Part 5

“Thanks upon thanks, most honored sir, but no, no!” interrupted Don Carlos, laying his hand upon the other’s arm, while his voice deepened with emotion. “If you, one of the wealthiest of the Granadines, were too loyal a patriot to buy off your sons from military service, shall I, who wear the uniform, hold back my own?”

“Ah, but my lads would not be bought off, though when it came to Adolfo, I consented, and when it came to Celestino, I besought. They were all for adventure and for seeing the world. They had lived among my globes and maps too long. Woe is me! Woe is me!”

Tears were streaming down the yellow face of the Geography Gentleman, and Pilarica could not bear the sight. She ran forward and, leaning against his knee, reached up and tried to wipe the tears away with her tiny handkerchief.

“Oho, oho!” he chirped, changing his manner at once. “Here is our Linnet wide awake again! What now? What now? A fairy story, shall it be? That’s what little girls like--stories of the fairies and the saints.”

“I would rather, if you please, hear about Cuba,” replied Pilarica, nestling close to those trembling knees. “What is it, and why does Spain drop people into it like acorns?”

Rafael, standing close beside his father, felt him start as if to check the childish questions, but already the Geography Gentleman was rising, not without difficulty, from his carven chair.

“Ugh!” he groaned. “My poor bones creak like a Basque cart. But no matter! As for the old, they may sing sorrow. Come with me to my study, all of you, all of you, and we will find out what Cuba looks like. Ah, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!”

Don Carlos tried again to protest, but the Geography Gentleman would have his way. So he led them to a room unlike anything that the children had ever seen before. Great globes swung in their standards, maps lined the walls, a desk with many pigeon-holes stood near a huge _brasero_, and everywhere were cases of books. Rafael hung back in bewilderment, but Pilarica kept close to their guide and watched with eager eyes while he gave the largest globe a twirl.

“Did you know the world was round?” he asked. “And that there is a red-haired goblin who sits in the center and holds on to our feet so we shan’t tumble off? When he yawns, it gives us an earthquake. A good old fellow, that, but he has too long a name for such little pink ears as yours.”

“My ears are larger,” suggested Rafael.

“And Shags and Don Quixote have the largest ears of all,” added Pilarica, and then blushed to see that even her father smiled, while the Geography Gentleman gurgled and wheezed until his yellow face was streaked with purple.

“Good! good! good!” he squeaked, as soon as he could muster even so much voice again. “The goblin’s name is Gravitation, and he sits all doubled up, with his long nose gripped between his knees, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, till his arms are almost ripped out of his shoulders, but not quite. For though he’s uglier than hunger, he’s stronger than the sun and the moon.”

The child gazed doubtfully at the big globe.

“Will you please open it and show him to me?”

Again the Geography Gentleman fell to laughing until he had to hold his aching sides.

“But do you think I have wind-mills in my head that I talk such a monstrous heap of nonsense?” he asked. “It is only that pretty little ladies like nonsense better than sense. No, I cannot open my globe for you, dainty one, but see! I can show you Spain.”

But Pilarica’s faith in the Geography Gentleman was shaken.

“Spain is not blue,” she objected, looking critically at the color of the patch beneath his thumb. And even while he pointed out Andalusia in the south, with its Moorish cities of Granada and Seville and Cordova, and the port of Cadiz; and Castile, occupying the middle of the Peninsula, with its ancient city of Toledo and its royal city of Madrid; and her father’s native province of Aragon to the northeast, with Saragossa, the home of his boyhood, still Pilarica’s air was so skeptical as to throw the lecturer into frequent convulsions of mirth.

“But where is the basket,--the big basket that Spain flings acorns into?” she questioned.

This, again, was too much for the Geography Gentleman, and while he was gasping and choking, Don Carlos came to his little daughter’s aid.

“Cuba is an island,” he explained, “the largest of the West Indian islands and almost all that is left to Spain of her once vast American possessions. One by one, the lands she had discovered and claimed--you remember about Queen Isabella and Columbus--rebelled against her, or otherwise slipped from her hold, and even now there is a revolt in Cuba that has already cost Spain dear in life and treasure.”

“And if the Yankees take a hand in the game,” put in their host, “may cost us Cuba herself.”

