Instead of the doll with golden hair, if only you would give me this
sweet, beautiful donkey!”
Her father lifted her in his arms, so that the flushed, wet face was
pressed against his own.
“Do you mean it, Honeydrop? Think again. Do you really wish me to buy
you this wretched ass in place of the wonderful dolly with Paris
clothes, in the Granada shop? I am afraid there is not money enough for
both.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” entreated Pilarica. “The doll is happy in the
shop-window, where she can see the children smile at her as they go by,
but the donkey--oh, father, _the donkey!_”
The peasant, whose arm had fallen to his side and who had been listening
shrewdly, now stepped forward, touching his hat with a surly civility.
“It’s not for the price of a basket of cabbages I would be selling my
fine donkey. I’m a poor man, your Worship. All that God has given me for
my portion in the world is morning and evening, three pennyworths of
poverty, and a bushel of children with the gullets of sharks. What would
become of us all without my strong, good ass?”
“I’ll give you two dollars for your dingy old rattlebones, my man, and
that is twice what anybody else would be fool enough to give you,” said
Don Carlos, holding out the coins.
The charcoal-seller looked at them greedily, but still hung back.
“Come, now!” spoke Don Carlos sharply. “Don’t stand hesitating like a
grasshopper that wants to jump and doesn’t know where. Remember that
covetousness bursts the bag. Is it a bargain or not?”
The decision of the officer’s tone and, still more, the tempting gleam
of the silver prevailed, but the peasant would not give over his donkey
until he had delivered the load of charcoal. So Don Carlos and Pilarica,
Rafael and Shags, escorted Sooty-Face and his limping ass to the hotel
hard by the Alhambra, where the sale was at last effected.
“And now the donkey, such as he is, is yours,” said Don Carlos, putting
the shabby bridle into Pilarica’s hand. “Haven’t you a smile for me
now?”
But the child, though she kissed her father gratefully, flung her arms
about the donkey’s neck, and, pressing her cheek to the bruised nose,
cried harder than ever, until Shags felt it time to interfere. That
generous-minded animal, whose long ears had been responding, with
various cocks and tremors, to every stage of the proceedings, now
drowned Pilarica’s sobs in a resounding bray. The stranger seemed to
understand this greeting better than he understood Pilarica’s
endearments and took a timid step or two toward his new comrade.
“Shall we call him Bavieca?” asked Rafael, eying the sorry beast
doubtfully. He certainly did small credit to the name of the peerless
steed.
“Better call him Rosinante,” laughed the father, “after the forlorn old
horse of Don Quixote, who was something of a hero, too, in his way. Most
people, as, for instance, his fat squire, Sancho Panza, who rode a
famous ass named Dapple, thought it a very foolish way.”
“Why?” questioned Pilarica, whisking off her tears with the ends of her
hair-ribbon.
“Oh, he took windmills for giants, and wayside inns for castles, and
flocks of sheep for armies. He rode through the country trying to right
wrongs and only got knocked about and made fun of for his pains. In
fact, this coming to the rescue of an abused donkey is something after
his fashion.”
And Don Carlos, a little shame-faced, looked his purchase over. The ass
was lame in one foot, covered with welts and fly-bites, and so weak that
he seemed hardly able to walk even now that his load had been removed.
But Pilarica was enchanted with him and kept lavishing caresses upon the
gaunt beast, whose large, liquid eyes looked out wonderingly at her.
“I want to call him Don Quixote,” she announced. “I think Don Quixote
is a lovely hero, and this is such a lovely, lovely donkey.”
“Very well!” assented her father, with a shrug. “At any rate, he’s lean
enough. And now to see what Tia Marta will have to say to this
performance of ours!”
But Tia Marta unexpectedly took Don Quixote to her heart. As the ass
stood before her for inspection, hanging his head as if aware of his
unsightliness, and now and then slowly shaking his drooped ears, she
surveyed him for a moment, her squinting eyes taking account of all the
marks of cruel usage, and then stamped her foot in anger.
“That charcoal-seller ought to be thrashed like wheat,” she cried. “How
I wish I had the drubbing of him! I would like to split him in two like
a pomegranate. But God knows the truth, and let it rest there. And this
donkey is not so bad a bargain, Don Carlos. See what I will make of him,
with food and rest and ointment. The blessed ass of Bethlehem, he who
warmed with his breath the Holy Babe in the manger and bore Our Lady of
Mercy on his back to Egypt, could have no better care from me than I
will spend on this maltreated innocent.”
