letter to his father, and a tall youth from the Institute, where Rafael
was to go, his uncle said, when he was ten years old, came in twice a
week to set copies in a free, flourishing script and make fun of his
pupil’s painful scrawls.
“I don’t see why letters are so much harder to do than figures,” Rafael
would groan, casting his pen to the floor in an Andalusian temper.
But Doña Barbara would pick it up and pat the ink-smeared hand into
which she fitted it again with cool, comforting touches.
“Flowers black as night,
Field white as snow,
A plough and five oxen
To make it go,”
she would say in the dear voice that was a softer echo of his father’s,
and the five sturdy little oxen would resolutely resume their labors
with the plough.
As for play, he found the games of Santiago rougher than those to which
he had been accustomed in Granada. He was surprised, at first, to see
such big boys dancing in circles, while a lad on the outside would try
to touch one of them above the waist, but he soon discovered that these
were kicking circles where heels struck out behind so vigorously as to
make it no easy matter to tag without receiving the return compliment of
a kick.
The work element, too, entered into these Galician games. In the first
one Rafael played, he received whispered orders from the leading lad,
“the master,” to “be carpenter and gimlet.” After a few more directions,
Rafael stooped over, his palms on his knees, and held this position
while the other boys in turn took running leaps over him, resting their
hands on his shoulders, but careful not to touch him with their legs.
At the first jumping, every boy would say in the harsh Galician grumble,
like so many leap-frogs at his ear:
“Here’s a new worker good and clever.
Man must work forever and ever.”
On the return jumping-trip, when Rafael’s back was beginning to ache,
each asked:
“What do you do with your best endeavor?”
And he, as he had been instructed, made answer:
“I’m a carpenter good and clever.”
On the third leaping, each workman paused with his hands on Rafael’s
shoulders to put a question to the master and, upon receiving a negative
reply, vaulted as before.
“Have you saws that saw as sharp saws should?”
“Yes, my saws are very good.”
“Have you planes that plane as smooth planes should?”
“Yes, my planes are very good.”
“Have you hammers that pound as hammers should?”
“Yes, my hammers are very good.”
“Have you gimlets that bore as gimlets should?”
“No, my gimlets are not so good.”
At this the last questioner flung his arms about Rafael, pulling the
doubled little figure upright, and all the boys dealt him friendly cuffs
and tweaks as they dragged him to the master, chorusing:
“He needs a gimlet; that is true.
He needs a gimlet and he’ll take you.”
And then the game began all over again with another youngster secretly
appointed by the master as “tinker and tongs.”
Pilarica frankly disdained the Galician games. It hurt the child’s sense
of romance and poetry to find the same plays that had been robed in
beautiful suggestion, as she romped through them with her Andalusian
mates, given this queer, workaday, bread-and-butter flavor. How lovely
it used to be when the children would choose Pilarica to lead the
Morning-stars in their dancing advances nearer and nearer the deep
shadow cast by the Alhambra wall! Within the mystery of dusk would lurk
the lonely Moon, waiting her chance to spring and catch the first daring
star who should venture to skip across the line dividing light from
darkness! How the very words of the song twinkled and tempted!
“O the Moon and the Morning-stars!
O the Moon and the Morning-stars!
Who dares to tread--O
Within the shadow?”
And here was the same play in Galicia so degraded that Pilarica would
never consent to play it. Instead of the Moon in the shadow, a
beanseller sat in his stall, and instead of stars there were thieves who
scampered over the forbidden border, shouting rudely:
“Ho! Old Uncle! Seller of Greens!
We are robbing you of your beans.”
On a certain sunshiny morning of her second autumn in Galicia, Pilarica
was protesting to her schoolmates against the game of _Hunt the Rat_.
For Pilarica went to school. The little girl had teased so to be taught
that Uncle Manuel, to quiet her, was sending her, at a penny a week, to
the dame-school kept in the porch of an old gray church. It was against
the church wall that the children were seated in a close row, so that
the rat, Pilarica’s shoe, could be hidden between the wall and the
small of their backs. As the shoe was shuffled along from one to
another, the seeker was teased with the song:
“Rat, rat! Can’t you find the rat?
