In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Ah, that swallow is flown. The tower fell a matter of eight years back. My old wife and I can give you a song about that, for this little honey-throat is not the only musician in Spain. Ay, you shall hear what we old birds can do. The children sing this song, you understand, in dancing rows, one row answering the other, but that wife of mine is equal to a baker’s dozen of children. Look at her! Is she not devoted to the good Apostle to trudge all this way on foot? A long, rough way it is, but many amens reach to heaven. Come forth, my Zephyr! Waft! Waft!”

And he began to troll as merrily as if he had not a sin in the world, cutting a new caper with every line:

“In Saragossa– Oh, what a pity! —Has fallen the tower,Pride of the city.”

Out of the applauding cluster of pilgrims a very stout but very robust old woman, her skirt well slashed so as to display her carmine petticoat, came mincing to meet him, taking up the song:

“Fell it by tempest,Fairies or witches,The students will raise itFor students have riches.”

An ironic laugh broke from the listeners, while the husband, flourishing legs and arms in still more amazing antics, caught up the response:

“Call on the students!Call louder and louder!They’ve only two coppersTo buy them a chowder.”

The old dame flirted her canary-colored skirts and skipped as nimbly as he, replying in her rough but rich contralto:

“Chowder of studentsIs sweeter than honey,But the gay AndalusiansHave plenty of money.”

At this the children looked so surprised and self-conscious that the shrewd peasants guessed at once from what province they came.

“The gay AndalusiansHave fiddle and ballad,But only two coppersTo buy them a salad,”

roared the man with special gusto, and frisked up to Pilarica, who dodged away in quick displeasure from those open arms.

But Rafael, to his utter horror, was captured by the monstrous matron, who grasped the boy in a pair of marvellously strong hands and swung him, blushing and struggling, up to her shoulder, while, gamboling still, she led the chorus of pilgrims in the final stanza:

“In Saragossa– Oh, what a pity! —Has fallen the tower,Pride of the city.”

Thereupon she enfolded Rafael in a smothering hug, smacked him heartily on each glowing cheek, and then let him drop as suddenly as the tower. Before he could fairly catch his breath, that astonishing old couple had started on with the rest of the Apostle’s devotees, leaving Rafael still crimson with shame and wrath at this outrage on his boyish dignity.

“But pilgrims behave no better than gypsies,” he declared hotly to Uncle Manuel, who had come up to protect the children in case the fun should go too far.

“For him who does not like soup, a double portion,” laughed Uncle Manuel. “You may not always find a kiss so hard to bear. She meant no harm, boy. These jolly peasants will make their offerings and do their penances piously enough at Santiago, even though they frolic on the trip. It is their holiday. There were wild doings along these roads in the old times, I’ll be bound,” went on the master-carrier, who grew more talkative and more genial with every day that brought him nearer home. “Then pilgrims from all over the world, in swarms and multitudes, sinners and saints all jumbled together, wearied their feet upon our stony ways. They say there were popes and kings among them. Be that as it may. There were scamps and fools by the plenty, I’ve no doubt. These mountains were infested with bandits then, who lay in wait to rob the pilgrims of the treasure they were bringing to help build the great church of St. James. Stealing a kiss is the worst that happens now. That is bad enough, eh? Well, well! What shall we do to cheer him up, Pilarica? Shall I let the two of you ride Coronela up this next steep bit? I like to feel Galicia under my feet. Coronela will count you no more than two feathers, while those little asses of yours, who are not used to these long mountain pulls, will gladly be rid of their riders.”

And this is how it happened that, some twenty minutes later, Rafael and Pilarica found themselves proudly leading the train, which they had already left so far behind that, at the second turn of the road, it was out of sight. Before them, however, stretched the straggling line of the pilgrims.

Rafael squared his chin.

“I’ll not risk passing that awful old woman; that I won’t,” he avowed, boldly turning Coronela out of the highway and urging her up the sheer side of the mountain. “Hold on to me tight, Pilarica, for Coronela will have to scrabble here.”

