Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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Kate went up the jet-like stone staircase, through the leather doors. Mrs Norris came forward on the terrace of the upper patio to receive her guests.

‘I’m so glad, my dear, that you came. I should have rung you up before, but I’ve had such trouble with my heart. And the doctor wanting to send me down to a lower altitude! I said to him, I’ve no patience! If you’re going to cure me, cure me at an altitude of seven thousand feet or else admit your incompetence at once. Ridiculous, this rushing up and down from one altitude to another. I’ve lived at this height all these years. I simply refuse to be bundled down to Cuernavaca or some other place where I don’t want to go. Well, my dear, and how are you?’

Mrs Norris was an elderly woman, rather like a conquistador herself in her black silk dress and her little black shoulder-shawl of fine cashmere, with a short silk fringe, and her ornaments of black enamel. Her face had gone slightly grey, her nose was sharp and dusky, and her voice hammered almost like metal, a slow, distinct, peculiar hard music of its own. She was an archaeologist, and she had studied the Aztec remains so long, that now some of the black-grey look of the lava rock, and some of the experience of the Aztec idols, with sharp nose and slightly prominent eyes and an expression of tomb-like mockery, had passed into her face. A lonely daughter of culture, with a strong mind and a dense will, she had browsed all her life on the hard stones of archaeological remains, and at the same time she had retained a strong sense of humanity, and a slightly fantastic humorous vision of her fellow men.