In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“ ‘Honey is not for the mouth of an ass,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and learning is not for women.’ But what a pity, Don Carlos, that this child is only a girl! Her wits run bright as the quicksilver fountain that used to sparkle in the royal garden of Seville.”

“She is like Rodrigo, keen as a Toledo blade,” assented Don Carlos. “It is this youngster,” drawing Rafael closer to him, “who has the slow brains of his father.”

“Slow and sure often wins the race,” said the old teacher, turning kind eyes on Rafael. “He will make a scholar when the time comes, and it should come soon now. Will you not enter him in the lower school next year? He may not be the mathematical wonder that his brother is, taking prizes as naturally as other lads bite off ripe mulberries, but if his father’s steadfastness of purpose has descended to him with his father’s chin, he will do well in the world. Character is better than talent. But this rosebud brings back to me her mother, who used to coax and coax me, when she was the merest midget, to teach her to read my books. Her parents spent several summers in Granada and, if they had consented, I would have liked to see what a girl’s head could do. But of course they would not hear of it. She was taught to dance and to embroider, only that. Her mind went hungry. But bless my heart! Such talk as this is not meal for chickens. A penny for your thoughts, my sober little man!”

“I was thinking about Spain,” answered Rafael, who all this time had been glowering at the globe. “How did we lose what was ours? Were there no more great kings after Ferdinand?”

“Yes,” said Don Carlos. “Spain has had strong kings and weak kings, wise and foolish, but even the best of them blundered at times. Ferdinand and Isabella themselves made mistakes. So some thirty years ago, when I was a boy, Spain tried to be a republic and get on without any king at all, but she did not prosper so.”

“King Alfonsito is not much older than I am,” murmured Rafael, with a wondering look in his great dark eyes.

“And a gallant child it is! A right royal child!” chirruped the Geography Gentleman.

“God bless him and grant him a long and righteous reign!” added Don Carlos, so solemnly that Pilarica clasped her hands as if she were saying her prayers.

“His father, King Alfonso XII, had a great heart,” the Geography Gentleman said musingly, “but his heart was wrung to breaking by sore troubles. I was in Madrid when the young Queen Mercedes died. Woe is me! What a grief was his!”

“Pilarica knows a song about that,” observed Rafael.

“Ah, to be sure! Spanish babies all over the Peninsula dance to that sorrow,” nodded the Geography Gentleman. “Come back into the patio, where the fountain will sing with her, and let us have it.”

So in the fragrant air of the patio, where an awning had been drawn to shut off the direct rays of the sun, Pilarica, dancing with strange, slow movements of feet and hands, sang childhood’s lament for the girl-queen.

“ ‘Whither away, young King Alfonso?(Oh, for pity!) Whither away?’‘I go seeking my queen Mercedes,For I have not seen her since yesterday.’“ ‘But we have seen your queen Mercedes,Seen the queen, though her eyes were hid,While four dukes all gently bore herThrough the streets of sad Madrid.’“ ‘Oh, how her face was calm as heaven!Oh, how her hands were ivory white!Oh, how she wore the satin slippersYou had kissed on the bridal night!“ ‘Dark are the lamps of the lonely palace;Black are the suits the nobles don;In letters of gold on the wall ’tis written:Her Majesty is dead and gone.’“He fainted to hear us, young Alfonso,Drooped like an eagle with broken wing;But the cannon thundered: ‘Valor, valor!’And the people shouted: ‘Long live the king!’ ”

“And now we must be taking our leave, with a thousand thanks for a red-letter day,” said Don Carlos.

“But no, no, no!” cried the Geography Gentleman. “Not until you have tasted a little light refreshment to wing your feet for the Alhambra hill. We will go up to the balcony and see Lorito – the wasteful rumple-poll that he is – enjoy his bread and butter.”

It was very pleasant on the balcony, with its pots of sweet basil, its earthen jar of fresh water and its caged cricket “singing the song of the heat.” The gentlemen were regaled with wine and biscuit, the children with candied nectarines and tarts, and to Lorito the maid respectfully handed a great slice of bread, thickly buttered. The square was quiet again, though from the Alameda came confused sounds, as of an angry crowd, cut by shrill outcries. A few beggars were gathered beneath the balcony, waiting for the bread which Lorito, after scraping off every least bit of the butter with his crooked beak, tore into strips and threw down to them, dancing on his perch and screaming with excitement to see them scramble for it.