“What are Yankees?” asked Rafael, frowning quite terribly at this suggestion.

“The most powerful nation in America,” replied Don Carlos, “a nation that threatens to go to war with us, if the trouble in Cuba continues much longer.”

“They must be very wicked people,” declared Rafael with flashing eyes.

“No, my son; they are much like the rest of the world,” answered his father, quietly. “I have met a few of them, but not to know them well, for they did not understand Spanish.”

“Not understand Spanish!” exclaimed Pilarica. “Then at least they must be very stupid, for Spanish even the donkeys understand!”

This reproach set the Geography Gentleman off again, and his sides were still shaking as he pointed out Cuba on the globe.

And now all Pilarica’s gathering suspicions of the science of geography were confirmed.

“But if Cuba belongs to Spain, who put it there close to America?” she asked. “Did the Yankees make that globe and put it there themselves?”

And once more the Geography Gentleman laughed till the close-fitting cap fell off and showed his shining bald head.

“‘Honey is not for the mouth of an ass,’” he quoted, “‘and learning is not for women.’ But what a pity, Don Carlos, that this child is only a girl! Her wits run bright as the quicksilver fountain that used to sparkle in the royal garden of Seville.”

“She is like Rodrigo, keen as a Toledo blade,” assented Don Carlos. “It is this youngster,” drawing Rafael closer to him, “who has the slow brains of his father.”

“Slow and sure often wins the race,” said the old teacher, turning kind eyes on Rafael. “He will make a scholar when the time comes, and it should come soon now. Will you not enter him in the lower school next year? He may not be the mathematical wonder that his brother is, taking prizes as naturally as other lads bite off ripe mulberries, but if his father’s steadfastness of purpose has descended to him with his father’s chin, he will do well in the world. Character is better than talent. But this rosebud brings back to me her mother, who used to coax and coax me, when she was the merest midget, to teach her to read my books. Her parents spent several summers in Granada and, if they had consented, I would have liked to see what a girl’s head could do. But of course they would not hear of it. She was taught to dance and to embroider, only that. Her mind went hungry. But bless my heart! Such talk as this is not meal for chickens. A penny for your thoughts, my sober little man!”

“I was thinking about Spain,” answered Rafael, who all this time had been glowering at the globe. “How did we lose what was ours? Were there no more great kings after Ferdinand?”

“Yes,” said Don Carlos. “Spain has had strong kings and weak kings, wise and foolish, but even the best of them blundered at times. Ferdinand and Isabella themselves made mistakes. So some thirty years ago, when I was a boy, Spain tried to be a republic and get on without any king at all, but she did not prosper so.”

“King Alfonsito is not much older than I am,” murmured Rafael, with a wondering look in his great dark eyes.

“And a gallant child it is! A right royal child!” chirruped the Geography Gentleman.

“God bless him and grant him a long and righteous reign!” added Don Carlos, so solemnly that Pilarica clasped her hands as if she were saying her prayers.

“His father, King Alfonso XII, had a great heart,” the Geography Gentleman said musingly, “but his heart was wrung to breaking by sore troubles. I was in Madrid when the young Queen Mercedes died. Woe is me! What a grief was his!”

“Pilarica knows a song about that,” observed Rafael.

“Ah, to be sure! Spanish babies all over the Peninsula dance to that sorrow,” nodded the Geography Gentleman. “Come back into the patio, where the fountain will sing with her, and let us have it.”

So in the fragrant air of the patio, where an awning had been drawn to shut off the direct rays of the sun, Pilarica, dancing with strange, slow movements of feet and hands, sang childhood’s lament for the girl-queen.

“‘Whither away, young King Alfonso? (Oh, for pity!) Whither away?’ ‘I go seeking my queen Mercedes, For I have not seen her since yesterday.’

“‘But we have seen your queen Mercedes, Seen the queen, though her eyes were hid, While four dukes all gently bore her Through the streets of sad Madrid.’

“‘Oh, how her face was calm as heaven! Oh, how her hands were ivory white! Oh, how she wore the satin slippers You had kissed on the bridal night!

