“And as good a tea-bell as any,” remarked Pedrillo. “It is three hours yet to Cordova and supper. We may as well make it four. Eh, Doña Marta?”
“A sparrow in the hand is better than a bustard on the wing,” assented a dusty voice from under the green umbrella.
So they all dismounted, while the hens, calling to one another: “Tk ca! Tk ca! Take care!” scuttled before the mules and donkeys as these were led into the path of shadow east of the house, where water and a few handfuls of barley soon gave them a better opinion of life. The travellers, seeking the shade of the rustic arbor, were served by a stately, withered old dame with fig bread, made into rolls like sausages, with cherries and aniseed water. Noting a row of beehives along the garden hedge, Grandfather sang softly:
and the old dame, comprehending, brought a piece of delicate honeycomb. But from ground and trees there came such a lulling hum of insects, like the whirr of fairy spinning-wheels, that Grandfather was fast asleep before the honeycomb arrived. Rafael and Pilarica, however, saw to it that the dainty was not slighted.
“It’s only a snack, this,” apologized Pedrillo, “but we’ll fare better in Cordova.”
“Bread with love is sweeter than a chicken with strife,” said Tia Marta gloomily. “I would our journey ended at Cordova.”
“Tell us about our Uncle Manuel, please, Don Pedrillo,” spoke up Rafael suddenly. “Is he a good man?”
“Ay, as upright as the finger of Saint John. He is no common carrier, your uncle. People trust him with packets of rare value, and he is charged with affairs of importance, as the receipt and payment of money.”
“Is money important?” asked Rafael.
“Your uncle thinks so, but I tell him that many a man gets to heaven in tow breeches. Yet surely it fares ill in this world with the people of the brown cloak. There is a saint, they say, called San Guilindon, who is forever dancing before the throne of God and singing as he dances:
On that saint I, for one, shall not waste candles.”
“Does Uncle Manuel ever get angry with his mules?” asked Pilarica anxiously, for she had not travelled the white road all these days without hearing the curses of harsh voices and the thwack of heavy blows.
“Not often, Little Canary of the Moon. Don Manuel is calmer than the parish church.”
“And our Cousin Dolores?” pursued Pilarica. “Is she pretty?”
“Nothing is ugly at fifteen.”
“And our Aunt Barbara, my father’s own sister? She is lovely, of course,” asserted Rafael, the wistful look crossing his brown face.
but Doña Barbara is one of the best.”
Suddenly Tia Marta beat her fist upon the table.
“Ay de mi! That I, an Andalusian of Seville, must go to Galicia, to the ends of the earth, to serve in the house of strangers!” she cried chokingly. “How shall I bear the ways of a mistress? Whether the pitcher hit the stone, or the stone hit the pitcher, it goes ill with the pitcher.”
Then there fell upon the group a silence that awakened Grandfather.
“Is the coach rolling over sand,” he asked, “or are the wings of an angel shedding hush as he passes overhead?”
Pedrillo, who had fallen into a deep muse, roused himself with a laugh.
“We have all been dreaming,” he said in his gruffest tone. “It is because we are so near to Cordova, the City of Dreams. And yet we are three hours away. But he who goes on, gets there.”
As the muleteer was paying the modest charge, the children watched the swineherd who, in his tattered cloak and sugar-loaf hat, was passing down the street, while the pigs, without pausing to say good night, scurried off every one to his own threshold. A goatherd, too, whose cloak was faded and whose leather gaiters flapped in rags, was milking his goats from door to door.
“People of the brown cloak!” murmured Rafael thoughtfully.
It was already cooler and the beasts they mounted were refreshed as well as the riders.
“Go on your way with God!” called the old dame from the threshold.
“And do thou abide with God!” chorused the travellers.
Not until the evening was well advanced did they find themselves at last treading the stone lanes of Cordova, a mysterious, Oriental city, whose narrow streets were empty at this time except for a few cloaked, gliding figures and silent except for the tinkling of guitars. It was dark between the high walls of the houses, yet the children caught an occasional glimpse through some arched doorway, as the tenant came or went, of an enchanted patio, its marble floor and leaping fountain transformed by the moonlight into the unreal beauty of a dream. In every street at least one cavalier stood clinging to the grating of a Moorish window, whispering “caramel phrases,” or, his gaze lifted to some dim balcony, pouring forth his soul in serenade.