This amused the children so much that they could hardly recall the proper Andalusian phrases for farewell. But their host, loving the ripple of their laughter, found nothing lacking in their courtesy and, at parting, slipped into Pilarica’s hand a dainty white Andalusian fan, painted with birds and flowers, and into Rafael’s a small geography, written by himself. Rafael was deeply impressed at receiving this, the first book he had ever owned, from its author, and carried it, on their homeward walk, in such a way that no learned person who might meet them could fail to see what it was.

“Of course nobody would give a geography to a girl,” he remarked.

“Maybe your geography isn’t true,” retorted Pilarica, flirting her fan. “But look, look! There is Grandfather with the donkeys, and Rodrigo is waiting for us, too.”

Don Carlos, who had his own reasons for wishing to see what Don Quixote was able to do, placed both the children on the white donkey’s back, leaving Shags for Grandfather to ride, and Don Quixote acquitted himself so well that he, with his double burden, was the first to arrive at the garden gate. Shags, trotting for sheer surprise, was close behind, but it was half an hour later before Don Carlos and Rodrigo came slowly up the road, the father’s arm thrown lightly over the lad’s shoulders.

IX

CHOSEN FOR THE KING

THE next morning, as Don Carlos was starting off, as usual, with Rodrigo, Rafael clung to his father’s hand.

The officer who, since that first unhappy night, seemed to have a complete understanding of the boy, hesitated.

“But I may walk all the way into Granada with your brother to-day and may not come back until afternoon. You know how tired you were yesterday by the time we reached the Gate of the Pomegranates.”

Rafael’s black eyes looked wistfully into his father’s.

“I would rather go with you and be tired than not go with you and not be tired,” he said.

Don Carlos smiled so tenderly that Rafael had a queer feeling as if his heart were growing too big for his jacket.

“You may come, my son,” decided the father, and then his glance fell doubtfully on Pilarica. “No, the city will be in tumult; no place for a little girl. But you may walk a bit of the way with us, Sweetheart.”

It seemed such a very wee bit that, when her father kissed her and bade her run back, the tears stood in Pilarica’s eyes like dew on pansies.

“Why not let her romp a while with the other children?” suggested Rodrigo, looking over to where a dozen happy tatterdemalions were skipping songfully about in one of their favorite circle-dances. “There are no gypsies among them this morning, and it is to the gypsies that Tia Marta most objects.”

“Very well,” assented Don Carlos, relieved to see the grieved face brighten. “You may play with them this forenoon, if you like. But don’t follow tourists into the Alhambra.”

“And scamper home if the children get rude,” warned Big Brother.

“And don’t go near the Gypsy King,” put in Rafael.

Uncrushed by all this weight of masculine authority, Pilarica threw kisses to her three guardians as long as they were in sight and then flashed into the midst of the dancing circle, where she was welcomed with a gleeful shout. Carmencita clamored, as always, for Little White Pigeons, and so the children divided into two opposite rows, each line in turn clasping hands and lifting arms while the other danced under, as the song indicates:

“Little white pigeonsAre dreaming of Seville,Sun in the palm tree,Roses and revel.Lift up the arches,Gold as the weather.Little white pigeonsCome flying together.“Little white pigeonsDream of Granada,Glistening snows onSierra Nevada.Lift up the arches,Silver as fountains.Little white pigeonsFly to the mountains.”

Then they played Hide-and-Seek in their own special fashion. The first seeker was Pepito, who sat doubled over, with his chubby palms pressed tight against his eyes, while the others slipped softly into their hiding-places, all except Pilarica, who, as the Mother, stood by and gave Pepito his signal for the start by singing:

“My nightingales of the AlhambraForth from the cage are flown.My nightingales of the AlhambraHave left me all alone.”

After they were tired of this, Isabelita called for Butterfly Tag and was chosen, because of her pink frock – torn though it was, – to be the Butterfly. Forming in a close circle about her, the children lifted her dress-skirt by the border and held it outspread, while Pilarica, on the outside, danced round and round the ring, fluting like a bird:

“Who are these chatterers?Oh, such a number!Nor by day nor by nightDo they let me slumber.They’re daughters of the Moorish kingWho search the garden-closeFor lovely Lady Ana,The sweetest thing that grows.She’s opening the jasmineAnd shutting up the rose.”

Then the children all at once lifted the pink frock and wrapped it about Isabella’s head, while Pilarica, dancing faster than ever, led them in singing seven times over:

“Butterfly, butterfly,Dressed in rose-petals!Is it on candle-flameButterfly settles?How many shirtsHave you woven of rain?Weave me anotherEre I call you again.”

