Part 10

They found the guests of the pension at dinner in the garden. There were ten or twelve people at the table, and Over and Catalina were conscious of a conspicuous entrance; and a certain familiar lighting of the eye in those facing the door heralded them as a distinguished young couple on their honeymoon. Catalina, whose spirits had ebbed far out, frowned and took the vacant chair beside Mrs. Rothe, that at least she might not be obliged to talk to a man, and Over sat himself beside the husband. In a moment Catalina saw her mistake; there was but one person between her cavalier and the blonde young woman who had inspired her with distrust.

The American girl sat at the head of the table with the air of a hostess entertaining her guests. She was perhaps twenty-six, but she had the aplomb of a woman who not only has been a gracious hostess for many years, but has exacted and received much tribute. She wore a thin black gown which became her fairness marvellously well, and had dressed her smooth, ashen hair both high and low. Her long back was straight without effort, and if her shoulders were a shade too broad her waist and hips were less mature. Everybody else looked dowdy in comparison, even Mrs. Rothe suffering an eclipse.

But if her toilette was triumphant, her manner was more so. On one side of her sat a Frenchman, on the other a Spaniard, opposite Captain Over a German, and she addressed each in his language, taking care that none should suffer at the expense of the other; and it was manifest that they all adored her. She was, in fact, a brilliant figure, and if her sweet smile was somewhat mechanical, and her fine, gray eyes keen and passionless, her swains were too dazzled by her manner and her handsome appearance to detect the flaws.

Catalina cocked her ears, but found neither wisdom nor cleverness in the remarks that fell from the thin, well-cut lips. It was the girl’s linguistic accomplishment, her bright manner of saying nothing, and willingness to hear men talk, that were responsible for the delusion that she was a brilliant woman. Catalina’s curiosity could no longer contain itself, and she turned abruptly to Mrs. Rothe and spoke for the first time.

“Who is she?” she asked. “Have you heard?”

“Her name is Holmes, and I heard her sister, that dowdy little artist over there, call her Edith.”

“I wonder who—what—she is?”

“Nobody in particular, I should think.”

“But she—she—dominates everything.”

“That is the American girl—a certain type. You’ll see a great many of them if you go about enough. This specimen was born with a respectable amount of good looks, a high opinion of herself, and some magnetism. On her way through life she has acquired what some call autorité, others bluff. She probably has no position to speak of at home—she never would wear her hair in that Florodora lump on her forehead if she had—but she has made a great deal of running in summer and winter resorts, and in Europe. The study of her life is twofold: dress and how to please men—while deluding them that they are graciously permitted to please her. Her knack for languages stands her in good stead, her tact is almost—never quite—perfect; for she too often makes the mistake of snubbing women. She knows the value of every glance, she has a genius for small talk and dress—probably she has not an income of a hundred and fifty dollars a month, and her sister has to dress like a sweep to help her out—and I should be willing to stake all I have that she dances to perfection. She is the sort of girl that men delight to make a belle of, not only because she flatters them and is always ‘all there,’ but because she does them so much credit. But they usually are quite content to swell her train, and forget to propose. What she is on the lookout for, of course, is a rich husband; but every year she becomes more and more the veteran flirt, more polished and mechanical, and less seductive, and will end by taking any one she can get.”

“She is a type, then. I fancied her unique.”

“Dear me! There are hundreds like her.”

“All the same, I can’t take my eyes off her. She fascinates me. I don’t like her—but I think I’d like to be like her.”

“Heaven forbid! She is a very second-rate person, my dear, and your beauty is real, while hers is only a matter of effect. She fascinates you because she is young and successful, and you see her like for the first time. But she is nothing in the world but a man’s woman, and while as chaste as an Amazon—I suppose Amazons were chaste—has probably been engaged several times—the type is sentimental—I might add, experimental. I caught Lolly hanging over her this afternoon, and she will doubtless put him through his paces. It won’t hurt him; she is not the type that men die for—not even what the French call an allumeuse—just a plain American flirt.”

