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 nobility, 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 classes 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 mañana 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 class 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 fé, 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 mañana, 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 noble 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 associate 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 passed. 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 mañana. 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.