Like lutes of angels, touched so nearHell’s confines, that the damned can hear.
Time: Five o’clock in the afternoon. Five o’clock, that is to say, by the railway time. There is another time in Barcelona--the town time, to wit--which differs from the hour of the iron road by thirty minutes or thereabouts. But then the town time is Spanish, that is to say that no one takes any notice of it. For into Spanish life time comes but little. If one wishes to catch a train--but, by the way, in Spain we do not catch, we take the train--a subtle difference--if then we wish to take the train, we arrive at the station three-quarters of an hour before the time indicated for departure, and there we make our arrangements with due dignity.
Place: The Rambla, which for those who speak alien tongues has an Arabic sound, and tells us that this, the finest promenade in the world, was once a sandy river-bed. Here now the grave caballero promenades himself from early morning to an eve that knows no dew.
Priest and peasant, the great lady and the gentleman who sells one a glass of water for a centimo, brush past each other. The great lady is dressed in black, as all Spanish ladies are, and on her head she wears the long-lived mantilla, which will last our time and the time of our grandsons. The humbler women-folk wear bright handkerchiefs in place of the mantilla; in dress they affect bright colours.
With the sterner sex, the line of demarcation is equally distinct. There is the man who wears the peasant’s blouse, and the man who wears the cloak.
It is with one of the latter that we have to deal--a tall, grave man, with quiet eyes and a long, pointed chin. The air is chilly, and this promenader’s black cloak is thrown well over the shoulder, displaying the bright-coloured lining of velvet, which is all the relief the Spaniard allows his sombre self.
The caballero’s face is brown, as of one whose walk is not always beneath the shady trees. The expression of it is chastened. One sees the history of a country in the faces of its men. In this there is the history of a past, it is the face of a man living in a bygone day. He notes the interest of the moment with grave surprise, but his life is behind him.
This man has the Spaniard’s thoughtful interest in a trifle. He pauses to note the number of the sparrows, as thick as leaves upon the trees. He carefully unfolds his cloak, gives the loose end a little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright lining. He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident. The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive frock with all the earnestness of early youth. And the cavalier walks on.
All this with a contemplative grandeur of demeanour worthy of larger if not better things.
In the roadway at the side of the broad promenade a carriage and pair followed this gentleman--carriage and horses which were beautiful even in this land of horses. For this was Cipriani de Lloseta de Mallorca, a great man in Barcelona, if he wished it, a greater in his own little island of Majorca, whether he wished it or not.
Leading out of this same fascinating Rambla, to the left, up towards the impenetrable fortress of Juich--impenetrable excepting once, and then it was the pestilent Englishman, as usual--leading then to the left is the Calle de la Paz. In the Street of the Peace there is a house, on the left hand also, into the door of which one could not only drive a coach and four, but eke a load of straw. Moreover, the driver could go to sleep and leave it to the horses, for there is plenty of space. This is the Casa Lloseta, the town residence since time immemorial of the family of that name. There are servants at the door, there are servants on the broad marble staircase, there are servants everywhere! for the Spaniard is unapproachable in the gentle art of leaving things to others. In the patio, or marble courtyard, there plays a monotonous little fountain, peacefully plashing away the sunny hours.
In England el Señor Conde de Lloseta de Mallorca would be looked upon as a mystery, because he lived in a large house by himself; because it was not known what his tastes might be; because the interviewer interviewed him not, and because the Society rags had no opportunity of describing his drawing-room.
In Spain things are different. If the count chose to live in his own cellar, his neighbours would shrug their shoulders and throw the end of their capes well over to the back. That was surely the business of the count.
Moreover, Cipriani de Lloseta was not the sort of man of whom it is easy to ask questions. His was the pride of pride, which is a vice unbreakable. When the Moors went to Majorca in the eighth century they found Llosetas there, and Llosetas were left behind eight hundred years later, when the southern conqueror was driven back to his dark land. Among his friends it is known that Cipriani de Lloseta lived alone because he was faithful to the memory of one who, but for the hand of God, would have lived with him until she was an old woman, filling, perhaps, the great gloomy house in the Calle de la Paz with the prattle of children’s voices, with the clatter of childish feet in the marble passages.
The younger women looked at him surreptitiously, and asked each other what sort of wife this must have been; while their elders shrugged their ample shoulders with a strange little Catalonian contraction of the eyes, and said--
“It is not so much the woman herself as that which the man makes her.”
For they are wise, these stout and elderly ladies. They were once young, and they learnt the lesson.
This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, leads a somewhat lonely life, inasmuch as he associates but little with the men of his rank and station. It is, for instance, known that he walks on the Rambla, but no one of any importance whatever, no one that is likely to recognise him, is aware of the fact that another favourite promenade of his is the Muelle de Ponente, that forsaken pier where the stone works are and where no one ever promenades. Here Cipriani de Lloseta walks gravely in the evening--to be more precise, on Tuesday or Friday evening--about five o’clock, when the boat sails for Majorca.
He stands, a lonely, cloaked figure, at the end of the long stone pier, and his dark Spanish eyes rest on the steamer as it glides away into the darkening east and south.
Often, often this man watches the boats depart, but he never goes himself. Often, often he gazes out in his chastened, impenetrable silence over the horizon, as if seeking to pierce the distance and look on the bare heights of the far-off island.
For there, over the glassy smoothness of the horizon, behind those little grey clouds, is Majorca--and Lloseta.
Lloseta, a bare, brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it had economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave available for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the plain. Below, the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies to the westward, while to the east the rising undulations terminate in the bare uplands of Inca. Olive-trees cover the plain like an army, trees that were planted by the Moors a thousand years ago.
