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Updated: May 20, 2025
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?
"Three generations ago," he said, "a Count de Lloseta, the grandfather of this present excellency, made over on 'rotas' the estate and house known as the Val d'Erraha to the grandfather of the late Cavalier Challoner a Captain Challoner, one of Admiral Byng's men." Again he paused, arranging his papers. "The Majorcan system 'rotas' is known to your excellency?" "No, senor."
Fitz stayed where he was, standing by the dead man, looking down at the priest's bowed head, while the bell of the little chapel attached to the Casa d'Erraha told the valley that a good man had gone to his rest. We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds. The priest was the first to speak. "You are his friend, I also; but we are of different nations."
"MY DEAR MISS CHALLONER, I learn that you are in Barcelona, and at the same time I find with some indignation that my lawyer in Mallorca, with a deplorable excess of zeal, has been acting without my orders in respect to the property of the Val d'Erraha.
The Casa d'Erraha has not changed in any way nothing changes in the Balearics. The same soft Southern odours creep up from the valley to battle with the strong resinous scent of the pines that crown the mountains. Eve had been a year in D'Erraha the whole of her married life. The Count de Lloseta placed the house at their disposal for the honeymoon.
"Yes," said one of them the younger of the two and he glanced at his watch. "I gave her an hour." The elder man took the dead woman's hand in his. He released the envelope from her grasp and read the superscription, "Recipe for apple jelly." With a grave smile he handed the envelope to Eve as Fitz took her out of the room. They went downstairs together, and both were thinking of D'Erraha.
Then he raised his eyes to the old city towering on the hillside above them, the city that has not changed these six hundred years, and he smiled a wan smile. "I have brought a horse for you," said Fitz, "either to ride back to D'Erraha with me now or to take you to Lloseta, should you care to go direct there.
Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty pounds a year, and Eve accepted for her uncle. Besides this she had a little ready money the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa d'Erraha. A person who looked like a butler or a major- domo had gone over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves.
The Count rode alone beneath the gloom of the maritime pines which grow to their finest European stature on the northern slope of D'Erraha. He had been in the saddle all day; but Cipriani de Lloseta was a Spaniard, and a Spaniard is a different man when he has thrown his leg across a horse.
"No such luck for her," said Rosa's cousins and aunts, who were dotted all up the slopes of the valley on either side in their little stone cottages; right up from the river to the Val d'Erraha that sunny valley of repose which lies far above the capital of Majorca, far above the hum of life and sound of the restless sea.
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