CAMARADERIE.
... Again I distinguished the Belgian drummer's steps coming aft along
the deck planks. "They are all so sick below," said he, "that I could
endure it no longer." He sat down on the saloon skylight beside me.
"You see that low hummocky island we are coming to, out yonder on the
port hand? Cabrera, monsieur, where they say Hannibal was born, and
where they hope and expect M. Blanc's successors will find a
resting-place for their tables when France and Italy hound them out of
Monte Carlo. I was over in Cabrera the other day. I ran across in the
little packet from Palma. There's a lovely harbour there--almost as
good as the one at Mahon; and the place holds two hundred people, who
are planting vines and building fortifications. My faith, it will be a
heavy change if they make that into the fashionable gambling hell of
Europe.
"You are regarding the island--you see its contours; now shut your
eyes.
"'_Messieurs faites vo' jeu._'--There's the big fast Steamer that
has just run over from Marseille in ten hours with a full passenger
list of French, English, Russians, and Americans. Few have braved the
sea-trip just to idle about the _casino_ as they used to do near
Monaco. These are men and women who have come for hard business at the
tables, and who for the most part expect to break or be broke.
"There is a gorgeous hotel awaiting them at the head of the harbour,
where they dress and dine, and then out they go, down the avenues of
rustling date-palms (which bear electric lamps amongst their ochre
fruit-clusters), and so on, to the most sumptuous building in the
world, the new Cabreran _casino_.
"It differs hugely from the old temple of chance on the edge of the
Continent--that _enfer sur terre_ set amid a _paradis_. There
is no ornate concert-room here, or theatre or opera house. There is not
even a _salon_ for gossip and smoke and exercise. The whole is one
enormous _salle de jeu_, and the clink of gold against yellow gold
is the only instrumental music. The cartwheel five-franc piece is
nowhere permissible now, and at the _rouge et noir_ tables
hundred-franc notes are the smallest stake. There is a change in
everything except in the croupiers and the chefs, and the actual tables
and machinery over which they preside. Even the atmosphere is new. The
old dry heat is no more. In its place is a moist warmth, heavy with the
scent of heliotrope and tuba roses. It seems as if one of the scent
factories at Hyeres had staved its vats somewhere close at hand. Change
everywhere. Mesdemoiselles les cocottes----But I weary m'sieu' with my
twaddle. '_Rien ne va plus._' The farce is over.
"Regard that brown promontory yonder, the easternmost horn of Palma
Bay. With permission take my _lunette_. So; now you cannot fail to
see. A ship of the Romans laden with pottery struck there in time past,
filled, and went down in deep water. The fishermen often bring up in
their nets unbroken pieces from her cargo, crocks and pipkins identical
in shape and texture with those the islanders use to-day. Ah, m'sieu',
but they are ignorant, these Mallorcans, and happy in their ignorance.
Food is so easily gained that none need starve; they have the best
climate imaginable, free from the sirocco which plagues Algeria, and
from the mistral which kills one on the Riviera; they are too indolent
to meddle with politics; they live in a lotus-land of beauty and ease.
We should despise them, monsieur, but I fear many of us will envy their
lot."
The _Antiguo Mahones_ was threading her way through a fleet of
small fishing-boats, as I could tell by the reduced speed, the hooting
of the siren, and the constant and prolonged rattle of the steering
rods. Soon she would bring up to the quay in Palma harbour. Why should
I not get ashore there and work out the hard problem that was engaging
me?
So far I had made no scheme of ultimate route. The meeting at the Mahon
hotel with that cheery _chevalier d'industrie_ Haigh, and the
knowledge that that more robust brigand, his blustering, heavy-fisted
partner Cospatric, was close at hand, had given me little leisure to
plan far ahead. All my time was occupied in thinking how to fool the
one and keep out of sight of the other till I could make escape from
their immediate vicinage.
But having once cleared from the island, it seemed to me that all
probable danger of our future meeting was passed; at any rate, Mallorca
would be the most unlikely spot to run foul of them in. So when the
commercial traveller had turned away to look after his own affairs
again, I got hold of Sadi, and told him to pull our traps together and
pay up what we owed.
Sadi turned and set about fulfilling the order without a question. That
is the best of Sadi. He never wants to know the why or wherefore of
anything. Within limits he is the perfection of a servant for a man
such as me.
I had trusted Sadi with many things, and so far he had never failed me.
I felt sure that he liked me, which was more than I would have said for
any other member of the human race. But all the same, if he had seen it
worth his while to rob or betray, I'd a pretty strong notion that blood
instinct would prove too strong, and he'd do it. You see, Sadi's mother
was half Arab, half Portuguese; his father was all Portuguese--jail-bird
Portuguese; his youth had been spent in Marquez, which is on Delagoa
Bay; and these things do not breed immaculate honesty calculated to
stand every strain.
I may have wronged Sadi. As I say, he never failed me. But I felt that
there might reasonably be a limit to his faithfulness, and to let him
have the solving of that inscription which I carried about my person
locked in a fleckless photographic plate might very well have
outstepped that limit. It would have been a heavy test on an
archbishop's honesty.
So I did not intend to employ Sadi about this matter except as a last
resort. I wished to let this, the most valuable secret the world
contained, be known to no one except myself, if it could be so
contrived. I desired to get it stored within my brain alone, and then
to destroy the only other trace of it that was existent.
Yet labouring under my peculiar disadvantage, the task appeared a
hopelessly impossible one.
