Their own games were much more interesting to the children than the glories of the old Moorish palace, and they flocked about Pilarica, each clamoring for a favorite dance.
“Little Bird Pinta,” teased Isabelita.
“Little White Pigeons,” whined Carmencita, who was always on the verge of tears.
“Little Blind Hen,” shouted Pepito.
“Pin—Pige—Hen,” echoed the gypsy babies impartially.
“The Charcoal Woman,” wept Carmencita.
“Butterfly Tag,” coaxed Isabelita.
“Charcoal-Butter,” chimed in the obliging gypsy babies.
“Grasshopper! Grasshopper!” roared Pepito and thereupon began to skip about, his fat hands clasped under his knees, gasping as tunefully as he could:
“Hush! hush!” urged Pilarica. “We will play Larán-larito, and Pepito shall be the cheese.”
So Pepito, easily rolling himself up into a round, soft ball, proudly occupied the center of the scene, while the others, suiting their action to the words of the song, danced about him, ever drawing nearer and nearer, ready for the final pounce.
But just at the thrilling moment when all the five kitties flung themselves upon the plump, indignant cheese, which struck out right and left with pudgy fists and defended itself as never cheese was known to do before, there arose a hubbub in the further halls of the Alhambra and the larger boys and girls came rushing back, pursued by Don Francisco, the guardian of the palace, and a purple-faced foreigner whose voice sounded as if he were using bad language.
Arnaldo seized the hand of Isabelita, Zinga made a snatch at Rosita, and even Leandro, flinging back a silver cigar-case as he ran, paused to catch up the toddling Benito, while Carmencita wailed so piteously and Pepito bawled so lustily that the big children who had no little brothers and sisters to look after hustled these two clamorous waifs along in the flight. But nobody took thought for Pilarica, who, terrified by the hue and cry, turned and fled down one arched passage after another, across dim chambers and through long galleries, until, at last, she could hear nothing but stillness anywhere about her, and that, queerly enough, frightened her more than all the noise had done.
IF Rafael had waited for his brother at the Gate of the Pomegranates, as usual, things might not have turned out quite so badly. For here the way from Granada up the Alhambra hill opens into three avenues, and the boy, in his impatience, having failed to meet Rodrigo on the shortest and steepest, dashed up again by the second and down by the third, and so managed to miss him altogether. For while Rafael, back once more at the Gate of the Pomegranates, tired out by so much headlong running, was cooling his parched throat at a runlet of sparkling water, Rodrigo was already at home, opening the gate of the old garden.
A tall, dark, graceful lad of eighteen, a scholar’s satchel strapped to his shoulders, he swung the gate wide and stepped back with much deference to make way for his companion.
“After you, sir,” he said.
But this companion, a man of middle age, sturdy and square-chinned, clad in the uniform of a naval engineer, stood motionless. His face, set in stern lines, was under perfect control, yet, as the son beside him half divined, it was harder for him to enter that fragrant, blossoming enclosure than to face the enemy’s cannon. For it was here that, something over three years ago, he had brought from their simple but pleasant lodgings in Cadiz his tenderly loved wife, hoping that the air of the hilltop might restore her failing strength. Half the savings of a frugal lifetime had been spent to call a great physician from Madrid. He prescribed little medicine, but an abundance of fresh eggs and pure goat’s milk and bade them, to the horror of their devoted maid, always known to the children as Tia Marta, set the invalid’s bed out in the open. But not the restful cool of the evening air nor the living warmth of the sunshine could avail, and to the man who halted at the gate this beautiful garden was the place of sorrow. Recalled to his ship almost immediately after his wife’s death, there had been no time to find a new home for his children. So he had left them in this wild Paradise under charge of his gentle father-in-law and of the faithful, though sharp-tongued, Tia Marta. Since then he had not been able to visit them, for his ship had been sent to the Pacific, and except for brief letters, written to Rodrigo from time to time, and for the small but punctual sums of money forwarded to a Granada bank for the family support, they had heard nothing of him.
