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.