“‘Dark are the lamps of the lonely palace; Black are the suits the nobles don; In letters of gold on the wall ’tis written: _Her Majesty is dead and gone_.’

“He fainted to hear us, young Alfonso, Drooped like an eagle with broken wing; But the cannon thundered: ‘Valor, valor!’ And the people shouted: ‘Long live the king!’”

“And now we must be taking our leave, with a thousand thanks for a red-letter day,” said Don Carlos.

“But no, no, no!” cried the Geography Gentleman. “Not until you have tasted a little light refreshment to wing your feet for the Alhambra hill. We will go up to the balcony and see Lorito--the wasteful rumple-poll that he is--enjoy his bread and butter.”

It was very pleasant on the balcony, with its pots of sweet basil, its earthen jar of fresh water and its caged cricket “singing the song of the heat.” The gentlemen were regaled with wine and biscuit, the children with candied nectarines and tarts, and to Lorito the maid respectfully handed a great slice of bread, thickly buttered. The square was quiet again, though from the _Alameda_ came confused sounds, as of an angry crowd, cut by shrill outcries. A few beggars were gathered beneath the balcony, waiting for the bread which Lorito, after scraping off every least bit of the butter with his crooked beak, tore into strips and threw down to them, dancing on his perch and screaming with excitement to see them scramble for it.

This amused the children so much that they could hardly recall the proper Andalusian phrases for farewell. But their host, loving the ripple of their laughter, found nothing lacking in their courtesy and, at parting, slipped into Pilarica’s hand a dainty white Andalusian fan, painted with birds and flowers, and into Rafael’s a small geography, written by himself. Rafael was deeply impressed at receiving this, the first book he had ever owned, from its author, and carried it, on their homeward walk, in such a way that no learned person who might meet them could fail to see what it was.

“Of course nobody would give a geography to a girl,” he remarked.

“Maybe your geography isn’t true,” retorted Pilarica, flirting her fan. “But look, look! There is Grandfather with the donkeys, and Rodrigo is waiting for us, too.”

Don Carlos, who had his own reasons for wishing to see what Don Quixote was able to do, placed both the children on the white donkey’s back, leaving Shags for Grandfather to ride, and Don Quixote acquitted himself so well that he, with his double burden, was the first to arrive at the garden gate. Shags, trotting for sheer surprise, was close behind, but it was half an hour later before Don Carlos and Rodrigo came slowly up the road, the father’s arm thrown lightly over the lad’s shoulders.

IX

CHOSEN FOR THE KING

The next morning, as Don Carlos was starting off, as usual, with Rodrigo, Rafael clung to his father’s hand.

The officer who, since that first unhappy night, seemed to have a complete understanding of the boy, hesitated.

“But I may walk all the way into Granada with your brother to-day and may not come back until afternoon. You know how tired you were yesterday by the time we reached the Gate of the Pomegranates.”

Rafael’s black eyes looked wistfully into his father’s.

“I would rather go with you and be tired than not go with you and not be tired,” he said.

Don Carlos smiled so tenderly that Rafael had a queer feeling as if his heart were growing too big for his jacket.

“You may come, my son,” decided the father, and then his glance fell doubtfully on Pilarica. “No, the city will be in tumult; no place for a little girl. But you may walk a bit of the way with us, Sweetheart.”

It seemed such a very wee bit that, when her father kissed her and bade her run back, the tears stood in Pilarica’s eyes like dew on pansies.

“Why not let her romp a while with the other children?” suggested Rodrigo, looking over to where a dozen happy tatterdemalions were skipping songfully about in one of their favorite circle-dances. “There are no gypsies among them this morning, and it is to the gypsies that Tia Marta most objects.”

“Very well,” assented Don Carlos, relieved to see the grieved face brighten. “You may play with them this forenoon, if you like. But don’t follow tourists into the Alhambra.”

“And scamper home if the children get rude,” warned Big Brother.

“And don’t go near the Gypsy King,” put in Rafael.

Uncrushed by all this weight of masculine authority, Pilarica threw kisses to her three guardians as long as they were in sight and then flashed into the midst of the dancing circle, where she was welcomed with a gleeful shout. Carmencita clamored, as always, for _Little White Pigeons_, and so the children divided into two opposite rows, each line in turn clasping hands and lifting arms while the other danced under, as the song indicates:

“Little white pigeons Are dreaming of Seville, Sun in the palm tree, Roses and revel. Lift up the arches, Gold as the weather. Little white pigeons Come flying together.