“Ah, this is like my Seville. So long as lovers ‘eat iron,’ we are in Andalusia yet,” sighed Tia Marta.
“I know about Murillo. He painted a whole skyful of Virgins and cherubs. Grandfather told me,” piped up Pilarica.
“Yet I warrant you he’ll eat a good breakfast to-morrow morning,” chuckled Pedrillo.
“That is my saint,” said Rafael proudly.
“Ay, and the Guardian of Cordova and the Patron of Travellers,” added Pedrillo. “His image stands high on the bell-tower yonder and it would be well for you to thank him for our good journey.”
“Does he take care of travellers on the ocean, too?” asked Rafael, remembrance of his father and brother tugging always at his faithful little heart.
But Pedrillo did not answer, for suddenly the three mules, quickening their tired pace, whisked about and made for a familiar portal.
The children let Shags and Don Quixote pick their own way through the great, dirty courtyard, crammed with carts and canvas-covered wagons, with bales, baskets and packages of all sorts, with horses, mules and donkeys and with sleeping muleteers outstretched on the rough cobblestones, each wrapped in the manta of his beast, his hat pulled down over his face and his head pillowed on a saddle.
“But their beds are as hard as San Lorenzo’s gridiron,” exclaimed Tia Marta.
“And much colder,” added Pedrillo. “Yet hear them snore! There’s no bed like the pack-saddle, after all. Here! I will tie up these friends of ours for a minute, while I take you in to see Don Manuel.”
So he hastily fastened the animals to iron rings set in a wall, on which hung huge collars and other clumsy pieces of harness as well as festoons of red peppers strung up there to dry.
Crossing a threshold, they were at once in a large room, so smoky that the children fell to coughing. An immense fireplace, where a big kettle hung by a chain over the glowing embers, occupied all the upper end. Stone benches were built into the wall on either side of this enormous hearth, and from one of them a man arose and came slowly forward.
“In a good hour, Don Manuel,” was Pedrillo’s greeting.
“In a bad hour,” returned his employer bluntly. “You are two days late and I was minded, if you did not turn up by to-morrow morning, to go on without you.”
Uncle Manuel was of robust figure and weather-beaten face. He wore, like Galician carriers in general, a black sheepskin jacket, but his was fastened in front by chain-clasps of silver. His manners were not Andalusian, for he did not embrace even Pilarica. He looked the children over keenly and not unkindly, led Grandfather to his own seat near the fire, on which the inn keeper had thrown a heap of brushwood to welcome the newcomers, and paid no attention whatever to Tia Marta, who felt herself ready to burst with rage. It was Pedrillo who found a place for her at the very end of the opposite bench and even this slight courtesy called out a noisy burst of laughter from his comrades.
“And see what a dandy he has made of himself,” mocked Hilario, who resented, in behalf of his own ginger-colored blouse and cowhide sandals, Pedrillo’s new finery.
“Dress a toad and it looks well,” taunted Tenorio, so long and lean and bony that Pilarica quietly held up her doll to get a good view of him.
“If it only had wings, the sheep would be the best bird yet,” put in Bastiano, whose voice was not merely gruff, as all those Galician voices were, but surly, too.
Tia Marta looked to see Pedrillo take vengeance for these insults, but when the flat-nosed little fellow only laughed good-humoredly, her wrath broke loose.
“The lion is not so brave as they tell us,” she snapped, squinting worse than ever because of the smoke.
And at once the rough jests of the muleteers, diverted from Pedrillo, were brought to bear on her.
“But here is a woman with a temper hot enough to light two candles at.”
“Sourer than a green lemon.”
“Long tongues want the scissors.”
“A goose’s quill hurts more than a lion’s claw.”
And still Pedrillo stood sheepishly smiling, even when Tia Marta rounded on him and on them all with the hated copla:
A growl went up from the benches, but Uncle Manuel interposed:
“And what wonder that her patience has lost the stirrup? Tired and hungry, and then baited like a bull by your rusty wits! Out to the courtyard with all of you and help Pedrillo curry the beasts.”
