The glad lady

This being the season of the year for fiestas and romerias one of these was always in prospect even though Don Juan suggested only such as might be most interesting. That at the little old town of Celorio promised certain unusual features and all prepared to go.

“What is the difference between a romeria and a fiesta?” asked Patty.

“A romeria is a pilgrimage, properly speaking; a fiesta is simply a feast day in honor of some special saint or some particular Madonna,” Don Juan told her. “Many pilgrims go to the romeria of Covadonga on account of the miraculous image there which the faithful regard with much veneration. A fiesta in our little village may be a very simple affair; a romeria is more important, for it brings visitors from miles around. It has been a great many years since I went to Celorio, but Tomás says the romeria there has lost none of its interesting features and that there will be a great many promisers this year.”

“Promisers? And what are they?”

“They are those who, during some illness of theirs or of someone near and dear, promise a white robe to the Virgin if they recover. I will not spoil the effect by telling you more. That is enough to make you understand what you will see. The very devout do many such things.”

“What other things are done?”

“Sometimes a very strict and wealthy lady will mortify the flesh by promising to wear only a certain color for so many weeks or months. The more unbecoming the color the greater the sacrifice. Purple is often chosen as being very trying to a sallow skin,” Doña Martina remarked.

“I’m afraid,” said Patty with a smile, “that I’d never get into heaven if it depended upon such a sacrifice to my vanity. I’d look a fright in purple, wouldn’t I, Tomás?”

This young man brought suddenly into the conversation from a brown study into which he was plunged, hurriedly replied, “Shocking, awful badth form,” that being the readiest English which came to him at the moment. Then, by the laugh which went up, perceiving that he had made the wrong reply, he asked, “What didth you say, Mees Pattee? I didth not hear correctly.”

“I asked if you thought I would look well in purple.”

“You wouldth look well in anything,” responded Tomás with a bow, and so redeemed his reputation for gallantry.

“There will probably be no place to get lunch at Celorio,” said Doña Martina, “so we must take something with us, and our romeria will be in the nature of a picnic, for after the service at the church we can go to the playa and have our lunch. Celorio is directly on the sea.”

“What fun that will be,” said Patty. “I shall like it better than going to a fonda, though that is a good experience, too. Is Celorio a pretty place?”

“It is very old and interesting. The church is of the tenth century and there is an old monastery attached, with a pretty garden.”

“And is it still used by the monks?”

“No, like many another it has passed out of the hands of the old Benedictines who used to possess it, and now it belongs to some friends of Juan’s who have bought it for a summer home. If any of them happen to be there we can probably go through it. You will like to see the garden, I am sure.”

“I’d like to see it all. Tell me some more about the romeria.”

“A very peculiar and ancient dance is given, a strictly religious one, which is called the danza prima because of its great antiquity, for no one seems to know when and how it originated. It is put into practice each year when the figure of the Virgin is borne from the church. Then the girls from the village sing their weird little song and dance the danza prima, the step of which is taken backward.”

“It must be the queerest thing.”

“It is very quaint and very individual.”

“Have you asked Mr. Lisle to go with us?” said Patty suddenly.

“No, but I shall do so, or you can when you see him.”

“When I see him? Do you realize that he has not been here for, let me see—three days?”

“And why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sulky, probably.”

“Again, why?”

“Oh, well, just because. Don’t ask me to keep track of all the moods into which our young men fall. After all, elderly men are much more satisfactory. One can usually trace their seeming peevishness to a fit of indigestion or a desire for a smoke. Perceive Tomás, for example; he has been as one in a trance all the morning. Just now when he left the room he fairly staggered with dreaminess.”

“It is all your fault, after your capers last night.”

“My capers! Goodness, Tina, one would think me an huesta or some other evil thing. Don’t be silly. Did you never play with two boys at the same time, I’d like to know? It seems to me I have a dim recollection of your having gone to a dance at home on one occasion, when you started forth with one individual of a fair complexion and came home with a dark-haired escort, unless someone spilt hair-dye on his head on the way back.”

“Patty, how did you—”

“How did I find out? I was peeping from the window when you came in and I saw—”

“Never mind,” said her sister hastily. “You see I’d had a little tiff with Juan and we made up that night. It was quite a different thing, for it was a very serious matter with us.”

Patty hugged her knees and rocked back and forth enjoying her sister’s discomfiture. “And how do you know it isn’t serious with me?” she asked.

“What is?”

“Oh, all this,” Patty replied indefinitely. “At least it is this way; I don’t want to favor one young man above another, because I am breaking my heart over Don Felipe. When he comes galumphin along he doesn’t know that each beat of his horse’s hoofs goes Pitty Patty.”

