“I saw that horse standing in the middle of the arena every time my mind
was off guard!” said Catalina. “I woke up suddenly in the night with the
hideous vision painted on the dark. I thought it was a judgment on me
for going—that I should be haunted by it for the rest of my life. I
believe it was Velasquez that banished it, but now I see it only at
intervals.”
“Perhaps,” said Over, “we were wiser in going back. Our savagery was
glutted and the imagination blunted. I was never so bored in my life as
at the end of two hours of it, and I haven’t thought of it since.”
They were down in the crypt of the Escorial, in the Pantheon de los
Reyes. Mrs. Rothe had offered to chaperon Catalina, and after two days
of sight-seeing in Toledo had returned to Madrid to prepare for the trip
south. She had seen the Escorial, and Catalina had come out alone with
Over to the grim mass of masonry growing out of the Guadarrama
Mountains, which from a distance looks like a phantom casino for dead
pleasures. They had wandered over it leisurely, lingering in the cell,
with its scant leather furniture, where Philip II. in his monastic
arrogance had received the ambassadors of Europe, and peering through
the little window of the inner cell upon the same sight that had held
his dying gaze as he lay where they, as a great concession, were
permitted to stand—a high-mass in the chapel beyond. Then they had
descended the fifty-nine steps into the black-and-gold vault where lies
the dust of Charles V. and his successors to the throne of Spain,
together with the queens who reigned, or mothered kings.
It is an octagonal apartment, with eight rows of niches, the kings on
the right of the altar opposite the entrance, the queens on the left.
Every sarcophagus, wrought in precisely the same elaborate pattern, is
of black marble heavily encrusted with gold. The handful of dust that
once was chief of the Holy Roman Empire is in the sarcophagus on a level
with the top of the altar, and below him is Philip II. There is none of
the picturesque confusion, the vagaries of different epochs, nor the
lingering scent of death of the Kaisergruft in Vienna. It might have
been built yesterday, but it has the sombre richness, the lofty dignity
of Spain itself.
There were only two empty niches, and the guide informed his patrons
that they awaited the young king and the late Queen Isabella.
“Where is she now?” asked Catalina. “Why is she not here?”
“Oh, she must remain in the Pudridero for ten years,” said the guide,
indifferently. “It is the custom. For some it is only five years, but
she was very fat.”
Thus was explained the purity of the atmosphere.
They ascended thirty-four of the steps and wandered through that white
marble quarry, so brilliant, so new, so cheerful, where lie the lesser
dead of the House of Spain. There are rows and rows and rows of them. In
one octagonal, snow-white mass, exactly resembling a huge wedding-cake,
the dust of many children has been put away, and the gay coat of arms
embellishing it seems cut there to cheer the little ones in their last
sleep. Many of the glistening sarcophagi are as yet without inscription,
awaiting, no doubt, time and the Pudridero.
Above, in the Sacristia and Ante-Sacristia, they were shown the
magnificent vestments and altar-cloths with which the uneasy Isabella,
as age waxed and time waned, propitiated Church and saints. And what she
had been was discreetly forgotten; she had descended into the Pudridero
fortified with the odor of sanctity.
They dismissed the guide and walked down the foot-path to the lower
town. For a time they preserved the tranquil silence which is so
pleasant an episode in friendship; for although this friendship was
barely three weeks old, they had enjoyed so much in common, and
companioned each other through so many annoyances, quarrelled and made
up so often, discovered so many points of sympathy and disagreement,
they had come to take their intimate association as a matter of course,
while still their mutual interest deepened.
Over stole a glance at his companion as she looked aside into the
gardens. She had restored the short skirt to favor, but to gratify Mrs.
Rothe, who was shocked that so much beauty should go to waste, she had
bought a gray silk blouse and a soft gray hat. Still she looked more
like the aggressive Catalina to whom he had grown accustomed before the
brief, distracting interval of the mantilla. He was well again after
these three weeks of almost open-air life, much heat, and uninterrupted
freedom, and carried his tall, thin figure with military erectness,
while his keen eyes seemed always laughing and there was a tinge of
color in his dark face. He now not only looked the handsome, highly
bred, intelligent Englishman who might have had an Italian or Spanish
ancestor, but his magnetism was alive again, and the observant Catalina
noticed that women stared at him and occasionally lay in wait.
The hotel in Madrid where they were all stopping was full of travellers
and of deputies, many of whose wives were handsome, and dressed like
women who looked to life to furnish them with much amusement. Catalina
speculated and occasionally flew into a rage; for this trip in Spain he
was all hers, if she never saw him again, and she was ready to spit fire
upon possible rivals.
She was not in her most amiable mood to-day. The hotel was on the Puerta
del Sol, the noisiest plaza in Europe. If the throngs that haunt it ever
go to bed they must get up again at once, and Catalina, whose rest was
broken, wondered how Spain had ever acquired the reputation for
indolence. Moreover, it was quite true that the horrors of the bull-ring
had haunted her almost to the point of obsession, and as she was too
philosophical to wish the done undone, she took refuge in wrath against
herself for not meeting the inevitable with her usual stolidity. She
prided herself greatly upon her Oriental serenity, and looked upon her
temper as a mere annex, which, no doubt, would be absorbed in time.
