Читать книгу The Travelling Thirds - Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton - Страница 7

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He did not haunt her dreams, however, and she had quite forgotten him as she watched the sunrise next morning from the long ridge of the Montjuich. Her cabman was refreshing himself elsewhere and she had given herself up to one of the keenest delights known to the imaginative and ungregarious mind, the solitary contemplation of nature. She watched the great, dusky plains and the jagged whiteness of Montseny’s lofty crest turn yellow. Spain is one of those rare, dry countries where the very air changes color. The whole valley seemed to fill slowly with a golden mist, the snow on the great peak and on the Pyrenees beyond glittered like the fabled sands, and even the villas clinging to the steep mountain-side, the palaces in their groves of palm-trees and citron, orange, and pomegranate, all seemed to move and sway as in the depths of shimmering tides. Catalina had the gift to see color in atmosphere as apart from the radiance that falls on sky and mountain, a gift which is said to belong only to people so highly civilized as to be on the point of degeneration. Catalina, with her robust youth and brain, was well on the hither side of degeneration, but in her lonely life and dislike of humankind she had cultivated her natural appreciation of beauty until it had not only developed her perceptions to acuteness but empowered them, when enchanted, to rise high above the ego.

She stood with her head thrown back, her mouth half open as if to quaff deeply of that golden draught, fancying that just beyond her vision lay all cosmos waiting to reveal itself and the mystery of the eternal. When she heard herself accosted she was bewildered for a moment, not realizing that she was actually in the world of the living.

“You will ruin your eyes, Miss Shore,” a calm but genial voice had said. “The scene is worth it, but—”

“How dare you speak to me!” cried Catalina, furiously. She advanced swiftly, willing to strike him, not in the least mollified to recognize the Englishman upon whom she had bestowed her infrequent approval the night before.

His eye lit with interest and a pardonable surprise. But he continued, imperturbably: “Of course, I should not have been so rude as to speak to you if I hadn’t happened to know Mr. Moulton rather well. I had a talk with him last night in the hotel and he was good enough to tell me your name.”

“How on earth did you ever know Cousin Lyman?” She forgot her anger. “You are an Englishman, and I am sure Cousin Lyman—” She stopped awkwardly, too loyal to continue, but her eyes were large with curiosity. Where could Lyman T. Moulton have known this Englishman with his unmistakable air of that small class for whose common sins society has no punishment? “He usually knows only literary people,” she continued, lamely.

“And you are sure I am not!” His laugh was abrupt, but as good-natured as his voice. “You are quite right. I can’t even write a decent letter. But literary men often belong to good clubs, you know, and one of the most distinguished of our authors happened to bring Mr. Moulton to one of mine. He was over some years ago.”

“Oh, I remember.” She also recalled the curious boyish pleasure which illumined Mr. Moulton’s face whenever he alluded to this visit to England. It had been his one vacation from his family in thirty years.

“What is your name?” demanded Catalina, with an abruptness not unlike his own, but unmodified by his careless good-humor.

“Over.” Then, as she still looked expectant, “Captain James Brassy Over, if it interests you.”

“Oh!” She was childishly disappointed that he was not a lord, never having consciously seen one, then was gratified at her perspicacity of the night before.

“How have I disappointed you?”

“Disappointed me?” Her eyes flashed again. “All men are disappointing and are generally idiots, but I could not be disappointed in a person to whom I had never given a thought.”

“Oh!” he said, blankly. He was not offended, but was uncertain whether she were affected or merely a badly brought up child. Belonging to that order of men who have something better to do than to understand women, he decided to let her remark pass and await developments.

“I’m rather keen on Mr. Moulton,” he announced, “and have half a mind to join your party. I was going to cut across to Madrid, but he says you have made out rather a jolly trip down the coast and then in to Granada.”

“But we are travelling third class,” she stammered, with the first prompting of snobbery she had ever known. “We—we thought it would be such an experience.”

“So Mr. Moulton told me. I always travel third.”

“You? Why?”

“Poverty,” he said, cheerfully.

Catalina was furious with herself, the more so as she had descended to the level of her cousins, whom she secretly despised as snobs. She did not know how to extricate herself from the position she had assumed, and answered, lamely:

“Poverty? You don’t look poor.”

“Only my debts keep me from being a pauper.”

“And you don’t mind travelling third?”

“Mind? It’s comfortable enough; as comfortable as sleeping on the ground.”

Catalina’s face illumined. For the first time it occurred to him that she might be pretty. She forgot the awkward subject, and asked, eagerly:

“Were you in the Boer War?”

“Yes.”

“All through it?”

“Pretty well.”

“Do tell me about it. I never before met any one who had been in the Boer War, and it interested me tremendously.”

“There’s nothing to tell but what you must have read in the papers.”

“I suppose that is an affectation of modesty.”

“Not at all. Nothing is so commonplace as war. There is nothing in it to make conversation about.”

“But you lost such a dreadful number of officers!”

“We had plenty to spare—could have got along better with less.”

His cheerfulness was certainly unaffected. The two pairs of dark eyes watched each other narrowly, his keen and amused, hers with their stolid surface and slumbering fires.

“But you were wounded!” she said, triumphantly.

“Never was hit in my life.”

“But you have been ill!”

“Oh, ill, fast enough—rheumatism.”

