After dinner Catalina went up to her room to brush her hair—her head
ached slightly—and sit for a while by herself before the evening walk.
As a rule, she was the first to be down, but to-night she had a perverse
desire for Over to come or send for her. She was suddenly tired of
meeting him half-way, of being the frank, almost sexless, comrade; she
wanted to be sought and made much of. Miss Holmes might be a
second-rate, but she was an artist, and Catalina was not above taking a
leaf out of her book.
“I’d rather be a hermit and have smallpox than bother forever as she
does, according to Mrs. Rothe; and flatter men—not I! But I think I
should be more feminine and difficult.”
Her hands trembled a little as she burnished her hair, and once her eyes
filled with tears; but she brushed them off with a scowl, and still
refused to think. She had been too much with Over, and their friendship
had run too smoothly for her thoughts to have been tempted to revolve
about him when alone. There were times when she turned cold and then hot
if he came upon her suddenly, and his touch and glance had thrilled her
more than once. But she had kept it steadily before her that this was
but a summer friendship and that in a short time she would be in
California and he in England. It is true that her imagination
supplemented the separation with a meeting in one country or the other
not later than a year hence, but she had not permitted her mind to dwell
upon the significance of his audible self-analysis in Madrid, holding
that when a man doubted the depth of his sentiments the time had not
come to take him seriously. Moreover, to speculate upon the significance
of a man’s attentions was not only indelicate but put her in the class
with other girls, and nothing distressed her more than to approach the
average. Therefore, had she never sought to discover what lay beneath
her daily pleasure in Over’s society and her matter-of-fact assumption
that for the time he was hers.
Nor would she permit herself to analyze her sense of disappointment
to-night. Her soul had been floating on the high, golden notes of the
nightingales, and not alone; it had plunged down with a velocity that
left it sick and dizzy, but as Catalina banged the large pins into her
hair she still refused to demand the reason.
The people were talking in the garden. She shut her window overlooking
it and sat down before the one opposite. The moon had not risen; the
street, lit by a solitary lamp, was full of shadows. It was easy to
convert the shadows into swarthy men with turbaned heads and flowing
robes, but she was not in a historical mood. Even a man with a long
Spanish cloak folded closely about him and holding manifestly to the
heavier shadows failed to arrest her attention. In spite of her
admirable self-control her mind wondered uneasily why Over did not call
her, how he was occupied; for the time was passing.
Her eyes wandered to the height behind the Albaicin. There were lights;
they might be watch-fires. It was not so long ago that that turbulent
quarter had rung with the clamor of battle, of civil strife, that its
gates had been secretly opened to Boabdil in the night, and his father
or uncle been defied to come over and redden its streets. What were four
centuries?
“I shall always have that pleasure, that resource,” thought Catalina,
arrogantly. “I can always take refuge in the past on a moment’s notice.
Where on earth can he be? Does he suppose I don’t want to walk—as I
haven’t gone down? Or is he too interested—”
Her spine stiffened. She listened intently, then stood up silently and
looked down. Over and Miss Holmes were standing in the doorway of the
pension, talking. Catalina could not distinguish the words. Over had a
low voice of no great carrying power, and Miss Holmes had neglected none
of the charms that man finds excellent in woman. But he was leaning to
her words in a fashion that denoted interest, and oblivion of all else
for the moment. In a flash Catalina realized just how attractive he was
to women.
Still talking, they moved from the doorway into the street, and then
down in the direction of the palace. Catalina leaned out with a gasp,
hardly believing the evidence of her eyes. For a moment astonishment
routed other sensations. Was it possible that Over was on his way to
visit the Alhambra for the first time by moonlight with another
woman?—that he was going for his evening walk at all without her? Never
had he thought of doing such a thing before; they went off together,
frequently alone, every evening. Even in Toledo he had come directly to
the Casa Villéna after dinner, and sooner or later, by one device or
another, had managed to carry her off for a stroll. But there he was,
complacently walking down street with another woman, and not so much as
a backward glance. And the other woman had white lace about her head and
shoulders, and no doubt looked like a lorelei. The only beauty she had
ever heard Over praise was the beauty of fair women, which was as it
should be. And Englishmen laughed at American distinctions. If this girl
were second class, how was Over to find her out on a moonlight night in
a tricksy frame, how discover that she wore her hair like a shop-girl?