The spirited mule, invigorated by her hour of grazing, took the pathless slope lightly and steadily, but a tumult of calls and laughter showed that the children were recognized and the purpose of their daring detour surmised. Rafael, half expecting to see the rotund figure of the lively old dame leaping after him from crag to crag, recklessly pushed Coronela on. When at last she slipped and slid, struck a level ledge, regained her footing by a gallant effort and stood trembling, they were far up the mountainside, quite shut away from all view of the road by masses of ribbed and jagged rock. Such a wild, lonely place as it was! These rocks, all notched and needled and bristling, had a savage look. There was an angry rock with horns that threatened them, and an ugly rock with teeth that grinned at them. And out from behind the most wicked-looking rock of all peered a man, a red-eyed, haggard, desperate fellow, who had broken jail a week before and, hunted like a wolf, was skulking in the hills, waiting his chance to escape from Galicia and then from Spain. Those bloodshot eyes of his stared greedily at the superb mule and his hand shot out to clutch the bridle.

XVIII

RAFAEL’S ADVENTURE

BY a quick, sharp tug, Rafael swerved Coronela out of reach. To his own surprise, he was not frightened. His mind was filled with one idea, and his will braced to one purpose. He must save his little sister and Uncle Manuel’s choice mule from the peril into which his foolhardy performance had brought them. Coronela could not make speed down that rocky descent. She would have to pick her way and the robber could soon catch her. All this flashed through Rafael’s thought as he jerked the mule aside. The next instant he had leapt to the ground and dealt her a stinging slap.

“Hold on tight, Pilarica! Arré, Coronela!”

The mule, Pilarica clinging to her neck, sprang away and the man sprang after, with the boy in pursuit. Rafael remembered his popgun, – a frail weapon, but it served. It was already charged with Uncle Manuel’s pointed pewter button, and as mule and man turned at right angles from their first course, which had brought them to the brink of a precipice, Rafael dodged in front and delivered his bullet full in the convict’s forehead. It struck with enough force to draw blood that trickled down into the man’s eyes, blinding and confusing him. Before he fully realized what had happened, Coronela had made good her escape, for he dared not give her chase after she had come into view from the road.

With a curse he lunged toward the boy, who, intent only on drawing the enemy away from Coronela and her precious burden, fled back up the mountain as fast as his legs could spin. As he ran, his watch was jolted from its pocket under his belt and, glinting in the sun, bobbed at the end of its chain. He ran well, for all that trudging across Castile had developed good muscle in those stocky little legs, but the criminal who, weak from years of confinement, ran clumsily, was nevertheless almost upon him, when Rafael bolted into a cleft in a giant rock, – a cleft too narrow for a man’s shoulders to enter. Turning to face the opening while turn he could, Rafael wriggled and wormed his way until even a small boy could get no further. Then he stood at bay, not precisely with his back to the wall, but to a granite crack, breathing hard from his scamper, but conscious only of a thrilling excitement.

“Come out of there,” called the convict fiercely, “or I’ll shoot you.”

“Shoot away,” returned Rafael, wondering if the man really had a gun.

He hadn’t, not even a popgun. He picked up a stone to cast at the child, but memory plucked at his arm and held it back, – the memory of his own blithe, adventurous boyhood. For the sake of the lad he used to be, before high spirit had led him on to a rash enterprise that blundered suddenly into crime, the convict’s scarred, unhappy heart softened toward the courageous youngster trapped in that fissured rock.

“Hand out your watch,” he called again, “and I’ll let you go.”

Rafael’s watch! His father’s good-bye gift! The gift that meant his father’s faith in him! No, that father should not have cause again to say that his son was a heedless boy who could not guard his own pockets.

“I will not,” he shouted defiantly.

“Hand it out this minute, before the snakes get at you.”

Snakes! Rafael’s legs jumped, but not his heart.

“I will not.”

“Oh, very good! I’ll leave you for a few days to think it over,” returned the convict, proceeding to wedge a big rock into the narrow opening. Adding smaller stones, he roughly walled up the entrance, so shutting Rafael into a straiter cell than his own too extensive experience of prisons had ever encountered. He meant to lurk again among the crags until the search for the boy should be over and then come back under the starlight for the watch, since a bit of silver in hand might make all the difference to a fugitive between escape and capture. At the least, he could trade it for food and a knife. But the officers had him before nightfall and, in all the dreary years that came after, no thought of his misdeeds tortured the prisoner so much as the remembrance of a little boy he had left to perish in a lonely rock.

