Читать книгу In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael - Katharine Lee Bates, Katharine Lee Bates, Bates Katharine Lee - Страница 4

THE eyes of the Gypsy King began to glitter like jet beads. He had caught sight of an omnibus toiling up the Alhambra hill, and after the first a second, and after the second a third. Tourists! A party of foreign tourists! A host of golden, gullible tourists! Ah, Xarifa would be pleased with him, after all. She would toss him off a panful of crisp fritters for supper and then sit with him in the mouth of their cave, enjoying all the gypsy jest and music. With surprising nimbleness he climbed to the top step of the fountain, and there he stood, brandishing his hat high above his head and bowing and beckoning and twisting and bowing again until Pilarica turned quite giddy just from watching him.

“Come away!” ordered Rafael, tugging at her hand, and she followed her brother to the ivied wall beneath that bell-tower on whose top the first cross was lifted after the Christians had taken the Alhambra from the Moors. Here Rafael busied himself in gathering together a few smooth stones, as much in the shape of Spanish rolls as he could find, and arranging them in a row.

“Count out!” he commanded Pilarica, and the little girl, dancing up and down the line as she sang, proceeded to touch with an airy foot one stone and then another and another in turn.

Before the song was ended, Rafael had clapped his magic cap over the stone designated by Q and stood, with red lips firmly pressed together, abiding results.

“Sing something else, Pilarica,” he entreated, “or else I cannot, cannot wait.”

And Pilarica, with a quick instinct for what would hold his attention, piped up the song by which Spanish children keep in memory the name of a true patriot. By the middle of the second line, Rafael’s fresh treble was chiming in with hers, though his gaze never wavered from the wonder-working fez.

“Now! now!” cried Rafael, and whisked the red cap off the stone, which looked – precisely as it had looked before. Not one flake of puffy crust, not one white, tempting crumb betrayed whatever change might have come to pass under that magic covering. The children fell flat on their stomachs on either side of this doubtful substance and first Rafael, then Pilarica, thrust out a red tongue and licked it cautiously. The taste was gritty. Rafael tried to take a bite, but his white young teeth slipped helplessly off the flinty surface. The boy squatted back on his heels, his small fists clenched, and glared darkly out before him.

“Perhaps one of the others – ” faltered Pilarica.

“They are all alike,” interrupted Rafael, in a voice harsh with mounting anger. “They are stones, just stones, and they always will be stones. I knew it all the time.”

“Our rolls are very, very hard once in a while,” ventured the little girl again, but this remark was met with scornful silence.

“Or I might hunt for a toad,” she persisted, dismayed by Rafael’s sombre stare. “Toads are much softer than stones, and perhaps – ”

But the boy had bounded to his feet and was stamping furiously upon the magic cap.

“The gypsy is a humbug, and the cap is a humbug,” he exclaimed chokingly, “and I have been cheated out of my watch and chain, – my silver watch and chain that my father gave me. I will not bear it. I am going down the hill to meet Rodrigo, and he will make that lying old thief give them back to me.”

And without another glance toward the little sister whom he had so loftily taken under his protection, Rafael, bare-headed, dashed away and disappeared down the steep avenue by which Rodrigo usually came home from the Institute.

The tears trembled for a moment on Pilarica’s long eyelashes, as she found herself thus forsaken, but she was a practical little person on occasion, as the sisters of impulsive brothers needs must be, and so she picked up the red fez, brushed away the dust, folded it neatly and hid it in her bodice. Then she scattered the stones far and wide, so that Rafael might not come upon that unlucky row again and be stung by the reminder of his loss.

And what next? For a moment the child looked longingly down, from her green nook, on the outspread city of Granada, with its clusters of gray towers and spires that seemed to be talking together in the purple air about the times that were. Rafael was allowed to go half-way down the Alhambra hill to meet Rodrigo, and sometimes Rodrigo, on a holiday, would take his little brother into the city with him for a whole afternoon, but Rodrigo, who was a student and knew everything, said it was best for girls to bide at home. Only yesterday Rafael had gone into Granada with Rodrigo, to see a wonder-working troupe of jugglers, and returned rejoicing in the red fez. An Arab peddler, who was, as well, snake-charmer and sword-eater, pleased by the boy’s wide-eyed admiration of his exploits, had tossed it to him with the laughing words: “Red is the color of magic.” And Tia Marta went down to Granada sometimes with the donkey Shags for the frugal family supplies, but she could not be bothered with Pilarica, while Grandfather, who never found Pilarica a bother, was too feeble now for the confusion of the city streets and for the long climb back up the hill.

