‘I should deplore any method of settling the difficulty that deprived me of the services of an excellent coachman,’ murmured the countess.
‘But if he married my daughter he cannot continue to be your coachman,’ cried the duchess indignantly.
‘Are you going to give Pilar an income for them to live on?’
‘Me? Not a peseta. I told Pilar at once that she should get nothing from me. They can starve for all I care.’
Well, I should think rather than do that he will prefer to stay on as my coachman. There are very nice rooms over my stables.’
The duchess went pale. The duchess went red.
‘Forget all that has passed between us. Let us be friends. You can’t expose me to such a humiliation. If I’ve ever done things to affront you I ask you on my knees to forgive me.’
The duchess cried.
Dry your eyes, Duchess,’ the Frenchwoman said at last. ‘I will do what I can.’
‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘Perhaps. Is it true that Pilar has and will have no money of her own?’ Not a penny if she marries without my consent.’
The countess gave her one of her brightest smiles.
‘There is a common impression that southern people are romantic and northern people matter-of-fact. The reverse is true. It is the northerners who are incurably romantic. I have lived long enough among you Spaniards to know that you are nothing if not practical.’
The duchess was too broken to resent openly these unpleasant remarks, but, oh, how she hated the woman! The Countess de Marbella rose to her feet. ‘You shall hear from me in the course of the day.’
She firmly dismissed her visitor.
The carriage was ordered for five o’clock and at ten minutes to, the countess, dressed for her drive, sent for Jose. When he came into the drawing-room, wearing his pale grey livery with such an air, she could not deny that he was very good to look upon. If he had not been her own coachman-well, it was not the moment for ideas of that sort. He stood before her, holding himself easily, but with a gallant swagger. There was nothing servile in his bearing.
‘A Greek god,’ the countess murmured to herself ‘It is only Andalusia that can produce such types.’ And then aloud: ‘I hear that you are going to marry the daughter of the Duchess of Dos Palos.’
‘If the countess does not object.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
Whoever you marry is a matter of complete indifference to me. You know of course that Data Pilar will have no fortune.’
‘Yes, madam. I have a good place and I can keep my wife. I love her.’
‘I can’t blame you for that. She is a beautiful girl. But I think it only right to tell you that I have a rooted objection to married coachmen. On your wedding-day you leave my service. That is all I had to say to you. You can go.’
She began to look at the daily paper that had just arrived from Paris, but Jose, as she expected, did not stir. He stared down at the floor. Presently the countess looked up.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘I never knew madam would send me away,’ he answered in a troubled tone. ‘I have no doubt you’ll find another place.’
‘Yes, but ...’
‘Well, what is it?’ she asked sharply.
He sighed miserably.
‘There’s not a pair of mules in the whole of Spain to come up to ours. They’re almost human beings. They understand every word I say to them.’
The countess gave him a smile that would have turned the head of anyone who was not madly in love already.
‘I’m afraid you must choose between me and your betrothed.’
He shifted from one foot to the other. He put his hand to his pocket to get himself a cigarette, but then, remembering where he was, restrained the gesture. He glanced at the countess and that peculiar shrewd smile came over his face which those who have lived in Andalusia know so well.
‘In that case, I can’t hesitate. Pilar must see that this alters my position entirely. One can get a wife any day of the week, but a place like this is found only once in a lifetime. I should be a fool to throw it up for a woman.’
That was the end of the adventure. Jose Leon continued to drive the Countess de Marbella, but she noticed when they sped up and down the Delicias that henceforward as many eyes were turned on her handsome coachman as on her latest hat: and a year later Pilar married the Marques de San Esteban.
A MAN FROM GLASGOW
♦
It is not often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has the luck to witness such an incident as engaged Shelley’s attention when he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn’t look upon it as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an inclination to beat anyone.
I have never seen anything so exciting as that, but the first time I went to Algeciras I had an experience that seemed to me far from ordinary. Algeciras was then an untidy, neglected town. I arrived somewhat late at night and went to an inn on the quay. It was rather shabby, but it had a fine view of Gibraltar, solid and matter-of-fact, across the bay. The moon was full. The office was on the first floor, and a slatternly maid, when I asked for a room, took me upstairs. The landlord was playing cards. He seemed little pleased to see me. He looked me up and down, curtly gave me a number, and then, taking no further notice of me, went on with his game.
When the maid had shown me to my room I asked her what I could have to eat.
‘What you like,’ she answered.
I knew well enough the unreality of the seeming profusion.
‘What have you got in the house?’
‘You can have eggs and ham.’
The look of the hotel had led me to guess that I should get little else. The maid led me to a narrow room with white-washed walls and a low ceiling in which was a long table laid already for the next day’s luncheon. With his back to the door sat a tall man, huddled over a brasero, the round brass dish of hot ashes which is erroneously supposed to give sufficient warmth for the temperate winter of Andalusia. I sat down at table and waited for my scanty meal. I gave the stranger an idle glance. He was looking at me, but meeting my eyes he quickly turned away. I waited for my eggs. When at last the maid brought them he looked up again.
