“This is Granada—Granada—Granada—and we are living in the
Alhambra—somehow I always pictured the Alhambra as a mere palace, not as
a whole military town where thousands lived; and to be actually
domiciled in one of its old streets—its old, steep, narrow, crooked
streets—I don’t quite realize it, do you?”
“I shall feel more romantic when I have cleaned up—and some one has
stolen my pipe.”
“Oh, I hate you!” said Catalina, but she forgot him in a moment.
She had persuaded Mrs. Rothe to go to a pension instead of a hotel—she
had heard of one frequented mainly by artists—and with less difficulty
than she had anticipated, for it was the season of travelling Americans,
and her erring but sensitive chaperon was weary of being stared at. The
front windows of the pension looked upon a street whose paving-stones
and walls had echoed the tramp of Moorish feet for nearly 1000 years,
and are still as eloquent of that indomitable race as if the Spanish
conquerors had never passed under the Gate of Justice. In an angle at
the back of the house was a garden with a long, latticed window in its
high wall, and beyond were the great shade-trees of Alhambra Park. There
was a sound of running water and the hum of drowsy insects, but it
seemed as quiet as a necropolis after the long flight from the station
behind the jingling mules into Granada, and the following drive over the
rough streets of the city up to the heights of the Alhambra.
Catalina’s room had windows on both street and garden, and she could
look down into Over’s room in the other side of the angle, on the floor
below. The garden, although the kitchen opened upon it, was full of
sweet-smelling flowers and rustic chairs, and at one end was a long
table where a man sat painting. There were no palms here, for Granada is
2000 feet above the Mediterranean and the eternal snows are on the
Sierras behind her.
“I suppose, then,” said Catalina, after a half-hour’s dreaming, “that
you don’t mind if I go for a walk without you?”
“Oh, do wait! I’m quite fit now.”
“I’ll meet you down in the street.”
On her way through the quaint, irregular house she met a tall,
fine-looking girl, who half smiled and bowed as if welcoming her to the
pension. For a moment Catalina wondered if by any chance her family
could have bought out the Spanish proprietors, but dismissed the
thought. The girl was not only unmistakably American, but of the
independent class. She wore a blue veil about the edge of her large hat,
and her ashen hair in a single deep curve on her forehead. Her white
shirt-waist and white duck skirt were adjusted with a perfection of
detail that suggested the habit of a maid or of time and concentrated
thought. Her features were good, and in spite of a hint of selfishness
and rigidity about the mouth, and a pair of rather cold gray eyes, her
smile was very sweet. But her claim to distinction was in her grooming,
her beauty mien, and in her subtle air of gracious patronage.
“She looks like a princess and yet not quite like a lady,” thought
Catalina. “What can she be?”
Over joined her, and as the two gray, harmonious figures walked down the
street Catalina turned suddenly and looked at the pension. The girl in
white was leaning from one of the upper windows. But this time the cool
gray eyes had no message for one of her own sex. They dwelt upon the
Englishman’s military and distinguished back. Catalina thrilled to the
vague music of unrest deep in some unexplored nook of her being. The
second response was a snapping eye which she turned upon Over.
“I met an American girl as I was coming out that I have taken a dislike
to,” she announced. “She has a most absurd patronizing manner, and looks
as if she were trying to be the great lady but couldn’t quite make it. I
prefer the Moultons, who are frankly suburban.”
“I thought the Moultons very jolly—poor souls. I suppose they have
reached the haven of an Atlantic liner by this.”
“Did you see that girl?” asked Catalina, sharply.
“What girl? Oh, in the pension, just now. I passed a rather stunning
girl on the stairs—but there are so many girls! Shall we wander about
outside a bit before getting the tickets?”
The great red towers of the Alhambra were before them, and Catalina
forgot the Unknown. There happened to be no one else in the Plaza de los
Aljibes as they entered it, and the afternoon was very warm and still.
They lingered between the hedges of myrtle, the flower best beloved of
the Moor, and disdaining the upstart palace of Charles V. looked
wonderingly at the featureless wall that hid so much beauty, and in its
time had secluded from the vulgar the daily life and gorgeous state of
the most picturesque court in Europe, and such harems of varied
loveliness as never will be seen again. Only the Tower of Comares,
rising sheer from the northern wall of the Assabica Hill, is as visible
from the plaza, as from the courts, of whose life it was once a part.
