The Grey Lady | Page 8

of the table.
The waiter explained in fluent Castilian the nature of the dish.
"I want to know if it's slugs," repeated the sailor, with a stout
simplicity.
One or two commercial travellers, possessing a smattering of English,
smiled openly, and an English gentleman seated at the side of the
inquirer leant gravely towards him.
"That is a preparation of fish," he explained. "You won't find it at all
bad."
"Thank you, sir," replied the old man, helping himself with an air of
relief which would have been extremely comic had it been shorn of its
pathos. "I am afraid," he went on confidentially, "of gettin' slugs to eat.
I'm told that they eat them in these parts."
"This," replied the other, with stupendous gravity, "is not the slug
season. Besides, if you did get 'em, I dare say you would be pleasantly
surprised."
"Maybe, maybe! Though I don't hold by foreign ways."
Such was the beginning of a passing friendship between two men who
had nothing in common except their country; for one was a peer of the
realm, travelling in Spain for the transaction of his own private affairs,

or possibly for the edification of his own private mind, and the other
was Captain John Thomas Bontnor, late of the British mercantile
service.
Being a simple-minded person, as many seamen are, Captain Bontnor
sought to make himself agreeable.
"This is the first time," he said, "that I have set foot in Spain, though
I've heard the language spoken, having sailed in the Spanish Main, and
down to Manilla one voyage likewise. It is a strange- sounding
language, I take it--a lot of jabbering and not much sense."
He spoke somewhat slowly, after the manner of one who had always
had a silent tongue until grey hairs came to mellow it.
The young man, his hearer, looked slightly distressed, as if he was
suppressing some emotion. He was rather a vacuous-looking young
man--startlingly clean as to countenance and linen. He was shaven, and
had he not been distinctly a gentleman, he might have been a groom.
He apparently had a habit of thrusting forward his chin for the purpose
of scratching it pensively with his forefinger. This elegant trick
probably indicated bewilderment, or, at all events, a slight
mystification--he had recourse to it now--on the question of the Spanish
language.
"Well," he answered gravely, "if you come to analyse it, I dare say
there is as much sense in it as in other languages--when you know it,
you know."
"Yes," murmured the captain, with a glowing sense of satisfaction at
his own conversational powers. He felt he was becoming quite a
society man.
"But," pursued the hereditary legislator, "it's tricky--deuced tricky. The
nastiest lot of irregular verbs I've come across yet. Still, I get along all
right. Worst of it is, you know, that when I've got a sentence out all
right with its verbs and things, I'm not in a fit state to catch the answer."
"Knocks you on to your beam-ends," suggested Captain Bontnor.
"Yes."
Lord Seahampton settled his throat more comfortably in his spotless
collar, and proceeded to help himself to a fourth mutton cutlet.
"Staying here long?" he inquired.
"No, not long," answered Captain Bontnor slowly, as if meditating;
then suddenly he burst into his story. "You see, sir," he said, "I'm

getting on in years, and I'm not quite the build for foreign travel. It sort
of flurries me. I'm a bit past it. I'm not here for pleasure, you know."
This seemed to have the effect of sending Lord Seahampton off into a
brown study--not apparently of great value so far as depth of thought
was concerned. He looked as if he were wondering whether he himself
was in Barcelona for pleasure or not.
"No," he murmured encouragingly,
"It is like this," pursued Captain Bontnor, confidentially. "My sister,
Amelia Ann, married above her."
"Very much to her credit," said Lord Seahampton, with a stolid face
and a twinkle in his eye. "And--"
"Died."
"Dear, dear!"
"Yes," pursued the captain, "she died nineteen years ago, leaving a little
girl. He's dead now--Mr. Challoner. He's my brother-in-law, but I call
him Mr. Challoner, because he's above me."
"I trust he is," said Lord Seahampton, cheerfully, with a glance at the
painted ceiling. "I trust he is."
The captain chuckled. "I mean in a social way," he explained. "And
now he's dead, his daughter Eve is left quite alone in the world, and she
telegraphed for me. She is living in the Island of Majorca."
"Ah!"
The kindly old blue eyes flashed round on his companion's face.
"Do you know it?"
The peer thrust forward his chin and spoilt what small claims he had to
good looks.
"No; I've heard of it, though. I know of a wom--a