All the educated classes speak Spanish fluently. Yet in most of the shops, even in Palma, and in the country districts, the native language prevails.
Very few of the working women understand Spanish. Their lives having been passed on the islands, they remain ignorant of any but their mother tongue; though it is common to find their menfolk speaking Spanish well, owing to their having been in the army, or to their having passed the period of voluntary exile that most of them serve almost as they do the demands of the State.
Those who know, say that Majorca is a bad place to learn Spanish in; that in order to have a good accent the intending traveller is best to acquire it elsewhere. And as Borrow says, you must open your mouth and take your hands out of your pockets to speak Spanish.
Before leaving London we tried, after a very desultory fashion, to pick up a little Spanish. The Boy, who took Berlitz lessons, got on famously and was our mainstay from the moment we crossed the Spanish frontier at Port Bou. But he declares that he had not been long in Palma before he found himself speaking Spanish with a Majorcan accent.
For my part, in point of language I found the direction of even so small an establishment as the Casa Tranquila very puzzling, especially at first. After carefully gleaning a knowledge of the Spanish coinage that enabled me to count up to say ten, in pesetas and centimos, it was bewildering to find sums calculated in reals and in perros grandes and perros pequeñas.
I shall never forget the first time Apolonia, the laundress, appeared to deliver up our clean linen and to receive her just recompense. When I inquired how much we owed her, Apolonia told me the sum, but she did it in Majorcan.
"Onza reals, cuatro centims, dos centims."
"Que vale en pesetas?" I asked, but Apolonia could not reckon in pesetas. Raising her stubby fingers, she proceeded to make cabalistic signs in the air, repeating the whole "Onza reals, cuatro centims, dos centims," in a voice that grew louder and louder, as though the more noise she made the more likely was she to pierce my thick understanding.
Maria, hearing the discussion, left her dusting, and running swiftly on her string-soled alpargatas, came to the rescue.
If matters had been bad before, they were now worse. Four hands were in the air. Two voices in Majorcan, that became momentarily more strident, kept repeating the tale of reals and centims until, feeling undecided whether to laugh or to cry, I cut the matter short by emptying the contents of my housekeeping purse on the table and imploring Apolonia to help herself.
After many protestations she agreed to do so. And with much reluctant and timorous hovering of her fingers over the coins, at last selected the exact sum; which, before taking possession of, she carefully spread before my eyes, calling upon Maria to witness that she had not abused my trust.
The calculations of Mundo, the vegetable man, were – if possible – more distracting; for having inherited the national characteristic of honesty to an almost unnatural degree, the worthy Mundo, in his desire to be strictly just in his dealings, had a way of splitting farthings that sometimes proved inexplicable, not only to his customers but also to himself.
How often, when he stood puzzling over some fraction of a penny, have I felt impelled to say rashly: "Bother the expense, Mundo. I'll make you a present of the half farthing!"
Fortunately for Mundo's opinion of my sanity, the spirit of economy that tinctures the balmy air of these Fortunate Isles prevented any such extravagant proceeding.
V
TWO HISTORIC BUILDINGS
After we were fairly settled in our house our first excursion naturally was to the Castle of Bellver, the ancient fortress that, from the veranda, we saw clearly silhouetted against the western sky.
The afternoon was glorious. The sky was a cloudless blue, the sunlight cast deep shadows; to drive there in one of the quaint, open-sided tramcars would have been a treat. But there had been thunder in the night, and the apprehensive authorities had decided that it was a day for bringing out the closed vehicles. So we sat in the stuffy little car, and drove out through crowded Santa Catalina and across the bridge that spanned the dry torrente of San Magin, and past the consumos sheds towards the Terreno, the favourite summer resort of Palma folks, whose charming villas clothe the slope leading to the steep hill on whose summit stands the old castle.
The sun was hot, the air exhilarating. Flowers – roses, zinnias, plumbago, chrysanthemums, geraniums – still bloomed in the villa gardens. To us it was a glorious summer day. To the Majorcans it was already winter. The pretty houses were nearly all empty. Their owners had returned to town.
The old road to the Castle is a stiff climb up a rocky slope. The new road is an excellent carriage drive that winds round the hill. We chose the steep way, and found ourselves frequently pausing and turning to look back across the sparkling waters of the bay to Palma, which at that moment was looking, as it so often does, like some celestial city.
The air was fragrant with the essence of the pines that clothed the slopes – at their feet tall pink heath and wild lavender were in bloom.
When Jaime the First built Bellver for a summer palace, he made it an invincible fortress. One thing only could one imagine as more difficult than getting into the Castle, and that would be getting out of it. Yet, had we so willed, on this balmy afternoon the hitherto impregnable stronghold with its deep moat, its implacable walls, might have been ours without even a show of resistance; for when we reached the gateway we found it open and unguarded.
But fortunately for the reputation of Bellver our mood was pacific; and we were content to linger without until an old woman, who had espied us as she was leaving the Castle with what was presumably the washing of the custodian in a chequered handkerchief under her arm, ran back calling loudly for "Bordoi."
Bordoi appeared in the person of the custodian of the Castle. He was an old soldier, gaunt, lean, courteous, and evidently possessing a genuine pride in his charge.
The first thing to which he called our attention was the grating set high over the entrance, through which, after the endearing fashion of their time, the occupants of the Castle were accustomed to shower a gentle hint to depart, in the form of arrows or boiling water, upon the heads of any visitors whose appearance they did not fancy.
The Castle, which is in the form of a circle, is built round a courtyard containing a great draw-well. Looking down, it was interesting to me to see that the moist sides of the interior were thickly coated with luxuriant maidenhair fern, such as we had years before noticed growing inside the mouth of the well in the house of the maker of amphoræ in Pompeii.
Reaching down his long arm, the custodian picked me a frond, explaining that it made a wholesome medicinal drink – "quite as good as sarsaparilla."
And here an odd query occurs to me. Does the office of caretaker conduce to dyspepsia, or does the enforced leisure of the occupation dispose to hypochondria? During a little journey through the Shakespeare country, for instance, it was impossible – even for such very polite people as ourselves – to avoid noticing the boxes of patent pills or of much-vaunted lotions that figured prominently amongst the private possessions of the people who showed us the places of interest.
The stern face of the old keep has frowned on many tragic sights. It was up these rocky slopes that the headless body of the third Jaime was borne, after his luckless attempt, at the battle of Lluchmayor, to wrest his kingdom from a usurper. And it was there, too, that the boy son who had fought so bravely by his father's side was carried, desperately wounded.
In more recent times Bellver has acted the part of a State prison. Political prisoners, numbering as many as three or four hundred at a time, have been immured within its massive walls. It was easy to picture them clustering in the spacious courtyard about the well, or pacing the open-sided gallery overlooking