In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Cry louder, Baby!” she admonished, with a little shake to which Baby instantly responded. It was really marvellous what a roar went forth upon the air, as if the kid had been transformed into a lion-cub. Clear and shrill above this remarkable accompaniment soared the ringing call of Pilarica. Don Quixote frisked his ears and tail and turned his course toward her of his own impulse; Pedrillo gave a shout of joy, and behind Pedrillo rose the halloo of Bastiano, and behind Bastiano clanged the great copper bell of Coronela.

There was a festival of greeting for Pilarica, but Baby Bunting, howling his worst, had a welcome only from Tia Marta. She gathered the brown bantling into her arms with a torrent of tender endearments and from that hour constituted herself his nurse and champion.

As the days went by, many and sharp were her quarrels with Don Manuel, who was determined that the foundling should be left at the first refuge that offered.

“Do you hope to carry this ugly tadpole on to Santiago?” he demanded at last. “Then let me tell you once for all that I will not receive it into my house. My house,” he added, not remembering to be consistent in the matter of Natural History, “is no nest for screech-owls.”

“Yah-ee!” protested the baby.

“Where’s Herod?” asked Hilario, winking at Tenorio and Bastiano, who mischievously repeated, one after the other:

“Where’s Herod?”

But Pedrillo picked up the child from Tia Marta’s tired shoulder and, dandling it skilfully, walked back and forth till the fretful cry was hushed.

They were enjoying a full midday meal at a village inn, for their lodging-place was so far on it could hardly be reached before late evening. Now that they were getting up into the hill country, where water was more plentiful and the heat not so intense, Don Manuel was pressing on at the full speed of the train in his desire that all, but especially the children, should be at Santiago for the feast of St. James. They were sitting at table in a long open room, at whose further end stood the mules and donkeys, their halters thrown over wall-pegs ingeniously made of ham-bones. Swallows flashed and called among the rafters. Pigeons with rainbow necks flew down to share the crumbs. A dog and two or three cats hunted about under the table for scraps. An enterprising hen, with a brood of fluffy chickens twit-twit-twittering behind her, bore in at the open door with the determined air of a militant suffragette and flew heavily across the room, lighting, to the children’s glee, right on Bastiano’s astonished head. The turkey and the pig, a gaunt black pig with stiff bristles, tried to join the party, but the dog, recalled to a sense of duty, promptly drove them out.

The muleteers were making merry over their favorite dish of big yellow peas boiled to a pap in olive oil, and flanked, on this occasion, by a platter of fried fish, but the children preferred an omelet tossed up in a twinkling out of the freshly laid eggs that they had helped the ventera find in the hay-scented stable. Meanwhile Grandfather was feasting them with riddles and with a treat of roasted chestnuts, singing as they munched:

“More than a score of neighbors who dwellEach in a satin hall,Like a little brown nun in a little brown cell,And never go out to call.”

And again:

“A jewel-case from her treasuryThe courteous forest gave to meAs through brown leaves I trod;A chest as glossy as chest could be,A chest locked tight without a key;The carpenter was God.”

At this the ventera, a dumpling of a body with roguish round eyes, held a secret consultation with Grandfather and then stood laughing at Pilarica and Rafael while he puzzled them with an entirely new riddle:

“Oh, this will make your patience melt,The meaning is so shady;The lady has a soft brown belt,But the belt it has no lady.”

It was not until the doughnuts were spluttering in the olive oil that the children had the answer in their throats, and then it was on the way down instead of up. The carriers, even Don Manuel, came crowding about that tempting kettle, but Tia Marta, her thin face twitching, still sat on her three-legged stool at the table, crumbling her share of the loaf for the chickens and doves, and wishing she could give Roxa a shred of the fried fish. Pedrillo lingered near. Since her absorption in Juanito, as she called the child whom she had taken to her heart on St. John’s Eve, she seemed to have half forgotten her grudge against Pedrillo.

He came up to her now to show her that the baby slept.

“Angelito,” she murmured over it, touching the tiny cheek. “See, it is fatter already! I could make him well and strong, as I made the donkey. But what am I to be? A stranger in a strange land, a servant in another woman’s kitchen, with not even a cat of my own to mew to me. Never before have I been without a child to rear. There were my little sisters first, and then my blessed Catalina, and then her rosy Rodrigo – ah, that cruel Cuba! – and then those cherubs there that Doña Barbara will steal away from me. Blood is thicker than water, though it be water of tears. Ay de mi!”