“She has style,” sighed Catalina.

“Of a sort,” said the New-Yorker, indifferently. Then she turned suddenly to Catalina with the charming sympathy of glance and manner that blinded her friends to the poor ruin of her face. “How you could rout her if you would!” she said. “Don’t you know, my dear, that the woman who receives that sort of promiscuous adulation is always the woman who wants it, who works for it? Given a decent amount of natural charm, and any determined woman can be a belle. But it means more work and self-repression, more patience with bores as well as with the wary, than you would ever give to it. And it means popularity with men and nothing more; no depth of accomplishment or interest in anything vital; and under that assumption of glorified independence she is really a slave, afraid to relax her vigilance lest she lose her hold, never daring to be absent-minded or careless in her dress. Of all the girls I have ever known you have the least reason to envy any one—so banish the cloud!”

Catalina glowed, and reminded herself of the opportunities thrust upon her to be the belle of a season that she had spurned with less than politeness; but in a moment her brows met and she lost her appetite. Over had been drawn into the magnetic current at the head of the table. Miss Holmes was leaning forward as if graciously permitting the stranger to enter, yet herself lured by the wisdom—it was a comment on the narrowness of Moorish streets—that flowed from his lips.

“What idiots men are!” thought Catalina, viciously. “I suppose if I hung on his words like that he’d not hesitate a minute about being in love with me. But I’d like to see myself!”

XX

After dinner Catalina went up to her room to brush her hair—her head ached slightly—and sit for a while by herself before the evening walk. As a rule, she was the first to be down, but to-night she had a perverse desire for Over to come or send for her. She was suddenly tired of meeting him half-way, of being the frank, almost sexless, comrade; she wanted to be sought and made much of. Miss Holmes might be a second-rate, but she was an artist, and Catalina was not above taking a leaf out of her book.

“I’d rather be a hermit and have smallpox than bother forever as she does, according to Mrs. Rothe; and flatter men—not I! But I think I should be more feminine and difficult.”

Her hands trembled a little as she burnished her hair, and once her eyes filled with tears; but she brushed them off with a scowl, and still refused to think. She had been too much with Over, and their friendship had run too smoothly for her thoughts to have been tempted to revolve about him when alone. There were times when she turned cold and then hot if he came upon her suddenly, and his touch and glance had thrilled her more than once. But she had kept it steadily before her that this was but a summer friendship and that in a short time she would be in California and he in England. It is true that her imagination supplemented the separation with a meeting in one country or the other not later than a year hence, but she had not permitted her mind to dwell upon the significance of his audible self-analysis in Madrid, holding that when a man doubted the depth of his sentiments the time had not come to take him seriously. Moreover, to speculate upon the significance of a man’s attentions was not only indelicate but put her in the class with other girls, and nothing distressed her more than to approach the average. Therefore, had she never sought to discover what lay beneath her daily pleasure in Over’s society and her matter-of-fact assumption that for the time he was hers.

Nor would she permit herself to analyze her sense of disappointment to-night. Her soul had been floating on the high, golden notes of the nightingales, and not alone; it had plunged down with a velocity that left it sick and dizzy, but as Catalina banged the large pins into her hair she still refused to demand the reason.

The people were talking in the garden. She shut her window overlooking it and sat down before the one opposite. The moon had not risen; the street, lit by a solitary lamp, was full of shadows. It was easy to convert the shadows into swarthy men with turbaned heads and flowing robes, but she was not in a historical mood. Even a man with a long Spanish cloak folded closely about him and holding manifestly to the heavier shadows failed to arrest her attention. In spite of her admirable self-control her mind wondered uneasily why Over did not call her, how he was occupied; for the time was passing.

Her eyes wandered to the height behind the Albaicin. There were lights; they might be watch-fires. It was not so long ago that that turbulent quarter had rung with the clamor of battle, of civil strife, that its gates had been secretly opened to Boabdil in the night, and his father or uncle been defied to come over and redden its streets. What were four centuries?