Her eyes softened. “Ah, sleeping on the damp ground!”

“No. Drink.”

For a moment the sullen fires in Catalina boiled high, then her eyes caught the sparkle in his and she burst into a ringing peal of laughter. She laughed rarely, and when she did her whole being vibrated to the buoyancy of youth.

“Well,” she said, gayly, “I hope you have reformed. The Moultons are temperance—rabid—and I had rheumatism once from camping out. I had to set my teeth for a week. Then I went to a sulphur spring and cured it. But I am hungry. Isn’t there a restaurant here, somewhere?”

“I was about to suggest a visit to the Café Miramar. It is only a step from here.”

A few minutes later they sat at a little table on the terrace, and while Captain Over ordered the coffee and rolls Catalina forgot him and stared out over the vast blue sparkle of the Mediterranean. Above, the air had drifted from gold to pink—a soft, vague pink, stealing away before the mounting sun. She had pushed back her hat and coat, and the soft collar of her blouse showed a youthful column upon which her head was proudly set. She wore no hair on her fine, open brow, but the knot at the base of the neck was rich in color. Her complexion, without red to break its magnolia tint, was flawless even in that searching light. Her beautiful eyes were vacant for the moment, and her nose, while delicate, was unclassical, her cheek-bones high; but it was her mouth that arrested Over’s gaze as the most singular feature he had ever seen. Childishly red, it was deftly cut, and resembled—what was it? A bow? Certainly not a Cupid’s bow, for that was full and pouting. Then he recalled the Indian bows in the armory at home. That was it—the bow of an Indian bent sharply in the middle, so sharply that it was really two half-bows the mouth resembled, and absolutely perfect in its drawing, in the tapering sweep of its corners. A perfect mouth is a feature one may read of for a lifetime and never see, however many mouths there be that charm and invite. Pretty mouths are abundant enough, and mouths that indicate lofty or delightful characteristics, but rarely is the mouth seen for which nature has done all that she so generously does for eyes and profile. But for Catalina she had cut a mouth so exquisite that its first effect was of something uncanny, as of an unknown race, and it further held the attention as indicating absolutely nothing of the character behind.

Catalina dazedly removed her eyes from the sea and met Over’s.

“Stop staring at me,” she said, with a frown.

He was about to retort that she had been made to be stared at, but it occurred to him in time that he understood her too little to invite her into the airy region of compliment. He had known girls to resent them before, and they were not in his line anyway. He merely replied: “Here comes the coffee. I promise you to give it my undivided attention.”

They sat silent for a few moments, keenly appreciating their little repast. Coffee always went to Catalina’s head, and when she had finished she felt happy and full of good-fellowship.

“I like you immensely, and hope you’ll come with us,” she announced. “I’m rather sorry you are not a lord, though. I’ve never seen one.”

“Well, I have a cousin who is one, and if you like to come to England I’ll show him to you. He’s rather an ass, though, and you’ll probably guy him.”

“You are not very respectful to the head of your house.”

“Oh, he was my fag at school—he’s two years younger than I am.”

“Is he in the House of Peers?”

“Good Lord, no! That is, he has his seat, of course, but I doubt if he’d recognize Westminster in a photograph. Gayety girls are his lay. We married him young, though, and assured the succession.”

“Is he a typical lord?”

“What’s that? We have all sorts, like any other class. I might as well ask you if you were a typical American.”

“Well, I’m not!” cried Catalina, with lightning in her eyes. “If nature had made me a type I’d have made myself over. It makes me hate nearly everybody, but, at least, I love to be alone, and I can always get that when I want it. I’ve got a big ranch—fifty thousand acres—and after my mother died, two years ago I lived on it alone, never speaking to a soul but my men of business and the servants. That’s my idea of bliss, and the moment I strike the American shore I’m going back.”

He looked at her with increasing interest—a girl of silences who loved nature and hated man. But he merely said, with his quick smile: “You are a very grand young person indeed. Somerton—my cousin—has only thirty thousand acres. Of course, he’s beastly poor—has so much to keep up. I suppose a ranch of that size is pure luxury, and blossoms like the rose.”

“Much you know about it. I often have all I can do to make both ends meet. Droughts kill off my cattle and sheep and dry up everything that grows. My Mexicans and Indians are an idle, worthless lot, but sentiment prevents me from turning them off—their grandparents worked on the ranch. It makes me independent, of course, but I really am what is called land poor. I’m thinking of dividing a part of it into farms and selling them, and also of selling some property I have on Santa Catalina, which has become fashionable. Then I should be quite rich. Mother could get work out of anybody, but I am not nearly so energetic, and they know it. But I am so happy when I am there, and need so little money for myself that I haven’t thought about it heretofore. Being over here has taught me the value of money, and I want to come back to Europe before long. Then I’ll come alone and stay several years. There is so much to learn, and I find I know next to nothing. Well, let us go. As long as I am with the Moultons I suppose I must consider them, and they probably think I have been kidnapped. Who was that youth you were walking with last night?”

“The Marquis Zuñiga. I met him at the club and we strolled out together. I introduced him to Mr. Moulton and he will call this afternoon—is quite bowled over by your golden-haired cousin. I suppose we can drive back together? It would look rather absurd, wouldn’t it, going down in a procession of two?”