Would
not follow us into our garden because, as he showed us by the sign, it
was forbidden to any but guests. He said he was going into the country
with his family for the afternoon, and with some difficulty he owned
that he expected to play there; it was truly an admission hard to make
for a boy of his gravity. We shook hands at parting with him, and with
our yesterday's guide, and with the teacher and with the hunchback; they
all offered it in the bond of our common English; and then we felt that
we had parted with much, very much of what was sweetest and best in
Ronda.
VI
The day had been so lovely till now that we said we would stay many days
in Ronda, and we loitered in the sun admiring the garden; the young
landlady among her flowers said that all the soil had to be brought for
it in carts and panniers, and this made us admire its autumn blaze the
more. That afternoon we had planned taking our tea on the terrace for
the advantage of looking at the sunset light on the mountains, but
suddenly great black clouds blotted it out. Then we lost courage; it
appeared to us that it would be both brighter and, warmer by the sea
and that near Gibraltar we could more effectually prevent our steamer
from getting away to New York without us. We called for our bill, and
after luncheon the head waiter who brought it said that the large black
cat which had just made friends with us always woke him if he slept late
in the morning and followed him into the town like a dog when he walked
there.
It was hard to part with a cat like that, but it was hard to part with
anything in Ronda. Yet we made the break, and instead of ruining over
the precipitous face of the rock where the city stands, as we might have
expected, we glided smoothly down the long grade into the storm-swept
lowlands sloping to the sea. They grew more fertile as we descended and
after we had left a mountain valley where the mist hung grayest and
chillest, we suddenly burst into a region of mellow fruitfulness, where
the haze was all luminous, and where the oranges hung gold and green
upon the trees, and the women brought grapes and peaches and apples to
the train. The towns seemed to welcome us southward and the woods we
knew instantly to be of cork trees, with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
under their branches anywhere we chose to look.
Otherwise, the journey was without those incidents which have so often
rendered these pages thrilling. Just before we left Ronda a couple,
self-evidently the domestics of a good family, got into our first-class
carriage though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets.
