Part 7

Mrs. Moulton was so far the reverse of a cruel and vicious woman that she had been, for the good of her soul, too amiable and self-sacrificing for at least thirty years of her life. Not fine enough to have developed loveliness of character, there had, perhaps, been too few opportunities for reaction, or, if occurring, they had been conscientiously stifled. A good woman, but not of the most distinguished fibre, the effacement of self for the few she loved had been but a higher order of selfishness, and when for the first time in her life a positive hatred possessed her it found her without that greatness which ignores and foregoes revenge. Catalina, it must be confessed, would have tried the patience of far more saintly characters than Mrs. Moulton, and when to a natural antipathy was added the daily jarring of long-tried nerves the wonder was that the crisis did not come sooner.

But Mrs. Moulton was accustomed to self-control and to the exercise of the average amount of Christianity. Moreover, she had her standards of conduct, and held all exhibitions of feeling to be vulgar. Therefore, in spite of her growing and morbid desire to humble Catalina, she might have forborne to force an issue, and perhaps, had circumstances favored the alien, have grimly, however unwillingly, triumphed once more over self.

But these last days had unravelled her nerves. To passionate sympathy for her pale and persecuted daughter, misled in the first instance by the daily example of a barbarian, had recently been added a night of hideous discomfort, when, not one of the four speaking a language but their useless own, and without the invaluable Baedeker, they had fled from a ridiculous peasant, changing trains at midnight, waiting hours at way-stations, arriving at Toledo in the gray, cold dawn, hungry, worried, exhausted, to find neither omnibus nor cab at the station.

As Mrs. Moulton toiled up the steep road through the carven gates of terrible and romantic memory, she had heartily wished that modern enterprise had blown up the rock with dynamite or run an elevator from the Tagus. It was then that her hatred of Catalina—who at least with her knowledge of foreign languages had been an acceptable courier—became an obsession, and she could have shrieked it out like any common virago. The emotional wave had receded, but left a dark and poisonous deposit behind.

It was easy to convince herself that Catalina had lost the train at Albacete on purpose. When her husband had received Captain Over’s telegram she had assumed that the Englishman had persuaded the girl to return, eager, no doubt, to be rid of her. She was not prone to think evil, and had one of her daughters or the approved young women of her circle been left with a young man at a way-station for two days and nights, she might have given way to nerves but never to suspicion. But as the crowning iniquity of the author of her downfall, it gave her the opportunity she had coveted, and she burned to take advantage of it.

When Catalina finally announced herself, Mrs. Moulton was standing in the middle of her bedroom and Jane was reading by the window. The latter nodded as the prodigal entered, and returned to her book.

“Well,” said Catalina, amiably, “how are you all? I am glad you are rid of the peasant at last. Where is Lydia?” She paused, blinking under the cold glare of Mrs. Moulton’s eyes. “What is the matter?” she asked, haughtily. “Cousin Lyman said you were angry, but you must have known how I was left. I am sorry you didn’t have Baedeker with you.” This was an unusual concession for Catalina, but something in the bitter and contemptuous face made her vaguely uneasy.

“You were left on purpose,” said Mrs. Moulton, deliberately.

Catalina made a quick step forward, the breath hissing through her teeth. She looked capable of physical violence, but Mrs. Moulton continued in the same cold, even tones:

“You remained behind in order to be alone with Captain Over for two days and nights. You are not fit to associate with my daughters. You are a wicked, abandoned creature, and I refuse—I absolutely refuse—to shelter your amours. If you appeal to my husband I shall tell him to choose between us.”

Catalina fell back, staring. Innocent she might be but not ignorant. It was impossible to mistake the woman’s meaning, and in a flash she understood that by the evil-minded evil might be read into her adventure. It was then, however, that she showed herself thoroughbred. Her anger left her as abruptly as it had come. She drew herself up, bowed impersonally, and left the room.

Mrs. Moulton, trembling, sank into a chair, and Jane, protesting that her parent had behaved like an empress, fetched the aromatic salts. But Mrs. Moulton, having unburdened her hate, had parted with its sustaining power, and was flat and cowed in the reaction.

