a very beautiful daughter, and to you will I give her if you kill the
wild boar that makes such havoc in my city. If you fail, by the way,
you will lose your head. Choose from my armory the weapons that you like
best, and kill the boar the first thing after breakfast to-morrow.’
“So in the morning Don Juan Bolondron, who had armed himself as well as
he knew how, went out to the forest, his knees shaking with fright, to
slay the monster. But he went so slowly, wondering how, if he should be
so lucky as to escape from the boar, he could escape from the king, that
it was past dinner-time when he arrived, and the beast, who could not
bear to be kept waiting for his meals, rushed out upon him, bristling
all over with rage and hunger. When Don Juan Bolondron saw this
horrible, flame-eyed creature coming, he began to run with all his might
back to the king’s palace and the boar came after, so that it was
written down in history as the swiftest race ever known. Don Juan
reached the palace first and hid behind the door, while the boar, losing
sight of him, dashed on into the patio, where were stationed the royal
guards. The soldiers, glad of something to do, discharged their muskets
all at once, and the boar, much to his surprise, fell dead as a stone.
Don Juan Bolondron, who had peeped out to see how matters were going
on, now popped into their midst, drawn sword in hand, upbraiding them
with having slaughtered the monster that he was driving in from the
forest to give for a pet to the king.
“The king, who was sitting, greatly bored, on his throne upstairs, ran
down to see who had called, and when he found that Don Juan had been
bringing the boar as a present to his feet, he was so touched that he
married him to the princess before supper.
“Unluckily, Don Juan dreamt of his bench and, as he had a way of talking
in his sleep, he called to the princess:
“‘Here, wife! Hand me my last, will you! The pincers, too! And my awl,
wife, my awl!’
“The princess, startled awake by his impatient cries, was naturally much
shocked to think that her father might have mistaken a cobbler for a
hero. So in the morning she went to the king before he had finished
shaving and asked him to look into it.
“The king had Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow summoned to his
chamber at once and thundered, waving his frothy razor:
“‘Fellow, are you a cobbler or a king’s son-in-law? You certainly can’t
be both, even if I have to cut off your head, after all, to set this
blunder straight.’
“‘High-and-Mighty Father-in-Law,’ replied Don Juan, ‘give yourself no
concern. Her Highness, the Princess, my honorable Lady, though very
beautiful, has only a woman’s wit. She was confused with sleep, too, and
misunderstood what I said. I was again in my dream taunting the wild
boar, as I taunted him when I was dragging him by his ears up the palace
steps, telling him that his face was flat as a last, his teeth dull as
pincers, and his bite no more to be dreaded than a cobbler’s awl. You
see, sire, how a woman, unused to deeds of valor, would fail to
understand.’
“‘They are such impulsive creatures,’ sighed the king. ‘It is very
troublesome. Do you not see, my daughter, how rashly you jumped to a
conclusion? Now go in peace, both of you, and don’t come bothering me
again with your domestic quarrels.’
“And so,” concluded Pedrillo, “my story ends with bread and pepper and a
grain of salt, and I’ve no more to say.”
“I do not care for that story,” said Rafael, who had grown very red in
the face.
“But the Princess was right,” protested Pilarica, with a puzzled little
pucker of her forehead.
“If the Devil had not invented lying, that shoemaker would,” observed
Tia Marta. “But your tiresome tale has not been quite useless, Don
Pedrillo. It has put Juanito fast to sleep.”
“And Grandfather, too,” added Pilarica.
“The better for them,” remarked Uncle Manuel, patting the glossy neck of
his offended mule, for Capitana had just been so rude as to frisk past
Coronela and take the lead.
Pedrillo was quite disconcerted by these frank criticisms and croaked
dolefully, pushing Peregrina on beside the impudent, triumphant
Capitana:
“Unhappy is the tree
That grows in the field alone;
Every wind is its enemy
Till it be overthrown.”
“What on earth is the matter with the man?” queried Tia Marta.
“There is something I would say to you before we come to the city,”
faltered Pedrillo.
“Say it now,” bade Tia Marta briskly. “Of what art afraid, heart of
butter?”
“My mother’s son has no wife,” ventured Pedrillo wistfully. “I know,” he
went on to say, with his old twinkle, “that choosing a wife is as risky
as choosing a melon. I know that there is in heaven a cake kept for
husbands who never repented of their choice, and into which, up to this
day, no one has ever set tooth--”
“Bah!” interrupted Tia Marta. “That is because no husbands ever went to
heaven.”
“My house is only a cottage,” pursued Pedrillo humbly, “and Don Manuel’s
house is large and fine. It was a pilgrim inn once and still has the
sacred shell of St. James carved over the door. But ‘little bird, little
nest.’”
“And what would I be in Don Manuel’s grand house?” asked Tia Marta
bitterly. “A cook of cabbage broth, without a place of my own to scold
in or anybody of my own to scold, not even allowed to keep for myself
this child as harmless as a crust of bread, this innocent as pure as a
water-jar.”
And she kissed the baby head that nestled so confidingly against her
shoulder.
“There will always be room in my cottage and in my heart for Juanito,”
promised Pedrillo.
Tia Marta, dropping her look to Capitana’s inquisitive, pricked-up ears,
made answer in an Andalusian _copla_:
“I’ll tell you my mind, and that
Holds good to the gates of Zion:
I would rather be the head of a rat
Than be the tail of a lion.”
“I know I’m not much to look at,” admitted Pedrillo, a trifle aggrieved
by the comparison.
“No, you are not,” assented Tia Marta. “Truth is God’s daughter. But you
are a handy little piece of a man, and since I have a loaf of bread,
I’ll not ask for cheese-cakes. The poor should be contented with what
they find and not go seeking for truffles at the bottom of the sea.”
The two were so absorbed in each other that they failed to notice
Pilarica, who had ridden up on Don Quixote and was now charging joyously
down the line, telling everybody that Don Pedrillo and Tia Marta, while
both making believe to kiss Juanito, had really kissed each other. The
news was received with peals of laughter, and all the carriers ran
forward, voicing saucy congratulations:
“No summer like a late summer,” mocked Bastiano.
“You would better take me, Doña Marta,” advised Tenorio, whose legs
looked longer than ever, attired in their festival garb of
chestnut-colored breeches, with rows of glass buttons down the sides,
“for I have a nose, at least.” And then, turning back, he sang over his
shoulder at Pedrillo:
“Poor boy! You haven’t a nose,
For God did not will it so;
Fairings you buy at the fair,
But as for noses, no.”
“Don’t trust him, Doña Marta,” teased Hilario, whose shabby suit was set
off for the occasion by a red and gold handkerchief. “He loses his heart
to somebody every trip.
“‘His loves I might compare
To plates of earthenware.
Break one, and Mother of Grace!
Another takes its place.’”
“A truce to your nonsense!” called Don Manuel, who had urged Coronela on
to the crest of the long rise they had been slowly ascending. “Look!
Look! Yonder is Santiago de Compostela.”
All gazed in silence upon the pilgrim city, set upon a hill in a circle
of hills, its many groups of towers and spires tending upward on every
side toward its crowning cathedral of St. James.
Don Manuel beamed upon the group of Andalusians.
“Will you not be happy here?” he asked, his iron face all quivering with
joy and love, while the honest Hilario wept aloud and the other three
carriers, even Bastiano, did not restrain their tears. “Listen! Where
there are church bells, there is everything. Even at this distance I can
hear them ringing,--the five-score and fourteen holy bells of
Santiago.”
XX
THE TREE WITH TWELVE BRANCHES
“Here they are!” shouted Uncle Manuel, flinging himself off Coronela and
running forward like a boy to embrace his wife and daughter, who had
sighted the mule-train from the roof of their house and had come to the
outskirts of the city to bid the travellers welcome.
Aunt Barbara, a short, dark, active woman, with a face whose expression
was so sweet with gracious kindness that nobody could ever tell whether
the features were beautiful or not, gathered the two children into her
arms with a low, wordless cry of passionate tenderness. As she held them
close, winning even Rafael’s shyness with eager, delicate caresses, they
remembered what they had not known their memories held,--the lavishment
of love that had cherished their babyhood.
“Mothers must be different from all the world,” thought Pilarica, and
pressed, with a sudden yearning for something that her childish heart
had lost, into the depths of that ardent tenderness.
Meanwhile Dolores, a merry-faced, cozy little body, in her festal array
of wine-colored bodice with cuffs worked in gold thread, her petticoat
as blue as a violet, her white kerchief starred with marvellous fruits
and flowers, was giving the prettiest of greetings to Grandfather. And
Tia Marta was met with a cordial gentleness that readily included
Juanito.
“Of course we cannot keep him,” began Don Manuel.
“Wait and see!” laughed Dolores. “You know it will be just as Lady
Mother and I say.” And then she flew back into her father’s arms to kiss
away his very feeble effort at a rebuking frown.
