Part 12
“I have no intention of marrying at present,” replied Catalina, without the flicker of an eyelash.
“Lucky you! I haven’t either, for that matter, although my prince threatens to descend upon me; and if he does—” She lifted her shoulders again. “Women are idiots when they fall in love. Marriages ought to be made by the state according to fitness. How do you like my scheme for to-night?” she added, abruptly.
“It is a stroke of genius. Fancy having a dance in the Alhambra by moonlight to carry away as a memory! Are you fond of dancing?”
“I adore it. It is the one thing I can do to perfection. I have actually been proposed to half a dozen times on the strength of my dancing.”
Catalina turned cold. “What an odd reason for proposing! A man cannot dance with his wife.”
“Well, you see, a man’s head sometimes swims with his feet. Given a man who is fond of dancing and he is apt to think a woman perfection who dances to perfection.”
Catalina rose abruptly. “I must go upstairs and rest for to-night. I have been on the go since daybreak. Thank you for asking me to your pretty room,” she added, with the charming courtesy she had at command. “You have what the French call the gift of installation, and this looks as if you had always lived here. I can’t even keep my room tidy.”
“You have always had servants to keep it tidy for you,” said the other, with her quick, sweet smile. She shook Catalina’s hand warmly. “Come in often,” she said, and there was no doubting her sincerity. “And put on your most becoming gown to-night. It will be a pleasure to look at you.”
But although she was attracted to Catalina, and admired her beauty with the eye of the connoisseur, she had made up her mind to marry Over. Her love for the worthy but impoverished prince who had followed her about Europe for half a year was a fiction of the moment, but Over had carried her off her feet. She had met scions of the continental aristocracies by the score, but it was her first adventure with an Englishman of the higher class who looked as if he would love with difficulty and make love with ardor. She had held his attention during the morning immediately in the wake of many sensations quickened by Catalina, and it is possible that some of their exuberance may have overflowed to her. She recalled that his eyes had sparkled and melted and dwelt ardently upon her own, that his tones had been laden with meaning more than once, that he had uttered many spontaneously complimentary things. She looked upon Catalina as a lovely and somewhat clever child who could have no chance in the ring with herself, but she had taken pains to make certain that her young affections were not involved. She might have hesitated before breaking an engagement. It must be added that she cared not at all if Over were rich or poor. An English aristocrat, handsome, charming, a guardsman—her heart ached with the romance of it.
XXIV
After supper they sat about the table in the garden until nine o’clock, the men and several of the women smoking; and there was much talk of art, of books, of travel, gossip of the studios, of politics. Until the day before it had been a party grown intimate through the association of several weeks, and to-night, at this their third meal, the three Americans and the Englishman glided insensibly into the circle. It was a new society for all of them, and they were interested according to their respective bias.
Rothe was somewhat surprised to find that untidy artists could yet be gentlemen not to say men. His wife felt a sympathetic interest in the individual, and wondered if all these nice people were very poor and what their particular form of poverty was like; she had never come across artists in her charities. She longed vaguely to help them in some way without giving offence. And then she envied them their illusions, their faith, their enthusiasm, and wondered if the fount of eternal youth from which these endowments flowed washed from apprehension the everlasting pettiness of mortal life. Over was always interested when he was not bored, and Catalina pulsated with curiosity and thanked Heaven anew for her deliverance from the Moultons. She had spent the afternoon reading to Mrs. Rothe, then had taken a nap, ignoring Over’s existence.
But she sat opposite him at the table and looked very pretty in the candle-light, her arms extended, her hands clasped, her lithe body erect, her attitude one of absolute repose; the eyes, only, smiled occasionally above the serenity of the rest of her face. Once both she and Over became conscious that they had drifted from the conversation and were listening to the nightingales singing in the park beyond the wall. He met her eyes with a flash in his own, but she flashed defiance in response, and turned her attention to the German artist who was disputing hotly with the Frenchman, pounding the table and apoplectic with excitement. Miss Holmes with her admirable skill calmed the raging waters and scattered them into various channels. She was in white to-night with a black silk scarf about her shoulders and one end over her abundant fair hair; and the eyes of her devotees rarely left her face. The prince actually had arrived in the afternoon, and occupied the place of honor beside her, although she had contrived that Over should sit on her left; and she had played them against each other—or thought she had—throughout the evening.
The prince was a thick-set, melancholy looking man of middle years who had some reputation for historical research, a position of solid respectability wherever he went, and a turn for severe economy. His inconsiderable power to add to the gayety of the world was further depressed by the sense of his folly in falling in love with a penniless girl, but he glowered across at Over and resolved anew to win her if they had to rusticate on his meagre estate for the rest of their lives. She was the only woman who had ever lifted the weight from his spirit, made him forget for a moment the contemptible condition into which, through no fault of his, his ancient family had fallen. If it had not been for this condition it is possible that he might long since have turned his back on the temptation of the American girl, for he held republics in such scorn that he would not have hesitated to break faith with the citizen of an illegitimate nation, as one wholly outside his code of honor and inherited sense of conduct. But this girl had brought sweetness into his life and he was grateful to her, and in his manner loved her.
