In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

XII

THE OPEN ROAD

EARLY as it was, the Alhambra children were out in force to bid their playmates good-bye.

“A happy journey!” “Till we meet again!” called the better-nurtured boys and girls, while the gypsy toddlers, Benito and Rosita, echoed with gusto: “Eat again!”

By this time Pedrillo had overtaken Capitana and, seizing her by the bridle, was proceeding to thump her well with a piece of Tia Marta’s broom, broken in the course of the mule’s antics, when Pilarica, putting Don Quixote to his best paces, bore down upon the scene in such distress of pity that the beating had to be given up. But Pedrillo twisted the halter around Capitana’s muzzle and so tied her to the tail of Peregrina. Thereupon Capitana, all her mulish obstinacy enlisted to maintain her leadership, began to bray and plunge in such wild excitement that even the decorous Carbonera danced in sympathy. Finally Capitana flung herself back with all her weight and pulled until it seemed that Peregrina’s tail must be dragged out by the roots, but, happily, the halter broke, and again Capitana, trumpeting her triumph, came to the front.

“Child of the Evil One!” groaned Pedrillo, rubbing his wrenched shoulder, while Tia Marta swayed on her pinnacle, and Peregrina cautiously twitched the martyred tail to make sure it was still on. And after Capitana’s escapades, Don Quixote still further delayed the progress of the train by a determination to turn in at every courtyard where he had been accustomed to deliver charcoal and pay a parting call.

Some of the ruder gypsy children scampered alongside, jeering at Pedrillo’s ugliness and Tia Marta’s plight, but at last even the fleet-footed Leandro had dropped back and the prolonged sound of Pepito’s bellow of affectionate lament came but faintly on the breeze. Then Grandfather, lifting his eyes to the dazzling mountain peaks from which the sunrise glow had vanished, began to sing in fuller voice than usual:

“The hood of Lady Blanche
– You’re free to guess it, if you will —
It does not fit the restless sea,
But how it suits the hill!”

“Did you ever see the ocean, Grandfather?” asked Rafael, with a longing in his uplifted eyes that the old man understood.

“Ay, laddie, and so have you, for the first four years of your life were lived in Cadiz. Don’t you remember how the great billows used to break against the foot of the sea-wall? But I like better the waves that play on the shore at Malaga.”

And again Grandfather sang gaily, for it made the blood laugh in his old veins to feel the strong motion of a mule beneath him once more:

“How shall we feed these choir-boys,
Drest in white and blue,
Always coming and always going?
Sandwiches must do.”

“I don’t remember the sea as well as the ships,” said Rafael.

“Ah, the ships!” responded Grandfather.

“It is a sight the saints peep down from the windows of heaven to see – a ship under full sail.

“ ‘Curtsies like a lady,
Rocks like a gammer,
Cuts without scissors,
Tacks without a hammer.’ ”

Carbonera and Shags had now come up with the rest of the cavalcade, which had halted at a wayside fountain to wash out dusty throats, and while Pedrillo was watering the mules and donkeys, Tia Marta, who had regained her breath after her jolting, struck into the conversation with the zest of a tongue that would make up for lost time.

“Bah! Why are you asking your grandfather about ships? He will tell you nothing but rhymes and nonsense. Did I not dwell at Cadiz for a baker’s dozen of years and what is there about ships I do not know? Live with wolves and you’ll learn to howl. Live in Cadiz and you’ll soon know the difference between the sailing-vessels, that spread their white wings and skim over the water like swans, and the battle-ships, dark and low like turtles. God sends his wind to the sailing-ship, but it’s the devil’s own engines, roaring with flame and steam deep down in the iron lungs of them, that drive on the man-of-war.”

“And my father is the master of those roaring engines,” thought Rafael with a thrill of pride, as Capitana started on again with a lunge that nearly dismounted Tia Marta, taken off her guard as she was. Falling back to the end of the train, the boy gave his red cap an impatient twirl, but its magic did not avail to show him what he so yearned to see, – Cadiz, the white city rising like a crystal castle at the end of the eight-mile rope of sand; Cadiz, the Silver Cup into which America, once upon a time, had poured such wealth of gold and gems and marvels; Cadiz, that its lovers liken to a pearl clasped between the parted turquoise shells of sea and sky, or to a nest of sea-gulls in the hollow of a rock. Just then – could Rafael’s hungry gaze have reached so far – a grim battleship was lying like a stain upon those azure waters and from her turret a stern-faced officer, with the stripes of a Chief Engineer, was watching through a spy glass a herd of conscripts, driven like cattle down the wharf to the waiting transports.

