In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates

In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

FOREWORD

The verses in this story, with the exception of the two snatches, in chapters 6 and 14, of ballads of the Cid, I have translated directly out of Spanish folk-song. Some of these, especially riddles, and others, especially those sung in the circle-dances, have previously appeared in The Churchman and in my Spanish Highways and Byways and are used here by the courtesy of The Churchman publishers and of the Messrs. Macmillan Company.

В В В В Katharine Lee Bates.

The Scarab. June 3, 1913.

I

PILARICA IN THE MOORISH GARDEN

AT last, at last, that tiresome stint of embroidery was done. The threads, no longer white, had tangled so often under the impatient tugs of those rosy little fingers that it was fully half an hour later than usual before Pilarica could jump up from the threshold, run back through the house to Tia Marta, display those finished three inches of “labors” and plead:

“Tia Marta, with your kind permission I will now go out to play.”

Tia Marta was stooping over a great, open chest in the inner room whose only other furniture was a wide, low bedstead and two canvas cots. All the family slept there except Pilarica’s big brother, Rodrigo, who was a student in the Institute of Granada and so, being a person of dignity, had the curtained box-bed in the kitchen. This outer room, like the bedroom behind it, was all of stone and so dim that the light from the doorway showed only a glimmer of copper and pewter on the side where the cooking was done. The bedroom had a window, so narrow that it seemed hardly more than a slit cut in the thick stone of the wall. There was no glass in the window and there were no rugs nor carpets on the cold, tiled floors.

Tia Marta, huddled over the big chest in the duskiest corner of all, could not have seen the embroidery well, even though Pilarica’s eagerness thrust it close against the squinting red eyes; but she scolded, for Tia Marta enjoyed scolding, quite as sharply as if every moist little stitch had been measured and found wanting.

“Worse and worse! The very gypsies would be ashamed to wear it. The donkeys would bray at it. What is to become of a girl born without the needle-gift? The saints take pity! But get you out into the sunshine, child, and play! This house is as dark as a wolf’s mouth. Out of doors with you!”

And Tia Marta thrust the strip of linen back to Pilarica with such a jerk that the needle flew off the thread, slid to the floor and, after a merry hop or two, hid itself in a crack. This was fun for the needle, but it kept Pilarica away from the garden for ten minutes more while her small palms rubbed over the worn, uneven tiles in anxious search. But as soon as she knelt down and prayed to Santa Rita, the clever saint who can find anything that is lost, the needle gave her knee a saucy prick and consented, after its run-away frolic, to be stuck into the cloth again. For, you see, the needle had been working hard, too, and wanted its bit of holiday as much, perhaps, as Pilarica wanted hers.

But the loss of those ten minutes out of her golden afternoon was a sore trial to the little girl and she dashed like a tiny whirlwind through the house to fling herself, sobbing and laughing both at once, into the arms of Grandfather. He sat, white-haired and dreamy-eyed, his guitar on the mosaic bench beside him, under the olive-tree before the door. It was so comforting to feel the tender clasp of the old, trembling arms and to hear the slow and broken but still sweet old voice that had crooned over Pilarica since her earliest memory.

“What’s this? What’s this? Dew on my red rosebud? Hush, Heart of Honey, hush! I have a new riddle for you.

“ �Little glass boxes

That sometimes leak,

But open and shut

Without a squeak.’ ”

Pilarica promptly pointed her two forefingers at her still tearful eyes.

“That is easy,” she said, slipping to her knees upon the ground and leaning against the end of the be