In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Peace,” answered Don Carlos, and in a moment both doors swung wide.

A little old man came hurrying across the marble court to meet them. His head was covered by a close-fitting red silk cap, his eyes were two black twinkles, and his face was yellow as an orange.

“It’s the Geography Gentleman,” whispered Rafael to Pilarica, while their host was greeting Don Carlos. “I met him once when I was walking with Rodrigo and he gave me macaroons.”

“And you have brought your cherubs, as I begged you,” twittered the Geography Gentleman, pecking at Pilarica’s cheeks. “And how are you called, my sweeting?”

“Maria Pilar Catalina Isabel Teresa Mariana Moreto y Hernandez, at the service of God and yourself,” responded the child, demurely kissing the clawlike hand and smiling trustfully into the queer yellow face so near her own.

“Aha! So our Lady of the Pillar has you under her protection, and Catalina is for your mother, whom I knew before she was as tall as you are now – ah, white pearl among the souls in Paradise! – and the other names?”

“Are for the great queen whose tomb I have just taken her to see and for her sponsors in baptism,” explained Don Carlos.

“Good, good! And this is Rafael, an old friend of mine, though so young. Aha, ha, ha! And now you children are wondering why I keep my cap on in the house, and that, too, when it is honored by the presence of a little ladybird. It is not because I am such a good Spaniard that I must always wear the red with the yellow; not that, not that. It is because I am bald, like St. Peter. Did you never hear it said that a silent man is as badly off for words as St. Peter for hair? I will teach you a verse about him:

“St. Peter was so bald,
Mosquitoes bit his skin,
Till his mother said: ‘Put on your cap,
Poor little Peterkin.’

“But you are hot; you are tired; you are well-nigh slain by that enemy, the sun. Come and rest! Come and rest! The house is yours. All that it holds is yours. Come and rest!”

It seemed to the awed children that their house held a great deal, as they followed the Geography Gentleman, to whom their father had offered his arm. First he led them to the central court, an Andalusian patio, open to the air, with violet-bordered fountain, with graceful palms and, planted in urns, small, sweet-blossoming trees. Then their adventurous sandals climbed a wide marble stairway and pattered on over the tiled floors from chamber to chamber out to a shaded balcony. Pilarica and Rafael were less impressed by the Moorish arches and windows, the delight of foreign visitors, than by objects less familiar to their eyes, – statues, pictures, tapestried walls, curtained bedsteads, hanging lamps and, strangest of all the strange, an American rocking-chair.

A smiling maid came in, bearing a silver pitcher and basin, and the children bathed their faces and hands in the cool, rose-scented water, but when the maid offered them the embroidered towel of fine linen she carried on her arm, Pilarica drew back in dismay.

“But we would get it wet,” she objected.

Nobody laughed, although the black eyes of the Geography Gentleman twinkled more brightly than ever. Don Carlos stepped forward and held over the basin his own hands, on which the maid poured a fresh stream from the pitcher. Then he dried his hands upon the towel and passed it to Pilarica, who, though still reluctant, ventured to use one end, while Rafael, at the same time, plunged his dripping face into the other.

The luncheon, it seemed to the little guests, was a repast fit for heroes, even for the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio, – a cold soup like a melted salad, a perfumed stew in which were strangely mingled Malaga potatoes, white wine, honey, cinnamon and cloves, and, for a crowning bliss, a dish of sugared chestnuts overflowed by a syrup whose every spoonful yielded a new flavor, – lemon peel, orange peel, tamarind, and a medley of spices.

After luncheon everybody, in true Spanish fashion, took a nap, the Geography Gentleman in one of the hushed chambers, and Don Carlos in another, but the children slept far more soundly on couches in adjoining balconies, though over Pilarica’s slumber two canaries in a gilded cage were chirping drowsily about their family affairs, and a bright green parrot, chained to a perch, did his best to waken Rafael by screaming for bread and butter.

VIII

ONLY A GIRL

PILARICA and Rafael were finally aroused from the siesta by a commotion in the square. Peeping over the queerly twisted iron railing of the balconies, they saw many women, in the bright-hued costume of Andalusian peasants, surging by in stormy groups, talking wildly and making violent gestures. Then came a dozen lads of about Rodrigo’s age, locked arm in arm and chorusing in time to their swinging tread:

“To-morrow comes the drawing of lots;
The chosen march delighted
And leave the girls behind with those
Whom the King has not invited.”

The children looked and wondered for a while, and then, as they had been bidden, went down to the patio.

Don Carlos and his host were smoking there together and talking so earnestly that they did not notice the light footfalls.