She had considered him in her clear-eyed fashion, had pictured herself as his companion, well loved, no doubt, and with the entrée to the best intellectual society on the Continent; but she knew him to be far more selfish than any man she had ever met, and with a pride which, no matter how he might love and admire her, would never permit him to forget that he was a prince and she a plebeian; it is only just to add that she might have belonged to the flower of American aristocracy and he would have made no distinction. It was always a risk for an American woman to marry a European aristocrat with his uncontrollable sense of social superiority not only over the inhabitants of the United States of America, but over those of every other nation but his own; and to marry one who took life seriously and was as poor as a church mouse was nothing short of foolhardy. But a prince was a prince, even if he were not the head of his family, and to become an indisputable princess was a great temptation to the self-made American girl—had been until she met Over. Now she would have sacrificed a prince of the blood with a malachite mine in Russia.
She had made herself very charming to Over throughout the evening, drawing him out, showing him to the others at his best, and he had been somewhat stimulated by the dull glow in the black, opaque eyes opposite. As they separated to dress for the party he asked Catalina once more to give him the initial dance, and when she refused, positively, he immediately and eagerly asked the same favor of Miss Holmes. After a moment’s sprightly thought and hesitation he was gratified.
Like most Englishmen of his class he was fond of dancing, although he regarded it as a sort of poetical exercise, and on the whole preferred golf; and one good dancer was much the same to him as another. He was far too practical to feel any desire to hold a particular girl in his arms in a public room where other men held other girls in conventional embrace; but this Catalina could not know, and ran up to her room angry and hurt.
Nevertheless, she dressed herself with elaborate care in an evening gown recently made in Paris, a white chiffon spangled with gold. It revealed the slim roundness of her neck and arms, and clasped her beautiful figure like mere drapery on a statue. She put a white rose on either side of the mass of hair she always wore low on her neck and found a long scarf of golden tissue to protect her when the night grew chill.
When she joined the others in the sala there was a murmur of admiration, rising high among the artists, which she received with absolute stolidity. Over came forward at once.
“What next?” he murmured. “You surpass my expectations. I can say no more than that. But you must put that scarf about your shoulders directly you go out or you will take cold.”
“Practical Englishman! I never had a cold in my life.”
“Wonderful young person! Put it on at once. We are starting.”
Miss Holmes looked like a lorelei with an American education, in pale green. Her sister was draped in sage green, and the other artist of her sex in red and yellow Spanish shawls. Mrs. Rothe wore an elaborate blue gown with an air of doing the occasion all the honor possible. Over, Rothe, and the prince wore the conventional evening dress; the foreign artists were in their velvet jackets, with the one exception of the German, who had got himself up in the property costume of a Spanish grandee.
Miss Holmes draped a white lace shawl about her head and shoulders. “Come!” she said. “It is time to start.” And she led the way down the dark street with her prince. She was to dance many times with Over, and amiably gave the brief interval to the admirer who was much too serious for even the stately quadrille.
Over and Catalina brought up in the rear. She drew close to him with a little shiver.
“I still have that sense of being watched,” she said. “I can’t understand why I should be so silly as to notice it. I am usually afraid of nothing—never had a nerve before.” But she did understand, and resented. Over had roused and quickened all her femininity, and she longed for his protection, wondered at her former boy-like indifference to sympathy as to peril.
Over drew her hand through his arm. “It may be nothing and it may mean a good deal. Mind you do not wander off by yourself in the palace. If you do I shall be hunting for you, and that will spoil my evening. This dance has upset our plans, but we must have a stroll together through some of those old courts and corridors before the party breaks up.”
XXV
The moon hung directly over the tower of Comares. In the arcade beside the Room of the Two Sisters was a mass of bright cushions and an Oriental carpet. Here Mrs. Rothe enthroned herself, and the melancholy and disgusted prince kept her company. The musicians fiddled and strummed in the pavilion at the top of the court. Wind was rising in the trees on the steep hill-side above the Darro, and the nightingales sang. The great rooms around the court, the low chambers above, were black with shadow, but the open spaces about the lions were lively with whirling figures and the chatter of women. The original party, which was too rich in men, had been reinforced by several American girls from another pension, and all had entered into the gay spirit of the night except Catalina, who stood alone in the pavilion opposite the musicians, frankly miserable, and furious with herself for daring to suffer.
