Part 11

She held her breath, but he replied, promptly: “I walked round a bit with Miss Holmes—that fair girl who sat at the head of the table. But the moon rises late and there was nothing to see. I was in bed by ten o’clock. I hope you will be quite fit to-night so that we can see the Alhambra by moonlight together. I am very keen on that.”

“So am I,” and she gave him an enchanting smile, but without a trace of self-consciousness. “How do you find Miss Holmes? I long to meet her. She attracts me very much.”

“Oh, she is very jolly. Can talk about anything and has the knack of your race and sex for putting a fellow quite at his ease. You are certain to like her. She has given up her home life and wanders about Europe for the sake of her sister, who is an artist; has a deuced fine nature, I should say. What?”

“Nothing. Shall we take a walk? We can’t get the cards for the palace for an hour or two yet.”

“I hoped you would feel like a jolly long walk this morning. We really had no exercise yesterday, and after that ride from Madrid I feel as if I’d like to be on my legs for a week.”

They walked for two hours along one of the country roads behind the Alhambra, racing occasionally, glimpsing many beautiful vistas, lingering for a while before the Generalife, the summer palace of the Moorish kings; Catalina gloating over the profusion and variety of the flowers, not only in the famous garden, but cropping out of every crevice of the walls themselves. As they sat in the warm sunshine of one of the terraces she gave him another little lecture on the history of Granada in a curiously exultant voice that made him oblivious of the useful information she imparted. Never had he been so attractive to her as in this new rôle of the mere man endeavoring to propitiate his goddess, and happiness bubbled and sparkled within her; if by chance their eyes met her lashes played havoc with the expression of hers. She radiantly felt that he belonged to her; she obliterated the future and forgot the seductress. She informed Over that it was Granada, Spain, the golden morning, that made her happy, and was careful to remove any impression he might harbor that she was making an effort to please him; for pride and a diabolical cunning stood her in the stead of experience. She merely had put her moody, undisciplined side to rest and exhibited in high relief her luminous, exultant girlhood; and Over stared and said little.

But she was determined that if he did address her it should not be in direct sequence to her wiles, for she had a passionate wish to be sought, to be pursued. She would continue to dazzle him with the jewels of her nature and make him forget the weeds and clay that had inspired him with uneasiness, but she would go no further.

“Come!” she exclaimed, springing to her feet. “We can get into the Alhambra now, and I simply cannot wait any longer.”

“Do you know,” she said, as they walked down the hill towards the fortress, “I have had an uneasy sense of being watched ever since I came here? I was conscious of it several times while we were exploring yesterday, and last night as I sat by my window for a few moments before I went to bed”—she stammered, caught her breath, and went on—“I felt it again; and in the night I woke up and heard two men talking under my window. I suppose there was nothing remarkable in that, but they stood there a long time, and one of the voices, although it was pitched very low, sounded dimly familiar. This morning, just before we reached the high-road I had again the sense of being watched—I am very sensitive to a powerful gaze.”

Over, who was probably afraid of nothing under the sun, was looking at her in alarm. “You know I have always said that you must not go out alone in Spain,” he said, authoritatively. “And there is danger quite aside from your beauty. Not only are all Americans supposed by the ignorant, rapacious lower classes of Europe to be phenomenally wealthy, but Californians in particular. And doubtless California is a legend with the Spaniard. I am not given to melodrama, but there is a desperate lot over in the Albaicin.”

“I don’t see what could happen to me in broad daylight, and certainly I am not going to run after you or ‘Lolly’ every time I want to go out. What a bore!”

“Not for me. I wish you would promise—”

“Well, I’ll be careful,” she said, lightly. “I have no desire for adventures of that sort. They must be horribly dirty over in the Albaicin, and after our experience with Spanish banks it might be some time before I could be ransomed.”