As I went down the gang-plank and ranged up against Sadi's elbow,
walking with him past the wine casks and other litter on Palma quay, it
seemed to me that after all I should have to accept the risk and
recruit this companion's aid. But such a decision was far too momentous
to be hurriedly jumped at. The Recipe was safely locked in the
yellow-green film. To most of the world its very existence was unknown,
and I did not think that either Haigh or Weems or Cospatric would ever
guess the manner in which it had been carried off and transferred to an
invisible shape. Yes, the dark slide and its contents seemed safe in my
possession, and as we entered the sacking-floored carriage that was to
take us up to our _Fonda_, I registered a resolve concerning it.
_Pace_ accidents, I would cudgel my own resources for one entire
year before I gave in and sought external aid.
At the Fonda de Mallorca I took, in Spanish fashion, a three-roomed
suite, and for one entire day did not move out of their whitewashed
fastnesses.
I sat thinking, thinking, and thinking, and felt my brain grow duller
with every effort.
"This will not do," I told myself. "I am used to fresh air, and
sunshine, and the sound of voices, and I must live amongst all these as
usual if I am to puzzle out this riddle. The answer, the key, if it
comes at all, will arrive in a snap and a sudden, and won't be got at
by tedious pondering in an uncomfortable hermitage."
So the next morning I spent on the roof chatting with a girl who was
hanging out clothes to dry on the roof adjoining, sniffing the scent of
the oranges which came from a roof-garden across the street, toasting
myself under the hot sun, and getting fanned by the sweet sea-air that
poured up over the housetops from the curved bay beyond.
A bell clanged below, and I went down the steps to luncheon. The
landlord, according to his wont with strangers who were entered as
_Senor_ and not as _Don_, intended that I should join the
drummers' mess; but I was in no particular mood for that racy assembly
just then, and bade Sadi take me to the dining-room at the other end of
the house, where I sat down amongst garrison officers, proprietors come
in from the country, and members of that bachelor fraternity which
lived at the club opposite, and had their two principal daily meals
here. They all knew one another, and had their well-worn cycle of
conversation. They were tolerably cultured men, who rose superior to
patois, and spoke pure and beautiful Castilian.
No one addressed me, and I did not open my mouth for speech. Probably
it never dawned upon them that I understood a word of their tongue. We
Anglo-Saxons abroad have not a reputation for being polyglot, and I
never advertise my own small linguistic attainments unless specially
called upon to do so. I do not care particularly for the trouble of
talking myself, and one scores sometimes by a taste for silence. I made
rather a good point that way once in a certain Genovese _caffe_.
When that _desayuno_ had progressed as far as cold pickled tunny,
which came as a fourth course, we had an addition to the party. There
was a light pattering of feet along the tiles to the doorway, and I
felt the men around me bow--as they bowed to each newcomer. I joined
them in the salute, and heard with surprise, as the fresh arrival went
round by the table-head, the rustle of skirts--of tweed skirts, or else
of rough serge, I could not be certain which.
She took a seat opposite to me. The waiter placed before her a basin of
soup. It was a Mallorquin soup, which consisted for the most part of
slices of bread and a few slips of greens soaked in a very thin stock,
with an egg broken over the whole so that the boiling mixture poached
it lightly. Also there was a little oil added--native rancid oil. This
sounds very nasty, but like the taste for olives, if a taste for that
soup is once developed, it fascinates. Myself, I like this soup. The
woman opposite did not. She told the waiter to take it away, naming it
by its proper Mallorquin name.
"The _arte de cocina_ of our island is not for every one's palate,
I fear, senora," observed one of the men beside her. "It is not every
foreigner who takes to it like your countryman _vis-a-vis_."
Till then I had been uncertain of her nationality, though I had had my
suspicions of it, for the Anglo-Saxon walk differs from the gait of the
southern nations; but on this slender introduction we dropped into
conversation, and spoke in English of those desultory matters which one
does chat upon to a casual hotel acquaintance.
We others had ended our meal before she was midway, and the Spaniards
had finished their cigarettes and coffee before she rose.
"You say, sir," said she, when she pushed the dish of burnt almonds
finally away and rolled her napkin into its ring--"you say, sir, that
you are staying here some time. So am I. It is my happiness to know the
island well. If I can be of any use to you, command me. I see, with
regret, that you are blind."
I'm afraid I frowned angrily. She had touched me on my only sore point.
"Madame," I said, "I congratulate you on your clear-sightedness. I
flatter myself that I conceal my blindness from most people. I dare lay
a heavy wager that none of the others who have been sitting round this
table has so much as guessed at it."
"I had--that is, I knew some one intimately, sir, whose eyesight had
been destroyed. So you see I naturally noticed trifles about you which
would escape others. But you may trust me not to mention a word about
it. _Adios, senor, y diez mil perdons._"
She rose and bowed. I did the same. I was angry with the woman and yet
attracted by her, and at the same time ashamed of being so. I suppose
these three conflicting emotions combined to make me careless. Anyway,
the next thing that happened was that I, who never stumbled, found
myself blundering over a rush-seated chair, and sweeping two
dessert-plates from the table as I clutched out to preserve my balance.
The waiter, who was in the room, rapped out a good round obscene oath
of surprise. Nothing but the woman's action could have prevented his
discovering my infirmity. She laughed amusedly, and said in Spanish,
"Why, senor, one might think you were blind. You should look to your
path even when you are very polite." And then she drew near me at the
corner of the table, and rested her elbow against mine as skilfully and
unobtrusively as Sadi himself could have done it.
"You see, I know better than to grip you by the arm," she said,
dropping into English again.
"You have a skill and tact that not one in a million possesses. I am
deeply grateful." We were at the foot of the stone stairs. I had my
hand on the slim iron rail.
"You will be able to get back to your rooms now?"
"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 passage 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 assented 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,
unobtrusive tact she made herself my eyes. Into her talk she infused
the tale of the quick and the still things we passed 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.