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Travelling Thirds

<h2 class='c007'>XVII</h2></div> <div class='c005'> <ANTIMG class='drop-capi' src='images/i-p188.jpg' width-obs='150' alt='' /></div> “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 189Toledo 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 190black 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, 191where 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 192through 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 193noticed 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 194her 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 195find 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.” 196“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 197has 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 198happy 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.” 199She 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 200quite 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. 201“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 202bright 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 203San 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 204to 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. 205“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.” <div class='chapter'> 206 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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