The Albaicin might be dirty and abandoned to wickedness, but they decided, as they leaned over the parapet of the Plaza de los Aljibes before entering the palace, there was no doubt of its picturesqueness. Far beneath them sparkled the Darro, and beyond it, parallel with the Alhambra Hill, rising from the plain almost to the very top of the steep mountain spur, was another vast roof of pinkish-gray tiles. But here they could distinguish one or two narrow streets, mere cuts in a bed of rock, from their perch, and high balconies full of flowers between the Moorish arches, a glimpse of bright interiors, the towers and patios of a great convent where the nuns walked among the orange-trees and the pomegranates, the roses and geraniums. Not a sound rose from the ancient city; it might have been as dead as the turbulent race that made its history. It lay steeping, swimming, in the pink light that seemed to rise like a vapor from its roofs. It looked like some huge stone tablet of antiquity, with hieroglyphics raised that the blind might read.

“I shall come and look at this in every light,” said Catalina, “so if I disappear you will know where to find me.”

They entered the palace through the little door in the non-committal wall, and, after bribing the guide to let them alone, lingered for a time in the Court of Myrtles, where the orange-trees no longer grow beside the pool, but where the arcades and overhanging gallery are as graceful as when the court was the centre of life of the Comares Palace, first in this group of palaces. Then, through an arcade that abutted into a fairy-like pavilion, they entered the Court of Lions.

Probably the Alhambra is the one ruin in the world where the most ardent expectations are gratified. From a reasonable distance the restored arabesque patterns on the walls, like Oriental carpets of many colors, and raised in stucco, present the illusion of originals; and all else, except the tiles gaudy in the primal colors, on the many roofs which project over the arcades into the courts, and the marble floors, are as the Africans left it. The twelve hideous lions upholding the double fountain in the famous court must have been designed by artists that had never penetrated the African jungle nor visited a menagerie, and, as the only ugly objects amid so much light and graceful beauty, serve as an accent rather than a blot. Upholding the arches of the arcades that surround the court are 128 pillars so light and slender, so mellowed by time, that they look far more like old ivory than marble. Above the arches the multicellular carving again looks like old ivory, and through them are seen the gay convolutions of the arabesques on the walls of the corridor. Above the cluster of shafts at the eastern end, which forms one of the two pavilions, the florid roofs multiply and rise to a dome of all the colors. Overhanging the north side of the court—in the second story—is a long line of low windows. They once gave light and glimpses of history to the captives of the king’s harem.

“You must half close your eyes and imagine silken curtains waving between those slender pillars, which were meant to simulate tent-poles,” said Catalina. “And Oriental rugs and divans in those arcades, and the lounging gentlemen of the court, and turbaned soldiers keeping guard, and women eternally peeping through the jalousies above. They must have seen this court red a thousand times: Muley Aben Hassan had two of his sons beheaded by this very fountain to please a new sultana; and when they weren’t beheading under orders they were flying into passions and killing one another. And the women could look straight into that room over there where Boabdil had the Abencerrages killed because one of them, as I told you, fell in love with his sultana. Do you see it all?”

“I confess I don’t,” said Over, laughing. “But I see quite enough—too much would make me apprehensive. How would you have liked that life?” he asked, curiously, as they crossed to the Hall of the Abencerrages. “I mean to have been the sultana of the moment, of course, not one of those captives up there.”

“I should probably have been nothing but devil,” replied Catalina, dryly. “It would have given me some pleasure to stick a knife into Muley Aben Hassan, and to have applied a sharp stick to Boabdil.”

They stood for a few moments in the lofty room with its domed ceiling like a cave of stalactites, its fountain and ugly brown stains, and then Catalina shuddered and ran out.

“I can stand courts where murder has been done,” she said, “for the sky always seems to clean things up. But that room is full of a sinister atmosphere. I should commit murder myself if I stayed in it too long.”

The impression vanished and she moved her head slowly on the long column of her throat, smiling with her eyes, which met Over’s.

“I hate ugly fancies and atmospheres,” she said, softly. “And the rest of the palace looks like a pleasure house; only I wish there were furniture and curtains—it seems to me they could be reproduced as successfully as the arabesques and roofs. Now one receives the impression that they slept and sat on the floor.”

