"Then tell me, Mr. Pether, were you a registered diamond merchant out there?"
"I was. I swear I was. Had I been there for Illicit Diamond Buying I should have deserved all I got, and more besides. But after being blinded, where was the use of trying to retaliate? of proving it was all a mistake? of pressing for a money recompense? Imprisoning a man, or fining him, or even blinding him in turn, could not restore my eyes."[3 ]
And then I went on to tell her how it was a pure platonic love for diamonds themselves that had turned me to trade in those lovely stones; how their iridescent glitter delighted my eye, and how the very act of handling them in their dull, rough, uncut state was a joy to me that almost amounted to monomania. The theme pleased her, and she asked me to go on. I had not spoken of diamonds once during all those long years of darkness, and to discourse about them again to any one who took the obvious interest in them that she did was for me an indulgence nothing short of delicious. And when we parted for the night, and I found myself once more alone, I was almost surprised that I had said nothing about this new enterprise in the diamond industry which fortune had thrown in my way. "I feel sure," I told myself, "that she will share this great secret. She is the one person in this world for me to trust. But I cannot part with it yet. Besides, I have only known her two days. Time enough when we get back to Palma."
We went out afoot after breakfast next morning, and during all that day I revelled in the beauties of Miramar, the finest piece of cliff and coast scenery in Europe. There is one of the many watch-towers here, a gray old building whose architect was dead before the Pharaohs or even the Phœnicians began to pile stones together, and yet the old citadel has not bent one inch to all that string of time. We ascended half-way outside up a ladder, and entered a small domed chamber. Then we climbed together on to the roof, which is half a covered sentry-house, half a balustraded lookout post. We could hear the rattle of the surf creaming away twelve hundred feet below, and could look down almost sheer into the many-hued blue water; and behind there were mountains rising steeply up into the clouds. The view was incomparable.
Then we went down again, winding along a narrow path that was edged with flowering heath, and gained a jutting crag which seemed almost to overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof, and over the altar was the marble effigy of a man of years.
I do not know why it was, but as we stood on the balcony outside that tiny chapel, leaning over the rail, and listening to the murmur of the woods beside and of the waters beneath us, I almost felt impelled to there and then show my companion that little wooden case I carried in my breast-pocket, and tell her of the vast and wonderful secret it contained. In fact, I believe it was the very greatness of the impulse which made me resist it. I am the last man to be called superstitious, but it seemed to me then that old Lully's shade was hovering near his birthplace, and was busying itself in my direction. I did not like the guidance, and so resisted it; and directly afterwards we strolled back across the bridge, and on through the woods again.
I cannot, I will not tell in detail how the next few days passed. The little idyl concerns no one but myself—and one other—and there is no reason to desecrate them by bawling its delicate folds abroad. Suffice it to say that we went on through Deya to Soller, and then taking mules, climbed the mountain passes to the convent of Nuestra Señora de Lluch.
"You can stay here if you choose," observed my companion, as our mules drank out of the fountain basin in the courtyard. "Inside the big doorway yonder is written up 'Silencio' and 'Vir prudens tacebit,' but the monks are not overstrict, and, like the Archduke at Miramar, they offer free hospitality to all wayfarers. If you have never stayed in a convent of this kind before, the experience will amuse you."
"And you?"
"Oh, I shall go on to Pollensa, and you can join me there, if you choose, to-morrow."