But Tia Marta dropped scalding tears of vexation into her bowl of puchero, though that delectable mixture of boiled meat, chickpeas and all manner of garden stuff, was already quite hot enough with red pepper and garlic.
Uncle Manuel, having seen to it that the food was prompt and plentiful, did not speak to any of them as they ate, but busied himself with adding up columns of figures in a much-worn account book that he drew from an inner pocket. When they had finished, however, he took from the inn keeper’s hand a little iron lamp, shaped like a boat, and helped Grandfather up the ladder that led to the loft. There he conducted them to two small rooms, roughly boarded off, with a low partition between them. Hanging the lamp by its ring from a nail, he opened the beds to make sure that the coarse sheets were fresh, and left them with a grave “Sleep in peace.”
The mattresses were stuffed with cornhusks of an especially lumpy sort, and that, perhaps, as well as the spell of Cordova, had something to do with the fact that they all slept restlessly, dreaming homesick dreams. Tia Marta heard the hawks wheel and whistle above the Giralda, and their faces were like the face of Pedrillo. Pilarica, nestling beside her, moved her little white feet, dancing for Big Brother, who held one hand hidden as if to surprise her with a gift when the dance was done. And beyond the partition Grandfather murmured the pet name of his twin sister who had died in childhood, more than threescore years ago, while Rafael’s red lips curved in a happy smile, for he stood with his father in the roaring heart of a swift battle-ship, which changed in an instant to a beautiful stillness, and they stood in the heart of God.
THE boy was wakened by Grandfather’s voice. The only man, lying on his back, was conversing with a spider whose long cobweb floated from a rafter.
“And it is cloudy,” announced Rafael, who had jumped up and thrust his head through an opening, that could hardly be called a window, in the wall. “How did you know, Grandfather?”
“Oh, I can feel the sky without seeing it, and this morning it is
“So it is,” assented Rafael. “I believe we are going to have a rainy day.”
Yet any kind of a day is interesting to a child, and Rafael, having quickly disposed of a cup of chocolate as thick as flannel, was soon out in the courtyard, where horses were snorting, donkeys braying, and mule-drivers, called arrieros in Spain, bawling out guttural reproaches to their beasts. They were nearly all Galicians, these arrieros, with honest, homely faces. All wore peaked caps that increased their resemblance to a company of little brown gnomes. Among them Tenorio looked more tall and gaunt than ever. He was leading out a graceful, spirited mule, sheared all over except on the legs and the tip of the tail and decorated not only with the usual red tufts and tassels and fringes, but with a profusion of tinsel tags. She carried saddle-bags, but nothing more except a copper bell as large as a coffee-pot which dangled under her neck and marked her out as the leader of the train.
Several strings of mules had gone already and others were just getting away, their bells jingling merrily and their drivers in full cry. “Arre, ar-r-r-e, ar-r-r-r e!” rent the air to the accompaniment of cracking whips and thwacking cork-sticks. The courtyard was so nearly cleared that Rafael easily made his way over to Tenorio.
“Is that Uncle Manuel’s mule?” he asked.
“Ay, his Coronela, and a pampered beast she is,” answered the Galician. “The master loves her so well that he would give her white bread and eat black himself. But what do you think of our cavalry here?”
Then Rafael saw that Pedrillo and Hilario were getting a bunch of pack-mules into line. Their loads were piled high, but they were stolid, heavy beasts, unlike the riding mules, and though they grunted under the burden and tried to get rid of their packages by rubbing against one another, they were so docile that a touch of the staff would send each to its place. But Bastiano, he of the surly voice, was having difficulties with a new mule, white and sleek, that he was lading. Blanco’s head was roped up; the two bales, having been carefully poised to make sure that they were of equal weight and would balance each other, had been slung over his back, but as Bastiano was about to lash them on, Blanco plunged and the load was tumbled to the ground.
“Ha, Tough-Hide!” snarled Bastiano. “That is the trick you would play on me, is it?”
And plucking up a large stone, he struck the animal cruelly on the side of the head.
“No, no!” cried a childish voice, and Pilarica was clinging to his arm. “You mustn’t hurt the poor mule like that. Oh, you mustn’t! You mustn’t!”