They were entering the Room of the two Sisters, opposite the Hall of the Abencerrages, once the chief room of the sultana’s winter suite. There are two slabs of marble in the floor that look like recumbent tombstones. What their original purpose was legend sayeth not, unless it was to give an easy designation to a room which needs no such trivial spur to the memory. For the ceiling of this great apartment is one of the curiosities of the world. The dome is like a vast bee-hive, its 5000 cells wrought with the very colors of the flowers from which the ambitious builders brought their honey sweets. It might be a sort of Moorish heaven for the souls of bees, those tiny amazons who alone have demonstrated the superiority of the female over the male.

Catalina mentioned this conceit, and Over laughed grimly.

“When women are willing to do all the work—” he began, and then lifted his hat. Miss Holmes entered the room from the sala beyond.

She came forward with a smile of welcome, her manner quite that of a chatelaine welcoming the stranger to the halls of her ancestors.

“I am so glad I happen to be here,” she said, “I know you are people whom guides only bore. I have lived in the Alhambra three weeks now, and am thinking of offering my services at the office; but you may have them for nothing.” She included Catalina in her smiling gaze. “I hope your headache is better,” she added, politely.

“Yes, thank you,” replied Catalina, who longed to scratch her. She reminded herself of her new rôle, however, and gave her a dazzling smile that filled her eyes with warmth and accented the gray coldness of the orbs, which, like her own, faced Over. “How I envy you for having been here three weeks!” she said. “I feel as if I couldn’t wait to know, to be familiar with it all. Do you live in Spain?”

“If you call boarding in pensions frequented by artists of all the nationalities, living in a country, I have been here a year.”

She piloted them through the rooms, reciting the information that lies in Baedeker, adroitly compelled by Catalina’s intelligent questions to address the lecture to her. By the time they reached the queen’s boudoir in the Torre del Peinador, Catalina noted that the guide chafed visibly at being compelled to ignore the man, and it was evident by her wandering glances and the inflections of her voice that she not only admired the Englishman’s good looks, but appreciated his social superiority over the gentlemen of the brush who so often were her portion at pensions. Here, however, it was obviously the woman who would be interested in the perforated stone slab in a corner of the floor, which may have been built to perfume a queen or merely to warm her, and as she and Catalina disputed amiably, Over leaned on the stone wall of the narrow balcony and looked at the splendid view of Albaicin and mountain.

Then Catalina whimsically determined to give the girl the opportunity she craved. Her interest in the conversation perceptibly waning, Miss Holmes was enabled to transfer her attentions to the man, and, with battery of eye and glance, convey to him her pleasure in dropping history for human nature. When his attention was absorbed Catalina descended softly into the long arcade which overhangs the Darro, and, after wandering about at its extremity for a few moments and getting her bearings, sat down on the window-seat that looks upon the Patio de la Reja, with its neglected fountain and cypresses. They must pass her on their way to the Sala de los Embajadores. She was not sorry to be alone, and felt happy and secure, experiencing a passing moment of contempt for men in general, so easy were they to manage—a mood which assails every charming woman at times, and even on the heels of doubt and despair. But Catalina’s spirit was too buoyant not to comprehend ideality in its flight, and she stared unseeingly at the dead walls and saw only what she had divined in Over.

She waited a long while. Coming out of her reverie with a start, she wondered how long it was and drew out her watch. It was half-past eleven, and, making a rapid calculation, she was driven to conclude that her cavalier had been absorbed by the enchantress for fully an hour.