“It was from that window that the Sultana Ayxa la Horra, the mother of
Boabdil el Chico, let him down to the Darro with a rope made of shawls
so that he could escape from Granada before his dreadful old father
murdered him,” volunteered Catalina. “But of course you have read all
about it—there never was a more delicious book than _The Conquest of
Granada_.”
“Never heard of it, and am densely ignorant of the whole thing. You will
have to coach me, as usual.”
“Then I suppose you don’t know that we should have no Alhambra
to-day—hardly one stone on another—if it hadn’t been for Irving—an
American! How do you like that?”
“You know I have no race jealousy, and I had just as lief it had been
Irving as any other Johnny. What difference does it make, anyhow? We
have the Alhambra. It’s like bothering about who wrote Shakespeare’s
plays.”
“That doesn’t interest you?”
“Not a bit. The plays don’t much, for that matter. I’m glad our
literature has them, but all that sort of speculation seems to me a
crying waste of time and mental energy. Let’s have the lecture. What did
you say your black’s name was?”
“Black! Boabdil had beautiful golden hair and blue eyes.” And she
sketched the vacillating fate of that ill-starred young monarch while
they sat on a bench opposite the great façade of the Alcazaba, that once
impregnable citadel swarming with turbaned Moors. To Catalina they were
almost visible to-day, so vivid was her historical sense; and, as ever,
she caught Over in the rush of her enthusiasm. He always invited these
little disquisitions, less for the information, which he usually forgot,
than for the pleasure of watching the changing glow on Catalina’s so
often immobile face. Moreover, she was invariably amiable when roaming
through history. Her voice, in spite of its little Western accent, was
soft and rich and lingered in his ear long after she had fallen into a
silence which presented a contemptuous front to such masculine
artfulness as he possessed.
To-day, after they had passed through the little door of the Alcazaba,
she fell abruptly from garrulity into a state of apparent dumbness; but
Over walked contentedly beside her in the warm and fragrant silence of
the ruin. Except for the ramparts and the two great watch-towers where
the Moor had contemplated for so many anxious months the vast army and
glittering camp of Ferdinand and Isabella on the vega beyond Granada,
and the sheer sides of the rock on which the fortress was built, there
was little to suggest that it had once been the warlike guardian of the
palace. It rather looked as if it had been the pleasure-gardens of a
pampered harem, with its winding walks between terraces of bright
flowers, its fountains, overgrown, like the fragments of wall, with ivy,
and its grottos, always cool, and of a delicious fragrance; while from
every point there was a glimpse of snow mountain or sunburned plain.
After they had rambled in silence for an hour Catalina emerged from her
centres and suggested that they go up to the platform of the Torre de la
Vela. From that high point, famous for having been the first in Granada
to fly the pennons of Aragon and Castile, they saw the perfect rim of
hills and mountains that curve about the city and its vega. On the
tremendous ridges and peaks of the Sierras, no less than on the blooming
slopes of the lower ranges, there once were watch-towers and fortified
towns, the outer rind of the pomegranate which the Spaniards stripped
off bit by bit until they reached the luscious pith that so aptly
symbolized the delights of the Moorish stronghold. The fortresses are
gone, but the eternal snows still glitter, the Xenil is as silvery as of
yore, while the sloping city of Granada itself presents an indescribably
ancient appearance, with its millions of tiles, baked and faded by the
centuries into a soft, pinkish gray, its streets so narrow that one
seems to look down upon a vast roof, from which crosses and towers rise
like strange growths that mar the harmony of a scene otherwise perfect
in line and delicate color. The solitary tower of the cathedral rises
from the mass of roofs like a mere monument above the tombs of Ferdinand
and Isabella, who, for all they lie in consecrated stone, have ever
about them the phantom of the ancient mosque.
Above the roofs the very air was pink; and out on the shimmering vega to
the western hills the sun was seeking to pay his evening visit. On the
right, or north, of the Alhambra, across the river Darro, was the
Albaicin on a steep mountain spur, once both sister and rival of the
palace hill, “the whole surrounded by high walls three leagues in
circuit, with twelve gates, and fortified by 1030 towers.” It was, in
general, faithful to Boabdil el Chico, Catalina informed her companion,
thirsty for knowledge, and was the scene of terrific battles between
that whim of destiny and his unrighteous old father Muley Aben Hassan.
