“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.”
CHAPTER V. THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.
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.