“I shall always have that pleasure, that resource,” thought Catalina, arrogantly. “I can always take refuge in the past on a moment’s notice. Where on earth can he be? Does he suppose I don’t want to walk—as I haven’t gone down? Or is he too interested—”

Her spine stiffened. She listened intently, then stood up silently and looked down. Over and Miss Holmes were standing in the doorway of the pension, talking. Catalina could not distinguish the words. Over had a low voice of no great carrying power, and Miss Holmes had neglected none of the charms that man finds excellent in woman. But he was leaning to her words in a fashion that denoted interest, and oblivion of all else for the moment. In a flash Catalina realized just how attractive he was to women.

Still talking, they moved from the doorway into the street, and then down in the direction of the palace. Catalina leaned out with a gasp, hardly believing the evidence of her eyes. For a moment astonishment routed other sensations. Was it possible that Over was on his way to visit the Alhambra for the first time by moonlight with another woman?—that he was going for his evening walk at all without her? Never had he thought of doing such a thing before; they went off together, frequently alone, every evening. Even in Toledo he had come directly to the Casa Villéna after dinner, and sooner or later, by one device or another, had managed to carry her off for a stroll. But there he was, complacently walking down street with another woman, and not so much as a backward glance. And the other woman had white lace about her head and shoulders, and no doubt looked like a lorelei. The only beauty she had ever heard Over praise was the beauty of fair women, which was as it should be. And Englishmen laughed at American distinctions. If this girl were second class, how was Over to find her out on a moonlight night in a tricksy frame, how discover that she wore her hair like a shop-girl? Doubtless, if he thought at all about the matter, he would elevate Miss Holmes above herself in the social scale. She at least did not suggest the cow-boy.

And still he did not turn his head. Perhaps he was only strolling for a few minutes with the new acquaintance, waiting for his usual companion to descend. Catalina leaned farther out. In a moment they passed the old mosque and disappeared.

She fell back from the window, unable for a moment to think coherently; the blood was pounding in her head. Her impulse was to run after them and twist her rival’s neck. She panted with hate, with the desire for vengeance, with the lust to kill. She stood like a wooden idol, but she boiled with the worst passions of the ancient races behind her. She conceived swift plans of vengeance. She would make friends with the girl, poison her peace of mind, kill her if she could not inveigle her into killing herself. The malignant, treacherous nature of the aboriginal controlled her, obsessed her. Civilization fell away; she was capable of the worst; she cared nothing for consequences. Literally, she wanted the enemy’s scalp. Then, without premeditation, she wept stormily, like an undisciplined child—or a savage—beside itself. And then the obsession passed and she was horrified.

It was not thus her imagination had dwelt upon the great revelation. She had visioned love among the stars, and had expected—groping, perhaps—to find it there. But to discover it in a fit of jealous rage, writhing in the most ignoble of the passions, her soul shrieking for revenge—she descended to the depths of discouragement, humiliation. She doubted if she were worthy of being loved even by a mere man—for the moment she despised the entire sex for Over’s weakness and inconstancy. Of course, like others, he had succumbed to this enchantress, who didn’t even wear her hair like a lady, and was therefore unworthy of even the rage she had flung after him. She longed to despise him so hotly that her love would be reduced to a charred ember, and thought she had succeeded; then it flamed all through her, and she sprang to her feet.

“There is one thing I can do,” she thought, and lit the candle. “I’ll leave to-morrow. Never will I go through this again, and never will I see him again if I can help it.”

She had the instinct of all wounded things, and a terror of the emotions that had torn her. Pain she could stand, and had a dim foreshadowing that in solitude she might attain that dignity of soul that sorrow and meditation bring to great natures, but never the passionate conflict of emotions that confused her now. As she locked her trunk there was a knock on her door. She answered mechanically, and Mrs. Rothe entered.

