O LAS PIEDRAS!
The travellers were awakened in the early morning by the drone of
cow-carts, by the singing of a thrush in a cage hung at the doorway
of their inn, and by the chatter of girls flocking to the fountain.
As soon as she was dressed Anita went out upon the balcony to look
down on the little plaza which was lively enough now that the village
was awake. Groups of women and girls gossiped at the fountain; the
shoemaker across the way kept time to his singing with the tap-tap
upon his last; the little _moza_ of the inn skurried from the bakery
with freshly-baked loaves for the señorita's breakfast; half a dozen
bright-plumaged parrots paraded up and down before the door of a shop,
laughingly watched by a group of men; two turkeys honk-honked below the
balcony, turning up an inquiring eye at the possible bestower of bounty
watching from above.
Anita was called inside by a tap at the door from the little maid who
summoned the ladies to their coffee, with "_A comer, señoritas._"
"It is all so unusual and interesting," declared Anita as she sat down
to the table. "I see where I spend all my idle hours on the balcony.
What are we to do to-day, mother?"
"We shall go by train to a small city near here, and from there to the
little village where your father was born."
"Why didn't we go directly there?"
"Because it is not conveniently reached; there is no good _fonda_, and
the city itself would be more expensive."
"Excellent reasons, _madre mia_. How lucky it is that you can speak
Spanish. Scarce anyone knows English and in these out-of-the-way places
how could we manage?"
"Not very well, especially with the persons whom we shall want to
question. Officials, shopkeepers, as well as persons of social
standing, generally know French, but the peasants and those living in
remote villages, naturally, know nothing but their mother tongue. The
train leaves at ten, Anita, so we must not linger. I wouldn't advise
you to go again on that fascinating balcony unless you want me to leave
you behind."
Anita, at this suggested possibility, did not dally, but went directly
to the room which she and her mother occupied together, for there was
no other available. It was exquisitely neat; clean, fine linen upon
each bed, soft blankets, and mattresses the most comfortable that
could be imagined; they were stuffed with wool which was picked over
and washed every year. A table, two chairs, a huge washstand, a large
mirror completed the furnishings. The board floor was spotless from
daily scrubbing, the curtains hand-spun and home-dyed, but there was
never a clothes press nor a dressing bureau in sight. The tall water
jug held fresh, clear water and a like one of hot water was brought to
them each morning.
"We can hang up our clothes on the floor à la Japanese, I suppose,"
Anita had remarked upon viewing the room. But a few nails driven in the
door supplied hanging space for the time being and sufficed, since they
knew their stay would be short.
"We should best wear our hats on the train," remarked Mrs. Beltrán
before they started. "I am not Spanish enough to don a mantilla or to
wear merely a veil upon every occasion."
"Oh, you dear Englishy mother," cried Anita. "Well, as I am half
English I will follow the custom half the time." She settled her hat
upon her curly head saying: "There, I look like any American girl, for
I have completely un-Spanished myself, and with my stately mother will
be recognized anywhere as an _Inglesa_. What do we do when we get to
the town?"
"We shall be met by your father's cousin, Doña Benilda. She is to guide
us to the village."
"As she is my cousin, too, I hope I shall like her," remarked Anita as
they started forth.
The tinkle of a bell, the call of "_Señores viajeres para Santander
al tren_" and the train, upon which Anita and her mother had been
travelling, glided off, leaving them upon the platform looking
curiously around. How, among the many black clad women, were they to
distinguish Doña Benilda? Peasant women with little shawls across their
shoulders or folded over their heads trudged off with baskets; girls,
daintily shod, with hair carefully arranged, chattered in groups,
workmen in blue jeans moved with deliberation about the platform.
Presently a middle-aged, dark-eyed little woman, enveloped from head
to foot in a black veil, and followed by a little maid, came up to
the strangers. "Doña Catalina and Señorita Anita, my cousins, without
doubt," she said in Spanish.
