Part 3

By this time the fruit was put on the table. All the other guests had left the room except the priest and the professor, who were playing a game of dominoes. A large melon was placed before J. He looked at me as he cut it:

“You remember what I have always said? Till you come to Spain it is impossible to know what a melon can be.”

“No earthly melon can taste as good as this one smells,” said Patsy. “It is as if all the spices of Arabia had been let loose in this room!”

The servants had withdrawn, the clatter of the dishes had ceased. Some one opened a window; from the garden came the music of a guitar played by a master hand, a man’s voice singing a song of Andalusia:

“_Me han dicho que tu te casas,_ _y asi lo dice la gente,_ _todo sera en un dia_ _tu casamiento y mi muerte._”

(They have told me thou art to wed, so people say; all shall be in one day, thy marriage and my death.)

Don Jaime’s thimbleful of gin and his two cups of black coffee--he ate scarcely anything--had waked him up wonderfully. He smoked, with my permission, between the courses throughout lunch, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the phenomenally long nail of his little finger; his hands were white, handsome, and exquisitely kept. Lunch over and the serenade finished, Don Jaime settled his old black _sombrero_ jauntily on the side of his head, buttoned up his threadbare coat--its darning was a work of art--and declared himself ready to show us the town.

“You would like to paint it red, wouldn’t you?” said Patsy.

“White better is suited to that climate,” said Don Jaime. _His_ slang was current in the England of the sixties, and he took ours literally, but he laughed buoyantly because Patsy laughed.

Algeciras is a clean, pretty town, with neat, whitewashed houses, handsome iron gratings to doors and casements, and curious metal gargoyles and gutters painted green. Here and there from a window, or, in the more important houses, from a balcony like a small grated out of doors boudoir, leaned a handsome Algeciras girl, her dark, smooth hair beautifully dressed, with a bright flower worn over the middle of the forehead,--a pink rose, a white camelia, or one of the gorgeous red or yellow carnations one must come to Andalusia to see. We walked in the _alameda_, a well laid out promenade, with neat little gardens, each with a small pavilion on either side. We loitered in the city square, admired its beauties, and the handsome uniforms of the smart, well set up Spanish officers, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes outside the more fashionable cafés.

“_Miré_ (look)! this is the bull-fighters’ café,” said Don Jaime, as we turned into a side street, “and there is Bombito, the first matador in Spain. He has come down from Madrid for the bull-fight to-morrow.”

An open door gave a glimpse of a tawdry interior with large mirrors, red plush seats, and atrocious decorations. At a table near the window sat the matador, a magnificently built man, with a frank, open face and a courageous eye. He was dressed in Andalusian costume,--a short, close-fitting coat like an Eton jacket, red sash, very tight trousers, wide-brimmed hat of hard gray felt. His hair, tied in a cue, was turned up under his hat; his full ruffled shirt was fastened by large diamonds; a superb cabuchon ruby burned on his finger. Around him sat a group of _aficionados_, the fancy, the young bloods of Algeciras. As we passed, Bombito, looking up, recognized Don Jaime. The matador smiled and nodded, and the _aficionados_ turned to see the fortunate man to whom Bombito waved his hand.

“Spain at last, Spain of the songs I have sung, the pictures on fans and guava boxes I have collected,” Patsy burbled joyously.

“_Quando los matadores matan en la corrida, van a la plaza bonitas con flores y abanicos._” (When the matadors are killing in the bull ring, come the pretty girls with flowers and fans.)

Not far from the plaza, as we were passing a house of quality, with seraphic green gargoyles, Don Jaime halted and looked sharply across the way. A correct young man, in a rakish gray sombrero, stood at the opposite corner waiting, not loitering like us; it was evident that he was here with a purpose.

“Behold the _novio_!” said the Don; “I feared he dead or married.”

Patsy asked who the gentleman with the varnished boots might be, who was gazing at an upper window with a white blind; he, apparently, did not see us. The Don explained that he was a _novio_ (fiancé) _haciendo el oso_ (doing the bear). He had heard it said that every afternoon, for five years, this faithful lover had stood outside the window of his beloved for exactly three hours!

“Is he mad?”

“Is love lunatics? Then must be vasty, crazy palaces by all Spain. He follow one antique custom, what we call ‘_cosas de España_.’”