Amid the rugged heights of the mountains, here at their highest, and in the fastness of a gorge, lies Lloseta itself.
From the heights above a subtle invigorating odour of marjoram, rosemary, lavender, growing wild like heather, comes down to mingle with the more languid breath of tropic plant and flower.
Such is Lloseta--a home to live for, to die for, to dream of when away from it. As a man is dreaming of it now, just across that hundred miles of smooth sea, on the end of the Muelle de Ponente at Barcelona.
He is always dreaming of it--in Spain, where he is a Spaniard--in England, where he might be an Englishman. It is not every one of us who has a home from whence his name is derived, who signs his letters with a word that is marked upon the map.
Such is Cipriani of that name, who has now left the Rambla and is wandering along the deserted pier.
The steamer has loosed its moorings, is slowly picking its way out of the crowded harbour, and it will pass the pier-head by the time that Cipriani de Lloseta reaches that point.
The man walks slowly, cloaked to the mouth, for the evening breeze is chilly. He gravely descends the steps and begins to walk on the little path around the circular tower at the end of the pier. He usually stands at the very end, so as to be as near to Majorca as possible, one might almost think.
He gravely walks on, and quite suddenly he comes upon a youthful Briton smoking a cigar and dangling a thick stick.
“Ah!” the two men exclaim.
“What are you doing in Barcelona?” asks the Spaniard.
“The devil only knows, my dear man. I don’t.”
“I hope he had nothing to do with your coming here--idle hands, you know.”
The Englishman sat gravely down on a small granite column and reflected.
“No,” he answered after a pause, “it was not that. I left England because I wanted to get away from--Well, from an old woman who wants me to marry her daughter. I went to Monte Carlo, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m hanged if she didn’t follow me, bringing the poor girl with her.”
The Spaniard smiled gravely.
“A willing victim!”
“No, Lloseta, you’re wrong there. That’s the beastly part of it. That girl, sir, was actually shivering with fright one night when the old woman managed to leave us on the terrace together. Some one else, you know!”
The dark eyes looking across towards Majorca were not pleasant to contemplate.
“However,” pursued the ingenuousparti, “I spoke to her as one might have done to another chap, you know. I said, ‘You’re frightened of something.’ She didn’t answer. ‘You’re afraid that I’m going to ask you to marry me.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Well, I’m not. I’m not such a cad.’ And after that we got on all right. She would have told who it was if I had let her. Two days later I sloped off here. Spain choked her off--the old lady, I mean.”
Lloseta laughed, and the young man began to think that he had said something rude.
“She did not know what a nice place it is,” he added, with a transparency which did no harm. “Yes, you’re right. The devil had something to do with my coming here. Match-making old women are the devil.”
He paused and attended to his cigar. The steamer passed within a hundred yards of them.
The Englishman nodded towards it.
“Steamer’s going to Majorca,” he said.
Lloseta nodded his head.
“Yes,” he answered gravely, “I know.”
“I came down to see it off!”
The Spaniard looked at him sharply.
“Why?” he asked.
“I know an old chap on board--going across to fetch an English girl, a Miss Challoner. Her father’s dead.”
Lloseta said nothing. Presently he turned to go, and as they walked back together he arranged to send a carriage for the Englishman and his luggage to bring him to the big house in the Street of the Peace, which he explained with a shadowy smile was more comfortable than the hotel.
“So,” he said to himself, as he walked towards his vast home alone, “so the Caballero Challoner is dead. They are passing off the stage one by one.”
A home where exiled angels might forbearAwhile to moan for paradise.
There is a valley far up in the mountains behind the ancient city of Palma--the Val d’Erraha. Some thousand years ago the Arabs found this place. After toils and labours, and many battles by sea and land, a roaming sheikh settled here, calling it El Rahah - the Repose.
He dug a well--for where the Moor has been there is always sparkling water--he planted olive trees, and he built a mill. The well is there to-day; the olive trees, old and huge and gnarled as are no other olive trees on the earth, yield their yearly crop unceasingly; the mill grinds the Spaniard’s corn to-day.
In the Val d’Erraha there stands a house--a rambling, ungainly Farm, as such are called in Majorca. It runs off at strange angles, presenting a broken face to all points of the compass. From a distance it rather resembles a village, for the belfry of the little chapel is visible and the buildings seem to be broken up and divided. On closer inspection it is found to be self-contained, and a nearer approach discloses the fact that it presents to the world four solid walls, and that it is only to be entered by an arched gateway.
In the centre of the openpatiostands the Moorish well, surrounded, overhung by orange trees. This house could resist a siege--indeed, it was built for that purpose; for the Moorish pirates made raids on the island almost within the memory of living persons.
Such is the Casa d’Erraha--the House of Repose. It stands with its back to the pine slopes, looking peacefully down the valley, over terraces where grow the orange, the almond, the fig, the lemon, the olive; and far below, where the water trickles, the feathery bamboo.
The city of Palma is but a few miles away, in its strong thirteenth-century restriction within high ramparts. It has its cathedral, its court-house - all the orthodox requirements of a city, and, moreover, it is the capital of the whilom kingdom of Majorca. King Jaime is dead and gone. Majorca, after many vicissitudes, has settled down into an obscure possession of Spain; and to the old-world ways of that country it has taken very kindly.
But with the unwritten history of Majorca we have little to do, and we have much with the Casa d’Erraha and the owner thereof--a plain Englishman of the name of Challoner--the last of his line, the third of his race, to own the Casa d’Erraha.