‘I want you to wake me in time for the first boat,’ he said.
‘Si, senor.’
His accent told me that English was his native tongue, and the breadth of his build, his strongly marked features, led me to suppose him a northerner. The hardy Scot is far more often found in Spain than the Englishman. Whether you go to the rich mines of Rio Tinto, or to the bodegas of Jerez, to Seville or to Cadiz, it is the leisurely speech of beyond the Tweed that you hear. You will meet Scotsmen in the olive groves of Carmona, on the railway between Algeciras and Bobadilla, and even in the remote cork woods of Merida.
I finished eating and went over to the dish of burning ashes. It was midwinter and the windy passage across the bay had chilled my blood. The man pushed his chair away as I drew mine forwards.
‘Don’t move,’ I said. ‘There’s heaps of room for two.’
I lit a cigar and offered one to him. In Spain the Havana from Gib is never unwelcome.
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ he said, stretching out his hand.
I recognized the singing speech of Glasgow. But the stranger was not talkative, and my efforts at conversation broke down before his monosyllables. We smoked in silence. He was even bigger than I had thought, with great broad shoulders and ungainly limbs; his face was sunburned, his hair short and grizzled. His features were hard; mouth, ears and nose were large and heavy and his skin much wrinkle
d. His blue eyes were pale. He was constantly pulling his ragged, grey moustache. It was a nervous gesture that I found faintly irritating. Presently I felt that he was looking at me, and the intensity of his stare grew so irksome that I glanced up expecting him, as before, to drop his eyes. He did, indeed, for a moment, but then raised them again. He inspected me from under his long, bushy eyebrows.
‘Just come from Gib?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going tomorrow-on my way home. Thank God.’
He said the last two words so fiercely that I smiled.
‘Don’t you like Spain?’
‘Oh, Spain’s all right.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Too long. Too long.’
He spoke with a kind of gasp. I was surprised at the emotion my casual inquiry seemed to excite in him. He sprang to his feet and walked backwards and forwards. He stamped to and fro like a caged beast pushing aside a chair that stood in his way, and now and again repeated the words in a groan. ‘Too long. Too long.’ I sat still. I was embarrassed. To give myself countenance I stirred the brasero to bring the hotter ashes to the top, and he stood suddenly still, towering over me, as though my movement had brought back my existence to his notice. Then he sat down heavily in his chair.
D’you think I’m queer?’ he asked.
‘Not more than most people,’ I smiled.
‘You don’t see anything strange in me?’
He leant forward as he spoke so that I might see him well.
‘No.’
‘You’d say so if you did, wouldn’t you?’
‘I would.’
I couldn’t quite understand what all this meant. I wondered if he was drunk. For two or three minutes he didn’t say anything and I had no wish to interrupt the silence.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked suddenly. I told him.
‘Mine’s Robert Morrison.’
‘Scotch?’
‘Glasgow. I’ve been in this blasted country for years. Got any baccy?’
I gave him my pouch and he filled his pipe. He lit it from a piece of burning charcoal.
‘I can’t stay any longer. I’ve stayed too long. Too long.’
He had an impulse to jump up again and walk up and down, but he resisted it, clinging to his chair. I saw on his face the effort he was making. I judged that his restlessness was due to chronic alcoholism. I find drunks very boring, and I made up my mind to take an early opportunity of slipping off to bed.
‘I’ve been managing some olive groves,’ he went on. ‘I’m here working for the Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Limited.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘We’ve got a new process for refining oil, you know. Properly treated, Spanish oil is every bit as good as Lucca. And we can sell it cheaper.’
He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact, business-like way. He chose his words with Scotch precision. He seemed perfectly sober.
‘You know, Ecija is more or less the centre of the olive trade, and we had a Spaniard there to look after the business. But I found he was robbing us right and left, so I had to turn him out. I used to live in Seville; it was more convenient for shipping the oil. However, I found I couldn’t get a trustworthy man to be at Ecija, so last year I went there myself D’you know it?’
‘No.’
‘The firm has got a big estate two miles from the town, just outside the village of San Lorenzo, and it’s got a fine house on it. It’s on the crest of a hill, rather pretty to look at, all white, you know, and straggling, with a couple of storks perched on the roof No one lived there, and I thought it would save the rent of a place in town if I did.’
‘It must have been a bit lonely,’ I remarked.
‘It was.’
Robert Morrison smoked on for a minute or two in silence. I wondered whether there was any point in what he was telling me.
I looked at my watch.
‘In a hurry?’ he asked sharply.
‘Not particularly. It’s getting late.’
‘Well, what of it?’
‘I suppose you didn’t see many people?’ I said, going back.
‘Not many. I lived there with an old man and his wife who looked after me, and sometimes I used to go down to the village and play tresillo with Fernandez, the chemist, and one or two men who met at his shop. I used to shoot a bit and ride.’
‘It doesn’t sound such a bad life to me.’
