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MRS. KEITH'S CRIME

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI

 

IT is very exciting to look at Malaga. I stand and drink it in with my eyes. What does it matter if the houses are ugly and gaunt? There behind are the great mountains, and the bright green vegetation glowing in the light, and above is the blue sky, and all about it is the sunshine--the blessed sunshine that is to make my little child well. I turn and look at her, and as our eyes meet we laugh like two children glad to be together, and full of thankfulness that we are here.

            A quarter of an hour later, while Miss Martin is still getting Mrs. Greenside's many packages together, Molly and I go down the gangway steps and row to the Spanish shore. I wonder if I shall ever forget the noise and fuss and discomfort of this landing? And yet I do not mind any of it ; it amuses me, and the strangeness and newness of everything fascinate me just as they do Molly, who clings to me, and looks up at me with grave eyes wide open and bewildered, not knowing whether to laugh or to be afraid. There is no custom-house. Our luggage is examined there in the street, while we look on, and the dirty black-eyed beggar boys lean over the rail  put to prevent them from crowding round too closely. At last we manage to get into a jolting fly, and the porters and boatmen lift up our luggage, and with much earnestness cheat us right and left before they let us drive off to the hotel.

            Mr. Murray was to have been with us, and promised to help us land, but a fireman on board the ship injured his hand, and he stayed behind to see what could be done. But we are all safe now, I think, as we drive away, and look curiously around to see what this new land to which we have come is like. It is not as yet inviting. The streets are dirty, the houses low ; we pass no handsome buildings, no gay cafés as at Marseille ; there are no trees till we get to the Alameda, and there they look dusty and miserable, and the beneath them is dirty and ill-kept. Altogether, it looks as cheerless a place for wintering in as can well be imagined. There is a cold north-easterly wind blowing, too ; at sea we did not feel it, but here it meets us as we turn the corners of the narrow, unsavoury streets. My heart misgives me, but still I will not be dismayed. Is there not a blue sky overhead, and surely that will see my little Molly get, and what else matters? Suddenly the excitement fails, a mist gathers about all things, and I remember that I have been suffering pain these hours past, though I have hardly noticed it.

            ' Mother dear,' Molly whispers, as we stop at the hotel, ' your face is so white. Are you ill, darling?' and she pushes her hand into mine.

            I look round and see some dirty boys watching us. There is a beggar who holds up a diseased arm ; there is a man leaning against the doorpost. I can see a little way into the hall of the hotel--it is ugly and dirty ; and then all things swim softly away, and I can see the blue water and the ship, and it is all so beautiful, only I am choking ; and where is Molly?

            Is Molly gone?

 

            We are sitting, in a little room, evidently just inside the hotel. It looks like the porter's room. There is a half-bottle of wine on the table, and a half-finished plateful of untempting-looking food. Outside the door is our luggage. Some ragged children peep in from the street ; I can see the people passing to and fro. Molly has been crying, and clings to me in fear ; she kisses me as I look wonderingly around and try to remember what it all means. There is a dark man standing by me, with a look of patient waiting on his face, as if he had been politely wasting his time till it should please me to come to my senses again.

            ' Is anything the matter?' I ask.

            The dark man bows and goes leisurely to the door, and, looking up and down the hall, makes a strange sound which my little knowledge of Spanish will not permit me to understand. It results in the coming of a fair man with a red moustache, and a heavy watch-chain so evidently false that it catches my eye the moment he appears. He is English, and the the interpreter to the hotel.

            ' Is anything the matter?' I repeat.     

            ' You were faint, madam,' he answers, with a bow and smile, as though he were making some pleasant little remark. ' The fatigue of the journey, perhaps. You are better, and would like to see your rooms, madam? We have sent for the English doctor, but he is not yet here. You would like to see him in your room?'

            Molly clings to me and caresses my hand as we go up the bare, unswept stairs. Was ever place so unwelcoming in the civilised world as this Spanish one? Slowly following the Englishman and the Spaniard, who seems to be the landlord, we pass the salle-á-manger on the first floor ; it looks dark and haunted by flies. On the whitewashed walls we can see what appears to be the advertisement of a bullfight. We got up another flight of stairs, and stop before a door. We wait till the landlord succeeds in unlocking it, and opens one half of it, and then we enter, Molly and I, and look round. It is a large room, with a dusty red tile floor. It contains two beds in an alcove, and a table is in the middle of the room ; against the wall there is a large worm-eaten sofa covered with faded green velvet. Everything is worn out and tawdry and uncomfortable. We go to the windows and look out. There is the Alameda stretching along the middle of the wide space between us and the opposite houses. On either side the Alameda are the broken-down carriages, the beggars, and the people who are not beggars and yet do not look one whit more cheerful than their less prosperous fellows. I think of the French people, and the Italians, and the Swiss, and wonder why the Spaniards look so different. There is a row of houses on the other side of the Alameda, but it is not picturesque ; nothing is. As yet everything is ugly and disappointing, and I begin to think with dismay that this not the place in which Molly will get well.

            The landlord disappears, and I sit down on the faded sofa, and, taking Molly on my lap, try hard to keep back the tears that weakness and disappointment are forcing into my eyes. But this is foolish. We came for the sky, not for the houses of the furniture. Why should I lose heart because the streets are dusty and the rooms are ugly?

