they found Pilarica. The first trace they had of her was in the gypsy
quarter, where the whole cave population came swarming out upon them,
aroused by Xarifa’s shrill defence of the Gypsy King. He knew nothing
whatever of their trumpery trash, she unblushingly declared with the
little watch and chain deep in her pocket, nor did he know even by sight
their nuisances of children, and he was, moreover, so sick with the
misery in his bones that he had not been off his bed for seven days and
nights. Rodrigo had enough to do to get his father, whose peremptory
bearing only made matters worse, out of the jostling, threatening crowd
before they were actually mobbed, yet he found a chance to throw a smile
at a young gypsy girl whose dancing he had often admired.
“A clue, Wildrose of the Hillside! One little clue, Feet of Zephyr!” he
coaxed, and Zinga, flashing him a friendly glance, pushed against him
in the throng and muttered:
“There are more pearls in the Alhambra than ever the Moors dropped
there.”
Acting on this doubtful hint, they had roused the indignant Don
Francisco from his slumbers, and when that drowsy guardian of the old
palace told them of the invasion of children that afternoon, had induced
him to conduct a search for Pilarica. By the help of lanterns, for a
chill rain had blown over from the Sierra Nevada, quenching the
moonlight, they made their way through corridor after corridor and
chamber after chamber and court after court. Don Francisco wished to
shout the child’s name, but her father feared the sound might startle
her out of sleep into sudden alarm, and so they pursued their anxious
quest as noiselessly as might be.
“Hush!” breathed Rodrigo. He had heard, and not far off, the voice of
his little sister, piping faintly:
“Oh, I have a dolly, and she is dressed in blue,
With a fluff of satin on her white silk shoe,
And a lace mantilla to make my dolly gay,
When I take her dancing this way, this way, this way.
“When she goes out walking in her Manila shawl,
My Andalusian dolly is quite the queen of all.
Gypsies, dukes and candy-men bow down in a row,
When my dolly fans herself, so and so and so.”
“It’s only Big Brother,” spoke Rodrigo quietly and, stepping forward
with his lantern, he turned its light on a brave little lassie cuddled
in the window-recess of what had been the boudoir of a queen. She was
hugging to her heart a most comforting, companionable doll, made out of
a bundle of newspapers that one of the tourists had let fall. Pilarica’s
wisp of a hair-ribbon was serving as a belt and the costume was
completed by Rafael’s red fez. Although the child had not slept through
all the long, dark hours, the shapeless doll had borne her such good
company, rustling affably whenever conversation was in order, that she
had forgotten to be afraid.
V
A BEAUTIFUL FEVER
Pilarica did not remember her father, and it was not without some
persuasion that she consented to let the stranger carry her, while to
Rodrigo was entrusted the newspaper doll, whose demeanor he pronounced
quite stiff, although her intelligence was beyond dispute.
“Don’t lose the magic cap, pl--” murmured Pilarica, but for once her
politeness remained incomplete, for no sooner was the silky head at rest
on the broad shoulder than the exhausted child fell fast asleep.
Curiously enough, the warm pressure of that nestling little body turned
the thoughts of Don Carlos, for the first time since he had left the
garden, to Rafael. Had he, perhaps, been too harsh with the youngster?
How suddenly that first, happy look in the great eyes had been clouded
with distress and shame! The boys’ mother had always been tender with
them, even in their wrongdoing. And he, accustomed as he was to deal
with bolts and wheels, must learn not to handle the hearts of children
as if they, too, were made of iron. The father’s mood was already
self-reproachful as they entered the stone kitchen, which a ruddy
_brasero_, the Spanish fire-pan where charcoal is burned, and a savory
odor of stew made cozy and homelike.
“Now praised be the Virgin of the Pillar!” cried Tia Marta,
unceremoniously snatching Pilarica from Don Carlos and carrying her to
the warmth of the _brasero_. And while Rodrigo, his vivacity unchecked
by hunger and fatigue, poured forth the story of the rescue, which lost
nothing in his telling, Tia Marta woke the little sleeper enough to make
her swallow a cup of hot soup, undressed her, rubbed the slender body
into a rosy glow and tucked her snugly away in bed. Grandfather stirred
in his cot as the child was brought into the inner room and hummed a
snatch of lullaby, but Rafael’s cot was empty.
Tia Marta’s squinting eyes, as she returned to the kitchen, peered into
the shadows that lay beyond the flickering circle of light cast by the
_brasero_.
“Rafael, come and get your soup and then to bed,” she called. “You must
be as sleepy as the shepherds of Bethlehem.”
