In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael. Katharine Lee Bates

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СКАЧАТЬ and even Leandro, flinging back a silver cigar-case as he ran, paused to catch up the toddling Benito, while Carmencita wailed so piteously and Pepito bawled so lustily that the big children who had no little brothers and sisters to look after hustled these two clamorous waifs along in the flight. But nobody took thought for Pilarica, who, terrified by the hue and cry, turned and fled down one arched passage after another, across dim chambers and through long galleries, until, at last, she could hear nothing but stillness anywhere about her, and that, queerly enough, frightened her more than all the noise had done.

      IV

      RAFAEL IN DISGRACE

      IF Rafael had waited for his brother at the Gate of the Pomegranates, as usual, things might not have turned out quite so badly. For here the way from Granada up the Alhambra hill opens into three avenues, and the boy, in his impatience, having failed to meet Rodrigo on the shortest and steepest, dashed up again by the second and down by the third, and so managed to miss him altogether. For while Rafael, back once more at the Gate of the Pomegranates, tired out by so much headlong running, was cooling his parched throat at a runlet of sparkling water, Rodrigo was already at home, opening the gate of the old garden.

      A tall, dark, graceful lad of eighteen, a scholar’s satchel strapped to his shoulders, he swung the gate wide and stepped back with much deference to make way for his companion.

      “After you, sir,” he said.

      But this companion, a man of middle age, sturdy and square-chinned, clad in the uniform of a naval engineer, stood motionless. His face, set in stern lines, was under perfect control, yet, as the son beside him half divined, it was harder for him to enter that fragrant, blossoming enclosure than to face the enemy’s cannon. For it was here that, something over three years ago, he had brought from their simple but pleasant lodgings in Cadiz his tenderly loved wife, hoping that the air of the hilltop might restore her failing strength. Half the savings of a frugal lifetime had been spent to call a great physician from Madrid. He prescribed little medicine, but an abundance of fresh eggs and pure goat’s milk and bade them, to the horror of their devoted maid, always known to the children as Tia Marta, set the invalid’s bed out in the open. But not the restful cool of the evening air nor the living warmth of the sunshine could avail, and to the man who halted at the gate this beautiful garden was the place of sorrow. Recalled to his ship almost immediately after his wife’s death, there had been no time to find a new home for his children. So he had left them in this wild Paradise under charge of his gentle father-in-law and of the faithful, though sharp-tongued, Tia Marta. Since then he had not been able to visit them, for his ship had been sent to the Pacific, and except for brief letters, written to Rodrigo from time to time, and for the small but punctual sums of money forwarded to a Granada bank for the family support, they had heard nothing of him.

      Rodrigo, too, left much to be desired as a correspondent, although his handwriting blossomed out in bolder flourishes from year to year. He wrote of his progress in his studies, his prizes in mathematics, his interest in the new English sports, his ambition to enter an engineering school and follow his father’s career, and added in a postscript that the rest of the family were well. And all their talk on the homeward climb, after the officer had astonished and rejoiced his son by calling for him at the Institute, had still been of Rodrigo, his successes, his amusements, his future. It would have amazed that vivacious youth to know that under all the kindly responses, the father’s heart was yearning toward the little daughter, longing to find in her face, hardly more than a baby face as he remembered it, some image of her mother’s. Of Rafael he scarcely thought at all. He recollected, without interest, that the younger boy was said to take after him, while both Rodrigo and Pilarica were held to resemble their mother, and it was that resemblance which he craved. He himself recognized it in Rodrigo’s sunny looks and charming manners, but the lad’s frank egotism was all his own.

      The lingerer at the gate drew a long breath and entered the garden. In spite of himself, his steps turned toward an open place among the orange trees, the place where his wife’s bed had stood, but there was no bed there now, only an old, old man, seated on the ground and idly piling up the fallen fruit into a golden pyramid. As he went on with his building, he was crooning over and over:

      “Many laughing ladies

      In a castle green;

      All are dressed in yellow

      And fit to serve the Queen.”

      The new-comer, for all his self-control, gave a start of painful surprise.

      “Is that your grandfather?” he asked Rodrigo.

      “Ay, sir, to be sure it is, and a grandfather as good as bread,” answered the lad, with a sensitive flush, while, stooping quickly, he fairly lifted the light, swaying figure to its feet.

      “Never mind the oranges now, Grandfather,” he said brightly. “See! We have an honored guest.”

      The old man turned a dazed look upon his son-in-law.

      “I am at your feet, sir,” he quavered, in the courteous phrase of Andalusia. “The house is yours.”

      “But surely you know me, – Catalina’s husband,” pleaded the stranger, opening his arms.

      The old man nodded many times, but drew back from the embrace.

      “You are the young man from Saragossa who would wed my daughter Catalina,” he answered slowly. “She is away just now – I forget where – but when she comes home again, we will talk of these things.” Then, moving his fingers as if he were touching the strings of a guitar, he began to sing softly:

      “Going and coming,

      I lost my heart one day.

      Love came to me laughing;

      In tears Love went away.”

      “How long has he been like this?” asked the officer, turning sharply on Rodrigo. “And why have you told me nothing of it?”

      “Your pardon, sir,” pleaded the lad, “but what was there to tell? Grandfather is often confused by evening, when he is tired. He will be quite clear-headed again in the morning. Perhaps he is not so active as he was, but he does a little work about the garden and he will amuse the children hour after hour with his stories and riddles and scraps of song. He loves Pilarica better than his eyelashes.”

      “Where is Pilarica?” asked the father.

      “Where is Pilarica?” echoed the old man, speaking more alertly than before. “I have played the airs that please her best, and there were no dancing feet.”

      “She may be helping Tia Marta with the supper,” suggested Rodrigo, turning toward the house. “And there goes Tia Marta now. Oho! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!”

      “Ay, indeed! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!” came a mocking response from where a wiry figure, arrayed in saffron kerchief and purple petticoat, was seen hurrying in another direction through the shrubbery. “Always Tia Marta, from cock-crow to pigeon-roost! Now it’s Shags that brays to Tia Marta for his mouthful of chopped straw, and then it’s Roxa that mews to Tia Marta for a morsel of dried fish. It’s not slave to every Turk I was in the days when they counted me the fairest maid and the finest dancer in Seville. But all make firewood of a fallen tree.”

      “This is natural, at all events,” exclaimed the officer, with the first smile since he had entered the garden. “My good Marta, I kiss your hands.”

      “Don Carlos!” screamed the old servant, her sharp brown face, so like a walnut, shining with welcome as she scrambled toward him through bushes that seemed, for very mischief, to catch at her skirts and hold her back. СКАЧАТЬ