Look in this hole and look in that.”
“It’s ugly,” pouted Pilarica. “I don’t want my shoe to be a rat. Why
don’t you hunt a golden cup or a fairy or something else that is nice to
think about?”
The other children stared and one tall, sullen-faced girl rudely threw
the shoe back to Pilarica.
“Because we don’t have golden cups and fairies in Galicia to hunt,” she
said, “and we do have rats. That’s sense, isn’t it? But take your old
shoe. We don’t want it.”
“These are not old shoes, yet,” replied Pilarica with untroubled
sweetness, “because their eyes are shut.”
“Do you mean anything by that?” demanded the sullen-faced girl.
Pilarica put on the rat-shoe, curling her toes with a shiver of disgust,
stretched out her feet and sang:
“Two little brothers
Just of a size;
When they get to be old folks
They’ll open their eyes.”
“Mine are wide open,” lisped a midget beside her, tumbling over on his
back that he might the better hold up his ragged footgear to the public
gaze, but as most of the children were barefoot, the subject was allowed
to lapse.
The morning session was half over, as you could see by looking down that
row of child faces. Half of them had been washed, and the other half
evidently not. Pilarica was one of some five, out of the fifty, that
came clean and tidy from home. The teacher, a white-headed grandmother,
with a poppy-red handkerchief twisted into a horn over each temple, now
appeared scuffling around the corner of the church on her knees, with
loud puffings and groanings. She had a hard vow to fulfil,--to go
seventy times around the outside of the church on those rheumatic
joints, and the gravel was cruel; but she tried to make one circuit
every day. Bowing her white head and kissing the lowest step of the
porch, she dragged herself up and, sitting down on the alabaster
fragment of a long-since-shattered statue, clucked for her pupils to
gather round her as a hen would call her chickens.
“We will leave the rest of the faces till afternoon,” she announced.
“Some of you may rub my knees, and Pilarica may have her doll and drill
you in the scales.”
The shrewd old mistress had discovered that Pilarica was possessed of a
little musical knowledge, thanks to Grandfather and his guitar, and so
allowed her to bring her doll, essential to the lesson, to school; but
its Paris wardrobe and Granada countenance had suffered so much in
Galician handling that dolly was now regularly placed, for safe keeping,
between the jaws of a stone griffin above the porch. The biggest boy had
the daily privilege of climbing up and depositing it there, and the old
dame’s rod would knock it out again to be caught in Pilarica’s anxious
arms. Battered and tattered as the doll had become under this severe
educational process, it was dearer to Pilarica than ever, and she
clasped it tight as, standing before the children, she sang in that
clear, fresh voice which even the sullen-faced girl gladdened to hear:
“_Do_n’t pin-prick my darling dolly, _Do_
_Re_spect my domestic matters. _Re_
_Me_thinks she grows melancholy, _Mi_
_Fa_st as her sawdust scatters. _Fa_
_Sol_e rose of your mamma’s posy. _Sol_
_La_ugh at your mamma, so! _La_
_Se_al up your eyes all cozy. _Si_
_La Sol Fa Mi Re Do._”
After Pilarica and the doll had done their best for half an hour to
inculcate a knowledge of the scales, the dame bade the children go and
play _Kite_ in the churchyard; but one of them remained.
“Well?” asked the old woman apprehensively.
“Will you please teach me something?” pleaded Pilarica.
“Ay, child, to be sure I will,” and the wrinkled hand drew, from a crack
in a wondrously carven pedestal beside her, all the library the school
possessed,--a dilapidated primer and a few loose leaves from a
prayer-book.
The mistress pored over these dubiously for a while and then her look
brightened.
“This is _O_,” she said impressively, “and that is _M_.”
“But you teach me O and M every time,” remonstrated Pilarica, “and never
anything else. Indeed, I know O and M quite well now.”