Rodrigo, too, left much to be desired as a correspondent, although his handwriting blossomed out in bolder flourishes from year to year. He wrote of his progress in his studies, his prizes in mathematics, his interest in the new English sports, his ambition to enter an engineering school and follow his father’s career, and added in a postscript that the rest of the family were well. And all their talk on the homeward climb, after the officer had astonished and rejoiced his son by calling for him at the Institute, had still been of Rodrigo, his successes, his amusements, his future. It would have amazed that vivacious youth to know that under all the kindly responses, the father’s heart was yearning toward the little daughter, longing to find in her face, hardly more than a baby face as he remembered it, some image of her mother’s. Of Rafael he scarcely thought at all. He recollected, without interest, that the younger boy was said to take after him, while both Rodrigo and Pilarica were held to resemble their mother, and it was that resemblance which he craved. He himself recognized it in Rodrigo’s sunny looks and charming manners, but the lad’s frank egotism was all his own.
The lingerer at the gate drew a long breath and entered the garden. In spite of himself, his steps turned toward an open place among the orange trees, the place where his wife’s bed had stood, but there was no bed there now, only an old, old man, seated on the ground and idly piling up the fallen fruit into a golden pyramid. As he went on with his building, he was crooning over and over:
The new-comer, for all his self-control, gave a start of painful surprise.
“Is that your grandfather?” he asked Rodrigo.
“Ay, sir, to be sure it is, and a grandfather as good as bread,” answered the lad, with a sensitive flush, while, stooping quickly, he fairly lifted the light, swaying figure to its feet.
“Never mind the oranges now, Grandfather,” he said brightly. “See! We have an honored guest.”
The old man turned a dazed look upon his son-in-law.
“I am at your feet, sir,” he quavered, in the courteous phrase of Andalusia. “The house is yours.”
“But surely you know me,—Catalina’s husband,” pleaded the stranger, opening his arms.
The old man nodded many times, but drew back from the embrace.
“You are the young man from Saragossa who would wed my daughter Catalina,” he answered slowly. “She is away just now—I forget where—but when she comes home again, we will talk of these things.” Then, moving his fingers as if he were touching the strings of a guitar, he began to sing softly:
“How long has he been like this?” asked the officer, turning sharply on Rodrigo. “And why have you told me nothing of it?”
“Your pardon, sir,” pleaded the lad, “but what was there to tell? Grandfather is often confused by evening, when he is tired. He will be quite clear-headed again in the morning. Perhaps he is not so active as he was, but he does a little work about the garden and he will amuse the children hour after hour with his stories and riddles and scraps of song. He loves Pilarica better than his eyelashes.”
“Where is Pilarica?” asked the father.
“Where is Pilarica?” echoed the old man, speaking more alertly than before. “I have played the airs that please her best, and there were no dancing feet.”
“She may be helping Tia Marta with the supper,” suggested Rodrigo, turning toward the house. “And there goes Tia Marta now. Oho! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!”
“Ay, indeed! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!” came a mocking response from where a wiry figure, arrayed in saffron kerchief and purple petticoat, was seen hurrying in another direction through the shrubbery. “Always Tia Marta, from cock-crow to pigeon-roost! Now it’s Shags that brays to Tia Marta for his mouthful of chopped straw, and then it’s Roxa that mews to Tia Marta for a morsel of dried fish. It’s not slave to every Turk I was in the days when they counted me the fairest maid and the finest dancer in Seville. But all make firewood of a fallen tree.”
“This is natural, at all events,” exclaimed the officer, with the first smile since he had entered the garden. “My good Marta, I kiss your hands.”
“Don Carlos!” screamed the old servant, her sharp brown face, so like a walnut, shining with welcome as she scrambled toward him through bushes that seemed, for very mischief, to catch at her skirts and hold her back. She grasped him by the shoulders and, as he laughingly tried to free himself, pulled down his head and gave him a resounding smack on either cheek. “May all the saints be praised! To see you safe home again is as sweet as God’s blessing. But to think—oh, I could beat my bones for very rage!—that the supper to-night is not a supper of festival.”
“Never mind that!” protested Don Carlos. “Who but you taught me the saying that no bread is hard to the hungry? Let me see the children. Where is Pilarica?”
“The children! Can I have them forever like puppies under my feet? Pilarica! Do you expect me to keep her shut up in a sugar-bowl for you? She is off with Rafael, who promised to look well after her. Never fear! He has, like every boy, a wolf in his stomach, and supper-time will soon bring them home again.”
“Off with Rafael!” repeated Rodrigo, ridding himself of his satchel. “That is why he did not meet me this afternoon at the Gate of the Pomegranates. Ha! I hear him running now,—but he is alone.”
