In Gibraltar, we stayed at the Club House Hotel. Our rooms looked out over the sea, where, before us, lay a mountain range bathed in light, and on the far side of the strait, obscured by mist, lay Africa.
We set out at once on a sight-seeing tour in one of Gibraltar’s famous carts, which consist of two parallel benches, back to back, mounted lengthwise over a pair of huge wheels, and each cart is drawn by a fast, sturdy English horse, which, having lived for some time among Spaniards, has acquired a cantankerous streak!
The finest scenic drive in Gibraltar is a road that encircles the mountainside, halfway up the slope above the city, and which is bordered by cottages whose gardens and orchards are filled with exotic plants from the Orient: aloes, prickly pear, cacti and palm trees; and down below, glimpsed through the foliage, lies the luminous blue stillness of the Mediterranean.
The countess was enchanted; the generous light, the sun-burnished water, the contemplative silence of the clear blue sky, the purple mists on the mountains, the lush vegetation; everything provoked in that poor shrunken soul an unexpected enthusiasm for life. She laughed, and her eyes sparkled; she was full of an irrepressible energy that made her feel like breaking into a run.
We went and sat in the Gibraltar Gardens, where the English had rather overdone the military theme. Instead of fountains, there were statues of generals; a tangle of roses covered the pyramids of cannon balls; and the cannon sat foolish and impassive beneath the magnolia trees. But it was so peaceful there! Such a divine, absorbed silence! Such an air of immortality! It seemed that everything, the plants, the earth, the light, had stopped, plunged deep in meditation, suspended, listening, noiselessly breathing! Below lay the shining sea, as delicate and smooth as satin. In the distance, wrapped in a vaporous blue haze, we could see the craggy outline of the Atlas Mountains. Nothing moved, apart from the occasional dove flying past, ineffably serene. At one point, from a passing regiment of Highlanders, came the sound of bagpipes playing melancholy airs from the mountains of Scotland. And those sweet, ethereal notes seemed to us like the sonorous inhabitants of the air.
The countess had remained seated and silent, soaking up the marvellous serenity, the beauty of the light, the slumbering sea, the keen scents.
‘Wouldn’t you agree,’ she said, ‘that it makes one feel like dying, right here, very quietly, alone…’
‘Alone?’ I asked.
She smiled, her eyes fixed on the lovely backdrop of the bright horizon.
‘Alone?’ she said: ‘No.’
‘Be careful, fair cousin, be careful!’ I warned. ‘You start thinking thoughts like that and along comes an innocent little dream that pitches its tent in your heart and begins to burrow into it, and then, dear cousin, then…’
‘Then we have dinner,’ announced the count who was suddenly there beside us, all aglow because he had shaken the hand of an English colonel and picked a red cactus flower.
We went down to the hotel. After dinner, we ambled around the Plaza del Martillo. It was time to retire; an English brass band played a melancholy tune. Out at sea, we heard the sound of a gun being fired.
‘The mail boat for India has arrived,’ our guide explained. And from high up, a cannon replied with a thunderous echo.
‘Do the passengers come ashore the day they arrive?’ I asked.
‘The military almost always do, sir. They have the governor’s permission to disembark down below.’
When we returned to the hotel at ten o’clock, having strolled along the esplanades in the moonlight, we heard cheerful voices and corks popping, the unmistakable sounds of a gentlemen’s supper party. The countess went up to her room. The count and I went into the dining-room. British officers who had travelled from Southampton en route to the garrison in Malta had disembarked and were having supper.
We had sat down and were drinking beer, when I had occasion to hand a jar of mustard to one of the British officers sitting near me. I dropped the jar, spattering myself with mustard. The officer smiled sympathetically, I laughed at my own clumsiness, we struck up conversation and, by the end of the evening, were walking arm-in-arm together along the esplanade that ran along the sea front past the windows of the hotel. A wash of silent moonlight lent a spiritual quality to the splendid view of the mountains and the vast, motionless sea.
I had taken a liking to that English officer, because of the fine, noble cast of his face, the originality of his thinking, and a certain sad gravity of manner. He was a young artillery officer who had fought in India. The sun of Hindustan had tanned his fresh, pale countenance, deepened the colour of his eyes and given an intense tawny tinge to his fair hair.
We were strolling along, deep in conversation, when a window above us was suddenly flung open, and a woman in a white dressing-gown stepped out and leaned lightly on the balcony to gaze at the luminous horizon and the melancholy sea. It was the countess.
The moonlight wrapped about her, silvering her face and making her body seem somehow slighter, more ethereal, like that of a character out of ancient legend. Her hair tumbled generously about her in large, loose curls.
‘What a beautiful woman!’ exclaimed the British officer stopping to look, his eyes wide with admiration. ‘Who can she be?’
‘Actually, she’s my cousin,’ I said, laughing. ‘Married, of course. She’s the countess of W. She leaves tomorrow for Malta on the mail boat. I’ll introduce her to you on board, my friend, so you can amuse her with tales of India. The unfortunate young countess adores the Romantic. In Portugal, even our romances aren’t romantic. Tell me, have you ever hunted tigers, captain?’
‘Occasionally. Does your cousin speak English?’
‘Like a Portuguese, that is to say, very badly. But she hears with her eyes and always knows what you’re thinking.’
We went our separate ways.
‘I’ve arranged a lovely little romance for you, cousin,’ I said entering the room where the count was writing letters and smoking his pipe. ‘A romance in which we go tiger-hunting with rajahs, where there are temple dancers, forests of palm trees, English wars and elephants…’
‘I see. What’s his name?’
‘His name is Captain Rytmel, an artillery officer, twenty-eight years old, on his way to Malta; he has a fair moustache, a bit of India in his eyes, a lot of England in his eccentricity, and is, in short, a perfect gentleman.’
‘A beer-drinker!’ said the countess, pulling the petals off the cactus flower.
‘A beer-drinker!’ roared the count, looking up with comic indignation. ‘My dear, don’t say that in my presence, unless you want to turn my hair grey! I have the highest regard for the English and for beer. A beer-drinker indeed! A young fellow of such perfection!’ he murmured and continued scratching away with his pen.
At seven o’clock the following morning we went aboard the Ceylon, the Royal Mail ship for India. The Rock of Gibraltar, dragged early from its bed, was still wearing its nightcap of mist. There were already travellers and officers on deck. The boards were damp; there was a great confusion of baggage, baskets of fruit and caged birds; the gangway became choked with Gibraltarian hawkers. The countess retired to her cabin to rest for a while. At nine o’clock nearly all the passengers who had joined the ship at Gibraltar and those who had come with her from Southampton were up on deck; the smoke billowed, the small boats departed, the early mist had vanished, the sun lent a rosy tint to the white houses of Algeciras and San Roque, and from on shore came the sound of drum rolls.
The countess, seated on a carved Indian chair, was gazing out at the little Spanish villages strung out along the bay.
Captain Rytmel was some way off, chatting to the count, who was already enthusing over the captain’s dignified bearing, his adventures in India and the odd shape of the army hat that he wore with such unusual aplomb. The captain was holding a pencil and sketchbook in his hand.
‘Captain,’ I said, taking him by the arm, ‘I’m going to introduce you to my cousin, the countess. Hide your sketchbook, though, she’s a merciless drawer of caricatures.’
The countess held out a small, thin, nervous hand, with nails as smooth as Dieppe ivory.
‘My cousin tells me, Captain Rytmel, that you have a whole host of stories about India to regale me with. I must warn you now that I’m not going to let you leave out a single tiger or scrap of countryside. I want to hear everything! I adore India, the India of the Indians, of course, not that of the Englishmen. Have you been to Malta before? Is it nice?’
‘Malta, countess, is part Italy and part Levant. That’s what makes it so surprising. It has a strange, distinctive charm. Otherwise, it’s just a rock.’
‘Will you be staying long in Malta?’ asked the countess.
‘Only a week.’
The countess was nervously twisting her gloves; she looked up at Captain Rytmel, cleared her throat, and said quickly:
‘Oh, you must let me see your sketchbook.’
‘But, countess, it’s empty or almost empty, apart from a few line drawings and topographical notes.’
‘I don’t believe you. I bet you have some sketches of Indian landscapes, and there’s bound to be at least one tiger, if not a temple dancer!’
And with a charmingly triumphant gesture, she snatched the sketchbook from Captain Rytmel’s hand.
The captain turned crimson. The countess leafed rapidly through the book, then, suddenly, gave a little cry, blushed, and sat with the book open, her eyes moist and smiling, her lips parted. I looked: on the page was a drawing of a woman in a white dressing-gown, leaning on a balcony and looking out at a horizon of mountains and sea. It was a perfect portrait of the countess. He had seen her in that pose the evening before, in the moonlight, at the hotel window.
The count had joined us.
‘Why, it’s you, Luísa! But what talent! You really are an admirable fellow, captain. You’ve caught her to a T!’
‘Oh no, not at all!’ said the captain. ‘Last night at the hotel, I was sitting in my room with my sketchbook open, and the pencil, without my permission, without my intending it, did this drawing of its own accord. It’s this disobedient pencil that should be punished!’
‘What?’ bellowed the count. ‘It must be a magic pencil. Captain, I’ve decided that you will join us for dinner as soon as we arrive in Malta. I won’t let you get away, my dear chap. You will be our guide to the island. Yes, caught her to a T!’
And in Portuguese to the countess, he added:
‘A beer-drinker, eh?’
At that moment, a bell sounded for lunch.