Sunset found us far from the town on a lonely path skirting the coast. We looked through the ragged, blue cactus hedge at the beautiful view; watched the flame kindle and flash out from the lighthouse on Isla Verde; the ferry boat, _Elvira_, pass on her last trip from Gibraltar to Algeciras. A few steps further on the path brought us out upon a bold headland where, out of sight of the town, an old house sloughed and sagged on its foundations. A large fig tree grew on one side of the porch, a cork tree on the other; a tame lamb lifted its head from nibbling the grass and bleated a long “ba-a-a.”

“Picturesque, isn’t it?” said Patsy. His gaze, idly roving over the landscape, concentrated and grew intent as the door opened, and a girl in a red dress, with a yellow handkerchief over her head, came out of the old house. It was as if a rough oyster shell had opened and shown the perfect pearl it held.

“I say, don’t you think it wicked to be so handsome?” groaned Patsy.

With a light, graceful step the girl walked to the edge of the cliff. A straggling path led down to the beach where an old, patched boat lay on its side. On a shelf of clean sand, below a tiny, ill-kept kitchen garden, lay an elderly man dressed in good black clothes--it was Sunday. The girl, evidently his daughter, called him to come in, the sun had gone down, he would catch cold. The old fellow obstinately refused to move; he was very comfortable where he was. Then, seeing us, he scrambled to his feet:

“Olá, olá! Engerlish, Engerlish!” he hailed us gleefully, waving an arm over his disreputable head. Two grave men of his own class, who passed at that moment, reproved him sternly, but he was in the incorrigibly merry stage and continued to wave and shout:

“Engerlish, Engerlish! How much? Very dear, goddam.”

“This is my third visit to Spain,” said J., “and that is the first drunken man I have seen even here.”

“_Claro_,” said Don Jaime, “we are not afflict with that vice of drunkenness.”

A rusty brown water spaniel, lying near the old drunkard, rose, yawned, stretched itself fore and aft, and sniffed at Patsy’s boots.

“Notice where the hair is worn off his back?” Patsy murmured, taking a burr out of the dog’s long, flapping ear. “A strap has done that--a strap, I suspect, that fastens together two little water-tight kegs filled with tobacco from Gibraltar. Smuggler! Is the old fellow your partner? Where’s the entrance to the smuggler’s cave? Don, we’ve discovered a _contrabandista’s_ den!”

“May be!” laughed Don Jaime.

The spaniel lost interest in us and sat down to search for fleas. The girl had persuaded her father to come indoors. She supported him as he staggered towards the house.

“I’m off; it must mortify her to have us see him.” Patsy strode ahead; we followed. Soon the fierce, prickly blades of the blue cactus hid the house from view.

“A pretty gel, not?” was the Don’s comment.

“I wonder what her name is?” said Patsy. “Dolores, Pepita? It was worth the price of the journey just to see her face!” He was silent during the rest of the walk, keeping well ahead of us and singing snatches of an old song:

“_vous connaissez que j’ai por mie_ _une Andalouse a l’oeil lutin----_”

We left Algeciras before daylight for Ronda. If the Spaniard sleeps late at home, on his travels he must be an early bird,--the trains all seem to start between midnight and cockcrow. Don Jaime remained behind. Some night, he explained, when he felt particularly fit, he would omit going to bed; otherwise he must pass all his life in Algeciras; to get up in time for that hobgoblin train was not possible.

Across the bay we could make out the faint silhouette of Gibraltar against the ashen sky, a black lion asleep under the pallid day-star. The swift-coming dawn little by little transformed it to a gray lion dormant on an amethyst sea. Long after the great caved mountain was lost to sight, a distant growl shook the air.

“Morning gunfire at the Rock,” said Patsy, “that’s the last we shall hear of the British Lion for some time.”

Sunrise came while we were in the heart of a dark forest. The hoary old trees had mighty, wide-spreading boughs, covered thick with small, gray-green leaves like the ilex; the trunks were old and frail--some of them mere hollow shells that might have housed a dryad or a satyr. They stood well apart from each other, the undergrowth and dead wood carefully trimmed away from their roots.

“See how well cared for the forest patriarchs are,” said Patsy. “They must be kept alive as long as possible, like some old people, because they are the main support of the community.”

Gold-tipped arrows of sunlight now began to pierce the thick green shadows of the forest, and striking the old trunks and the heavy lower branches brought out their wonderful tints.

“Look at those gorgeous rainbow trees! See the colors,--mother of pearl, carmine, violet, lavender,--what does it mean?” I cried.

It meant, I found, that this was the cork forest, and that the bark of the cork trees had lately been cut. Those rainbow colors soon fade, however, like the pink and white complexion of youth.

At the next station stood many cars laden with rough cork.

“The coarse, outer layers are used for fishing nets and life preservers. To even things up,” Patsy explained, “they keep the fine, inner pinkish layers to bottle up those two great life destroyers, the drugs and liquors of the world.”

The way now led over the Sierra Rondena, through the wildest, most beautiful part of Andalusia; past thickets of gum cistus, covered with glorious, golden-hearted, white blossoms; across green _vegas_ enamelled with clumps of amber gorse; through waves of daisies, white and yellow, regiments of scarlet poppies marching through the pale green wheat, multitudes of cornflowers, morning glories, and ruby-headed alfalfa, king of all the handsome clover tribe. In this company of old friends a stranger flower stooped through the fields, half drooping, half mourning, a purple hood pulled over its head almost hiding the small blue bells hanging from the bending stalk. In that holiday crowd it looked like a hooded monk, a purple _penitente_ at a carnival. I could never learn its true name, so we called it the Spanish Friar....

“Lift thine eyes, oh, lift thine eyes to the mountains, whence cometh help!” sang Patsy.

Intoxicated with the flower feast, the way had brought us within sight of the distant Sierras without our being aware. The mountains came to meet us, nearer, nearer; then, all at once, we were in their midst; the tall blue peaks came crowding all about us. As the engine panted “up, up” the mountain pass, the way crossed a flashing mountain torrent leaping down, down to the _vega_ and the sea beyond; it looked more like a river of emeralds and snow than mere green water and white foam.

“Andalusia, once Vandalusia, named for the Vandals, who tarried here before their wild dash across the Alps down into Italy. Andalusia, ‘ultima terræ’ of the ancients, the uttermost parts of the earth, where good old Jonah longed to flee, small blame to him,” Patsy maundered on, sleepily giving us bits of guidebook information.

“Andalusia, Vandalusia, Vandalusia, Andalusia.” The wheels sang it like a lullaby. “Anda----”

“Ronda, Ronda!” cried the guard. We rubbed our eyes, snatched our belongings, tumbled out of the compartment to the platform, and almost into the arms of the Sibyl of Ronda, patiently waiting for us there, like Fate. She was a tiny old woman, draped like a Tanagra statuette, in veils of soft, rusty black: her face was like a damask rose that has withered on its stalk; the eyes alone, diamond bright, were young, full of fire. With a tremulous hand she offered J. a box of matches. An officious young man, with oiled hair and a green cravat, pushed her rudely aside. She was not to trouble the gentlefolk, responsibility for whose welfare in Ronda he assumed. Was he not the “offeecial” guide? Did he not speak English?

“We can speak English ourselves, and we don’t want a guide,” J. interposed. “We want a philosopher and friend. If we must have somebody to toot us about, I vote we take the Sibyl.”

“What? Prefer an old thing like that to an active young man like me?” The official guide was incredulous!

“Isn’t she a little old?” I ventured.

“Did you ever see handsomer wrinkles? They are perfectly classic,” said J.

“And the twinkle in her eye!” Patsy supported him. “Wrinkles and twinkles against stall-fed guidebookery? The old girl for me. She’s over eighty, she says; she was born in Ronda; has lived here all her life. She must know more about it than that Algerine pirate with the emerald tie. Past eighty, you said, didn’t you?”

“_Ochanta dos; perro en Ronda los ombres a ochanta son pollones_,” the Sibyl answered. I am eighty-two, but in Ronda men of eighty are only chickens.

“I understand her Spanish!” cried Patsy. “That settles it; sealed to the Sibyl! I’ll go bond she will let us in for something worth seeing.” As usual, Patsy and J. had their way, and the active young man, angry and chapfallen, watched us with a sinister look, as we pottered slowly along beside the Sibyl. Our guides were mostly chosen for beauty, or charm. On the whole the plan worked well enough.

