Читать книгу In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael - Katharine Lee Bates - Страница 6

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“WHOOP!” sounded suddenly from over Pilarica’s head, and a red Turkish fez came flying down from the high garden-wall, alighting neatly on the top of the solitary column. At the edge of that wall a sturdy, square-chinned boy, by way of getting up his courage for the leap, was chanting an old nursery rhyme:

“There was a Señor Don Cat.

In a chair of gold he sat.

In a suit of silk he was clad,

And pointed shoes he had.

His Godfather came and said:

‘If you would like to wed

A beautiful Moorish tabby,

Take a walk on the roof of the abbey.’

But when he saw her there,

He tumbled into the air,

And on the cloister stones

Arrived with broken bones.”

Thump! The boy was sitting on the ground, in the very center of the summer-house, vigorously rubbing those portions of his body which had suffered most in the adventure; but as Pilarica, with the deference due to an athlete as well as to a brother, sprang up and handed him his cap, he flung it on, cocked it jauntily and shook back the gilt tassels that were tickling his ears.

“This is a magic cap and, when I wear it, I am anybody I choose to be,” announced the new-comer, somewhat breathlessly. “I am now,” he continued, still sitting on the ground but waving his arms suggestively, “Rafael the Archangel.”

“You are welcome to your house, my lord Archangel,” faltered Pilarica, not forgetting her manners, but holding her precious castanets tightly clasped behind her back.

“What have you there?” queried Rafael, pulling off his hempen sandals and anxiously inspecting the soles of his feet.

Poor little Pilarica, into whom courtesy had been instilled as the first of all the virtues, winked hard, but held out the castanets toward her brother.

“They are at your service,” she faltered. But Rafael, too, could practise the Andalusian graces when he had a mind.

“They are very well placed where they are,” he returned affably in the set phrase proper to the occasion and, giving his gay fez a twirl, he added: “I am not the Archangel any more, but the high and mighty Moor Abdorman Murambil Xarif, master of this palace. You are my Christian captive and will now dance for me.”

“But I do not want to be a Christian captive,” protested Pilarica.

“Would you rather be a dog of an infidel, a follower of false Mahound?” demanded Rafael, in a tone of shocked reproach. “If so, I shall have to sweep you into the sea.”

“But ar’n’t you a dog of an infidel, too, since you are a Moor?” asked Pilarica in that keen way of hers, which her brother often found disconcerting.

Rafael caught off his red cap with a pettish gesture and tossed it aside.

“Your tongue is too full of words, Pilarica,” he grumbled. “It is unseemly to answer back. I am a year older than you. What’s more, I am a boy and you are a girl. As Tia Marta says, the fingers of the hand are not equal.”

Pilarica spread out the little brown fingers of her right hand and considered them so seriously that Rafael was encouraged to go on.

“Besides, I have heard Rodrigo say that a woman who speaks Latin always comes to a bad end.”

“But I do not speak Latin,” pleaded Pilarica. “Isn’t Latin the gori-gori-goo that the priests sing in the church? I do not see why anyone should learn it, for Grandfather says that in heaven the angels all speak Spanish.”

“Of course they do,” assented Rafael proudly. “Spanish is the most beautiful language that ever was spoken, just as the Spaniards are the best and bravest people on the earth.”

“Who are the other people on the earth? Are they all followers of false Mahound, like the Moors?” asked Pilarica.

Rafael frowned. There never was a girl like Pilarica for asking inconvenient questions.

“Child,” he said, looking as ancient and impressive as any eight-year-old could, “did Grandfather ever tell you the story of Juan Cigarron?”

“Not yet,” replied Pilarica meekly, “but it would give me great pleasure to hear it, if you please.”

“Grandfather tells me many more stories than he tells you,” boasted Rafael. “You are all for riddles and verses, but he and I talk together, like men, of the affairs of the world. Juan Cigarron, who lived a long, long while ago, before you, and even I, had been born, made believe that he was a great magician and could see anything, even if it was hidden in the very depths of the earth, unless, to be sure, there was a blue cloth wrapped around it.”

“Why blue?” asked Pilarica.

“Why not?” retorted Rafael, quite angrily. “Will you listen to my story, or will you be forever chattering? The King sent for Juan Cigarron and asked him many questions and, by great good luck, he was able to answer every one. Then the King, for a reward, promised to grant him whatever he might wish, even though it were the gold crown on the King’s head, but Juan Cigarron did not wish for the crown. He wished that His Majesty might never ask him anything again. Oh! And that reminds me,” exclaimed Rafael, jumping up quite forgetful of his bumps and bruises and tossing on his cap once more, “that the Gypsy King is to tell me my fortune this very afternoon.”

Pilarica clasped her hands in silent appeal, and her eyes grew so starry with hope that Rafael, already beyond the limits of the summer-house, looked back, swaying doubtfully on one foot.

“Tia Marta does not allow you to go over to the gypsy quarter,” he objected.

“Nor you, either,” was on the tip of Pilarica’s tongue, but she wisely bit it back, urging:

“The Gypsy King will not have gone home so early. He will be waiting near the Alhambra, sitting on the fountain-steps, looking for tourists who may buy his photograph for a peseta. And besides,” she added with innocent tact, “Tia Marta knows that I am safe anywhere with you.”

Rafael swaggered.

“Of course you are,” he announced grandly. “You are my little sister, and I, even though a bull should charge upon me, would stand before you as strong as the columns in the temple of Solomon. Come on! I will ask Tia Marta if you may go with me.”

