Читать книгу The Travelling Thirds - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 6

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She brushed her hair viciously in the solitude of her bedroom in Barcelona; fortunately, the composition of the party always gave her a room to herself.

“To-morrow morning I’ll be up and out before they are awake,” she announced to her sulky image. “This evening I suppose I must walk with them on the Rambla. Of course, if I had come alone I should have had to find a chaperon for such occasions, but it would be some quaint old duenna I could hire. I’ve never wanted my liberty as I do here in Spain, and Cousin Lyman will barely let me wash my own face. I never was so taken care of in my life—”

She ground her teeth, but nodded as Mr. Moulton put his head in at the door and asked her if she were sure she was comfortable, if her room was quite clean and her keys in proper order. Then he adjured her not to drink the water until he had ascertained its reputation, and to be careful not to lean over the railing of the balcony, as it might be insecure; the Spanish were a shiftless people, so far as his observation of them went.

Catalina flung her hair-brush at the door as he pattered down the hall to examine the welfare of his daughters.

“I’ve a mind to go up and dance on the roof,” she cried, furiously. “One would think I was four years old. Papa was just like that when we travelled, and if all American men are the same I’ll marry an Englishman.”

After dinner Mr. Moulton, having seen his wife safely into bed and conscientiously determined to observe every respectable phase of foreign life, drew Lydia’s arm within his, and, bidding Catalina take Jane’s and follow close behind him, went out upon the Rambla. Upon these occasions he always took his youngest carefully under his wing. A wag had once said of her, while commenting upon the infinite respectability of the Lyman T. Moultons, that on a moonlight night, in a boat on a lake, Lydia might develop possibilities; and it may have been some dim appreciation of these possibilities that prompted Mr. Moulton to favor the beauty of the family with more than her share of attention. But Lydia had a coquettish pair of eyes, and under her father’s formidable wing had indulged in more than one innocent flirtation. Catalina raged that she was to take her first night’s pleasure in Spain in the companionship of Jane, and ignored her protector’s mandate. Jane, whose sense of duty increased in proportion to her dislikes, took a firm hold of the Californian’s rigid and vertical arm, and marched close upon her father’s heels.

They promenaded with all Barcelona, in the very middle of the Rambla, that splendid avenue of many names above the vaulted bed of the river. For nearly a mile on either side the hotels and cafés and many of the shops and side streets were brilliantly alight. Under the double row of plane-trees were kiosks for the sale of newspapers, post-cards of the bull-fight, fans, and curios; and passing and repassing were thousands of people. All who were not forced to work this soft southern night strolled there indolently, to take the air, to see, now and again to be seen. Doubtless, there were other promenades for the poor, but here all appeared to have come from the houses of the aristocracy or wealthy middle class. Many were the duennas, elderly, stout, or shrunken, always in black, with a bit of lace about the head, immobile and watchful. Perhaps they towed one maiden, but more frequently a party.

The girls and young matrons were light and gay of attire; occasionally their millinery was Parisian, but more often they wore the mantilla or rebosa. Their eyes were bright, demure, inviting, rarely indifferent; and making up the other half of the throng were officers, students, men of the world, murmuring compliments as they passed or talking volubly of politics and war. Two young aristocrats behind Catalina were laughing over the recent visit of the young king, when, simply by the magic of his boyish personality, eager to please, he had transformed in a moment the most hostile and anarchistic city in his kingdom, determined to show its insolent contempt, into a mob of cheering, hysterical madmen. The socialists and anarchists might be sailing their barks on the hidden river beneath, they were forgotten, the mayor hardly dared to show his face, and the women kissed their fingers to the pictures of the gallant little king hanging on every kiosk; the men lifted their hats.

It was the most brilliant and animated picture of out-door life that Catalina had seen in Europe, and the general air of good breeding, of mingled vivacity and perfect dignity, the picturesque beauty of many of the women, the constant ripple of talk and laughter, the flare of light and the dim shades of the old trees, appealed powerfully to the girl from the most picturesque portion of the United States, and in whom scenes of mere fashion and frivolity aroused a resentment as passionate as if fed by envy and privation. She had stood one morning not a fortnight since on a corner of the Rue de Rivoli and watched carriage after carriage, automobile after automobile roll round the corner of the Place de la Concord, each framing women in the extravagant uniform of fashion—American women, all come from across the sea for one purpose only, the purpose for which they lived their useless, idle lives—more clothes. For this they spent two wretched weeks on the ocean every year—the ship’s doctor had told Catalina that the pampered American was the most unheroic sailor on the Atlantic—and they looked unnormal, exotic, mere shining butterflies whose necks would be twisted with one turn of a strong wrist in the first week of a revolution; a revolution of which, unindividual as they were, they would be a precipitating cause. But here there was no exotic class, none but legitimate causes of separation from the masses; it was the charming faces one noted, the lively expression of pleasure in mere living; the garments might be Parisian, but, being less than the woman, and worn without consciousness, they barely arrested the eye, and were no part of the picture, as was the mantilla or the rebosa.

Catalina for once hated no one in the world, and even became oblivious of the grip on her arm. She looked about her with the wide, curious eyes of youth. Few gave her more than a passing glance, for her stiff hat threw an ugly shadow on her face and every line of her figure was hidden under her loose coat. But she noted that Lydia, who in the evening wore a small hat perched coquettishly on her fluffy hair, was receiving audible admiration. Suddenly she glanced out of the corner of her eye at Jane, but that severe virgin was staring moodily at the ground; her head ached and she longed for bed. Mr. Moulton, doing his best to be interested and stifle his yawns, was glancing in every direction but his immediate right, and consequently no one but his pretty daughter, and finally Catalina, noticed the handsome young Spaniard who had established communication with the blue eyes of the north. Finally the youth whispered something in which only the word adorado was intelligible to Lydia, who clung to her father’s arm with a charming scowl.

“Don’t be frightened,” whispered Catalina.

“They don’t mean anything—not like Frenchmen.”

Not only was the crowd so great that many a flirtation passed unnoticed, but heretofore Catalina had not observed that the cavalier was companioned. When he whispered to Lydia, however, she saw a man beside him frown and take his arm as if to draw him away, but when she reassured the coquette, this man turned suddenly, his brows still knit but relaxing with a flash of amusement. Then Catalina took note of him and saw that he was not a Spaniard, although nearly as dark as Lydia’s conquest. He was an Englishman, she made sure by his expression, so subtly different from that of the American. He might have been an officer, from his carriage, and he was extremely thin and walked slowly, rather than sauntered, as if the effort were distasteful or painful. His thin, well-bred face looked as if it recently might have been emaciated, but its pervading expression was humorous indifference, and his eyes had almost danced as they met hers. He did not look at her a second time, evidently seeing no profit in the idle flirtations that delighted his neighbors, and Catalina, a trifle piqued, watched him covertly, and decided that he was a nobleman, had been in the Boer War, was doubtless covered with scars and medals.