All three—for Grandfather had wandered away in search of his guitar—turned to face a bareheaded little lad, drops of sweat standing out upon his forehead and the dark red glowing through the clear brown of his cheeks. Suddenly arrested in his rush, he stood gazing up with wide, happy eyes at the father whom he recognized at once, the father for whom he cherished in secret a passionate hero-worship.
“Where is Pilarica?” three voices asked in chorus. But Rafael heard only the deep, stern tone of Don Carlos, and it struck him dumb with dismay.
“What have you done with your sister?” demanded that accusing voice again.
“Why—I—I left her—I left her at the foot of the old Watch-Tower,” faltered the culprit.
“I wanted—I wanted to meet Rodrigo. And then—and then—I—I forgot Pilarica.”
Rafael’s voice sank lower and lower under his father’s gathering frown. That father, accustomed as a naval officer to enforce strict discipline, spoke again with such cutting rebuke that the child before him shivered from head to foot.
“How long ago was it that you deserted your sister?”
“I—I don’t know,” murmured Rafael. “An hour. Two hours. I don’t know. I—I gave my watch to the Gypsy King.”
“The thief that he was to take the poor boy’s treasure!” broke in Tia Marta, nervously trying to divert the father’s wrath. “Those gypsies would rob the Holy Child of his swaddling-clothes, and St. Joseph of his ass. Ay, they would let the young Madonna walk the desert on foot and wrap the Blessed Babe in—”
“Rodrigo,” interrupted Don Carlos, “we go to find Pilarica. And do you, Marta, never again confide my little daughter to the care of a heedless boy who cannot even guard his own pockets.”
For a moment Rafael stood as if stunned, his black head drooping. He had dreamed so often of his father’s home-coming, but never, never had he dreamed a scene like this. In the next moment Rodrigo, as he followed his father’s impatient strides toward the gate, was passed, at the Sultana Fountain, by a speeding little figure, and Don Carlos felt a pair of small, hot hands fasten on his arm.
“Oh, do me the favor, sir, of letting me go with you. I can show you exactly where I left her. She will not have gone far. She may be there yet. I know that I can find her sooner even than Rodrigo. Father! Father!”
But Don Carlos, thoroughly displeased, thrust the clinging hands away.
“We want no help of yours. Stay where you are. That is my command. If you are not old enough to understand what it means to betray a trust, at least it is time you learned obedience.”
It was midnight, and their hearts had grown heavy with dread, before they found Pilarica. The first trace they had of her was in the gypsy quarter, where the whole cave population came swarming out upon them, aroused by Xarifa’s shrill defence of the Gypsy King. He knew nothing whatever of their trumpery trash, she unblushingly declared with the little watch and chain deep in her pocket, nor did he know even by sight their nuisances of children, and he was, moreover, so sick with the misery in his bones that he had not been off his bed for seven days and nights. Rodrigo had enough to do to get his father, whose peremptory bearing only made matters worse, out of the jostling, threatening crowd before they were actually mobbed, yet he found a chance to throw a smile at a young gypsy girl whose dancing he had often admired.
“A clue, Wildrose of the Hillside! One little clue, Feet of Zephyr!” he coaxed, and Zinga, flashing him a friendly glance, pushed against him in the throng and muttered:
“There are more pearls in the Alhambra than ever the Moors dropped there.”
Acting on this doubtful hint, they had roused the indignant Don Francisco from his slumbers, and when that drowsy guardian of the old palace told them of the invasion of children that afternoon, had induced him to conduct a search for Pilarica. By the help of lanterns, for a chill rain had blown over from the Sierra Nevada, quenching the moonlight, they made their way through corridor after corridor and chamber after chamber and court after court. Don Francisco wished to shout the child’s name, but her father feared the sound might startle her out of sleep into sudden alarm, and so they pursued their anxious quest as noiselessly as might be.
“Hush!” breathed Rodrigo. He had heard, and not far off, the voice of his little sister, piping faintly:
“It’s only Big Brother,” spoke Rodrigo quietly and, stepping forward with his lantern, he turned its light on a brave little lassie cuddled in the window-recess of what had been the boudoir of a queen. She was hugging to her heart a most comforting, companionable doll, made out of a bundle of newspapers that one of the tourists had let fall. Pilarica’s wisp of a hair-ribbon was serving as a belt and the costume was completed by Rafael’s red fez. Although the child had not slept through all the long, dark hours, the shapeless doll had borne her such good company, rustling affably whenever conversation was in order, that she had forgotten to be afraid.