“Little white pigeons Dream of Granada, Glistening snows on Sierra Nevada. Lift up the arches, Silver as fountains. Little white pigeons Fly to the mountains.”

Then they played Hide-and-Seek in their own special fashion. The first seeker was Pepito, who sat doubled over, with his chubby palms pressed tight against his eyes, while the others slipped softly into their hiding-places, all except Pilarica, who, as the Mother, stood by and gave Pepito his signal for the start by singing:

“My nightingales of the Alhambra Forth from the cage are flown. My nightingales of the Alhambra Have left me all alone.”

After they were tired of this, Isabelita called for Butterfly Tag and was chosen, because of her pink frock--torn though it was,--to be the Butterfly. Forming in a close circle about her, the children lifted her dress-skirt by the border and held it outspread, while Pilarica, on the outside, danced round and round the ring, fluting like a bird:

“Who are these chatterers? Oh, such a number! Nor by day nor by night Do they let me slumber. They’re daughters of the Moorish king Who search the garden-close For lovely Lady Ana, The sweetest thing that grows. She’s opening the jasmine And shutting up the rose.”

Then the children all at once lifted the pink frock and wrapped it about Isabella’s head, while Pilarica, dancing faster than ever, led them in singing seven times over:

“Butterfly, butterfly, Dressed in rose-petals! Is it on candle-flame Butterfly settles? How many shirts Have you woven of rain? Weave me another Ere I call you again.”

Suddenly they varied the song:

“Now that Lady Ana Walks in garden sweet, Gathering the roses Whose dew is on her feet, Butterfly, butterfly, Can you catch us? Try it, try!”

In an instant the circle had broken and scattered, while the Butterfly, blinded and half smothered in the folds of the skirt, dashed about as best she could, trying to catch one or another of her teasing playmates.

Then followed Washerwoman, and Chicken-Market, Rose and Pink, and Golden Earrings, and when, at noon, Don Carlos and Rafael came back, the children were all absorbed in the circle-dance of _Mambrú_. Don Carlos remembered the song from his own childhood in Saragossa and hummed the pathetic couplets under his breath, as he stood watching.

“Mambrú is gone to serve the king, And comes no more by fall or spring.

“We’ve looked until our eyes are dim. Will no one give us word of him?

“You’d know him for his mother’s son By peasant dress of Aragon.

“You’d know him for my husband dear By broidered kerchief on his spear.

“The one I broider now is wet. Oh, may I see him wear it yet!”

With the last word of the song all the little figures in the circle flung themselves face downward on the ground, so impetuously that Carmencita and Pepito bumped their heads together and set up such a duet of stormy weeping that, for dramatic close, there was nothing left to be desired.

Don Carlos swung Pilarica, hotter and more weary than Rafael himself, to her feet, and as she smiled up into his face, she saw in it, for all its gravity, a great relief.

Tia Marta, too, who met them at the garden gate, was quick to read his look.

“Your heart has been taking a bath of roses,” she said.

And Don Carlos, in the same breath, was telling her his good tidings.

“Rodrigo drew a lucky number. There is weeping in other homes to-day, but not in ours.”

“Other people’s troubles are easily borne,” scoffed Tia Marta, but the dry, walnut face was twitching so strangely that the children wished it had been polite to laugh.

After their simple luncheon, a hunch of bread and a bowlful of olives for each, Pilarica coaxed Rafael out to the summer-house where the boy, not ill-pleased to have an audience for his story, seated himself with his back against the column and recounted the great event of the day.

“The Gov’ment,” he explained, with the dignity of a prime minister, “needs more soldiers for Cuba.”

“Acorns,” murmured Pilarica.

“And so it has set up in every city and town and village--my father told me so--urns for the lottery, and all the men who ar’n’t too young, like me, or too old, like Grandfather and the Geography Gentleman, draw out a number. If it’s a very, very high number, you don’t go to Cuba, but if isn’t, you do.”

“And Rodrigo?” breathed Pilarica, who was sitting on the ground exactly in front of Rafael, leaning forward and squeezing her sandals in her hands so hard that her toes ached all the rest of the afternoon.

Rafael’s eyes glowed.

“Oh, he was so tall and straight as he stood there waiting his turn. He had his cap in his hand and he waved it and looked right across the urn to my father and me and laughed. And my father took off his hat to him. Think of that! My father! Some day I am going to be a hero, like the Cid, and then, perhaps, he will take off his hat to me.”

Don Carlos, pacing back and forth on one of the tiled walks, smiled as he caught the words.

“And then it was Rodrigo’s turn?” prompted Pilarica.

“Yes, his turn among the very first, and I stood on my tippiest tiptoes to see. I saw his arm go down into the urn, and I saw it come up again, and in his hand was something that he held out to the officer who was marking the names. Then the officer smiled, and nodded to my father, and we knew it was all right; so we followed Rodrigo out of the hall to embrace him. And I wanted him to come back with us, but he waited to see how the luck went with his friends.”

It was not till late in the afternoon that Rodrigo came back, and then he did not come alone. Along the road was heard a sound of tramping feet and suddenly there broke forth the familiar song of Cuban conscripts.

“We’re chosen for Alfonsito; We serve the little king; We care not one mosquito For what the years may bring. How steel and powder please us, We’ll tell you bye and bye. Give us a good death, Jesus, If we go forth to die.”

“What does this mean?” demanded Don Carlos hoarsely, rising from the mosaic bench and fronting the lads as they thronged into the garden. He had already recognized Rodrigo’s voice and now he saw his son marching among the recruits.

There was a moment’s pause and then one of Rodrigo’s classmates stepped forward.

“We kiss your hands, Don Carlos,” he said, “and salute you as the father of a generous son. All Granada rings with his praises. For even while we, chosen for the King, were congratulating him on his better fortune, up to the urn came a young peasant, a laborer in the vineyards, as dazed as a pig in a pulpit. He drew a lot for the hungry island, and his mother--ah, you should have seen and heard her! They say it was she who led the rabble yesterday afternoon, when the women, hating Columbus for having ever discovered Cuba, stoned his statue in the _Alameda_. Her shrieks, as she pushed her way through the crowd to her boy, might have pierced the very bronze of that statue to the heart. The Civil Guards laid hands on her to drag her out, but she clung to that staring lout of hers like a starved dog to its bone. Then Rodrigo, the head of our class, the pride of the Institute, came forward and gave himself as a substitute for that dull animal, that mushroom there. And not even a God-bless-you did the unmannerly couple stay to give him, but made off as if a bull were after them. To bestow benefits upon the vulgar is to throw water into the ocean. But we, who know a great action when we see it, have escorted Rodrigo home to do him honor.”

For the first moment it looked to Rafael as if the stern face of his father had turned gray, but that may have been only the shadow of the olive-leaves above his head.

“You are welcome, Don Ernesto,” he replied in a voice even deeper than its wont, “and welcome to you all, soldiers of Spain. Marta, do me the favor to bring forth such refreshment as the house affords. Gentlemen, all that I have is yours. Take your ease and be merry.”

And so all was bustle and jollity till the conscripts trooped away again, and the family had, but only for one night more, Rodrigo to themselves. The children decided that it must be a fine thing, after all, to go and help put Cuba in its right place on the map, for everybody was talking faster and more cheerily than usual. Only Grandfather was heard murmuring a riddle that made a sudden silence in the group:

“In my little black pate Is no love nor hate, No loyalty nor treason, And though I’ve killed your soldier boy, I do not know the reason.”

“Bullet,” guessed Pilarica, her lip quivering as she looked toward Big Brother.

“That’s the bullet I’m going to dodge,” laughed Rodrigo. “There are more bullets than wounds in every battle. Eh, Tia Marta?”

“A shut mouth catches no flies,” returned the old woman tartly. But she bundled Grandfather into the house where he was still heard crooning to his guitar:

“I would not be afraid of Death, Though I saw him walking by, For without God’s permission He can not kill a fly.”

Suddenly Don Carlos turned to Rodrigo, holding out both hands: