The Recipe for Diamonds Part 17

"Perfectly."

"Then again buenas."

"Adios. But shall I not see you again?"

She laughed quietly. "Whenever you please, sir. I shall probably be staying in this hotel for some time yet."

"Would you," I began, and felt myself to flush as I spoke, though no novice at chatting with most kinds of women--"are you in a hurry, that is? Would you come out into the _patio_ down the pa.s.sage yonder and sit awhile? We shall find some hammock chairs, and if the glare off those tall white walls hurts you, there is an awning to pull down."

She a.s.sented very gracefully, and we sat there for a couple of hours, afterwards strolling out past the great amber-coloured cathedral, and on to the walls, whilst the sun sank into the water beyond the little lateen-sailed fishing-boats that dotted the bay. With clever, un.o.btrusive tact she made herself my eyes. Into her talk she infused the tale of the quick and the still things we pa.s.sed in our stroll, never entering into pointed descriptions, but rather mentioning them in her chat as though they were of interest to herself alone.

And afterwards, in the evening, she was kind enough to come to a box I had secured at the opera-house--a building which is almost equal to La Scala--and I had the delight of _seeing_ Balfe's "The Talisman"

acted, as well as of listening to the music.

She was a woman of perfect self-reliance. She had seen men and women and places. She knew well how the restrictions of society were ruled, but she was quite capable of mapping out her own line of conduct to suit her own ideas. At least I deduced as much, though we exchanged no single word upon the subject. There had arisen between us a _camaraderie_ that for me was delightful. Sadi was good, but his companionship had its limits. She was all Sadi was, and more. It would be a poor compliment to say she was everything a male comrade could be.

She was woman through it all. She was thoughtful, bright, amusing, resourceful.

Yet we never verged beyond the bounds of mere _camaraderie_, nor do I think that either of us wished to do so.

CHAPTER XVI.

CRUELLY INTERRUPTED.

For the life of me I cannot say now who proposed it. I think the scheme must have been evolved spontaneously between us. But the fact remains that next morning saw Mrs. Cromwell and myself driving out through the city _puerto_ by the railway station and the _Plaza de Toros_, and out along the level road across the plain, towards the hills that skirt it.

She knew the island thoroughly--knew every inch of it, one might say--and understood and appreciated the people of all grades. I could not have found anywhere a more interesting companion.

The old Mallorcan n.o.bility, the oldest in Europe, are but little in evidence. They stay indoors, and outside their old palaces one hears little about them. Even in Palma, where times change but slowly, times have changed for them. They are woefully hard up--the result of heavy gambling in a past generation, and the depreciation of land in this.

Indeed, with one exception, all cla.s.ses down to the peasants are poor; but they are not unhappy. It would be impossible to find a race more contented with their lot. There is no absolute poverty. Bean porridge can be got almost for the asking, and if one eats bean porridge enough, one is not hungry. Their other wants are very few, and they are easily supplied. So that, practically speaking, every one, even the very poorest, is well off.

Life for the Mallorcan does not consist of making money. He rather goes to the other extreme, and takes it as meant for doing nothing in, for chatting, for smoking indifferent cigarettes, for strolling about under a melodramatic black cloak with crimson plush lining, and for other enjoyments. He has no marked objection to money when it comes to his hand, but he will neither stoop nor climb to gather it. Allah has given him a lovely and fruitful island, with a perfect climate, and a store of philosophical contentment, and a theory of life called the _manana_ theory which utterly eliminates hurry. He wisely does not try to go against these things that Allah has arranged, and consequently most of his time is spent in rigorous _far niente_.

It is only the women of Mallorca who work when they have got nothing else to do. In these frequent intervals they whitewash their dwellings and neighbourhood generally, which gives sanitation and neatness.

Of the only wealthy cla.s.s in Mallorca she seemed reluctant to speak.

They were converted Jews, locally known as _Chuetas_. I found she had somehow imbibed a notion that I too was a Jew; but when I emphatically denied the impeachment, and said that I strongly hated Jews, she told me about these _Chuetas_.

They are the Christianized lineal descendants of those Spanish Jews who in the old days disliked the alternative _auto da fe_, and preferred to 'vert. To-day they are a caste distinct to themselves, intermarry, and are loathed by all the other natives with a great loathing, and have no communications with outsiders except upon business. Needless to say, this last item is a large one, and in reality accounts for all the others. The Mallorcans are an easy-going race, and if they get hard cash to-day, repayment is a matter for _manana_, and therefore unworthy of consideration. And so the _Chuetas_ have contrived to get the upper hand all through the country. They might be forgiven for neglecting to toil and spin, for that is the custom in general favour; but the other idiosyncrasy rankles, and from n.o.ble to _puta_, every soul hates, abhors, and detests them. A man, an Englishman, who had not entered the island till middle life, told how he came there with tolerant notions, and thinking the treatment of these tribesmen unjust, cultivated the acquaintance of many of them. But he said he soon had to give them up. Their language, their thoughts, their sentiments, their mode of life, were alike disgusting. He understood why that low-grade _puta_ who had been offered marriage by a wealthy _Chueta_ had spat in his face by way of answer. They were utterly unfit to a.s.sociate with. It was the old tale: kick a dog for centuries and he becomes an utter cur, and cur he will remain for centuries to come. And yet by a ghastly irony, the most devout of the devout Palman Catholics is the hated and despised Palman _Chueta_.