“Silly.”

“I simply adore the way his hair doesn’t grow about his temples, and that gap in his teeth is so unique. You wonder what has been there, then you find yourself gazing at the one wobbly front tooth which is left and calculate how long it will last without dropping out. He affords so many interesting conjectures that it doesn’t make any difference what he says, for his personality is so attractive it makes up for all else. His teeth are such curios I suppose that is why he hangs on to them; he wouldn’t have anything so modern as a new set for anything. If he could only buy an old set, one that had belonged to George Washington or some celebrity, no doubt he would pay any price.”

“For a girl of twenty you are the most nonsensical child I ever saw. Will you never grow up?”

“I hope not. I’m sure I don’t want to. It is enough to see what mature years have done for my sister for me to desire to keep out of my majority as long as possible. Don’t remind me of the approaching time when I shall be free, white and twenty-one.”

“What about Robert Lisle? Shall I send him a note?”

“No, don’t let’s bother about him. I wish you wouldn’t bring him into the conversation just now when I am ecstasying over Don Felipe. Isn’t ecstasying rather a good word? You spoil my train of thought.”

“You really don’t want me to hunt up Robert Lisle? Tomás can stop at the fonda.”

“No, you needn’t, so far as I am concerned. If you want him you will have to affix him to your train. He doesn’t deserve to be asked after staying away three whole days. Now he can whistle for invitations from me.”

Doña Martina looked up with a smile. Patty seemed a little more emphatic than the occasion demanded. “Very well,” she returned. “We will trust to luck. If he comes we will ask him; if he doesn’t, we will not. We will leave it that way.”

Robert Lisle did not appear that day and the next was the one set for the expedition to Celorio where Our Lady of Carmen would be triumphantly borne forth in procession. The village, which one passed through from the railway station, was not large, but was charmingly situated. The space around the church was full of people coming and going. On one side stretched blue reaches of sea; on the other arose the Cantabrian mountains. Behind the church stood the monastery around which a fair garden blossomed within high stone walls.

Coming from the bright sunlight without, the church looked singularly dark and gloomy as one entered under the gallery for men, so that the two or three steps leading to the body of the church were only dimly discerned, but as one became accustomed to the dimness the very obscurity became a charm, and one could see the age-stained timbers, the quaintly carved capitols of the columns which supported the gallery, the grotesque vases in the chancel, which were now filled with flowers and were in the form of devils. They might well be of pagan origin, but none could tell how old they might be. The gleaming candle points at the altar gave the only light, and this was the more effective because of the dimness beyond, in which knelt upon the stone floor shadowy figures in black.

Don Juan’s party found a place on one of the few benches near the entrance, and presently through the low-arched doorway came a white-robed woman on her knees. She was followed by another, then after an interval, by two together. Following these came a mother and her two sons on their bare knees. Others appeared from time to time all making their way slowly down the stone steps and up the body of the church to the altar where the white robes were deposited at the feet of the Virgin. Then mass was said and the Lady of Carmen, preceded by the dancing village maids, was carried forth to the music of the ancient danza prima. Following her came the ramas borne by the worthiest young men of this and neighboring villages, then all who wished, carried tall candles and joined in the procession which passed around the church, to the noise of rocket bombs frequently sent off from the tower.

“What are they going to do now?” asked Patty as she watched the villagers circle around the huge pyramids of loaves, decorated with flowers.

“The girls will sing the song of the rama. It is rather a monotonous chant, and one gets deadly tired of it when it is kept up as long as it is liable to be, but it will probably interest you for a while,” Don Juan told her.

“And what becomes of the ramas?”

“The loaves are sold or given to the poor. Sometimes one person buys all and sells the bread for very little.”

“It is a sort of harvest home, isn’t it?”

“Yes, though here they make a religious ceremony of everything. They end up with a dance, however, and what begins a romeria ends a fiesta.”

“Where are you all?” asked Doña Martina, coming up. “We are going to have our lunch now. Tomás has gone to pick out a good place where we can be undisturbed. We’d better be walking down toward the shore.”

A quiet place was not hard to discover, and before long the little party was cosily ensconced under a big tree near the cliffs.

“This is the best chicken I ever ate,” remarked Patty. “I can’t see how Manuela does turn out such good things when I see her building that little fire of twigs on top of that stone hearth.”

“When a thing has been done in the same way for centuries, the manner of doing ought to become perfection,” replied Doña Martina.