Suddenly they varied the song:

“Now that Lady AnaWalks in garden sweet,Gathering the rosesWhose dew is on her feet,Butterfly, butterfly,Can you catch us? Try it, try!”

In an instant the circle had broken and scattered, while the Butterfly, blinded and half smothered in the folds of the skirt, dashed about as best she could, trying to catch one or another of her teasing playmates.

Then followed Washerwoman, and Chicken-Market, Rose and Pink, and Golden Earrings, and when, at noon, Don Carlos and Rafael came back, the children were all absorbed in the circle-dance of Mambrú. Don Carlos remembered the song from his own childhood in Saragossa and hummed the pathetic couplets under his breath, as he stood watching.

“Mambrú is gone to serve the king,And comes no more by fall or spring.“We’ve looked until our eyes are dim.Will no one give us word of him?“You’d know him for his mother’s sonBy peasant dress of Aragon.“You’d know him for my husband dearBy broidered kerchief on his spear.“The one I broider now is wet.Oh, may I see him wear it yet!”

With the last word of the song all the little figures in the circle flung themselves face downward on the ground, so impetuously that Carmencita and Pepito bumped their heads together and set up such a duet of stormy weeping that, for dramatic close, there was nothing left to be desired.

Don Carlos swung Pilarica, hotter and more weary than Rafael himself, to her feet, and as she smiled up into his face, she saw in it, for all its gravity, a great relief.

Tia Marta, too, who met them at the garden gate, was quick to read his look.

“Your heart has been taking a bath of roses,” she said.

And Don Carlos, in the same breath, was telling her his good tidings.

“Rodrigo drew a lucky number. There is weeping in other homes to-day, but not in ours.”

“Other people’s troubles are easily borne,” scoffed Tia Marta, but the dry, walnut face was twitching so strangely that the children wished it had been polite to laugh.

After their simple luncheon, a hunch of bread and a bowlful of olives for each, Pilarica coaxed Rafael out to the summer-house where the boy, not ill-pleased to have an audience for his story, seated himself with his back against the column and recounted the great event of the day.

“The Gov’ment,” he explained, with the dignity of a prime minister, “needs more soldiers for Cuba.”

“Acorns,” murmured Pilarica.

“And so it has set up in every city and town and village – my father told me so – urns for the lottery, and all the men who ar’n’t too young, like me, or too old, like Grandfather and the Geography Gentleman, draw out a number. If it’s a very, very high number, you don’t go to Cuba, but if isn’t, you do.”

“And Rodrigo?” breathed Pilarica, who was sitting on the ground exactly in front of Rafael, leaning forward and squeezing her sandals in her hands so hard that her toes ached all the rest of the afternoon.

Rafael’s eyes glowed.

“Oh, he was so tall and straight as he stood there waiting his turn. He had his cap in his hand and he waved it and looked right across the urn to my father and me and laughed. And my father took off his hat to him. Think of that! My father! Some day I am going to be a hero, like the Cid, and then, perhaps, he will take off his hat to me.”

Don Carlos, pacing back and forth on one of the tiled walks, smiled as he caught the words.

“And then it was Rodrigo’s turn?” prompted Pilarica.

“Yes, his turn among the very first, and I stood on my tippiest tiptoes to see. I saw his arm go down into the urn, and I saw it come up again, and in his hand was something that he held out to the officer who was marking the names. Then the officer smiled, and nodded to my father, and we knew it was all right; so we followed Rodrigo out of the hall to embrace him. And I wanted him to come back with us, but he waited to see how the luck went with his friends.”

It was not till late in the afternoon that Rodrigo came back, and then he did not come alone. Along the road was heard a sound of tramping feet and suddenly there broke forth the familiar song of Cuban conscripts.

“We’re chosen for Alfonsito;We serve the little king;We care not one mosquitoFor what the years may bring.How steel and powder please us,We’ll tell you bye and bye.Give us a good death, Jesus,If we go forth to die.”

“What does this mean?” demanded Don Carlos hoarsely, rising from the mosaic bench and fronting the lads as they thronged into the garden. He had already recognized Rodrigo’s voice and now he saw his son marching among the recruits.

There was a moment’s pause and then one of Rodrigo’s classmates stepped forward.