Don Quixote began to droop as the midday heats came on, and Pedrillo, still trudging along on foot, swung Pilarica up to Peregrina’s back.

“And how does our little lady like the open road?” asked the muleteer.

Pilarica had not words to tell him how much she liked it, – how strange and how enchanting every league of the way, rough or smooth, was to her senses. Under that violet sky all the world, except for the snowy mountain-tops, was green with spring, – the emerald green of the fig trees, the bluish green of the aloes, the ashen green of the olives. Every fruit orchard, every vineyard, the shepherds on the hills with flocks whose fleeces shone like silver in the sun, the gleam of the whitewashed villages, all these made the child’s heart leap with a buoyant happiness she knew not how to utter. The stranger it all was, the more she felt at home. As here and there, for instance, they passed an unfamiliar tree, it became at once a friend, and almost a member of their caravan. The hoary sycamores were so many grandfathers reaching out their arms to Pilarica; the locusts clapped their little round hands like playmates, and the pepper-trees, festooned with red berries, seemed to rival the gaudy trappings of the mules. Every turn in the road was an adventure. But the child could find no better language for her thoughts than the demure question:

“Do you think, Don Pedrillo, that we shall meet a bear?”

“Surely not,” the Galician hastened to answer; “there are no bears left in Spain to trouble the king’s highways. But if one should peep out from under the cork trees there, all I would need to do would be to fling a hammer or a horseshoe at him, and whoop! Off would amble Señor Bear, whimpering like Diego when his wife first ate the omelet and then beat him with the frying-pan. For, you see, the bear was once a blacksmith, but so clumsy at the forge that he scorched his beard one day and pounded his thumb the next, till he growled he would rather be a bear than a blacksmith, and our Lord, passing by with Peter, James and John, took him at his word. And the bear is still so afraid of being turned back into a blacksmith that if you throw the least piece of iron at him, he will run away like memory from an old man.”

“Grandfather remembers,” protested Pilarica.

Pedrillo twisted his head and laughed to see how erect the white-haired rider was sitting upon his pack.

“He is only fifty years old to-day,” he said, “but it is high time for our nooning. We’ll not squeeze the orange till the juice is bitter. Eh, señora?”

And Tia Marta replied quite affably: “You are right, Don Pedrillo. Fifty years is not old.”

“It is the very cream of the milk,” gallantly assented the muleteer, helping down first Tia Marta and then Grandfather, for their muscles were yet stiff, however young their spirits might have grown.

How glad the mules and donkeys were to browse in the shade! And how briskly Tia Marta sliced into her best earthenware bowl, the drab one with dull blue bands, whatever was brought her for the salad in addition to her own contribution of a crisp little cabbage! Pedrillo produced from one of his striped saddle-bags a handful of onions, so fresh and delicate that a Spanish taste could fancy them even uncooked, and lifting one between finger and thumb, croaked the copla:

“This lady has many petticoats,
But she has little pride,
For the coarsest of her petticoats
She wears on the outside.”

Then Grandfather, not to be outdone, held up to general view a scarlet pepper full of seeds, reciting:

“The church where the tiny people
Pray all the week is not
Cold marble and soaring steeple,
It is round and little and hot;
And red it is as a ruby crown,
This queer little church of Fairytown.”

Pilarica, meanwhile, to whose guardianship Tia Marta had entrusted three hard-boiled eggs that morning, brought them safely forth from the satchel, where they had been hobnobbing with the doll, the fan and the castanets, and passed them over one at a time, to prolong the game. She herself remembered a rhyme to the purpose and sang it very sweetly to a tune of her own, dancing as she sang:

“A little white box
All can open, but
Once it is open,
None can shut.”

Pedrillo made sport for them, when the second egg appeared, by trying to follow Pilarica’s example, but it was an uncouth dance that his short legs accomplished in time to the copla:

“My mamma built me a pretty house.
But without any door at all;
And when I wanted to go to walk,
I had to break the wall.”

But Grandfather’s verse, for the third egg, was voted quite the best of all:

“A yellow flower within white leaves,