Part 4

Catalina made no reply, but she ran swiftly to the big, canvas-covered diligence, climbed over the high wheel before Over could follow to assist her, and seated herself beside the driver with the most ingratiating manner that any of her party had seen her assume. Over placed himself beside her, the others took possession of the rear, the driver cracked his whip, and the six mules, jingling with half a hundred bells, leaped down the dusty road towards the steep and rocky heights where Tarragona has defied the nations of the earth. Then it was that Over laughed softly, and the innocent Moultons learned what depths of iniquity may lie at the base of a ranch-girl’s blandishments. As they reached the foot of the bluff the delighted youth who was answerable to Heaven for his precious freight abandoned the reins. Catalina gathered them in one hand, half rose from her seat, and with a great flourish cracked the long whip, not once, but thrice, delivering herself of sharp, peremptory cries in Spanish. The mules needed no further encouragement. They tore up the steep and winding road, whisked round curves, strained every muscle to show what a Spanish mule could do. They even shook their heads and tossed them in the air that their bells might jingle the louder. Mrs. Moulton and Jane screamed, clinging to each other, the portmanteaus bounced to the floor, and Mr. Moulton would have grasped Catalina’s arm but Over intercepted and reassured him. And, indeed, there were few better whips than Catalina in a state notorious for a century of reckless and brilliant driving. She drove like a cowboy, not like an Englishwoman, Over commented, but he felt the exhilaration of it, even when the unwieldy diligence bounded from side to side in the narrow road and the dust enveloped them. In a moment he shifted his eyes to her face. Her white teeth were gleaming through the half-open bow of her mouth, tense but smiling, and her splendid eyes were flashing, not only with the pleasure of the born horsewoman, but with a wicked delight in the consternation behind her. She looked, despite the mules and the dusty old diligence, like a goddess in a chariot of victory, and Over, who rarely imagined, half expected to see fire whirling in the clouds of dust about the wheels.

As they reached the top of the bluff the driver indicated the way, and they flew down the Rambla San Carlos, past the astounded soldiers lounging in front of the barracks, and stopped with a grand flourish in front of the hotel.

Catalina turned to Over, her lips still parted, her eyes glittering.

“That is the first time I have been really happy since I left home,” she announced, ignoring her precipitately descending relatives. “I feel young again, and I’ve felt as old as the hills ever since I’ve been in Europe. I’ll like you forever because you approve of me, and I haven’t seen that expression on anybody’s face for months.”

“Oh, I approve of you!” said the Englishman, laughing.

They descended, and she challenged him to race her to the parapet that they might limber themselves. He accepted, and, in spite of her undepleted youth, he managed to beat by means of a superior length of limb. The victory filled him with a quite unreasoning sense of exultation, and as they hung over the parapet and looked out upon the liquid turquoise of the sea, sparkling under a cloudless sky, its little white sail-boats dancing along with the pure joy of motion, he felt younger and happier than he had since his cricket days.

“I think we had better not go to the hotel for a time,” he suggested. “I am afraid that Mr. and Mrs. Moulton are in a bit of a wax. Perhaps after they have rested and freshened up they will forgive you, and meanwhile we can explore.”

So they wandered off to the old town until they stood at the foot of a flight of ancient stone steps, wider than three streets, that led up to the plaza before the cathedral. Crouching in the shallow corners of the stair were black-robed old crones who looked as if they might have begged of Cæsar. Passing up and down, or in and out of the narrow streets, to right and left were young women of languid and insolent carriage, in bright cotton frocks and yellow kerchiefs about their heads, young men in small clothes and wide hats, loafing along as if all time were in their little day, and troops and swarms of children. These attached themselves to the strangers, encouraged by the caressing Spanish words of the girl, followed them through the cathedral, and out into a side street, chattering like magpies.

“You look like a comet with a long tail,” said Over. “I’ll scatter them with a few coppers.” He paused as she turned her head over her shoulder and regarded him with a wondering reproach. For the moment her large brown eyes looked bovine. “Do you want these little demons to follow us all over the place?” he asked, curiously.

