[Illustration: 30 LOOKING ACROSS THE NEW BRIDGE (300 FEET HIGH) OVER THE GUADA-LAVIAR GORGE, RONDA
Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda
seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our
young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after
forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite
prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as
they passed us and said, “Good afternoon.” The general English lasted
quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives
prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one,
who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were
some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English
hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of
prosperity. The students seem each prepared to guide strangers through
Ronda, but sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the
pathetic young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he
had guided none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against
a course of bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to
repair the loss of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He
smiled wanly, and then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted
and thanked me in English which I can cordially recommend to strangers
knowing no Spanish.
All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with
the purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back
street parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and
of a squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in
the decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of
their street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into
the avenue where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing
about, but preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the
entrance of the new bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and
recognized with some hesitation the donkey’s harness-maker who, in his
Sunday dress and with his hat on, was not just the work-day presence
we knew. He held by the hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he
introduced as his second son, self-destined to follow the elder brother
to America, and duly take up the profession of teaching in Puerto Rico
after experiencing the advantages of the Escuela Mann. His father said
that he already knew some English, and he proposed that the boy should
go about with us and practise it, and after polite demur and insistence
the child came with us, to our great pleasure. He bore himself with fit
gravity, in his cap and long linen pinafore as he went before us, and we
were personally proud of his fine, long face and his serious eyes, dark
and darkened yet more by their long lashes. He knew the way to just such
a book store as we wanted, where the lady behind the desk knew him and
willingly promised to get me some books in the Andalusian dialect, and
send them to our hotel by him at half past twelve. Naturally she did not
do so, but he came to report her failure to get them. We had offered to
pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, and when we had overcome his
scruple he brought the money back, and we had our trouble over again
to make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought
ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to
America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a
visit and then they were going back together.
V
Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another
bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always
vainly trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the _Historia
de Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez_ as well done, and telling all
that one would ask to know about that famous city. The author’s picture
is on the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his
father goes far to win the reader’s heart. Outside the bookseller’s a
blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was
selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain
in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that
they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I
think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself
greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with
that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind
minstrel’s almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads
are another thing.
After we left the bookseller’s, our little guide asked us if we would
like to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a
white and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its
simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was
presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely
about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and
the church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we
thought we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda.
That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive,
rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed
upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There
seemed at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman
pacing to and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which
our guide said was this cavalier’s house. He interested me beyond any
reason I could give; he looked as if he might represent the highest
society in Ronda, but did not find it an adequate occupation, and might
well have interests and ambitions beyond it. I make him my excuses for
intruding my print upon him, but I would give untold gold if I had it to
know all about such a man in such a city, walking up and down under
the embrowning trees and shrinking flowers of its Alameda, on a Sunday
morning like that.
Our guide led us to the back gate of our hotel garden, where we found
ourselves in the company of several other students of English. There
was our charming young guide of the day before and there was that sad
hunchback already mentioned, and there was their teacher who seemed so
few years older and master of so little more English. Together we looked
into the valley into which the vision makes its prodigious plunge at
Ronda before lifting again over the fertile plain to the amphitheater of
its mighty mountains; and there we took leave of that nice boy who 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.