The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(5)
“The macehuales think God speaks to them in the form of a talking cross. It’s not exactly heathen,” he replied, simply because he wanted to see Lizalde’s flushed face grow even redder. He didn’t like the hacendado, even if the man was paying him. He didn’t like anyone. All men were to him worse than dogs, and he reviled humanity.
“It’s heresy all the same. I suppose you don’t properly worship the lord, Mr. Laughton? Few of your kind do.”
He wondered if he meant men in his line of work or Englishmen and shrugged. Piety was not necessary to do his employer’s bidding, and he’d lost any faith he’d ever had long before he ever touched the shore of the Americas.
They took many turns through the mangroves until the water grew shallow and they spotted two lonely wooden poles. There was a simple skiff tied to one of them. This must be what amounted to the landing. A road of bright reddish-yellow dirt ran from there. In the rainy season it would no doubt turn into a muddy trap. But for now it was dry, and there was a clear path through the dense scrub and brush.
One man walked ahead of them, and behind them there were two others, carrying Montgomery’s belongings. If he decided to stay he’d have a few toiletries; the rest might be sent later, though there wasn’t much else to bring. He tended to travel light at all times. The possessions he couldn’t do without were his rifle, which he slung over his left shoulder, the pistol at his hip, and the compass in his pocket. This last item had been a wedding gift from his uncle. It had seen him through British Honduras, through swamps, creeks, rickety bridges, and sharply pointed ridges. Through dampness and swarms of mosquitoes. Through lands rich with limestone and teeming with mahogany, past ceiba trees with buttresses as sturdy as the towers of a castle, their branches festooned with orchids.
Now it brought him here, to Mexico.
They walked until they reached two ceiba trees shading a tall Moorish arch. In the distance there was a white house. The whole of Moreau’s property was surrounded by a huge, tall wall and anchored by those arches. The house and other buildings—he spotted the stables to the left—lay in the middle of this long, walled rectangle where plants grew wild and unkempt.
It wasn’t a proper, grand hacienda by a long shot—he thought it too small for that; the property might pass as a ranch—but it was still a sight. Lizalde had told him the previous owners had thought to run a sugar mill. If they had, their efforts had been poor; he couldn’t spot the telltale chimney stacks. Maybe there was a trapiche in the back, but he couldn’t see that far. There was a shorter, dividing wall at the rear. It had been painted white, like the house. The workers’ housing must be behind that dividing wall, along with other structures.
The Mexican way of building houses, inherited from the Spaniards, involved walls behind walls and more walls. Nothing was easily exposed to the curious eyes of passersby. He bet there was a delightful interior patio behind the house’s strong fa?ade, a cloistered haven of hammocks and greenery amid a row of arcades. The house’s portón itself was tall, nine feet in height, made of wood so dark it almost looked black, contrasting with the whiteness of the house. There was a postigo that could be opened to allow people on foot passage so that the double doors didn’t have to swing open.
Montgomery was proven wrong when a woman opened the postigo to receive them, and they walked across the interior courtyard. There were no lush gardens, nor lazy hammocks. He was presented with the sight of a dry fountain shaded by a fiddlewood tree and empty planters. Unpruned bougainvilleas hugged the stone walls. Graceful archways led into the house proper, and windows with iron grilles looked onto the courtyard. Despite the cloistered quality of Mexican dwellings, the inside and the outside also seemed to mix freely, and above the archways there were carved images of leaves and flowers, evoking the presence of nature. It was a paradox that he enjoyed, this meeting of stone and plant, darkness and air.
The woman told the men carrying Montgomery’s things to wait in the courtyard and then asked the gentlemen to follow her.
The sitting room Lizalde and Montgomery were led into had tall French doors and was furnished with two red settees that had seen better days, three chairs, and a table. Not the finest abode, not the pride of the wealthiest hacendado, definitely more of a haphazardly maintained country manor, but they had a piano. A massive, handwrought iron chandelier was dramatically suspended from wooden beams, drawing the eye, further indicating a certain amount of wealth.
Preposterously, a delicate clock had been placed atop a mantle. It was painted with a courting scene, showing a man in French livery of a previous century kissing the hand of a woman. Cherubs served as further ornamentation, and the top of it was painted a pale blue. It did not match anything else in the room. It was as if the owner of the house had ransacked another property and then hastily tossed the clock into this chamber.
A man sat on one of the chairs. When they walked in, he stood up and smiled. Dr. Moreau was taller than Montgomery, and Montgomery regularly towered over others, a good six feet and two inches in height. The doctor was also powerfully built, with a fine forehead and a resolute mouth. Though his hair was growing white he had an eagerness, a vitality, that did not give at all the impression of a man approaching his golden years. In his youth, Dr. Moreau could have been a pugilist, had he wanted to.
“Did you have a good trip? And would you like a glass of anise liqueur?” Dr. Moreau asked once Lizalde had introduced them. “I find it cools one down.”