The front windows were closely shuttered. Except for three dogs the place might have been deserted. But on making our way round to the back we found ourselves in the midst of the bevy of people—caretakers, gardeners, labourers, and their families—who live about and in a big country house.
The wife of the caretaker, supported by her half-dozen children and an old dame who was presumably their grandmother, advanced to the wide doorway of the kitchen to greet us. From the vicinity of the stables and outhouses men and lads gathered, and stood a silent group, attentive to our attempts at Spanish conversation, which attempts, it must be admitted, were puerile.
We were merely asking if we might have the privilege of seeing over the house, but we failed to make our meaning clear. Calling her little dark-eyed chica, who was evidently the educated member of the family, the mother conjured her to translate; but the chica, for the first time removing her eyes from the Lady's hat and flowing veil, only blushed and hung her pretty head.
At our wits' end, we were reduced to helpless laughter, when comprehension suddenly flashed upon the mother.
"Si, si, señoras," she said, and trotted briskly off, with us close upon her heels and the children and the grandmother bringing up the rear, across the spacious kitchen, along a passage, and up a stair so dark that we had to grope our way.
Passing quickly from one room to another, she threw open the jealously closed shutters of the windows, admitting the light. The house was one of the many delightfully unpretentious country seats to which Majorcan aristocrats migrate during the hot weather. Everything was arranged for the sake of coolness. There were no carpets or curtains. The tiled floors and lofty raftered ceilings of the large airy rooms made it an ideal summer residence. The windows and balconies afforded beautiful and varied views towards the romantic mountains, across the fragrant orange groves, or over the far-stretching fertile plains.
The noble family, we gathered, had other homes: one at Palma, and yet another at Madrid, but still they liked to return to the house that nestled so close to the great frowning mountains.
When we left she sent the pretty dark-eyed chica to show us the path through the orange groves, and dispatched the eldest son hotfoot after to pick us a gift of oranges from the trees whose fruit was sweetest.
Neither the Lady nor I was inclined for much exertion. Climbing a little way up the hill, we sat down in the shade of an olive-tree and ate oranges and gossiped.
At our feet the ground slipped down into the valley, to rise on the farther side in the mountains, on whose crest we could see the remains of the towered battlements above which, in the seventeenth century, the two heroes Cabritt and Bassa kept the Majorcan flag flying, after the remainder of the island had surrendered to the usurper Alphonso IV of Aragon.