“But eat, woman, eat,” gruffly implored Pedrillo. “You are giving away all your luncheon. Eat, and your trouble will be gone. Bread is relief for all kinds of grief.”

“Not for mine,” wailed the Andalusian. “Everyone knows his own sorrow, and God knows the sorrow of us all. Are the doors of Santiago so narrow that the gifts of Heaven may not enter in? Oh, this Don Manuel! This Galician with his soul shut in his account book! Growing richer every trip and grudging a few drops of milk as if he were a son of ruin with nothing left for God to rain on!”

“Patience, patience!” urged Pedrillo, his snub-nosed face so intent on Tia Marta that he inadvertently tilted Juanito wrong side up. “Did you never hear of the monk who, as he was telling his beads in his vineyard, suddenly held out his hand to see if it rained? Down flew a thrush and laid an egg on his palm. So the holy man waited, always with his arm outstretched, day after day, till five eggs had been laid, and then week after week, till they had all been hatched out and the fledglings had flown away. Then the mother-thrush, perching on the nearest fig tree, sang to the monk a song as sweet as an angel’s, so that he was well rewarded for his patience.”

“Bah! and how about the ache in his arm? But it is long since you have told me one of your foolish stories, Don Pedrillo.”

And Tia Marta, for the first time since Cordova, smiled on him.

“Ah!” murmured Pedrillo, hastily righting Juanito who was puckering for a roar. “Give the canary hempseed and you’ll see how it will sing.”

But at this critical moment Capitana, who had worked her halter free and whose softly jingling bells, as she ambled down the room, had not been noticed by the absorbed talkers, thrust her long head, with its most solemn expression, in between the two faces that had drawn so near together.

XVI

BY THE WAY

AS the road wound up into the mountains, fresh energy possessed the entire company. Even Carbonera became freakish, while Capitana was more than ever the practical joker of the train. The donkeys ran races. Don Manuel talked less of his winnings and more of the home-coming, though he still threatened Juanito, who crowed defiantly and brandished tiny fists, with the first orphanage they should reach. The rising spirits of the muleteers bubbled over in songs and witticisms at the expense of Pedrillo, whose devotion to Tia Marta, no longer forbidden, could not hope to escape their merry mockery; but that sweet-natured hobgoblin only grinned under their jesting, and Tia Marta, her tongue at its keenest, gave them as good as they sent. Grandfather and his riddles were by this time in high favor with the carriers, and Pilarica, as brown as a gypsy and as eager as a humming-bird, was very proud of the homage paid to his wild-honey learning.

And Rafael’s hurt was healing. He loved his father better than ever, better than in the days of that vague hero-worship, better than when the dear touch was on his shoulder and the dear voice in his ears, – touch and voice that he had missed with such an ache of longing. Now dreams and yearning had both melted into a constant loyalty, a passion of obedience, that was the pulse of the son’s heart. Pilarica understood. To the others he was still a sturdy, black-eyed urchin, ripe for mischief, with a child’s heedlessness and a boy’s boastfulness, but the little sister knew the difference between the teasing Rafael of the Moorish garden and this elder brother, whose care of her, though it lacked the tender gaiety of Rodrigo’s, had grown, since St. John’s Eve, into a steady guardianship.

They had been climbing for two hours, and those the first two hours after the siesta, when, even here among the mountains, the July heat was hard to bear. Springs were no longer infrequent and Shags had been relieved of his burden of jars, but Uncle Manuel, when they were nearing some stream long familiar to him, would find an excuse for sending Rafael on in advance that the lad might have the joy of discovery and announcement. So to-day it was their water-boy, as the carriers laughingly called him, who stood at a turn of the ascending road waving his broad-brimmed straw hat, long since substituted by Uncle Manuel, who had no faith in magic, for the beloved red fez.

“Water! Fresh, clear, sparkling water! Only a copper a glass!” shouted Rafael, imitating the cry of the Galician water-seller so common in the cities of Spain.

“A fine little fellow that!” commented Tenorio, whose long legs easily kept pace, on the climb, with Coronela.

Uncle Manuel tried his best not to look pleased.

“Needs training,” he said harshly. “Needs discipline. All boys do. I set him sums to work out in his head every day now as we ride.”

“Ay, and put him to figuring after supper, when he can hardly keep two eyes open,” grunted Tenorio. “You’ll wear out the youngster’s brains, Don Manuel.”