“Does it pay?” she demanded again and again. “Does it pay?”

XV

For two days Catalina disappeared. Mr. Moulton, distracted, appealed to the police. He knew that his wife had been severe, but the wicked words of her utterance were never repeated to him. But Mrs. Moulton, although spiritually debased, loved Catalina none the better for her condition, and protested that no one was so well able to take care of herself, even demanding that they move on and leave her in charge of the consul. To this Mr. Moulton would not hearken, and he and the equally disquieted Englishman patrolled the streets and haunted the headquarters of the police. The day of the fête dawned and nothing had been seen or heard of Catalina.

Over was alone when he saw her. The narrow streets were packed with people, and, turning aside to make way for a religious procession, he had become separated from the Moultons. He walked slowly, his head thrown back, gazing at the gay and beautiful sight above him. From every high window and balcony costly brocades and tapestries, embroidered shawls and Oriental carpets depended. The brown old houses, craggy as their high perch itself, warmed into life with the flaunting color. In the balconies were aristocratic men and women, the latter wearing the mantilla, held high with a comb, caught back with a rose. It was an enchanting sight; and above all was the dazzling blue and gold of the sky. Through the chatter of the good-natured crowd wandered the strains of solemn music, and his was the only alien face.

He was staring upward at a little balcony from which hung a magnificent blue silk shawl, embroidered and fringed with white, and admiring the mantillas and roses, the languid fans and fine eyes above it, when Catalina came through the window behind and looked down upon him. She, too, wore a mantilla, the white mantilla of Spanish lace he had watched her buy in Barcelona. A red rose held it above her left ear, and in her hand she carried her fan. She had also assumed the lofty dignity of the Spanish woman of high degree, and she had never looked so beautiful. For a moment she returned his gaze stolidly, and he fancied she meant to cut him; then she bowed, said something to one of her companions, pointed to the stern, brass-bound door below, and disappeared.

A moment later the door opened and he was shown into the patio, a shadowy retreat from the glare and noise of the street, full of palms and pomegranates, roses and lilies, with a cool fountain playing, and many ancient chairs of iron and wood.

Catalina was standing by the fountain looking as Spanish as if these old walls had encircled her cradle. She shook hands with him cordially.

“I have had a bad time,” she said, “and hated you, as well as the Moultons, but it was unreasonable and I am over it. You were as nice and kind as possible, and I shall always remember it. Don’t ask me what that dreadful woman said. I shall forget it, but I shall never speak to any of them again, and I should be glad if you would tell them so, and that I shall remain here until they leave.”

His mind grasped at once the substance of Mrs. Moulton’s diatribe; he had given the subject no thought before. He turned hot and then cold, and involuntarily took a step nearer to the girl, with a fierce instinct of protection. Catalina may have understood, for a spot of color appeared on her high cheek-bones, but she continued, calmly:

“Of course you want to know where I have been and what I am doing in this house. When I left the hotel I went directly to the archbishop and told him as much as was necessary, using as passport a circular letter the fathers of the mission of Santa Barbara had given me. He brought me here at once. The Señora Villéna has this beautiful house, but is poor—and so kind. I have enjoyed the change, I can tell you.”

“You certainly are more in your element. I am glad it has turned out so well. I have been very uneasy.”

“Have you? Did you think I had thrown myself into the Tagus, or was wandering about roofless with my big grip in my hand?”

“It was my knowledge of your good sense, familiarity with the language, and winning manner—when you choose to exert it—that permitted me to go to bed at night. Nevertheless, you are not the woman to travel alone in Spain. What are your plans?”

“What are the Moultons’ plans?”

“They have had enough of Spain—of travel, for that matter—and they are still in dread of Jesus Maria. They will go from here to Barcelona, take a boat for Genoa, and remain there until their steamer arrives. They say that Italy will feel like home after Spain.”

“Then I shall go from here to Granada. Perhaps I can persuade some one to chaperon me, but if not I shall go alone. Nothing shall cheat me out of Granada.”

“If you find no one else I shall go with you.”

