Kitabı oku: «In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael», sayfa 6

XI
UP AND AWAY

AS the children, riding their donkeys, came in sight of the garden, Tia Marta stood squinting over the gate. Her eyes were redder than ever, but they saw all there was to see. They saw the little olive face of Pilarica shining like the face of one who has looked upon a glory, for the child’s soul had caught fire from her brother’s deed of sacrifice and her father’s solemn words, from all the courage and the love of that farewell scene at the station. She had not known before in her short life that grief, as well as joy, is beautiful.

“It is the mother looks out of her eyes this day,” said the old woman, addressing Don Quixote, who twitched a friendly ear. “The holy rose loves the thorns amid which it grew.”

Pilarica understood this hardly better than the little white ass, though he made a point of looking impressed, but she could not wait to question, so eager was she to do her father’s bidding and explore the summer-house.

Rafael’s face was flushed and there was something glittering on his eyelashes that made him turn away from Tia Marta’s scrutiny. But his chin was squarer than ever and, even before seeking comfort from his fragmentary Sultana, he led away the donkeys with a new air of responsibility.

Then Tia Marta’s glance, flashing into indignant comprehension, fell on the queer figure that followed, leading the mules. If looks could kill, Pedrillo would have dropped with a thump in the dust of the road. The garden gate banged in his very face, but the Galician, nothing daunted, began to sing in a curious, croaking voice:

 
“The reason the hedgehog has such sharp hair
– At least, so runs the rumor —
Is that God created that creature there
When God was out of humour.”
 

“I have no time to waste on vagabonds,” called Tia Marta over her shoulder, as she retreated to her kitchen. “My day is as full as an egg. So be off with you!”

“Ay, busy is the word, for we all start for Cordova at sun-up to-morrow,” returned Pedrillo in his gruff tone and rude northern accent.

“That lie is as big as a mountain,” cried Tia Marta, shaking her fist at an astonished oleander.

“I have got an idea between eyebrow and eyebrow,” continued Pedrillo, as unruffled as if Tia Marta had paid him a compliment. “I will put up Don Manuel’s mules where the little gentleman stables the donkeys and then I will come back and help you with the packing.”

“Huh! Break my head; then plaster it,” retorted Tia Marta. “I want no help of him who has come to rob me. Put your ugly beasts where you will, but get away with you!”

When the muleteer, a little later, sauntered through the garden, Tia Marta was sitting on the bench, shelling the beans for dinner. She split open the pods with angry motions and bit off the hard, black end of each bean as spitefully as if she had a special grudge against it. Roxa was curled up beside her and, uninvited, Pedrillo sat down on the farther end of the bench.

“The cat is washing her face,” he remarked, “a sure sign that a guest is coming. She expects me to eat most of those beans.”

“Humph!”

Pedrillo, undiscouraged, politely scratched Roxa’s head, and Roxa, in return, very rudely scratched his finger from nail to knuckle.

“Good cat!” chuckled Tia Marta, as the muleteer raised that bleeding member to his mouth.

The silence that ensued was broken only by a resentful miaul from Roxa, as Pedrillo, edging along the bench, pushed her off, until he suddenly observed:

“Galicia is much pleasanter than Andalusia.”

Only such a preposterous statement as this could have surprised Tia Marta out of her resolution not to speak another word to this grotesque and insolent intruder.

“Far countries make long liars,” she gasped, nearly swallowing a whole bean in her rage.

“But I like the prickly pear that abounds in these parts,” went on Pedrillo, stealing a roguish glance at the woman beside him. And again he gruffly intoned one of those Spanish coplas of which he seemed to have no less a store than Grandfather himself.

 
“Be careful, be careful how you awake
A certain bad little red little snake.
The sun strikes hot, but old and young
Stand more in dread of a bitter tongue.”
 

“I’ll ask you an Andalusian riddle,” jerked back Tia Marta revengefully, the pan upon her knees trembling with her wrath until the beans rattled:

 
“I can sing; loud I can sing,
Though I hav’n’t hair nor wool nor wing.”
 