Rafael’s chief uneasiness, at first, was about those threatened snakes. What if the crack behind him should be full of them, – clammy serpent coils swaying for the spring! Would they begin at his ankles? He stood first on one foot and then on the other, while he squirmed and twisted out of his extreme retreat. Then he flung himself with all his force against the rock that had been wedged into the opening. It did not stir. He set his shoulder to it; he shoved with a strength that seemed greater than his own; he battered his body against it in desperate endeavor; but it held fast. The boy’s hands were bleeding when he dropped exhausted to the ground, a little huddle of despair. But despair would never do. He was up again and, this time, working with all the skill and patience he could command to dislodge the smaller stones. After an eternity of effort, the highest of these was jolted from its place and fell on the outside, leaving a peep-hole through which the blessed light looked strangely in, as if wondering to find its friend Rafael shut in a den like this. The hole was so far up that it showed him only a violet glimpse of sky, but even that comforted and calmed the boy, who sat down quietly and knit his brows in thought. What would his father tell him to do? His duty, of course. But what was one’s duty in a pinch like this? To get out if he could, and if he couldn’t to behave himself manfully where he was. Nothing could be plainer than that. Rafael decided to call for help, even at the risk of bringing back his enemy, but his shouts, though he did his best, seemed shut into that granite cleft with him. He attacked the great rock again, and the stones, but without any other result than to tire himself out. At last the creeping fear, against which he had been half unconsciously fighting all the time, was getting the better of his fortitude. For one horrible instant he fancied that the narrow walls were closing in to crush him. Again he struggled to his feet. He must do anything, anything, rather than sit still and be afraid. He clambered, often slipping back, up to the little peephole and listened, listened, listened until he heard, or thought he heard, the thudding tramp of the mule-train far down the road and the click-clack, ding-dong, tinkle-tinkle of its assorted bells. Oh, surely Coronela would have gone safely down; surely Pilarica would send Uncle Manuel and Pedrillo to his relief. He must let them know where he was. He must rig some kind of a signal. There was something yet that he could do, – something to save him from the terror.

Nature has her own kindnesses in store for us all, and when Rafael, having rigged his signal, lost his slight footing and tumbled, bumping his head, in falling, on a projecting stone, she promptly put him to sleep, so that he lay untroubled and unafraid on the rocky floor of his prison. He did not hear the excited barking of dogs, as a tall, grave shepherd, his sheepskin garments fragrant with thyme, met a rescue party of mingled muleteers and pilgrims searching the mountainside and guided them to the neighborhood of the cleft rock.

“It was about here, sir,” the shepherd was saying to Uncle Manuel. “I was on that summit yonder and started down as soon as I saw that the young master was in danger. Hey, Melampo! Hey, Cubilon! Find the trail, Lobina!”

“What nice names!” observed Pilarica, fearlessly patting one of the gaunt beasts. Uncle Manuel frowned. This was no place, no errand, for a girl. He had left her behind with Tia Marta. But that grumpy Bastiano, who could refuse the child nothing, had set her on Shags and – it served him right – had had that reluctant donkey to drag up the rough ascent.

“Ay, my little lady,” the shepherd was saying to Pilarica. “All our dogs have these names, for such were the names of the sheepdogs of Bethlehem who went with their masters to see the Holy Child in the stable.”

Pilarica smiled up into the wind-worn face of the speaker with happy confidence. She had noticed him from the road as he stood upon the summit, a majestic figure against the sky, and had thought in her childishness that he looked like God, keeping watch over the world.

“And when the shepherds met the other wise men at the door,” she asked, “did the dogs bark at the camels?”

“Has the girl no heart,” thought Uncle Manuel, “to be talking of such far-off things, when her brother may be – ”

But not even in his silent thought could Uncle Manuel finish the sentence. Lobina was sniffing at a fresh red stain upon a stone.

Pilarica saw her uncle’s distress and wondered at it. She did not understand distress. Her soul was still pure sunshine that marvelled at the shadow. But she slipped, for love and pity, her slender hand into his hard grip. In a moment he pushed her, not ungently, from him.

“Take the child back,” he ordered Bastiano. “You should not have brought her.”

“She thought she could help,” growled the muleteer.

“Help! Of what possible help could a girl be here? This is man’s work.”

And Uncle Manuel’s eyes anxiously questioned Pedrillo, who had been on his knees examining the blood-stain.

