“Ah!” exclaimed Captain Over, “this is Spain! Who is going to sit with
me in front?”
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.