“It’s the only talk he understands,” muttered Bastiano, his lean brown face slowly flushing under the horror in those dusky eyes. “You can’t treat mules like bishops.”
“Why not?” asked Pilarica.
“The world is coming to a pretty pass when a man can’t bang his beast,” growled Bastiano, dropping the stone, while Blanco planted his four feet wide apart in stubborn resistance to anything and everything that might be demanded of him.
At that point there pierced through all the tumult of the courtyard the shrill tones of Tia Marta.
“Pilarica! Rafael! What have you bandits done with my children? Smoked sardines of Galicia that you are! Of all the rascally—”
A roar of laughter cut her sentence short.
“Here Aunt Anna Hardbread comes again to throw a cat in our faces.”
“Look out for her! Old straw soon kindles.”
“Call us names and you’ll be sorry. Though we wear sheepskin, we’re no sheep.”
“Is it true that Dame Spitfire is going with us?”
“Bad news is always true.”
“Give her civil words, then. A teased cat may turn into a lion.”
“Señora, may your joys increase—and your tongue shorten!”
“May you live a thousand years—that is, nine hundred and ten years more!”
“Ruffians!” gasped Tia Marta, as soon as she could get her voice for fury. “Cheese-rinds! If only there was a man, an Andalusian, here!”
And she glared on Pedrillo, who, more embarrassed than he had ever been in his life, was standing on one foot and scratching his bushy head.
“An Andalusian!” taunted Bastiano. “Much good that would do you. Everything with the Andalusians passes off in talk. They are all mouth. Crabs with broken claws could fight better than your Andalusian fiddlers.”
“What is Andalusia?” mocked Hilario. “A Paradise where the fleas are always dancing to the tunes played by the mosquitoes.”
Thereupon something like a diminutive battering-ram took Hilario in the stomach and he sat down so unexpectedly that he tripped up the long legs of Tenorio, who bit the dust beside him. Then Rafael, his black eyes blazing, leapt on Bastiano, who, stumbling back in his surprise against Blanco, was dealt a well-deserved mule-kick that sent him, too, sprawling on the cobblestones.
“Now they will kill me,” thought Rafael and drew his small figure erect to meet his fate like a hero. At least, if he had not captured five Moorish kings, he had brought three Galician arrieros low, and perhaps his prowess would be sung in ballads yet to be. But to his astonishment, and somewhat to his discomfiture, the courtyard rang with friendly laughter and applause, in which Hilario and Tenorio, quickly regaining their feet, heartily joined.
“Good for young Cockahoop!”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“As valiant as the Cid!”
Even Bastiano, still sitting on the ground and rubbing his bruised shin, regarded the fiery little champion of Tia Marta and of Andalusia with an amused respect.
But Uncle Manuel, hurrying back from business in the city and expecting to find his string of mules ready and waiting, bent his brows on the scene in evident perplexity.
“It is not too late,” he said to Pedrillo, “to let you take the woman and little girl and the old man on to Santiago by railroad. My nephew may choose for himself, but I think he will like to ride with us.”
“Yes, yes!” urged the muleteers.
“We need a protector,” chuckled Hilario.
“And so do I,” cut in Tia Marta. “The boy is the only man among you. As to that Pedrillo, Don Manuel, I tell you once for all that we will not journey in his care. I would not trust him with a sack of scorpions.”
“Tut, tut!” protested Don Manuel. “One can accomplish more with a spoonful of honey than with a quart of vinegar. But if not Pedrillo, then who? The railroad is dangerous at the best, and there are several changes to be made from train to train and from train to diligence. I cannot send you on by yourselves and I can not go with you. Besides, it would be wasteful. The mules and donkeys are already provided, but the railroad will cost much money,—the railroad that has so hurt the business of us Galician carriers.”
“We are well enough off as we are,” said Tia Marta curtly, “if only we need not have speech with these sons of perdition.”
So Uncle Manuel arranged the order of march with care. He was to lead the way on Coronela, and the string of pack mules, fastened, as usual, muzzle to tail, would follow, with Tenorio, Bastiano and Hilario on the tramp beside them. The necessity of detaching, every now and then, one or another of the mules that might be carrying packages for some hamlet off the main route, made so large a number of men necessary. At a considerable distance, in order to avoid the dust kicked up by those forty hoofs, Grandfather, Tia Marta and the children were to follow, and Pedrillo was to act as rear-guard for the entire cavalcade.
