A home where exiled angels might forbear
Awhile 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 open patio stands 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 gunboat Kittiwake.
Four months earlier, by one of those chances which seem no chance when
we look back to them, the Kittiwake had 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 the Kittiwake was 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 senorita 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
Senorita 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 the patio to 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 the Kittiwake, 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 Senorita'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.