The mules were dragging our carriage across the plain whilst she told me these things about the people, and at intervals she served me as eyes to note the beauties that we pa.s.sed. There were orchards of almond-trees that seemed from a distance to be bearing a crop of snowflakes, till one came nearer and could distinguish the delicate pinks and mauves of their blossom; there were bushy algobras with rich green foliage; oranges, bearing the last of that juicy crop which, when fresh gathered, melts in the mouth like ice; olive-trees, with dry gray leaves and trunks so grotesquely gnarled as to suggest arboreal pain.

The hot sun above, dappling the young corn and filling the stone water-conduits with soft tree-shadows; the tinkling twitter of unseen birds; the repose everywhere, made up a charm which my poor words refuse to utter. And yet she made me feel it all, and more besides.

We approached the cup-edge of the mountain. To a Spaniard all trees except fruit-trees mean so many cubic feet of wood for building or charcoal. As Spain and Italy both know, climates change when the forests go, and the crops suffer from long droughts or heavy deluges which sweep the soil bodily away in spite of laboriously-built stone terraces or concrete-lined water ducts. But that is for _manana_.

The timber is wanted for to-day, and down it comes. Yet from a merely scenic point of view this ruthless axemanship is hardly to be deplored where we were then. The rocks were bare, save for scattered dark-green dottings of pine or ilex perched where they could not readily be come at; they were full of fantastic shadows; they were shaven, gray, and rugged; they were unspeakably grand.

The crags closed in as we went on, and the hiss of the stream which had neared the road began to drown the bird-songs. Some of the hills beside us were clothed with green shrubs, and some were gaunt and bare, of homely gray splashed with red. Ahead there was a wee white house, apparently balanced like an eagle's nest in an inaccessible eyrie. The orchards had gone, but the stony land was still scratched up to receive crops, and laboriously terraced to keep the soil from being swilled into the sea.

The hills pressed farther together into a rocky gorge, with the rut of the road perched high on one side, and the stream brawling away fifty feet below. Goats with tinkling bells were flitting about the crags like so many brown flies. One began to wonder whether the road was not a _cul-de-sac_, and whether Valledemosa did not lie in some other direction. There seemed absolutely no outlet except for wings.

But with an angle of the gorge one opened out a new scene. Another wide valley lay ahead of us, through which the road wound steeply, past women gathering the purple olives from the turf beneath the trees, past laden orange-trees, and sprawls of p.r.i.c.kly pears, and fields of sprouting beans.

And then we came to two yellow gate-posts, on one of which was the date 1063, whilst the other bore this inscription: "VITae IN INTROITV aeDIS SANCTae EXUS."

"Valledemosa is here," said my companion, "the village beside that convent where Madame Dudevant brought Chopin to die, and from which she took him away full of new life. The mules will bait here. It is for you to say whether we go on or return to Palma."

"From the day when I lost my eyes to this day," was my reply, "I have never known what it was to see the shapes that G.o.d has builded on the face of the earth, or the colours with which He has painted them. Mind, I have never whined for the sight that was taken away from me. I have accepted my _Kismet_, and have made it as bright as thought and contrivance could manage. I believe, without egotism, that there are few blind men who have trained themselves to be as conscious of their surroundings as I am. But my powers have great limitations. However preternaturally sensitive a man may be to all manner of sounds, he cannot tell everything from sound alone, not even though his sense of touch besides is laboriously refined. Without the gift of sight there must always be (so I had been forced to decide) a black gaping hiatus which it seemed that no human power could fill. Of my helpers, till yesterday, Sadi was the only one who showed the least fraction of talent; yet even his best efforts could scarcely throw a glimmer through the cloud.

"But to-day you have done what I believed no breathing person could do.

You have worked a miracle. You have made me to see as with mine own old eyes. Heaven grant that this is not all a dream to be waked up from."

We spent that night at the Archduke's _hospitar_ at Miramar--near Raymond Lully's birthplace--where free housing is given to any pa.s.ser-by for three days, with olives, salt, and oil, the typical trio, provided. In the evening I told her across the _brazero_ a tale that had never crossed my lips before, the tale of how I had lost my eyes. I took her in my story to the south of Africa, and led her out over green rolling veldt to a hawthorn-crowned kopje, where we lay out of sight amongst the bushes. I explained to her that I was a diamond merchant, and that I was waiting there for men who were to bring me stones for sale. And then I told how, instead of those I expected, others came out of the soft black tropical night, in turn mistaking me also for some one else. They thought I was there for I.D.B.--I, an honest trader--and not daring to kill, had loaded their guns with rock-salt. I told her how the first charge had struck me full in the face and destroyed my sight for ever; how I had got up and fled shrieking away, and then lay hid for days in a clump of karoo-scrub nursing my hideous pain, and wishing for the death which would not come. And then I sketched to her the way that Sadi had found me, and nursed me, and been with me in all those groping after years, paying full tribute to his devotion.