“We know that in Galicia, too,” replied Pedrillo, moving an inch nearer his ungracious hostess. “Did you ever hear our story about the frog? Once two Galicians were tramping the road from Leon, and one said to the other: I’m going home to Galicia.’ ‘If God please,’ corrected his comrade. ‘Nay, whether God please or not,’ the profane fellow gave answer. ‘There’s only one stream now between me and my province, and I can cross that without God’s help.’ So for his impiety the water pulled him down and he was turned into a frog. Then for three years, what with leeches, swans and, worst of all, small boys, he did penance enough. But one day he heard a Galician about to cross the river say: ‘I am going home,’ ‘If God please,’ croaked the frog, and all in an instant, in a holy amen, he was a man once more and standing on good dry land in Galicia. And so I tell you, as a Christian should, that we all start at sun-up to-morrow for Cordova, if God please.”

Tia Marta tossed her head and squinted rebelliously at the twinkle-eyed mannikin now close beside her, but after the simple dinner, where Pedrillo, as good as his word, did the most of the eating, she knotted up the few belongings of Grandfather and the children in bright kerchiefs. They let her do as she thought best with their modest wardrobes, but Grandfather fitted his guitar-case with a strap so that it could be slung over his shoulders, while Pilarica gathered into Rodrigo’s book-satchel her most precious possessions, the castanets, the painted fan and – wonder of wonders! – a golden-haired doll in ravishing pink frock and white kid slippers that had mysteriously made its way from the shop-window in Granada to the summer-house. There she had found it taking a siesta – for its eyelids shut with a snap whenever it was laid upon its back – in the slender shadow cast by the lonely column. Rafael disposed his chief treasures about his sturdy little person. The small Geography was slipped inside his blouse, where it could be quickly consulted in case they should lose their way. The red cap, of whose magic he felt much in need, was on his head, and for the new silver watch – no child’s toy this, but a trusty time-keeper that might last out a lifetime – Tia Marta stitched a stout pocket under his belt. Nothing could have cleared the mist from Rafael’s eyes like the finding of that manly watch carefully looped by its chain about the shapely foot of his Sultana.

And when Tia Marta, kneeling before the great, brass-clamped, carven-footed chest in the inner room, raised its massive lid, she saw on top of the familiar contents a little packet of money marked with her name. Beating her breast, the old servant rocked herself to and fro. As if she wanted wages for the care of Doña Catalina’s cherubs! And now that she had gold and silver, she could go her own way. She could return to Seville and enter into service there with civilized people, with Andalusians, under the daily blessing of the Giralda. She was free to choose. And being free to choose, Tia Marta from that moment began, with all the zeal in the world, to make ready for the journey to Galicia. And Pedrillo, whose arms were as long as his legs were short, worked with her as naturally and effectively as one ox pulls with another.

“But this task is harder than the creation,” fretted Tia Marta and, indeed, there was much to do. The chest had been originally rented by Don Carlos with the house, and so had the large bed and the canvas cots and, of course, the box-bed in the kitchen. The hinged leaf that, when it was not serving as a table, hung against the wall, the stools, the meal-box, the brasero, the garden-tools, all these must be left. Don Francisco, taking over the place for his brother, who planned to make a living out of the garden by keeping a stall for fruit and flowers at the Alhambra entrance, had paid Don Carlos a few pesetas for them a week ago. But every old cooking-pot and baking-tin wrung the heart of Tia Marta. Not one horn spoon, not one wooden plate could she be persuaded to abandon. The chocolate bowls, the gypsy-woven bread-baskets, the pitchers and cups of tawny earthenware, the pair of great water-jars she would not leave behind, but Pedrillo, a miracle of good-nature, was so handy with his coils of rope and his rough pieces of duck and burlap that he managed to make it possible for her to take what she wanted most. In the confusion Pilarica, whose angel moods alternated with others that could hardly be so described, laid hands on her grimy scrap of embroidery and, making escape with it to the boxwood hedge in which Rodrigo had clipped out his green menagerie, thrust it joyfully down the throat of the largest lion, – a buried treasure for the little nieces of Don Francisco to discover.

In one way or another, they were all busy as bees till the stars came out, when the children, at least, – though Rafael slept on a wet pillow – fell into such sound, sweet slumber that they wakened, with the sense of adventure overbearing the sense of loss, as good as new in the first freshness of the morning.

