The Travelling Thirds

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

The moon hung directly over the tower of Comares. In the arcade beside the Room of the Two Sisters was a mass of bright cushions and an Oriental carpet. Here Mrs. Rothe enthroned herself, and the melancholy and disgusted prince kept her company. The musicians fiddled and strummed in the pavilion at the top of the court. Wind was rising in the trees on the steep hill-side above the Darro, and the nightingales sang. The great rooms around the court, the low chambers above, were black with shadow, but the open spaces about the lions were lively with whirling figures and the chatter of women. The original party, which was too rich in men, had been reinforced by several American girls from another pension, and all had entered into the gay spirit of the night except Catalina, who stood alone in the pavilion opposite the musicians, frankly miserable, and furious with herself for daring to suffer.

Over had danced no less than six times with Miss Holmes, whose dancing would throw a Hebe out of court. She was the triumphant belle of the evening—no sultana in her little hour had ever held prouder sway in these halls of the Moors; and where they, indeed, had been glad of one doubtfully devoted heart she was lightly spurning half a dozen. The men importuned her between dances, the foreigners extravagant in their admiration, Over consoling himself with manifest discontent when she gave her hand to another.

He had just completed his sixth waltz with her when Catalina had her inspiration. He had not looked at her since the dancing began. There was only one way in which she could compel his attention, and although her shyness rose to arms, her knees shook, and her breath came short, she set her teeth and glided down the arcade to the pavilion of the musicians.

It had been understood that after the first hour and a half there was to be an interval for lemonade and sweets and rest, during which they would sit on the cushions and admire the opposite arcade and the airy grace of the pavilions under the light of the moon.

“It must have been here that Muley Aben Hassan and Boabdil used to sit with their courts while the minstrels—or whatever they were in those days—tried to amuse them, and the nautch-girls danced, and the captives above envied the captives below,” Miss Holmes was beginning as they arranged the cushions, when several of the party gave a low cry, and the hostess paused with her mouth open. A figure had risen before them in the moonlight, slim, young, veiled, the very eidola of those forgotten women the number of whose heart-beats had depended upon the nod of a tyrannical voluptuary. Only her eyes, long, dark, expressionless, were revealed above the gold tissue of her veil, and Over alone recognized her instantly. He had missed her as they assembled, and was about to go in search of her when she appeared. He held his breath, and the others, one or two of the girls giggling hysterically, hardly knew whether to be frightened or not.

Then the low, soft, dreaming strains of music crept over to them and she began to dance. She had known the old Spanish dances all her life and loved them with all the wild blood in her, despising the more the conventional whirl of the drawing-room. She danced none of these to-night, however, but an improvisation, born of her knowledge of Moorish traditions, the place, and the hour.

As Over realized what she purposed he stepped forward with the intention of stopping the performance, enraged that other men should be in the audience, but arrested by his distaste of a scene. In a moment he sank down on his cushions, wondering that he had doubted her, for it was apparent even in the first few moments that in spite of the graceful abandon of her dancing there was to be nothing to suggest the coarseness of the women that had danced on that spot before her.

But if the swinging and swaying and bending and whirling of her body were without suggestiveness they were the very poetry of beauty. The scarf was bound about her head and over her face below the eyes, but she held a point in either hand, her arms sometimes extended, at others describing curves that made the delicate tissue flutter like the many wings of tiny birds. The spangles on her dress, the diamond buckles on her slippers were 1000 points of light, for the moon was poised directly overhead and flooding the court. 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.

The arches between the company and the dancer, the fountain above the lions rising in a silver veil behind her, and beyond it the white, shining arches with their moving shadows, the distant warbling of the nightingales rising above the swooning music, the Oriental mystery in the eyes above the veil—not one of her audience but surrendered himself, although, in superficial fashion, all had recognized her.

And then, while their senses were locked, while they were hardly conscious whether they slept or waked, a strange and terrible thing happened. From the Room of the Two Sisters beside them the figure of a man leaped like a sword from its scabbard, caught the dancer in his arms, and disappeared whence it had come.