“We kiss your hands, Don Carlos,” he said, “and salute you as the father of a generous son. All Granada rings with his praises. For even while we, chosen for the King, were congratulating him on his better fortune, up to the urn came a young peasant, a laborer in the vineyards, as dazed as a pig in a pulpit. He drew a lot for the hungry island, and his mother – ah, you should have seen and heard her! They say it was she who led the rabble yesterday afternoon, when the women, hating Columbus for having ever discovered Cuba, stoned his statue in the Alameda. Her shrieks, as she pushed her way through the crowd to her boy, might have pierced the very bronze of that statue to the heart. The Civil Guards laid hands on her to drag her out, but she clung to that staring lout of hers like a starved dog to its bone. Then Rodrigo, the head of our class, the pride of the Institute, came forward and gave himself as a substitute for that dull animal, that mushroom there. And not even a God-bless-you did the unmannerly couple stay to give him, but made off as if a bull were after them. To bestow benefits upon the vulgar is to throw water into the ocean. But we, who know a great action when we see it, have escorted Rodrigo home to do him honor.”

For the first moment it looked to Rafael as if the stern face of his father had turned gray, but that may have been only the shadow of the olive-leaves above his head.

“You are welcome, Don Ernesto,” he replied in a voice even deeper than its wont, “and welcome to you all, soldiers of Spain. Marta, do me the favor to bring forth such refreshment as the house affords. Gentlemen, all that I have is yours. Take your ease and be merry.”

And so all was bustle and jollity till the conscripts trooped away again, and the family had, but only for one night more, Rodrigo to themselves. The children decided that it must be a fine thing, after all, to go and help put Cuba in its right place on the map, for everybody was talking faster and more cheerily than usual. Only Grandfather was heard murmuring a riddle that made a sudden silence in the group:

“In my little black pateIs no love nor hate,No loyalty nor treason,And though I’ve killed your soldier boy,I do not know the reason.”

“Bullet,” guessed Pilarica, her lip quivering as she looked toward Big Brother.

“That’s the bullet I’m going to dodge,” laughed Rodrigo. “There are more bullets than wounds in every battle. Eh, Tia Marta?”

“A shut mouth catches no flies,” returned the old woman tartly. But she bundled Grandfather into the house where he was still heard crooning to his guitar:

“I would not be afraid of Death,Though I saw him walking by,For without God’s permissionHe can not kill a fly.”

Suddenly Don Carlos turned to Rodrigo, holding out both hands:

“My noble boy, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I will tell you frankly that I have thought it was your fault to lay overmuch stress on your own concerns and your own career, a career whose promise has indeed been bright, and now you have cast it all away that a peasant lad may not be torn from his mother.”

“I have no mother, sir,” replied Rodrigo, blushing like a girl and speaking in a hesitating way most unlike his usual fluency. “If there had been anyone to grieve over me like that – and yet I don’t know. Something happened – happened inside of me. It was as if a candle-flame went out and the daylight flooded in. After all, a life is a life.”

“Bah!” sniffed Tia Marta. “All trees are timber, but pine is not mahogany.”

Yet the children reasoned that she was not displeased, for she spared no pains to prepare a festival supper that evening, serving all the dishes that Rodrigo liked best, even to spiced wine and fritters.

X

TIA MARTA’S REBELLION

WHEN they gathered in the garden that evening, the grown people would still keep talking. Rafael and Pilarica, who were tired and drowsy after all the excitement of the day, missed the silence that usually fell as their father smoked and Rodrigo puzzled out his problems. To-night it seemed that nobody could keep quiet for ten seconds together.

“What shall I bring you back from Cuba, Tia Marta?” laughed Rodrigo.

“Yourself,” snapped the old woman, “with a grain of sense under your hair for something new.”

“And epaulets on my shoulders? I may return a general. Who knows?”

“Bah! Being a man I may come to be Pope. But many go out for wool and return shorn.”

Meanwhile Grandfather was strumming on his guitar and murmuring a riddle that neither of the children had heard before:

“An old woman gathering fig upon fig,Nor heeds whether moist or dry,Soft or hard or little or big,A basketful for the sky.”

Before they could ask the answer, their father was pointing out to them the lovely cluster of stars that we call the Pleiades.

“Those are what shepherds know as the Seven Little Nanny Goats,” he said, “and that long river of twinkling light you see across the sky” – designating the Milky Way – “is the Road to Santiago. For Santiago, St. James the Apostle, was the Guardian Saint of all Spain in the centuries when the Moors and Christians were at war in the Peninsula, and the story goes that in one desperate battle, at sunrise, when the Christian cause was all but lost, there appeared at the head of their ranks an unknown knight gleaming in silver armor, as if he had ridden right out of the dawn, waving a snow-white banner stamped with a crimson cross. He charged full on the infidel army, his sword flashing through the air with such lightning force that his fierce white steed trampled the turbaned heads like pebbles beneath his hoofs. This was St. James – so the legend says – and from that time on he led the Christian hosts till the Moors were driven back to Africa. And up in Galicia, in the city of Santiago, where your Aunt Barbara lives, is his famous shrine, to which pilgrims used to flock from all over Europe, and they looked up at the heavens as they trudged along and named that beautiful stream of stars the Road to Santiago.”