            ' Dear little Molly,' I say, ' we will be very happy here ; but do not quite believe myself.

            In half an hour Dr. Murray comes, and as I look at him I feel thankful that we are not to be in his hands for the winter. He is older by ten years than the brother who has just arrived. He is tall and grave, with cold grey eyes and a well-shaved chin. He has a way of looking at you as though he could see you through and through, and he makes you feel while you are speaking to him, as if you were not altogether accurate, and that knowing this he coldly made allowance for it. For all this, there is something in his manner that impresses you with his skill ; you dislike him, but you feel an unwilling confidence in his power. He asks what is the matter, and looks at me curiously and silently while I hurriedly tell him that nothing is the matter except that I have been tired, and have fainted from fatigue, I suppose, and anxiety about my child. I was always impatient of doctoring for myself, and never could take the trouble to carry out directions, but when I have been ill have always got well as best I could, and from mere strength of my own will.

            Dr. Murray is apparently satisfied with my account, though I feel that he does not altogether believe it ; he prescribes a tonic, and then he looks at Molly. He reads the letter I have brought from Dr. Finch, and says he will come with his brother to examine her to-morrow. It will be better that they should do so together, as she is to be his brother's patient. He says, in a cold, confident voice, that a child's life is a thing never to be despaired of--which, while it shows that he recognised the gravity of Dr. Finch's report, gives me hope and courage. And then he remarks that we have come to the wrong hotel--that this is not the best place, though it is kept by respectable people ; and I tell him how disappointing Malaga is as far as I have seen it, that it looks like the dreariest, ugliest place in the world for sick folk to get well in, and that I had hoped we should be in the country.

            ' Perhaps you would like Zahra better,' he says politely. ' It is a little place four or five miles from Malaga, along the shore. There is an inn there, quite Spanish, but comfortable and clean. A good many Spaniards stay there in the summer for the bathing, and English people have had a fancy for it last year and this. It is warm and sheltered, and there are some pretty walks, which there are not around Malaga.'

            ' Why do people come to Malaga?' I ask.

            ' Simply for the climate,' he answers. ' There is nothing else.'

            ' But we should be so far from a doctor if we went to this other place.'

            ' No, for my house is at Zahra,' he answers, ' and my brother will live in it this winter. I merely come into Malaga every day, and at night if I am wanted they have to send a man on horseback after me.'

            ' And it is pretty?'

            ' It is interesting, as all places are where the Moors have been. I don't know, of course, if the Moorish traditions interest you ; they do most people. Unfortuantely, they have left few traces of any kind at Zahra. An old Welshman, Udal ap Rhys, who described it in some travels he wrote a great many years ago, said it was a cultivated garden full of flowers and fruit, with a climate that was truly blessed ; but this is no longer true of it, except in regard to the climate.'

            ' Why is this?'

            He shrugs his shoulders, and looks as if he did not wish to be led into a discussion. ' The last thing a Spaniard does is to take care of the land,' he answers.

' But, as I say, it has a fine climate, and it is free from the dust and smells of Malaga. I will leave you to think it over, Mrs. Keith ; ' and he looks as if he wishes to go.

            ' There are some English at the inn at Zahra?' I ask, anxious to be satisfied on that point.

            ' Fonda de Madrid it is called. Several English people are there : Lord and Lady Bexley, and some very nice people called Vincent.' Vinvent? They are Alice Grey's friends.

            ' Is a Mr. Ralph Bicknell staying there?' I ask quickly, suddenly remembering my old playfellow, and thinking it would be pleasant to see him again.

            Dr. Murray looks at me coldly for a moment, as if he disapproved of the question, though I do not know why he should. It makes the colour come to my face, not on Ralph Bicknell's account, but becaue of Dr. Murray's seeming disapproval.

            ' He may be,' he answers, ' but I don't know him by name. Several people have been there this winter. But you had better rest here for a few days, Mrs. Keith,' he says, in a distant, professional tone. ' To-morrow my brother and I will come and see you child.'

            After he has gone, Miss Martin comes to the door to ask after Molly, and if she may help me to unpack. I refuse the offered kindness, but am grateful enough to her ; and then Molly, standing by the window, cries out for joy at sight of a water-carrier, and the nect moment something else takes her fancy, and she exclaims, ' Oh, mother, the ladies in the street have no bonnets on--only lace things, and they are so pretty.'

            What a world of triffles it is. Passing a looking-glass, I lift Molly up in my arms and stand before it. We both look better, and suddenly I laugh out just as I did at Marseille, for the new hope is strong in me, and she looks as if she would get well. And then all the world will grow bright again, and we shall be happy once more. It is not coldness, it is not forgetfulness, but I am so sated with sorrow ; I am young and full of life, and my heart hungers and cries out for happiness, and longs for it as a starving soul for food. Get well, little Molly ; get well, my sweet, and we will be happy together.

            Molly is going to dine at the table d'hôte with the rest on this first evening. As we enter the dining-room the dark-haired Spaniards turn and look at her, and my knowledge of Spanish is enough to let me understand when one of them says that she is beautiful, and that her hair is like the sunshine. The other Spaniard says it is like her mother's hair, and I am as pleased to be admired once more as if all the world were before me still, and sorrow and I were strangers.

 

 

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