So the children raced gleefully across the garden, dodging in and out among geraniums, heliotrope and fuchsias that had grown into great shrubs like trees, but paused at the fretted Moorish arch that now performed the humble office of their kitchen door, to see what Grandfather was doing. The old man, whom the circle of the years had brought back near to childhood, was playing happily with a snail that found itself halted in some important journey of its own by his protruding foot.

“A riddle! a riddle for the snail!” coaxed Pilarica, throwing herself down on the ground to lift the wee round traveller over that meddlesome mountain; and Grandfather, after strumming a minute on his guitar, recited:

“I was roaming in the meadow and there, upon my soul,

I met a little mansion out for a stroll.

The dignified Lord Mayor was sitting in his hall.

I said: ‘Come take a walk with me.’ He answered: ‘Not at all.

My office is so serious I never leave my chair,

But the city hall goes with me when I need to take the air.’ ”

Meanwhile Rafael, who felt himself quite too grown-up for riddles, had dived into the darkness of the house, whence he soon came scampering out, followed by the shrill tones of Tia Marta.

“The Gypsy King, indeed! And what sort of a king is that? Everyone is as God has made him, and very often worse.”

“But may Pilarica go?” called Rafael.

“Ask her grandfather. Am I a donkey, to bear all the burdens of this household?”

“May I go, Grandfather?” teased Pilarica. The old man nodded at least twenty times and, catching up the word donkey, struck with his quavering voice into a popular tune:

“Little I am, but everywhere

Blows and burdens I have to bear.

Haw-hee! “That is why my voice of long protest Has grown to be bigger than all the rest Of me.”

“Haw-hee!” echoed Rafael, with such a good imitation of a bray that a genuine ass made sonorous answer from the highroad beyond.

“Grandfather says I may go,” cried Pilarica joyfully into the arched doorway.

“Bah!” responded Tia Marta. “His heart is softer than a ripe fig.”

But she did not take back the permission, and Pilarica had the rare delight of an excursion with Rafael outside the garden.

Half ashamed of his condescension, the boy did not spare her, but tore at his full speed along the dusty road, between giant hedges of aloes, with their blue, sworded leaves, and lances tipped with yellow blossoms, so that it was a very hot, panting little girl who arrived, hardly a minute behind him, at the fountain on whose steps was enthroned the Gypsy King.

This was a very splendid personage indeed, with his high, peaked hat sparkling all over with pendants of colored glass that flashed back the sun like crown jewels. His slashed jacket was wondrously embroidered and spangled and his broad sash was of scarlet silk. Even his trousers and stockings looked as if he had been wading in a sunset. Smiling on Pilarica, he drew a bright cup from his wallet and, leaning toward the fountain, filled it with water that could not have looked more deliciously fresh and cold if the cup had been made of purest silver instead of gypsy tin. But thirsty as she was, the little Andalusian maiden handed the cup back to the giver.

“After you, please,” she said as sweetly as if her throat were not almost choked with the white dust.

The Gypsy King bowed with much majesty and touched the cup to his lips, but then she insisted on passing it to Rafael, who made short work of draining its contents to the last drop. He did not fail, however, to fill it again for his sister, so that, at last, Pilarica found herself seated on the lowest step, at the feet of the fortune teller, quite cool and comfortable.

But the picturesque old gypsy, although he could not help being kind to Pilarica, was in a gloomy mood. He had sold only one of his photographs all day long, and that to a rude young foreigner—we hope it was not an American—who had laughed at his kingship to his face and spun him the silver coin so carelessly that it had rolled into a crevice of the stone work and joined the lost treasures of the Alhambra. And well the poor old gypsy knew that, however much he might pose as a king in his flaunting hat and gaudy jacket by day, with twilight he must make his way back to the rows of human dens that burrow into the hillside across the river Darro. And there, as soon as he should draw back the dirty flap of cloth from the entrance of his own cave, his swarthy young wife, Xarifa, would demand the amount of his day’s earnings and, when he confessed to an empty wallet, would fly into such a passion that the heavy silver earrings would pound against her raven hair and every flounce on her bright orange petticoat would seem to bristle with rage. He could tell his own fortune, for that evening, only too well,—a shame-faced old fellow perched on a stool in the corner, trying with trembling hands to mend a cooking tin or a piece of harness, while Xarifa’s furious voice went on and on, until at last he should be suffered to fall asleep on the heap of ragged sheepskins that served him for a royal couch.

So although on yesterday, when he had sold three photographs and had three pesetas jingling in his purse, the Gypsy King had promised to tell Rafael’s fortune as an act of friendship, to-day he was stubbornly silent, holding out his palm to be crossed with silver. Rafael’s flush met the red edges of his fez. The only silver he had was a little watch and chain that his father had given him when, three years ago, that gallant naval engineer left his children, whose mother had just died, in the care of Grandfather and Tia Marta and sailed away, under the red and yellow flag of Spain, to do his part for king and country. No one guessed how deeply Rafael loved that absent father, the hero of all his dreams, but the boy had even more than the usual share of Spanish pride and, with a sudden gulp that was not far from a sob, he dropped the watch and chain into that greedy palm.

And he could make nothing of the fortune, after all. The Gypsy King, muttering strange words that only gypsies know, bent forward and with his staff traced rude figures in the sand,—a train of mules, a cockle-shell, a battle-ship; but suddenly he lifted his staff and touched it lightly to Rafael’s magic cap.

“That is your fortune,” he declared. “It will turn toads into nightingales and stones into bread. Don’t give that away, my little gentleman, even to the gypsies.”