Over had danced no less than six times with Miss Holmes, whose dancing would throw a Hebe out of court. She was the triumphant belle of the evening—no sultana in her little hour had ever held prouder sway in these halls of the Moors; and where they, indeed, had been glad of one doubtfully devoted heart she was lightly spurning half a dozen. The men importuned her between dances, the foreigners extravagant in their admiration, Over consoling himself with manifest discontent when she gave her hand to another.
He had just completed his sixth waltz with her when Catalina had her inspiration. He had not looked at her since the dancing began. There was only one way in which she could compel his attention, and although her shyness rose to arms, her knees shook, and her breath came short, she set her teeth and glided down the arcade to the pavilion of the musicians.
It had been understood that after the first hour and a half there was to be an interval for lemonade and sweets and rest, during which they would sit on the cushions and admire the opposite arcade and the airy grace of the pavilions under the light of the moon.
“It must have been here that Muley Aben Hassan and Boabdil used to sit with their courts while the minstrels—or whatever they were in those days—tried to amuse them, and the nautch-girls danced, and the captives above envied the captives below,” Miss Holmes was beginning as they arranged the cushions, when several of the party gave a low cry, and the hostess paused with her mouth open. A figure had risen before them in the moonlight, slim, young, veiled, the very eidola of those forgotten women the number of whose heart-beats had depended upon the nod of a tyrannical voluptuary. Only her eyes, long, dark, expressionless, were revealed above the gold tissue of her veil, and Over alone recognized her instantly. He had missed her as they assembled, and was about to go in search of her when she appeared. He held his breath, and the others, one or two of the girls giggling hysterically, hardly knew whether to be frightened or not.
Then the low, soft, dreaming strains of music crept over to them and she began to dance. She had known the old Spanish dances all her life and loved them with all the wild blood in her, despising the more the conventional whirl of the drawing-room. She danced none of these to-night, however, but an improvisation, born of her knowledge of Moorish traditions, the place, and the hour.
As Over realized what she purposed he stepped forward with the intention of stopping the performance, enraged that other men should be in the audience, but arrested by his distaste of a scene. In a moment he sank down on his cushions, wondering that he had doubted her, for it was apparent even in the first few moments that in spite of the graceful abandon of her dancing there was to be nothing to suggest the coarseness of the women that had danced on that spot before her.
But if the swinging and swaying and bending and whirling of her body were without suggestiveness they were the very poetry of beauty. The scarf was bound about her head and over her face below the eyes, but she held a point in either hand, her arms sometimes extended, at others describing curves that made the delicate tissue flutter like the many wings of tiny birds. The spangles on her dress, the diamond buckles on her slippers were 1000 points of light, for the moon was poised directly overhead and flooding the court. The perfume of the scarf stole into the senses of the staring company and completed the illusion, delicately brushing with sensuousness what was otherwise an expression of the rhythm of life, the dreaming of an ardent but virginal soul. So a nautch-girl may have danced for the first time before a king, ignorant then of what was expected of her, dissolving in the joy of rhythmical motion, of innocent pride in her own young beauty.
The arches between the company and the dancer, the fountain above the lions rising in a silver veil behind her, and beyond it the white, shining arches with their moving shadows, the distant warbling of the nightingales rising above the swooning music, the Oriental mystery in the eyes above the veil—not one of her audience but surrendered himself, although, in superficial fashion, all had recognized her.
And then, while their senses were locked, while they were hardly conscious whether they slept or waked, a strange and terrible thing happened. From the Room of the Two Sisters beside them the figure of a man leaped like a sword from its scabbard, caught the dancer in his arms, and disappeared whence it had come.
There was a fatal moment of incredulity; then Over leaped to his feet and ran into the dark room. But he had no idea which way to turn, and had lost himself in the Sala de los Ajimeces beyond when he heard Miss Holmes cry, sharply:
“He mustn’t go alone, and at least I know every foot of the palace. The man will make for the underground rooms or climb out of one of the windows and down the hill to the Albaicin.”
The word completed Over’s horror, but as he hastily rejoined the party, now voluble in the Room of the Two Sisters, he despatched Rothe and the Spanish artist for the police, and then with little ceremony ordered Miss Holmes to lead the way.
Catalina, in that leap from the dark room to her swaying form, dreamy with its own motion, had recognized Jesus Maria; but in the swift flight that followed her face was pressed so hard against his shoulder that she could neither see nor cry out. Her feet struck against narrow walls, but her arms were pinioned in that strong, deft embrace, and rage inwardly as she might, he controlled her as easily as if she were bound with cords. It was only when she felt him lift her slightly as he vaulted over a window-ledge that she found her opportunity. With a swift writhe of her body she freed her hands and beat upon his face with all her strength, which was not inconsiderable. He was stumbling down the steep declivity below the Comares Tower, and he paused a moment to take breath.