Early as it was, the dawn just silvering the edges of the east, Pedrillo and Grandfather, who had been a famous horseman in his day, were busy lading the mules, matching riddles meanwhile so merrily that Pilarica and even Rafael could hardly swallow their chocolate for laughing.

 
“Some wrinkled old ladies,
Sure to appear
For Christmas feasting
And birthday cheer.”
 

piped Grandfather, handing over a box of Malaga raisins.

 
“Sons they are of the selfsame mother;
One goes to church and not the other,”
 

grunted Pedrillo, tucking a bottle of wine and a bottle of vinegar into opposite corners of a striped saddle-bag already stuffed almost to bursting.

Tia Marta, searching wildly about for any pet objects that might have been overlooked, now came rushing forth with a scrubby palm-leaf broom. Twisting a wry face, Pedrillo shoved it under the straps of one of the loads, while Grandfather sang:

 
“Without an s I would weep,
Instead of making the hall
Ready for guests who’ll keep
Holiday one and all,
Feasting on frosted cake
Full of citron and plums,
While after they’re gone I take
Only a supper of crumbs.”
 

Meanwhile Pedrillo had come to grief. Setting his foot against the flank of the mule he was loading, he pulled so vigorously on the cords that cinched the pack as to burst two buttons off his trousers. As this garment boasted only four, the dilemma was serious.

The dumpy little fellow held up those two iron buttons to Tia Marta with a comical look, croaking:

 
“They are round as moons
And wear pantaloons.”
 

“But I’ve lost my scissors,” wailed the old woman. “They slipped out of my hand just now when I was gathering up —ay de mi!– the last things from the chest, and that room in there is darker than Jonah’s chamber in the whale.”

“Hunt up a candle and look for them, can’t you?” begged Pedrillo of the children.

It was Pilarica who found, under the bench, a stray inch of tallow-dip, but it was Rafael who carried it through the house, holding it close to the floor, while Grandfather quavered:

 
“In a little corner
Sits a little old man;
He wears his shirt inside his flesh;
That’s a queer plan;
And eats his shirt and eats his flesh
Fast as he can.”
 

When the scissors turned up, Pedrillo hailed them with a joyous couplet:

 
“Two friends out walking quite of a mind,
Their feet before and their eyes behind.”
 

The buttons were sewed on with Tia Marta’s stoutest thread, and so, with song and jest, with bustle and stir and the excitement of trifling mischances, the great departure was made. On each mule, already hung with saddle-bags, Pedrillo had fitted a round stuffed frame, covering the entire back. Over this he had spread a rainbow-hued cloth and roped on baggage until the mules, in protest, swelled out their sides so that the cords could not stretch over anything more. Then Pedrillo, after vainly remonstrating with each animal in turn, had strapped another gay manta over the whole. On Peregrina, whose harness boasted a double quantity of red tassels and strings of little bells, he had piled up the baggage so cunningly as to afford a support for Tia Marta’s back, but the Daughter of the Giralda, though undaunted by the loftiness of her proposed throne, had made her own choice among the mules.

“This is mine,” she declared perversely, laying her hand on Capitana, a meek-mannered beast that stood dolefully on three legs, her ears drooping, her eyes half-closed, and her head laid pensively upon the rump of the soot-colored Carbonera.

Pedrillo hesitated a moment, then grinned and helped Tia Marta scramble up to her chosen perch, where she crooked her right knee about a projection of the frame in front with an air that said she had been on mule-back many a time before.

“Now give me Roxa,” she demanded. “Do you suppose I would leave my gossip behind?”

