In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Never mind the oranges now, Grandfather,” he said brightly. “See! We have an honored guest.”

The old man turned a dazed look upon his son-in-law.

“I am at your feet, sir,” he quavered, in the courteous phrase of Andalusia. “The house is yours.”

“But surely you know me, – Catalina’s husband,” pleaded the stranger, opening his arms.

The old man nodded many times, but drew back from the embrace.

“You are the young man from Saragossa who would wed my daughter Catalina,” he answered slowly. “She is away just now – I forget where – but when she comes home again, we will talk of these things.” Then, moving his fingers as if he were touching the strings of a guitar, he began to sing softly:

“Going and coming,
I lost my heart one day.
Love came to me laughing;
In tears Love went away.”

“How long has he been like this?” asked the officer, turning sharply on Rodrigo. “And why have you told me nothing of it?”

“Your pardon, sir,” pleaded the lad, “but what was there to tell? Grandfather is often confused by evening, when he is tired. He will be quite clear-headed again in the morning. Perhaps he is not so active as he was, but he does a little work about the garden and he will amuse the children hour after hour with his stories and riddles and scraps of song. He loves Pilarica better than his eyelashes.”

“Where is Pilarica?” asked the father.

“Where is Pilarica?” echoed the old man, speaking more alertly than before. “I have played the airs that please her best, and there were no dancing feet.”

“She may be helping Tia Marta with the supper,” suggested Rodrigo, turning toward the house. “And there goes Tia Marta now. Oho! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!”

“Ay, indeed! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!” came a mocking response from where a wiry figure, arrayed in saffron kerchief and purple petticoat, was seen hurrying in another direction through the shrubbery. “Always Tia Marta, from cock-crow to pigeon-roost! Now it’s Shags that brays to Tia Marta for his mouthful of chopped straw, and then it’s Roxa that mews to Tia Marta for a morsel of dried fish. It’s not slave to every Turk I was in the days when they counted me the fairest maid and the finest dancer in Seville. But all make firewood of a fallen tree.”

“This is natural, at all events,” exclaimed the officer, with the first smile since he had entered the garden. “My good Marta, I kiss your hands.”

“Don Carlos!” screamed the old servant, her sharp brown face, so like a walnut, shining with welcome as she scrambled toward him through bushes that seemed, for very mischief, to catch at her skirts and hold her back. She grasped him by the shoulders and, as he laughingly tried to free himself, pulled down his head and gave him a resounding smack on either cheek. “May all the saints be praised! To see you safe home again is as sweet as God’s blessing. But to think – oh, I could beat my bones for very rage! – that the supper to-night is not a supper of festival.”

“Never mind that!” protested Don Carlos. “Who but you taught me the saying that no bread is hard to the hungry? Let me see the children. Where is Pilarica?”

“The children! Can I have them forever like puppies under my feet? Pilarica! Do you expect me to keep her shut up in a sugar-bowl for you? She is off with Rafael, who promised to look well after her. Never fear! He has, like every boy, a wolf in his stomach, and supper-time will soon bring them home again.”

“Off with Rafael!” repeated Rodrigo, ridding himself of his satchel. “That is why he did not meet me this afternoon at the Gate of the Pomegranates. Ha! I hear him running now, – but he is alone.”

All three – for Grandfather had wandered away in search of his guitar – turned to face a bareheaded little lad, drops of sweat standing out upon his forehead and the dark red glowing through the clear brown of his cheeks. Suddenly arrested in his rush, he stood gazing up with wide, happy eyes at the father whom he recognized at once, the father for whom he cherished in secret a passionate hero-worship.

“Where is Pilarica?” three voices asked in chorus. But Rafael heard only the deep, stern tone of Don Carlos, and it struck him dumb with dismay.

“What have you done with your sister?” demanded that accusing voice again.

“Why – I – I left her – I left her at the foot of the old Watch-Tower,” faltered the culprit.

“I wanted – I wanted to meet Rodrigo. And then – and then – I – I forgot Pilarica.”

Rafael’s voice sank lower and lower under his father’s gathering frown. That father, accustomed as a naval officer to enforce strict discipline, spoke again with such cutting rebuke that the child before him shivered from head to foot.

“How long ago was it that you deserted your sister?”

“I – I don’t know,” murmured Rafael. “An hour. Two hours. I don’t know. I – I gave my watch to the Gypsy King.”

“The thief that he was to take the poor boy’s treasure!” broke in Tia Marta, nervously trying to divert the father’s wrath. “Those gypsies would rob the Holy Child of his swaddling-clothes, and St. Joseph of his ass. Ay, they would let the young Madonna walk the desert on foot and wrap the Blessed Babe in – ”

“Rodrigo,” interrupted Don Carlos, “we go to find Pilarica. And do you, Marta, never again confide my little daughter to the care of a heedless boy who cannot even guard his own pockets.”