At once the guests were hurried home to pottage. And such a pottage! Egg
and chicken cut into small pieces, bits of ham, red peppers and green
string beans! But they could not linger over their plates, for all the
world was scurrying through the streets toward the cathedral to see the
fireworks.
“Drops of water must run with the stream,” said Uncle Manuel, thrusting
his dripping spoon behind his ear, like a pen, in his haste; but
Grandfather was too weary for junketing, and Tia Marta could not be
persuaded to leave Juanito.
“A Christian child is holier than fireworks,” she declared, standing in
the doorway, under the carven cockleshell, with the sleepy baby fretting
in her arms.
“And quite as noisy,” came back as a parting shot from Don Manuel, who
might seem to have had enough to do, without that, in shepherding his
party of women and children through the surging throng.
Although Rafael’s head, still sensitive from the bump, was aching hard
when they all came home an hour before midnight, and Pilarica had to
pull her hair and pinch herself to keep a certain pair of pansy eyes
from drawing their silk curtains, yet both children loyally felt that
they must do their best to make up to Tia Marta for the ravishing sights
she had missed.
Much relieved that Doña Barbara left it for her to put her darlings to
bed, Tia Marta listened demurely to all their drowsy wonder-tales of
cascades of fire, showers of falling stars, flaming rivers flowing
through the night, golden trees blossoming with rubies and emeralds and
amethysts, the colossal lizard that sprang up with a crash, turning to a
glistening green dragon that tried to chase the stars, and, best of all,
a million-tinted Alhambra which changed, in one splendid instant, to
lustrous silver, to an intense and awful white, and then vanished, with
a series of deafening thunders, as a sign of Santiago’s victory over the
Moors. Yes, Tia Marta listened to everything they could keep awake long
enough to tell her, and never once confessed how she had seen all this,
and more, from the roof of the house, with Pedrillo sitting close beside
her, his hand over hers, to reassure her in case the explosions should
be too loud for Andalusian nerves to bear.
The _fiesta_ lasted for several days. There were solemn ceremonies in
the cathedral, stately processions through the streets, fairs, sports,
open-air music and dancing. Pilarica’s height of rapture was reached
when the King of Censers, the great, silver incense-burner of the Middle
Ages, swung by a system of chains and pulleys from the vaulting of the
central cupola, flashed its majestic curves through the cathedral, a
tremendous fire-bird dipping and rising in a cloud of fragrance over the
upturned faces of the vast, hushed congregation. But Rafael took a boy’s
delight in the eight giants, hollow wicker images some twelve feet high,
representing mediæval pilgrims, Moors, Turks and modern tourists, an
absurd array that strutted at the head of the processions and even
danced, to the music of pipe and tabor, before the High Altar. He was
puzzled to understand how they were propelled until he saw peering out
at him from the waistband of that chief booby, John Bull, the rueful
face of Hilario. A teasing troop of dwarfs were trying to trip and upset
this particularly clumsy giant, and Rafael struck in gallantly to the
rescue, serving Hilario at cost of a bloody nose. He pelted the dwarfs
with melon rinds, while Bastiano, concealed inside the British Matron,
John Bull’s towering escort, gathered up his calico petticoats and
pounded at them with his pasteboard head. Rafael described this, with
high glee, at the supper table, but, remembering Don Juan Bolondron, was
silent as to his own exploits.
In the motley assemblage of pilgrims the children came often upon their
friends of the road. They were all conducting themselves most decorously
now. The dreamy-eyed pilgrim was too deeply absorbed in his devotions
for more than a dim smile at Pilarica, and even the wild peasant woman
was doing a weary penance, dragging herself on her bruised knees up the
long flight of stone steps to the great west doors and on over the worn
pavement of the nave to where the enthroned statue of St. James welcomes
his worshippers.
After the feast of Santiago there came, in the end of August, the
wedding of Tia Marta. Pedrillo had decided, or, rather, she had decided
for him, to give up the road and try to make a living out of the soil,
whereat Don Manuel, who counted Pedrillo his right-hand man, was sorely
vexed.
“Why not leave the world as it is?” urged the master-carrier. “Is not
the woman better off under my roof, where she is made one of us and has
her spoon in every dish, than living on a mud floor, with goat and pig,
in that cabin of yours, munching a crust of bread and an onion? As for
you, man, your feet will tingle to be on the tramp.”
Pedrillo scratched his bushy head.
“And Juanito?” he asked.
“Ah, Juanito! He is not so bad, that Juanito. He will amuse my wife
while I am away. Now that the little rascal is getting fat on the good,
rich milk of our Galician cows, he cries no more than a pigeon. He will
soon be playing the screech-owl again on such fare as you can give him.”