PILARICA did not remember her father, and it was not without some persuasion that she consented to let the stranger carry her, while to Rodrigo was entrusted the newspaper doll, whose demeanor he pronounced quite stiff, although her intelligence was beyond dispute.
“Don’t lose the magic cap, pl—” murmured Pilarica, but for once her politeness remained incomplete, for no sooner was the silky head at rest on the broad shoulder than the exhausted child fell fast asleep. Curiously enough, the warm pressure of that nestling little body turned the thoughts of Don Carlos, for the first time since he had left the garden, to Rafael. Had he, perhaps, been too harsh with the youngster? How suddenly that first, happy look in the great eyes had been clouded with distress and shame! The boys’ mother had always been tender with them, even in their wrongdoing. And he, accustomed as he was to deal with bolts and wheels, must learn not to handle the hearts of children as if they, too, were made of iron. The father’s mood was already self-reproachful as they entered the stone kitchen, which a ruddy brasero, the Spanish fire-pan where charcoal is burned, and a savory odor of stew made cozy and homelike.
“Now praised be the Virgin of the Pillar!” cried Tia Marta, unceremoniously snatching Pilarica from Don Carlos and carrying her to the warmth of the brasero. And while Rodrigo, his vivacity unchecked by hunger and fatigue, poured forth the story of the rescue, which lost nothing in his telling, Tia Marta woke the little sleeper enough to make her swallow a cup of hot soup, undressed her, rubbed the slender body into a rosy glow and tucked her snugly away in bed. Grandfather stirred in his cot as the child was brought into the inner room and hummed a snatch of lullaby, but Rafael’s cot was empty.
Tia Marta’s squinting eyes, as she returned to the kitchen, peered into the shadows that lay beyond the flickering circle of light cast by the brasero.
“Rafael, come and get your soup and then to bed,” she called. “You must be as sleepy as the shepherds of Bethlehem.”
But no Rafael replied. Rodrigo and his father exchanged startled glances.
“Didn’t the boy come back to the house?” asked Don Carlos.
“Do you mean to say you didn’t take him with you?” demanded Tia Marta.
“Father commanded him to stop where he was,” said Rodrigo, aghast, and rushed out again into the rain, Don Carlos and Tia Marta at his heels.
They found Rafael, drenched to the skin, standing erect with folded arms beside the Sultana Fountain, a stubborn little image of obedience; but when his brother’s hand fell on his shoulder, the child reeled and fainted away. Rodrigo caught the boy just in time to save the dark head from crashing against the marble curb of the basin and, with Tia Marta’s help, carried him to the kitchen. Here they both worked over the passive form with rubbing, hot flannels and every remedy they knew, while Don Carlos, sick at heart, looked on, not venturing to touch his little son.
Rafael revived at last, but only to pass into fit after fit of convulsive crying. He lay in his brother’s arms, refusing to taste the hot soup, goat’s milk, herb tea, that, one after another, Tia Marta pressed upon him.
“But it’s peppermint tea, my angel,” she wheedled, “and peppermint is the good herb that St. Anne blessed.”
“It’s bed-time, Rafael,” pleaded Rodrigo. “Isn’t it, father? And no boy ever goes to bed without his supper.”
“Bed-time? I should think so indeed,” replied Don Carlos. “It’s quarter of two by my watch.”
At the word watch Rafael’s wild crying broke out anew.
“Do you see those tears, Don Carlos?” scolded Tia Marta, whose anxiety had to vent itself in abuse of somebody. “Tears as big as chickpeas! A house in which a child weeps such tears as those is not in the grace of God. And why, in the name of all the demons, must you be talking of watches? Such is the tact of Aragon, not of Andalusia. Oh, you Aragonese! You would speak of a rope in the house of a man that had been hanged.”
Rafael’s crying suddenly ceased. The loyal little lad sat upright on Rodrigo’s knee and turned his stained and swollen face with a certain dignity upon the old servant.
“You are not to speak to my father like that, Tia Marta,” he said. “What my father does is right.”
“Oh, the impudent little cherub!” cried Tia Marta, hugely delighted, while Don Carlos had to turn away to hide the quiver that surprised his lip.
The next day Pilarica, though she slept till noon, was as well as ever, but Rafael lay, now shaking with chills, now burning with fever, yet always wearing the rumpled red fez, which his light-headed fancies seemed to connect with the look of comprehending love in his father’s eyes.
