In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

When the muleteer, a little later, sauntered through the garden, Tia Marta was sitting on the bench, shelling the beans for dinner. She split open the pods with angry motions and bit off the hard, black end of each bean as spitefully as if she had a special grudge against it. Roxa was curled up beside her and, uninvited, Pedrillo sat down on the farther end of the bench.

“The cat is washing her face,” he remarked, “a sure sign that a guest is coming. She expects me to eat most of those beans.”

“Humph!”

Pedrillo, undiscouraged, politely scratched Roxa’s head, and Roxa, in return, very rudely scratched his finger from nail to knuckle.

“Good cat!” chuckled Tia Marta, as the muleteer raised that bleeding member to his mouth.

The silence that ensued was broken only by a resentful miaul from Roxa, as Pedrillo, edging along the bench, pushed her off, until he suddenly observed:

“Galicia is much pleasanter than Andalusia.”

Only such a preposterous statement as this could have surprised Tia Marta out of her resolution not to speak another word to this grotesque and insolent intruder.

“Far countries make long liars,” she gasped, nearly swallowing a whole bean in her rage.

“But I like the prickly pear that abounds in these parts,” went on Pedrillo, stealing a roguish glance at the woman beside him. And again he gruffly intoned one of those Spanish coplas of which he seemed to have no less a store than Grandfather himself.

“Be careful, be careful how you awake
A certain bad little red little snake.
The sun strikes hot, but old and young
Stand more in dread of a bitter tongue.”

“I’ll ask you an Andalusian riddle,” jerked back Tia Marta revengefully, the pan upon her knees trembling with her wrath until the beans rattled:

“I can sing; loud I can sing,
Though I hav’n’t hair nor wool nor wing.”

“We know that in Galicia, too,” replied Pedrillo, moving an inch nearer his ungracious hostess. “Did you ever hear our story about the frog? Once two Galicians were tramping the road from Leon, and one said to the other: I’m going home to Galicia.’ ‘If God please,’ corrected his comrade. ‘Nay, whether God please or not,’ the profane fellow gave answer. ‘There’s only one stream now between me and my province, and I can cross that without God’s help.’ So for his impiety the water pulled him down and he was turned into a frog. Then for three years, what with leeches, swans and, worst of all, small boys, he did penance enough. But one day he heard a Galician about to cross the river say: ‘I am going home,’ ‘If God please,’ croaked the frog, and all in an instant, in a holy amen, he was a man once more and standing on good dry land in Galicia. And so I tell you, as a Christian should, that we all start at sun-up to-morrow for Cordova, if God please.”

Tia Marta tossed her head and squinted rebelliously at the twinkle-eyed mannikin now close beside her, but after the simple dinner, where Pedrillo, as good as his word, did the most of the eating, she knotted up the few belongings of Grandfather and the children in bright kerchiefs. They let her do as she thought best with their modest wardrobes, but Grandfather fitted his guitar-case with a strap so that it could be slung over his shoulders, while Pilarica gathered into Rodrigo’s book-satchel her most precious possessions, the castanets, the painted fan and – wonder of wonders! – a golden-haired doll in ravishing pink frock and white kid slippers that had mysteriously made its way from the shop-window in Granada to the summer-house. There she had found it taking a siesta – for its eyelids shut with a snap whenever it was laid upon its back – in the slender shadow cast by the lonely column. Rafael disposed his chief treasures about his sturdy little person. The small Geography was slipped inside his blouse, where it could be quickly consulted in case they should lose their way. The red cap, of whose magic he felt much in need, was on his head, and for the new silver watch – no child’s toy this, but a trusty time-keeper that might last out a lifetime – Tia Marta stitched a stout pocket under his belt. Nothing could have cleared the mist from Rafael’s eyes like the finding of that manly watch carefully looped by its chain about the shapely foot of his Sultana.

And when Tia Marta, kneeling before the great, brass-clamped, carven-footed chest in the inner room, raised its massive lid, she saw on top of the familiar contents a little packet of money marked with her name. Beating her breast, the old servant rocked herself to and fro. As if she wanted wages for the care of Doña Catalina’s cherubs! And now that she had gold and silver, she could go her own way. She could return to Seville and enter into service there with civilized people, with Andalusians, under the daily blessing of the Giralda. She was free to choose. And being free to choose, Tia Marta from that moment began, with all the zeal in the world, to make ready for the journey to Galicia. And Pedrillo, whose arms were as long as his legs were short, worked with her as naturally and effectively as one ox pulls with another.

“But this task is harder than the creation,” fretted Tia Marta and, indeed, there was much to do. The chest had been originally rented by Don Carlos with the house, and so had the large bed and the canvas cots and, of course, the box-bed in the kitchen. The hinged leaf that, when it was not serving as a table, hung against the wall, the stools, the meal-box, the brasero, the garden-tools, all these must be left. Don Francisco, taking over the place for his brother, who planned to make a living out of the garden by keeping a stall for fruit and flowers at the Alhambra entrance, had paid Don Carlos a few pesetas for them a week ago. But every old cooking-pot and baking-tin wrung the heart of Tia Marta. Not one horn spoon, not one wooden plate could she be persuaded to abandon. The chocolate bowls, the gypsy-woven bread-baskets, the pitchers and cups of tawny earthenware, the pair of great water-jars she would not leave behind, but Pedrillo, a miracle of good-nature, was so handy with his coils of rope and his rough pieces of duck and burlap that he managed to make it possible for her to take what she wanted most. In the confusion Pilarica, whose angel moods alternated with others that could hardly be so described, laid hands on her grimy scrap of embroidery and, making escape with it to the boxwood hedge in which Rodrigo had clipped out his green menagerie, thrust it joyfully down the throat of the largest lion, – a buried treasure for the little nieces of Don Francisco to discover.

