Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ Now, I shall be rather relieved when I am safely out of Spain, for I know that he was quite serious. When we were running away from Albacete and then from Alcazar, I felt as serious as he did—I was really romantic and love-lorn—but I took myself in hand when I arrived here, and now I am quite sensible again.”
“What a tangle! Is that the way people fall in love—and out again?” Catalina felt puzzled and depressed. Life suddenly seemed commonplace, love a sort of cap-and-bells, to be worn now and again when convenient. ”

“ The boy looked bored.
“The worst is past for the moment,” said Over to Catalina, and under cover of her mantilla he took her hand. “They will take the poor brute out, and the rest is pure sport.” And Catalina, in a tensity of emotion, held fast to his hand during the rest of the performance, quite unconscious of the act.
The bull, meanwhile, had dashed for the glittering figures in the middle of the arena, his red horns looking as if they would rip the earth did they encounter nothing more inviting. Then came the graceful, agile antics of the banderilleros. ”

“ I believe in work, because idleness horrifies me; some primal instinct in me wars against it. The civilization that permits idleness in the rich and in those with just enough to relieve them from work, with none of the responsibilities and diversions of great fortunes, is no civilization at all, to my mind. Of course, I believe in progress, but I believe in hanging on to the conditions which first made progress possible; and when I saw those carriage-loads of ridiculous women and finery in Paris I wanted to go home and till the soil and restore the balance. How good that coffee smells! ”

“ The results of propinquity might ofttimes be casual, but that mighty force was invariably loaded with the seeds of fate, and he knew himself as liable to love as any man. With the oddest and most enigmatic girl he had ever met, who allured while striving to repel, as devoid of coquetry as a boy or a child, yet now and then revealing a glimpse of watchful femininity, to whom nature had given a wellnigh perfect shell; and thrown upon his protection in long days of companionship—he summed it up curtly over his pipe. ”

“ The woman, who was adjusting herself at some pains in the next box but one, was extremely tall and thin, and her blazing locks, admirably coiffée as they were above her broken but still handsome face, excited the comment of others than Catalina. She had sacrificed her face to her figure and had reached that definite age when women dye their hair with henna. But even forty is an age when the entire absence of flesh makes a woman look not youthful but like an old maid; and scarlet hair, that would harden a young face, is a search-light above every hollow and patch of manufactured surface. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Only the second daughter, Lydia, just departing from her first quarter-century, turned to the alien relative with a sparkle in her eye. She was a girl about whose pink-and-white-and-golden prettiness there was neither question nor enthusiasm, and her thin, graceful figure and alertly poised head received such enhancement as her slender purse afforded. She wore—need I record it?—a travelling-suit of dark-blue brilliantine, short—but at least three inches longer than Catalina’s—and a large hat about whose brim fluttered a blue veil. ”

“ The perfume of the scarf stole into the senses of the staring company and completed the illusion, delicately brushing with sensuousness what was otherwise an expression of the rhythm of life, the dreaming of an ardent but virginal soul. So a nautch-girl may have danced for the first time before a king, ignorant then of what was expected of her, dissolving in the joy of rhythmical motion, of innocent pride in her own young beauty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She realized the mistake she had made in the exuberance of her happy self-confidence; for a girl like Miss Holmes can make heavy running in an hour. On the steamer and in the various pensions where the Moultons had lingered she had often seen what no doubt was this same type of girl retire into a corner with the man she had marked for her own and talk—or listen—hour after hour; and Catalina had speculated upon their subjects, wondering that one human being could interest another for so long a time without the exterior aids of travel. ”

“ It was always a risk for an American woman to marry a European aristocrat with his uncontrollable sense of social superiority not only over the inhabitants of the United States of America, but over those of every other nation but his own; and to marry one who took life seriously and was as poor as a church mouse was nothing short of foolhardy. But a prince was a prince, even if he were not the head of his family, and to become an indisputable princess was a great temptation to the self-made American girl—had been until she met Over. ”

