In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

But Tia Marta unexpectedly took Don Quixote to her heart. As the ass stood before her for inspection, hanging his head as if aware of his unsightliness, and now and then slowly shaking his drooped ears, she surveyed him for a moment, her squinting eyes taking account of all the marks of cruel usage, and then stamped her foot in anger.

“That charcoal-seller ought to be thrashed like wheat,” she cried. “How I wish I had the drubbing of him! I would like to split him in two like a pomegranate. But God knows the truth, and let it rest there. And this donkey is not so bad a bargain, Don Carlos. See what I will make of him, with food and rest and ointment. The blessed ass of Bethlehem, he who warmed with his breath the Holy Babe in the manger and bore Our Lady of Mercy on his back to Egypt, could have no better care from me than I will spend on this maltreated innocent.”

Tia Marta was as good as her word. Her choicest balsams were brought to bear upon the donkey’s hurts, and Leandro, whom Rodrigo asked over to see the animal, for gypsies are wise in such matters, agreed with the old woman that the ass was of good stock and might have, under decent conditions, years of service in him yet. When the charcoal stains were washed away and the discoloration of the bruises had faded out, the discovery was made, to Pilarica’s ecstasy, that Don Quixote was a white donkey. Oh, to possess a plump white donkey! The child was in such haste to see those scarecrow outlines rounded out that Tia Marta grew extravagant and added handfuls of barley to the regular rations of chopped straw. And as it would never do to feed the new-comer better than the faithful Shags, that Long-Ears, too, found his fare improved, so that, with a chum to share his cellar and a festival dinner every day, he waxed fat and frisky and often sang, as best he could, his resonant psalm of life.

Pilarica went carolling like a bird through the old garden in those blithe spring mornings, and Rafael had grown so vigorous that he was again more than a match for her at their favorite game of Titirinela. The children would clasp hands, brace their feet together until the tips of Rafael’s sandals strained against his sister’s, fling their small bodies back as far as the length of their arms would allow, and then spin around and around like a giddy top, singing responsively:

“ ‘Titirinela, if you please!’
‘Titirinela, bread and cheese!’
‘What is your father’s worshipful name?’
‘Sir Red-pepper, who kisses your hands.’
‘And how does he call his beautiful dame?’
‘Lady Cinnamon, at your commands.’
Titirinela, toe to toe!
Titirinela, round we go!”

Once, as Don Carlos came to pick up his little daughter, after the whirling top had broken in two and each half had rolled laughing on the ground, Pilarica clasped her arms tight about his neck, exclaiming:

“Dearest father, are we not the very happiest people in all the world!”

But he hastily thrust an official-looking envelope into his pocket and, for his only answer, shut the shining eyes with kisses.

VII

THE GEOGRAPHY GENTLEMAN

RAFAEL woke three times that night and put out his hand to his father’s hammock, only to find it empty. Listening intently, he would hear measured steps pacing up and down at the further end of the garden. The third time, he ventured to call, and the steps quickened their beat and came toward him.

“Anything amiss, my son?” asked Don Carlos, stooping over the cot.

“I keep waking up and missing you,” confessed Rafael, half ashamed. “Isn’t it very late?”

“Yes, or very early, as one may like to call it,” answered Don Carlos, looking to the east, where a pearly gleam was already stealing up the sky. “But I will turn in now, if your rest depends on mine. A youngster like you should make but one sleep of it the whole night long, and not lie with eyes as wide open as a rabbit’s.”

The next morning Tia Marta noticed that Don Carlos had a haggard look and that, when he returned from his walk with Rodrigo, his face was grave and anxious.

“The master’s furlough must be nearly up,” she remarked to the cat, with whom she was in the habit of holding long conversations, “or he worries about the new conscription, fearing for the señorito. But it is not our bonny Rodrigo who would draw a lot for the soldiering. He is ever the son of good-luck. And yet – ah, well! well! Each man sneezes as God pleases. As for you and me, Roxa, we will not be troubling the master with questions. Some broths are the worse for stirring.”

When Don Carlos, however, came upon Rafael and Pilarica running races in the garden, his bearing was so gay that they mischievously barred his passage, standing across the walk, hand in hand, and singing:

“Potatoes and salt must little folks eat,
While the grown-up people dine
Off marmalade, peanuts and oranges sweet,
With cocoanut milk for wine.
On the ground do we take our seat;
We’re at your feet, we’re at your feet.”

As they suited the action to the words, he bent and lightly knocked the black heads together, saying merrily:

“What a pity that nobody wants to spend the day with me in Granada!”

“A whole day!”

“In Granada!”

And the madcaps, wild with glee, flashed about the fragrant garden more swiftly than the swallows, whose chirurrí, chirurrí, chicurrí, Beatriiiiíz, Pilarica mocked so truly that her father could not always tell which was child and which was bird.