“The feet of the gardener never hurt the garden,” replied the master-carrier, who prided himself on the practical education that he was giving his nephew.

As the animals came in sight of the cascading stream, they brayed with joy. The donkeys and the riding mules plunged at once into the water, and the carriers speedily released the pack-mules so that these, too, might cool their legs in the pleasant swash of the current.

“Ah!” sighed Hilario, looking up from the bank where he had thrown himself down at full length to drink. “A brook of Galicia is better than a river of Castile.”

“It’s wetter, any way,” growled Bastiano, who had gone some distance up the stream to fill a leather bottle with the pure flow of the cascade. “The rivers of Castile are dry half the year and without water the other half.”

“What is the thing – can’t you tell me yet? —That falls into the water and doesn’t get wet?”

hummed Grandfather, while his eyes followed the play of a sunbeam in the waves.

“Did you ever hear,” asked Pedrillo of the children, as they watched Shags and Don Quixote revelling in the rill, “of that peasant called Swallow-Sun?”

“What a funny name!” exclaimed the little girl. “A thousand thanks, Don Bastiano.”

For Bastiano, who was never surly with Pilarica, had brought his bottle to her before he drank himself.

“He was called so,” continued Pedrillo, “because one day, when his donkey was drinking out of a stream in which the sun was reflected, the sky suddenly clouded over, and the peasant cried out in dismay: ‘Saint James defend us! My donkey has drunk up the sun.’ ”

It was so pleasant by the rivulet, under the shade of the great locusts, that Uncle Manuel permitted an hour’s rest.

“Don’t let us overrun the time,” he said to his nephew, and the men exchanged winks as Rafael, with an air of vast importance, consulted his watch.

Everybody welcomed Uncle Manuel’s decision. Shags and Don Quixote trotted off to a velvet patch of grass and rolled in the height of donkey happiness, their hoofs merrily beating the air. Pedrillo gathered twigs and made a bit of a fire on a broad grey rock, so that Tia Marta might heat the milk for Baby Bunting, who lay kicking on his kid-skin beside her, in the little soft shirt she had knit for him.

“This is not Castile, where I had to dig up the roots of dead bushes for fuel,” said Pedrillo, his face more comical than ever as he puffed out his cheeks to blow the flame.

“It is good to be among trees again,” admitted Tia Marta, “though the pine forests of Galicia are not beautiful like the orange-groves of Andalusia.”

“A bad year to all the grumblers in the world!” exclaimed Hilario in loyal indignation.

“No heaven was ever inventedThat pleased the discontented,”

muttered Bastiano.

“What have you in Andalusia that shines in the sun like that white poplar yonder?” demanded Don Manuel.

Grandfather, sitting on the edge of a rock with Pilarica nestled against him, made a gesture of reverence.

“The white poplar is the first tree that God created,” he said. “It is hoary, you see, with age.

“Are there good trees and bad trees?” asked Pilarica.

“Yes,” replied Grandfather. “The trees that are green all the year round enjoy that favor in return for having given shade to the Holy Family on the journey to Egypt, but the willow, on which Judas hanged himself, is a tree to be shunned. Yet the birds love the willow, for it gives them food and shelter. Back in Estremadura, where, you remember, we saw scarcely a shrub, no birds can nest, and they say that even the wee lark, if it would visit that province, must carry its provisions on its back.”

“Are all the birds good?” asked Pilarica again.

“Almost all,” replied Grandfather.

“ ‘The little birds among the reeds,God’s trumpeters are they,For they hail the Sun with musicAnd wish him happy day.’

But the swallows are best of all, because they used to build under the eaves of Joseph’s home at Nazareth and watch the face of the Christ Child at his play.”

“There was once a bird,” struck in Pedrillo, “a very saucy little bird, who ordered a fine new suit of his tailor, hatter and shoemaker, and then, quite the dandy, flew away to the palace garden. Here he alighted on a twig just outside the King’s window and had the impudence to sing:

“ ‘In my new spring suit (aha the spring!)I’m a prettier fellowThan his Majesty there (oho the king!)For all his purple and yellow.’

The king, very angry, had the bird caught and broiled and, to make sure of him, ate him himself, but the little rebel raised such a riot in the royal stomach that the king was glad enough to throw him up again. The bird came out in forlorn plight, stripped of all his new feathers, but he went hopping about the garden, begging a plume from every bird he met, so that he was soon even gayer and saucier than before. But when the king tried to catch him again, he flew so fast he drank the winds and did not stop till he was above the nose of the moon.”

