In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

And she kissed the baby head that nestled so confidingly against her shoulder.

“There will always be room in my cottage and in my heart for Juanito,” promised Pedrillo.

Tia Marta, dropping her look to Capitana’s inquisitive, pricked-up ears, made answer in an Andalusian copla:

“I’ll tell you my mind, and that
Holds good to the gates of Zion:
I would rather be the head of a rat
Than be the tail of a lion.”

“I know I’m not much to look at,” admitted Pedrillo, a trifle aggrieved by the comparison.

“No, you are not,” assented Tia Marta. “Truth is God’s daughter. But you are a handy little piece of a man, and since I have a loaf of bread, I’ll not ask for cheese-cakes. The poor should be contented with what they find and not go seeking for truffles at the bottom of the sea.”

The two were so absorbed in each other that they failed to notice Pilarica, who had ridden up on Don Quixote and was now charging joyously down the line, telling everybody that Don Pedrillo and Tia Marta, while both making believe to kiss Juanito, had really kissed each other. The news was received with peals of laughter, and all the carriers ran forward, voicing saucy congratulations:

“No summer like a late summer,” mocked Bastiano.

“You would better take me, Doña Marta,” advised Tenorio, whose legs looked longer than ever, attired in their festival garb of chestnut-colored breeches, with rows of glass buttons down the sides, “for I have a nose, at least.” And then, turning back, he sang over his shoulder at Pedrillo:

“Poor boy! You haven’t a nose,
For God did not will it so;
Fairings you buy at the fair,
But as for noses, no.”

“Don’t trust him, Doña Marta,” teased Hilario, whose shabby suit was set off for the occasion by a red and gold handkerchief. “He loses his heart to somebody every trip.

“ ‘His loves I might compare
To plates of earthenware.
Break one, and Mother of Grace!
Another takes its place.’ ”

“A truce to your nonsense!” called Don Manuel, who had urged Coronela on to the crest of the long rise they had been slowly ascending. “Look! Look! Yonder is Santiago de Compostela.”

All gazed in silence upon the pilgrim city, set upon a hill in a circle of hills, its many groups of towers and spires tending upward on every side toward its crowning cathedral of St. James.

Don Manuel beamed upon the group of Andalusians.

“Will you not be happy here?” he asked, his iron face all quivering with joy and love, while the honest Hilario wept aloud and the other three carriers, even Bastiano, did not restrain their tears. “Listen! Where there are church bells, there is everything. Even at this distance I can hear them ringing, – the five-score and fourteen holy bells of Santiago.”

XX

THE TREE WITH TWELVE BRANCHES

“HERE they are!” shouted Uncle Manuel, flinging himself off Coronela and running forward like a boy to embrace his wife and daughter, who had sighted the mule-train from the roof of their house and had come to the outskirts of the city to bid the travellers welcome.

Aunt Barbara, a short, dark, active woman, with a face whose expression was so sweet with gracious kindness that nobody could ever tell whether the features were beautiful or not, gathered the two children into her arms with a low, wordless cry of passionate tenderness. As she held them close, winning even Rafael’s shyness with eager, delicate caresses, they remembered what they had not known their memories held, – the lavishment of love that had cherished their babyhood.

“Mothers must be different from all the world,” thought Pilarica, and pressed, with a sudden yearning for something that her childish heart had lost, into the depths of that ardent tenderness.

Meanwhile Dolores, a merry-faced, cozy little body, in her festal array of wine-colored bodice with cuffs worked in gold thread, her petticoat as blue as a violet, her white kerchief starred with marvellous fruits and flowers, was giving the prettiest of greetings to Grandfather. And Tia Marta was met with a cordial gentleness that readily included Juanito.

“Of course we cannot keep him,” began Don Manuel.

“Wait and see!” laughed Dolores. “You know it will be just as Lady Mother and I say.” And then she flew back into her father’s arms to kiss away his very feeble effort at a rebuking frown.

At once the guests were hurried home to pottage. And such a pottage! Egg and chicken cut into small pieces, bits of ham, red peppers and green string beans! But they could not linger over their plates, for all the world was scurrying through the streets toward the cathedral to see the fireworks.

“Drops of water must run with the stream,” said Uncle Manuel, thrusting his dripping spoon behind his ear, like a pen, in his haste; but Grandfather was too weary for junketing, and Tia Marta could not be persuaded to leave Juanito.

“A Christian child is holier than fireworks,” she declared, standing in the doorway, under the carven cockleshell, with the sleepy baby fretting in her arms.

“And quite as noisy,” came back as a parting shot from Don Manuel, who might seem to have had enough to do, without that, in shepherding his party of women and children through the surging throng.

Although Rafael’s head, still sensitive from the bump, was aching hard when they all came home an hour before midnight, and Pilarica had to pull her hair and pinch herself to keep a certain pair of pansy eyes from drawing their silk curtains, yet both children loyally felt that they must do their best to make up to Tia Marta for the ravishing sights she had missed.

Much relieved that Doña Barbara left it for her to put her darlings to bed, Tia Marta listened demurely to all their drowsy wonder-tales of cascades of fire, showers of falling stars, flaming rivers flowing through the night, golden trees blossoming with rubies and emeralds and amethysts, the colossal lizard that sprang up with a crash, turning to a glistening green dragon that tried to chase the stars, and, best of all, a million-tinted Alhambra which changed, in one splendid instant, to lustrous silver, to an intense and awful white, and then vanished, with a series of deafening thunders, as a sign of Santiago’s victory over the Moors. Yes, Tia Marta listened to everything they could keep awake long enough to tell her, and never once confessed how she had seen all this, and more, from the roof of the house, with Pedrillo sitting close beside her, his hand over hers, to reassure her in case the explosions should be too loud for Andalusian nerves to bear.

The fiesta lasted for several days. There were solemn ceremonies in the cathedral, stately processions through the streets, fairs, sports, open-air music and dancing. Pilarica’s height of rapture was reached when the King of Censers, the great, silver incense-burner of the Middle Ages, swung by a system of chains and pulleys from the vaulting of the central cupola, flashed its majestic curves through the cathedral, a tremendous fire-bird dipping and rising in a cloud of fragrance over the upturned faces of the vast, hushed congregation. But Rafael took a boy’s delight in the eight giants, hollow wicker images some twelve feet high, representing mediæval pilgrims, Moors, Turks and modern tourists, an absurd array that strutted at the head of the processions and even danced, to the music of pipe and tabor, before the High Altar. He was puzzled to understand how they were propelled until he saw peering out at him from the waistband of that chief booby, John Bull, the rueful face of Hilario. A teasing troop of dwarfs were trying to trip and upset this particularly clumsy giant, and Rafael struck in gallantly to the rescue, serving Hilario at cost of a bloody nose. He pelted the dwarfs with melon rinds, while Bastiano, concealed inside the British Matron, John Bull’s towering escort, gathered up his calico petticoats and pounded at them with his pasteboard head. Rafael described this, with high glee, at the supper table, but, remembering Don Juan Bolondron, was silent as to his own exploits.

In the motley assemblage of pilgrims the children came often upon their friends of the road. They were all conducting themselves most decorously now. The dreamy-eyed pilgrim was too deeply absorbed in his devotions for more than a dim smile at Pilarica, and even the wild peasant woman was doing a weary penance, dragging herself on her bruised knees up the long flight of stone steps to the great west doors and on over the worn pavement of the nave to where the enthroned statue of St. James welcomes his worshippers.

After the feast of Santiago there came, in the end of August, the wedding of Tia Marta. Pedrillo had decided, or, rather, she had decided for him, to give up the road and try to make a living out of the soil, whereat Don Manuel, who counted Pedrillo his right-hand man, was sorely vexed.

“Why not leave the world as it is?” urged the master-carrier. “Is not the woman better off under my roof, where she is made one of us and has her spoon in every dish, than living on a mud floor, with goat and pig, in that cabin of yours, munching a crust of bread and an onion? As for you, man, your feet will tingle to be on the tramp.”

Pedrillo scratched his bushy head.

“And Juanito?” he asked.

“Ah, Juanito! He is not so bad, that Juanito. He will amuse my wife while I am away. Now that the little rascal is getting fat on the good, rich milk of our Galician cows, he cries no more than a pigeon. He will soon be playing the screech-owl again on such fare as you can give him.”

“I have heard,” said Pedrillo, “that St. Peter, when he lived upon the earth, was anxious about the rearing of an orphan and told his trouble to our Lord Christ. The Master bade him turn over a heavy stone beside their path. So St. Peter, puffing a bit, rolled it over, and found under it all manner of grubs and slugs living in content. Then said Christ our Lord to Peter: ‘Shall not the care that provides even for such as these be trusted to nourish this dear child?’ ”

“Be that as it may,” replied Don Manuel stubbornly, “every man is the son of his deeds, and life has not made you a farmer.”

Grandfather who, through all the talk, had been smiling sagely and strumming on his guitar, now began to sing:

“Though many friends give counsel,
Take your own advice;
’Tis not by other people’s paths
One wins to Paradise.”

“Your Honor is as wise as Merlin,” exclaimed Pedrillo, beaming on the singer. “I invite you to my wedding.”

It was on a sunny morning, when the tassels of the maize were dancing in the sea-breeze, that Pedrillo and Tia Marta knelt before the priest in a small side-chapel of a neighboring church. The ceremony was brief. A white scarf was cast over Tia Marta’s head and over Pedrillo’s shoulder, and their necks were tied together with a white satin ribbon, called the yoke. When the ritual of the church had been spoken and the couple had given each other wedding rings, the priest handed to Pedrillo a tray on which were heaped thirteen silver dollars. These he passed to Tia Marta as a symbol of his worldly wealth wherewith he her endowed, and she prudently knotted the coins up in her handkerchief.

“No wedding without a tamborine,” said Don Manuel, who was bearing his defeat with a good grace. So the Andalusian bride, quietly dressed in black with a blue kerchief over her head, and the Galician bridegroom were made guests of honor in a house of loving faces, of music and of feasting. Rafael and Pilarica had strewn the rooms with rushes and wild flowers, and Doña Barbara and Dolores had prepared the wedding breakfast. The main dish, on which Doña Barbara prided herself not a little, was founded on rice boiled in olive oil, but to this she had added chicken, red peppers, peas, salt pork, sausage, clam and eel, and flavored it all with saffron, so that it was, as everybody said, fit for the King of Spain.