"And our cousin Doña Benilda," replied Mrs. Beltrán in the same tongue.
"But how did you know us so readily?"
"Oh, the hats, the hats," returned Doña Benilda, smiling. Then she
kissed them on each cheek, summoned the little maid to carry their
bags and they started up the street of the quaint and pretty town,
mountains on one side, the great Cantabric Sea on the other. Now that
the tide was coming in it rose in certain streets, lapping against the
sides of ancient houses whose small slits of windows had looked out for
centuries upon the incoming or outgoing flood. The little market place
was lively with shoppers, while from the grim, gray old church issued a
throng of black-robed women, mantillas on heads and missals in hands.
Before the door of one of the fairly modern apartment houses the
party paused to mount many stairs and at last to find themselves in
Doña Benilda's high-up rooms where the guests were welcomed with much
ceremony; the house was theirs, they were told. From the balcony swung
vines and gay flowering plants; a bird chirped in a gilded cage by a
curtained window; there were many rooms, many mirrors, few pictures,
a large and ornate representation of the Virgin of Covadonga the most
prized. The _sala_, arranged after the regulation style of that part
of the country, showed a bent-wood sofa with three chairs ranged at
each end in regular order and facing one another. One or two old
cabinets, an antique chest, a high antique refectory table, finely
carved, completed the furniture. From the windows of one of the rooms
one beheld the range of mountains fading off into the clouds; on the
other side sparkled the sea. The long sea wall, time-worn, small-eaved
stone houses, a distant church perched upon a hill, peeped out from the
green of trees, and farther off the white houses of a village showed
themselves enclosed in thick embowerage.
Anita had a strange feeling of association with it all. The home
of her ancestors it was which Doña Benilda pointed out to her, the
church where her father was baptized and the distant village where he
was born. "Cuesta is the name," Doña Benilda told her. "We go there
to-morrow."
Though understanding something of the talk Anita was obliged to turn
frequently to her mother to interpret.
"My daughter has not yet become very proficient in her father's
language," Mrs. Beltrán explained. "She can speak a little, read more,
but it is another thing to understand what is said to her."
Doña Benilda replied animatedly. "When comes in my son Rodrigo, he will
speak in the English," she said with pride. "At once he will come," she
added as she led them to their rooms. Exquisitely embroidered linen,
wonderful counterpanes, blankets of the finest covered the beds, but
beyond this the rooms displayed very simple furnishing.
Before long appeared Don Rodrigo, a funny looking little man who might
have been of any age. He was small, dark, lean. His hair was black and
bushy, his small moustache carefully waxed and turned up at the ends.
With arms too short and head too big for his body, Anita told herself
that he looked exactly like a boy doll. He advanced on high heels, bent
low before her mother, kissed her hand and said that he kissed her
feet. Before Anita he paused a moment as if wondering if he might take
the cousinly privilege of kissing her upon either cheek, but observing
that she gave no encouragement to this sort of greeting, he also kissed
her hand and murmured that the house and its contents were hers, and
that he was her cousin who kissed her feet.
But Anita, understanding little of the courtly phrases and wishing to
ask questions, said: "You speak English, do you not, cousin?"
"Si, señorita, I spik a leetle," was the reply, "no mooch, enough maybe
for tell you somethings you like know. I am wishing I spik baitter, but
no I have the, what is this?--the oportunidad."
"The opportunity," Mrs. Beltrán came to the rescue.
"Ah, _si_. You also spik the Spanish. _Usted habla Español?_" He turned
with quick relief to her.
"Tell him, mother," said Anita, "that I will help him with his English
if he will help me with my Spanish."
"_Bueno!_" cried Rodrigo when this was explained. "Is good. I like
mooch thees--thees--_arreglo_." He looked inquiringly at Mrs. Beltrán.
"Arrangement," she helped him to the word.
"_Gracias._ I like these arrangements," he said slowly and uncertainly,
with much rolling of his R's.