Edward Challoner lay on his bed in the large room overlooking the valley and the distant sea. In the House of Repose he lay awaiting the call to a longer rest than earthly weariness can secure. The grave old Padre of the neighbouring village of St. Pablo stood near the bed. Eve Challoner had sent for him, with the instinct that makes us wish to be seen off on a long journey by a good man, of whatsoever creed or calling.
At times the old priest gently patted the hand of Eve Challoner as she stood by his side.
Climate and country and habit have a greater influence over the human frame than we ever realise. Eve Challoner had been subject to these subtle influences to a rare extent. Tall and upright, clad in black, as all Spanish ladies are, she was English and yet Spanish. Of a clear white, her skin was touched slightly by the sun and the warm air which blows ever from the sea, blow which way it may across the little island.
Romance tells of Andalusian beauty, of Catalonian grace--and in sober British earnest (a solid thing) there are few more beautiful women than high-born Spanish ladies. Eve Challoner had caught something - some trick of the head--which belongs to Spain alone. Her eyes had a certain northern vivacity of glance, a small something which is noticeable enough in Southern Europe, though we should hardly observe it in England, for it means education. In the matter of learning, be it noted in passing, the ladies of the Peninsula are not so very far above their duskier sisters of the harem farther east.
The girl’s eyes were dull now, with a sort of surprised anguish, for sorrow had come to her before its time. The man lying on the bed before her had not reached the limit of his years. Quite suddenly, twelve hours before, he had complained of a numb feeling in his head, and the voice he spoke in was thick and strange. In a surprisingly short time Edward Challoner was no longer himself--no longer the cynical, polished gentleman of the world--but a hard-breathing, inert deformity, hardly human. From that time to this he had never spoken, and Heaven knew there was enough for him to say. Death had caught him unawares as, after all, he generally does catch us. There were several things to set in order as usual; for it is only in books and on the stage that folks make a graceful exit, clearing up the little mystery, forgiving the wrongs, boasting with feeble voice of the good they have done--with lowering tone and soft music slowly working together to the prompter’s bell. It is not in real life that dying men find much time to prattle about their own souls. They usually want all their breath for those they leave behind. And who knows! Perhaps those waiting on the other side think no worse of the man who dies fearing for others and not for himself.
In Edward Challoner’s paralysed brain there was a great wish to speak to his daughter, but the words would not come. He looked at those around him with a dreary indistinctness as from a distance, almost as if he had begun his long journey and was looking back from afar.
And so the afternoon wore on to the short southern twilight, and the goat-bells came tinkling up from the valley--for nature must have her way though men may die, and milking-time rules through all the changes.
While the light failed over the land two men were riding through it as fast as horse could lay hoof to the ground. They were on the small road running from the Soller highway up to the Val d’Erraha, and he who led the way seemed to know every inch of it. This was Henry FitzHenry, and his companion, ill at ease in a Spanish saddle, was the doctor of Her Majesty’s gunboatKittiwake.
Four months earlier, by one of those chances which seem no chance when we look back to them, theKittiwakehad broken down on leaving the anchorage of Port Mahon. Towed back by a consort, she had been there ever since, awaiting some necessary pieces of machinery to be made in England and sent out to her. Hearing by chance that the navigating lieutenant of theKittiwakewas Henry FitzHenry - usually known as Fitz--Mr. Challoner had written to Minorca from the larger island, introducing himself as the Honourable Mrs. Harrington’s cousin, and offering what poor hospitality the Val d’Erraha had to dispense.
In a little island there is not very much to talk about, and the gossips of Majorca had soon laid hold of Fitz. They said that the English señorita up at the Casa d’Erraha had found a lover, and a fine, handsome one at that; else, they opined, why should this English sailor thrash his boat through any weather from Cuidadela in Minorca to Soller in Majorca, riding subsequently from that small and lovely town over the roughest country in the island to the Valley of Repose as if the devil were at his heels. That was only their way of saying it, for they knew as well as any of us that love in front can make us move more quickly than ever the devil from behind.
At Alcudia they watched his boat labour through the evil seas. The wind was never too boisterous for him, the waves never too high.
“It is,” they said, “the English mariner from Mahon going to see the Señorita Challoner. Ah! but he has a firm hand.”
And they smiled dreamily with their deep eyes, as knowing the malady themselves.
This time there had been two figures clad in black oilskins in the stern of the long white boat. Two horses had been ordered by cable to be ready at Soller instead of one. For Eve Challoner had telegraphed to her countrymen at Port Mahon when this strange and horrid numbness seized her father.
The sun was setting behind the distant line of the sea when Fitz and his companion urged their tired horses up the last slope to the Casa d’Erraha. Within the gateway Mrs. Baines, the only English servant in this English house, was awaiting them. She curtsied in an old-fashioned way to the doctor, who had not seen an Englishwoman’s face for two years and more, and asked him to follow her. Fitz did not offer to accompany them--indeed, he made it quite obvious that he did not want to do so. Two of the vague attendants who are always to be found in their numbers about the doorway and stableyard of a Spanish country-house took the horses, and Fitz wandered round thepatioto the southern door which led to the terrace.
There was not very much change in Henry FitzHenry since we saw him in Mrs. Harrington’s drawing-room six years earlier. The promise of the boy had been fulfilled by the man, and here was a quiet Englishman, chiefly remarkable for a certain directness of purpose which was his, and seemed to pervade his being. Here was one who had commanded men--who had directed skilled labour for the six impressionable years of his life. And he who directs skilled labour is apt to differ in manner, in thought and habit, from him whose commands are obeyed mechanically.