Tia Marta was as good as her word. Her choicest balsams were brought to
bear upon the donkey’s hurts, and Leandro, whom Rodrigo asked over to
see the animal, for gypsies are wise in such matters, agreed with the
old woman that the ass was of good stock and might have, under decent
conditions, years of service in him yet. When the charcoal stains were
washed away and the discoloration of the bruises had faded out, the
discovery was made, to Pilarica’s ecstasy, that Don Quixote was a white
donkey. Oh, to possess a plump white donkey! The child was in such haste
to see those scarecrow outlines rounded out that Tia Marta grew
extravagant and added handfuls of barley to the regular rations of
chopped straw. And as it would never do to feed the new-comer better
than the faithful Shags, that Long-Ears, too, found his fare improved,
so that, with a chum to share his cellar and a festival dinner every
day, he waxed fat and frisky and often sang, as best he could, his
resonant psalm of life.
Pilarica went carolling like a bird through the old garden in those
blithe spring mornings, and Rafael had grown so vigorous that he was
again more than a match for her at their favorite game of _Titirinela_.
The children would clasp hands, brace their feet together until the tips
of Rafael’s sandals strained against his sister’s, fling their small
bodies back as far as the length of their arms would allow, and then
spin around and around like a giddy top, singing responsively:
“‘Titirinela, if you please!’
‘Titirinela, bread and cheese!’
‘What is your father’s worshipful name?’
‘Sir Red-pepper, who kisses your hands.’
‘And how does he call his beautiful dame?’
‘Lady Cinnamon, at your commands.’
_Titirinela, toe to toe!_
_Titirinela, round we go!_”
Once, as Don Carlos came to pick up his little daughter, after the
whirling top had broken in two and each half had rolled laughing on the
ground, Pilarica clasped her arms tight about his neck, exclaiming:
“Dearest father, are we not the very happiest people in all the world!”
But he hastily thrust an official-looking envelope into his pocket and,
for his only answer, shut the shining eyes with kisses.
VII
THE GEOGRAPHY GENTLEMAN
Rafael woke three times that night and put out his hand to his father’s
hammock, only to find it empty. Listening intently, he would hear
measured steps pacing up and down at the further end of the garden. The
third time, he ventured to call, and the steps quickened their beat and
came toward him.
“Anything amiss, my son?” asked Don Carlos, stooping over the cot.
“I keep waking up and missing you,” confessed Rafael, half ashamed.
“Isn’t it very late?”
“Yes, or very early, as one may like to call it,” answered Don Carlos,
looking to the east, where a pearly gleam was already stealing up the
sky. “But I will turn in now, if your rest depends on mine. A youngster
like you should make but one sleep of it the whole night long, and not
lie with eyes as wide open as a rabbit’s.”
The next morning Tia Marta noticed that Don Carlos had a haggard look
and that, when he returned from his walk with Rodrigo, his face was
grave and anxious.
“The master’s furlough must be nearly up,” she remarked to the cat, with
whom she was in the habit of holding long conversations, “or he worries
about the new conscription, fearing for the _señorito_. But it is not
our bonny Rodrigo who would draw a lot for the soldiering. He is ever
the son of good-luck. And yet--ah, well! well! Each man sneezes as God
pleases. As for you and me, Roxa, we will not be troubling the master
with questions. Some broths are the worse for stirring.”
When Don Carlos, however, came upon Rafael and Pilarica running races in
the garden, his bearing was so gay that they mischievously barred his
passage, standing across the walk, hand in hand, and singing:
“Potatoes and salt must little folks eat,
While the grown-up people dine
Off marmalade, peanuts and oranges sweet,
With cocoanut milk for wine.
On the ground do we take our seat;
We’re at your feet, we’re at your feet.”
As they suited the action to the words, he bent and lightly knocked the
black heads together, saying merrily:
“What a pity that nobody wants to spend the day with me in Granada!”
“A whole day!”
“In Granada!”
And the madcaps, wild with glee, flashed about the fragrant garden more
swiftly than the swallows, whose _chirurrí_, _chirurrí_, _chicurrí_,
_Beatriiiiíz_, Pilarica mocked so truly that her father could not always
tell which was child and which was bird.
“_What, what, gentlemen! What, what, what! What, what, ladies! What,
what, what!_ As the old duck quacks when the barnyard gets too lively,”
called Grandfather, who was trimming one of the boxwood hedges. Even his
physical energies seemed to have been somewhat restored in these three
eventful weeks since Don Carlos had come home.
“Save your strength, you little spendthrifts,” bade their father. “It’s
a long road to Granada, and a longer road back. And now run to Tia
Marta to be made fine.”
“May Shags go with us?” shouted Rafael.
“And Don Quixote, please,” begged Pilarica.
“Not all the way,” replied Don Carlos, “but Grandfather, if he will be
so kind, may bring the donkeys to meet us at the Gate of the
Pomegranates an hour before sundown.”
“With much pleasure,” assented Grandfather, while the children scampered
off to be arrayed in their simple best.
Such a joyous day as it was! They walked down slowly, with frequent
rests, in which Don Carlos would tell them still more stories of the
Cid, and of Bernardo del Carpio, the valiant knight who loved his father
even better than he loved his country.
“And so do I,” said Rafael shyly, and Don Carlos, though he shook his
head, pinched the square chin, so like his own, and did not look
displeased. But at their next rest he began to tell them what a glorious
history their country had,--how the Spanish Peninsula, after the Romans,
once masters of the world, had occupied and ruled it for nearly seven
centuries, was possessed by the Goths, one of the wild, free races from
the north of Europe that poured down upon the sunny southern lands and
wrested them from the grasp of Rome, then weakened by luxury and unable
to resist.
“But this does not interest Pilarica,” the speaker interrupted himself
to say. “There are flowers over yonder, Honey Heart, that you might run
and gather.”
“Oh, but I love it!” protested the little girl, all her face aglow. “I
can just see the Goths rushing down from the top of the world, and the
lazy Romans looking so surprised while their countries are taken away
from them.”
“Huh!” snorted Rafael. “I don’t see any such thing. Do be quiet,
Pilarica, while my father tells me what happened next.”
“Something more than two centuries of Gothic rule, which was Christian
rule, happened next,” continued Don Carlos, “and then the Moors,
followers of the false prophet Mohammed, swarmed over from Africa and
drove the Christians back and back, till even stout little Galicia,
which made a stubborn resistance up in its far corner, was conquered. It
was feared that the Mohammedans would pass the Pyrenees, that majestic
mountain range which shuts off our Peninsula from the rest of Europe,
and overrun all Christendom, and it is the supreme service of Spain to
civilization, her crowning honor and her holiest pride, that in this
crisis of destiny she saved Europe from the Moslems. Against that dark
tide of invasion, checked by the mountain bar, she flung the fighting
force of all her chivalry, and little by little, century by century, the
armies of the Cross forced the armies of the Crescent southward,
drenching all the way with blood, until at last, at last, under our
great wedded sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Moors were driven
out even from their last stronghold in the Peninsula, from Granada, and
sent flying back across the Straits.”
In the fervor of his feeling, Don Carlos had risen and swept off his
hat, as if in the presence of that august Spain whose heroic past he was
relating. Pilarica’s slender arms were extended to help in pushing out
the Moors. Rafael, breathing hard, was the first to speak.
“Oh-h! I am so glad to be a Spaniard.”
“And well you may be,” said Don Carlos, holding out his hand to Pilarica
for resuming the walk. “Not only does Europe owe, perhaps, her very
existence as a Christian continent to Spain, but it was through the
faith and practical support of Queen Isabella that the Italian
adventurer, Columbus, was enabled to cross the vast, unknown Atlantic
and discover America.”
“Are not Europe and America very grateful to us?” asked Pilarica, as she
tripped along by her father’s side, taking three steps to his one.
“Of course they are,” Rafael took it upon himself to answer. “Isn’t that
a silly question, father? But Pilarica is only a girl.”
“Queen Isabella, who did such wonderful things for Spain and the world,
was only a girl once,” remarked Pilarica.
Rafael pretended not to hear.
Their father brought them first to the stately cathedral of Granada.
Here, in the Royal Chapel, all three stood silent for a moment above the
dim vault where rest in peace the ashes of Ferdinand and Isabella. Then
he took them to the magnificent promenade, the _Alameda_, along whose
sides tower rows of giant trees that throw an emerald arch across the
avenue. Here fountains were playing, roses, myrtles and jessamines were
in rich bloom, and there were dazzling glimpses of the snow-robed Sierra
Nevada. But when the little feet began to lag under the noontide heat,
Don Carlos led the children to a neighboring square and, pausing before
one of the tallest houses, reached his arm through the iron bars of the
outer door and twitched a bell-chain that was looped within.