But no Rafael replied. Rodrigo and his father exchanged startled
glances.
“Didn’t the boy come back to the house?” asked Don Carlos.
“Do you mean to say you didn’t take him with you?” demanded Tia Marta.
“Father commanded him to stop where he was,” said Rodrigo, aghast, and
rushed out again into the rain, Don Carlos and Tia Marta at his heels.
They found Rafael, drenched to the skin, standing erect with folded arms
beside the Sultana Fountain, a stubborn little image of obedience; but
when his brother’s hand fell on his shoulder, the child reeled and
fainted away. Rodrigo caught the boy just in time to save the dark head
from crashing against the marble curb of the basin and, with Tia Marta’s
help, carried him to the kitchen. Here they both worked over the passive
form with rubbing, hot flannels and every remedy they knew, while Don
Carlos, sick at heart, looked on, not venturing to touch his little son.
Rafael revived at last, but only to pass into fit after fit of
convulsive crying. He lay in his brother’s arms, refusing to taste the
hot soup, goat’s milk, herb tea, that, one after another, Tia Marta
pressed upon him.
“But it’s peppermint tea, my angel,” she wheedled, “and peppermint is
the good herb that St. Anne blessed.”
“It’s bed-time, Rafael,” pleaded Rodrigo. “Isn’t it, father? And no boy
ever goes to bed without his supper.”
“Bed-time? I should think so indeed,” replied Don Carlos. “It’s quarter
of two by my watch.”
At the word _watch_ Rafael’s wild crying broke out anew.
“Do you see those tears, Don Carlos?” scolded Tia Marta, whose anxiety
had to vent itself in abuse of somebody. “Tears as big as chickpeas! A
house in which a child weeps such tears as those is not in the grace of
God. And why, in the name of all the demons, must you be talking of
watches? Such is the tact of Aragon, not of Andalusia. Oh, you
Aragonese! You would speak of a rope in the house of a man that had
been hanged.”
Rafael’s crying suddenly ceased. The loyal little lad sat upright on
Rodrigo’s knee and turned his stained and swollen face with a certain
dignity upon the old servant.
“You are not to speak to my father like that, Tia Marta,” he said. “What
my father does is right.”
“Oh, the impudent little cherub!” cried Tia Marta, hugely delighted,
while Don Carlos had to turn away to hide the quiver that surprised his
lip.
The next day Pilarica, though she slept till noon, was as well as ever,
but Rafael lay, now shaking with chills, now burning with fever, yet
always wearing the rumpled red fez, which his light-headed fancies
seemed to connect with the look of comprehending love in his father’s
eyes.
Those first few days left little memory of their stupors and their
nauseas and their pains, but when Rafael began to pay heed to life once
more, he found himself thin and languid, to be sure, but the object of
most gratifying attentions from the entire household. His cot had been
placed--not without a pitched battle between Don Carlos and Tia
Marta--under the old olive tree just before the door, and Grandfather,
in his accustomed seat on the mosaic bench, had brightened up again into
the best of entertainers. All this stir and excitement in the household
seemed to have scattered the mists that had been creeping slowly over
his brain. He was more alert than for many months and no longer played
with oranges and snails. He knew his son-in-law now and while he had as
many riddles in his white head as ever, he gave them out only as the
children called for them. When Rafael saw that they amused his father,
the boy began to hold them in higher esteem.
“They do well for girls at any time,” he confided to Rodrigo, “and for
men when we are ill.” But he insisted that the answers should be
guessed.
“Ask us each a riddle in turn, please, Grandfather,” he requested one
marvelous Andalusian evening, when the earliest stars were pricking with
gold the rich purple of the sky, “and I will pronounce the forfeits for
those who fail.”
“With whom do I begin?” asked Grandfather.
“With my father, of course,” responded Rafael.
“No, no, my son. Always the ladies first,” corrected Don Carlos, drawing
Pilarica to his side.
“Then it is Tia Marta who begins, for she is bigger than I am, and so
she must be more of a lady,” observed Pilarica wisely.
Just then the five-minute evening peal from the old Watch-Tower rang
out, and Grandfather, turning to Tia Marta, recited:
“Shut in a tower, I tell you truth,
Is a saintly woman with only one tooth;
But whenever she calls, this good old soul,
Sandals patter and carriages roll.”
“Bah!” ejaculated Tia Marta. “As if I had not known that ever since I
could suck sugarcane! To ask a church-bell riddle of one who was born on
the top of the Giralda!”
“I was born in a bell-tower;
So my mother tells;
When the sponsors came to my christening,
I was ringing the bells,”
sang Grandfather roguishly, strumming on his guitar.