To-day it is given over to thousands of gypsies, who are faithful to
nothing but their nefarious and ofttimes murderous instincts. But by far
the most imposing objects in the extensive panorama, after the snow
mountains, were the ruined towers of the Alhambra itself. Besides the
three in the foreground, and Comares, or romantic memories, was a line
in varying stages of picturesque decay, extending along the precipitous
bluff overhanging the Darro. Between were gardens of glowing flowers,
narrow streets, ruined walls, wild patches of wood where the cliff-side
jutted; and on the south side of the Alhambra hill, parallel with the
Darro, the dense park of elms planted by the Duke of Wellington.
“There is the town of Santa Fé,” said Catalina, pointing to a speck on
the edge of the vega. “Ferdinand and Isabella caused it to be built when
they were in camp. The articles of Granada’s capitulation were signed
there, and their contract with Columbus. Over there in the Sierras,
somewhere, is the spot where Boabdil turned to take a last look at
Granada, and was reproached by his mother—who was far more of a man than
he was—for weeping like a woman for what he could not defend like a man.
When I was a child my mother used to sing me to sleep with ‘The Last
Sigh of the Moor.’”
And she suddenly trilled forth with an abandonment of sorrow which
startled Over more than any phase she had yet exhibited.
“‘Ay, nunca, nunca, nunca mas veré!’ That means, ‘Aye, never, never,
never more to see,’” she translated, practically. “How close it brings
the island of Santa Catalina, undiscovered by the tourist then, and our
lonely little inn! My mother always sang me to sleep in a big
rocking-chair, and my father sat by a student-lamp and read, frowning
until she had finished. It all seems a thousand years ago.”
“Did you miss your parents much?” asked Over, curiously.
For a second it seemed to him that he saw a window open in the depths of
her eyes. Then she turned her back on him. “I don’t live in the past,”
she said. “Let us go down into the park. It will be dusk in a few
moments, and the nightingales will sing.”
They lingered awhile among the terraces watching the sun go down, then
descended through the Gate of Justice into the park. There the steep
aisles were dim, there was the murmur of running water, and in a few
moments the nightingales burst forth into song.
Over and Catalina sat down on a grassy bank. There appeared to be no one
in the park but themselves. The man looked up, half expecting to see
turbaned heads and flashing eyes on the towers and ramparts above; or
the glittering cavalcade of Ferdinand and Isabella crowding through the
Gate of Justice; or the faithless wife of Boabdil stealing out to her
fatal tryst with Hammet of the Abencerrages. In the warm duskiness of
the wood under the watch-towers and ramparts, and the fountain of
Charles V. beside them, the music of nightingale and distant waters
thrilling the soft, voluptuous air, it was easy to imagine that the
walls of Granada had yielded to neither the Spaniard nor to time. They
were the most romantic moments he had ever known; and the Alhambra is
the most romantic ruin on earth, the one where the modern world seems
but a bit of prophetic history, and 400 years are as naught.
But there came a moment when he retraced his flight and stole a glance
at Catalina. If she were as thrilled with the sense of his nearness as
he with hers in these glades of teeming memories, she gave no sign. With
her head thrown back and eyes half closed she appeared to be drinking in
the delicious notes of the nightingales. She was quite as beautiful as
any of the captive sultanas who had whiled away the hours for their
fierce lords in the mysterious apartments above—and startlingly like.
Such women, white of skin, dark and sphinxlike of eye, with delicate
features and tender forms, were sought throughout the East to tempt the
sated appetite of the Moorish tyrants. Just so had women with wistful,
upturned profiles listened to the dulcet notes of the nightingale
floating down from the trees beside Comares into the spacious courts
beneath their narrow windows, dreaming of the lovers they would never
see. How like she was! In looks, yes; but he laughed outright as his
fancy pictured Catalina as even the reigning favorite of a harem where a
mistaken monarch sought to filch her of her liberty and bend her will.
His abrupt, half-conscious laughter rent the spell of the evening, and
Catalina sprang to her feet.
“I forgot to ask the dinner-hour,” she said. “But it must be time. I am
starved.”
She walked rapidly up the hill, and Over followed, conscious that he had
thrown away one of the exquisite moments of life, and hardly knowing,
now that the intoxication had passed, whether he would have it so or
not.