But Roxa had her own views about that, and no sooner had Pedrillo, catching puss up by the scruff of her neck, flung her into Tia Marta’s arms, than she tore herself loose, bounded on to Capitana’s head and off again to the ground, where she had shot out of sight under the shrubbery in less time than Tia Marta could have said Bah. But Tia Marta had no chance to say even that, for Capitana, insulted at the idea of being ridden by a clawing cat, curled her upper lip, kicked out at Don Quixote, snapped at the heels of Grandfather who was just clambering to his station on the back of Carbonera, skipped to one side, dashed by the other mules and, with a flourish of ears and tail, took the head of the procession. Thus it was that, just as the full sunrise flushed the summits of the Sierra Nevada, a lively cavalcade burst forth from the garden gate. Capitana, utterly disdainful of Tia Marta’s frenzied tugs on the rope reins, pranced on ahead, her bells in full jingle. Pedrillo, dragging the reluctant Peregrina along by the bridle, ran after, shouting lustily. Grandfather followed on Carbonera, and the children on their donkeys brought up the rear. It was not a moment for tears. Rafael, as the head of this disorderly family, was urging Shags forward to the rescue of Tia Marta, and when Pilarica turned for a farewell look, what she saw was Roxa atop of the garden wall, – Roxa serenely washing her face and hoping that the new family would keep Lent all the year, so that there might be plentiful scraps of fish.

XII
THE OPEN ROAD

EARLY as it was, the Alhambra children were out in force to bid their playmates good-bye.

“A happy journey!” “Till we meet again!” called the better-nurtured boys and girls, while the gypsy toddlers, Benito and Rosita, echoed with gusto: “Eat again!”

By this time Pedrillo had overtaken Capitana and, seizing her by the bridle, was proceeding to thump her well with a piece of Tia Marta’s broom, broken in the course of the mule’s antics, when Pilarica, putting Don Quixote to his best paces, bore down upon the scene in such distress of pity that the beating had to be given up. But Pedrillo twisted the halter around Capitana’s muzzle and so tied her to the tail of Peregrina. Thereupon Capitana, all her mulish obstinacy enlisted to maintain her leadership, began to bray and plunge in such wild excitement that even the decorous Carbonera danced in sympathy. Finally Capitana flung herself back with all her weight and pulled until it seemed that Peregrina’s tail must be dragged out by the roots, but, happily, the halter broke, and again Capitana, trumpeting her triumph, came to the front.

“Child of the Evil One!” groaned Pedrillo, rubbing his wrenched shoulder, while Tia Marta swayed on her pinnacle, and Peregrina cautiously twitched the martyred tail to make sure it was still on. And after Capitana’s escapades, Don Quixote still further delayed the progress of the train by a determination to turn in at every courtyard where he had been accustomed to deliver charcoal and pay a parting call.

Some of the ruder gypsy children scampered alongside, jeering at Pedrillo’s ugliness and Tia Marta’s plight, but at last even the fleet-footed Leandro had dropped back and the prolonged sound of Pepito’s bellow of affectionate lament came but faintly on the breeze. Then Grandfather, lifting his eyes to the dazzling mountain peaks from which the sunrise glow had vanished, began to sing in fuller voice than usual:

 
“The hood of Lady Blanche
– You’re free to guess it, if you will —
It does not fit the restless sea,
But how it suits the hill!”
 

“Did you ever see the ocean, Grandfather?” asked Rafael, with a longing in his uplifted eyes that the old man understood.

“Ay, laddie, and so have you, for the first four years of your life were lived in Cadiz. Don’t you remember how the great billows used to break against the foot of the sea-wall? But I like better the waves that play on the shore at Malaga.”

And again Grandfather sang gaily, for it made the blood laugh in his old veins to feel the strong motion of a mule beneath him once more:

 
“How shall we feed these choir-boys,
Drest in white and blue,
Always coming and always going?
Sandwiches must do.”
 

“I don’t remember the sea as well as the ships,” said Rafael.

“Ah, the ships!” responded Grandfather.

“It is a sight the saints peep down from the windows of heaven to see – a ship under full sail.

 
“ ‘Curtsies like a lady,
Rocks like a gammer,
Cuts without scissors,
Tacks without a hammer.’ ”
 

Carbonera and Shags had now come up with the rest of the cavalcade, which had halted at a wayside fountain to wash out dusty throats, and while Pedrillo was watering the mules and donkeys, Tia Marta, who had regained her breath after her jolting, struck into the conversation with the zest of a tongue that would make up for lost time.