“Who comes?” called a voice from above, as in the old times of warfare
between Christian and Moor.
“Peace,” answered Don Carlos, and in a moment both doors swung wide.
A little old man came hurrying across the marble court to meet them. His
head was covered by a close-fitting red silk cap, his eyes were two
black twinkles, and his face was yellow as an orange.
“It’s the Geography Gentleman,” whispered Rafael to Pilarica, while
their host was greeting Don Carlos. “I met him once when I was walking
with Rodrigo and he gave me macaroons.”
“And you have brought your cherubs, as I begged you,” twittered the
Geography Gentleman, pecking at Pilarica’s cheeks. “And how are you
called, my sweeting?”
“Maria Pilar Catalina Isabel Teresa Mariana Moreto y Hernandez, at the
service of God and yourself,” responded the child, demurely kissing the
clawlike hand and smiling trustfully into the queer yellow face so near
her own.
“Aha! So our Lady of the Pillar has you under her protection, and
Catalina is for your mother, whom I knew before she was as tall as you
are now--ah, white pearl among the souls in Paradise!--and the other
names?”
“Are for the great queen whose tomb I have just taken her to see and for
her sponsors in baptism,” explained Don Carlos.
“Good, good! And this is Rafael, an old friend of mine, though so young.
Aha, ha, ha! And now you children are wondering why I keep my cap on in
the house, and that, too, when it is honored by the presence of a little
ladybird. It is not because I am such a good Spaniard that I must always
wear the red with the yellow; not that, not that. It is because I am
bald, like St. Peter. Did you never hear it said that a silent man is as
badly off for words as St. Peter for hair? I will teach you a verse
about him:
“St. Peter was so bald,
Mosquitoes bit his skin,
Till his mother said: ‘Put on your cap,
Poor little Peterkin.’
“But you are hot; you are tired; you are well-nigh slain by that enemy,
the sun. Come and rest! Come and rest! The house is yours. All that it
holds is yours. Come and rest!”
It seemed to the awed children that their house held a great deal, as
they followed the Geography Gentleman, to whom their father had offered
his arm. First he led them to the central court, an Andalusian _patio_,
open to the air, with violet-bordered fountain, with graceful palms and,
planted in urns, small, sweet-blossoming trees. Then their adventurous
sandals climbed a wide marble stairway and pattered on over the tiled
floors from chamber to chamber out to a shaded balcony. Pilarica and
Rafael were less impressed by the Moorish arches and windows, the
delight of foreign visitors, than by objects less familiar to their
eyes,--statues, pictures, tapestried walls, curtained bedsteads, hanging
lamps and, strangest of all the strange, an American rocking-chair.
A smiling maid came in, bearing a silver pitcher and basin, and the
children bathed their faces and hands in the cool, rose-scented water,
but when the maid offered them the embroidered towel of fine linen she
carried on her arm, Pilarica drew back in dismay.
“But we would get it wet,” she objected.
Nobody laughed, although the black eyes of the Geography Gentleman
twinkled more brightly than ever. Don Carlos stepped forward and held
over the basin his own hands, on which the maid poured a fresh stream
from the pitcher. Then he dried his hands upon the towel and passed it
to Pilarica, who, though still reluctant, ventured to use one end, while
Rafael, at the same time, plunged his dripping face into the other.
The luncheon, it seemed to the little guests, was a repast fit for
heroes, even for the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio,--a cold soup like a
melted salad, a perfumed stew in which were strangely mingled Malaga
potatoes, white wine, honey, cinnamon and cloves, and, for a crowning
bliss, a dish of sugared chestnuts overflowed by a syrup whose every
spoonful yielded a new flavor,--lemon peel, orange peel, tamarind, and a
medley of spices.
After luncheon everybody, in true Spanish fashion, took a nap, the
Geography Gentleman in one of the hushed chambers, and Don Carlos in
another, but the children slept far more soundly on couches in adjoining
balconies, though over Pilarica’s slumber two canaries in a gilded cage
were chirping drowsily about their family affairs, and a bright green
parrot, chained to a perch, did his best to waken Rafael by screaming
for bread and butter.
VIII
ONLY A GIRL
Pilarica and Rafael were finally aroused from the siesta by a commotion
in the square. Peeping over the queerly twisted iron railing of the
balconies, they saw many women, in the bright-hued costume of Andalusian
peasants, surging by in stormy groups, talking wildly and making violent
gestures. Then came a dozen lads of about Rodrigo’s age, locked arm in
arm and chorusing in time to their swinging tread:
“To-morrow comes the drawing of lots;
The chosen march delighted
And leave the girls behind with those
Whom the King has not invited.”
The children looked and wondered for a while, and then, as they had been
bidden, went down to the patio.
Don Carlos and his host were smoking there together and talking so
earnestly that they did not notice the light footfalls.
“No, if it comes to that, I shall not buy him off,” Don Carlos was
saying. “He must take his chance with the rest of the eighty thousand
whom Spain has flung like acorns into Cuba.”
“My own three sons among them, my gentle José, my fearless Adolfo, my
merry Celestino,” moaned the old man, rocking himself to and fro like
one in bodily pain. “My money can do nothing for them now--my gallant
boys!--but if you would accept from an old friend, for the comfort of
his lonely heart, the thousand pesetas--”
“Thanks upon thanks, most honored sir, but no, no!” interrupted Don
Carlos, laying his hand upon the other’s arm, while his voice deepened
with emotion. “If you, one of the wealthiest of the Granadines, were too
loyal a patriot to buy off your sons from military service, shall I, who
wear the uniform, hold back my own?”
“Ah, but my lads would not be bought off, though when it came to Adolfo,
I consented, and when it came to Celestino, I besought. They were all
for adventure and for seeing the world. They had lived among my globes
and maps too long. Woe is me! Woe is me!”
Tears were streaming down the yellow face of the Geography Gentleman,
and Pilarica could not bear the sight. She ran forward and, leaning
against his knee, reached up and tried to wipe the tears away with her
tiny handkerchief.
“Oho, oho!” he chirped, changing his manner at once. “Here is our Linnet
wide awake again! What now? What now? A fairy story, shall it be? That’s
what little girls like--stories of the fairies and the saints.”
“I would rather, if you please, hear about Cuba,” replied Pilarica,
nestling close to those trembling knees. “What is it, and why does Spain
drop people into it like acorns?”
Rafael, standing close beside his father, felt him start as if to check
the childish questions, but already the Geography Gentleman was rising,
not without difficulty, from his carven chair.
“Ugh!” he groaned. “My poor bones creak like a Basque cart. But no
matter! As for the old, they may sing sorrow. Come with me to my study,
all of you, all of you, and we will find out what Cuba looks like. Ah,
Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!”
Don Carlos tried again to protest, but the Geography Gentleman would
have his way. So he led them to a room unlike anything that the children
had ever seen before. Great globes swung in their standards, maps lined
the walls, a desk with many pigeon-holes stood near a huge _brasero_,
and everywhere were cases of books. Rafael hung back in bewilderment,
but Pilarica kept close to their guide and watched with eager eyes while
he gave the largest globe a twirl.
“Did you know the world was round?” he asked. “And that there is a
red-haired goblin who sits in the center and holds on to our feet so we
shan’t tumble off? When he yawns, it gives us an earthquake. A good old
fellow, that, but he has too long a name for such little pink ears as
yours.”
“My ears are larger,” suggested Rafael.
“And Shags and Don Quixote have the largest ears of all,” added
Pilarica, and then blushed to see that even her father smiled, while the
Geography Gentleman gurgled and wheezed until his yellow face was
streaked with purple.
“Good! good! good!” he squeaked, as soon as he could muster even so much
voice again. “The goblin’s name is Gravitation, and he sits all doubled
up, with his long nose gripped between his knees, pulling, pulling,
pulling, pulling, till his arms are almost ripped out of his shoulders,
but not quite. For though he’s uglier than hunger, he’s stronger than
the sun and the moon.”
The child gazed doubtfully at the big globe.
“Will you please open it and show him to me?”
Again the Geography Gentleman fell to laughing until he had to hold his
aching sides.
“But do you think I have wind-mills in my head that I talk such a
monstrous heap of nonsense?” he asked. “It is only that pretty little
ladies like nonsense better than sense. No, I cannot open my globe for
you, dainty one, but see! I can show you Spain.”
But Pilarica’s faith in the Geography Gentleman was shaken.