The second detachment gave the first so good a start that the mule-train was quite out of sight, when our little troop rode in single file, under a pelting shower, through those narrow Moorish streets. Pedrillo paused at a mat-shop, where the prentices and their master, all squatted on the floor, were weaving the red, brown and yellow fibres of the reeds, to bargain for flexible strips of matting to wrap about Tia Marta and Pilarica, but Tia Marta haughtily declined the attention, although the rain had already run the green and scarlet hues of her umbrella into an unwholesome looking blend. Neither would she accept, for herself, his suggestion that they take refuge, till the shower be past, in the famous Moorish mosque, but she let him hurry Grandfather and Pilarica through the Court of Oranges, whose feathery palms and ancient orange trees were almost as dripping wet as the five sacred fountains, and into the strangest building of all Spain. On this gloomy morning the interior was dimmer than ever and in that weird half-light the marvellous forest of pillars,—hundreds of columns, granite, serpentine, porphyry, jasper, marbles of every kind and color,—seemed to be dreaming of those pagan temples, in Rome, in Athens, in Carthage, from which, in the days of Arab splendor, they had been pilfered by the victorious Caliphs of Cordova.
Rafael had manfully chosen to stay by Tia Marta and, when the others came out, the little fellow was having his hands full with the two donkeys and the two mules left in his charge, while Capitana, who, jealous of Coronela’s honors, had been vixenish from the start, was backing into a pottery shop and threatening with destruction a whole floorful of ruddy water-pitchers, green-glazed pots, buff plates and amber pipkins. Pedrillo sprang to her bridle and dragged her out again before she had done more damage than crush that unlucky umbrella against the lintel, so that rivulets of green and scarlet trickled freely over Tia Marta’s face, which still, despite this gallant rescue, had not the least flicker of a smile for poor Pedrillo.
And so it was day after day as the mule-train, leaving behind luxuriant Andalusia, crept across the rolling pasture lands of Estremadura, Don Quixote’s province, and the sunburnt steppes of Castile. Tia Marta regarded Pedrillo no more than if he were one of the infrequent figures they met on those lonely plains,—an elf-haired shepherd clad in the woolly skins of his own sheep, an old crone with a basket of turnips on her head, a milkmaid balancing on either shoulder a jar wrapped in leaves, a bare-legged peasant with a gaudy handkerchief twisted about his forehead and streaming down the back of his neck. To these she would, indeed, say “Good day” or “God be with you,” in response to the grave courtesy of their Castilian greetings, but Pedrillo might as well have been a gargoyle on a Gothic cathedral for all the heed she paid to his hangdog blandishments.
With Grandfather often asleep, Tia Marta always cross and Pedrillo in the dumps, the children found the advance guard more amusing. Rafael liked to push Shags forward and ride with Uncle Manuel, although, to tell the truth, he did not care much for his uncle’s talk. The practical-minded Galician was not interested in the heroes of Spain and only shrugged his shoulders when told of Rodrigo’s impulsive self-sacrifice. Rafael, on the other hand, was soon bored by details of profit and loss and by tirades against the railroads, fast doing away as they were with the time-honored mule-express. Though now and then some special business would take Don Manuel to one of the larger cities, as to Cordova, in general he served only those remote districts which the railroad had not yet invaded. Rafael would pore over his little Geography and then look off wistfully to the east, till the tawny waste was lost in the hazy blur, and dream of Toledo crowning the black cliff’s above the yellow Tagus,—Toledo, of which his father had told him so much, the ghost-city, now a mere white wraith of its once imperial self. And he was not to see Madrid, either, nor have a chance of taking off his red cap to the boy king. Still, it was grand to ride at the head of the procession and it was only when Uncle Manuel would begin to beguile the way by setting Rafael sums in arithmetic, that Shags was allowed to fall back to a more humble station.