Those first few days left little memory of their stupors and their nauseas and their pains, but when Rafael began to pay heed to life once more, he found himself thin and languid, to be sure, but the object of most gratifying attentions from the entire household. His cot had been placed—not without a pitched battle between Don Carlos and Tia Marta—under the old olive tree just before the door, and Grandfather, in his accustomed seat on the mosaic bench, had brightened up again into the best of entertainers. All this stir and excitement in the household seemed to have scattered the mists that had been creeping slowly over his brain. He was more alert than for many months and no longer played with oranges and snails. He knew his son-in-law now and while he had as many riddles in his white head as ever, he gave them out only as the children called for them. When Rafael saw that they amused his father, the boy began to hold them in higher esteem.
“They do well for girls at any time,” he confided to Rodrigo, “and for men when we are ill.” But he insisted that the answers should be guessed.
“Ask us each a riddle in turn, please, Grandfather,” he requested one marvelous Andalusian evening, when the earliest stars were pricking with gold the rich purple of the sky, “and I will pronounce the forfeits for those who fail.”
“With whom do I begin?” asked Grandfather.
“With my father, of course,” responded Rafael.
“No, no, my son. Always the ladies first,” corrected Don Carlos, drawing Pilarica to his side.
“Then it is Tia Marta who begins, for she is bigger than I am, and so she must be more of a lady,” observed Pilarica wisely.
Just then the five-minute evening peal from the old Watch-Tower rang out, and Grandfather, turning to Tia Marta, recited:
“Bah!” ejaculated Tia Marta. “As if I had not known that ever since I could suck sugarcane! To ask a church-bell riddle of one who was born on the top of the Giralda!”
sang Grandfather roguishly, strumming on his guitar.
“But this fiddling old grasshopper is enough to set the blood of St. Patience on fire,” snapped Tia Marta, who had been standing in the doorway and now indignantly popped back into her kitchen.
“Did Tia Marta ring the bells when she was a teenty tinty baby?” asked Pilarica.
“Not just that,” replied Don Carlos, who was seated in the hammock that he had swung beside Rafael’s cot in order to care for the sick boy at night, “but it is true that she was born high up in the Giralda, which, as she may have told you, is the beautiful old Moorish minaret, that looks as if it were wrought of rose-colored lace, close by the glorious cathedral of Seville. There are thirty bells in this tower and they all have names. One is Saint Mary, I remember, and one Saint Peter, and one The Fat Lady, and one The Sweet Singer. Tia Marta can tell you all the rest, for she spent the first seventeen years of her life among them, way up above the roofs of the city. The hawks that build their nests even higher, under the gilded wings of the crowning statue of Faith, used to drop their black feathers at her feet and she would wear them in her hair when she came down to the festivals of Seville. She was a wonderful dancer in those days, I have heard your grandfather say.”
“Ay, that she was,” chimed in the old man, speaking with unwonted animation. “I can see her now in her yellow skirt spangled all over with furbelows, wearing her wreath of red poppies with the best, while her little feet would twinkle to the clicking of the castanets.”
“But how did she happen to grow so old and ugly?” asked Rafael.
“Oh, Rafael!” exclaimed Pilarica, shocked by such unmannerly frankness.
“Very nobly,” answered Don Carlos, stroking his little daughter’s hair. “By love and by service. When her father, the bell-ringer, died, and a stranger took his rooms in the Giralda, Marta came down into the city and entered the home of your grandfather and sainted grandmother—”
“May God rejoice her soul with the light of Paradise!” murmured Grandfather devoutly.
“There Marta was nurse-maid for your mother, then a little witch two or three years old,” continued Don Carlos. “And she grew so fond of her charge that she never left her, not even when your mother had the infinite goodness to marry me, and we moved to Cadiz, my naval station then. And now Tia Marta, for your mother’s blessed sake, spends all her strength and devotion upon you. We must never forget what we owe her, and we must always treat her with respect and affection.”
Rodrigo, who was pacing the tiled walks near by, trying to puzzle out a mathematical problem, turned to say:
“I’ll bring her a cherry ribbon from Granada to-morrow.”
“And she may wash my ears as hard as she likes,” magnanimously declared Rafael.
But Pilarica slipped from within the circle of her father’s arm and ran into the house to surprise Tia Marta with a sudden squeeze and shower of kisses.