Doubtless, if he thought at all about the matter, he would elevate Miss
Holmes above herself in the social scale. She at least did not suggest
the cow-boy.
And still he did not turn his head. Perhaps he was only strolling for a
few minutes with the new acquaintance, waiting for his usual companion
to descend. Catalina leaned farther out. In a moment they passed the old
mosque and disappeared.
She fell back from the window, unable for a moment to think coherently;
the blood was pounding in her head. Her impulse was to run after them
and twist her rival’s neck. She panted with hate, with the desire for
vengeance, with the lust to kill. She stood like a wooden idol, but she
boiled with the worst passions of the ancient races behind her. She
conceived swift plans of vengeance. She would make friends with the
girl, poison her peace of mind, kill her if she could not inveigle her
into killing herself. The malignant, treacherous nature of the
aboriginal controlled her, obsessed her. Civilization fell away; she was
capable of the worst; she cared nothing for consequences. Literally, she
wanted the enemy’s scalp. Then, without premeditation, she wept
stormily, like an undisciplined child—or a savage—beside itself. And
then the obsession passed and she was horrified.
It was not thus her imagination had dwelt upon the great revelation. She
had visioned love among the stars, and had expected—groping, perhaps—to
find it there. But to discover it in a fit of jealous rage, writhing in
the most ignoble of the passions, her soul shrieking for revenge—she
descended to the depths of discouragement, humiliation. She doubted if
she were worthy of being loved even by a mere man—for the moment she
despised the entire sex for Over’s weakness and inconstancy. Of course,
like others, he had succumbed to this enchantress, who didn’t even wear
her hair like a lady, and was therefore unworthy of even the rage she
had flung after him. She longed to despise him so hotly that her love
would be reduced to a charred ember, and thought she had succeeded; then
it flamed all through her, and she sprang to her feet.
“There is one thing I can do,” she thought, and lit the candle. “I’ll
leave to-morrow. Never will I go through this again, and never will I
see him again if I can help it.”
She had the instinct of all wounded things, and a terror of the emotions
that had torn her. Pain she could stand, and had a dim foreshadowing
that in solitude she might attain that dignity of soul that sorrow and
meditation bring to great natures, but never the passionate conflict of
emotions that confused her now. As she locked her trunk there was a
knock on her door. She answered mechanically, and Mrs. Rothe entered.
“What—”
Catalina, who was sitting on the floor, sprang to her feet. Her hair was
disordered and her eyes red. There was no use attempting to conceal
anything from this keen-eyed woman, whose sufferings were stamped in the
loosened muscles of her face. She stood silent and haughty. She would
deny nothing, but nothing was further from her mind than confession.
“May I sit down?” asked Mrs. Rothe. “Have you a headache? I was afraid
you must have, as you did not come down.”
“My head doesn’t ache, but I am sick of Spain. I am going to start for
home to-morrow.”
“Oh, I am sorry. It will be dreary without you. And I thought it so
enchanting here. Can’t I induce you to change your mind?”
Catalina sat down on her trunk, but she shook her head. “I want to go
home,” she said.
Mrs. Rothe turned her kind, bitter eyes full upon Catalina. “Don’t run
away,” she said. “It is unworthy of you. And this means nothing. What is
more natural—he being a man—than that he should accept the minor
offerings of the gods when the best is not forthcoming? Moreover, when a
man has talked steadily to one girl for three weeks”—she shrugged her
shoulders—“that is the way they are made, my dear, the way we are all
made, for that matter, as you will discover in time for yourself. It is
better to accept men as they are, and early than late.”
“I never want to see another man again—and this was our first night in
Granada. There was—had been for weeks—a tacit understanding that we
should do every bit of it together—”
“But you disappeared. No doubt he thought you were indisposed—”
“I wanted him to come after me, for once.”
“Oh, my dear, men are so dense. When they love us desperately they
rarely do what we most long to have them. If I don’t sympathize with
you—well, I think of my own throes, not only at your age, but so often
after. It is so easy to fall in love, so difficult to remain there. You
can marry Over if you wish—and two or three years hence—the pity of it!”
“Do you mean that no love lasts?”