“I suppose Manuela has the experience of generations to work with, for the methods have been handed down from mother to daughter who knows how long. Have some wine, Paulette? What would you like, Patty?”

“A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou,” she quoted.

“Only for Thou, read Tomás,” her sister whispered. “Well, you have it all, for surely this wilderness were Paradise enow’.”

“You have left out the singing in the wilderness.”

“We had that awhile ago.”

The last remnants of the feast were bundled up and bestowed upon a lame beggar whom they met on their way back to the church, and then, as good luck would have it, Don Juan found that his friends, the owners of the old monastery, were at home, and to the little party the great gates were opened, gates behind which the girls had been trying to peep, for the clambering flowers which had reached the top of the wall, gave promise of more beauty within.

Through one corridor after another they were led by their obliging hosts. Many of the old cells remained just as they were when the old Benedictines pattered their prayers as they looked forth from the deep set windows; others had been altered to suit the needs of the family. Above the doors of the great sala were coats of arms, for here more than one great personage had been housed. A wide porch overlooked the pretty garden, and the fields beyond, belonging to the estate stretched away and away toward the mountains. A crumbling tower was pointed out as the oldest part of the building; a thousand years old, said their guide.

“Think of the old frales who lived here,” said Doña Martina in an awed tone. “Think of all that has happened since this was built. Doesn’t it give one a strange feeling to contemplate these gray walls and think how long they have lasted?”

“Can’t you fancy those Benedictine fathers walking in the garden below there, or sitting in their cells working over some beautiful old missal?” returned Patty.

“I suppose there was also a nunnery somewhere near,” remarked Paulette.

“No doubt, for the church would be the center of a settlement.”

“It gives one much more of a sense of the reality of all that old history to come to a place like this,” said Patty. “Where does this lead?” for their guide opened a small door and beckoned them to follow him. Patty was the first to step through and she found herself standing in a small enclosed balcony. She peeped through the lattice work and caught her sister’s arm. “Oh, do see where we are,” she exclaimed. They looked down and beheld the nearly deserted church; only a few kneeling figures still occupied it. The gorgeously bedizened figure of the Virgin shone out in the light of the candles still burning around the altars.

“The little gallery,” their host told them, “was used as a choir for the nuns who were placed behind the grating that they might not be seen by those below.”

“They could be heard though,” commented Patty, “and I daresay their singing was very sweet. That adds another interest to this rare old spot.”

The dancing was in full swing when they passed through the old gateway, leaving the scarlet geraniums and white lilies glorifying the sunlit places. The jovial notes of the jota called them to watch the pretty dance, and when at last they took their leave rocket bombs were still going up, and the sound of violin and drum announced that another dance had begun.

“It has been wonderful, this romeria,” said Patty, dreamily. “I feel as if I had made a real pilgrimage. Is it as wonderful at any of the fêtes in France, Paulette?”

Paulette was not willing to admit that they were any less interesting and discoursed volubly upon a Breton feast day which she remembered and which she declared to be much more picturesque because of the costumes worn.

The singing in the wilderness was furnished that evening when Tomás took his guitar into the garden and trolled forth some of the unwritten songs which they had not yet heard. Then he told them queer tales of the peasants and of the saints, of how in the time of a great drought a figure of the Virgin is carried from her own church to some other where she must stay till it rains. Sometimes the patron saint of some little chapel is given a change of residence in the same manner. “At one time long ago,” said Tomás, “there was a very great drought and the poor people became desperate. At last one peasant woman took by stealth the figure of a saint from a little chapel in her neighborhood. She hid it under a cloth and at a certain waterfall she gave it a good dousing which she thought this patron saint deserved. At once came a perfect torrent of rain, nearly carrying off woman and saint on their way back to the chapel. Ever since then the people call upon San Acisclo, as he is named, whenever rain is needed.”

“That is a lovely tale,” the girls agreed. “Tell us some more, Tomás. Tell us about the inxanos.”

“Oh, the inxanos do many things. Not only do they build the caves in which they live, but they carry on business. There was a beautiful lady inxana who did this, and there is a tale about her but I do not think it as interesting as some others. The tales are very numerous and some day perhaps I shall collect them.” He took up his guitar and began to sing a little love song. Overhead the stars were climbing down behind the mountains, the air was fresh and sweet with the odors from gardens and fields. It was very still, very beautiful. Patty’s thoughts drifted off to the old monastery, to the frales and religiosas. On just such nights they had watched the stars set behind these same immovable hills. She felt very small, very young, and she snuggled up close to her sister, who put a protecting arm around her just as she had done to the little baby sister in that old home garden of Kentucky.