By the time the little girl came out again, Grandfather had a riddle for her:
As the child hesitated, Rodrigo pointed to the luminous horizon, and she promptly said: “The Moon.”
“But that’s not playing fair,” protested Rafael.
“Oh, we don’t expect girls to play fair,” laughed his brother.
“But I want to play fair,” urged Pilarica. “And I want to be punished, like Rafael, when I do wrong. Why wasn’t it just as bad in me to disobey Tia Marta and run off with the Alhambra children as it was in Rafael to leave me alone?”
“It’s hard to explain, Sugarplum,” said her father, “but the world expects certain things of a man, courage and faithfulness and honor, and a boy is in training for manhood.”
“And what is a girl in training for?” asked Pilarica.
“To be amiable and charming,” answered Rodrigo promptly.
“But I want to be faithful and hon’able, too,” persisted Pilarica.
“A man must do his duty,” declared Don Carlos, slowly and earnestly. “That is what manliness means. He must satisfy his conscience. But it is enough for a little girl if she content her father’s heart, as my darling contents mine. And when the years shall bring you a husband, then he will be your conscience.”
“But I want a conscience of my own,” pouted Pilarica. “And I do not want a husband at all. If I must grow up, I will be a nun and make sweetmeats.”
“Time enough to change your mind,” scoffed Rodrigo. “What is my riddle, Grandfather?”
“Wait till my father has had his turn,” jealously interposed Rafael.
Grandfather was all ready:
“But this is difficult,” groaned Don Carlos, thinking so hard that the hammock creaked.
“I know,” cooed Pilarica. “Grandfather told it to me once before.”
“Don’t give my father a hint,” warned Rafael.
“But Rodrigo gave me a hint,” returned Pilarica.
“Oh, that’s different,” declared Rodrigo, almost impatiently. “Men must play fair.”
But it was some time before Don Carlos found the right answer, “Night”; and Rodrigo had almost as much trouble in guessing his.
He called out “Firefly” only just in time to escape a forfeit, but Rafael, to whom fell the puzzle:
quickly guessed “Stars.”
He could hardly help it, with such a shining company of them shedding their gracious looks down upon the garden.
“How many stars are there, Grandfather?” he asked.
“One thousand and seven,” replied Grandfather, “except on Holy Night, the blessed Christmas Eve, when there flashes out one more, brightest of all, the Star of Bethlehem.”
“That is your Andalusian arithmetic,” laughed Don Carlos, shaking his head. “They say in Galicia that a man should not try to count the stars, lest he come to have as many wrinkles as the number of stars he has counted.”
“Where’s Galicia?” asked Pilarica.
“Far from here, in the northwest corner of Spain,” answered Don Carlos, more gravely than seemed necessary. “My sister—your Aunt Barbara—lives there, and one of these days I am going to tell you more of her, and of her husband, your Uncle Manuel, and of your Cousin Dolores, who is a year or two younger than Rodrigo. They are the only kindred we have in the world.”
Even Rodrigo wondered at the sudden seriousness in Don Carlos’ tone, but Grandfather, at that moment, chanted another riddle, which, as it turned out, nobody could guess, not even Tia Marta, who had come to the doorway again.
Grandfather finally had to tell them the answer, “Darkness,” and then Rafael assigned to everybody a forfeit. Tia Marta was sent into the house after a treat, which, for Rafael’s own forfeit, he was not to taste; Pilarica danced, Rodrigo vaulted over the cot, and Don Carlos was begged to “tell about the heroes of Spain.”
“To-morrow,” said the father, taking Rafael’s wrist in his cool fingers and counting the pulse. “You have had quite enough talking for to-night, my son.”
And then the English consul, whose home was on the Alhambra hill, dropped in, just as Tia Marta was passing around—but not to Rafael—the most delicious cinnamon paste whose secret she had learned from the nuns in Seville. The consul shook hands with Don Carlos and Rodrigo, patted Pilarica’s head, complimented Tia Marta on the paste, and then bent over Rafael’s cot.
“So you have been having a fever, my little man?” he said.
“Oh, such a beautiful fever!” sighed Rafael blissfully, snuggling his face against his father’s coat sleeve.
“But how is that?” queried the consul in surprise.
“It’s the red cap,” volunteered Pilarica. “It doesn’t exactly turn real stones into real bread, but it makes trouble pleasant, and that’s the same thing, only better.”
The Englishman did not look much enlightened.