“I have heard,” said Pedrillo, “that St. Peter, when he lived upon the
earth, was anxious about the rearing of an orphan and told his trouble
to our Lord Christ. The Master bade him turn over a heavy stone beside
their path. So St. Peter, puffing a bit, rolled it over, and found under
it all manner of grubs and slugs living in content. Then said Christ our
Lord to Peter: ‘Shall not the care that provides even for such as these
be trusted to nourish this dear child?’”
“Be that as it may,” replied Don Manuel stubbornly, “every man is the
son of his deeds, and life has not made you a farmer.”
Grandfather who, through all the talk, had been smiling sagely and
strumming on his guitar, now began to sing:
“Though many friends give counsel,
Take your own advice;
’Tis not by other people’s paths
One wins to Paradise.”
“Your Honor is as wise as Merlin,” exclaimed Pedrillo, beaming on the
singer. “I invite you to my wedding.”
It was on a sunny morning, when the tassels of the maize were dancing in
the sea-breeze, that Pedrillo and Tia Marta knelt before the priest in a
small side-chapel of a neighboring church. The ceremony was brief. A
white scarf was cast over Tia Marta’s head and over Pedrillo’s shoulder,
and their necks were tied together with a white satin ribbon, called the
yoke. When the ritual of the church had been spoken and the couple had
given each other wedding rings, the priest handed to Pedrillo a tray on
which were heaped thirteen silver dollars. These he passed to Tia Marta
as a symbol of his worldly wealth wherewith he her endowed, and she
prudently knotted the coins up in her handkerchief.
“No wedding without a tamborine,” said Don Manuel, who was bearing his
defeat with a good grace. So the Andalusian bride, quietly dressed in
black with a blue kerchief over her head, and the Galician bridegroom
were made guests of honor in a house of loving faces, of music and of
feasting. Rafael and Pilarica had strewn the rooms with rushes and wild
flowers, and Doña Barbara and Dolores had prepared the wedding
breakfast. The main dish, on which Doña Barbara prided herself not a
little, was founded on rice boiled in olive oil, but to this she had
added chicken, red peppers, peas, salt pork, sausage, clam and eel, and
flavored it all with saffron, so that it was, as everybody said, fit for
the King of Spain.
Then Pedrillo, putting a brave face on it, started off with Juanito,
thrown like a sack of meal across his shoulder, but the baby cooed
serenely and kicked out a pair of pink heels in disrespectful bye-bye to
the great house of the cockle shell. For once, Tia Marta had no words,
but kissed Doña Barbara and Dolores with lips that twitched and
trembled.
Don Manuel shook her hand and wished her joy in his blunt fashion. He
wanted to venture on a jocose remark, but although she seemed so meek
just then, he still stood in awe of the tongue, by which he had been
often worsted in their battles over Baby Bunting. “A scalded cat dreads
cold water,” he mused, and discreetly held his peace.
Rafael and Pilarica escorted the new family to their home just outside
the city. It was a cottage, to be sure, but with a vine-shaded porch, a
maize-field of its own and a funny little stone barn standing up on six
granite legs and wearing a gabled roof.
As the door was opened, the wind made a slight stir of dust in the empty
house.
“Ah!” croaked Pedrillo joyously. “Good Santa Ana, by way of example to
the housekeeper, is sweeping here.”
“And I will help her,” cried Pilarica, seizing a bundle of peacock
feathers of faded jewel hues and brushing up the hearth. “We have two
homes in Galicia now, Rafael.”
“And another uncle,” laughed Rafael, “Tio Pedrillo.”
“O-hoo!” crowed Juanito.
Then Tia Marta, gathering the three children into one indiscriminate
hug, fell to crying with all her might, which proved that she was
entirely happy.
Autumn came with its harvesting and all the joys of the vintage.
Pedrillo, like his neighbors, made his own wine, and Rafael and Pilarica
had glorious times stamping, in the lightest of attire, on the grapes in
the vat and singing:
“Green I slept in my cradle;
Red at the ball danced I;
But now I’m purple you like me best
And laugh to see me die.”
The autumn found Dolores more than ever fond of finery. She would don
her best cream-colored kerchief, starred with gold, only to visit her
father’s sheep out in the heather. One early October evening, when the
girl, with shining eyes, had slipped away to join one of the groups of
leaping dancers that dotted the fields, Doña Barbara smiled and sighed,
and sighed and smiled, saying as if to herself:
“There is no sun without its clouds and no lass without her lovers.”