“Why not?”

“Tarragona is theirs,” said Over, lightly. “They would annoy most women.” He hoped to provoke her to further revelation, but she made no reply, and they rambled with occasional speech through the ancient narrow streets, followed by their noisy retinue, the little Murillo faces sparkling with curiosity and foresight of illimitable wealth in coppers.

But even Catalina forgot them at times, as she and her companion stopped to decipher the Roman inscription on the foundation blocks of many of the houses. Although the houses themselves may have been younger than the huge blocks with their legends of the Scipios and the Cæsars, they were old enough, and the steep and winding streets, with the women hanging out of the high windows and sitting before the doors, all bits of color against the mellow stone, were no doubt much the same in effect as when Augustus and his hosts marched by with eagles aloft.

Catalina, who had the historic sense highly developed and had found her happiness in the past, infected Over with her enthusiasm, and he followed her without protest to the outskirts of the town, and looked down over the great valley beneath the heights of Tarragona, then up past the Cyclopean walls, those stupendous, unhewn blocks of masonry which still, for a sweep of two miles or more, surround the old town.

“What a place to hide from the world!” said Catalina. They had turned into a little street just within the wall, and seated themselves on an odd block to rest, their exhausted retinue camping all the way along the line. Opposite them was a high and narrow house, its upper balcony full of flowers, and an arcade behind suggesting the dim quiet of patio with its palms and fountain, its shadows haunted with incommunicable memories of an ancient past. “The new town we drove through with its fine houses is too commonplace; but this—any one of these eyries—what a nest! I could live quite happy up there, couldn’t you?”

“For a time.” He was too frankly modern to yield unconditionally. “But I must confess I can’t think what artists are about.”

When they reached the plaza, Catalina turned to the children and solemnly thanked them for the great pleasure and service they had rendered two belated strangers. They accepted the tribute in perfect good faith and then scrambled for the coppers.

VIII

Over and Catalina walked hastily to the hotel; they had but half an hour in which to make themselves presentable for dinner. Preparation for this function, however, was not elaborate. A tub and a change of shirt and blouse was all that could be expected of weary tourists travelling with one portmanteau each; their trunks were not to leave the stations until they reached Granada. Catalina invariably appeared in her hat, ready to go out again the moment the meal was over if she could induce Mr. Moulton to take her. Tonight the others sat down to their excellent repast in the cool dining-room without her. Mrs. Moulton and Jane were disposed to treat Over with hauteur, but thawed after the soup and fish. Mr. Moulton had long since recovered his serenity and expressed regret that he had not accompanied the more enterprising members of the party. Only Lydia, who had put on her prettiest blouse and fluffed her hair anew, was interested in neither dinner nor Tarragona.

“Off your feed?” Over was asking, sympathetically, when Mrs. Moulton, who was helping herself to the roast, dropped the fork on her plate. The others followed the direction of her astonished eyes and beheld Catalina—but not the Catalina of their habit. Hers was the largest of the portmanteaus, and it was evident that she had excavated it at last. Gone were the stiff, short skirt and ill-fitting blouse, the drooping hat and shapeless coat. She wore a girlish gown of white nun’s-veiling, made with a masterly simplicity that revealed her figure in all its long grace, its gentle curves, and supple power of endurance. Only the round throat and forearms were revealed, but the lace about them and the calm stateliness of her carriage produced the impression of full dress. Her mass of waving chestnut hair, with a sheen of gold like a web on its surface, was parted and brushed back from her oval face into a heavy knot at the base of the head. Around her throat she wore a string of pearls, and falling from her shoulders a crimson scarf.

She walked down the long room with a perfect simulation of unconsciousness, except for the lofty carriage of her head, which concealed much inward trepidation. Her broad brow was as bland as a child’s, and her eyes wore what an admirer had once called her “wondering look.” Never had her remarkable mouth looked so like a bow, the bow of her Indian ancestors. A beauty she was at last, fulfilling the uneasy prediction of her relatives. The few other people in the dining-room stared, and Captain Over, who had risen, stared at her hard.