She was too proud to go after them, but her fingers curved round the window-seat in the effort to restrain herself, and her spirits plunged into an abyss of dull despair, emerging only on jealous and torturing wings to drop again. She realized the mistake she had made in the exuberance of her happy self-confidence; for a girl like Miss Holmes can make heavy running in an hour. On the steamer and in the various pensions where the Moultons had lingered she had often seen what no doubt was this same type of girl retire into a corner with the man she had marked for her own and talk—or listen—hour after hour; and Catalina had speculated upon their subjects, wondering that one human being could interest another for so long a time without the exterior aids of travel. The man had always looked as engrossed as the girl, and Catalina was forced to conclude that the mysterious arts were effective, and wished it were not forbidden to listen behind a curtain, but only that curiosity might be satisfied—she scorned arts herself. Now she wondered distractedly what this ashen-haired houri was talking about to make Over forget his very manners; but none of the long, desultory conversations, followed by the longer silences peculiar to her experience with him, threw light on the weapons of this accomplished ruler of hearts; although the bare idea that they might be leaning over the parapet side by side in a familiar silence brought Catalina to her feet and turned her sharply towards the arcade. But at that moment she saw them coming.

Over was a little ahead of his companion, who was smiling with her lips, and he came forward with some anxiety in his eyes.

“I only just missed you,” he said. “I thought you were there in the room lost in one of your silent moods. When did you come down?”

“Only a little while ago,” said Catalina, sweetly, and she saw the eyes of the other girl flash with something like fear. She also noted that her cheeks were flushed.

“You have got a little sunburned,” she said, with concern for a fine complexion in her voice. “It is much cooler down here. Have we time to go into the Sala de los Embajadores?”

And Over was made subtly aware of the second-rate quality of Miss Holmes’s accent.

They entered the immense room, whose dome is like a mighty jewel hollowed and carved within, where Boabdil drew his last breath as king of Granada; and before Miss Holmes could open her lips, Catalina, with all the picturesqueness of vocabulary she could command at will, described several of the scenes of which this most historical room in the Alhambra was the theatre; not only throwing into low relief the academic meagreness of the other girl’s knowledge, but insinuating its supererogation. Meanwhile she missed nothing. She saw the girl’s color fade, her expression of almost supercilious self-confidence give place to anxiety, and as she turned away and stared out of one of the deep windows, it rushed over Catalina sickeningly that Over, in the span of an hour, had captivated her heart as well as her fancy. He must have made himself very fascinating! Catalina bungled her centuries; Miss Holmes in love would make a formidable rival.

The girl turned suddenly with mouth wholly supercilious and the light of war in her eyes. Catalina’s face was as impassive as a mask. Miss Holmes walked deliberately towards Over, her mouth relaxing and humor in her eye, but Catalina was too quick for her. She might be an infant in the eyes of this accomplished flirt, but she had imagination and a brain capable under stress of abnormal rapidity of action. She had pulled out her watch and was facing Over.

“The palace closes at twelve—for the morning.” she said, without a quiver of nervousness in her voice. “It wants but a few minutes of twelve, and we never care for luncheon until one. Would you care to go down and make the usual futile attempt at the poste restante—or are you tired?”

“Tired? Let us go, by all means. I have had exactly one letter since I arrived in Spain. There surely is a batch here.”

“I expect rather important ones.” She turned to Miss Holmes. “Good-morning,” she said, gayly. “And thank you so much. We are the hungriest people in the world for knowledge.” And she marshalled the unconscious Over out, he lifting his hat mechanically to Miss Holmes, while admiring the sparkle in Catalina’s eyes and the unusual color in her cheeks.

XXII

As they walked down the Empedrada, the most shadowy of the avenues in the park, Catalina’s ungloved hand came in contact with Over’s and was instantly imprisoned. For a moment she lost herself in the warm magnetism of that contact, wondering somewhat, but filled with a new sense of pleasure. But as she turned her head and met his steady gaze, half humorous, half tender, she made her obedient eyes dance with mischief.

“Beware of the Alhambra,” she said, lightly.

“I am not afraid of the Alhambra,” and although she turned her hand he held it fast.

“Aren’t you?”

“You are very provocative.”

She longed for the mantilla which had given her such confidence in Toledo, but swept him a glance from the veiled splendor of her eyes.

“I don’t know whether I mind having my hand held or not.”