“Bah! Why are you asking your grandfather about ships? He will tell you nothing but rhymes and nonsense. Did I not dwell at Cadiz for a baker’s dozen of years and what is there about ships I do not know? Live with wolves and you’ll learn to howl. Live in Cadiz and you’ll soon know the difference between the sailing-vessels, that spread their white wings and skim over the water like swans, and the battle-ships, dark and low like turtles. God sends his wind to the sailing-ship, but it’s the devil’s own engines, roaring with flame and steam deep down in the iron lungs of them, that drive on the man-of-war.”

“And my father is the master of those roaring engines,” thought Rafael with a thrill of pride, as Capitana started on again with a lunge that nearly dismounted Tia Marta, taken off her guard as she was. Falling back to the end of the train, the boy gave his red cap an impatient twirl, but its magic did not avail to show him what he so yearned to see, – Cadiz, the white city rising like a crystal castle at the end of the eight-mile rope of sand; Cadiz, the Silver Cup into which America, once upon a time, had poured such wealth of gold and gems and marvels; Cadiz, that its lovers liken to a pearl clasped between the parted turquoise shells of sea and sky, or to a nest of sea-gulls in the hollow of a rock. Just then – could Rafael’s hungry gaze have reached so far – a grim battleship was lying like a stain upon those azure waters and from her turret a stern-faced officer, with the stripes of a Chief Engineer, was watching through a spy glass a herd of conscripts, driven like cattle down the wharf to the waiting transports.

Don Quixote began to droop as the midday heats came on, and Pedrillo, still trudging along on foot, swung Pilarica up to Peregrina’s back.

“And how does our little lady like the open road?” asked the muleteer.

Pilarica had not words to tell him how much she liked it, – how strange and how enchanting every league of the way, rough or smooth, was to her senses. Under that violet sky all the world, except for the snowy mountain-tops, was green with spring, – the emerald green of the fig trees, the bluish green of the aloes, the ashen green of the olives. Every fruit orchard, every vineyard, the shepherds on the hills with flocks whose fleeces shone like silver in the sun, the gleam of the whitewashed villages, all these made the child’s heart leap with a buoyant happiness she knew not how to utter. The stranger it all was, the more she felt at home. As here and there, for instance, they passed an unfamiliar tree, it became at once a friend, and almost a member of their caravan. The hoary sycamores were so many grandfathers reaching out their arms to Pilarica; the locusts clapped their little round hands like playmates, and the pepper-trees, festooned with red berries, seemed to rival the gaudy trappings of the mules. Every turn in the road was an adventure. But the child could find no better language for her thoughts than the demure question:

“Do you think, Don Pedrillo, that we shall meet a bear?”

“Surely not,” the Galician hastened to answer; “there are no bears left in Spain to trouble the king’s highways. But if one should peep out from under the cork trees there, all I would need to do would be to fling a hammer or a horseshoe at him, and whoop! Off would amble Señor Bear, whimpering like Diego when his wife first ate the omelet and then beat him with the frying-pan. For, you see, the bear was once a blacksmith, but so clumsy at the forge that he scorched his beard one day and pounded his thumb the next, till he growled he would rather be a bear than a blacksmith, and our Lord, passing by with Peter, James and John, took him at his word. And the bear is still so afraid of being turned back into a blacksmith that if you throw the least piece of iron at him, he will run away like memory from an old man.”

“Grandfather remembers,” protested Pilarica.

Pedrillo twisted his head and laughed to see how erect the white-haired rider was sitting upon his pack.

“He is only fifty years old to-day,” he said, “but it is high time for our nooning. We’ll not squeeze the orange till the juice is bitter. Eh, señora?”

And Tia Marta replied quite affably: “You are right, Don Pedrillo. Fifty years is not old.”

“It is the very cream of the milk,” gallantly assented the muleteer, helping down first Tia Marta and then Grandfather, for their muscles were yet stiff, however young their spirits might have grown.

How glad the mules and donkeys were to browse in the shade! And how briskly Tia Marta sliced into her best earthenware bowl, the drab one with dull blue bands, whatever was brought her for the salad in addition to her own contribution of a crisp little cabbage! Pedrillo produced from one of his striped saddle-bags a handful of onions, so fresh and delicate that a Spanish taste could fancy them even uncooked, and lifting one between finger and thumb, croaked the copla:

 
“This lady has many petticoats,
But she has little pride,
For the coarsest of her petticoats
She wears on the outside.”
 