For a moment Rafael stood as if stunned, his black head drooping. He had dreamed so often of his father’s home-coming, but never, never had he dreamed a scene like this. In the next moment Rodrigo, as he followed his father’s impatient strides toward the gate, was passed, at the Sultana Fountain, by a speeding little figure, and Don Carlos felt a pair of small, hot hands fasten on his arm.

“Oh, do me the favor, sir, of letting me go with you. I can show you exactly where I left her. She will not have gone far. She may be there yet. I know that I can find her sooner even than Rodrigo. Father! Father!”

But Don Carlos, thoroughly displeased, thrust the clinging hands away.

“We want no help of yours. Stay where you are. That is my command. If you are not old enough to understand what it means to betray a trust, at least it is time you learned obedience.”

It was midnight, and their hearts had grown heavy with dread, before they found Pilarica. The first trace they had of her was in the gypsy quarter, where the whole cave population came swarming out upon them, aroused by Xarifa’s shrill defence of the Gypsy King. He knew nothing whatever of their trumpery trash, she unblushingly declared with the little watch and chain deep in her pocket, nor did he know even by sight their nuisances of children, and he was, moreover, so sick with the misery in his bones that he had not been off his bed for seven days and nights. Rodrigo had enough to do to get his father, whose peremptory bearing only made matters worse, out of the jostling, threatening crowd before they were actually mobbed, yet he found a chance to throw a smile at a young gypsy girl whose dancing he had often admired.

“A clue, Wildrose of the Hillside! One little clue, Feet of Zephyr!” he coaxed, and Zinga, flashing him a friendly glance, pushed against him in the throng and muttered:

“There are more pearls in the Alhambra than ever the Moors dropped there.”

Acting on this doubtful hint, they had roused the indignant Don Francisco from his slumbers, and when that drowsy guardian of the old palace told them of the invasion of children that afternoon, had induced him to conduct a search for Pilarica. By the help of lanterns, for a chill rain had blown over from the Sierra Nevada, quenching the moonlight, they made their way through corridor after corridor and chamber after chamber and court after court. Don Francisco wished to shout the child’s name, but her father feared the sound might startle her out of sleep into sudden alarm, and so they pursued their anxious quest as noiselessly as might be.

“Hush!” breathed Rodrigo. He had heard, and not far off, the voice of his little sister, piping faintly:

“Oh, I have a dolly, and she is dressed in blue,
With a fluff of satin on her white silk shoe,
And a lace mantilla to make my dolly gay,
When I take her dancing this way, this way, this way.

“When she goes out walking in her Manila shawl,
My Andalusian dolly is quite the queen of all.
Gypsies, dukes and candy-men bow down in a row,
When my dolly fans herself, so and so and so.”

“It’s only Big Brother,” spoke Rodrigo quietly and, stepping forward with his lantern, he turned its light on a brave little lassie cuddled in the window-recess of what had been the boudoir of a queen. She was hugging to her heart a most comforting, companionable doll, made out of a bundle of newspapers that one of the tourists had let fall. Pilarica’s wisp of a hair-ribbon was serving as a belt and the costume was completed by Rafael’s red fez. Although the child had not slept through all the long, dark hours, the shapeless doll had borne her such good company, rustling affably whenever conversation was in order, that she had forgotten to be afraid.

V

A BEAUTIFUL FEVER

PILARICA did not remember her father, and it was not without some persuasion that she consented to let the stranger carry her, while to Rodrigo was entrusted the newspaper doll, whose demeanor he pronounced quite stiff, although her intelligence was beyond dispute.

“Don’t lose the magic cap, pl – ” murmured Pilarica, but for once her politeness remained incomplete, for no sooner was the silky head at rest on the broad shoulder than the exhausted child fell fast asleep. Curiously enough, the warm pressure of that nestling little body turned the thoughts of Don Carlos, for the first time since he had left the garden, to Rafael. Had he, perhaps, been too harsh with the youngster? How suddenly that first, happy look in the great eyes had been clouded with distress and shame! The boys’ mother had always been tender with them, even in their wrongdoing. And he, accustomed as he was to deal with bolts and wheels, must learn not to handle the hearts of children as if they, too, were made of iron. The father’s mood was already self-reproachful as they entered the stone kitchen, which a ruddy brasero, the Spanish fire-pan where charcoal is burned, and a savory odor of stew made cozy and homelike.

“Now praised be the Virgin of the Pillar!” cried Tia Marta, unceremoniously snatching Pilarica from Don Carlos and carrying her to the warmth of the brasero. And while Rodrigo, his vivacity unchecked by hunger and fatigue, poured forth the story of the rescue, which lost nothing in his telling, Tia Marta woke the little sleeper enough to make her swallow a cup of hot soup, undressed her, rubbed the slender body into a rosy glow and tucked her snugly away in bed. Grandfather stirred in his cot as the child was brought into the inner room and hummed a snatch of lullaby, but Rafael’s cot was empty.