Part 4

“The King looked on him kindly, as on a vassal true; Then to the King Ruy Diaz spake after reverence due: ‘O King, the thing is shameful, that any man beside The liege lord of Castile himself should Bavieca ride:

“‘For neither Spain nor Araby could another charger bring So good as he, and certes, the best befits my king. But that you may behold him, and know him to the core, I’ll make him go as he was wont when his nostrils smelt the Moor.’

“With that, the Cid, clad as he was in mantle furred and wide, On Bavieca vaulting, put the rowel in his side; And wildly, madly sped the steed, while the mantle streamed behind As when the banner of Castile beats in a stormy wind.

“And all that saw them praised them; they lauded man and horse As mated well and rivalless for gallantry and force; Ne’er had they looked on horseman might to this knight come near, Nor on other charger worthy of such a cavalier.

“Thus, to and fro a-rushing, the fierce and furious steed, He snapped in twain his hither rein. ‘God pity now the Cid!’ ‘God pity Diaz!’ cried the lords, but when they looked again, They saw Ruy Diaz ruling him with the fragment of his rein; They saw him proudly ruling with gesture firm and calm, Like a true lord commanding, and obeyed as by a lamb.

“And so he led him foaming and panting to the King; But ‘No!’ said Don Alfonso, ‘it were a shameful thing That peerless Bavieca should ever be bestrid By any mortal but Bivar. Mount, mount again, my Cid!’”

Rafael’s mind was still full of the Cid when, two or three days later, he was well enough to take a short ride on Shags outside the garden. The rough-coated, mouse-colored donkey carried his young master jauntily, being apparently well pleased to see him out again. Don Carlos, racking his memory for more ballads of the Cid, was walking beside Shags, when Pilarica, who had tripped on ahead and turned a corner, uttered a cry of distress. The father sprang forward and found the child on her knees in the dust of the highway, her face streaming with tears, while she held up her clasped hands in entreaty to a sullen-faced fellow who was brutally beating his ass. The poor creature, hardly more than skin and bones, was so cruelly overladen with sacks of charcoal that he had stumbled on a steep and stony bit of the road and broken the fastenings of one of the sacks, whose contents were merrily making off downhill like little black imps on a holiday. The peasant, in a fury, was dealing the ass great fisticuffs on the tender nose, and between the eyes, shut in patient endurance of the blows.

Don Carlos had often seen animals beaten and had usually passed by with a shrug of annoyance, but the anguish of pity in his little daughter’s face and attitude suddenly smote him with an intolerable feeling, as if that horny fist were pounding his own heart.

“Hold, there, my friend!” he protested. “Enough is as good as a feast. If you kill your donkey, who will carry the load?”

The charcoal seller, his arm raised for another blow, stared in astonishment at the speaker.

“You would do well to put your tongue in your pocket,” he growled. “This ass is mine, to beat if I choose and to kill if I choose. I am thinking that is what I will do, for his skin is the best of him now.”

Pilarica rose and rushed to her father, her eyes their deepest pansy purple with beseeching.

“Oh, dearest father, if you please! If you would kindly do me the favor! Instead of the doll with golden hair, if only you would give me this sweet, beautiful donkey!”

Her father lifted her in his arms, so that the flushed, wet face was pressed against his own.

“Do you mean it, Honeydrop? Think again. Do you really wish me to buy you this wretched ass in place of the wonderful dolly with Paris clothes, in the Granada shop? I am afraid there is not money enough for both.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” entreated Pilarica. “The doll is happy in the shop-window, where she can see the children smile at her as they go by, but the donkey--oh, father, _the donkey!_”

The peasant, whose arm had fallen to his side and who had been listening shrewdly, now stepped forward, touching his hat with a surly civility.

“It’s not for the price of a basket of cabbages I would be selling my fine donkey. I’m a poor man, your Worship. All that God has given me for my portion in the world is morning and evening, three pennyworths of poverty, and a bushel of children with the gullets of sharks. What would become of us all without my strong, good ass?”

“I’ll give you two dollars for your dingy old rattlebones, my man, and that is twice what anybody else would be fool enough to give you,” said Don Carlos, holding out the coins.

The charcoal-seller looked at them greedily, but still hung back.

“Come, now!” spoke Don Carlos sharply. “Don’t stand hesitating like a grasshopper that wants to jump and doesn’t know where. Remember that covetousness bursts the bag. Is it a bargain or not?”

The decision of the officer’s tone and, still more, the tempting gleam of the silver prevailed, but the peasant would not give over his donkey until he had delivered the load of charcoal. So Don Carlos and Pilarica, Rafael and Shags, escorted Sooty-Face and his limping ass to the hotel hard by the Alhambra, where the sale was at last effected.

“And now the donkey, such as he is, is yours,” said Don Carlos, putting the shabby bridle into Pilarica’s hand. “Haven’t you a smile for me now?”

But the child, though she kissed her father gratefully, flung her arms about the donkey’s neck, and, pressing her cheek to the bruised nose, cried harder than ever, until Shags felt it time to interfere. That generous-minded animal, whose long ears had been responding, with various cocks and tremors, to every stage of the proceedings, now drowned Pilarica’s sobs in a resounding bray. The stranger seemed to understand this greeting better than he understood Pilarica’s endearments and took a timid step or two toward his new comrade.

“Shall we call him Bavieca?” asked Rafael, eying the sorry beast doubtfully. He certainly did small credit to the name of the peerless steed.

“Better call him Rosinante,” laughed the father, “after the forlorn old horse of Don Quixote, who was something of a hero, too, in his way. Most people, as, for instance, his fat squire, Sancho Panza, who rode a famous ass named Dapple, thought it a very foolish way.”

“Why?” questioned Pilarica, whisking off her tears with the ends of her hair-ribbon.

“Oh, he took windmills for giants, and wayside inns for castles, and flocks of sheep for armies. He rode through the country trying to right wrongs and only got knocked about and made fun of for his pains. In fact, this coming to the rescue of an abused donkey is something after his fashion.”

And Don Carlos, a little shame-faced, looked his purchase over. The ass was lame in one foot, covered with welts and fly-bites, and so weak that he seemed hardly able to walk even now that his load had been removed. But Pilarica was enchanted with him and kept lavishing caresses upon the gaunt beast, whose large, liquid eyes looked out wonderingly at her.

“I want to call him Don Quixote,” she announced. “I think Don Quixote is a lovely hero, and this is such a lovely, lovely donkey.”

“Very well!” assented her father, with a shrug. “At any rate, he’s lean enough. And now to see what Tia Marta will have to say to this performance of ours!”

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.

“Peace,” answered Don Carlos, and in a moment both doors swung wide.

A little old man came hurrying across the marble court to meet them. His head was covered by a close-fitting red silk cap, his eyes were two black twinkles, and his face was yellow as an orange.

“It’s the Geography Gentleman,” whispered Rafael to Pilarica, while their host was greeting Don Carlos. “I met him once when I was walking with Rodrigo and he gave me macaroons.”

“And you have brought your cherubs, as I begged you,” twittered the Geography Gentleman, pecking at Pilarica’s cheeks. “And how are you called, my sweeting?”

“Maria Pilar Catalina Isabel Teresa Mariana Moreto y Hernandez, at the service of God and yourself,” responded the child, demurely kissing the clawlike hand and smiling trustfully into the queer yellow face so near her own.

“Aha! So our Lady of the Pillar has you under her protection, and Catalina is for your mother, whom I knew before she was as tall as you are now--ah, white pearl among the souls in Paradise!--and the other names?”

“Are for the great queen whose tomb I have just taken her to see and for her sponsors in baptism,” explained Don Carlos.

“Good, good! And this is Rafael, an old friend of mine, though so young. Aha, ha, ha! And now you children are wondering why I keep my cap on in the house, and that, too, when it is honored by the presence of a little ladybird. It is not because I am such a good Spaniard that I must always wear the red with the yellow; not that, not that. It is because I am bald, like St. Peter. Did you never hear it said that a silent man is as badly off for words as St. Peter for hair? I will teach you a verse about him:

“St. Peter was so bald, Mosquitoes bit his skin, Till his mother said: ‘Put on your cap, Poor little Peterkin.’

“But you are hot; you are tired; you are well-nigh slain by that enemy, the sun. Come and rest! Come and rest! The house is yours. All that it holds is yours. Come and rest!”

It seemed to the awed children that their house held a great deal, as they followed the Geography Gentleman, to whom their father had offered his arm. First he led them to the central court, an Andalusian _patio_, open to the air, with violet-bordered fountain, with graceful palms and, planted in urns, small, sweet-blossoming trees. Then their adventurous sandals climbed a wide marble stairway and pattered on over the tiled floors from chamber to chamber out to a shaded balcony. Pilarica and Rafael were less impressed by the Moorish arches and windows, the delight of foreign visitors, than by objects less familiar to their eyes,--statues, pictures, tapestried walls, curtained bedsteads, hanging lamps and, strangest of all the strange, an American rocking-chair.

A smiling maid came in, bearing a silver pitcher and basin, and the children bathed their faces and hands in the cool, rose-scented water, but when the maid offered them the embroidered towel of fine linen she carried on her arm, Pilarica drew back in dismay.

“But we would get it wet,” she objected.

Nobody laughed, although the black eyes of the Geography Gentleman twinkled more brightly than ever. Don Carlos stepped forward and held over the basin his own hands, on which the maid poured a fresh stream from the pitcher. Then he dried his hands upon the towel and passed it to Pilarica, who, though still reluctant, ventured to use one end, while Rafael, at the same time, plunged his dripping face into the other.

The luncheon, it seemed to the little guests, was a repast fit for heroes, even for the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio,--a cold soup like a melted salad, a perfumed stew in which were strangely mingled Malaga potatoes, white wine, honey, cinnamon and cloves, and, for a crowning bliss, a dish of sugared chestnuts overflowed by a syrup whose every spoonful yielded a new flavor,--lemon peel, orange peel, tamarind, and a medley of spices.

After luncheon everybody, in true Spanish fashion, took a nap, the Geography Gentleman in one of the hushed chambers, and Don Carlos in another, but the children slept far more soundly on couches in adjoining balconies, though over Pilarica’s slumber two canaries in a gilded cage were chirping drowsily about their family affairs, and a bright green parrot, chained to a perch, did his best to waken Rafael by screaming for bread and butter.

VIII

ONLY A GIRL

Pilarica and Rafael were finally aroused from the siesta by a commotion in the square. Peeping over the queerly twisted iron railing of the balconies, they saw many women, in the bright-hued costume of Andalusian peasants, surging by in stormy groups, talking wildly and making violent gestures. Then came a dozen lads of about Rodrigo’s age, locked arm in arm and chorusing in time to their swinging tread:

“To-morrow comes the drawing of lots; The chosen march delighted And leave the girls behind with those Whom the King has not invited.”

The children looked and wondered for a while, and then, as they had been bidden, went down to the patio.

Don Carlos and his host were smoking there together and talking so earnestly that they did not notice the light footfalls.

“No, if it comes to that, I shall not buy him off,” Don Carlos was saying. “He must take his chance with the rest of the eighty thousand whom Spain has flung like acorns into Cuba.”

“My own three sons among them, my gentle José, my fearless Adolfo, my merry Celestino,” moaned the old man, rocking himself to and fro like one in bodily pain. “My money can do nothing for them now--my gallant boys!--but if you would accept from an old friend, for the comfort of his lonely heart, the thousand pesetas--”