“ The descendants of warriors slept and loafed and begged in the sun, thankful for a tortilla a day and dreading nothing this side of Judgment but the visit of the tax-gatherer. To escape the calls of the remorseless one, many who owned not even a little vineyard on the plain slept in the hollowed side of a hill and made the earth their pillow.
“Brutes!” said Catalina, meaning the government.
“Why don’t they come to America?” asked Lydia, wonderingly. “Look at that old woman out in the field. That is the most shocking thing you see in Europe—women in the fields everywhere.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Over was a clever, warm-hearted woman of the simple, old-fashioned aristocracy, who offered her sons no assistance in choosing their wives, and had the broadest tolerance for the vagaries of young people. With her lively mind and humor she would win upon Catalina at once, and her complete honesty of nature would finish the conquest of a girl whose hatred of sham was almost fanatical. ”

“ Moulton patted her amiably and descended in the wake of Catalina and Lydia. They were surrounded at once by beggars, even the babies in arms extending their hands. There were few men among them, but the women, picturesque enough in their closely pinned kerchiefs of red or yellow, were more pertinacious than man ever dared to be. Lydia, fastidious and economical, retreated into the train and closed the door; but Catalina disbursed coppers and gave one dirty little Murillo a peseta. ”

“ Over groped and stumbled down the hill, but with far more agility than the encumbered Catalan. There was no path, the thick brush and rocks were everywhere, and the moon made the shadows under the trees the heavier. But when a thin Englishman has spent the greater part of his life on his feet and out-of-doors he is little likely to lose his balance or skill even on a steep wilderness designed by the cunning Moor as a pitfall for the enemy. ”

“ She was not sorry to be alone, and felt happy and secure, experiencing a passing moment of contempt for men in general, so easy were they to manage—a mood which assails every charming woman at times, and even on the heels of doubt and despair. But Catalina’s spirit was too buoyant not to comprehend ideality in its flight, and she stared unseeingly at the dead walls and saw only what she had divined in Over. ”

“ Even Lydia came forth from the sulky aloofness of the morning, and Jane laid Pater to rest, when, after the excellent luncheon, Catalina produced a large box of bonbons.
By this time there was no one in the car but the Guardia Civile and a young peasant, a brawny, handsome Catalan, who might have been the village blacksmith and a possible leader in the anarchy of his province. He had the haughty, independent manner of his class, and, although his eye was fiery and reckless, the lower part of his face symbolized power and self-control. ”

“ As Mrs. Moulton toiled up the steep road through the carven gates of terrible and romantic memory, she had heartily wished that modern enterprise had blown up the rock with dynamite or run an elevator from the Tagus. It was then that her hatred of Catalina—who at least with her knowledge of foreign languages had been an acceptable courier—became an obsession, and she could have shrieked it out like any common virago. The emotional wave had receded, but left a dark and poisonous deposit behind.
150It was easy to convince herself that Catalina had lost the train at Albacete on purpose. ”

“ A good woman, but not of the most distinguished fibre, the effacement of self for the few she loved had been but a higher order of selfishness, and when for the first time in her life a positive hatred possessed her it found her without that greatness which ignores and foregoes revenge. Catalina, it must be confessed, would have tried the patience of far more saintly characters than Mrs. Moulton, and when to a natural antipathy was added the daily jarring of long-tried nerves the wonder was that the crisis did not come sooner. ”

“ When she was persuaded by her mother to attend a party in Santa Barbara she rooted herself in a corner and glowered in her misery, snubbing every adventurous youth that approached her. She adored books, her out-door life, her parents, and asked for nothing further afield.
When she was eighteen her father died. She rode to the extreme confines of the ranch and mourned him, returning to her life at home with the stolidity of her Indian ancestors. Mrs. Shore grieved also, but by this time she was too busy a woman to consort with the past. ”

“ I’m sure even Jane will enjoy it.”
“I loathe travelling,” said the elder Miss Moulton, with energy. “It’s nothing but reading Baedeker, stalking through churches and picture-galleries, and rushing for trains, loaded down with hand-baggage. I feel as if I never wanted to see another thing in my life. Of course I’m glad I’ve seen London and Paris and Rome, but the discomforts and privations of travel far outweigh the advantages. I haven’t the slightest desire to see Spain, or any more down-at-the-heel European countries; America will satisfy me for the rest of my life. ”

“ 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 234behind 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. ”