“But this fiddling old grasshopper is enough to set the blood of St.
Patience on fire,” snapped Tia Marta, who had been standing in the
doorway and now indignantly popped back into her kitchen.
“_Did_ Tia Marta ring the bells when she was a teenty tinty baby?” asked
Pilarica.
“Not just that,” replied Don Carlos, who was seated in the hammock that
he had swung beside Rafael’s cot in order to care for the sick boy at
night, “but it is true that she was born high up in the Giralda, which,
as she may have told you, is the beautiful old Moorish minaret, that
looks as if it were wrought of rose-colored lace, close by the glorious
cathedral of Seville. There are thirty bells in this tower and they all
have names. One is Saint Mary, I remember, and one Saint Peter, and one
The Fat Lady, and one The Sweet Singer. Tia Marta can tell you all the
rest, for she spent the first seventeen years of her life among them,
way up above the roofs of the city. The hawks that build their nests
even higher, under the gilded wings of the crowning statue of Faith,
used to drop their black feathers at her feet and she would wear them in
her hair when she came down to the festivals of Seville. She was a
wonderful dancer in those days, I have heard your grandfather say.”
“Ay, that she was,” chimed in the old man, speaking with unwonted
animation. “I can see her now in her yellow skirt spangled all over with
furbelows, wearing her wreath of red poppies with the best, while her
little feet would twinkle to the clicking of the castanets.”
“But how did she happen to grow so old and ugly?” asked Rafael.
“Oh, Rafael!” exclaimed Pilarica, shocked by such unmannerly frankness.
“Very nobly,” answered Don Carlos, stroking his little daughter’s hair.
“By love and by service. When her father, the bell-ringer, died, and a
stranger took his rooms in the Giralda, Marta came down into the city
and entered the home of your grandfather and sainted grandmother--”
“May God rejoice her soul with the light of Paradise!” murmured
Grandfather devoutly.
“There Marta was nurse-maid for your mother, then a little witch two or
three years old,” continued Don Carlos. “And she grew so fond of her
charge that she never left her, not even when your mother had the
infinite goodness to marry me, and we moved to Cadiz, my naval station
then. And now Tia Marta, for your mother’s blessed sake, spends all her
strength and devotion upon you. We must never forget what we owe her,
and we must always treat her with respect and affection.”
Rodrigo, who was pacing the tiled walks near by, trying to puzzle out a
mathematical problem, turned to say:
“I’ll bring her a cherry ribbon from Granada to-morrow.”
“And she may wash my ears as hard as she likes,” magnanimously declared
Rafael.
But Pilarica slipped from within the circle of her father’s arm and ran
into the house to surprise Tia Marta with a sudden squeeze and shower of
kisses.
By the time the little girl came out again, Grandfather had a riddle for
her:
“When she wears her silvery bonnet,
My lady is passing fair;
But she’s always turning her head about,
Gazing here and there.”
As the child hesitated, Rodrigo pointed to the luminous horizon, and she
promptly said: “The Moon.”
“But that’s not playing fair,” protested Rafael.
“Oh, we don’t expect girls to play fair,” laughed his brother.
“But I _want_ to play fair,” urged Pilarica. “And I want to be punished,
like Rafael, when I do wrong. Why wasn’t it just as bad in me to disobey
Tia Marta and run off with the Alhambra children as it was in Rafael to
leave me alone?”
“It’s hard to explain, Sugarplum,” said her father, “but the world
expects certain things of a man, courage and faithfulness and honor, and
a boy is in training for manhood.”
“And what is a girl in training for?” asked Pilarica.
“To be amiable and charming,” answered Rodrigo promptly.
“But I want to be faithful and hon’able, too,” persisted Pilarica.
“A man must do his duty,” declared Don Carlos, slowly and earnestly.
“That is what manliness means. He must satisfy his conscience. But it
is enough for a little girl if she content her father’s heart, as my
darling contents mine. And when the years shall bring you a husband,
then he will be your conscience.”
“But I want a conscience of my own,” pouted Pilarica. “And I do not want
a husband at all. If I must grow up, I will be a nun and make
sweetmeats.”
“Time enough to change your mind,” scoffed Rodrigo. “What is my riddle,
Grandfather?”
“Wait till my father has had his turn,” jealously interposed Rafael.
Grandfather was all ready:
“Here comes a lady driving into town;
Softly the horses go;
Her mantle’s purple, and black her gown;
Gems on her forehead glow.”
“But this is difficult,” groaned Don Carlos, thinking so hard that the
hammock creaked.