“What—”

Catalina, who was sitting on the floor, sprang to her feet. Her hair was disordered and her eyes red. There was no use attempting to conceal anything from this keen-eyed woman, whose sufferings were stamped in the loosened muscles of her face. She stood silent and haughty. She would deny nothing, but nothing was further from her mind than confession.

“May I sit down?” asked Mrs. Rothe. “Have you a headache? I was afraid you must have, as you did not come down.”

“My head doesn’t ache, but I am sick of Spain. I am going to start for home to-morrow.”

“Oh, I am sorry. It will be dreary without you. And I thought it so enchanting here. Can’t I induce you to change your mind?”

Catalina sat down on her trunk, but she shook her head. “I want to go home,” she said.

Mrs. Rothe turned her kind, bitter eyes full upon Catalina. “Don’t run away,” she said. “It is unworthy of you. And this means nothing. What is more natural—he being a man—than that he should accept the minor offerings of the gods when the best is not forthcoming? Moreover, when a man has talked steadily to one girl for three weeks”—she shrugged her shoulders—“that is the way they are made, my dear, the way we are all made, for that matter, as you will discover in time for yourself. It is better to accept men as they are, and early than late.”

“I never want to see another man again—and this was our first night in Granada. There was—had been for weeks—a tacit understanding that we should do every bit of it together—”

“But you disappeared. No doubt he thought you were indisposed—”

“I wanted him to come after me, for once.”

“Oh, my dear, men are so dense. When they love us desperately they rarely do what we most long to have them. If I don’t sympathize with you—well, I think of my own throes, not only at your age, but so often after. It is so easy to fall in love, so difficult to remain there. You can marry Over if you wish—and two or three years hence—the pity of it!”

“Do you mean that no love lasts?”

“In tenacious natures like yours it may. Nevertheless, there will be times when he will bore you, get on your nerves, when you will plan to get away from him for a time. A few years ago I still clung—in the face of experience—to my delusions. Then I would have held your hand and wept sympathetic tears. Now, I can only say, go in and win, but don’t break your heart over an imagined capacity for love at an interminable high pitch.”

“You must have loved Mr. Rothe when you married him,” said Catalina, with curiosity, and feeling that Mrs. Rothe had opened the gates and bade her enter.

“I did,” said the older woman, dryly. “For what other reason, pray, would I make a fool of myself, and disgust and antagonize those whom I had loved so long? What a fool the world is!” she burst out. “And writers, for that matter! They are always harping on the death of the man’s love, upon the punishment that will be visited upon the woman of mature years who marries a man younger than herself! I am capable of the profoundest feeling, and I have never been able really to love a man in my life. I have deluded myself again and again, and invariably the man has disappointed or disgusted me. This is my third husband. The first died, but not soon enough to leave me with a blessed memory. The second, whom I had found irresistible, developed into a gourmand with a bad temper. I lived with him for fifteen years. When I met Rothe I was forty, the beginning of the most critical period in the life of women of my sort—when if not happy we would stake our souls for happiness. It seemed to me that I could not continue to live without love, and yet that I could not die unless I had, if only for a day, loved to the full capacity of my nature. When I met Rothe and he fell head over heels in love with me—I was a very handsome woman five years ago—I was at first flattered; then his ardor struck fire in me and I made no effort to extinguish it. It was what I had waited for, prayed for, and I encouraged it, fanned the flame. I was convinced that it was the grand passion at last; and I went out to Dakota. I gloried in the sacrifice, gloated over it. And in spite of divorce and scandal I suppose I was happy for a time.”

“And now?” asked Catalina, breathlessly. She had forgotten Over and Miss Holmes. Never had she been so close to living tragedy. Mrs. Rothe, in her negligée of pale yellow silk and much lace, her ruffled petticoat and slippers of the same shade, indescribably fresh and dainty, and, in the light of the solitary candle, a beautiful woman once more, was to Catalina the very embodiment of “the world,” and for the moment far more interesting than herself.