“Bah!” said Tia Marta. “Stuff and nonsense”

“Rubbish!” chimed in Bastiano. “Pedrillo must have been taught to lie by a serpent descended from the snake of Eden.”

“And what, pray, do you know about it?” snapped Tia Marta, turning most inconsistently against her fellow-critic, “you who are standing off there solitary as asparagus or as that ill-tempered old rat who made himself a hermitage in a cheese, – You who couldn’t tell a story half as good, no, not for a pancake full of gold-pieces!”

“What a scolding deluge is this! It froths and fizzes like cider. It’s a pity there are not stoppers enough for all the bottles in the world,” retorted Bastiano.

“Come, come!” interposed Grandfather. “Stabs heal, but sharp words never. There is a cool breeze springing up. Thank God for his angel, the wind!

“ ‘Without wings to church it flies,Without a mouth it whistles,And without hands it turns the leavesOf the Gospels and Epistles.’ ”

The little fire on the rock flared up in the gust, and the children, who, having borrowed all the hats in the company, had ranged them in a row and were trying to outdo each other in jumping over every hat in the line and back again without a pause, came panting up to watch the flame.

“Sing us the fire songs, please, Grandfather,” coaxed Pilarica. She brought the old man his guitar and as the withered fingers moved over the strings, even Don Manuel drew near to listen.

“Here’s a fine gentleman come to town;His shoes are red and his plume is brown.”

“Ugh!” interpolated Tia Marta, who had burned her finger. Grandfather’s eyes twinkled.

“I’m red as a rose for you;I live at your command;My spirit glows for you.Then why withdraw your hand?”

“Don’t forget the one about the charcoal,” prompted Rafael.

“I may be black when I come,But only make me at home,And you shall find me a merry fellow,Dancing in stockings red and yellow.”

“We stack up pine cones for fuel in our Galician cellars,” observed Uncle Manuel. “It is only the stupidest peasants who cut down our splendid chestnuts for firewood, burning their best food.”

“Green, green, green it sang on the hill;Dark and silent it crossed the sill;Yellow to-night as a daffodilAnd red as a rose it is singing still.”

“But there is no end to his wisdom!” gasped the admiring Hilario. “Only two more,” smiled Grandfather.

“More than a hundred beautiful ladiesI saw for an instant dancing by;All their faces were red as roses,But in an instant I saw them die.”

“Those are the sparks,” interpreted Pilarica.

“Before the mother is born, we meetThe son out walking on the street.Tall as a pine, his weight indeedIs less than that of a mustard seed.”

“That’s the smoke,” expounded Rafael.

“And now do let him rest,” commanded Tia Marta, folding her bright-hued Andalusian shawl into a pillow for the white head. “Lie down there by Juanito and be quiet till the start. These children, little and big, would keep you playing and singing for them till the Day of Judgment. It’s your own fault, too. If you make yourself honey, the flies will eat you.”

While Grandfather dozed, Pedrillo put out the fire and tried to talk with Tia Marta, but she perversely turned her back.

“Vainly to the shrine goes poor José;His saint is out of sorts to-day,”

mocked Tenorio, but Pedrillo, nothing daunted, set to making Rafael a popgun. This he did very deftly by cutting a piece of alder half as long as Pilarica’s arm, which he measured with great gravity from wrist to elbow. Drawing out the pith, he fitted into the alder tube a smaller stick to serve as ramrod, and everybody fell to searching for bits of cork, pebbles, pieces of match, anything that would do for bullets. Uncle Manuel went so far as to contribute a sharp-pointed pewter button.

So was Rafael, all unconsciously, armed for his great adventure.

XVII

PILGRIMS OF ST. JAMES

FROM time to time, while our travellers took their ease in the locust shade, other wayfarers came toiling up or down the steep and stony road and paused to drink at the stream. There were two strings of pack-mules during the hour, the muleteers passing the laconic greeting: “With God!” A freckled lad of a dozen years or so, in charge of a procession of donkeys nearly hidden under their swaying loads of greens, was too busy for any further salutation than an impish grimace at Rafael. There were boorish farmers, doubled up on side-saddles. There was a group of rustic conscripts, ruddy-cheeked, saucer-eyed, bewildered, their little all bundled into red and yellow handkerchiefs and slung from sticks over their shoulders. There was a village baker with rings of horny bread strung on a pole, – bread eyed so wistfully by a lame dog who was tugging along a blind old beggar that Uncle Manuel, quite shamefaced at his own generosity, gave Rafael a copper to buy one of those dusty circlets for the two friends in misfortune.