As for Pilarica, she was the pet of the caravan and as happy as the day was long. A yellow butterfly on a scarlet poppy was enough to set her blithe heart dancing. Where Tia Marta saw nothing but endless leagues of arid, barren soil, Pilarica would find, in dips and dimples of that parched tableland, patches of sage and rosemary, wild thyme and lavender, that, trodden under foot and hoof, sent up a cloud of mingled fragrances. The carriers vied with one another in coaxing the child to ride beside them. There was not a mule in the train on whose back she had not been perched, sitting crosslegged like a little Turk between the two big bales. Tenorio would tempt her by gifts. Whenever they passed through a village, and now the poorest hamlet was a welcome sight, with its doorways full of gossiping groups, and its laughing girls, water-jar on head, clustered about the fountain, his lank figure was to be seen stooping over stall or garden-hedge buying sweeties made of almonds and honey, a red carnation or, were there nothing better to be had, a bright green beetle in a paper cage. The shabby Hilario hunted through his ginger-colored blouse and trousers all in vain for one loose copper, but his head was better stored than his pockets and he could allure both the children by starting up a droning chant of some old ballad, as this:
As for the cunning Bastiano, he had only to crack his whip high above Blanco’s untroubled head, and a plump white donkey would charge down upon him, bearing Pilarica to the rescue.
So one blue summer day followed another until—something happened.
It was at the edge of evening, when the still heated air was musical with slow chimes from far-off convent-belfries, whose gilded crosses stood out against the sky. Uncle Manuel was rebuking Rafael for having failed to provide water enough for the needs of the day. Early in the journey—too early, in Rafael’s opinion—Don Manuel had equipped Shags with a wicker frame into which could be fitted four large water-jars, two on a side. As the caravan traversed that central plateau where water is scarce, Rafael was expected to fill the jars at every spring, well or fountain, and give the travellers, especially the tramping muleteers, drink as it was called for. At first the new responsibility pleased him, but he soon grew tired of trudging along beside Shags, who had enough to do with carrying the jars, or of begging a ride on mule-back, and of late he had grown so negligent that more than once the supply of water had been exhausted long before the lodging for the night was reached.
Under his uncle’s reprimand, Rafael flushed, but answered haughtily:
“I’m no donkey-boy.”
“Ah! You were born in a silver cradle, perhaps?” Uncle Manuel asked with quiet but stinging irony. “Are you one of those whom God created too good for honest work?”
sneered Bastiano, who had come up for a draught of water only to find one tantalizing jar after another as dry as his own throat.
Rafael, knowing himself in the wrong, could not retort, but turned abruptly, drew from the mouths of the jars the four fresh lemons he was ingeniously using as corks, handed one to Uncle Manuel, another to Bastiano and, with Shags trotting at his heels like a dog, ploughed back through the deep dust along the train. He, too, was thirsty,—how thirsty nobody should ever know; he was ashamed and wanted comfort. He would join Pilarica who, only a girl though she was, had her values in hours like this. She could always find excuses for him when he could find none for himself. Sisters were made for that. But his clouded look was lifted to mule after mule in vain. She was not with the “cavalry,” for neither Tenorio nor Hilario, who accepted the remaining two lemons as a matter of course, had seen her, as they complained, since the nooning.
Rafael was too warm and weary for extra walking and he waited for the riding party to come up, but when it came, though Grandfather, singing softly to himself, and Tia Marta, in the act of repelling Pedrillo’s humble efforts to ease her seat with the offering of a cinnamon pillow, were there, he saw no Pilarica. Don Quixote, with empty saddle, was plodding along demurely a few rods behind the rest, but when asked what had become of his little mistress, he twitched his white ears with the most non-committal air in the world.