“No, if it comes to that, I shall not buy him off,” Don Carlos was saying. “He must take his chance with the rest of the eighty thousand whom Spain has flung like acorns into Cuba.”

“My own three sons among them, my gentle José, my fearless Adolfo, my merry Celestino,” moaned the old man, rocking himself to and fro like one in bodily pain. “My money can do nothing for them now – my gallant boys! – but if you would accept from an old friend, for the comfort of his lonely heart, the thousand pesetas – ”

“Thanks upon thanks, most honored sir, but no, no!” interrupted Don Carlos, laying his hand upon the other’s arm, while his voice deepened with emotion. “If you, one of the wealthiest of the Granadines, were too loyal a patriot to buy off your sons from military service, shall I, who wear the uniform, hold back my own?”

“Ah, but my lads would not be bought off, though when it came to Adolfo, I consented, and when it came to Celestino, I besought. They were all for adventure and for seeing the world. They had lived among my globes and maps too long. Woe is me! Woe is me!”

Tears were streaming down the yellow face of the Geography Gentleman, and Pilarica could not bear the sight. She ran forward and, leaning against his knee, reached up and tried to wipe the tears away with her tiny handkerchief.

“Oho, oho!” he chirped, changing his manner at once. “Here is our Linnet wide awake again! What now? What now? A fairy story, shall it be? That’s what little girls like – stories of the fairies and the saints.”

“I would rather, if you please, hear about Cuba,” replied Pilarica, nestling close to those trembling knees. “What is it, and why does Spain drop people into it like acorns?”

Rafael, standing close beside his father, felt him start as if to check the childish questions, but already the Geography Gentleman was rising, not without difficulty, from his carven chair.

“Ugh!” he groaned. “My poor bones creak like a Basque cart. But no matter! As for the old, they may sing sorrow. Come with me to my study, all of you, all of you, and we will find out what Cuba looks like. Ah, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!”

Don Carlos tried again to protest, but the Geography Gentleman would have his way. So he led them to a room unlike anything that the children had ever seen before. Great globes swung in their standards, maps lined the walls, a desk with many pigeon-holes stood near a huge brasero, and everywhere were cases of books. Rafael hung back in bewilderment, but Pilarica kept close to their guide and watched with eager eyes while he gave the largest globe a twirl.

“Did you know the world was round?” he asked. “And that there is a red-haired goblin who sits in the center and holds on to our feet so we shan’t tumble off? When he yawns, it gives us an earthquake. A good old fellow, that, but he has too long a name for such little pink ears as yours.”

“My ears are larger,” suggested Rafael.

“And Shags and Don Quixote have the largest ears of all,” added Pilarica, and then blushed to see that even her father smiled, while the Geography Gentleman gurgled and wheezed until his yellow face was streaked with purple.

“Good! good! good!” he squeaked, as soon as he could muster even so much voice again. “The goblin’s name is Gravitation, and he sits all doubled up, with his long nose gripped between his knees, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, till his arms are almost ripped out of his shoulders, but not quite. For though he’s uglier than hunger, he’s stronger than the sun and the moon.”

The child gazed doubtfully at the big globe.

“Will you please open it and show him to me?”

Again the Geography Gentleman fell to laughing until he had to hold his aching sides.

“But do you think I have wind-mills in my head that I talk such a monstrous heap of nonsense?” he asked. “It is only that pretty little ladies like nonsense better than sense. No, I cannot open my globe for you, dainty one, but see! I can show you Spain.”

But Pilarica’s faith in the Geography Gentleman was shaken.

“Spain is not blue,” she objected, looking critically at the color of the patch beneath his thumb. And even while he pointed out Andalusia in the south, with its Moorish cities of Granada and Seville and Cordova, and the port of Cadiz; and Castile, occupying the middle of the Peninsula, with its ancient city of Toledo and its royal city of Madrid; and her father’s native province of Aragon to the northeast, with Saragossa, the home of his boyhood, still Pilarica’s air was so skeptical as to throw the lecturer into frequent convulsions of mirth.

“But where is the basket, – the big basket that Spain flings acorns into?” she questioned.

This, again, was too much for the Geography Gentleman, and while he was gasping and choking, Don Carlos came to his little daughter’s aid.

“Cuba is an island,” he explained, “the largest of the West Indian islands and almost all that is left to Spain of her once vast American possessions. One by one, the lands she had discovered and claimed – you remember about Queen Isabella and Columbus – rebelled against her, or otherwise slipped from her hold, and even now there is a revolt in Cuba that has already cost Spain dear in life and treasure.”

“And if the Yankees take a hand in the game,” put in their host, “may cost us Cuba herself.”

“What are Yankees?” asked Rafael, frowning quite terribly at this suggestion.