The red spots spread down to her throat, but she lifted her head higher. “No,” she said, “I suppose it does not look right.”

He cursed Mrs. Moulton for shattering the serene innocence of the girl; nevertheless, something even more captivating had replaced it. “I shall go,” he repeated, “unless I can persuade you to return to America with your relatives. Then my mind will be at rest. But as long as you are alone in Spain I shall do my best to protect you. If you forbid me to travel with you, well and good. I shall merely follow—that is to say, be your companion on the trains. In the towns we need not meet unless you wish it. You can always put yourself under the protection of the woman of the house and employ a duenna. But do adopt me as a brother and dismiss all nonsensical ideas from your mind.”

For the first time her eyes fell before his. She turned away abruptly. “You are very good,” she said. “Come up-stairs and meet the señora and her daughter. They are charming people.”

A few moments later, as they were standing on the balcony, she said to him: “They are taking me to the bull-fight this afternoon. Shall you go?”

“Possibly. But I am surprised that you wish to go. It is a beastly exhibition and no place for you.”

“I am going,” she said, imperturbably. “It is a part of Spain, and I should as soon think of missing a religious festival like this. Besides, I have seen bull-fights in southern California. You may as well come with us. Of course, Cousin Lyman is not going.”

“Probably not. Very well, I will go with you, if your friends will have me. I must lunch at the hotel with the Moultons and set their minds at rest; but it is an hour until then. Would you care to walk about the streets and see the crowd?”

The Señora Villéna was very large and the day was warm, but she amiably consented to walk as far as the cathedral in the wake of her guest.

“I have not been out alone since I came to her,” said Catalina, with a sigh, as she walked beside Over up the street. “At Granada I know of a pension, and liberty will be sweet again.”

Over’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the face between the soft edges of the mantilla.

“Your new rôle is vastly becoming. I had no idea that two days of Old-World discipline could effect such a change. You look as if you had always walked with a duenna at your heels.”

“So I have, nearly always. I never was on the street alone in my life until my mother died. You think me improved?” she added, quickly.

“I did not say that.”

“I have always thought your bluntness the best thing about you—I like the short skirt and covert coat best,” she said, defiantly.

“They do very well to disguise you on the train; but if I never saw you again I should prefer to remember you as you are now—or as you were that night in Tarragona. You hardly deserve your beauty, you know.”

And then, in a new spirit of coquetry, born perhaps of the mantilla, into whose silken mesh many a dream no doubt had flowed, she lifted her chin, dropped her eyelashes for a second, flashed him a swift personal glance. Before he could adjust himself to the new phase, however, she had dismissed it and remarked that she hoped not to meet the Moultons; and, unaccountably perturbed, he replied that they were sure to be fatigued and resting for luncheon.

It would have been easy to avoid them in the dense crowd packed into the plaza before the cathedral, waiting for the procession to pass. Over and Catalina paused a few moments to look at the superb gobelins with which the façade of the cathedral was hung, and then ran the gamut of the beggars and entered the cloister.

“I shall go into the Chapel of the Incarnacion and pray,” said the Señora Villéna, “and meet you here in half an hour—no?”

The Cathedral of Toledo is one of the world’s treasures, and all the world should see it; but for those who would or must read the sights of Europe a hundred descriptions of this vast, complex dream in early Gothic and late Renaissance and baroque have been written; and the best is forgotten at the end of an hour’s visit.

It was almost deserted, and Over and Catalina walked slowly towards the Capilla Mayor, through the rich brown silence of the nave, whispering occasionally, but overpowered by the forest of shafts uplifting an immensity of vaulting before which the eye reeled. The centuries of carving, as various as the peoples that had come and gone, crystallizing even the broken voice of the Moor, melted into a harmony comparable only, said Catalina, to the wonders of a Californian mountain-forest—of redwood and pine, madroño and oak, and giant ferns as delicate as the lace of her mantilla. There were high vaultings, too, where the sun never ripened the moss on the earth, and endless cryptograms wrought before the hand of man had taken the message of the gods.

