In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Vainly to the shrine goes poor José;
His saint is out of sorts to-day,”

mocked Tenorio, but Pedrillo, nothing daunted, set to making Rafael a popgun. This he did very deftly by cutting a piece of alder half as long as Pilarica’s arm, which he measured with great gravity from wrist to elbow. Drawing out the pith, he fitted into the alder tube a smaller stick to serve as ramrod, and everybody fell to searching for bits of cork, pebbles, pieces of match, anything that would do for bullets. Uncle Manuel went so far as to contribute a sharp-pointed pewter button.

So was Rafael, all unconsciously, armed for his great adventure.

XVII

PILGRIMS OF ST. JAMES

FROM time to time, while our travellers took their ease in the locust shade, other wayfarers came toiling up or down the steep and stony road and paused to drink at the stream. There were two strings of pack-mules during the hour, the muleteers passing the laconic greeting: “With God!” A freckled lad of a dozen years or so, in charge of a procession of donkeys nearly hidden under their swaying loads of greens, was too busy for any further salutation than an impish grimace at Rafael. There were boorish farmers, doubled up on side-saddles. There was a group of rustic conscripts, ruddy-cheeked, saucer-eyed, bewildered, their little all bundled into red and yellow handkerchiefs and slung from sticks over their shoulders. There was a village baker with rings of horny bread strung on a pole, – bread eyed so wistfully by a lame dog who was tugging along a blind old beggar that Uncle Manuel, quite shamefaced at his own generosity, gave Rafael a copper to buy one of those dusty circlets for the two friends in misfortune.

Here it was the children first heard the unforgettable squeal of a Basque cart. Far up the mountain road sounded vaguely a groan, a rumble, and then a rasping screech that startled Grandfather out of his nap and made Tia Marta, snatching up Baby Bunting, scramble to her feet in consternation. When at last the yoke of stalwart oxen, with a strip of red-dyed sheepskin draped above their patient eyes, came lumbering down the difficult descent into view, the children saw that they were attached to a rude cart, whose wheels were massive disks of wood, into which a clumsy wooden axle-tree was fitted, grating with that uncanny squeakity-squeak at every revolution. The cart had a heaping load of cabbages, together with a bundle of fodder for the oxen and a basket of provision for the driver, who plodded along beside them.

“What a hideous, horrible racket!” scolded Tia Marta, while Juanito, jealous of this unexpected rival, screamed his lustiest.

“Hush, baby, hush!” soothed Pedrillo. “Hush, or the Bugaboo will get thee. Nay, Doña Marta, that is the music of my homeland. We all love it here. The oxen would not pull without it. Besides, it scares away the wild beasts of the mountains and puts even the Devil to flight.”

“And see those cabbages, the bread of the poor,” exulted Hilario. “Ah, there is no dish in all Spain so good as our Galician cabbage-broth.”

The wail of the cart, that jolted by without stopping, was yet in their ears, when Pilarica, who was still gazing after it, began to dance with excitement.

“O Rafael! Rafael!” she cried. “Come and see! Come quick! These are the wonderfullest people yet.”

She had caught sight of a band of pilgrims on their way to Santiago, to the shrine of St. James, whose festival falls on July twenty-fourth and still attracts devotees from all over the Peninsula, especially the northern provinces and Portugal, and even from beyond the Pyrenees. It was a picturesque group that came footing it bravely up that hot, rocky road. The bright sunshine brought out the crude colors of their homespun petticoats, broidered jackets, blouses, sashes, hose. The women’s heads were wrapped in white kerchiefs, but over these they wore, like the men, broad hats whose rims were caught up on one side by scallop shells. Notwithstanding the mid-afternoon heat, most of them kept on their short, round capes, spangled all over with these pilgrim shells, sacred to St. James. Their staffs, wound with gaudy ribbons, had little gourds fastened to the upper end. Some carried leather water-bottles at their belts, but they had no need of knapsacks, for food was given them freely all along the route and, if charitable lodging failed, the pine groves made fragrant chambers.

The pilgrims paused to drink at the cascade, and the children, while careful not to intrude, ventured, hand in hand, a little nearer. One man came limping toward them and seated himself on a stone. He was making the pilgrimage barefoot, as an act of devotion, and a thorn had run itself into his heel.

