“Yes,” replied Fitz simply, “if you like.”
“It is better so, my son”--the padre took a pinch of snuff--“because--he was not of my Church. You will stay here, you and your friend. She, the Señorita Eve, cannot be left alone, with her grief.”
He spoke Spanish, knowing that the Englishman understood it.
They drew down the blinds and passed out on to the terrace, where they walked slowly backwards and forwards, talking over the future of Eve and of the Casa d’Erraha.
In Spain, as in other southern lands, they speed the parting guest. Two days later Edward Challoner was laid beside his father and grandfather in the little churchyard in the valley below the Casa d’Erraha. And who are we that we should say that his chance of reaching heaven was diminished by the fact that part of the Roman Catholic burial service was read over him by a Spanish priest?
Fitz had telegraphed to Eve’s only living relative, Captain Bontnor, and Fitz it was who stayed on at the Casa d’Erraha until that mariner should arrive; for the doctor was compelled to return to his ship at Port Mahon, and the priest never slept in another but his own little vicarage house.
And in the Casa d’Erraha was enacted at this time one of those strange little comedies that will force themselves upon a tragic stage. Fitz deemed it correct that he should avoid Eve as much as possible, and Eve, on the other hand, feeling lonely and miserable, wanted the society of the simple-minded young sailor.
“Why do you always avoid me?” she asked suddenly on the evening after the funeral. He had gone out on to the terrace, and thither she followed him in innocent anger, without afterthought. She stood before him with her slim white hands clasped together, resting against her black dress, a sombre, slight young figure in the moonlight, looking at him with reproachful eyes.
He hesitated a second before answering her. She was only nineteen; she had been born and brought up in the Valley of Repose amidst the simple islanders. She knew nothing of the world and its ways. And Fitz, with the burden of the unique situation suddenly thrust upon him, was, in his chivalrous youthfulness, intensely anxious to avoid giving her anything to look back to in after years when she should be a woman. He was tenderly solicitous for the feelings which would come later, though they were absent now.
“Because,” he answered, “I am not good at saying things. I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am for you.”