Like lutes of angels, touched so near
Hell'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 Senor 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 ingenuous parti, "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."