“May I try, sir?” asked Rafael, as the stranger’s lean fingers fumbled rather helplessly at the foot, and instantly, with a twist and a squeeze and an “Out, if you please,” the boy had drawn the thorn. To prevent the embarrassment of thanks, Rafael turned to his sister.

“Sing the riddle, Pilarica,” he directed, and the little girl, Grandfather’s ready pupil, piped obediently:

“It was this very morning,
When I was out at play,
I found it without seeking it,
I sought it without finding it,
And because I did not find it,
I carried it away.”

The dreamy-eyed pilgrim paid no heed to the rhyme, but dropped to his knees, bowed his head to the ground and kissed Pilarica’s little worn sandal.

“For the sake of Our Lady of the Pillar, whose blessed name you bear,” he said, detaching from his cape – which, in addition to the scallop shells, was studded over with amulets of all sorts – a tiny ivory image of the Virgen del Pilar and pressing it into Pilarica’s hand. “Even so she keeps her state in her own cathedral at Saragossa. Ah, that you might behold her as she stands high on her jasper column, her head encircled by a halo of pure gold so thickly set with sparkling gems that the dazzle of their glory hides her face in light!”

A jovial old peasant, whose costume might have been cut out of the rainbow, pushed him rudely to one side.

“Well do I know Our Lady of the Pillar,” he boasted, “and her jewelled shrine in Saragossa, for I am of Aragon, the bravest province in Spain.”

“My father used to live in Saragossa,” volunteered Rafael, with the shy pride that always marked his mentions of his father. “He has told us of Our Lady of the Pillar and of the leaning tower.”

“Ah, that swallow is flown. The tower fell a matter of eight years back. My old wife and I can give you a song about that, for this little honey-throat is not the only musician in Spain. Ay, you shall hear what we old birds can do. The children sing this song, you understand, in dancing rows, one row answering the other, but that wife of mine is equal to a baker’s dozen of children. Look at her! Is she not devoted to the good Apostle to trudge all this way on foot? A long, rough way it is, but many amens reach to heaven. Come forth, my Zephyr! Waft! Waft!”

And he began to troll as merrily as if he had not a sin in the world, cutting a new caper with every line:

“In Saragossa
– Oh, what a pity! —
Has fallen the tower,
Pride of the city.”

Out of the applauding cluster of pilgrims a very stout but very robust old woman, her skirt well slashed so as to display her carmine petticoat, came mincing to meet him, taking up the song:

“Fell it by tempest,
Fairies or witches,
The students will raise it
For students have riches.”

An ironic laugh broke from the listeners, while the husband, flourishing legs and arms in still more amazing antics, caught up the response:

“Call on the students!
Call louder and louder!
They’ve only two coppers
To buy them a chowder.”

The old dame flirted her canary-colored skirts and skipped as nimbly as he, replying in her rough but rich contralto:

“Chowder of students
Is sweeter than honey,
But the gay Andalusians
Have plenty of money.”

At this the children looked so surprised and self-conscious that the shrewd peasants guessed at once from what province they came.

“The gay Andalusians
Have fiddle and ballad,
But only two coppers
To buy them a salad,”

roared the man with special gusto, and frisked up to Pilarica, who dodged away in quick displeasure from those open arms.

But Rafael, to his utter horror, was captured by the monstrous matron, who grasped the boy in a pair of marvellously strong hands and swung him, blushing and struggling, up to her shoulder, while, gamboling still, she led the chorus of pilgrims in the final stanza:

“In Saragossa
– Oh, what a pity! —
Has fallen the tower,
Pride of the city.”

Thereupon she enfolded Rafael in a smothering hug, smacked him heartily on each glowing cheek, and then let him drop as suddenly as the tower. Before he could fairly catch his breath, that astonishing old couple had started on with the rest of the Apostle’s devotees, leaving Rafael still crimson with shame and wrath at this outrage on his boyish dignity.

“But pilgrims behave no better than gypsies,” he declared hotly to Uncle Manuel, who had come up to protect the children in case the fun should go too far.