The old dame cocked her red horns petulantly and thrust back her library
into the marble crevice.
“O and M are very good learning,” she insisted. “Go back under the
doorway and say your prayer and don’t come to school again to-day.”
So Pilarica, the corners of her mouth drooping just a little, knelt
under the Gothic portal and repeated:
“Mother Most Holy,
Thy servant kneels to say
That with thy kind permission
It is time to play.
Mother Most Holy,
My loving heart implores,
Bless this little sinner
Before she runs outdoors.”
XXII
THE PORCH OF PARADISE
Pilarica was quite at home, by this time, in the crooked, sombre streets
of Santiago, whose stones are histories. There fell on her unconscious
little figure, as she tripped along, the shadow of ancient
buildings,--churches, convents, hospitals, with quaintly sculptured
fronts. Over many of the massive, deeply recessed doors was graven the
cockle shell of St. James, showing that these were once rest houses for
the overflow of pilgrims, of whom thousands used to sleep on the floor
of the cathedral. Over the rough granite slabs that paved the roads her
little feet danced on to an inner music of her own, though all about her
was the harsh uproar of a Spanish city,--children blowing penny
whistles, blacksmiths beating their anvils, shopmen calling their wares.
The screech of the file, the grating of the saw, the click of the
chisel, added their discords to the braying of donkeys, the cracking of
whips, the screaming of parrots, the clanging of mule-bells.
Pilarica was glad to come out from the hubbub of the streets into the
comparative quiet of the great square from whose midst arises, a dark
mass of fretted granite, the cathedral of St. James. About one of its
fountains, carved in the shape of the pilgrim shell, were grouped a
number of girls, Dolores among them, filling the slender water-buckets
of Galicia and lifting them to their heads. They were singing _coplas_,
as in autumns past, but now their songs were sorrowful instead of merry,
for the brothers and lovers who had been drafted for the war did not
return and slowly there had filtered through, even to Santiago, news of
disaster and defeat.
One sad young voice after another made its moan, and Pilarica stood
listening with her innocent smile undimmed. She knew these girls,
Dolores’ friends, and to her childishness the pathos of their new songs
was sweeter than their former _coplas_ of mirth.
It was Milagros who was singing when Pilarica came:
“Wherever the lads are thronging,
I see him, still their chief.
Oh, shadow of my longing!
Vain shadow of my grief!”
Then rose the shrill note of little Peligros:
“Oh, for a horse of air
To gallop down the skies,
And carry me swiftly where
My wounded lover lies!”
The bowed figure of a woman in middle life, moving toward the cathedral,
had paused to hear the strains, and suddenly from her there broke a
passionate contralto:
“My cabin has a window
That looks on sea and sky,
And all the day I sit and watch
Ships and clouds go by.
Sailor, sailor, climb the mast,
Ask wind and spray and sea
What they have done with a widow’s son
That the King’s fleet took from me.”
The widow passed slowly on into the church, and Pilarica heard a muffled
tone, sounding like a sob, that she hardly recognized, at first, as
coming from Dolores:
“Three names shall tell his story:
’Twas Vigo gave him breath,
Santiago gave him love,
And Cuba gave him death.”
Then soared the pure, clear voice of Consuelo:
“God has lifted my belovèd
To His fair blue world above;
I shall not see my belovèd,
Not again, till I see Love.”
Pilarica skipped over to Dolores and pulled at her skirt.
“Will you go for walnuts with dolly and me?” she entreated. “The
mistress will not have me in the school again to-day, because I want to
learn. We can stop at the cottage for luncheon.”
Dolores looked down at her eager little cousin with kind, listless eyes.
“I must take home my bucket,” she said, “but I will come back.”
When she came back, Rafael was with her. Pilarica had disappeared from
the square, but they knew that they would find her in the cathedral, for
the cathedral was everybody’s meeting-place, everybody’s resting-place
and the playground of all the children of Santiago.