“In tenacious natures like yours it may. Nevertheless, there will be
times when he will bore you, get on your nerves, when you will plan to
get away from him for a time. A few years ago I still clung—in the face
of experience—to my delusions. Then I would have held your hand and wept
sympathetic tears. Now, I can only say, go in and win, but don’t break
your heart over an imagined capacity for love at an interminable high
pitch.”
“You must have loved Mr. Rothe when you married him,” said Catalina,
with curiosity, and feeling that Mrs. Rothe had opened the gates and
bade her enter.
“I did,” said the older woman, dryly. “For what other reason, pray,
would I make a fool of myself, and disgust and antagonize those whom I
had loved so long? What a fool the world is!” she burst out. “And
writers, for that matter! They are always harping on the death of the
man’s love, upon the punishment that will be visited upon the woman of
mature years who marries a man younger than herself! I am capable of the
profoundest feeling, and I have never been able really to love a man in
my life. I have deluded myself again and again, and invariably the man
has disappointed or disgusted me. This is my third husband. The first
died, but not soon enough to leave me with a blessed memory. The second,
whom I had found irresistible, developed into a gourmand with a bad
temper. I lived with him for fifteen years. When I met Rothe I was
forty, the beginning of the most critical period in the life of women of
my sort—when if not happy we would stake our souls for happiness. It
seemed to me that I could not continue to live without love, and yet
that I could not die unless I had, if only for a day, loved to the full
capacity of my nature. When I met Rothe and he fell head over heels in
love with me—I was a very handsome woman five years ago—I was at first
flattered; then his ardor struck fire in me and I made no effort to
extinguish it. It was what I had waited for, prayed for, and I
encouraged it, fanned the flame. I was convinced that it was the grand
passion at last; and I went out to Dakota. I gloried in the sacrifice,
gloated over it. And in spite of divorce and scandal I suppose I was
happy for a time.”
“And now?” asked Catalina, breathlessly. She had forgotten Over and Miss
Holmes. Never had she been so close to living tragedy. Mrs. Rothe, in
her negligée of pale yellow silk and much lace, her ruffled petticoat
and slippers of the same shade, indescribably fresh and dainty, and, in
the light of the solitary candle, a beautiful woman once more, was to
Catalina the very embodiment of “the world,” and for the moment far more
interesting than herself.
“Now! I hate the sight of him. I am bored beyond the power of words to
tell. I have to remind myself that he is not my son, and when I do not
long for my own son, who was far brighter, I long for a man of my own
age to exchange ideas with, who will understand me in a degree. There
are a few women with eternal youth in their souls, but I am not one of
them. I am tired of all his little habits; the very expression of his
face when he smokes a cigarette with his after-dinner coffee gets on my
nerves. I am sick of making-up and pretending to be interested in the
things that interest a young man. I want to be frankly myself—of course,
I should hate growing old in any case, but I am sick of being a
slave—that is what it amounts to when you don’t dare to be yourself. But
I must keep up the farce lest I lose him, and the world laugh and once
more remind itself of its perspicacity. I give him a long rope; he is
still fond of me; my pride mounts as everything else fades away. There
you are!”
Catalina had hardly drawn breath during this jeremiade. She no longer
had any desire to run from her own pain. After all, what had Over done
but take a walk with a strange girl in her own absence? She had beaten a
mole-hill as high as a mountain. But she could think of nothing to say.
In the bitter misery before her there was the accent of finality, and
comment would have been resented if heard.
“I have told you all this,” said Mrs. Rothe, “partly because the impulse
after five years of repression was irresistible, partly to show you that
the great tragedy of a woman’s life is when not the man, but she, ceases
to love. Better far death and desolation, and a great memory, than a
nature in ruins, and the magic that would rebuild gone out of hope
forever. As for you—congratulate yourself that you are able to feel and
suffer as you have done to-night. Over is a better sort than most. Marry
him and prove that you are of greater and finer stuff than I. I should
be delighted. And if this girl should develop into a rival of a sort,
welcome the stimulation, and show your mettle—”
“I won’t fight over any man!”
“Certainly not. Simply be more charming than she is. Nothing could be
easier. You could not make the mistake of eagerness if you tried, but
you can be obliviously delightful—and you know him far better than she
does, and have no machine-made methods. Now go to bed and sleep, and
ignore the episode in the morning. You went to bed with a headache and
neither knew nor cared what Over did with himself.”