But if this were diplomacy it failed; he tightened his clasp.

“I am not sure that I know _you_.”

“I have heard you say that a good many times. You are not very original.”

“I was thinking of to-day, particularly.”

“Why to-day?” The wondering expression held her eyes. “I have never felt more natural, nor happy. I feel as if the mere blood in my veins had turned to that golden mist we saw on the vega this morning. I adore Spain!”

She spoke the last words in such a passion of relief that he brought his face closer to hers.

“I believe I’d give my soul to kiss you,” he whispered. There was no humor in his eyes, and he looked the born lover; and the glades of the “sacred grove” looked the very bower of lovers. But Catalina’s moment of response was over. Humiliated and furious with herself, she vowed on the spot that she would never again lift an eyelash to fascinate him. Love seemed lying in the dust, rocked back and forth by her experimental foot. He should come to her of his own free will, or go whence he came—with Miss Holmes, if he chose. She would be loved and wooed ideally, or die an old maid. But to bait—to man[oe]uvre—to cross swords with a rival! For the moment she hated Over, and he might have departed on the instant with her blessing.

She had snatched away her hand and was almost running down the hill. He made no effort to recover her until they reached the Gate of Granada, and then they walked sedately down the white hot street together.

“Miss Holmes, it seems, has arranged rather a jolly affair for to-night,” he said. “A dance in the Alhambra—in the Court of Lions. She has permission from the authorities, and has engaged some musicians. The moon rises at ten, and we will dance for two or three hours. How do you like the idea?”

“Well enough. I am not overfond of dancing.”

“I am sorry. I hoped you would give me the first waltz.”

“Well, I will if I dance. But dancing is not my forte, and I hate doing anything I don’t do well. I suppose you don’t dance any better yourself, though. Englishmen never do.”

“Indeed! How many Englishmen have you danced with?”

“Well, I have heard they don’t.”

“I flatter myself I dance rather well. It would be more like you to judge for yourself.”

“I’ll see.”

They reached the post-office after a hot walk through the town, there to meet with the usual official stupidity, or indifference, at the window of the _poste restante_. In vain Catalina adjured the somnolent person leaning on his elbows to look carefully through the R’s and S’s and O’s. He replied that there was nothing, but that there might be on the morrow; the manager of the pension had already spoken to him.

They left the post-office with bristling tempers.

“It is a relief to hate something in Spain,” cried Catalina. “And I hate the post, the telegraph, and the banks. There is a cab. I have had enough of walking for one day.”

XXIII

After luncheon Miss Holmes put her arm through Catalina’s. “Come into my room and talk to me a little while,” she murmured. “I am so tired of all these men.”

Catalina had stiffened at the contact, but pride made her yield at once. She turned with a smile in her eyes, and the other girl exclaimed, impulsively, “You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life!”

“Oh!” said Catalina, melting; but it was characteristic that she merely accepted the tribute as her due and did not return it in kind.

The two girls presented an edifying spectacle for the eyes of puzzled man as they walked off, arm in arm; moreover, at the finish of an hour’s chat in Miss Holmes’s cool little room they were very good friends, for women may hate each other as rivals but like each other as human creatures of the same sex. They have so many feminine interests in common, that man often dips over the horizon of memory while the mind is alive with the small and normal, only to resume his sway when it is vacant again.

Miss Holmes, sitting on the floor, her hands clasped about her knees, proved to be much like any other girl, and entertained Catalina with lively anecdotes of her experience in Europe. Unconsciously she revealed much that evoked Catalina’s sympathies. She made her own clothes, and it was evident that her life was harried by small economies whose names Catalina barely knew. She was a piece of respectable driftwood in Europe anchored to a still more respectable sister, and the more remarkable that she still was able to suggest a young woman of the leisure class.

“Of course I must marry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Unfortunately, the only man I ever wanted to marry is a prince without a cent—you meet scions of all the nobility in pensions; but that, of course, means that they are as poor as you are. I suppose that you—independent as you are—won’t marry for ages?”