When I had finished she said she wanted to ask me one question, if she might do so without offence.

"Nothing you would say," I replied, "can annoy me."

"Then tell me, Mr. Pether, were you a registered diamond merchant out there?"

"I was. I swear I was. Had I been there for Illicit Diamond Buying I should have deserved all I got, and more besides. But after being blinded, where was the use of trying to retaliate? of proving it was all a mistake? of pressing for a money recompense? Imprisoning a man, or fining him, or even blinding him in turn, could not restore my eyes."[3]

[3] _Note, by another hand._--Inquiries pushed by me, Taltavull, through the agents of my brotherhood in the neighbourhood of Du Toit's Pan, have elicited the following communication: "Pether, more generally known as Conkleton, was a regular Jew Kopjewalloper from Petticoat Lane. He had abundance of money, and was the pest of the diamond fields. Several of his runners were caught and convicted, but no case could ever be framed against him in person, as he flourished before the days of Diamond Registration. However, the charge of I.D.B. grew so strong against him that at last the boys took the law into their own hands and rock-salted him. Afterwards he disappeared. The lesson appeared to have been sufficient. Rock-salt, so they say, when fired into the skin, hurts." The name of my informant cannot be divulged; but he is a most earnest worker in the Great Cause, and I, Taltavull, will pledge my credit on his veracity.

(Signed) TALTAVULL.

_Anarchist Headquarters, Barcelona._

And then I went on to tell her how it was a pure platonic love for diamonds themselves that had turned me to trade in those lovely stones; how their iridescent glitter delighted my eye, and how the very act of handling them in their dull, rough, uncut state was a joy to me that almost amounted to monomania. The theme pleased her, and she asked me to go on. I had not spoken of diamonds once during all those long years of darkness, and to discourse about them again to any one who took the obvious interest in them that she did was for me an indulgence nothing short of delicious. And when we parted for the night, and I found myself once more alone, I was almost surprised that I had said nothing about this new enterprise in the diamond industry which fortune had thrown in my way. "I feel sure," I told myself, "that she will share this great secret. She is the one person in this world for me to trust.

But I cannot part with it yet. Besides, I have only known her two days.

Time enough when we get back to Palma."

We went out afoot after breakfast next morning, and during all that day I revelled in the beauties of Miramar, the finest piece of cliff and coast scenery in Europe. There is one of the many watch-towers here, a gray old building whose architect was dead before the Pharaohs or even the Phoenicians began to pile stones together, and yet the old citadel has not bent one inch to all that string of time. We ascended half-way outside up a ladder, and entered a small domed chamber. Then we climbed together on to the roof, which is half a covered sentry-house, half a bal.u.s.traded lookout post. We could hear the rattle of the surf creaming away twelve hundred feet below, and could look down almost sheer into the many-hued blue water; and behind there were mountains rising steeply up into the clouds. The view was incomparable.

Then we went down again, winding along a narrow path that was edged with flowering heath, and gained a jutting crag which seemed almost to overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof, and over the altar was the marble effigy of a man of years.

I do not know why it was, but as we stood on the balcony outside that tiny chapel, leaning over the rail, and listening to the murmur of the woods beside and of the waters beneath us, I almost felt impelled to there and then show my companion that little wooden case I carried in my breast-pocket, and tell her of the vast and wonderful secret it contained. In fact, I believe it was the very greatness of the impulse which made me resist it. I am the last man to be called superst.i.tious, but it seemed to me then that old Lully's shade was hovering near his birthplace, and was busying itself in my direction. I did not like the guidance, and so resisted it; and directly afterwards we strolled back across the bridge, and on through the woods again.

I cannot, I will not tell in detail how the next few days pa.s.sed. The little idyl concerns no one but myself--and one other--and there is no reason to desecrate them by bawling its delicate folds abroad. Suffice it to say that we went on through Deya to Soller, and then taking mules, climbed the mountain pa.s.ses to the convent of Nuestra Senora de Lluch.

"You can stay here if you choose," observed my companion, as our mules drank out of the fountain basin in the courtyard. "Inside the big doorway yonder is written up '_Silencio_' and '_Vir prudens tacebit_,' but the monks are not overstrict, and, like the Archduke at Miramar, they offer free hospitality to all wayfarers. If you have never stayed in a convent of this kind before, the experience will amuse you."

"And you?"

"Oh, I shall go on to Pollensa, and you can join me there, if you choose, to-morrow."

"But why not remain here?"