove at the south end of the house. Besides being, in itself, a cool and pleasant spot, it is full of interest to any one who cares about the relics and antiquities of an ancient and vanishing race, concerning whom little is or ever will be known. There are two students in it at this moment; though whether they are studying antiquities is another matter. Let us give ear to their discourse and be instructed.
"But this was made for you to wear, Miss Trednoke. Try it. It fits you perfectly, you see. There can be no doubt about your being a princess, now!"
"I sometimes feel it,--here!" she said, putting her hand on her bosom. She was looking at him as she said it, but her eyes, instead of any longer meeting his, seemed to turn their regard inward, and to traverse strange regions, not of this world. "I see some one who is myself, though I can never have been she: she is surrounded with brightness, and people not like ours; she thinks of things that I have never known. It is the memory of a dream, I suppose," she added, in another tone.
"Heredity is a queer thing. You may be Aztecan over again, in mind and temperament; and every one knows how impressions are transmitted. If features and traits of character, why not particular thoughts and feelings?"
"I think it is better not to try to explain these things," said she, with the unconscious haughtiness which maidens acquire who have not seen the world and are adored by their family. "They are great mysteries,--or else nothing." She now removed from her head the curious cap or helmet, ornamented with gold and with the green feathers of the humming-bird, which her companion had crowned her with, and hung it on its nail in the cabinet. "Perhaps the thoughts came with the cap," she remarked, smiling slightly. "I don't feel that way any more.
I ought not to have spoken of it."
"I hope the time will come when you will feel that you may trust me."
"You seem easy to know, Mr. Freeman," she replied, looking at him contemplatively as she spoke, "and yet you are not. There is one of you that thinks, and another that speaks. And you are not the same to my father, or to Professor Meschines, that you are to me."
"What is the use of human beings except to take one out of one's self?"
"But it is not your real self that comes out," said Miriam, after a little pause.
She never spoke hurriedly, or until after the coming speech had passed into her face.
Freeman laughed. "Well," he said, "if I'm a hypocrite, I'm one of those who are made and not born. As a boy, I was frank enough. But a good part of my life has been spent with people who couldn't be trusted; and perhaps the habit of protecting myself against them has grown upon me. If I could only live here for a while it would be different.--Here's an odd-looking thing.
What do you call that?"
"We call it the Golden Fleece."
"The Golden Fleece! I can imagine a Medea; but where is the Dragon?"
"If Jason came, the Dragon might appear."
"I remember reading somewhere that the Dragon was less to be feared than Medea's eyes. But this fleece seems to have lost most of its gold. There is only a little gold embroidery."
"It shows where the gold is hidden."
"It's you that are concealing something now, Miss Trednoke. How can a woollen garment be a talisman?"