“Why! I can tell you where Rafael is,” cried Pilarica. “He’s in there.”

And the small brown finger pointed to a tatter of red, that waved, on the end of what seemed to be an alder reed, from a rock near by. “That’s Rafael’s magic cap, – all that’s left of it. He always carries it in his blouse. He has tied it to his popgun. He’s hiding in the rock.”

It did not take the muleteers a moment to tear away the stones that closed the entrance, but when Uncle Manuel stooped into the cleft and lifted out the inert little body, a dreadful silence fell upon the group, – a silence soon broken by Pilarica’s cheerful pipe:

“Rafael! Wake up! It isn’t bed-time yet.”

At that sweet, familiar voice the lids fluttered, and the black eyes, bewildered, brave, looked up into Uncle Manuel’s face.

The Pilgrim of the Thorn, as Pilarica called him, instantly had his water-gourd at the white lips, and Rafael revived so rapidly that he was soon sitting upon his uncle’s knee. He even glanced at his watch, with his usual air of careless magnificence in performing this action, and was amazed to find that only one hour had passed since they left the rivulet. Every man of them wanted to carry him down to the road. The boy hesitated to make a choice, but when the vigorous old peasant-woman, who had puffed up the mountainside after the rest, put in her claim, he decided at once.

“I’ll ride Shags,” he said.

XIX

THE END OF THE ROAD

THERE was still a big lump under Rafael’s hat when, a few afternoons later, our travellers, after a brief siesta, started out on the last stage of their long journey. The muleteers were in the wildest spirits, tossing coplas from one to another and often roaring out in chorus:

“Galicia is the fairest landBy God to mortals granted,Galicia, our Galicia,Galicia the enchanted.”

Even Tia Marta could not deny the charm of the landscape, – ranges of wooded mountains, reaches of green meadow and of farmlands waving with wheat, cozy farm-houses with broad, overshadowing roofs and a wealth of vines creeping up the white-washed walls, but she waxed ever more indignant at sight of the sturdy peasant-women working in the fields, driving the ploughs, wielding old-fashioned hoes and spades, loading bullock-carts with produce, and carrying boxes, barrels, bales, all manner of heavy and unwieldy burdens, on their heads.

“So that is what a woman’s head is good for in Galicia,” she remarked tartly. “And I’ll warrant that the husbands of these women are spending, out of every four and twenty hours, five and twenty at the tavern.”

Uncle Manuel, who had insisted on having the whole Andalusian party ride at the head of the train with him, that he might point out to them the first view of the pilgrim city, shook his head over this arithmetic, and Pedrillo, festive in a fringed fire-red scarf, ventured to remonstrate:

“Not so, Doña Marta. The husbands emigrate to South America, that they may grow rich there. Some of them die of the Galician homesickness, but others come back with their wallets full of gold. And there are many fishermen, who are oft casting their lines and nets.”

Grandfather caught only the last word, for Carbonera was in a laggard mood, but one word was bait enough to land a riddle:

“I sat at peace in my palace,Till I entered a stranger’s hut;Then my house ran out at his windows,And his door on me was shut.”

“We have lost the first day of the feast, but we shall be in early enough for the fireworks, I hope,” said Uncle Manuel. His eyes were shining with an eagerness that made quite another man of him. “Look well to that rogue of a Blanco,” he added to Bastiano, who had come up with a peach for Pilarica. “We must not have any mishaps to detain us this afternoon.”

“Never fear!” growled Bastiano. “If we fall in with a wild boar, we have Don Juan Bolondron and his popgun to defend us.”

Rafael, who had been praised and petted (and forgiven) for his exploit on the mountainside until he was in no small danger of self-conceit, detected something that he did not like in this allusion and looked up sharply.

“Who is Don Juan Bolondron?” he inquired.

“Ask Pedrillo. He’s the story-teller,” replied Bastiano. “I’m taking his place at the rear, and I know why, too.

“ ‘Lovers have such a simple mindThey think the rest of the world is blind.’ ”

“Once there was a poor shoemaker named Bolondron,” began Pedrillo in a great hurry. “All day he would sit cobbling at his bench and as he cobbled he would sing coplas about his craft, as this:

“ ‘A shoemaker went to mass,But he didn’t know how to pray;He walked down the altars, asking the saints:Any shoes to be mended to-day?’ ”

“Or this,” struck in Grandfather.