Now information is amusing in the morning, and pleasant enough in the middle of the afternoon, when one’s brain has been refreshed by the siesta, but after a long day of dancing, walking, guests and feasting, information is good for little but to put one to sleep. Pilarica did not awaken even enough to know when her father and Big Brother kissed her good-night, but Rafael questioned with an enormous gape:

“Was Santiago’s horse as good as Bavieca?” and then his blinking eyes shut tight without waiting for the answer.

It was as well, as it turned out, that the children had a full night’s sleep, for never in all their lives had there been a day so crowded with emotions and surprises as the morrow. Pilarica in the great bed of the inner room and Rafael on his cot under the olive tree were aroused at the same time by angry screaming that their tousled heads, still in the borderland between sleep and waking, took at first for Lorito’s, but as the dream-mist cleared away, they knew the voice for that of Tia Marta in a rage. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, arms akimbo, facing their father, whose hand was raised in a vain effort to check her torrent of words.

“Would you throw the rope after the bucket?” she was crying. “Is it not enough that the señorito must sail to the Indies, and you, but you would have me lead forth those forsaken innocents to Galicia? Galicia! That will I never do in spite of your teeth. Don’t tell me of their Aunt Barbara. Did she not stoop to marry a Galician? Bah! Coarse is the web out of which a Galician is spun. It is not the maid of the Giralda who will pass the end of her days among pigs.”

“But I cannot leave them, Marta, here on your hands. Their grandfather is now little more than a child himself. What could you do if Rodrigo and I should neither of us come back? No, no, the children must be in shelter. They must be with their kindred. The arrangements are all made. When my ship put in at Vigo for supplies, I took train to Santiago and settled the whole matter with my sister and her husband. And be assured that you, who have been so faithful, so devoted, will find warm welcome under their roof. You can be very useful to my sister.”

“Toss that bone to another dog. An Andalusian to go into service in Galicia! Take your wares to a better market. Is it at fifty years that one becomes a vagabond and goes about the world, sucking the wind? Ay de mi! The wheel of fortune turns swifter than a mill-wheel. Ah, but your heart, Don Carlos, is harder than a hazel-nut, – ay, as hard as your head, for the head of an Aragonese pounds the nail better than a hammer.”

“And your pride, my good Marta, is as big as a church. Why should you not serve my sister as you have served me? There is sunshine on the wall even in Galicia. And the children – how could they bear to lose you, too, on this day when they must lose so much? And what would become of you, if you were left behind?”

“The dear saints know. When one door shuts, another opens. Hammer away with that Aragonese head of yours till the skies fall. You are hammering on cold iron, Don Carlos. Whoever goes, Roxa and I stay here. You may tear my little angels from me, if you will, but not one step, not one inch of a step, does either foot of mine take toward Galicia.”

“Galicia? Who is going to Galicia?” called Rafael, appearing in the doorway.

“Out with you!” bade Tia Marta, stamping angrily. “The secret of three is nobody’s secret. Go wash your face, for the world is turned over since you washed it last. And out with you, too, Don Carlos, if I am ever to have a chance to get the chocolate ready.”

The chocolate, because of Tia Marta’s agitation or for some other reason, did not taste right that morning. Even Rafael set his bowl down half full. All was hurry and commotion. Rodrigo’s new knapsack and a bag of extra clothing for the voyage were swung upon Shags, while Don Quixote, who was beginning to wear a sleek and comfortable aspect that belied his name, was laden with the hammock and a couple of valises that the children, casting dismayed looks at each other, recognized as their father’s. Then Rodrigo embraced Grandfather and, with a mischievous air of gallantry, Tia Marta, who flung her arms about his neck and burst into a storm of crying. At first she refused to touch the hand that Don Carlos held out to her, but, suddenly relenting, snatched it to her lips and rushed back into the house, thrusting the ends of her saffron kerchief into her mouth to choke her sobs. Roxa, bristling and spitting, retreated under the bench. But Grandfather sat serene, crooning to his guitar: