Part 11

Rafael’s chief uneasiness, at first, was about those threatened snakes. What if the crack behind him should be full of them,--clammy serpent coils swaying for the spring! Would they begin at his ankles? He stood first on one foot and then on the other, while he squirmed and twisted out of his extreme retreat. Then he flung himself with all his force against the rock that had been wedged into the opening. It did not stir. He set his shoulder to it; he shoved with a strength that seemed greater than his own; he battered his body against it in desperate endeavor; but it held fast. The boy’s hands were bleeding when he dropped exhausted to the ground, a little huddle of despair. But despair would never do. He was up again and, this time, working with all the skill and patience he could command to dislodge the smaller stones. After an eternity of effort, the highest of these was jolted from its place and fell on the outside, leaving a peep-hole through which the blessed light looked strangely in, as if wondering to find its friend Rafael shut in a den like this. The hole was so far up that it showed him only a violet glimpse of sky, but even that comforted and calmed the boy, who sat down quietly and knit his brows in thought. What would his father tell him to do? His duty, of course. But what was one’s duty in a pinch like this? To get out if he could, and if he couldn’t to behave himself manfully where he was. Nothing could be plainer than that. Rafael decided to call for help, even at the risk of bringing back his enemy, but his shouts, though he did his best, seemed shut into that granite cleft with him. He attacked the great rock again, and the stones, but without any other result than to tire himself out. At last the creeping fear, against which he had been half unconsciously fighting all the time, was getting the better of his fortitude. For one horrible instant he fancied that the narrow walls were closing in to crush him. Again he struggled to his feet. He must do anything, anything, rather than sit still and be afraid. He clambered, often slipping back, up to the little peephole and listened, listened, listened until he heard, or thought he heard, the thudding tramp of the mule-train far down the road and the click-clack, ding-dong, tinkle-tinkle of its assorted bells. Oh, surely Coronela would have gone safely down; surely Pilarica would send Uncle Manuel and Pedrillo to his relief. He must let them know where he was. He must rig some kind of a signal. There was something yet that he could do,--something to save him from the terror.

Nature has her own kindnesses in store for us all, and when Rafael, having rigged his signal, lost his slight footing and tumbled, bumping his head, in falling, on a projecting stone, she promptly put him to sleep, so that he lay untroubled and unafraid on the rocky floor of his prison. He did not hear the excited barking of dogs, as a tall, grave shepherd, his sheepskin garments fragrant with thyme, met a rescue party of mingled muleteers and pilgrims searching the mountainside and guided them to the neighborhood of the cleft rock.

“It was about here, sir,” the shepherd was saying to Uncle Manuel. “I was on that summit yonder and started down as soon as I saw that the young master was in danger. Hey, Melampo! Hey, Cubilon! Find the trail, Lobina!”

“What nice names!” observed Pilarica, fearlessly patting one of the gaunt beasts. Uncle Manuel frowned. This was no place, no errand, for a girl. He had left her behind with Tia Marta. But that grumpy Bastiano, who could refuse the child nothing, had set her on Shags and--it served him right--had had that reluctant donkey to drag up the rough ascent.

“Ay, my little lady,” the shepherd was saying to Pilarica. “All our dogs have these names, for such were the names of the sheepdogs of Bethlehem who went with their masters to see the Holy Child in the stable.”

Pilarica smiled up into the wind-worn face of the speaker with happy confidence. She had noticed him from the road as he stood upon the summit, a majestic figure against the sky, and had thought in her childishness that he looked like God, keeping watch over the world.

“And when the shepherds met the other wise men at the door,” she asked, “did the dogs bark at the camels?”

“Has the girl no heart,” thought Uncle Manuel, “to be talking of such far-off things, when her brother may be--”

But not even in his silent thought could Uncle Manuel finish the sentence. Lobina was sniffing at a fresh red stain upon a stone.

Pilarica saw her uncle’s distress and wondered at it. She did not understand distress. Her soul was still pure sunshine that marvelled at the shadow. But she slipped, for love and pity, her slender hand into his hard grip. In a moment he pushed her, not ungently, from him.

“Take the child back,” he ordered Bastiano. “You should not have brought her.”

“She thought she could help,” growled the muleteer.

“Help! Of what possible help could a girl be here? This is man’s work.”

And Uncle Manuel’s eyes anxiously questioned Pedrillo, who had been on his knees examining the blood-stain.

“Why! I can tell you where Rafael is,” cried Pilarica. “He’s in there.”

And the small brown finger pointed to a tatter of red, that waved, on the end of what seemed to be an alder reed, from a rock near by. “That’s Rafael’s magic cap,--all that’s left of it. He always carries it in his blouse. He has tied it to his popgun. He’s hiding in the rock.”

It did not take the muleteers a moment to tear away the stones that closed the entrance, but when Uncle Manuel stooped into the cleft and lifted out the inert little body, a dreadful silence fell upon the group,--a silence soon broken by Pilarica’s cheerful pipe:

“Rafael! Wake up! It isn’t bed-time yet.”

At that sweet, familiar voice the lids fluttered, and the black eyes, bewildered, brave, looked up into Uncle Manuel’s face.

The Pilgrim of the Thorn, as Pilarica called him, instantly had his water-gourd at the white lips, and Rafael revived so rapidly that he was soon sitting upon his uncle’s knee. He even glanced at his watch, with his usual air of careless magnificence in performing this action, and was amazed to find that only one hour had passed since they left the rivulet. Every man of them wanted to carry him down to the road. The boy hesitated to make a choice, but when the vigorous old peasant-woman, who had puffed up the mountainside after the rest, put in her claim, he decided at once.

“I’ll ride Shags,” he said.

XIX

THE END OF THE ROAD

There was still a big lump under Rafael’s hat when, a few afternoons later, our travellers, after a brief siesta, started out on the last stage of their long journey. The muleteers were in the wildest spirits, tossing _coplas_ from one to another and often roaring out in chorus:

“Galicia is the fairest land By God to mortals granted, Galicia, our Galicia, Galicia the enchanted.” `p/

Even Tia Marta could not deny the charm of the landscape,--ranges of wooded mountains, reaches of green meadow and of farmlands waving with wheat, cozy farm-houses with broad, overshadowing roofs and a wealth of vines creeping up the white-washed walls, but she waxed ever more indignant at sight of the sturdy peasant-women working in the fields, driving the ploughs, wielding old-fashioned hoes and spades, loading bullock-carts with produce, and carrying boxes, barrels, bales, all manner of heavy and unwieldy burdens, on their heads.

“So that is what a woman’s head is good for in Galicia,” she remarked tartly. “And I’ll warrant that the husbands of these women are spending, out of every four and twenty hours, five and twenty at the tavern.”

Uncle Manuel, who had insisted on having the whole Andalusian party ride at the head of the train with him, that he might point out to them the first view of the pilgrim city, shook his head over this arithmetic, and Pedrillo, festive in a fringed fire-red scarf, ventured to remonstrate:

“Not so, Doña Marta. The husbands emigrate to South America, that they may grow rich there. Some of them die of the Galician homesickness, but others come back with their wallets full of gold. And there are many fishermen, who are oft casting their lines and nets.”

Grandfather caught only the last word, for Carbonera was in a laggard mood, but one word was bait enough to land a riddle:

“I sat at peace in my palace, Till I entered a stranger’s hut; Then my house ran out at his windows, And his door on me was shut.”

“We have lost the first day of the feast, but we shall be in early enough for the fireworks, I hope,” said Uncle Manuel. His eyes were shining with an eagerness that made quite another man of him. “Look well to that rogue of a Blanco,” he added to Bastiano, who had come up with a peach for Pilarica. “We must not have any mishaps to detain us this afternoon.”

“Never fear!” growled Bastiano. “If we fall in with a wild boar, we have Don Juan Bolondron and his popgun to defend us.”

Rafael, who had been praised and petted (and forgiven) for his exploit on the mountainside until he was in no small danger of self-conceit, detected something that he did not like in this allusion and looked up sharply.

“Who is Don Juan Bolondron?” he inquired.

“Ask Pedrillo. He’s the story-teller,” replied Bastiano. “I’m taking his place at the rear, and I know why, too.

“‘Lovers have such a simple mind They think the rest of the world is blind.’”

“Once there was a poor shoemaker named Bolondron,” began Pedrillo in a great hurry. “All day he would sit cobbling at his bench and as he cobbled he would sing _coplas_ about his craft, as this:

“‘A shoemaker went to mass, But he didn’t know how to pray; He walked down the altars, asking the saints: _Any shoes to be mended to-day?_’”

“Or this,” struck in Grandfather.

“‘To the jasper threshold of heaven His bench the cobbler brings: _Shoes for these little angels Who have nothing to wear but wings_.’”

“One day when he was sitting on his bench, taking a bowl of porridge,” continued Pedrillo, “it happened that a few drops were spilled, and flies swarmed upon them, and he slapped at the flies and killed seven. Then he began to shout: ‘I am a great warrior and from this time on I will be called Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.’ Now there was in the region about the city a forest, and in the forest a wild boar that liked the people so well he would eat several of them every week. The king had sent many hunters out to take him, but always they ran away or he devoured them, for he was the fiercest of the fierce. One day it came to the king’s ears that he had in his city a man called Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.

“‘This must be a terrible fighter,’ he said. ‘Bring him hither to me.’

“So Juan was brought into the royal presence. He wore his best shoes, but he trembled in them, though the king only looked at him out of two eyes, quite like anybody else, and said:

“‘They tell me, my man, that you are mighty in battle. Is it true that you slay seven at a blow?’

“‘It is true, your Sacred Royal Majesty,’ answered the cobbler, who could only guess how people talk at court.

“‘Well and good,’ said the king. ‘I happen to have, as kings usually do, a very beautiful daughter, and to you will I give her if you kill the wild boar that makes such havoc in my city. If you fail, by the way, you will lose your head. Choose from my armory the weapons that you like best, and kill the boar the first thing after breakfast to-morrow.’

“So in the morning Don Juan Bolondron, who had armed himself as well as he knew how, went out to the forest, his knees shaking with fright, to slay the monster. But he went so slowly, wondering how, if he should be so lucky as to escape from the boar, he could escape from the king, that it was past dinner-time when he arrived, and the beast, who could not bear to be kept waiting for his meals, rushed out upon him, bristling all over with rage and hunger. When Don Juan Bolondron saw this horrible, flame-eyed creature coming, he began to run with all his might back to the king’s palace and the boar came after, so that it was written down in history as the swiftest race ever known. Don Juan reached the palace first and hid behind the door, while the boar, losing sight of him, dashed on into the patio, where were stationed the royal guards. The soldiers, glad of something to do, discharged their muskets all at once, and the boar, much to his surprise, fell dead as a stone. Don Juan Bolondron, who had peeped out to see how matters were going on, now popped into their midst, drawn sword in hand, upbraiding them with having slaughtered the monster that he was driving in from the forest to give for a pet to the king.

“The king, who was sitting, greatly bored, on his throne upstairs, ran down to see who had called, and when he found that Don Juan had been bringing the boar as a present to his feet, he was so touched that he married him to the princess before supper.

“Unluckily, Don Juan dreamt of his bench and, as he had a way of talking in his sleep, he called to the princess:

“‘Here, wife! Hand me my last, will you! The pincers, too! And my awl, wife, my awl!’

“The princess, startled awake by his impatient cries, was naturally much shocked to think that her father might have mistaken a cobbler for a hero. So in the morning she went to the king before he had finished shaving and asked him to look into it.

“The king had Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow summoned to his chamber at once and thundered, waving his frothy razor:

“‘Fellow, are you a cobbler or a king’s son-in-law? You certainly can’t be both, even if I have to cut off your head, after all, to set this blunder straight.’

“‘High-and-Mighty Father-in-Law,’ replied Don Juan, ‘give yourself no concern. Her Highness, the Princess, my honorable Lady, though very beautiful, has only a woman’s wit. She was confused with sleep, too, and misunderstood what I said. I was again in my dream taunting the wild boar, as I taunted him when I was dragging him by his ears up the palace steps, telling him that his face was flat as a last, his teeth dull as pincers, and his bite no more to be dreaded than a cobbler’s awl. You see, sire, how a woman, unused to deeds of valor, would fail to understand.’

“‘They are such impulsive creatures,’ sighed the king. ‘It is very troublesome. Do you not see, my daughter, how rashly you jumped to a conclusion? Now go in peace, both of you, and don’t come bothering me again with your domestic quarrels.’

“And so,” concluded Pedrillo, “my story ends with bread and pepper and a grain of salt, and I’ve no more to say.”

“I do not care for that story,” said Rafael, who had grown very red in the face.

“But the Princess was right,” protested Pilarica, with a puzzled little pucker of her forehead.

“If the Devil had not invented lying, that shoemaker would,” observed Tia Marta. “But your tiresome tale has not been quite useless, Don Pedrillo. It has put Juanito fast to sleep.”

“And Grandfather, too,” added Pilarica.

“The better for them,” remarked Uncle Manuel, patting the glossy neck of his offended mule, for Capitana had just been so rude as to frisk past Coronela and take the lead.

Pedrillo was quite disconcerted by these frank criticisms and croaked dolefully, pushing Peregrina on beside the impudent, triumphant Capitana:

“Unhappy is the tree That grows in the field alone; Every wind is its enemy Till it be overthrown.”

“What on earth is the matter with the man?” queried Tia Marta.

“There is something I would say to you before we come to the city,” faltered Pedrillo.

“Say it now,” bade Tia Marta briskly. “Of what art afraid, heart of butter?”

“My mother’s son has no wife,” ventured Pedrillo wistfully. “I know,” he went on to say, with his old twinkle, “that choosing a wife is as risky as choosing a melon. I know that there is in heaven a cake kept for husbands who never repented of their choice, and into which, up to this day, no one has ever set tooth--”

“Bah!” interrupted Tia Marta. “That is because no husbands ever went to heaven.”

“My house is only a cottage,” pursued Pedrillo humbly, “and Don Manuel’s house is large and fine. It was a pilgrim inn once and still has the sacred shell of St. James carved over the door. But ‘little bird, little nest.’”

“And what would I be in Don Manuel’s grand house?” asked Tia Marta bitterly. “A cook of cabbage broth, without a place of my own to scold in or anybody of my own to scold, not even allowed to keep for myself this child as harmless as a crust of bread, this innocent as pure as a water-jar.”

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.