Here Doña Benilda came to bid them to the meal she had prepared with
the assistance of the little maid, and Rodrigo gave his arm, with much
ceremony, to Mrs. Beltrán, while Anita followed with his mother.
The midday meal was a substantial one, beginning with the hearty
_puchero_, a soup to which vegetables, chicken, ham and sausage
gave substance. The solid part of the soup, in which chick-peas
(_garbanzos_) formed a prominent part, served as a second course. A
wonderful omelet in which fried potatoes and herbs were folded, salad,
fruit and cheese followed, while a good red wine was served all through
the meal. Later coffee was brought into the _sala_.
There was much pleasant talk, some in English, some in French, some in
Spanish, and Anita decided, that, however unlike her friends at home
these new found cousins might be, that they were kind and hospitable to
the very last degree.
It was still early in the day, but as deliberation marked the Spanish
movements, they did not start on their walk to Cuesta till long past
noon. However, as they intended to stop over night with relatives, Doña
Benilda did not seem to think it mattered.
"You walk well?" inquired Rodrigo as they started out through the
streets of the Venice-like little city.
Anita, a trifle puzzled, answered that she hoped so, that she was
fond of walking, deciding that the latter was the proper reply to the
question.
Leaving the town they struck the _carretera_, the hard white road
which they followed for some distance, the sea always in sight, but
after some miles they came to a divergence of ways, and took the road
bearing overhill to the embowered little village of Cuesta. On its
outskirts an ancient church offered its friendly porch as a resting
place for the weary. They found it already occupied when they reached
it. Two women with baskets sat on one of the benches, a little lame
boy, with a baby toddler in charge, lounged on the steps, and two young
persons, evidently sweethearts, moved away consciously at the sight of
strangers. But the peasant women stopped their gossip for only a moment
and the lame boy regarded them with pleased interest.
Anita dropped down on the nearest bench. "_O, las piedras!_" she
exclaimed. "Why, why, my cousin, do they have these roads paved so
horribly and have such nice smooth _carreteras_?"
"It is for the cow," returned Rodrigo, "always for the cow. Here you
paircebay is a many farm, all is the hay, the cow, the corn. If no the
angular and uneben stone to the road the cow is to recline--how you
say?--is fall down when come wetness of road. No is goodth for the cow.
He is, yes, he is fall down when is make the journey weeth the load of
hay."
"I see, I understand. Many things are being explained to me," Anita
responded. "I wondered why they did not grease their cart wheels,
but now I understand that upon the narrow mountain roads there are
sometimes places where the cow-carts cannot pass, and if one driver
hears a screaking sound in the distance his own team can wait for the
other to pass at the proper point."
Rodrigo looked bewildered. "I regret you spik so rapeedth, no I can
walk behindth you."
Anita could not forbear laughing, at which Rodrigo looked rather
offended. "I beg your pardon," she made haste to say, drawing down her
mouth though the laughter lingered in her eyes, "I say just as funny
things in Spanish of course, and you are too polite to laugh at me."
She tried to speak slowly, "You may laugh at me all you wish," she went
on.
"I will not make laugh at you," he returned gravely. "I could not, but
if you will please you tell me when I am make mistake I am grateful.
What is thees I say no right?"
"You should have said you could not follow me; in English it does not
always mean the same as walk behind."
"The dictionary tell me."
"Oh, the dictionary; but dictionaries and idioms do not always agree."
"Ediom, ediom? Ediom is a language, no?"
"A peculiarity of a language, as we understand it."
"Ah, I perceibay. Is difficult thees English."
However the difficulties were eagerly hunted out and presented from
time to time by this zealous seeker for information, and Anita
discovered that her cousin Rodrigo was far more persevering and eager
than herself in acquiring facility, although she was in a country whose
speech she much desired to know. They spent most of their period of
rest on the old porch of the church in exchanging lessons, but tarried
long enough to go into the building and examine the tarnished gilt of
its images, the frayed altar cloths and the dingy hangings. Here, Doña
Benilda told them, "our grandfathers had their first lessons. An old
priest was their teacher. They learned to write, to cipher, upon the
bone of an ox, the shoulder blade it was. Those days are past, but Ave
Maria! we are no better in spite of the schools of to-day."
Anita pondered over this page from the past as they descended the steep
hill. "Oh, these _piedras_," she mourned as her thin-soled shoes struck
the pointed stones jutting up from the roughly paved way. "I shall
never need to do worse penance. How do they manage?" she asked as she
saw two girls ahead tripping unconcernedly down the hill in high-heeled
shoes.
"Always they have done so," Rodrigo told her, "and no longer does it
appear a difficult thing. Let us sit down and rest for some moments.
I will bring you a refreshment, a cup of the cold water from the good
fountain so quite near."
The little company sat down on a stone near a grove of huge eucalyptus
trees, and presently bringing his cup of water, Rodrigo returned, first
presenting a draught to Mrs. Beltrán and then, bowing low, he held out
the cup to Anita saying:
"Drink to me only with the eye,
And I am plague by mine,
Or drop a kees to the cope,
And no more I am asking for--"
"Ah-h, I am forget thees. The _vino_, what is?"
"The wine," Anita answered, scarcely able to hold the cup of water for
mirth. She dared not laugh, and scarcely could drink without choking.
She managed to control herself, however, and returned the cup saying:
"_Mil gracias, señor._ The water is delicious and the poetry very
beautiful."
"So I think," returned Rodrigo, well satisfied with himself. "Now we
will descend, and at the basest part of the hill we discover the birth
village of your father."
Into the village so thickly embowered in trees, they entered to find
the streets paved as roughly as the roads. The quiet of late afternoon
was upon the place and the bells of the church were ringing the Angelus.
"It is to our cousin Prudencia that we go," Rodrigo told Anita as they
turned up a narrow lane, and finally came upon a gate set in one of
the high walls between which they had been walking. Inside the gate
was a typical homestead of northern Spain; a garden of flowers, apple
trees neighboring orange and lemon boughs, chestnuts elbowing figs,
geraniums as high as your head, roses, heliotrope making the air sweet,
carnations swinging from balconies, an orio for corn, a cow stable,
hen house and pigeon cote annexed to the house whose red tiled roof
rose but a story higher. A brick-paved lower floor showed dining room
and kitchen, in the latter an altar-like structure where a charcoal
fire served for cooking all meals. Upstairs the _sala_ and bedrooms
with balconies before them and windows looking out upon the garden and
beyond through the close clustering trees to the sea.
At the door they were met by Doña Prudencia, dignified, calm, stately.
"These are our cousins, Catalina and Anita." Doña Benilda presented
them.
Doña Prudencia kissed them on either cheek and ushered them into the
house. "The wife and daughter of José Maria, my childhood's friend
and companion," she said thoughtfully. "Ai, Ai, poor José Maria!" She
crossed herself solemnly and sat gazing abstractedly out of the window.
It was rather an awkward moment, for Mrs. Beltrán was well aware that
no good report of her had reached her husband's relatives in those
early days of their first separation, and she was not at all sure what
prejudices they might still hold.
The interview was interrupted by the entrance of a dark-skinned,
blue-eyed girl about Anita's age. "My daughter, Amparo," said Doña
Prudencia.
After the usual cousinly greeting the two girls smiled at each other
and Anita felt that she should like this cousin.
"You must be ready for a _merienda_," said Amparo, leading the way to
a room where cakes and chocolate were ready to be served. "We have been
expecting you all afternoon, Benilda, and you, Rodrigo. Why were you so
late?"
"We stopped to look at the old church," Rodrigo explained, "and our
cousins are not used to these rough roads."
Then the talk was of generalities and the main object of the visit was
obliged to wait a later hour.