She turned suddenly with a little frown.
“There’s an end to our travelling third. I broached the subject last
night, and Mrs. Rothe looked as if I were stark mad. She has no snobbish
scruples, but I suppose the poor thing has never been uncomfortable in
her life. She asked me politely if I could not afford to go in the luxe
that runs between here and Granada once a week, and, of course, I had to
admit that I could. But I hate it. Couldn’t we go third and meet her
there?”
“I am afraid we have no good excuse—and it would take nearly two days by
the slow trains. I rather think you should be thankful for the solution
of Mrs. Rothe.”
“You need not preach. I am. But when I come back to Europe I’m going to
pretend to be a widow and travel by myself.”
“Are you so in love with liberty?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, I have always thought highly of it myself,” he said, lightly.
“How do you like Mrs. Rothe, on the whole? Don’t you find her a good
sort, in spite of her foibles?”
“Follies, I should call them. Yes, I like her, if only because she has
taught me that a person may be foolish and yet be wise; decorate herself
like a cocotte and yet be a lady; violate half the rules one has been
brought up on and yet be more estimable than the wholly virtuous—Cousin
Miranda, for instance.”
“Those would be dangerous deductions for some girls, but you have a
ripping strong head. You ought to be as grateful for that as for your
beauty.”
“I wish you’d stop preaching.”
“I never preached in my life,” he said, indignantly. “I was merely
thinking aloud—uttering an obvious fact. I might add that I wish your
temper was in the same class with your good looks and common-sense.”
“Well, it isn’t. Do you approve of second marriages?”
“Never given a thought to the subject. If ever I married it would not be
with the divorce court among the future possibilities.”
“I was not thinking of divorce—although Mrs. Rothe, in a way, suggested
the question. But I wonder how it feels to be married to a second man,
especially if you were in love with the first—and most youthful
marriages are for love. I picked up an old volume of Hawthorne the other
day and came across the phrase, apropos of a second marriage, ‘the
dislocation of the heart’s principles.’ You never forget a phrase like
that. And I have been wondering.”
“One is so different at twenty-five and thirty-five. It is almost like
being reborn. And so many youthful marriages result in disillusion and
disappointment you can hardly blame the victims for taking another try
at it. There is such a thing as sacrificing too much, and I fancy Mrs.
Rothe has. Still, there is something magnificent in the big gambler, and
Mrs. Rothe must have more courage than weakness to stake all on one
throw.”
“I don’t know that I blame her if she never was happy before; but
sometimes first love is real love—I mean, of course, when it is; mere
fancies don’t count. But if one has any brain and a moderate amount of
experience, one must know when one has been through the real thing. I am
thinking now of two people who have been married long enough to find
out. It is, no doubt, a matter for speculation before that; and that is
the reason so many girls marry and are happy, even though they have
broken their hearts several times—you see, women live the life of the
imagination until they can live in fact. But when one has actually lived
for some years with a man and loved him and he dies—that is what I mean.
Don’t you think it is the second-rate person who marries again? I have a
theory, in spite of Hawthorne, that mistaken marriages don’t count—I
mean so far as the soul, the inner life, is concerned,—but that the real
one counts forever, and that consolement with another partner
presupposes shallowness and a lack of true spirituality. Fancy being
equally happy and in deepest accord with two men. It is disgusting.”
“It certainly is unideal. And every Jack has his Jill. I don’t doubt
that—don’t in the least believe a man could be equally happy with any
one of a hundred charming and intelligent women—not if he wanted the
best out of life. But it is fortunate, perhaps, that the majority don’t
do any deep imagining. Then you think yourself capable of being faithful
to a memory?” he added, curiously.
“I know I could be—and happy, in a way; certainly far happier than if I
settled down into a commonplace content with another man. It is the
inner life that counts, nothing else.”
“How do you know these things?”
“How did you know you would be brave in battle before you were ever in
one?”
“Didn’t. Was awfully afraid I’d funk it.”
“Well,” she said, laughing, “perhaps that wasn’t a fortunate comparison.
But one can have intuitions without experience, especially if one lives
a more or less solitary life, and thinks. However, I have visions of
myself as an old maid on the ranch with half a dozen adopted children.
Falling in love is too hard work.”
“Is it?”
“Well—it has always seemed so to me.” She colored, more angry with
herself than with him. “I don’t pretend to any great amount of
experience, but you are so ridiculously literal.”
“You make cocksure assertions, and then get in a rage if I treat them
respectfully. When I don’t, you hiss at me like a snake. I don’t
complain, however, for I am now a qualified and hardened subject for
matrimony.”
“I suppose you mean that I will make all other women seem like angels.
You will have something to thank me for.”
“If any man ever has the courage to propose to you, and you bend so far
as to accept him, and his courage carries him as far as the altar, is it
your intention to nag him through life as you have nagged me in the past
three weeks?”
“Have I nagged you?” She turned her wondering eyes upon him. “I never—so
I thought—have treated any one so well.”