Then Grandfather, not to be outdone, held up to general view a scarlet pepper full of seeds, reciting:

 
“The church where the tiny people
Pray all the week is not
Cold marble and soaring steeple,
It is round and little and hot;
And red it is as a ruby crown,
This queer little church of Fairytown.”
 

Pilarica, meanwhile, to whose guardianship Tia Marta had entrusted three hard-boiled eggs that morning, brought them safely forth from the satchel, where they had been hobnobbing with the doll, the fan and the castanets, and passed them over one at a time, to prolong the game. She herself remembered a rhyme to the purpose and sang it very sweetly to a tune of her own, dancing as she sang:

 
“A little white box
All can open, but
Once it is open,
None can shut.”
 

Pedrillo made sport for them, when the second egg appeared, by trying to follow Pilarica’s example, but it was an uncouth dance that his short legs accomplished in time to the copla:

 
“My mamma built me a pretty house.
But without any door at all;
And when I wanted to go to walk,
I had to break the wall.”
 

But Grandfather’s verse, for the third egg, was voted quite the best of all:

 
“A yellow flower within white leaves,
White without a stain,
A flower precious enough to give
To the King of Spain.”
 

Only Rafael, who had slipped away for a reason that could be guessed at, when he reappeared, by certain clean zigzags down his dusty cheeks, missed the fun, but at least he did his share in making away with the salad, when Tia Marta had given it the final deluge of olive-oil. It was a pleasant sight for the branching walnut tree that shaded their feast, – the five picnickers all squatting, long wooden spoons in one hand and crusty hunches of bread in the other, about that ample bowl where, in fifteen minutes, not even a shred of cabbage was left to tell the tale.

But the siesta was a short one for Grandfather, and he rocked drowsily on Carbonera through the heats of the afternoon, though never losing his balance. Tia Marta, who was now as bent on leading as Capitana herself, had a fearsome time of it, despite Pedrillo’s ready hand at the bridle, for the way had grown hilly, and the mule, having a sense of humor, scrambled and slid quite unnecessarily, on purpose to hear the shrieks from the top of her pack.

“In every day’s journey there are three leagues of heart-break,” encouraged the muleteer, but Tia Marta answered him in her old tart fashion:

 
“Better it is to stay at home
Than ride a stumbling mule to Rome.”
 

They had covered barely a dozen miles of their long way to Cordova when they put up at a village inn for the night, all but the Galician too tired to relish the savory supper of rabbit-pie that was set before them. Tia Marta and Pilarica slept on a sack of straw in the cock-loft over the stable. Grandfather and Rafael were less fortunate, getting only straw without a sack, but that, as Rafael manfully remarked, was better than a sack without straw. Pilarica, too, proved herself a good traveller, enjoying the novelty even of discomfort. Drowsy as she was, she did not fail to kneel for her brief evening prayer:

 
“Jesus, Joseph, Mary,
Your little servant keep,
While with your kind permission
I lay me down to sleep.”
 

The floor of the loft was fashioned of rough-hewn planks so clumsily fitted together that the sleepers had a dim sense, all night long, of what was going on in the stable below, – the snoring of Pedrillo, the munching of the donkeys, the jingling of the mule-bells and the capers of Capitana.

With the first glimmer of dawn, Pedrillo began to load the mules.

“Waking and eating only want a beginning,” he shouted up to his comrades of the road.

“Your rising early will not make the sun rise,” groaned Tia Marta. “Ugh! That mule born for my torment has made of me one bruise. There is not a bone in my body that hasn’t an ache of its own. Imbecile that I am! Why should I go rambling over the world to seek better bread than is made of wheat?”

“Don’t speak ill of the journey till it is over,” returned Pedrillo. “I declare to you, Doña Marta, that the world is as sweet as orange blossoms in this white hour when the good God dawns on one and all. And as for Capitana, she is fine as a palm-branch this morning, but as meek as holy water, and will carry you as softly as a lamb.”

And Capitana, hearing this, tossed her head, gay with tufts of scarlet worsted, and kicked out at Don Quixote in high glee.