Here it was the children first heard the unforgettable squeal of a Basque cart. Far up the mountain road sounded vaguely a groan, a rumble, and then a rasping screech that startled Grandfather out of his nap and made Tia Marta, snatching up Baby Bunting, scramble to her feet in consternation. When at last the yoke of stalwart oxen, with a strip of red-dyed sheepskin draped above their patient eyes, came lumbering down the difficult descent into view, the children saw that they were attached to a rude cart, whose wheels were massive disks of wood, into which a clumsy wooden axle-tree was fitted, grating with that uncanny squeakity-squeak at every revolution. The cart had a heaping load of cabbages, together with a bundle of fodder for the oxen and a basket of provision for the driver, who plodded along beside them.

“What a hideous, horrible racket!” scolded Tia Marta, while Juanito, jealous of this unexpected rival, screamed his lustiest.

“Hush, baby, hush!” soothed Pedrillo. “Hush, or the Bugaboo will get thee. Nay, Doña Marta, that is the music of my homeland. We all love it here. The oxen would not pull without it. Besides, it scares away the wild beasts of the mountains and puts even the Devil to flight.”

“And see those cabbages, the bread of the poor,” exulted Hilario. “Ah, there is no dish in all Spain so good as our Galician cabbage-broth.”

The wail of the cart, that jolted by without stopping, was yet in their ears, when Pilarica, who was still gazing after it, began to dance with excitement.

“O Rafael! Rafael!” she cried. “Come and see! Come quick! These are the wonderfullest people yet.”

She had caught sight of a band of pilgrims on their way to Santiago, to the shrine of St. James, whose festival falls on July twenty-fourth and still attracts devotees from all over the Peninsula, especially the northern provinces and Portugal, and even from beyond the Pyrenees. It was a picturesque group that came footing it bravely up that hot, rocky road. The bright sunshine brought out the crude colors of their homespun petticoats, broidered jackets, blouses, sashes, hose. The women’s heads were wrapped in white kerchiefs, but over these they wore, like the men, broad hats whose rims were caught up on one side by scallop shells. Notwithstanding the mid-afternoon heat, most of them kept on their short, round capes, spangled all over with these pilgrim shells, sacred to St. James. Their staffs, wound with gaudy ribbons, had little gourds fastened to the upper end. Some carried leather water-bottles at their belts, but they had no need of knapsacks, for food was given them freely all along the route and, if charitable lodging failed, the pine groves made fragrant chambers.

The pilgrims paused to drink at the cascade, and the children, while careful not to intrude, ventured, hand in hand, a little nearer. One man came limping toward them and seated himself on a stone. He was making the pilgrimage barefoot, as an act of devotion, and a thorn had run itself into his heel.

“May I try, sir?” asked Rafael, as the stranger’s lean fingers fumbled rather helplessly at the foot, and instantly, with a twist and a squeeze and an “Out, if you please,” the boy had drawn the thorn. To prevent the embarrassment of thanks, Rafael turned to his sister.

“Sing the riddle, Pilarica,” he directed, and the little girl, Grandfather’s ready pupil, piped obediently:

“It was this very morning,When I was out at play,I found it without seeking it,I sought it without finding it,And because I did not find it,I carried it away.”

The dreamy-eyed pilgrim paid no heed to the rhyme, but dropped to his knees, bowed his head to the ground and kissed Pilarica’s little worn sandal.

“For the sake of Our Lady of the Pillar, whose blessed name you bear,” he said, detaching from his cape – which, in addition to the scallop shells, was studded over with amulets of all sorts – a tiny ivory image of the Virgen del Pilar and pressing it into Pilarica’s hand. “Even so she keeps her state in her own cathedral at Saragossa. Ah, that you might behold her as she stands high on her jasper column, her head encircled by a halo of pure gold so thickly set with sparkling gems that the dazzle of their glory hides her face in light!”

A jovial old peasant, whose costume might have been cut out of the rainbow, pushed him rudely to one side.

“Well do I know Our Lady of the Pillar,” he boasted, “and her jewelled shrine in Saragossa, for I am of Aragon, the bravest province in Spain.”

“My father used to live in Saragossa,” volunteered Rafael, with the shy pride that always marked his mentions of his father. “He has told us of Our Lady of the Pillar and of the leaning tower.”