The naval officer is a man of detail--he tells others to do that which they know he can do better himself.
They said on board theKittiwake, which was a small ship, that Fitz,--“old” Fitz, they used to call him--was too big for a seafaring life. In height, he was nearly six feet--six feet of spare muscle and bone--such a man as one sees on the north-east coast of England, the east coast of Scotland, or the west coast of Norway - anywhere, in fact, where the Vikings passed.
The deep blue eyes had acquired a certain quiet which had been absent in the boyish face--the quiet that comes of a burden on the heart; of the certain knowledge that the burden can never be removed. Luke’s life was not the only one that had been spoiled by an examination paper. Examination papers have spoilt more lives than they have benefited. A twin brother is something more than a brother, and Fitz went through life as if one side of him was suffering a dull, aching pain. The face of this man walking alone on the terrace of the House of Repose was not happy. Perhaps it was too strong for complete happiness--some men are so, and others are too wise. This was the face, not of a very wise or a brilliant man, but of one who was strong and simple--something in the nature of a granite rock. Sandstone is more easily shaped into a thing of beauty, but it is also the sandstone that is worn by weather, while a deep mark cut on granite stays there till the end.
Fitz had no intention of going upstairs. He was not a man to take the initiative in social matters. His instinct told him that if Eve wanted him she would send for him. She had cabled to him to bring the doctor. He had brought the doctor, and now he went out on the terrace to “stand by,” as he put it to himself, for further orders. If, as the gossips averred, he was the Señorita’s lover, he deemed it wiser to relinquish that position just now.
As a matter of fact, however, no word of love had passed between them.
Fitz was standing by the low wall of the terrace looking down into the hazy, dim depths of the valley, when the further orders which he awaited came to him.
Hearing a light step on the pavement behind him, he turned, and faced Eve, who was running towards him.
“Will you come upstairs?” she said. “I think he wants to see you.”
“Certainly,” he answered.
She had hurried out, but they walked back rather slowly. Nevertheless, they did not seem to have anything to say to each other.
When they entered the room upstairs together, a faint little smile full of wisdom hovered for a second round the old priest’s clean-shaven lips.
The dying man had evidently wanted something or some one. The old priest knew human nature, hence the little shadowy smile called up by Eve’s transparently partial interpretation of her father’s desire.
Edward Challoner looked at him, but did not appear to recognise his face. It seemed that he had left the earth so far behind now that the faces of those walking on it were no longer distinguishable.
He gave a little half-pettish groan, and a stillness came over the room.
The old padre and the doctor, who did not know a word of any common language, exchanged a glance, and in a very business-like way, as of one whose trade it was, the priest got down upon his knees. Then the doctor, half-shyly, approached Eve, and taking her by the arm, led her gently out of the room.
Fitz stayed where he was, standing by the dead man, looking down at the priest’s bowed head, while the bell of the little chapel attached to the Casa d’Erraha told the valley that a good man had gone to his rest.
We pass; the path that each man trodIs dim, or will be dim, with weeds.
The priest was the first to speak.
“You are his friend, I also; but we are of different nations.”
He paused, drawing the sheet up over the dead man’s face.
“He was not of my Church. You have your ways; will you make the arrangements?”
“Yes,” replied Fitz simply, “if you like.”
“It is better so, my son”--the padre took a pinch of snuff--“because--he was not of my Church. You will stay here, you and your friend. She, the Señorita Eve, cannot be left alone, with her grief.”
He spoke Spanish, knowing that the Englishman understood it.
They drew down the blinds and passed out on to the terrace, where they walked slowly backwards and forwards, talking over the future of Eve and of the Casa d’Erraha.
In Spain, as in other southern lands, they speed the parting guest. Two days later Edward Challoner was laid beside his father and grandfather in the little churchyard in the valley below the Casa d’Erraha. And who are we that we should say that his chance of reaching heaven was diminished by the fact that part of the Roman Catholic burial service was read over him by a Spanish priest?
Fitz had telegraphed to Eve’s only living relative, Captain Bontnor, and Fitz it was who stayed on at the Casa d’Erraha until that mariner should arrive; for the doctor was compelled to return to his ship at Port Mahon, and the priest never slept in another but his own little vicarage house.
And in the Casa d’Erraha was enacted at this time one of those strange little comedies that will force themselves upon a tragic stage. Fitz deemed it correct that he should avoid Eve as much as possible, and Eve, on the other hand, feeling lonely and miserable, wanted the society of the simple-minded young sailor.
“Why do you always avoid me?” she asked suddenly on the evening after the funeral. He had gone out on to the terrace, and thither she followed him in innocent anger, without afterthought. She stood before him with her slim white hands clasped together, resting against her black dress, a sombre, slight young figure in the moonlight, looking at him with reproachful eyes.
He hesitated a second before answering her. She was only nineteen; she had been born and brought up in the Valley of Repose amidst the simple islanders. She knew nothing of the world and its ways. And Fitz, with the burden of the unique situation suddenly thrust upon him, was, in his chivalrous youthfulness, intensely anxious to avoid giving her anything to look back to in after years when she should be a woman. He was tenderly solicitous for the feelings which would come later, though they were absent now.
“Because,” he answered, “I am not good at saying things. I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am for you.”
She turned away and looked across to the hills at the other side of the valley, a rugged outline against the sky.
“But I know all that,” she said softly, “without being told.”
A queer smile passed over his sunburnt face, as if she had unintentionally and innocently made things more difficult for him.
“And,” she continued, “it is--oh, so lonely.”
She made an almost imperceptible little movement towards him. Like the child that she was, she was yearning for sympathy and comfort.“I know--I know,” he said.
Outward circumstance was rather against Fitz. A clear, odorous Spanish night, the young moon rising behind the pines, a thousand dreamy tropic scents filling the air. And Eve, half tearful, wholly lovable, standing before him, innocently treading on dangerous ground, guilelessly asking him to love her.
She, having grown almost to womanhood, pure as the flowers of the field, ignorant, a child, knew nothing of what she was doing. She merely gave way to the instinct that was growing within her--the instinct that made her turn to this man, claiming his strength, his tenderness, his capability, as given to him for her use and for her happiness.
“You must not avoid me,” she said. “Why do you do it? Have I done anything you dislike? I have no one to speak to, no one who understands, but you. There is the padre, of course--and nurse; but they do not understand. They are--soold! Let me stay here with you until it is time to go to bed, will you?”
“Of course,” he answered quietly. “If you care to. To-morrow I should think we shall hear from your uncle. He may come by the boat sailing from Barcelona to-morrow night. It will be a good thing if he does; you see, I must get back to my ship.”
“You said she would not be ready for sea till next month.”
“No, but there is discipline to be thought of.”
He looked past her, up to the stars, with a scrutinising maritime eye, recognising them and naming them to himself. He did not meet her eyes--dangerous, tear-laden.
“There is something the matter with you,” she said. “You are different. Yes, you want my uncle to come the day after to-morrow--you want to go away to Mahon as soon as you can. I-- Oh, Fitz, I don’t want to be a coward!”
She stood in front of him, clenching her little fists, forcing back the tears that gleamed in the moonlight. He did not dare to cease his astronomical observations.
“Iwon’tbe a coward--if you will only speak. If you will tell me what it is.”
Then Fitz told his first deliberate lie.
“I have had bad news,” he said, “about my brother Luke. I am awfully anxious about him.”
He did it very well; for his motive was good. And we may take it that such a lie as this is not writ very large in the Book.
The girl paused for a little, and then deliberately wiped the tears from her eyes.
“How horribly selfish I have been!” she said. “Why did you not tell me sooner? I have only been thinking of my own troubles ever since--ever since poor papa-- I am a selfish wretch! I hate myself! Tell me about your brother.”
And so they walked slowly up and down the moss-grown terrace--alone in this wonderful tropic night--while he told her the little tragedy of his life. He told the story simply, with characteristic gaps in the sequence, which she was left to fill up from her imagination.
“I shall not like Mrs. Harrington,” said Eve, when the story was told. “I am glad that she cannot come much into my life. My father wanted me to go and stay with her last summer, but I would not leave him alone, and for some reason he would not accept the invitation for himself. Do you know, Fitz, I sometimes think there is a past--some mysterious past--which contained my father and Mrs. Harrington and a man--the Count de Lloseta.”
“I have seen him,” put in Fitz, “at Mrs. Harrington’s often.”
The girl nodded her head with a quaint little assumption of shrewdness and deep suspicion.
“My father admired him--I do not know why. And pitied him intensely--I do not know why.”
“He was always very nice to me,” answered Fitz, “but I never understood him.”
Talking thus they forgot the flight of time. It sometimes happens thus in youth. And the huge clock in the stable yard striking ten aroused Eve suddenly to the lateness of the hour.
“I must go,” she said. “I am glad you told me about--Luke. I feel as if I knew you better and understood - a little more. Good-night.”
She left him on the terrace, and walked sorrowfully away to the house which could never be the same again.
Fitz watched her slight young form disappear through an open doorway, and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant sea, lying still and glass-like in the moonlight. He was looking to the north, and it happened that from that same point of the compass there was coming towards him the good steamerBellver, on whose deck stood a little shock-headed man--Captain Bontnor.
There is a regular service of steamers to and from the Island of Majorca to the mainland, and, in addition, steamers make voyages when pressure of traffic may demand. TheBellverwas making one of these supplemental journeys, and her arrival was not looked for at Palma.
Eve and Fitz were having breakfast alone in the gloomy room overshadowed by the trailing wings of the Angel of Death, when the servant announced a gentleman to see the señorita. The señorita requested that the gentleman might approach, and presently there stood in the doorway the quaintest little figure imaginable.
Captain Bontnor, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, had put on his best clothes for this occasion, and it happened that the most superior garment in his wardrobe was a thick pilot-jacket, which stood out from his square person with solid angularity. He had brushed his hair very carefully, applying water to compass a smoothness which had been his life-long and hitherto unattained aim. His shock hair--red turning to grey--stood up four inches from his honest, wrinkled face. It was unfortunate that his best garments should have been purchased for the amenities of a northern climate. His trousers were as stiff as his jacket, and he wore a decorous black silk tie as large as a counterpane.
He stood quaintly bowing in the doorway, his bright blue eyes veiled with shyness and a pathetic dumb self-consciousness.
“Please come in,” said Eve in Spanish, quite at a loss as to who this might be.
Then Fitz had an inspiration. Something of the sea seemed to be wafted from the older to the younger sailor.
“Are you Captain Bontnor?” he asked, rising from the table.
“Yes, sir, yes! That’s my name!”
He stood nervously in the doorway, mistrusting the parquet-floor, mistrusting himself, mistrusting everything.
Fitz went towards him holding out his hand, which the captain took after a manfully repressed desire to wipe his own broad palm on the seam of his trousers.
“Then you are my uncle?” said Eve, coming forward.
“Yes, miss, I’m afraid--that is--yes, I’m your uncle. You see--I’m only a rough sort of fellow.”
He came a little nearer and held his arms apart, looking down at his own person in humble deprecation.
Eve was holding out her hand. He took it with a vague, deep-rooted chivalry, and she, stooping, very deliberately kissed him.
This seemed rather to bewilder the captain, for he shook hands again with Fitz.
“I-- ” he began, nodding into Fitz’s face. “You are--eh? I didn’t expect--to see--I didn’t know--”
At that moment Eve saw. It came to her in a flash, as most things do come to women. She even had time to doubt the story about Luke.
“This,” she said, with crimson cheeks, “is Mr. FitzHenry of theKittiwake. He kindly came to us in our trouble. You will have to thank him afterwards--uncle.”
“And in the meantime I expect you want breakfast?” put in Fitz, carefully avoiding Eve.
“Yes,” added the girl, “of course. Sit down. No, here!”
“Thankye--thankye, miss--my dear, I mean. Oh, anything’ll do for me. A bit of bread and a cup o’ tea. I had a bit and a sup on board before she sheered alongside the quay.”
He looked round rather helplessly, wondering where he should put his hat--a solid, flat-crowned British affair. Eve took it from him and laid it aside.
Captain Bontnor sat very stiffly down. His square form did not seem to lose any of its height by the change of position, and with a stiff back he looked admiringly round the room, waiting like a child at a school treat.
As the meal progressed he grew more at ease, telling them of the little difficulties of his journey, avoiding with a tact not always found inside a better coat all mention of the sad event which had caused him to take this long journey after his travelling days were done.
That which set him at ease more than all else was the fact, at length fully grasped, that Fitz was, like himself, a sailor. Here at least was a topic upon which he could converse with any man. General subjects only were discussed, as if by tacit consent. No mention was made of the future until this was somewhat rudely brought before their notice by the announcement that a second visitor desired to see the señorita.
With a more assured manner than that of his predecessor, a small, dark man came into the room, throwing off his cloak and handing it to the servant. He bowed ceremoniously and with true Spanish grace to Eve, with less ceremony and more dignity to the two men.
“I beg that your excellency will accept the sympathy of my deepest heart,” he said. “I regret to trouble you so soon after the great loss sustained by your excellency, indeed, by the whole island of Majorca. But it is a matter of business. Such things cannot be delayed. Have I your excellency’s permission to proceed?”
“Certainly, señor.”
The man’s clean-shaven face was like a mask. The expressions seemed to come and go as if worked by machinery. Sympathy was turned off, and in its place Polite-Attention-to-Business appeared. From under his arm he drew a leather portfolio, which he placed upon the table.
“The affairs of the late Cavalier Challoner were perhaps known to your excellency?”
“No; I knew nothing of my father’s affairs.”
Sympathy seemed to be struggling behind “Polite-Attention-to-Business,” while for a moment a real look of distress flitted over the parchment face. He paused for an instant, reflecting while he assorted his papers.
“I am,” he said, “the lawyer of his excellency the Count de Lloseta.”
Eve and Fitz exchanged a glance, and as silence was kept the lawyer went on.
“Three generations ago,” he said, “a Count de Lloseta, the grandfather of this present excellency, made over on ‘rotas’ the estate and house known as the Val d’Erraha to the grandfather of the late Cavalier Challoner--a Captain Challoner, one of Admiral Byng’s men.”
Again he paused, arranging his papers.
“The Majorcan system ‘rotas’ is known to your excellency?”
“No, señor.”
“On this system an estate is made over for one or two or three generations by the proprietor to the lessee who farms or sublets the land, and in lieu of rent hands over to the proprietor a certain proportion of the crops. Does your excellency follow me?”
Eve did not answer at once. Then the lawyer’s meaning seemed to dawn upon her.
“Then,” she said, “the Casa d’Erraha never belonged to my father?”
“Never”--with a grave bow.
“And I have nothing--nothing at all! I am penniless?”
The lawyer looked from her to Fitz, who was standing beside her listening to the conversation, but not offering to take part in it.
“Unless your excellency has private means--in England, perhaps.”
“I do not know--I know nothing. And we must leave the Casa d’Erraha. When, señor? Tell me when.”
The lawyer avoided her distressed eyes.
“Well,” he said slowly, “the law is rather summary. I--your excellency understands I only do my duty. I am not the principal. I have no authority whatever--except the law.”
“You mean that I must go at once?”
The lawyer’s parchment face was generously expressive of grief now.
“Excellency, the lease terminated at the death of the late Caballero Challoner.”
Eve stood for a moment, breathing hard. Fate seemed suddenly to have turned against her at every point. At this moment Captain Bontnor made bold--one could see him doing it--to take her hand.
“My dear,” he said, “I don’t quite understand what this foreign gentleman and you are talkin’ about. But if it’s trouble, dear, if it’s trouble--just let me try.”
Measure thy life by loss instead of gain,Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth.
“MY DEAR MISS CHALLONER,--I learn that you are in Barcelona, and at the same time I find with some indignation that my lawyer in Mallorca, with a deplorable excess of zeal, has been acting without my orders in respect to the property of the Val d’Erraha. I hasten to place myself and possessions at your disposition, and take the liberty of writing to request an interview, instead of calling on you at your hotel, for reasons which you will readily understand, knowing as you do the gossiping ways of hotels. As an old friend of your father’s, and one who moved and lived in neighbourly intercourse with him before your birth, and before the deplorable death of your mother, I now waive ceremony, and beg that you and your uncle will come and take tea with me this afternoon at my humble abode in the ‘Calle de la Paz.’--Believe me, dear Miss Challoner, yours very sincerely,“CIPRIANI DE LLOSETA DE MALLORCA.”
Eve read this letter in her room in the Hotel of the Four Nations at Barcelona. She had only been on the mainland twenty-four hours when it was delivered to her by a servant of the Count’s, who came to her apartment and delivered it into her own hands, as is the custom of Spanish servants.
Eve Challoner had grown older during the last few days. She had been brought face to face with life as it really is, and not as we dream it in the dreams of youth. She was not surprised to receive this letter, although she had no idea that the Count de Lloseta was in Spain. But the varying emotions of the last week had, as it were, undermined the confident hopefulness with which we look forward when we are young, and sometimes when we are old, to the management of our own lives here below. She was beginning to understand certain terms which she had heard applied to human existence, and to which she had hitherto attached no special meaning as relating to herself. More especially did she understand at this time that life may be compared to a stream, for she was vaguely conscious of drifting she knew not whither.
Fitz had come suddenly into her life; Captain Bontnor had come into it; and now this man, Cipriani de Lloseta, seemed to be asserting his right to come into it too. And she did not know quite what to do with them all. She had never, in the quiet, dreamy days of her youth, pictured a life with any of these men in it, and the future was suddenly tremendous, unfathomable. There were vast possibilities in it of misery, of danger, of difficulty; and behind these a vague, new feeling of a possible happiness far exceeding the happiness of her peaceful childhood.
Without consulting her uncle, who had gone out into the street to walk backwards and forwards before the door, as he had walked backwards and forwards on his deck for forty years, she sat down and accepted the Count’s informal invitation. She seemed to do it without reflection, as if impelled thereto by something stronger thanproorcon, as if acknowledging the Spaniard’s right to come into her life, bringing to bear upon it an influence which she never attempted to fathom.
Thus it came about that Eve and Captain Bontnor found themselves awaiting their host in the massive, gloomy drawing-room of the Palace in the Calle de la Paz at five o’clock that afternoon.
Captain Bontnor had learnt a great deal during the last few days; among other things he had learnt to love his niece with a simple, dog-like devotion, which had a vein of pathos in it for those who see such things. He placed himself well behind Eve, and looked around him with a wondering awe.
“I think, my dear,” he said, “that it would have been better if you had come alone. I--you know I am getting too old to learn manners now--eh--he! he! Yes. Having been so long at sea, you know.”
“I think the sea teaches men manners, uncle,” said Eve, with a little smile which he did not understand. “At any rate,” she went on, touching his rough sleeve affectionately, “it teaches them something that I like.”
“Does it, now? What, now? Tell me.”
“I do not know,” answered the girl, as if speaking to herself, and at this moment the door was opened. The man who came in was of medium height, with a long, narrow face, and singularly patient eyes.
“I should have known you,” he said, approaching Eve, and holding out his hand. “You do not remember your mother? I do, however. You are like her--and she was a good woman. And this is Captain Bontnor--your uncle.”
He shook hands with the old sailor without the faintest flicker of surprise at his somewhat incongruous appearance.
“I am glad,” he said suavely, “to make Captain Bontnor’s acquaintance.”
He turned to draw forward a chair, and the light from the high, barred window falling full on his head, betrayed the fact that his hair, close cut as an English soldier’s, was touched and flecked with grey. His lithe youthfulness of frame rather surprised Eve, who knew him to be a contemporary of her father’s.
“It is very good of you to come,” he went on in a low voice. “I took the privilege of the elder generation, you see! Captain, pray take that chair.”
He did the honours with a British ease of manner, strangely touched by a Spanish dignity.
“When I heard of your great bereavement,” he said, turning to Eve with a grave bow, “I ought perhaps to have gone to Mallorca at once to offer you what poor assistance was in my power. But circumstances, over which I had no control, prevented my doing so. My offer of help is tardy, I know, but it is none the less sincere.”
“Thank you,” replied Eve, conscious of a feeling of pleasant reliance in this new-found ally. “But I have good friends - the Padre Fortis, my uncle, and--a friend of ours, Mr. FitzHenry.”
“Of theKittiwake--at Mahon?”
“Yes.”
“I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. FitzHenry,” murmured the Count. “Now,” he said, with a sudden smile which took her by surprise by reason of the alteration it made in the whole man, “will you do me a great favour?”
“I should like to,” answered Eve, with some hesitation.
“And you?” said the Count, turning to Captain Bontnor.
“Oh yes,” replied that sailor bluntly, “if it’s possible.”
“I want you,” continued the Count de Lloseta, “to forget that this is the first time we meet, and to look upon me as a friend--one of the most intimate--of your father.”
“My father,” said the girl, “always spoke of you as such.”
“Indeed, I am glad of that. Now, tell me, who have you in the world besides Captain Bontnor?”
“I have no one. But--”
“We was thinking,” put in the Captain, in ungrammatical haste, “that Eve would come and live with me. It isn’t a grand house--just a little cottage. But such as it is, she’ll have a kindly welcome.”
“And, I have no doubt, a happy home”, added the Count, with one of his dark smiles. “I was merely wondering whether Miss Challoner intended to live in the Casa d’Erraha or to let it?”‘
Eve looked up in surprise, and Captain Bontnor’s blue eyes wandered from her face to the dark and courteous countenance of Cipriani de Lloseta.
“Perhaps,” continued the Spaniard imperturbably, “you have not yet made up your mind on the subject.”
“But the Casa d’Erraha does not belong to me,” said Eve, and Captain Bontnor wagged his head in confirmation. “Your own lawyer explained to me that my father only held it on ‘rotas.’”
“My own lawyer, my dear young lady, thereby proved himself an ass.”
“But,” said Eve, somewhat mystified, “the Val d’Erraha belongs to you, and you must know it. I have no title-deeds--I have nothing.”
“Except possession, which is nine points of the law. Will you take tea, and cream? I do not know how many points the law has, but one would naturally conclude that nine is a large proportion of the whole.”
While he spoke he was pouring out the tea. He handed a cup to her with a grave smile, as if the matter under discussion were one of a small and passing importance.
“I suppose,” he added, “you have learnt to love the Casa d’Erraha. It is a place--a place one might easily become attached to. Do you know”--he turned his back to her, busying himself with the silver teapot--“Lloseta?” he added jerkily.
“Yes. My father and I used to go there very often.”
“Ah--” He waited--handing Captain Bontnor a cup of tea in silence. But Eve was not thinking of Lloseta; she was thinking of the Casa d’Erraha.
“My father did not speak to me of his affairs,” she said. “He was naturally rather reserved, and--and it was very sudden.”
“Yes. So I learnt. That indeed is my excuse for intruding myself upon your notice at this time. I surmised that my poor friend’s affairs had been left in some confusion. He was too thorough a gentleman to be competent in affairs. I thought that perhaps my small influence and my diminutive knowledge of Majorcan law--the Roman law, in point of fact--might be of some use to you.”
“Thank you,” she answered; “I think we settled everything before we left the island, although we did not see Señor Peña, your lawyer. I--the Casa d’Erraha belongs to you!” she added, suddenly descending to feminine reiteration.
“Prove it,” said the Count quietly.
“I cannot do that.”
He shrugged his shoulders with a smile.
“Then,” he said, “I am afraid you cannot shift your responsibility to my shoulders.”
The girl looked at him with puzzled young eyes. He stood before her, dignified, eminently worthy of the great name he bore--a solitary, dark-eyed, inscrutable man, whose whole being subtly suggested hopelessness and an empty life. She shook her head.
“But I cannot accept the Casa d’Erraha on those terms.”
The Count drew forward a chair and sat down.
“Listen,” he said, with an explanatory forefinger upheld. “Three generations ago two men made a verbal agreement in respect to the estate of the Val d’Erraha. To-day no one knows what that agreement was. It may have been the ordinary ‘rotas’ of Minorca. It may not. In those days the English held Minorca; my ancestor may therefore have been indebted to your great-grandfather, for we have some small estates in Minorca. You know what the islands are to-day. They are two hundred years behind Northern Europe. What must they have been a hundred and twenty years ago? We have no means of finding out what passed between your great-grandfather and my grandfather. We only know that three generations of Challoners have lived in the Casa d’Erraha, paying to the Counts of Lloseta a certain proportion of the product of the estate. I do not mind telling you that the smallness of that proportion does away with the argument that the agreement was the ordinary ‘rotas’ of the Baleares. We know nothing--we can prove nothing. If you claimed the estate I might possibly wrest it from you--not by proof, but merely because the insular prejudice against a foreigner would militate against you in a Majorcan court of law. I cannot legally force you to hold the estate of the Val d’Erraha. I can only ask you as the daughter of one of my best friends to accept the benefit of a very small doubt.”
Eve hesitated. What woman would not?
Captain Bontnor set down his cup very gravely on the table.
“I don’t rightly understand,” he said sturdily, “this ‘rotas’ business. But it seems to me pretty plain that the estate never belonged to my late brother-in-law. Now what I say is, if the place belongs by right to Miss Challoner she’ll take it. If it don’t; well, then it don’t, and she can’t accept it as a present from anybody. Much obliged to you all the same.”
The Count laughed pleasantly.
“My dear sir, it is not a present.”
The Captain stuffed his hands very deeply into his pockets.
“Then it’s worse--it’s charity. And she has no need of that. Thank ye all the same,” he replied.
He stared straight in front of him with a vague and rather painful suggestion of incapability that sometimes came over him. He was wondering whether he was doing right in this matter.
“If,” he added, half to himself, as a sort of afterthought on the crying question of ways and means--“if it comes to that, I can go to sea again. There’s plenty would be ready to give me a ship.”
The Count was still smiling.
“There is no question,” he said, “of charity. What has Miss Challoner done that I should offer her that? I am in ignorance as to her affairs. I do not know the extent of her income.”
“As far as we can make out,” said Eve gently, “there is nothing. But I can work. I thought that my knowledge of Spanish might enable me to make a living.”
“No,” said Captain Bontnor, “I’m d--- I mean I should not like you to go governessing, my dear.”
The Count was apparently reflecting.
“I have a compromise to propose,” he said, addressing himself to Eve. “If we place the property in the hands of a third person--you know the value of land in Majorca--to farm and tend; if at the end of each year the profits be divided between us?”
But Eve’s suspicions were aroused, and her woman’s instinct took her further than did Captain Bontnor’s sturdy sense of right and wrong.
“I am afraid,” she said, rising from her chair, “that I must refuse. I--I think I understand why papa always spoke of you as he did. I am very grateful to you. I know now that you have been trying to give me D’Erraha. It was a generous thing to do--a most generous thing. I think people would hardly believe me if I told them. I can only thank you; for I have no possible means of proving to you how deeply I feel it. Somehow”--she paused, with tears and a sad little smile in her eyes--“somehow it is not the gift that I appreciate so much as - as your way of trying to give it.”
The Spaniard spread out his two hands in deprecation.
“My child,” he murmured gently, “I have not another word to say.”