They found her before the so-called Porch of Paradise, or Gate of Glory,
one of the supreme works of Christian art. Pilarica was never weary of
gazing at it. What was once an outside portico, most richly and
exquisitely chiselled, is now enclosed at the west end of the church. It
represents Christ enthroned among the blest, a multitude of vivid saints
whose faces glow with fullness of joy. On the central shaft of the
pillars that support the arches of this celestial doorway is a curious
group of slight dents in the agate, where, tradition says, Christ,
descending from His bliss above, placed His wounded hand. Pilarica had
been guiding an old blind peasant to this sacred column, helping the
groping fingers find their way to that strange impress, for all Galicia
believes that a prayer offered with the hand placed here is sure of
answer. When the grateful peasant had been led, as he requested, to the
nearest confessional, Pilarica ran back to see the hand of Dolores set
against the shaft, while tears rained down the girl’s wan cheeks as she
prayed for her lover of whose death in prison vague rumors had floated
home.
“Let us ask for Father and Big Brother to come back,” blithely proposed
Pilarica to Rafael. “God might listen better if we asked for one at a
time. I’ll pray for Rodrigo and let you pray for Father.”
The boy’s dark eyes were deep with memory, but after Pilarica, standing
on tiptoe, had fitted her small finger-tips to those five tiny hollows,
worn by faith in the hard marble, his brown hand followed hers.
Rafael tried to pray: “Please, God, bring my Father home,” but a rich,
tender voice rose from the past to check the words,--a voice that said:
“Wish nothing for yourself nor for me but that we may do our duty.” “May
my Father do his duty, dear God,” prayed the boy’s heart in its simple
loyalty, and as he lifted his eyes to the saints in Paradise, their glad
faces answered his wistful look with a strange, sweet fellowship.
Tia Marta gave them hospitable greeting at the cottage, where
Grandfather, over whose mind the mists, dispelled for the time being by
the excitement of the journey, were gradually drifting again, had of
his own impulse taken up his abode. Both Pedrillo, doing unexpectedly
well with the land, and Tia Marta, vastly flattered by Grandfather’s
preference, made him gladly welcome. When Dolores and the children came
in, he was rocking Juanito’s cradle and crooning over it broken lines of
the riddles now fast melting from his memory.
As Pilarica caught up the chubby two-year-old, Dolores quietly drew the
cradle out of Grandfather’s reach, for, as all Galicia knows, to rock an
empty cradle is an omen of ill to the baby who is next put into it.
Pilarica was pinching, one by one, Juanito’s wriggling toes:
“What a family! One is tall;
Two are shorter than that;
And there is one that is weak and small,
And one exceeding fat.”
Then Baby Bunting had a chance to show off his accomplishments.
“Kill a Moor,” commanded Rafael, and the pudgy fist shot out straight at
Rafael’s nose.
“How many gods are there?” catechised Pilarica, and one pink finger was
raised with most orthodox energy.
Meanwhile Tia Marta, who had grown at least ten years younger, was
bustling happily about, setting forth white bread and honey and crisp
fried potatoes for her guests. Not until they had eaten, did she venture
to ask Dolores if there was any word.
“No good word,” answered the girl, her eyes flooding with tears, “and it
has been so long.”
“Tut, tut!” said Tia Marta. “God is not dead of old age. Your lover’s
feet may be seeking you now. While there is God, there is mercy.”
“There is a buzzing in my ears,” spoke up Grandfather suddenly. “A leaf
has fallen from the Tree of Life.”
“Never mind him,” snapped Tia Marta, carefully tucking her best shawl
over his knees, “an old canary who doesn’t know what he sings. How
Juanito looks up and laughs! He sees the cherubs at play. Be of good
cheer, Dolores! Your sailor-lad may come back to you yet, and, if not,
God, who gives the wound, will give the medicine.”
“Will Father and Big Brother come back, Tia Marta?” asked Pilarica.