“I know,” cooed Pilarica. “Grandfather told it to me once before.”
“Don’t give my father a hint,” warned Rafael.
“But Rodrigo gave me a hint,” returned Pilarica.
“Oh, that’s different,” declared Rodrigo, almost impatiently. “_Men_
must play fair.”
But it was some time before Don Carlos found the right answer, “Night”;
and Rodrigo had almost as much trouble in guessing his.
“I’m a very tiny gentleman,
But I am seen from far.
Out walking in the evening
And lighting my cigar.”
He called out “Firefly” only just in time to escape a forfeit, but
Rafael, to whom fell the puzzle:
“A plate of nuts upset at night,
But all picked up by morning light,”
quickly guessed “Stars.”
He could hardly help it, with such a shining company of them shedding
their gracious looks down upon the garden.
“How many stars are there, Grandfather?” he asked.
“One thousand and seven,” replied Grandfather, “except on Holy Night,
the blessed Christmas Eve, when there flashes out one more, brightest of
all, the Star of Bethlehem.”
“That is your Andalusian arithmetic,” laughed Don Carlos, shaking his
head. “They say in Galicia that a man should not try to count the stars,
lest he come to have as many wrinkles as the number of stars he has
counted.”
“Where’s Galicia?” asked Pilarica.
“Far from here, in the northwest corner of Spain,” answered Don Carlos,
more gravely than seemed necessary. “My sister--your Aunt Barbara--lives
there, and one of these days I am going to tell you more of her, and of
her husband, your Uncle Manuel, and of your Cousin Dolores, who is a
year or two younger than Rodrigo. They are the only kindred we have in
the world.”
Even Rodrigo wondered at the sudden seriousness in Don Carlos’ tone, but
Grandfather, at that moment, chanted another riddle, which, as it turned
out, nobody could guess, not even Tia Marta, who had come to the doorway
again.
“Tell me, what is the thing I mean,
That the greater it grows the less is seen.”
Grandfather finally had to tell them the answer, “Darkness,” and then
Rafael assigned to everybody a forfeit. Tia Marta was sent into the
house after a treat, which, for Rafael’s own forfeit, he was not to
taste; Pilarica danced, Rodrigo vaulted over the cot, and Don Carlos was
begged to “tell about the heroes of Spain.”
“To-morrow,” said the father, taking Rafael’s wrist in his cool fingers
and counting the pulse. “You have had quite enough talking for to-night,
my son.”
And then the English consul, whose home was on the Alhambra hill,
dropped in, just as Tia Marta was passing around--but not to Rafael--the
most delicious cinnamon paste whose secret she had learned from the nuns
in Seville. The consul shook hands with Don Carlos and Rodrigo, patted
Pilarica’s head, complimented Tia Marta on the paste, and then bent over
Rafael’s cot.
“So you have been having a fever, my little man?” he said.
“Oh, such a beautiful fever!” sighed Rafael blissfully, snuggling his
face against his father’s coat sleeve.
“But how is that?” queried the consul in surprise.
“It’s the red cap,” volunteered Pilarica. “It doesn’t exactly turn real
stones into real bread, but it makes trouble pleasant, and that’s the
same thing, only better.”
The Englishman did not look much enlightened.
VI
HEROES AND DONKEYS
On the morrow Don Carlos was promptly called upon to redeem his forfeit.
Rafael was so much better that he had been lifted over to his father’s
hammock, where, propped against pillows, he sat almost upright, taking,
for the first time since his illness began, his usual breakfast of
chocolate and bread. Pilarica, in celebration of this happy event, had
waited to breakfast with him, and the two children were having great
fun, throwing back their heads in unison as they dipped the long strips
of bread into their bowls of cinnamon-flavored chocolate, so thick that
it clung to the bread in a sticky lump. They were very dexterous in
whirling up the bread-sticks and directing the sluggish brown trickle
into their mouths without spilling a drop, afterwards biting off the
chocolate-laden end of the bread and hungrily dipping again.
“And now for the heroes!” called Rafael.
“You didn’t say please,” rebuked Pilarica.
“Heroes, please,” amended the boy, “but girls ought not to correct their
brothers.”
“Do me the favor to excuse me,” apologized Pilarica.
“There is no occasion for it,” returned Rafael with his best Andalusian
manner.
“A thousand thanks,” responded Pilarica. And now that this series of
polite phrases, taught in every Spanish nursery, was duly accomplished,
Rafael called again for the heroes.
“One at a time,” responded the father, throwing out his hands with a
gesture of playful remonstrance. He had just come back from his morning
walk with Rodrigo, whom he liked to accompany for at least a part of the
way to the Institute, and was warm from the return climb. “One hero a
day, like one breakfast a day, is quite enough for Don Anybody.”
Then he told them stories of a champion who was mighty in Spain eight
hundred years ago.
“If I were one hundred times as old as I am,” cried Rafael with
sparkling eyes, “perhaps I would have seen him.”
“Perhaps,” smiled Don Carlos, and went on to tell the children that this
warrior’s name was the name of their own brother, Rodrigo, though he had
other names, too, as Ruy Diaz de Bivar, and was most often called the
Cid, or Lord, a title given him by the five Moorish kings whom he
conquered all at once.
“_Five--Moorish--kings!_” exclaimed Rafael in rapture, while Pilarica,
to help her imagination, propped up five tawny breadsticks in a row.
So their father told them how the Cid, when a stripling not twenty
summers old, had ridden forth on his fiery horse, Bavieca, followed by a
troop of youthful friends, against those five royal Moors who, with a
great army, were plundering Castile, and how he overthrew them and set
their host of Christian captives free.
“Our Rodrigo would have done that, too,” declared Rafael proudly, while
Pilarica, with one valiant dab of her forefinger, tumbled the five
bread-sticks into the dust. Later, remembering Tia Marta, she picked
them up and polished them off with a handful of rose-petals before
restoring them to the plate.
Finding his hero so popular, Don Carlos recited what he could remember
of an old Spanish ballad that tells of the Cid’s offer to give Bavieca
to the King of Castile.
“The King looked on him kindly, as on a vassal true;
Then to the King Ruy Diaz spake after reverence due:
‘O King, the thing is shameful, that any man beside
The liege lord of Castile himself should Bavieca ride:
“‘For neither Spain nor Araby could another charger bring
So good as he, and certes, the best befits my king.
But that you may behold him, and know him to the core,
I’ll make him go as he was wont when his nostrils smelt the Moor.’
“With that, the Cid, clad as he was in mantle furred and wide,
On Bavieca vaulting, put the rowel in his side;
And wildly, madly sped the steed, while the mantle streamed behind
As when the banner of Castile beats in a stormy wind.
“And all that saw them praised them; they lauded man and horse
As mated well and rivalless for gallantry and force;
Ne’er had they looked on horseman might to this knight come near,
Nor on other charger worthy of such a cavalier.
“Thus, to and fro a-rushing, the fierce and furious steed,
He snapped in twain his hither rein. ‘God pity now the Cid!’
‘God pity Diaz!’ cried the lords, but when they looked again,
They saw Ruy Diaz ruling him with the fragment of his rein;
They saw him proudly ruling with gesture firm and calm,
Like a true lord commanding, and obeyed as by a lamb.
“And so he led him foaming and panting to the King;
But ‘No!’ said Don Alfonso, ‘it were a shameful thing
That peerless Bavieca should ever be bestrid
By any mortal but Bivar. Mount, mount again, my Cid!’”
Rafael’s mind was still full of the Cid when, two or three days later,
he was well enough to take a short ride on Shags outside the garden. The
rough-coated, mouse-colored donkey carried his young master jauntily,
being apparently well pleased to see him out again. Don Carlos, racking
his memory for more ballads of the Cid, was walking beside Shags, when
Pilarica, who had tripped on ahead and turned a corner, uttered a cry of
distress. The father sprang forward and found the child on her knees in
the dust of the highway, her face streaming with tears, while she held
up her clasped hands in entreaty to a sullen-faced fellow who was
brutally beating his ass. The poor creature, hardly more than skin and
bones, was so cruelly overladen with sacks of charcoal that he had
stumbled on a steep and stony bit of the road and broken the fastenings
of one of the sacks, whose contents were merrily making off downhill
like little black imps on a holiday. The peasant, in a fury, was dealing
the ass great fisticuffs on the tender nose, and between the eyes, shut
in patient endurance of the blows.
Don Carlos had often seen animals beaten and had usually passed by with
a shrug of annoyance, but the anguish of pity in his little daughter’s
face and attitude suddenly smote him with an intolerable feeling, as if
that horny fist were pounding his own heart.
“Hold, there, my friend!” he protested. “Enough is as good as a feast.
If you kill your donkey, who will carry the load?”
The charcoal seller, his arm raised for another blow, stared in
astonishment at the speaker.
“You would do well to put your tongue in your pocket,” he growled. “This
ass is mine, to beat if I choose and to kill if I choose. I am thinking
that is what I will do, for his skin is the best of him now.”
Pilarica rose and rushed to her father, her eyes their deepest pansy
purple with beseeching.