“What, what, gentlemen! What, what, what! What, what, ladies! What, what, what! As the old duck quacks when the barnyard gets too lively,” called Grandfather, who was trimming one of the boxwood hedges. Even his physical energies seemed to have been somewhat restored in these three eventful weeks since Don Carlos had come home.

“Save your strength, you little spendthrifts,” bade their father. “It’s a long road to Granada, and a longer road back. And now run to Tia Marta to be made fine.”

“May Shags go with us?” shouted Rafael.

“And Don Quixote, please,” begged Pilarica.

“Not all the way,” replied Don Carlos, “but Grandfather, if he will be so kind, may bring the donkeys to meet us at the Gate of the Pomegranates an hour before sundown.”

“With much pleasure,” assented Grandfather, while the children scampered off to be arrayed in their simple best.

Such a joyous day as it was! They walked down slowly, with frequent rests, in which Don Carlos would tell them still more stories of the Cid, and of Bernardo del Carpio, the valiant knight who loved his father even better than he loved his country.

“And so do I,” said Rafael shyly, and Don Carlos, though he shook his head, pinched the square chin, so like his own, and did not look displeased. But at their next rest he began to tell them what a glorious history their country had, – how the Spanish Peninsula, after the Romans, once masters of the world, had occupied and ruled it for nearly seven centuries, was possessed by the Goths, one of the wild, free races from the north of Europe that poured down upon the sunny southern lands and wrested them from the grasp of Rome, then weakened by luxury and unable to resist.

“But this does not interest Pilarica,” the speaker interrupted himself to say. “There are flowers over yonder, Honey Heart, that you might run and gather.”

“Oh, but I love it!” protested the little girl, all her face aglow. “I can just see the Goths rushing down from the top of the world, and the lazy Romans looking so surprised while their countries are taken away from them.”

“Huh!” snorted Rafael. “I don’t see any such thing. Do be quiet, Pilarica, while my father tells me what happened next.”

“Something more than two centuries of Gothic rule, which was Christian rule, happened next,” continued Don Carlos, “and then the Moors, followers of the false prophet Mohammed, swarmed over from Africa and drove the Christians back and back, till even stout little Galicia, which made a stubborn resistance up in its far corner, was conquered. It was feared that the Mohammedans would pass the Pyrenees, that majestic mountain range which shuts off our Peninsula from the rest of Europe, and overrun all Christendom, and it is the supreme service of Spain to civilization, her crowning honor and her holiest pride, that in this crisis of destiny she saved Europe from the Moslems. Against that dark tide of invasion, checked by the mountain bar, she flung the fighting force of all her chivalry, and little by little, century by century, the armies of the Cross forced the armies of the Crescent southward, drenching all the way with blood, until at last, at last, under our great wedded sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Moors were driven out even from their last stronghold in the Peninsula, from Granada, and sent flying back across the Straits.”

In the fervor of his feeling, Don Carlos had risen and swept off his hat, as if in the presence of that august Spain whose heroic past he was relating. Pilarica’s slender arms were extended to help in pushing out the Moors. Rafael, breathing hard, was the first to speak.

“Oh-h! I am so glad to be a Spaniard.”

“And well you may be,” said Don Carlos, holding out his hand to Pilarica for resuming the walk. “Not only does Europe owe, perhaps, her very existence as a Christian continent to Spain, but it was through the faith and practical support of Queen Isabella that the Italian adventurer, Columbus, was enabled to cross the vast, unknown Atlantic and discover America.”

“Are not Europe and America very grateful to us?” asked Pilarica, as she tripped along by her father’s side, taking three steps to his one.

“Of course they are,” Rafael took it upon himself to answer. “Isn’t that a silly question, father? But Pilarica is only a girl.”

“Queen Isabella, who did such wonderful things for Spain and the world, was only a girl once,” remarked Pilarica.

Rafael pretended not to hear.

Their father brought them first to the stately cathedral of Granada. Here, in the Royal Chapel, all three stood silent for a moment above the dim vault where rest in peace the ashes of Ferdinand and Isabella. Then he took them to the magnificent promenade, the Alameda, along whose sides tower rows of giant trees that throw an emerald arch across the avenue. Here fountains were playing, roses, myrtles and jessamines were in rich bloom, and there were dazzling glimpses of the snow-robed Sierra Nevada. But when the little feet began to lag under the noontide heat, Don Carlos led the children to a neighboring square and, pausing before one of the tallest houses, reached his arm through the iron bars of the outer door and twitched a bell-chain that was looped within.

“Who comes?” called a voice from above, as in the old times of warfare between Christian and Moor.