“To be sure they will,” hastily answered the old nurse with a choke in
her voice. “God never wounds with both hands. Doña Barbara has enough to
bear in seeing Dolores waste away without having to weep for Don Carlos,
too.”
And indeed Dolores was but a shadow of the plump, rosy girl who had
sported with her cousins a year ago. So changed she was that a ragged
wayfarer, resting in the walnut-grove, did not recognize her, although
he had carried her face in his heart for many a yearning day. And the
nutting party looked down on him and his no less gaunt companion with
the easy compassion that views the misery of strangers. Spain had grown
used to the wretched sight of sick and crippled soldiers from the West
Indies and the Philippines creeping toward their homes. But Rodrigo knew
his little sister.
“Pilarica!” he cried feebly, staggering to his feet, and clasping her in
one loving arm--his other sleeve hung empty--while, after a long,
wondering gaze, Dolores and her Vigo lover drew silently together.
Rodrigo freed his hand for his brother, whose questioning eyes searched
that haggard face from which all trace of youth had disappeared.
“Rafael,” said the soldier, meeting the boy’s look steadily, “when the
Yankees raised a Spanish battle-ship, that had gone down in gallant
fight, they found in the engine-room the body of her Chief Engineer. His
hand still gripped the lever. He had died at his post. He had done his
duty.”
The lad stood erect, with folded arms, as he had stood by the Sultana
Fountain on that April night that seemed so long ago.
“That is a beautiful story,” said Pilarica, who had not understood.
“All stories are beautiful if one has a magic cap,” answered Big
Brother, smiling down into the winsome little face, but not with his old
gay smile. Yet there was something sweeter in it than before.
“No,” corrected Pilarica, who was kissing the empty sleeve over and
over. “It is Rafael who has the magic cap. It turns badnesses into
gladnesses.”
“And it will turn this pain into splendor, my brother,” said Rodrigo,
reeling from weakness and catching at Rafael’s shoulder with the one
thin hand. “Have you a bit of chocolate about you, laddie? How tall you
have grown! And how you have come to look like Father! That is his own
courage I am seeing in your face.”
“I will run on ahead to Tia Marta, who will make you a feast,” cried
Pilarica, so lost in rapture that still she did not catch the meaning of
what Rodrigo had said.
“Bread and cheese will be feast enough, especially if Tia Marta adds her
pinch of pepper,” replied Rodrigo, with a queer little ghost of a laugh.
“The Geography Gentleman--Heaven reward him!--cared for me and a dozen
more of us at Granada and gave me gold for the railroad journey north to
you; but there were so many of my half-starved comrades on the train
that the money was all gone before we had reached Leon and I have been
walking and living on the charity of berry-bushes and walnut-trees ever
since. But bide a wee, Caramel Heart! I have grand news for you. You
are to go to school,--a real girls’ school. What do you think of that?
It is in charge of a lady from over the sea, Doña Alicia, a lady who
loves Spain and was kind to us poor fellows in the hospital. Father
would, I know, be glad to have you go to her and learn.”
“It will be lovely to learn,” trilled Pilarica, the leaves rustling a
song of their own under her tripping feet. “And when Father comes home,
we’ll be just as happy under the sky as the angels are on top.
Grandfather says they dance all night and sometimes they jostle down a
star. And Father will come home soon, for the pillar prayers are always
answered. Only see! Dolores’ prayer and mine are answered already.”
“Mine was answered first,” said Rafael, and his voice, though a sob
broke through it, was proud,--the voice of a hero’s son.
LIST OF SPANISH WORDS, PRONOUNCED AND DEFINED
=Abdorman Murambil Xarif.= (Ab-dōr´-mahn Moor-ahm´-beel Xah-reef´.)
There is much reason to fear that this Moorish name was made up by
Rafael.
=Adolfo.= (Ah-dŏl´-fo.)
Adolphus. Adolph. A boy’s name meaning Noble Wolf.
=Augustin.= (Ah-goos-teen´.)
