第66章

Our third partner was Roger P.de la S-, the most Scandinavian-looking of Provencal squires, fair, and six feet high, as became a descendant of sea-roving Northmen, authoritative, incisive, wittily scornful, with a comedy in three acts in his pocket, and in his breast a heart blighted by a hopeless passion for his beautiful cousin, married to a wealthy hide and tallow merchant.He used to take us to lunch at their house without ceremony.I admired the good lady's sweet patience.The husband was a conciliatory soul, with a great fund of resignation, which he expended on "Roger's friends." I suspect he was secretly horrified at these invasions.

But it was a Carlist salon, and as such we were made welcome.The possibility of raising Catalonia in the interest of the REY NETTO, who had just then crossed the Pyrenees, was much discussed there.

Don Carlos, no doubt, must have had many queer friends (it is the common lot of all Pretenders), but amongst them none more extravagantly fantastic than the Tremolino Syndicate, which used to meet in a tavern on the quays of the old port.The antique city of Massilia had surely never, since the days of the earliest Phoenicians, known an odder set of ship-owners.We met to discuss and settle the plan of operations for each voyage of the Tremolino.

In these operations a banking-house, too, was concerned - a very respectable banking-house.But I am afraid I shall end by saying too much.Ladies, too, were concerned (I am really afraid I am saying too much) - all sorts of ladies, some old enough to know better than to put their trust in princes, others young and full of illusions.

One of these last was extremely amusing in the imitations, she gave us in confidence, of various highly-placed personages she was perpetually rushing off to Paris to interview in the interests of the cause - POR EL REY! For she was a Carlist, and of Basque blood at that, with something of a lioness in the expression of her courageous face (especially when she let her hair down), and with the volatile little soul of a sparrow dressed in fine Parisian feathers, which had the trick of coming off disconcertingly at unexpected moments.

But her imitations of a Parisian personage, very highly placed indeed, as she represented him standing in the corner of a room with his face to the wall, rubbing the back of his head and moaning helplessly, "Rita, you are the death of me!" were enough to make one (if young and free from cares) split one's sides laughing.She had an uncle still living, a very effective Carlist, too, the priest of a little mountain parish in Guipuzcoa.As the sea-going member of the syndicate (whose plans depended greatly on Dona Rita's information), I used to be charged with humbly affectionate messages for the old man.These messages I was supposed to deliver to the Arragonese muleteers (who were sure to await at certain times the Tremolino in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Rosas), for faithful transportation inland, together with the various unlawful goods landed secretly from under the Tremolino's hatches.

Well, now, I have really let out too much (as I feared I should in the end) as to the usual contents of my sea-cradle.But let it stand.And if anybody remarks cynically that I must have been a promising infant in those days, let that stand, too.I am concerned but for the good name of the Tremolino, and I affirm that a ship is ever guiltless of the sins, transgressions, and follies of her men.