Over replied, promptly: “I don’t believe half you have told me about California. Next year I shall obtain leave of absence and visit it—that is, if you will be my cicerone.”

“Why not this year?”

“Shall I?”

“It is all the same to me, but I may not be there next year. I need Europe. Of course, I know that I am a sort of cowboy.”

“Ah!” He hardly knew whether to be gratified or not. “Don’t desert your ranch altogether—nor surrender all the individuality it has given you. If you should be the great lady in Europe and ranch-girl at home—what a fascinating combination!”

“Well, I can be anything I choose, and on five minutes’ notice, too.”

“I am sure of it—but which is the real you? I think I know—then I am all at sea.”

She gave him another swift, upward glance, but she replied, sedately: “The worst, of course. That is what people always decide when a person suddenly reveals himself in a bad light. Twenty other sides may have been exhibited, but it is the revelation of the worst that always inspires the phrase, ‘At last he has shown himself in his true colors.’”

“Then you are too philosophical to condemn Mrs. Moulton utterly?”

“She has taught me the extent of my philosophy, so I forgive her—and ignore her existence.”

He made no reply, for he saw the Moultons not three yards away. They were in the Capilla Mayor, their necks craned in a vain attempt to register a permanent impression of the gorgeous coloring, the phalanxes of saints, the riotous beauty of carving on wall and arch and tomb. While he hesitated, Mr. Moulton brought down his tired eyes and they rested on Catalina. He gave a sharp exclamation of pleasure and hurried forward, his hand out-stretched. Catalina had included him in her wrath, but she forgave him instantly, and simultaneously conceived a stroke of revenge. Mrs. Moulton and Jane retreated, but Lydia ran to Catalina and kissed her.

“Where have you been?” she cried. “We have been just wild. How perfectly sweet you look in that mantilla!”

Catalina explained, and Mr. Moulton drew a long sigh of relief. “I shall never worry about you again, my dear child. And now tell me what you wish to do. I trust you will become reconciled—”

“I shall remain in Spain perhaps for some months—I have cancelled my passage. But I shall like to see _you_ again. Will you come to the Casa Villéna immediately after luncheon? I have a little plan to propose to you.”

“Certainly I will—but is your decision irrevocable?”

“Quite. Perhaps I shouldn’t keep you now. And my duenna must be waiting for me.”

She nodded and turned away, but Lydia followed and took her arm.

“I can go back to the hotel with Captain Over,” she said to her father, and the two girls walked down the nave with heads together, oblivious of the half-amused, half-sulky man in their wake.

“Well, what of Jesus Maria?”

“I have given up all hope of ever seeing him again.”

“Hope? Do you want to?”

“I do and I don’t. Of course, it had to end sooner or later, but—well—I _was_ fascinated! And there is so little to look back upon! However, it was great fun imagining what things might happen, and all the while to be quite safe under the paternal wing. I suppose if I had seen him alone I really wouldn’t have kissed him—I probably should have run away in disgust—but I enjoyed it all in imagination. Now, I shall be rather relieved when I am safely out of Spain, for I know that he was quite serious. When we were running away from Albacete and then from Alcazar, I felt as serious as he did—I was really romantic and love-lorn—but I took myself in hand when I arrived here, and now I am quite sensible again.”

“What a tangle! Is that the way people fall in love—and out again?” Catalina felt puzzled and depressed. Life suddenly seemed commonplace, love a sort of cap-and-bells, to be worn now and again when convenient.

“Well, I wish you good luck,” she said. “Write me when you are really engaged, and I’ll send you a lot of jewels from our California mines—tourmalines and chrysoprases and turquoises and garnets and beryls. I have jugs full of them.”

Lydia’s eyes expanded. “Jugs full! They cost frightfully in New York. Will you really send me some?”

“Dozens.”

“What a fairy princess you are! I am only beginning to appreciate you, and now you are throwing us over—for good and all!”

“Good-bye,” said Catalina, kissing her. “At two, Captain Over, and don’t forget to bring Cousin Lyman. And make no confidences,” she murmured.