In one way or another, they were all busy as bees till the stars came out, when the children, at least, – though Rafael slept on a wet pillow – fell into such sound, sweet slumber that they wakened, with the sense of adventure overbearing the sense of loss, as good as new in the first freshness of the morning.

Early as it was, the dawn just silvering the edges of the east, Pedrillo and Grandfather, who had been a famous horseman in his day, were busy lading the mules, matching riddles meanwhile so merrily that Pilarica and even Rafael could hardly swallow their chocolate for laughing.

“Some wrinkled old ladies,
Sure to appear
For Christmas feasting
And birthday cheer.”

piped Grandfather, handing over a box of Malaga raisins.

“Sons they are of the selfsame mother;
One goes to church and not the other,”

grunted Pedrillo, tucking a bottle of wine and a bottle of vinegar into opposite corners of a striped saddle-bag already stuffed almost to bursting.

Tia Marta, searching wildly about for any pet objects that might have been overlooked, now came rushing forth with a scrubby palm-leaf broom. Twisting a wry face, Pedrillo shoved it under the straps of one of the loads, while Grandfather sang:

“Without an s I would weep,
Instead of making the hall
Ready for guests who’ll keep
Holiday one and all,
Feasting on frosted cake
Full of citron and plums,
While after they’re gone I take
Only a supper of crumbs.”

Meanwhile Pedrillo had come to grief. Setting his foot against the flank of the mule he was loading, he pulled so vigorously on the cords that cinched the pack as to burst two buttons off his trousers. As this garment boasted only four, the dilemma was serious.

The dumpy little fellow held up those two iron buttons to Tia Marta with a comical look, croaking:

“They are round as moons
And wear pantaloons.”

“But I’ve lost my scissors,” wailed the old woman. “They slipped out of my hand just now when I was gathering up —ay de mi!– the last things from the chest, and that room in there is darker than Jonah’s chamber in the whale.”

“Hunt up a candle and look for them, can’t you?” begged Pedrillo of the children.

It was Pilarica who found, under the bench, a stray inch of tallow-dip, but it was Rafael who carried it through the house, holding it close to the floor, while Grandfather quavered:

“In a little corner
Sits a little old man;
He wears his shirt inside his flesh;
That’s a queer plan;
And eats his shirt and eats his flesh
Fast as he can.”

When the scissors turned up, Pedrillo hailed them with a joyous couplet:

“Two friends out walking quite of a mind,
Their feet before and their eyes behind.”

The buttons were sewed on with Tia Marta’s stoutest thread, and so, with song and jest, with bustle and stir and the excitement of trifling mischances, the great departure was made. On each mule, already hung with saddle-bags, Pedrillo had fitted a round stuffed frame, covering the entire back. Over this he had spread a rainbow-hued cloth and roped on baggage until the mules, in protest, swelled out their sides so that the cords could not stretch over anything more. Then Pedrillo, after vainly remonstrating with each animal in turn, had strapped another gay manta over the whole. On Peregrina, whose harness boasted a double quantity of red tassels and strings of little bells, he had piled up the baggage so cunningly as to afford a support for Tia Marta’s back, but the Daughter of the Giralda, though undaunted by the loftiness of her proposed throne, had made her own choice among the mules.

“This is mine,” she declared perversely, laying her hand on Capitana, a meek-mannered beast that stood dolefully on three legs, her ears drooping, her eyes half-closed, and her head laid pensively upon the rump of the soot-colored Carbonera.

Pedrillo hesitated a moment, then grinned and helped Tia Marta scramble up to her chosen perch, where she crooked her right knee about a projection of the frame in front with an air that said she had been on mule-back many a time before.

“Now give me Roxa,” she demanded. “Do you suppose I would leave my gossip behind?”

But Roxa had her own views about that, and no sooner had Pedrillo, catching puss up by the scruff of her neck, flung her into Tia Marta’s arms, than she tore herself loose, bounded on to Capitana’s head and off again to the ground, where she had shot out of sight under the shrubbery in less time than Tia Marta could have said Bah. But Tia Marta had no chance to say even that, for Capitana, insulted at the idea of being ridden by a clawing cat, curled her upper lip, kicked out at Don Quixote, snapped at the heels of Grandfather who was just clambering to his station on the back of Carbonera, skipped to one side, dashed by the other mules and, with a flourish of ears and tail, took the head of the procession. Thus it was that, just as the full sunrise flushed the summits of the Sierra Nevada, a lively cavalcade burst forth from the garden gate. Capitana, utterly disdainful of Tia Marta’s frenzied tugs on the rope reins, pranced on ahead, her bells in full jingle. Pedrillo, dragging the reluctant Peregrina along by the bridle, ran after, shouting lustily. Grandfather followed on Carbonera, and the children on their donkeys brought up the rear. It was not a moment for tears. Rafael, as the head of this disorderly family, was urging Shags forward to the rescue of Tia Marta, and when Pilarica turned for a farewell look, what she saw was Roxa atop of the garden wall, – Roxa serenely washing her face and hoping that the new family would keep Lent all the year, so that there might be plentiful scraps of fish.