“I heard that handsome sailor-lad of Vigo tell Dolores that she is so
sweet the roses are envious of her,” piped up Pilarica.
“No sailor-lad shall ever enter my door,” growled Uncle Manuel, just
back from another trip.
“No door can keep out love and death,” answered Aunt Barbara softly.
Pilarica began to wonder about love and death. People spoke those words
in such strange, beautiful tones. And night after night she lay awake
beside Dolores to hear a boyish voice, with the hoarse Galician note,
singing under the window. At first the _coplas_ were light and playful.
“The stars of heaven
Are a thousand and seven.
Those eyes of thine
Make a thousand and nine.”
“Tiny and dainty, you please me well,
Down to my heart’s true pith.
You look to me like a little bell
Made by a silversmith.”
Then they grew so earnest that the young voice would sometimes break
with feeling.
“Blest are the sheep that follow you
Across the meadows green,
For their shepherdess, in her mantle blue,
Is like the Heavenly Queen.”
“Until the singing shells
On the margin of the sea
Give me counsel to forget,
I will remember thee.”
For a while they waxed resentful.
“Don’t act as if you were the Queen
Putting on such airs.
I don’t choose to reach my Love
By a flight of stairs.”
But soon they were triumphant.
“I thought thee a proud, white castle;
I neared thee with alarm;
And I find thee a tender little girl
Who nestles in my arm.”
The winter was colder than the children had ever known, but it brought
the same gleeful Christmas, with its almond soup and cinnamon cake, the
blessing of the house with rosemary, the dancing before the mimic
Bethlehem and the putting out of stubby little shoes on the balcony, a
wisp of hay beside them for the camels, that the Three Kings might be
pleased and leave some friendly token--a few figs wrapped in a green
leaf or a tiny fish made of marchpane--of their mysterious passing in
the night. And after the family Christmas--“Every man in his own house
and God in the house of all”--there were gatherings of neighbors to sing
scores on scores of Holy Eve carols, and then the splendid celebration
in the cathedral.
Aunt Barbara, by gentle persuasions of which she alone possessed the
secret, induced Uncle Manuel to let her give liberal store of food and
linen to households in need, and Tia Marta, out in the granite cottage,
held Juanito close as she crooned:
“Where her happy heart was beating
Mary tucked her darling in,
Singing softly: ‘O my sweeting,
Love the poor and pardon sin.’”
There followed dark, chill weeks when all the tiles took to crying:
“Ladies sitting on a roof; it is rainy weather;
Still the ladies sit there, weeping all together.”
And since the new conscription had taken the Vigo sailor-lad away to the
war, Dolores, too, wept and wept until her girlish face had lost its
dimples and its rosy color.
But Pilarica and Rafael, though they did their childish best to comfort
Dolores, laughed the winter through. They searched the woods for
flowers, bringing home violets in January and narcissus in March, while
Dolores, whom they would coax out with them, bore back on her erect
young head a burden of fragrant brush for the evening fire.
Then came Easter, with its springtide joys, and festal summer, bringing
new troops of pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago.
“A tree with twelve branches;
Four nests on a bough;
In each nest seven thrushes;
Unriddle me now.”
So sang Aunt Barbara, and Pilarica, lifting her radiant little face for
one more kiss, made answer:
“The months are the branches;
A week is a nest;
The days are the thrushes;
Each song is the best.”
XXI
WORK AND PLAY
Rafael still dreamed of his father, especially on gusty nights, and
still, as he worked and played, tried to do what his father would
approve. For there was plenty of work, as well as play. Work is the
fashion in Galicia and neither Uncle Manuel nor Aunt Barbara could have
conceived of a happy life without it. Rafael, though he had developed no
liking for arithmetic, pegged faithfully away at the simple sums that
his uncle delighted to set him and became, if not swift, tolerably sure.
“Dame Diligence is the mother of success,” Aunt Barbara would say
cheerfully, when the lad’s face grew flushed over long columns, and
presently a purple plum or a russet apple would be dropped upon the
blurred and crumpled page. Another of Aunt Barbara’s quiet ways of
helping was to divert Pilarica’s headlong rushes upon her brother to
impart some news of burning importance,--how Bastiano had promised her
a hat woven of rushes or how Don Quixote had slipped off the
stepping-stones and splashed down into the brook. Aunt Barbara had only
to whisper _Bat_ to send the little girl dancing away out of doors
again, trilling like a penitent lark:
“Who is the student--hark, oh hark!--
Who studies best in the deepest dark?
Should you disturb his studies, beware!
This angry student will pull your hair.”