Augustus. Austin. A boy’s name meaning August, Exalted, Imperial.
=Alameda.= (Ah-la-meh´-dah.)
A shaded walk, as through a park.
=Alfonsito.= (Al-fŏn-see´-to.)
Little Alfonso.
=Alfonso.= (Al-fŏn´-so.)
Alphonso. A boy’s name meaning Ready. The present king of Spain is
Alfonso XIII.
=Alhambra.= (Al-hăm´-brah.)
The famous fortress and palace built by the Moors on a hilltop
overlooking Granada. The name is Arabic and means Ruddy, perhaps from
the color of the stone.
=Ana.= (Ah´-nah.)
Anna. Hannah. Anne. A girl’s name meaning Gracious. St. Anne, the mother
of the Madonna, is much beloved in Spain.
=Angelito.= (An-hel-lee´-to.)
Little angel.
=Arnaldo.= (Ar-năl´-do.)
Arnold. A boy’s name meaning Strong as an Eagle.
=Arré.= (Ar´-ray.)
Gee. The shout of a Spanish driver in urging on his mule.
=Arriero.= (Ar-re-er´-o.)
Muleteer; carrier.
=Ay de mi.= (I´ day mee´.)
Alas, poor me!
=Bastiano.= (Bäs-te-ah´-no.)
Short for Sebastiano. Sebastian. A boy’s name meaning Reverend. St.
Sebastian, a brave and beautiful young martyr shot all over with arrows,
is a favorite saint in Spain and Italy.
=Bavieca.= (Bah-ve-ā´-ca.)
The name of the Cid’s horse, mentioned in almost every one of the
hundred ballads of the Cid.
=Benito.= (Bā-nee´-to.)
Benedict. A boy’s name meaning Blessed.
=Bernardo del Carpio.= (Ber-nar´-do del Car´-pe-o.)
A Spanish warrior of the eighth or ninth century. The king long held the
father of Bernardo in cruel imprisonment and when at last obliged to
restore the captive, had him murdered in his dungeon, mounted the dead
body, in full armor, on horseback, and sent that forth to the expectant
son, who, in his grief and rage, went over to the Moors. See page 84.
=Blanco.= (Blan´-co.)
White. In this story, the name of a white mule.
=Bolondron.= (Bō-lon-drŏn´.)
A sonorous name fit for a braggart.
=Brasero.= (Brä-sā´-ro.)
Brasier. A pan for holding burning coals.
=Cadiz.= (Cä´deth. More often pronounced by the Andalusians Cä´-de.)
A fortified city on the southern coast of Spain.
=Capitana.= (Cah-pe-tah´-nah.)
Captainess. In this story, the name of a mule who insists on taking the
lead.
=Carbonera.= (Car-bon-er´-ah.)
Derived from =carbon= (car-bone´), meaning charcoal. In this story, the
name of a soot-colored mule.
=Carlos.= (Car´-los.)
Charles. A boy’s name meaning Noble of Spirit.
=Carmencita.= (Car-men-thee´-tah.)
Little Carmen. A girl’s name.
=Catalina.= (Cah-tah-lee´-nah.)
Catherine or Katharine.
=Celestino.= (Thel-es-tee´-no.)
Celestine. A boy’s name not uncommon in Spain.
=Cid.= (Pronounced in English, Sĭd; in Spanish, Thed.)
An Arabic word, meaning lord, given as a title of honor to Rodrigo
(Ro-dree´-go) or Ruy (Roo´-e) Diaz (Dee´-ath) de Bivar (Be-var´), a
Spanish hero of the eleventh century.
=Cigarron.= (Thie-gar-rón.)
The word, meaning a big cigar, appears in this story as a surname.
=Compostela.= (Com-po-stā´-lah.)
This word, derived from the Latin, =Campus Stellae=, the Field of the
Star, keeps in the name of the City of St. James a memory of the bright
star which, according to the legend, pointed out his burial place in
Galicia.
=Consuelo.= (Con-soo-āl´-o.)