ON the morrow Don Carlos was promptly called upon to redeem his forfeit. Rafael was so much better that he had been lifted over to his father’s hammock, where, propped against pillows, he sat almost upright, taking, for the first time since his illness began, his usual breakfast of chocolate and bread. Pilarica, in celebration of this happy event, had waited to breakfast with him, and the two children were having great fun, throwing back their heads in unison as they dipped the long strips of bread into their bowls of cinnamon-flavored chocolate, so thick that it clung to the bread in a sticky lump. They were very dexterous in whirling up the bread-sticks and directing the sluggish brown trickle into their mouths without spilling a drop, afterwards biting off the chocolate-laden end of the bread and hungrily dipping again.
“And now for the heroes!” called Rafael.
“You didn’t say please,” rebuked Pilarica.
“Heroes, please,” amended the boy, “but girls ought not to correct their brothers.”
“Do me the favor to excuse me,” apologized Pilarica.
“There is no occasion for it,” returned Rafael with his best Andalusian manner.
“A thousand thanks,” responded Pilarica. And now that this series of polite phrases, taught in every Spanish nursery, was duly accomplished, Rafael called again for the heroes.
“One at a time,” responded the father, throwing out his hands with a gesture of playful remonstrance. He had just come back from his morning walk with Rodrigo, whom he liked to accompany for at least a part of the way to the Institute, and was warm from the return climb. “One hero a day, like one breakfast a day, is quite enough for Don Anybody.”
Then he told them stories of a champion who was mighty in Spain eight hundred years ago.
“If I were one hundred times as old as I am,” cried Rafael with sparkling eyes, “perhaps I would have seen him.”
“Perhaps,” smiled Don Carlos, and went on to tell the children that this warrior’s name was the name of their own brother, Rodrigo, though he had other names, too, as Ruy Diaz de Bivar, and was most often called the Cid, or Lord, a title given him by the five Moorish kings whom he conquered all at once.
“Five—Moorish—kings!” exclaimed Rafael in rapture, while Pilarica, to help her imagination, propped up five tawny breadsticks in a row.
So their father told them how the Cid, when a stripling not twenty summers old, had ridden forth on his fiery horse, Bavieca, followed by a troop of youthful friends, against those five royal Moors who, with a great army, were plundering Castile, and how he overthrew them and set their host of Christian captives free.
“Our Rodrigo would have done that, too,” declared Rafael proudly, while Pilarica, with one valiant dab of her forefinger, tumbled the five bread-sticks into the dust. Later, remembering Tia Marta, she picked them up and polished them off with a handful of rose-petals before restoring them to the plate.
Finding his hero so popular, Don Carlos recited what he could remember of an old Spanish ballad that tells of the Cid’s offer to give Bavieca to the King of Castile.
Rafael’s mind was still full of the Cid when, two or three days later, he was well enough to take a short ride on Shags outside the garden. The rough-coated, mouse-colored donkey carried his young master jauntily, being apparently well pleased to see him out again. Don Carlos, racking his memory for more ballads of the Cid, was walking beside Shags, when Pilarica, who had tripped on ahead and turned a corner, uttered a cry of distress. The father sprang forward and found the child on her knees in the dust of the highway, her face streaming with tears, while she held up her clasped hands in entreaty to a sullen-faced fellow who was brutally beating his ass. The poor creature, hardly more than skin and bones, was so cruelly overladen with sacks of charcoal that he had stumbled on a steep and stony bit of the road and broken the fastenings of one of the sacks, whose contents were merrily making off downhill like little black imps on a holiday. The peasant, in a fury, was dealing the ass great fisticuffs on the tender nose, and between the eyes, shut in patient endurance of the blows.
Don Carlos had often seen animals beaten and had usually passed by with a shrug of annoyance, but the anguish of pity in his little daughter’s face and attitude suddenly smote him with an intolerable feeling, as if that horny fist were pounding his own heart.
“Hold, there, my friend!” he protested. “Enough is as good as a feast. If you kill your donkey, who will carry the load?”
The charcoal seller, his arm raised for another blow, stared in astonishment at the speaker.
“You would do well to put your tongue in your pocket,” he growled. “This ass is mine, to beat if I choose and to kill if I choose. I am thinking that is what I will do, for his skin is the best of him now.”
Pilarica rose and rushed to her father, her eyes their deepest pansy purple with beseeching.
“Oh, dearest father, if you please! If you would kindly do me the favor! 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: