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:

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:

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:

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:

Suddenly they varied the song:

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.

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.

“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:

“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:

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

“My noble boy, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I will tell you frankly that I have thought it was your fault to lay overmuch stress on your own concerns and your own career, a career whose promise has indeed been bright, and now you have cast it all away that a peasant lad may not be torn from his mother.”

“I have no mother, sir,” replied Rodrigo, blushing like a girl and speaking in a hesitating way most unlike his usual fluency. “If there had been anyone to grieve over me like that—and yet I don’t know. Something happened—happened inside of me. It was as if a candle-flame went out and the daylight flooded in. After all, a life is a life.”

“Bah!” sniffed Tia Marta. “All trees are timber, but pine is not mahogany.”

Yet the children reasoned that she was not displeased, for she spared no pains to prepare a festival supper that evening, serving all the dishes that Rodrigo liked best, even to spiced wine and fritters.