So the child lifted her wistful eyes from the proud old city to the far sweep of the plain beyond, a plain rich in gardens and vineyards, orchards and olive-groves, and then she looked out further yet to the ranks of snow-clad mountains that shut in the view. Those glistening summits made her lonely, and when a scamper of small feet came her way and a cry of eager voices called her name, Pilarica leapt down from her perch on the wall and let herself be swept along with the roguish little rabble of the Alhambra hill.

Tia Marta always scolded when Pilarica was found playing with the Alhambra children, for there were usually a few gypsies, rude and lawless, in the group, and some even of the Spaniards were so ill-bred as to make sport of strangers. But they were children, for all that, with the blithe laughter of children, and all the more determined to play with Pilarica because they knew that Pilarica was forbidden to play with them.

“To the Alhambra!” cried Arnaldo. “There are many people there, ugly people, with blue eyes, and hair the color of lemons, and faces flat like pesetas. There are so many that Don Francisco is as flustered as a fish in hot water and he has forgotten to lock the door after them. He will not notice us at all if we are careful to keep a court or two behind. But you must not run on and beg of the people, Zinga, and you, Leandro, must not be slipping your sly fingers into the ladies’ bags, or we shall all be driven out together.”

“I will do as I choose,” retorted the wild-haired gypsy girl, while the hawk-eyed gypsy lad, barely in his teens but already a skillful pickpocket, gripped the gay-handled knife in his belt and scowled defiance at Arnaldo.

Pilarica, frightened by the fierce looks, fell back with the little ones, Isabelita and Carmencita, chubby Pepito, and the gypsy two-year-olds, Rosita and Benito, letting the bigger and rougher children lead the way. So in two companies they tagged after the tourists up into the Court of Myrtles, with its great pool enclosed by myrtle hedges, and on to the Hall of the Ambassadors, whose walls are like lace of rare design and whose domed ceiling, all white and gold and blue, studded with starry figures, seems a bit of sky. When they had come to the Court of the Lions, whose multitude of white marble columns look, in their varied grouping, like guests frozen by some playful enchantment just as they were chatting together or musing apart in this exquisite throne-room of the Sultans, the smaller children began to lag. Plump Pepito sat down firmly on the floor. Carmencita, startled by the twelve marble lions that uphold the fountain-basin in the center, puckered up her face for a cry, and Pilarica, to divert her, started one of the circle-games in which Spanish children delight. Hand in hand, the little dancers tripped about like a ring of fairies, until Pilarica’s clear voice led them in the song of San Serení, the well-beloved Saint of Gentleness. All but the wee gypsies knew every stanza, singing lustily, and even Benito and Rosita acted out the gymnastic movements with the rest, kneeling, sitting, lying back and jumping up again, as the several verses directed.

Their own games were much more interesting to the children than the glories of the old Moorish palace, and they flocked about Pilarica, each clamoring for a favorite dance.

“Little Bird Pinta,” teased Isabelita.

“Little White Pigeons,” whined Carmencita, who was always on the verge of tears.

“Little Blind Hen,” shouted Pepito.

“Pin – Pige – Hen,” echoed the gypsy babies impartially.

“The Charcoal Woman,” wept Carmencita.

“Butterfly Tag,” coaxed Isabelita.

“Charcoal-Butter,” chimed in the obliging gypsy babies.

“Grasshopper! Grasshopper!” roared Pepito and thereupon began to skip about, his fat hands clasped under his knees, gasping as tunefully as he could:

“Hush! hush!” urged Pilarica. “We will play Larán-larito, and Pepito shall be the cheese.”

So Pepito, easily rolling himself up into a round, soft ball, proudly occupied the center of the scene, while the others, suiting their action to the words of the song, danced about him, ever drawing nearer and nearer, ready for the final pounce.

But just at the thrilling moment when all the five kitties flung themselves upon the plump, indignant cheese, which struck out right and left with pudgy fists and defended itself as never cheese was known to do before, there arose a hubbub in the further halls of the Alhambra and the larger boys and girls came rushing back, pursued by Don Francisco, the guardian of the palace, and a purple-faced foreigner whose voice sounded as if he were using bad language.

Arnaldo seized the hand of Isabelita, Zinga made a snatch at Rosita, 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.