Kitabı oku: «In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael», sayfa 11

XXI
WORK AND PLAY

RAFAEL still dreamed of his father, especially on gusty nights, and still, as he worked and played, tried to do what his father would approve. For there was plenty of work, as well as play. Work is the fashion in Galicia and neither Uncle Manuel nor Aunt Barbara could have conceived of a happy life without it. Rafael, though he had developed no liking for arithmetic, pegged faithfully away at the simple sums that his uncle delighted to set him and became, if not swift, tolerably sure.

“Dame Diligence is the mother of success,” Aunt Barbara would say cheerfully, when the lad’s face grew flushed over long columns, and presently a purple plum or a russet apple would be dropped upon the blurred and crumpled page. Another of Aunt Barbara’s quiet ways of helping was to divert Pilarica’s headlong rushes upon her brother to impart some news of burning importance, – how Bastiano had promised her a hat woven of rushes or how Don Quixote had slipped off the stepping-stones and splashed down into the brook. Aunt Barbara had only to whisper Bat to send the little girl dancing away out of doors again, trilling like a penitent lark:

 
“Who is the student – hark, oh hark! —
Who studies best in the deepest dark?
Should you disturb his studies, beware!
This angry student will pull your hair.”
 

What the boy longed to do was to learn to write, that he might send a letter to his father, and a tall youth from the Institute, where Rafael was to go, his uncle said, when he was ten years old, came in twice a week to set copies in a free, flourishing script and make fun of his pupil’s painful scrawls.

“I don’t see why letters are so much harder to do than figures,” Rafael would groan, casting his pen to the floor in an Andalusian temper.

But Doña Barbara would pick it up and pat the ink-smeared hand into which she fitted it again with cool, comforting touches.

 
“Flowers black as night,
Field white as snow,
A plough and five oxen
To make it go,”
 

she would say in the dear voice that was a softer echo of his father’s, and the five sturdy little oxen would resolutely resume their labors with the plough.

As for play, he found the games of Santiago rougher than those to which he had been accustomed in Granada. He was surprised, at first, to see such big boys dancing in circles, while a lad on the outside would try to touch one of them above the waist, but he soon discovered that these were kicking circles where heels struck out behind so vigorously as to make it no easy matter to tag without receiving the return compliment of a kick.

The work element, too, entered into these Galician games. In the first one Rafael played, he received whispered orders from the leading lad, “the master,” to “be carpenter and gimlet.” After a few more directions, Rafael stooped over, his palms on his knees, and held this position while the other boys in turn took running leaps over him, resting their hands on his shoulders, but careful not to touch him with their legs. At the first jumping, every boy would say in the harsh Galician grumble, like so many leap-frogs at his ear:

 
“Here’s a new worker good and clever.
Man must work forever and ever.”
 

On the return jumping-trip, when Rafael’s back was beginning to ache, each asked:

 
“What do you do with your best endeavor?”
 

And he, as he had been instructed, made answer:

 
“I’m a carpenter good and clever.”
 

On the third leaping, each workman paused with his hands on Rafael’s shoulders to put a question to the master and, upon receiving a negative reply, vaulted as before.

 
“Have you saws that saw as sharp saws should?”
“Yes, my saws are very good.”
“Have you planes that plane as smooth planes should?”
“Yes, my planes are very good.”
“Have you hammers that pound as hammers should?”
“Yes, my hammers are very good.”
“Have you gimlets that bore as gimlets should?”
“No, my gimlets are not so good.”
 

At this the last questioner flung his arms about Rafael, pulling the doubled little figure upright, and all the boys dealt him friendly cuffs and tweaks as they dragged him to the master, chorusing:

 
“He needs a gimlet; that is true.
He needs a gimlet and he’ll take you.”
 

And then the game began all over again with another youngster secretly appointed by the master as “tinker and tongs.”