The Romans showed their usual colossal common sense in choosing the site of Arunda. Rome always was the model city they kept in mind. Three things, they rightly held, were necessary to a city; a not too distant view of mountains, to uplift the soul of the citizen; a fine climate to stimulate his body; a river for boys to swim and fish in, and for men to traffic by. When they found this high, fertile plain shut in by an amphitheatre of mountains, with one lone hill in the midst, surrounded and cut in halves by a rushing river, they built their city of Arunda on the cleft, river-girt rock we call Ronda. The Moors, who cleverly dovetailed their towns and their civilization into what Rome left, built their town of Ronda with the ruins of Arunda. We found remains of both Roman and Moorish walls. The modern town, built by the “Catholic Kings,” Ferdinand and Isabel, is remarkable chiefly for the wonderful view from the _alameda_. You look down a sheer six hundred feet to the green _vega_, and the turbulent river Guadelevin fretting and fuming below. After roaring and raging through the Tajo, the deep chasm that divides Ronda, the river tumbles with a series of mad leaps and bounds to the plain beyond. Cutting a few antics with eddies and whirlpools, Guadelevin finally gets himself in hand, and goes soberly to work; turns the wheels of the old Moorish mills, makes flour for Ronda, as the Moors taught him to do; lends his strength to a new labor, for, marvel of marvels, old Moorish Ronda is lighted by electricity. In summer, when the river shrinks to a mere thread, its waning power is carefully husbanded and the water is led by pipes to do its work. Water, always water, alpha and omega of civilization! No town that could not be well supplied with water from the snowy Sierras or from some mountain lake was ever founded by Roman or Moor. Their wisdom is clearer now than ever before. What city prospers, lacking the Siamese twins of successful manufacture, water power, and electricity?

A flock of evil-looking birds hovered over a lonely thicket of tamarisks, close by the foot of the wall.

“From there,” said the Sibyl, pointing to the tamarisks, “they throw the dead horses over the walls, after the bull-fights. The vultures soon pick their bones!” Grrrr! The ugly word spoiled the lovely view.

The Sibyl lived in the old, Moorish part of the city, that is called the Ciudad. She led us through the steep, narrow streets, pointing out the show houses. Here lived the grim Moorish king, Almoneted. He drank his wine from the skulls of enemies whose heads he had cut off, made into goblets, and inlaid with splendid jewels. Patsy, in his rococo Spanish, wondered if Almoneted had hoped to inherit the courage that once flashed from the sockets he stopped with emerald and ruby. The Sibyl twinkled all over at his suggestion.

“_Claro_,” she said, “it was doubtless his idea.”

She showed us the Mina, an underground staircase of three hundred and sixty-five steps, one for every day in the year, like the churches in old Rome, leading down to the river. It was built so that, in case of siege, Ronda should not be cut off from water. Moorish caution! The Romans of Arunda apparently never contemplated such a possibility. The houses of the Ciudad are oriental in character, with blank, whitewashed walls, and rare, grated windows; they are all built to look as much alike as possible, in order to avoid attracting attention. The doors are the only distinguishing feature; all of them are massive, and built for defence; some are of walnut, some of oak, iron barred, iron bound, studded with bronze bosses or brass ornaments. Oh, redoubtable doors of old Ronda! What stores of wealth, what moons of beauty did you guard for the jealous Moors that made you?

The Sibyl understood all Patsy meant but could not say. The moment their eyes met, flash, flash, a secret code was established between them. Thanks to her, one of those mysterious doors was opened to us, and we saw the interior of one of those old Moorish houses, whose key, perhaps, is treasured by some Moor of Morocco to-day, for when they were driven back to Africa, the Moors took the keys of their houses in Andalusia and Granada with them, against the day they should return and reclaim their lost paradise. These keys have been handed down from generation to generation; some of them hang to-day in the Moorish houses of Tangiers and Tetuan.

When we were tired with much sightseeing, the Sibyl hospitably took us home to rest. In the patio of her house we found enchanting Moorish columns with slender shafts, and capitals that must have been copied from the Corinthian capitals the Romans used so much in Spain, only these are lighter and less formal, and have more feeling of the lovely form of the curling acanthus leaf. The patio, a survival of the Roman atrium, is an open court in the middle of the house, surrounded by a roofed corridor, where, during the warm weather, the life of an Andalusian family centres. In the Sibyl’s patio stood an old Moorish well with an Arabic inscription. I cast longing eyes at it.