“Great God!” But he was nonplussed at her sudden change of front, as he
always was. “There have been times,” he continued in a moment, “when you
have been quite the most charming woman in the world.”
Her wondering eyes were still on his, the rest of her face as immobile
as the Sphinx. He blundered along.
“I have been on the verge of proposing to you more than once.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You have a way of breaking the spell just at the critical moment. I am
never sure whether the you I am sometimes in love with is really there
or only assumed, like one of your rarely worn gowns. There are times
when I think you have every possibility, and others when I believe you
to be merely a more subtle variety of the American flirt.”
“Well, I’m sorry you didn’t propose,” she said, sedately. “Now I suppose
you never will. You would have been quite a feather in my cap.”
“That means you would not have accepted me?”
“Did you imagine I would?”
“There have been times when I did.” He was now goaded into boldness.
“Well, you’re just a conceited Englishman!” she cried, furiously. “If I
thought you meant that I’d never speak to you again!”
“Now I know where I am,” he said, serenely. “This, after all, is the
only you I am at home with.”
“Well, don’t speak to me again for twenty-four hours. I can’t stand you.
Thank Heaven, there is the train!”
Some hours later he found her sitting at the drawing-room window of the
hotel looking down upon the most characteristic sight in Madrid—the
afternoon procession of carriages.
From four o’clock until any hour of a fine night, while the national
stew simmers on the back of the stove, the wealth and fashion, and those
that would be or seem to be both, drive out the Calle de Alcala to the
great paseos and parks, and back through the narrow Carrera San Jeronimo
in an unbroken line that bewilders the eye and creates the delusion of
an endless and automatic chain. There are more private carriages in
Madrid than in any city in the world, and in bright weather their owners
would appear to live in them, indifferent to hunger or fatigue. Those
who have Paris gowns exhibit them, those who have not hide their poverty
under the always picturesque mantilla; but few are so poor as not to own
a turnout. A woman of any degree of fashion in Madrid will sell her
house if necessary, her furniture, her jewels, and live in two rooms
with one or no servant, but have her carriage and her daily drive she
will; for to lose one’s place in that distinguished chain would be to
lose one’s hold on the world itself. So long as they can see and be seen
daily in the avenues they love, bow to the same familiar faces, and
criticise the gowns of friend and foe, the _olla podrida_ can burn and
the frock under the mantilla be darned and turned, the daughters
dowerless, and even theatre tickets unavailable. They have, at least,
the best in life; and then there is always the long morning in bed and
the bull-fight. And who would not envy a people so tenacious of the
desirable and so bravely satisfied?
Catalina was at the window on the Carrera San Jeronimo, and there was no
one else in the sala at the moment. Over approached in some trepidation,
not having been spoken to since the final word on the slope of the
Escorial; but Catalina, diverted by the bright birds of paradise on
their homeward flight, looked up and smiled charmingly. She wore one of
her white frocks, and a string of pearls in her hair, and stirred the
languid air with a large black fan. In a strong light she was always
beautiful, and in the late, sun-touched shadows of evening, with her
pretty teeth showing between the red, waving line of her lips, she
looked very sweet and seductive.
“I suppose I ought to apologize,” said Over, who had had no thought of
apologizing.
“You did say very rude things, but I squared them by losing my temper.
If we begin to apologize—” She shrugged her shoulders and lowered her
lashes to the hats and mantillas below.
He took the chair before her. “Let us talk it out,” he said. “What do
you think? Is this close companionship of ours going to end in love, or
are we the usual passing jests of propinquity? I admit I have never been
so hard hit in my life; but at the same time I am not completely
floored. Perhaps that is only because I am too contented in a way. If we
were separated for a time, I fancy I’d know.”
“Your sense of humor must have flown off with your national caution. I
never before heard of a man asking a girl to straighten out his
sentiments for him.”
“I don’t care a hang about traditions. If I love you I want to marry
you, and if I don’t I’d rather be shot. I am talking it out in cold
blood when I can, and this unromantic spot, with all that infernal
clatter down there, is as good a place as any. Besides, I don’t want you
to think that I am not capable of being serious—of appreciating you.
Life would be unthinkable happiness if we loved each other—”
“You take for granted that if you managed to reach the dizzy height, I
should arrive by the same train.” She spoke flippantly, but he saw that
she had broken the sticks of her fan.
“I told you once before to-day that I believed every Jack had his Jill.
If I loved you it would be for what you had in you for me alone—I know
what the other thing means. You are as much in doubt as I am. As for
myself, I perhaps would be sure if you were not so beautiful; but there
are times when you blind, and I don’t intend to make that particular
kind of a silly ass of myself.”
“Well,” said Catalina, rising, “I have a fancy we will find out in
Granada—by moonlight in the Alhambra and all that sort of thing. One
thing is positive—we are in the dark at present, and the conditions are
not illuminating. Here comes Mrs. Rothe.” As she moved off she turned
suddenly. “If you should continue indefinitely in this painful state of
vacillation,” she said, sweetly, “you may consider these two little
conversations decently buried. For my part, I like friendship, and we
have become quite adept at that.”