‘I’d been there two years last spring. By God, I’ve never known such heat as we had in May. No one could do a thing. The labourers just lay about in the shade and slept. Sheep died and some of the animals went mad. Even the oxen couldn’t work. They stood around with their backs all humped up and gasped for breath. That blasted sun beat down and the glare was so awful, you felt your eyes would shoot out of your head. The earth cracked and crumbled, and the crops frizzled. The olives went to rack and ruin. It was simply hell. One couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I went from room to room, trying to get a breath of air. Of course I kept the windows shut and had the floors watered, but that didn’t do any good. The nights were just as hot as the days. It was like living in an oven.
‘At last I thought I’d have a bed made up for me downstairs on the north side of the house in a room that was never used because in ordinary weather it was damp. I had an idea that I might get a few hours’ sleep there at all events. Anyhow it was worth trying. But it was no damned good; it was a washout. I turned and tossed and my bed was so hot that I couldn’t stand it. I got up and opened the doors that led to the veranda and walked out. It was a glorious night. The moon was so bright that I swear you could read a book by it. Did I tell you the house was on the crest of a hill? I leant against the parapet and looked at the olive-trees. It was like the sea. I suppose that’s what made me think of home. I thought of the cool breeze in the fir-trees and the racket of the streets in Glasgow. Believe it or not, I could smell them, and I could smell the sea. By God, I’d have given every bob I had in the world for an hour of that air. They say it’s a foul climate in Glasgow. Don’t you believe it. I like the rain and the grey sky and that yellow sea and the waves. I forgot that I was in Spain, in the middle of the olive country, and I opened my mouth and took a long breath as though I were breathing in the sea-fog.
‘And then all of a sudden I heard a sound. It was a man’s voice. Not loud, you know, low. It seemed to creep through the silence like-well, I don’t know what it was like. It surprised me. I couldn’t think who could be down there in the olives at that hour. It was past midnight. It was a chap laughing. A funny sort of laugh. I suppose you’d call it a chuckle. It seemed to crawl up the hill—disj ointedly’
Morrison looked at me to see how I took the odd word he used to express a sensation that he didn’t know how to describe.
‘I mean, it seemed to shoot up in little jerks, something like shooting stones out of a pail. I leant forward and stared. With the full moon it was almost as light as day, but I’m dashed if I could see a thing. The sound stopped, but I kept on looking at where it had come from in case somebody moved. And in a minute it started off again, but louder. You couldn’t have called it a chuckle any more, it was a real belly laugh. It just rang through the night. I wondered it didn’t wake my servants. It sounded like someone who was roaring drunk.
“‘Who’s there?” I shouted.
‘The only answer I got was a roar of laughter. I don’t mind telling you I was getting a bit annoyed. I had half a mind to go down and see what it was all about. I wasn’t going to let some drunken swine kick up a row like that on my place in the middle of the night. And then suddenly there was a yell. By God, I was startled. Then cries. The man had laughed with a deep bass voice, but his cries were-shrill, like a pig having his throat cut.
“My God,” I cried.
‘I jumped over the parapet and ran down towards the sound. I thought somebody was being killed. There was silence and then one piercing shriek. After that sobbing and moaning. I’l
l tell you what it sounded like, it sounded like someone at the point of death. There was a long groan and then nothing. Silence. I ran from place to place. I couldn’t find anyone. At last I climbed the hill again and went back to my room.
‘You can imagine how much sleep I got that night. As soon as it was light, I looked out of the window in the direction from which the row had come and I was surprised to see a little white house in a sort of dale among the olives. The ground on that side didn’t belong to us and I’d never been through it. I hardly ever went to that part of the house and so I’d never seen the house before. I asked Jose who lived there. He told me that a madman had inhabited it, with his brother and a servant.’
‘Oh, was that the explanation?’ I said. ‘Not a very nice neighbour.’
The Scot bent over quickly and seized my wrist. He thrust his face into mine and his eyes were starting out of his head with terror.
‘The madman had been dead for twenty years,’ he whispered.
He let go my wrist and leant back in his chair panting.
‘I went down to the house and walked all round it. The windows were barred and shuttered and the door was locked. I knocked. I shook the handle and rang the bell. I heard it tinkle, but no one came. It was a two-storey house and I looked up. The shutters were tight closed, and there wasn’t a sign of life anywhere.’
‘Well, what sort of condition was the house in?’ I asked.
‘Oh, rotten. The whitewash had worn off the walls and there was practically no paint left on the door or the shutters. Some of the tiles off the roof were lying on the ground. They looked as though they’d been blown away in a gale.’
‘Queer,’ I said.
‘I went to my friend Fernandez, the chemist, and he told me the same story as Jose. I asked about the madman and Fernandez said that no one ever saw him. He was more or less comatose ordinarily, but now and then he had an attack of acute mania and then he could be heard from ever so far laughing his head off and then crying. It used to scare people. He died in one of his attacks and his keepers cleared out at once. No one had ever dared to live in the house since.