XVI

“But, my dear Catalina—why, of course, I cannot go—the idea is preposterous—”

“Now you are talking by the book. Why was Europe made except for the American to play in and refresh himself for the same old duties at home? And for a man of your intelligence to balk at a bull-fight—”

“It isn’t that I exactly balk—I mean I am not squeamish—and I could look away at the worst part—but I do not approve of bull-fights, and think it wrong to lend my countenance—”

“The bull-fight will go on just the same; and no one race is good enough to condemn the customs of another. See the world impartially and then go your own gait. Besides, you have come to study Spain, and how can you pretend to know it unless you see it at its most characteristic amusement? Don’t look at the arena if you had rather not—but think of the opportunity to see Spain en masse at its very worst!”

“There is much in what you say, but—great Heaven!—suppose it ever were known in America that I had been to a bull-fight! I should lose the confidence of a million people—I might be driven out of the Church—”

“There aren’t a dozen Americans in Toledo—and the bull-ring holds five thousand people. You can sit in the back of the box. No one will be looking at anything but the bull-fight, anyhow.”

Mr. Moulton drew a long sigh. He wanted very much to go to the bull-fight; and away from his family and alone with Catalina—whom he could never hope to influence—in this holiday crowd of dark, eager faces he felt almost emancipated and reckless. Over was ahead with the Señora Villéna and her daughter, and they were slowly making their way up the Calle de la Puerta Llana towards the Plaza Ayuntamiento. They reached it in a moment. It was so crowded with cabs and large, open carry-alls, waiting to take people to the bull-ring, that there was little room for foot-passengers. The carry-alls were very attractive with their six mules apiece, hung with bells and decorated with worsted fringe, and Mr. Moulton sighed again.

Before the archbishop’s palace a cab awaited the Señora Villéna. It held but three seats, and she turned with polite hesitation to Mr. Moulton and Captain Over, as they all stood, united at last, beside it.

“I am so sorry,” she said, “but I fear—”

“We are going in one of those omnibuses,” said Catalina, promptly. “I am simply dying to go that way—with the crowd; and of course you will not object, señora, so long as my cousin is with me.”

The señora smiled, very much relieved. “Bueno,” she said. “And I will await you at the entrance to the sombra.”

“You are a little wretch,” said Over as Mr. Moulton, flushed and excited, tucked the señora and her daughter into their cab.

“It won’t hurt him, and he will be sure to let it out to Cousin Miranda.”

“Oh, I see!” He laughed and went to the emptiest of the rapidly filling carry-alls to secure their seats. Catalina followed immediately, holding Mr. Moulton firmly by the arm. But that beacon-light of American literature had the instinct of the true sport in the depths of his manifold compromises. The die was cast, he had weakly permitted Catalina to commit him, and he would enjoy himself without his conscience.

And it would have been a far more conscience-stricken man than this to have remained unaffected by the gay animation that quickened the very mules. The venders were shrieking their wares; men and women, their hard faces glowing, were fighting their way good-naturedly towards the omnibuses, whose drivers cracked their whips and shouted invitations at so much a head. And then, suddenly, in a corner of the plaza appeared the picadores in their mediæval gorgeousness of attire, astride the ill-fated old nags.

It was the signal to start. The picadores wheeled and led the way to the north, the cabs rattled after; then the willing mules were given rein, and, jingling all their bells, plunged down the narrow streets to the high-road, scattering the foot-passengers, who, a motley crowd of men, women, boys, girls, infants in arms, streamed after. On the rough, dusty highway they passed 1000 more trudging towards the Plaza de Toros, eating and drinking as they went. They were come from the surrounding towns, many from Madrid, and even they led children by the hand and carried infants blinking in the strong sunlight. They cheered the picadores, who responded with the lofty courtesy of the mediæval general on his way to the wars. Far below there was not a sign of life on the great vega, nor in the villas on the mountain-slopes. All the little world about seemed to be crowded upon the knotted heights of Toledo.

When Catalina and her cavaliers arrived at the Plaza de Toros other crowds were struggling through the entrances, but at the door on the shady side, where tickets were high, there was no one at that moment but the Señora Villéna and her daughter.