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Travelling Thirds

<h2 class='c007'>VIII</h2></div> <div class='c005'> <ANTIMG class='drop-capi' src='images/i-p081.jpg' width-obs='150' alt='' /></div> 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 82since 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, 83was 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 84demonstrates 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 85walked 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 86high 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 87from 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 88good 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.” 89Catalina 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, 90and 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 91passion, 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. <div class='chapter'> 92 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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