“ ‘To the jasper threshold of heavenHis bench the cobbler brings:Shoes for these little angelsWho have nothing to wear but wings.’ ”

“One day when he was sitting on his bench, taking a bowl of porridge,” continued Pedrillo, “it happened that a few drops were spilled, and flies swarmed upon them, and he slapped at the flies and killed seven. Then he began to shout: ‘I am a great warrior and from this time on I will be called Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.’ Now there was in the region about the city a forest, and in the forest a wild boar that liked the people so well he would eat several of them every week. The king had sent many hunters out to take him, but always they ran away or he devoured them, for he was the fiercest of the fierce. One day it came to the king’s ears that he had in his city a man called Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.

“ ‘This must be a terrible fighter,’ he said. ‘Bring him hither to me.’

“So Juan was brought into the royal presence. He wore his best shoes, but he trembled in them, though the king only looked at him out of two eyes, quite like anybody else, and said:

“ ‘They tell me, my man, that you are mighty in battle. Is it true that you slay seven at a blow?’

“ ‘It is true, your Sacred Royal Majesty,’ answered the cobbler, who could only guess how people talk at court.

“ ‘Well and good,’ said the king. ‘I happen to have, as kings usually do, a very beautiful daughter, and to you will I give her if you kill the wild boar that makes such havoc in my city. If you fail, by the way, you will lose your head. Choose from my armory the weapons that you like best, and kill the boar the first thing after breakfast to-morrow.’

“So in the morning Don Juan Bolondron, who had armed himself as well as he knew how, went out to the forest, his knees shaking with fright, to slay the monster. But he went so slowly, wondering how, if he should be so lucky as to escape from the boar, he could escape from the king, that it was past dinner-time when he arrived, and the beast, who could not bear to be kept waiting for his meals, rushed out upon him, bristling all over with rage and hunger. When Don Juan Bolondron saw this horrible, flame-eyed creature coming, he began to run with all his might back to the king’s palace and the boar came after, so that it was written down in history as the swiftest race ever known. Don Juan reached the palace first and hid behind the door, while the boar, losing sight of him, dashed on into the patio, where were stationed the royal guards. The soldiers, glad of something to do, discharged their muskets all at once, and the boar, much to his surprise, fell dead as a stone. Don Juan Bolondron, who had peeped out to see how matters were going on, now popped into their midst, drawn sword in hand, upbraiding them with having slaughtered the monster that he was driving in from the forest to give for a pet to the king.

“The king, who was sitting, greatly bored, on his throne upstairs, ran down to see who had called, and when he found that Don Juan had been bringing the boar as a present to his feet, he was so touched that he married him to the princess before supper.

“Unluckily, Don Juan dreamt of his bench and, as he had a way of talking in his sleep, he called to the princess:

“ ‘Here, wife! Hand me my last, will you! The pincers, too! And my awl, wife, my awl!’

“The princess, startled awake by his impatient cries, was naturally much shocked to think that her father might have mistaken a cobbler for a hero. So in the morning she went to the king before he had finished shaving and asked him to look into it.

“The king had Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow summoned to his chamber at once and thundered, waving his frothy razor:

“ ‘Fellow, are you a cobbler or a king’s son-in-law? You certainly can’t be both, even if I have to cut off your head, after all, to set this blunder straight.’

“ ‘High-and-Mighty Father-in-Law,’ replied Don Juan, ‘give yourself no concern. Her Highness, the Princess, my honorable Lady, though very beautiful, has only a woman’s wit. She was confused with sleep, too, and misunderstood what I said. I was again in my dream taunting the wild boar, as I taunted him when I was dragging him by his ears up the palace steps, telling him that his face was flat as a last, his teeth dull as pincers, and his bite no more to be dreaded than a cobbler’s awl. You see, sire, how a woman, unused to deeds of valor, would fail to understand.’

“ ‘They are such impulsive creatures,’ sighed the king. ‘It is very troublesome. Do you not see, my daughter, how rashly you jumped to a conclusion? Now go in peace, both of you, and don’t come bothering me again with your domestic quarrels.’

“And so,” concluded Pedrillo, “my story ends with bread and pepper and a grain of salt, and I’ve no more to say.”

“I do not care for that story,” said Rafael, who had grown very red in the face.