“Ripping! Ripping!” he thought. Then, with a shock of personal pride: “She no longer looks like a cow-boy. She might be on her way to court.”

It was characteristic of Catalina that she did not even sink into her seat with one of those airy remarks with which woman demonstrates her ease in unusual circumstances. She made no remark whatever, but helped herself to the roast and fell to with a hearty appetite. Neither did she send a flash of coquetry to Captain Over; and he, with an odd sense that in her incongruity, and the hostility aroused in two of the party, she stood in need of a protector, began talking much faster than was his wont, and even condescended to tell Mr. Moulton an anecdote of the late campaign. Having gone so far he hardly could retreat, and indeed his reluctance seemed finally to be overcome. Very soon the company had forgotten Catalina, and Catalina came forth from herself and hung upon his words. Given her own way she would have been a man and a soldier, and like all normal women she exalted heroism to the head of the manly virtues. Over told no stories wherein he was the hero, but unwittingly he unrolled a panorama of infinite possibilities for the brave race of whose best he was a type. At all events, he made himself extremely interesting, and when he was finally left to Mr. Moulton and cigars, Catalina walked blindly out of the front door of the hotel, reinvoking the pictures that had stimulated her imagination. She was recalled by the pressure of a small but bony hand on her bare arm. She turned to meet the cold, blue gaze of Mrs. Moulton. That gentlewoman was very erect and very formal.

“You cannot go out alone!” she said, with disgust in her voice. “I am surprised to be forced to remind you that this is not—California. It would be impossible in your travelling costume, but dressed as for an evening’s entertainment in a private house you would be insulted at once. As long as you travel with us I must insist that you give as little trouble as possible.”

If she hoped for war, feeling herself for once secure, she was disappointed. Catalina merely shrugged her shoulders and, re-entering the hall, ascended the stair. She recalled that her room opened upon a balcony, which would answer her purpose.

The balcony hung above a garden overflowing with flowers, surrounded on three sides by the hotel and its low outbuildings, and secluded from the sloping street by a high wall. She paced up and down watching the servants under the veranda washing their dishes. They all wore a bit of the bright color beloved of the Iberian, and they made a great deal of noise. Suddenly Lydia took possession of her arm and related the adventure of the afternoon.

“Is it not dreadful?” she concluded. “A peasant! But to save my life I cannot be as furious as I should—nor help thinking of it. I feel like one of those princesses in the fairy tales beloved of the poor but wonderful youth.”

“It is highly romantic,” replied Catalina, dryly. “The setting was not all that it might have been, and I have seen too many picturesque vaqueros all my life to be deeply impressed by a handsome peasant in a blouse; but I suppose any romance is better than none in this Old World.”

She felt vaguely alarmed, and half a generation older than this silly little cousin whose suburban experience made her peculiarly susceptible to any semblance of romance in Europe; but as Lydia, repelled in her girlish confidence, drew stiffly away from her, Catalina relented with a gush of feminine sympathy.

“I really mean that a bit of romance like that makes life more endurable,” she asserted. “And you may be sure that your marquis would not have been so delicate. I wonder who he is! He certainly is a personage in his way. Of course, you’ll never see him again, but it will be something to think about when you are married to an author and correcting his type-written manuscripts!”

Lydia, mollified, laughed merrily. “I’m never going to marry any old author. Let the recording angel take note of that. I’m sick of mutual admiration societies—and all the rest of it. If I can’t do any better I’ll manage to marry some enterprising young business man and help him to grow rich.”

Catalina, who had had her own way all her life, nevertheless appreciated the colorless shallows in which her cousin had splashed of late in the vain attempt to reach a shore, and replied, sympathetically:

“Come back to California when I go and live on my ranch for a while. Out-of-doors is what you want; a far-away horizon is as good for the soul as for the eyes. And you’ll get enough of the picturesque and all the liberty you can carry—”

She paused abruptly and Lydia caught her breath. In the street below was the sound of a guitar, then of a man’s impassioned voice.

The girls stole to the edge of the balcony and looked over. There was no moon, and the vines were close. The street was thick with shadows, but they could see the lithe, active figure of a man clad in velvet jacket and smallclothes. His head was flung back and his quick, rich notes seemed to leap to the balcony above. Catalina had forgotten that her candles still burned. Their rays fell directly on the girls. The man saw them and his voice burst forth in such peremptory volume, ringing against the walls of the narrow street, that heads began to appear at many windows.

“It is that peasant we saw on the train to-day,” said Over’s amused voice behind the girls. “He was in the café a moment ago and is got up in full peasant finery. You made a conquest, Miss Lydia.”

Catalina felt her companion give an ecstatic shiver, but omitted to pull her back as she leaned recklessly over the rail. Her own spirit seemed to swirl in that glorious tide. She threw back her head, staring at the black velvet skies of Spain with their golden music, then turned slowly and regarded the old white walls and gardens about her, the palms and the riot of flowers and vine, invoking the image of Cæsar himself prowling in the night to the lattice of inviting loveliness in a mantilla. She wished she had draped her own about her head, and wondered if Over shared her vision.

But he was merely marvelling at her beauty, and wondering if he should ever get as far as California. He would like to see her in that patio she had described to him, with its old mission fountain, its gigantic date-palms through whose bending branches the sun never penetrated, the big-leaved banana-tree heavy with yellow fruit, the scarlet hammock, the mountains rising just behind the old house. She had described it to him only that afternoon, and he had received a vivid impression of it all, and of the deep verandas and the cool, austere rooms within. It had struck him as a delightful retreat after the strife of the world, and he wondered if under that eternally blue sky, in that Southern land of warmth and color, where the very air caressed, he could not forget even the broad demesne of his ancestors, a demesne that would never be his, but where he was always a welcome guest. She had told him that her estate—her “ranch”—went right down to the sea; it was, in fact, a wide valley, closed with the Pacific at one end, and a range of mountains immediately behind the house. It had seemed to him the ideal existence as she described it, a perfect balance of the intellectual and the out-door life, of boundless freedom and unvarying health; and all in an atmosphere of perfect peace. He had envied her at the moment, but had philosophically concluded that in the long run a man’s club most nearly filled the bill. He fancied, however, that he should correspond with her, and one of these days pay her a visit.

“Best remember that this is the land of passion, not of idle flirtation, Miss Lydia,” he said, warningly, as the music ceased for a moment. “What is play to you might be death to that Johnny down there.”

For answer Lydia plucked a rose and dropped it into a lithe brown hand that shot up to meet it.

IX

Catalina threw on her dressing-gown and leaned far out of her window. The very air felt as if it had been drenched by the golden shower of the morning sun, and so clear it was, it glittered like the sea. Across the narrow way was a stately white house, doubtless the “palace” of a rich man, and behind it, high above the street, was a beautiful garden, at whose very end, in an angle of the stone wall, stood a palm-tree. Beyond that palm-tree, so delicate and graceful in its peculiar stiffness, was a glimpse of blue water. Far below was a cross street in which no one moved as yet, and beside her were the balcony and garden of the hotel and the vines hanging over the wall.

Catalina sang, in the pure joy of being alive, a snatch of one of the Spanish songs still to be heard in Southern California.

“Buenas dias, señorita,” broke in a low and cautious voice, and Catalina, turning with a start and frown, saw that Captain Over was looking round the corner of the balcony.

“If you will come out here,” he continued, “I will make you a cup of coffee, and then we can go for a walk.”

Catalina nodded amiably, and, hastily dressing herself, opened her long window and joined him. He had brought his travelling-lamp and coffee-pot, and the water was simmering. With the exception of a man who was cleaning harness in the court below, they seemed to be the only persons awake. The air was heavy laden with sweet scents, and the garden in the fresh morning light was a riot of color. The Mediterranean was murmuring seductively to the shore.

“This is heaven,” sighed Catalina. “Why can’t one always be free from care like this—the Moultons, to be exact. Let’s you and I and Lydia run away from the rest.”

“When I run away with a woman I shall not take a chaperon,” said Over, coolly.

Catalina could assume the blankness of a mask, but upon repartee she never ventured. “Am I not to do any of the work?” she asked. “I am sick of being waited on. At home I often make my own breakfast before my lazy Mexicans are up, and saddle my horse. I do a great deal of work on the ranch, first and last, for I believe in work—and I didn’t get the idea from Tolstoï, either. I don’t like Tolstoï,” she added, defiantly. “He’s one of those gigantic fakes the world always believes in.”

“Well, I’ve never read a line of Tolstoï,” admitted Captain Over, who was carefully revolving his coffee-machine, “so I can’t argue with you. But work! This is all the work I want.”

“Don’t you love work?”

“I don’t.”

“But you do work.”

“At what?”

“Oh, in the army and all that.”

“My orderly does the work.”

“You are so provoking. There is all sorts of work you must do yourself.”

“Well, why do you remind me of anything so painful, when I am doing my best to forget it? You are not an altruist or a socialist, are you?”

“I’m not anything that some one else has invented. I believe in work, because idleness horrifies me; some primal instinct in me wars against it. The civilization that permits idleness in the rich and in those with just enough to relieve them from work, with none of the responsibilities and diversions of great fortunes, is no civilization at all, to my mind. Of course, I believe in progress, but I believe in hanging on to the conditions which first made progress possible; and when I saw those carriage-loads of ridiculous women and finery in Paris I wanted to go home and till the soil and restore the balance. How good that coffee smells!”

He poured her out a steaming cup. He had raided the kitchen for cream and bread, and he carried sugar with him. No orderly had ever made better coffee.

“What women?” he asked, smiling into her still angry eyes. They were seated at a little table close to the railing and the vines hung down in her hair. Her theories might be crude and somewhat vague, but at least she thought for herself.

She described the morning in the Rue de Rivoli and the procession of American butterflies.

“What can you expect in a new republic of sudden fortunes?” he asked. “Some one must spend the money, and the men haven’t time.”

“Then are your women something besides nerves and clothes—your leisure women?”

“I don’t wish to be rude, but they are. I am, of course, only comparing them with your idle class. I have had no chance to meet any other until now. But I have met scores of rich American women and girls in London and at country-houses, and I’ve come to the conclusion that what is the matter with them—aside from lack of traditions—is that their men leave them nothing to do but spend money and amuse themselves. With us rich women and poor are helpmeets, and what saves our fast set from being as empty-headed as yours is that they have grown up among men of affairs, have heard the great questions discussed all their lives. Then, of course, they are far better educated, and often extremely clever—something more than bright and amusing. Many of them are pretty hard cases, I’m not denying that; but few are silly. They have not had the chance to be, and that is where ancestors come in, too—serious ancestors. Personally, I have never been sensible to the famous charm of the American woman, and although there are exceptions, naturally—I am only generalizing—they strike me in the mass as being shallow, selfish, egotistical, nervous. I suppose the fundamental trouble is that they have so much that an impossible ideal of happiness is the result, and they are restless and dissatisfied because they can’t get it. Possibly in another generation or two they may develop the sort of brain that makes the women of the Old World well balanced and philosophical.”

“Weren’t you ever tempted to marry an heiress?”

“I never saw one that would look at me, so I’ve been spared one temptation, at least.”

Catalina had finished her coffee. She leaned her chin on her hands and gazed at him reflectively. “I should think you could get one,” she said, quite impersonally. “If you weren’t such a practical soul you’d be almost romantic looking, and you’re quite the ideal soldier, besides being a guardsman and well-born. I think if you came to Santa Barbara I could find you a rich girl. Quantities come there for the winter, and they are always delighted to be asked to a ranch.”