“Now! I hate the sight of him. I am bored beyond the power of words to tell. I have to remind myself that he is not my son, and when I do not long for my own son, who was far brighter, I long for a man of my own age to exchange ideas with, who will understand me in a degree. There are a few women with eternal youth in their souls, but I am not one of them. I am tired of all his little habits; the very expression of his face when he smokes a cigarette with his after-dinner coffee gets on my nerves. I am sick of making-up and pretending to be interested in the things that interest a young man. I want to be frankly myself—of course, I should hate growing old in any case, but I am sick of being a slave—that is what it amounts to when you don’t dare to be yourself. But I must keep up the farce lest I lose him, and the world laugh and once more remind itself of its perspicacity. I give him a long rope; he is still fond of me; my pride mounts as everything else fades away. There you are!”

Catalina had hardly drawn breath during this jeremiade. She no longer had any desire to run from her own pain. After all, what had Over done but take a walk with a strange girl in her own absence? She had beaten a mole-hill as high as a mountain. But she could think of nothing to say. In the bitter misery before her there was the accent of finality, and comment would have been resented if heard.

“I have told you all this,” said Mrs. Rothe, “partly because the impulse after five years of repression was irresistible, partly to show you that the great tragedy of a woman’s life is when not the man, but she, ceases to love. Better far death and desolation, and a great memory, than a nature in ruins, and the magic that would rebuild gone out of hope forever. As for you—congratulate yourself that you are able to feel and suffer as you have done to-night. Over is a better sort than most. Marry him and prove that you are of greater and finer stuff than I. I should be delighted. And if this girl should develop into a rival of a sort, welcome the stimulation, and show your mettle—”

“I won’t fight over any man!”

“Certainly not. Simply be more charming than she is. Nothing could be easier. You could not make the mistake of eagerness if you tried, but you can be obliviously delightful—and you know him far better than she does, and have no machine-made methods. Now go to bed and sleep, and ignore the episode in the morning. You went to bed with a headache and neither knew nor cared what Over did with himself.”

XXI

Thus it came about that the next morning, not long after dawn, Catalina was leaning out of her garden window humming a Spanish air when Over pushed aside his curtain and looked up expectantly.

“Coffee?” he whispered. She nodded. He pointed down to a little table in the window in the wall. They stole like conspirators through the dark house and down to the garden. Over was first at the tryst, and never had he greeted her with such effusion. He held her hand a moment and gazed solicitously into her eyes with an entire absence of humor as he tenderly demanded if she had been ill or only tired the night before, and assured her of his disappointment in being cheated of their walk. His conscience hurt him, and he felt the more penitent as he saw that disapproval in any of its varied manifestations was not to be his portion. For Catalina looked nothing short of angelic. Her eyes were a trifle heavy, as if with pain, but her beautiful mouth curled and wreathed with sweetness. She wore for the first time a white blouse and a duck skirt, and about her throat she had knotted a scarlet ribbon. The fine, soft masses of her hair looked as if spread with a golden net that caught the fire of the mounting sun, and she looked several years younger, fresher, more ingenuous than Miss Holmes, though older than herself.

She ground the coffee while he boiled the water, and when he alluded, with an enthusiasm that was almost sentimental, to their first coffee-making in Tarragona, recalling the solitary palm against the blue sea, her face lit up and her lips parted. So, all in a night, had their attitude of almost excessive naturalness towards each other dissolved into the historic duel of the man and the maid. Both were acutely sensible of the change, yet neither resented it, for it heralded the new chapter and its unfolded mysteries. Catalina had the advantage, for she understood and he did not; he only felt the subtle change, and the conviction that she was even more provocative than during the episode of the mantilla.

“No one in the world can make such good coffee,” she said, politely, as she sipped hers and looked through the bars at the dark arbors of the park. “I still had rather a headache when I awoke, but this is all I need. Did you go for a walk last night?”