After the manner of Spanish aristocrats when travelling, she was dressed in black, and carried a fan that seemed to go oddly with her smart hat. She had a beautiful figure, and the graceful carriage of her race. But an expression of discontent, as though she were already weary looking for something that might have been expected to happen but did not, lent an unbecoming droop to her well cut lips.
Her companion was a shrivelled little woman, whose gums were toothless and whose cheeks bore the pallor of enforced seclusion, but whose alert expression betokened generations of watchful patience. He would be an ingenious as well as an ardent lover whose attentions could escape the glint of those quiet eyes. A black mantilla covered her scant hair, a long semi-transparent shawl draped her narrow shoulders. In addition to her fan she held two parcels, one wrapped in green, the other in orange tissue-paper—a flimsy covering, surely, for a sea-passage.
We put ourselves in the care of the first porter who mounted the gangway—a handsome brigand with a slouch hat, curled moustaches, and yellow boots. Gathering up a mountain of light luggage in either hand, he tripped airily on shore, we meekly following.
A Spanish friend in London had recommended the Fonda de Mallorca (locally known as "Barnils'") as the best specimen of a typical Majorcan hotel, and there we had decided to stay until our plans for the next few months were matured.
As we left the harbour the hotel omnibus drew up in front of the Customs Office, and for the third and last time on the journey the solemn farce of the examination of our luggage was gone through. This time it was altogether perfunctory. Not an article was opened. The trunks, which followed on a cart, must have been treated with like trustful generosity, for their keys never left our possession.
As our baggage included a double supply of artist's materials requisite for a six months' stay, it turned the scale at three hundred pounds. Between Charing Cross and Paris the overweight was charged 15s. 6d. From Paris to Barcelona we paid 35 francs. From there to Palma it travelled free. But though we saw fellow-travellers in variant stages of exasperation over vexatious claims, we paid no duty anywhere. Even the China tea that, unknown to my men-folk, I had smuggled, travelled unsuspected. And as tea in Majorca is a ransom, and Indian at the best, I had, while my small store lasted, an unfailing sense of satisfaction in my contraband possession.
The Hôtel Barnils gave us a cordial welcome. The grateful fragrance of hot coffee was in the air as we were taken upstairs and delivered into the care of Pedro, the chamber-man, who was smoking a cigarette as he cleaned the tiled corridors with a basin of damp sawdust and an ineffectual-looking broom.
Our suite of rooms on the second floor consisted of a tiny salon, from which on either side opened a bedroom. The smaller had a window to the Calle del Conquistador, the larger overlooked the inner courtyard with its potted palms and ginger-plants. All three rooms were papered alike in a pattern of large black and brown leaves on a yellow ground. The effect was decidedly bizarre. To those of a melancholy temperament it would assuredly have proved trying, even though there was a certain relief in the collection of French coloured lithographs that further adorned the walls.
Our sitting-room, which, like the bedrooms, was paved with tiles, had a tall window that opened to the floor and was guarded by an iron railing. It had two red-covered easy-chairs, four fawn brocade small chairs, and a round table with a yellow and drab tablecloth.
In an amazingly brief space we were seated round that table drinking coffee out of tall glasses, and making acquaintance with the enciamada, a local breakfast dainty which is neither pastry, bread, nor bun, yet appears to enjoy something of the good qualities of all three. In form it somewhat resembles the fossil known to our nursery days as an ammonite. To picture a nicely baked and browned ammonite that has been well dusted with icing-sugar is to see an enciamada.