WHILE the caravan halted, all in consternation over the loss of Pilarica, that glad-hearted little maiden was, as ever, on the best of terms with life. To be sure, the nooning had not been quite as pleasant as usual. Though the morning route had led past fields softly golden with the early summer harvest, where reapers in wide hats were wielding shining sickles, the travellers had found themselves by midday on a parched upland, neither shade nor water to be had. After their frugal luncheon of bread and cheese, flavored with onions for the muleteers and with figs for the children, everybody but Pilarica had gone to sleep in such scanty shelter from the sun as the pack-mules afforded. Pilarica had loyally stayed by Don Quixote, who, though his sides were now well rounded out, cast hardly a larger scrap of shadow than the birds of prey hovering in the burning blue, so that the child, too hot to fall asleep, had taken her doll and strolled a little away from the train. Suddenly she saw stretched out at her feet a shabby cloak, propped up a trifle by dry stalks and broken bits of brush, the brown of the cloak so like the brown of the earth that it would hardly be noticed three yards off. Under this homely tent was—of all wonders!—a baby, a really truly baby wrapped in a little white kid-skin, a baby who blinked his black eyes and gurgled drowsily as Pilarica and her doll cuddled down beside him. And there they all three slept so soundly that the bustle attendant on getting the train under way did not rouse them, while Grandfather, supposing that Pilarica was riding with her uncle on Coronela or had been tossed up by one of the muleteers to a pack-throne, himself untied the rope that bound Don Quixote’s forelegs together and chirruped to the donkey to follow Carbonera.
When Pilarica, so exhausted by the heat that her siesta lasted twice as long as usual, finally awoke, a strange, wild-looking figure was squatted close by,—a figure so tanned from the mat of shaggy hair to the naked arms and legs that it looked as if it were only a queer shape of the sunburnt soil. Pilarica, fearlessly creeping out from under the cloak and sitting upright, saw at some distance beyond this unkempt watcher a flock of goats.
The goatherd was devouring a piece of black bread which he dipped, between bites, into a cow’s-horn half full of olive oil. He jumped back as the little girl appeared and stared at her with stupid, frightened eyes.
“Good-day, sir,” said Pilarica, who knew no reason why one should not be as polite to a goatherd as to a grandee.
Scared peasant though he was, he had Castilian manners.
“Will your Grace eat?” he stammered, offering his humble fare.
Pilarica declined with a courteous gesture of her little hand, now almost as brown as his own, and the customary Spanish phrase:
“May it do you good!”
He started again at the sound of her voice, but gulped down the rest of his bread, corked the cow’s-horn, thrust it into his rough leather wallet and then went to his flock, soon returning with warm milk in a bottle. Not daring, apparently, to reach across Pilarica, he pointed to the baby.
“Oh, may I!” exclaimed the little girl in ecstasy and, gathering that kid-skin bundle into her lap, she administered the milk as best she could, singing meanwhile, over and over, one of Grandfather’s lullabies:
The goatherd, to whom Pilarica’s sweet treble had an unearthly sound, crossed himself and backed still further away.
“What is the darling’s name?” she asked, too much engrossed in her new, delightful occupation to notice the peasant’s fright.
“THE CHILD OF HUNGER.”
“THE CHILD OF HUNGER.”
“The Child of Hunger,” replied the goatherd. He had a few words, at the best, and was, besides, more and more terrified in the presence of one whom he took to be a fairy. For he was but a simple-minded fellow, believing all the tales that he had heard from wandering shepherds on the windy waste or from old wives in rough-hewn chimney-corners. Whenever a lizard glided across his path, he saluted the little green creature with his best bow, for he believed that the lizard is itself so courteous that it will not go to sleep on a sunny wall without descending first to kiss the earth. When his eyes were hurting him, he would watch the swallows in their wheeling flight, for he believed that swallows know of a secret herb that cures sore eyes and that they pluck off its leaves to carry to their nestlings. He always trembled and crossed himself when he came upon even the prettiest little striped snake, for he believed that snakes never die, but when they see Death walking over the plain, looking for them, slip out of their skins and run away, growing into huge serpents with the years and becoming, in the centuries, scaly dragons that devour the flocks. This, he knew, was St. John’s Eve, when, as he had heard since childhood, from every fountain springs forth a fairy princess to spread her linen, white as snow and fine as cobwebs, out to dry in the dew. His young wife had perished of the fever a few weeks before and he could not leave their baby alone in the poor little hut of their brief happiness. So he had, while tending his flock, carried the child about with him, but the little one did not thrive. It would be better to give him to this gentle princess, who, perhaps, had come so far from her fountain to seek a playmate for that tiny fairy-baby with the golden hair and the bright blue eyes that never once winked as they looked out straight upon the western sun. What if the princess were waiting for a herd of elfin goats to bring that dainty creature milk? It would be as well for his honest Christian goats not to meet them. No harm could come to the child in the shining diamond grotto under the fountain, for the christening dews upon the little head would guard it from all evil. So the goatherd slyly picked up his coarse brown cloak and stealthily moved away with his flock, somewhat troubled in mind, for he thought Saint John might better have sent an angel than a fairy to their need, and missing so much the accustomed weight, lighter with every week, upon his arm, that he picked up a young kid and carried this for comfort.