Pilarica frankly disdained the Galician games. It hurt the child’s sense of romance and poetry to find the same plays that had been robed in beautiful suggestion, as she romped through them with her Andalusian mates, given this queer, workaday, bread-and-butter flavor. How lovely it used to be when the children would choose Pilarica to lead the Morning-stars in their dancing advances nearer and nearer the deep shadow cast by the Alhambra wall! Within the mystery of dusk would lurk the lonely Moon, waiting her chance to spring and catch the first daring star who should venture to skip across the line dividing light from darkness! How the very words of the song twinkled and tempted!

 
“O the Moon and the Morning-stars!
O the Moon and the Morning-stars!
Who dares to tread – O
Within the shadow?”
 

And here was the same play in Galicia so degraded that Pilarica would never consent to play it. Instead of the Moon in the shadow, a beanseller sat in his stall, and instead of stars there were thieves who scampered over the forbidden border, shouting rudely:

 
“Ho! Old Uncle! Seller of Greens!
We are robbing you of your beans.”
 

On a certain sunshiny morning of her second autumn in Galicia, Pilarica was protesting to her schoolmates against the game of Hunt the Rat. For Pilarica went to school. The little girl had teased so to be taught that Uncle Manuel, to quiet her, was sending her, at a penny a week, to the dame-school kept in the porch of an old gray church. It was against the church wall that the children were seated in a close row, so that the rat, Pilarica’s shoe, could be hidden between the wall and the small of their backs. As the shoe was shuffled along from one to another, the seeker was teased with the song:

 
“Rat, rat! Can’t you find the rat?
Look in this hole and look in that.”
 

“It’s ugly,” pouted Pilarica. “I don’t want my shoe to be a rat. Why don’t you hunt a golden cup or a fairy or something else that is nice to think about?”

The other children stared and one tall, sullen-faced girl rudely threw the shoe back to Pilarica.

“Because we don’t have golden cups and fairies in Galicia to hunt,” she said, “and we do have rats. That’s sense, isn’t it? But take your old shoe. We don’t want it.”

“These are not old shoes, yet,” replied Pilarica with untroubled sweetness, “because their eyes are shut.”

“Do you mean anything by that?” demanded the sullen-faced girl.

Pilarica put on the rat-shoe, curling her toes with a shiver of disgust, stretched out her feet and sang:

 
“Two little brothers
Just of a size;
When they get to be old folks
They’ll open their eyes.”
 

“Mine are wide open,” lisped a midget beside her, tumbling over on his back that he might the better hold up his ragged footgear to the public gaze, but as most of the children were barefoot, the subject was allowed to lapse.

The morning session was half over, as you could see by looking down that row of child faces. Half of them had been washed, and the other half evidently not. Pilarica was one of some five, out of the fifty, that came clean and tidy from home. The teacher, a white-headed grandmother, with a poppy-red handkerchief twisted into a horn over each temple, now appeared scuffling around the corner of the church on her knees, with loud puffings and groanings. She had a hard vow to fulfil, – to go seventy times around the outside of the church on those rheumatic joints, and the gravel was cruel; but she tried to make one circuit every day. Bowing her white head and kissing the lowest step of the porch, she dragged herself up and, sitting down on the alabaster fragment of a long-since-shattered statue, clucked for her pupils to gather round her as a hen would call her chickens.

“We will leave the rest of the faces till afternoon,” she announced. “Some of you may rub my knees, and Pilarica may have her doll and drill you in the scales.”

The shrewd old mistress had discovered that Pilarica was possessed of a little musical knowledge, thanks to Grandfather and his guitar, and so allowed her to bring her doll, essential to the lesson, to school; but its Paris wardrobe and Granada countenance had suffered so much in Galician handling that dolly was now regularly placed, for safe keeping, between the jaws of a stone griffin above the porch. The biggest boy had the daily privilege of climbing up and depositing it there, and the old dame’s rod would knock it out again to be caught in Pilarica’s anxious arms. Battered and tattered as the doll had become under this severe educational process, it was dearer to Pilarica than ever, and she clasped it tight as, standing before the children, she sang in that clear, fresh voice which even the sullen-faced girl gladdened to hear:

“Don’t pin-prick my darling dolly. Do

Respect my domestic matters. Re

Methinks she grows melancholy, Mi

Fast as her sawdust scatters. Fa

Sole rose of your mamma’s posy. Sol

Laugh at your mamma, so! La

Seal up your eyes all cozy. Si

La Sol Fa Mi Re Do.”