“What do you want?” she cried, furiously. “Money?”
He pressed his left hand over her mouth and dexterously caught both her hands in his right.
“Yes,” he said, grimly. “The señor your uncle can bring that with the golden señorita. It is you or she and the money, too. Keep quiet!” he said, violently. “If you cry out I will run a nail through your tongue.”
Catalina knew there was no time for any such ceremony at the moment, and the moment was all she had. With another sharp wrench she freed her head and hands, struggled to press her knee against his chest, and clawed his face with her sharp nails. The cliff was but little off the perpendicular, irregular of surface, and a wilderness of high shrubs, rocks, and trees. For a man to make the descent in daylight and unencumbered was no mean feat; but to endeavor to accomplish this at night, the moon hidden more often than not by the trees and Comares, with a struggling woman in his arms, tried even the superb strength and skill of the Catalan. He set her down and attempted to wind the long scarf more tightly about her mouth and throat and to bind her hands. But she was too quick for him. She made no attempt to run away, knowing the futility, but she braced herself against a rock and fought him. She felt not a spasm of fear, but she thrilled with the consciousness that she fought for more than her liberty undefiled; she fought for freedom to fly back to Over and have an end of subterfuge and delusion. In those moments, as she fought and kicked and scratched like a wild-cat, she had a vivid and serene vision of herself as Over’s wife. She knew it to be writ as clearly as if the hand of destiny traced it on the silver disk above, and while her body obeyed its primal instincts her soul sang.
The Catalan was desperate. He cursed his folly in not stationing his confederate on the Darro instead of in the hovel in the Albaicin; but he had feared confusion and felt contemptuously sure of his ability to manage a mere girl. But he had had no experience of girls whom ranch life had made vigorous and fearless, and whose fathers had taught them the principles of boxing. Catalina parried his attempts to give her a stunning blow as deftly as she filled her nails with his skin and hair, and she was so well braced he could not trip her. Once he made a sudden dive for her feet with his hands, but she leaped aside and his nose came in contact with the rock.
Suddenly he turned his head. Far above, in the windows of the Hall of the Ambassadors, from which he had made his escape, he heard the sound of voices. That moment was his undoing. With the leap of a panther Catalina was on his back. She pressed her knees into his sides, dragged his head back with one arm, while with the other she pounded his unprotected face. He gave a mighty shake, but he might as well have attempted to throw off a wild-cat of her own forests. He might exhaust her in time, but so long as she had strength she would hang on, and with a low roar, that portended hideous vengeance, he started once more down the bluff.
As Edith Holmes led the race through the many corridors and apartments that lay between the court and the Hall of the Ambassadors she knew that the game was hers if she chose to play it. There was but one place in Granada where an outlaw would be secure, and that was in the Albaicin, and she knew the Alhambra too well not to be sure of the route Catalina’s abductor would take. But it was simple enough to persuade Over that the man would be more likely to take an underground route, escaping at the favorable moment by some opening known only to his kind.
The descent to the baths was on the way to the Hall of the Ambassadors, and as she ran down the long corridor her brain whirled with the obsession of the place, and she fancied herself for a moment one of the favorites who had reigned here in the days of Moorish splendor until a fairer captive threatened her own youth and beauty and love of life with a silken cord and a brief struggle in one of the chambers above. Over’s apparent devotion during the first part of the night had roused in her all the passion of which she was capable, and she could feel his hot, short breath on her neck as they ran. She had watched his surrender to Catalina’s beautiful dancing and his wild, instinctive leap to her rescue with bitter jealousy and fear. In a flash she had seen Catalina for what she was—a girl to rouse all the romantic passion in a man; and in all her loveliness, her ideal womanhood, and her changing moods, she had been his constant companion for three weeks in Spain! But thrust out of sight—the creature of a gypsy—internationally besmirched—Her feet turned to the threshold leading down to the old Moorish bath, where ten minutes could be wasted. But the American girl in her suddenly revolted. Another American girl was in hideous peril, and she shuddered with disgust even more than with pity.
She whirled about. “Prince,” she whispered, “you and Helmholtz go down there and search, but I feel sure he has gone out one of the windows.” And she ran on to the Hall of the Ambassadors.
They searched it at last and hung out of the windows. Far below a faint sound came to their ears, but they could not determine its nature. An instant later they heard a short but infuriated roar, followed by the sharp call of a woman. Over was already on the other side of the window when Miss Holmes caught his arm.
“Don’t!” she cried, hysterically. “It is almost certain death. He is sure to have confederates!”
Over gave her a look of haughty surprise and shook her off. The Frenchman thrust a pistol into his hand.
“I never go without one here. Don’t hesitate to shoot.”