“Whatever you see,” said J., “admire nothing that can be carried off by the modern Vandals, who have looted Italy and are looting Spain. If you do, she’ll sell it.”

“The old Vandals were a decent lot in comparison,” Patsy agreed. “History has maligned them. If they did ‘lift’ a little property now and again, they, at least, left the owners the privilege of enjoying a virtuous indignation! These modern buyers, spoilers, barbarians, buy the victim’s consent, add ignominy to spoiliation!”

A pair of goldfinches gossipped about their housekeeping in a wattle cage hung near the old Moorish well. A lemon tree in a glazed earthenware pot (it had one green lemon) and some gorgeous double carnations, variegated dark red and yellow, planted in a petroleum can, stood close to the well where they could be easily watered. As she passed, the Sibyl pinched off a dead leaf with a touch that was a caress,--these were her growing things, this was her pleasaunce.

In the living-room, which was the kitchen, too, was a quaint, carved stone fireplace. On the balcony outside was a gilt iron grill, surmounted by a battered pomegranate “final,” sure some day to find its way into a “collection.” The house was clean, in spite of the horde of children it sheltered, the Sibyl’s great-grandchildren, for whose sake she sells matches at Ronda station.

The mother sat on a low stool rocking a wooden cradle with her foot; her hands were busy shelling _garbanzoz_, chickpeas, for the _olla_. Twin infants, lusty as Romulus and Remus, slept in the cradle; a pair of babes a size larger played with each other’s toes in a long, bath-shaped, wicker basket; a girl of five pretended to help her mother with the _garbanzoz_. As we entered, the mother rose, welcomed us with grave ceremony, offered us food and drink and assured us that this house and everything it contained was ours: “_Esta muy a la disposicion de Vmd._” It is very much at your disposal, the pretty old phrase goes.

Her face was plain beside the Sibyl’s, time had etched every line _there_ with an artist’s fine care, but she had the grace, the reserve, the proud bearing of the Andaluz that poets have praised before, and since, De Musset, whose Andaluz lived in Barcelona, and was a Catalan, after all. As the youngsters were very near of an age, when the mother offered to give us everything in sight I asked if she could spare a baby? She looked almost pretty as she unbent, smiled, patted the biggest, and answered, with a twinkle like the old woman’s, that there were none too many--indeed, that there were four more at school.

“Nine children, what a fine large family!” The Sibyl shrugged her shoulders, rolled up her eyes, and lifted a withered hand to heaven in protest.

“Granny doesn’t think it much of a family; she had seven boys and seven girls.”

“It is true,” the Sibyl nodded, and stroked her lean flanks with tremulous hands; “this,” she looked at her grandchild as if she expected great things of her, “is the seventh daughter of my seventh daughter.”

When, our visit over, we rose to take leave, spokesman Patsy produced the phrase from his vocabulary that he had been conning:

“_Muchas memorias. Adios._”

The Andaluz put this aside as too final. “_Hasta luego_,” she said, with her slow, sweet smile,--“Till we meet again.”

“_Vamos!_” said the Sibyl, and showed the way to the door.

As we left the house of many children, we met a cavalcade of gay young people riding out of town. The men rode horses, the girls mules or donkeys. The woman’s saddle was curiously made with crisscross arms and a back like an armchair. They were evidently well to do farmer folk; all wore good clothes and were well mounted. Several of them had ruddy, northern complexions. The Sibyl laid this to the excellent climate,--“In Ronda, we do not know when it is summer,” she said. The last of the cavalcade to pass was a large, gray mule with as pretty a couple as you might see, seated on his broad back. We felt sure they were bride and groom. The man, a handsome fellow, full of the lust of life, sat very straight in saddle; the slim girl on the pillion behind, her arm about his waist, was full of bridal coquetries. She wore red stockings, a rose behind her ear, a lace-trimmed petticoat. An old, yellowish, time-worn guitar was slung over her shoulders by a cherry ribbon. As they rode past us, both young people smiled and nodded to the Sibyl.

“Your friends?” Patsy asked.

“My relatives.” Proud that we should see them, and that they should see us, her face kindled; so did Patsy’s. We all walked on through the tortuous Moorish _calle_ with a lighter step, a braver heart for that chance meeting. It seemed as if we had caught some reflection of the hope, health, and love shining in their young faces.