After Pilarica and the doll had done their best for half an hour to inculcate a knowledge of the scales, the dame bade the children go and play Kite in the churchyard; but one of them remained.

“Well?” asked the old woman apprehensively.

“Will you please teach me something?” pleaded Pilarica.

“Ay, child, to be sure I will,” and the wrinkled hand drew, from a crack in a wondrously carven pedestal beside her, all the library the school possessed, – a dilapidated primer and a few loose leaves from a prayer-book.

The mistress pored over these dubiously for a while and then her look brightened.

“This is O,” she said impressively, “and that is M.”

“But you teach me O and M every time,” remonstrated Pilarica, “and never anything else. Indeed, I know O and M quite well now.”

The old dame cocked her red horns petulantly and thrust back her library into the marble crevice.

“O and M are very good learning,” she insisted. “Go back under the doorway and say your prayer and don’t come to school again to-day.”

So Pilarica, the corners of her mouth drooping just a little, knelt under the Gothic portal and repeated:

 
“Mother Most Holy,
Thy servant kneels to say
That with thy kind permission
It is time to play.
Mother Most Holy,
My loving heart implores,
Bless this little sinner
Before she runs outdoors.”
 

XXII
THE PORCH OF PARADISE

PILARICA was quite at home, by this time, in the crooked, sombre streets of Santiago, whose stones are histories. There fell on her unconscious little figure, as she tripped along, the shadow of ancient buildings, – churches, convents, hospitals, with quaintly sculptured fronts. Over many of the massive, deeply recessed doors was graven the cockle shell of St. James, showing that these were once rest houses for the overflow of pilgrims, of whom thousands used to sleep on the floor of the cathedral. Over the rough granite slabs that paved the roads her little feet danced on to an inner music of her own, though all about her was the harsh uproar of a Spanish city, – children blowing penny whistles, blacksmiths beating their anvils, shopmen calling their wares. The screech of the file, the grating of the saw, the click of the chisel, added their discords to the braying of donkeys, the cracking of whips, the screaming of parrots, the clanging of mule-bells.

Pilarica was glad to come out from the hubbub of the streets into the comparative quiet of the great square from whose midst arises, a dark mass of fretted granite, the cathedral of St. James. About one of its fountains, carved in the shape of the pilgrim shell, were grouped a number of girls, Dolores among them, filling the slender water-buckets of Galicia and lifting them to their heads. They were singing coplas, as in autumns past, but now their songs were sorrowful instead of merry, for the brothers and lovers who had been drafted for the war did not return and slowly there had filtered through, even to Santiago, news of disaster and defeat.

One sad young voice after another made its moan, and Pilarica stood listening with her innocent smile undimmed. She knew these girls, Dolores’ friends, and to her childishness the pathos of their new songs was sweeter than their former coplas of mirth.

It was Milagros who was singing when Pilarica came:

 
“Wherever the lads are thronging,
I see him, still their chief.
Oh, shadow of my longing!
Vain shadow of my grief!”
 

Then rose the shrill note of little Peligros:

 
“Oh, for a horse of air
To gallop down the skies,
And carry me swiftly where
My wounded lover lies!”
 

The bowed figure of a woman in middle life, moving toward the cathedral, had paused to hear the strains, and suddenly from her there broke a passionate contralto:

 
“My cabin has a window
That looks on sea and sky,
And all the day I sit and watch
Ships and clouds go by.
Sailor, sailor, climb the mast,
Ask wind and spray and sea
What they have done with a widow’s son
That the King’s fleet took from me.”
 

The widow passed slowly on into the church, and Pilarica heard a muffled tone, sounding like a sob, that she hardly recognized, at first, as coming from Dolores:

 
“Three names shall tell his story:
’Twas Vigo gave him breath,
Santiago gave him love,
And Cuba gave him death.”
 

Then soared the pure, clear voice of Consuelo:

 
“God has lifted my belovèd
To His fair blue world above;
I shall not see my belovèd,
Not again, till I see Love.”
 

Pilarica skipped over to Dolores and pulled at her skirt.

“Will you go for walnuts with dolly and me?” she entreated. “The mistress will not have me in the school again to-day, because I want to learn. We can stop at the cottage for luncheon.”

Dolores looked down at her eager little cousin with kind, listless eyes.

“I must take home my bucket,” she said, “but I will come back.”

When she came back, Rafael was with her. Pilarica had disappeared from the square, but they knew that they would find her in the cathedral, for the cathedral was everybody’s meeting-place, everybody’s resting-place and the playground of all the children of Santiago.

They found her before the so-called Porch of Paradise, or Gate of Glory, one of the supreme works of Christian art. Pilarica was never weary of gazing at it. What was once an outside portico, most richly and exquisitely chiselled, is now enclosed at the west end of the church. It represents Christ enthroned among the blest, a multitude of vivid saints whose faces glow with fullness of joy. On the central shaft of the pillars that support the arches of this celestial doorway is a curious group of slight dents in the agate, where, tradition says, Christ, descending from His bliss above, placed His wounded hand. Pilarica had been guiding an old blind peasant to this sacred column, helping the groping fingers find their way to that strange impress, for all Galicia believes that a prayer offered with the hand placed here is sure of answer. When the grateful peasant had been led, as he requested, to the nearest confessional, Pilarica ran back to see the hand of Dolores set against the shaft, while tears rained down the girl’s wan cheeks as she prayed for her lover of whose death in prison vague rumors had floated home.

“Let us ask for Father and Big Brother to come back,” blithely proposed Pilarica to Rafael. “God might listen better if we asked for one at a time. I’ll pray for Rodrigo and let you pray for Father.”

The boy’s dark eyes were deep with memory, but after Pilarica, standing on tiptoe, had fitted her small finger-tips to those five tiny hollows, worn by faith in the hard marble, his brown hand followed hers.

Rafael tried to pray: “Please, God, bring my Father home,” but a rich, tender voice rose from the past to check the words, – a voice that said: “Wish nothing for yourself nor for me but that we may do our duty.” “May my Father do his duty, dear God,” prayed the boy’s heart in its simple loyalty, and as he lifted his eyes to the saints in Paradise, their glad faces answered his wistful look with a strange, sweet fellowship.

Tia Marta gave them hospitable greeting at the cottage, where Grandfather, over whose mind the mists, dispelled for the time being by the excitement of the journey, were gradually drifting again, had of his own impulse taken up his abode. Both Pedrillo, doing unexpectedly well with the land, and Tia Marta, vastly flattered by Grandfather’s preference, made him gladly welcome. When Dolores and the children came in, he was rocking Juanito’s cradle and crooning over it broken lines of the riddles now fast melting from his memory.

As Pilarica caught up the chubby two-year-old, Dolores quietly drew the cradle out of Grandfather’s reach, for, as all Galicia knows, to rock an empty cradle is an omen of ill to the baby who is next put into it.

Pilarica was pinching, one by one, Juanito’s wriggling toes:

 
“What a family! One is tall;
Two are shorter than that;
And there is one that is weak and small,
And one exceeding fat.”
 

Then Baby Bunting had a chance to show off his accomplishments.

“Kill a Moor,” commanded Rafael, and the pudgy fist shot out straight at Rafael’s nose.

“How many gods are there?” catechised Pilarica, and one pink finger was raised with most orthodox energy.

Meanwhile Tia Marta, who had grown at least ten years younger, was bustling happily about, setting forth white bread and honey and crisp fried potatoes for her guests. Not until they had eaten, did she venture to ask Dolores if there was any word.

“No good word,” answered the girl, her eyes flooding with tears, “and it has been so long.”

“Tut, tut!” said Tia Marta. “God is not dead of old age. Your lover’s feet may be seeking you now. While there is God, there is mercy.”

“There is a buzzing in my ears,” spoke up Grandfather suddenly. “A leaf has fallen from the Tree of Life.”

“Never mind him,” snapped Tia Marta, carefully tucking her best shawl over his knees, “an old canary who doesn’t know what he sings. How Juanito looks up and laughs! He sees the cherubs at play. Be of good cheer, Dolores! Your sailor-lad may come back to you yet, and, if not, God, who gives the wound, will give the medicine.”

“Will Father and Big Brother come back, Tia Marta?” asked Pilarica.

“To be sure they will,” hastily answered the old nurse with a choke in her voice. “God never wounds with both hands. Doña Barbara has enough to bear in seeing Dolores waste away without having to weep for Don Carlos, too.”

And indeed Dolores was but a shadow of the plump, rosy girl who had sported with her cousins a year ago. So changed she was that a ragged wayfarer, resting in the walnut-grove, did not recognize her, although he had carried her face in his heart for many a yearning day. And the nutting party looked down on him and his no less gaunt companion with the easy compassion that views the misery of strangers. Spain had grown used to the wretched sight of sick and crippled soldiers from the West Indies and the Philippines creeping toward their homes. But Rodrigo knew his little sister.

“Pilarica!” he cried feebly, staggering to his feet, and clasping her in one loving arm – his other sleeve hung empty – while, after a long, wondering gaze, Dolores and her Vigo lover drew silently together.

Rodrigo freed his hand for his brother, whose questioning eyes searched that haggard face from which all trace of youth had disappeared.

“Rafael,” said the soldier, meeting the boy’s look steadily, “when the Yankees raised a Spanish battle-ship, that had gone down in gallant fight, they found in the engine-room the body of her Chief Engineer. His hand still gripped the lever. He had died at his post. He had done his duty.”

The lad stood erect, with folded arms, as he had stood by the Sultana Fountain on that April night that seemed so long ago.

“That is a beautiful story,” said Pilarica, who had not understood.

“All stories are beautiful if one has a magic cap,” answered Big Brother, smiling down into the winsome little face, but not with his old gay smile. Yet there was something sweeter in it than before.

“No,” corrected Pilarica, who was kissing the empty sleeve over and over. “It is Rafael who has the magic cap. It turns badnesses into gladnesses.”

“And it will turn this pain into splendor, my brother,” said Rodrigo, reeling from weakness and catching at Rafael’s shoulder with the one thin hand. “Have you a bit of chocolate about you, laddie? How tall you have grown! And how you have come to look like Father! That is his own courage I am seeing in your face.”

“I will run on ahead to Tia Marta, who will make you a feast,” cried Pilarica, so lost in rapture that still she did not catch the meaning of what Rodrigo had said.

“Bread and cheese will be feast enough, especially if Tia Marta adds her pinch of pepper,” replied Rodrigo, with a queer little ghost of a laugh. “The Geography Gentleman – Heaven reward him! – cared for me and a dozen more of us at Granada and gave me gold for the railroad journey north to you; but there were so many of my half-starved comrades on the train that the money was all gone before we had reached Leon and I have been walking and living on the charity of berry-bushes and walnut-trees ever since. But bide a wee, Caramel Heart! I have grand news for you. You are to go to school, – a real girls’ school. What do you think of that? It is in charge of a lady from over the sea, Doña Alicia, a lady who loves Spain and was kind to us poor fellows in the hospital. Father would, I know, be glad to have you go to her and learn.”

“It will be lovely to learn,” trilled Pilarica, the leaves rustling a song of their own under her tripping feet. “And when Father comes home, we’ll be just as happy under the sky as the angels are on top. Grandfather says they dance all night and sometimes they jostle down a star. And Father will come home soon, for the pillar prayers are always answered. Only see! Dolores’ prayer and mine are answered already.”

“Mine was answered first,” said Rafael, and his voice, though a sob broke through it, was proud, – the voice of a hero’s son.