Only the doll watched him as he went,—a high-minded doll that, as the afternoon wore by, showed no signs of jealousy, though Pilarica was utterly absorbed in her new plaything. The baby was almost as good as the doll, sleeping, or cooing, or kicking with its scrawny little legs. Once its wandering claw of a hand discovered an ear and did its best to pull that curious object off to put into the button mouth for proper investigation. It was this failure to detach its ear that finally roused the infant to wrath and it bleated as lustily as if it had been born the tenant of a kid-skin.
“Dear me!” sighed Pilarica, suddenly aware that she was weary and that a great red moon was climbing up over the edge of the world. “Where has the hairy man gone with his goats? Why didn’t he leave us some milk for supper? And when will somebody be coming for me?”
For Pilarica had the wisdom of experience. She knew that somebody always came for a little girl who was lost. For one moment a homesick thought fleeted back to her father and Big Brother and the rustling newspaper doll, and in the next she heard, not at all to her surprise, the trot-trot of Don Quixote’s hoofs and beheld that gallant ass, with Pedrillo running alongside, making over the plain toward the nooning place.
“Cry louder, Baby!” she admonished, with a little shake to which Baby instantly responded. It was really marvellous what a roar went forth upon the air, as if the kid had been transformed into a lion-cub. Clear and shrill above this remarkable accompaniment soared the ringing call of Pilarica. Don Quixote frisked his ears and tail and turned his course toward her of his own impulse; Pedrillo gave a shout of joy, and behind Pedrillo rose the halloo of Bastiano, and behind Bastiano clanged the great copper bell of Coronela.
There was a festival of greeting for Pilarica, but Baby Bunting, howling his worst, had a welcome only from Tia Marta. She gathered the brown bantling into her arms with a torrent of tender endearments and from that hour constituted herself his nurse and champion.
As the days went by, many and sharp were her quarrels with Don Manuel, who was determined that the foundling should be left at the first refuge that offered.
“Do you hope to carry this ugly tadpole on to Santiago?” he demanded at last. “Then let me tell you once for all that I will not receive it into my house. My house,” he added, not remembering to be consistent in the matter of Natural History, “is no nest for screech-owls.”
“Yah-ee!” protested the baby.
“Where’s Herod?” asked Hilario, winking at Tenorio and Bastiano, who mischievously repeated, one after the other:
“Where’s Herod?”
But Pedrillo picked up the child from Tia Marta’s tired shoulder and, dandling it skilfully, walked back and forth till the fretful cry was hushed.
They were enjoying a full midday meal at a village inn, for their lodging-place was so far on it could hardly be reached before late evening. Now that they were getting up into the hill country, where water was more plentiful and the heat not so intense, Don Manuel was pressing on at the full speed of the train in his desire that all, but especially the children, should be at Santiago for the feast of St. James. They were sitting at table in a long open room, at whose further end stood the mules and donkeys, their halters thrown over wall-pegs ingeniously made of ham-bones. Swallows flashed and called among the rafters. Pigeons with rainbow necks flew down to share the crumbs. A dog and two or three cats hunted about under the table for scraps. An enterprising hen, with a brood of fluffy chickens twit-twit-twittering behind her, bore in at the open door with the determined air of a militant suffragette and flew heavily across the room, lighting, to the children’s glee, right on Bastiano’s astonished head. The turkey and the pig, a gaunt black pig with stiff bristles, tried to join the party, but the dog, recalled to a sense of duty, promptly drove them out.
The muleteers were making merry over their favorite dish of big yellow peas boiled to a pap in olive oil, and flanked, on this occasion, by a platter of fried fish, but the children preferred an omelet tossed up in a twinkling out of the freshly laid eggs that they had helped the ventera find in the hay-scented stable. Meanwhile Grandfather was feasting them with riddles and with a treat of roasted chestnuts, singing as they munched: