XXII THE PORCH OF PARADISE

PILARICA was quite at home, by this time, in the crooked, sombre streets of Santiago, whose stones are histories. There fell on her unconscious little figure, as she tripped along, the shadow of ancient buildings,—churches, convents, hospitals, with quaintly sculptured fronts. Over many of the massive, deeply recessed doors was graven the cockle shell of St. James, showing that these were once rest houses for the overflow of pilgrims, of whom thousands used to sleep on the floor of the cathedral. Over the rough granite slabs that paved the roads her little feet danced on to an inner music of her own, though all about her was the harsh uproar of a Spanish city,—children blowing penny whistles, blacksmiths beating their anvils, shopmen calling their wares. The screech of the file, the grating of the saw, the click of the chisel, added their discords to the braying of donkeys, the cracking of whips, the screaming of parrots, the clanging of mule-bells.

Pilarica was glad to come out from the hubbub of the streets into the comparative quiet of the great square from whose midst arises, a dark mass of fretted granite, the cathedral of St. James. About one of its fountains, carved in the shape of the pilgrim shell, were grouped a number of girls, Dolores among them, filling the slender water-buckets of Galicia and lifting them to their heads. They were singing coplas, as in autumns past, but now their songs were sorrowful instead of merry, for the brothers and lovers who had been drafted for the war did not return and slowly there had filtered through, even to Santiago, news of disaster and defeat.

One sad young voice after another made its moan, and Pilarica stood listening with her innocent smile undimmed. She knew these girls, Dolores’ friends, and to her childishness the pathos of their new songs was sweeter than their former coplas of mirth.

It was Milagros who was singing when Pilarica came:

Then rose the shrill note of little Peligros:

The bowed figure of a woman in middle life, moving toward the cathedral, had paused to hear the strains, and suddenly from her there broke a passionate contralto:

The widow passed slowly on into the church, and Pilarica heard a muffled tone, sounding like a sob, that she hardly recognized, at first, as coming from Dolores:

Then soared the pure, clear voice of Consuelo:

Pilarica skipped over to Dolores and pulled at her skirt.

“Will you go for walnuts with dolly and me?” she entreated. “The mistress will not have me in the school again to-day, because I want to learn. We can stop at the cottage for luncheon.”

Dolores looked down at her eager little cousin with kind, listless eyes.

“I must take home my bucket,” she said, “but I will come back.”

When she came back, Rafael was with her. Pilarica had disappeared from the square, but they knew that they would find her in the cathedral, for the cathedral was everybody’s meeting-place, everybody’s resting-place and the playground of all the children of Santiago.

They found her before the so-called Porch of Paradise, or Gate of Glory, one of the supreme works of Christian art. Pilarica was never weary of gazing at it. What was once an outside portico, most richly and exquisitely chiselled, is now enclosed at the west end of the church. It represents Christ enthroned among the blest, a multitude of vivid saints whose faces glow with fullness of joy. On the central shaft of the pillars that support the arches of this celestial doorway is a curious group of slight dents in the agate, where, tradition says, Christ, descending from His bliss above, placed His wounded hand. Pilarica had been guiding an old blind peasant to this sacred column, helping the groping fingers find their way to that strange impress, for all Galicia believes that a prayer offered with the hand placed here is sure of answer. When the grateful peasant had been led, as he requested, to the nearest confessional, Pilarica ran back to see the hand of Dolores set against the shaft, while tears rained down the girl’s wan cheeks as she prayed for her lover of whose death in prison vague rumors had floated home.

“Let us ask for Father and Big Brother to come back,” blithely proposed Pilarica to Rafael. “God might listen better if we asked for one at a time. I’ll pray for Rodrigo and let you pray for Father.”

The boy’s dark eyes were deep with memory, but after Pilarica, standing on tiptoe, had fitted her small finger-tips to those five tiny hollows, worn by faith in the hard marble, his brown hand followed hers.

Rafael tried to pray: “Please, God, bring my Father home,” but a rich, tender voice rose from the past to check the words,—a voice that said: “Wish nothing for yourself nor for me but that we may do our duty.” “May my Father do his duty, dear God,” prayed the boy’s heart in its simple loyalty, and as he lifted his eyes to the saints in Paradise, their glad faces answered his wistful look with a strange, sweet fellowship.

Tia Marta gave them hospitable greeting at the cottage, where Grandfather, over whose mind the mists, dispelled for the time being by the excitement of the journey, were gradually drifting again, had of his own impulse taken up his abode. Both Pedrillo, doing unexpectedly well with the land, and Tia Marta, vastly flattered by Grandfather’s preference, made him gladly welcome. When Dolores and the children came in, he was rocking Juanito’s cradle and crooning over it broken lines of the riddles now fast melting from his memory.

As Pilarica caught up the chubby two-year-old, Dolores quietly drew the cradle out of Grandfather’s reach, for, as all Galicia knows, to rock an empty cradle is an omen of ill to the baby who is next put into it.

Pilarica was pinching, one by one, Juanito’s wriggling toes:

Then Baby Bunting had a chance to show off his accomplishments.

“Kill a Moor,” commanded Rafael, and the pudgy fist shot out straight at Rafael’s nose.

“How many gods are there?” catechised Pilarica, and one pink finger was raised with most orthodox energy.

Meanwhile Tia Marta, who had grown at least ten years younger, was bustling happily about, setting forth white bread and honey and crisp fried potatoes for her guests. Not until they had eaten, did she venture to ask Dolores if there was any word.

“No good word,” answered the girl, her eyes flooding with tears, “and it has been so long.”

“Tut, tut!” said Tia Marta. “God is not dead of old age. Your lover’s feet may be seeking you now. While there is God, there is mercy.”

“There is a buzzing in my ears,” spoke up Grandfather suddenly. “A leaf has fallen from the Tree of Life.”

“Never mind him,” snapped Tia Marta, carefully tucking her best shawl over his knees, “an old canary who doesn’t know what he sings. How Juanito looks up and laughs! He sees the cherubs at play. Be of good cheer, Dolores! Your sailor-lad may come back to you yet, and, if not, God, who gives the wound, will give the medicine.”

“Will Father and Big Brother come back, Tia Marta?” asked Pilarica.

“To be sure they will,” hastily answered the old nurse with a choke in her voice. “God never wounds with both hands. Doña Barbara has enough to bear in seeing Dolores waste away without having to weep for Don Carlos, too.”

And indeed Dolores was but a shadow of the plump, rosy girl who had sported with her cousins a year ago. So changed she was that a ragged wayfarer, resting in the walnut-grove, did not recognize her, although he had carried her face in his heart for many a yearning day. And the nutting party looked down on him and his no less gaunt companion with the easy compassion that views the misery of strangers. Spain had grown used to the wretched sight of sick and crippled soldiers from the West Indies and the Philippines creeping toward their homes. But Rodrigo knew his little sister.

“Pilarica!” he cried feebly, staggering to his feet, and clasping her in one loving arm—his other sleeve hung empty—while, after a long, wondering gaze, Dolores and her Vigo lover drew silently together.

Rodrigo freed his hand for his brother, whose questioning eyes searched that haggard face from which all trace of youth had disappeared.

“Rafael,” said the soldier, meeting the boy’s look steadily, “when the Yankees raised a Spanish battle-ship, that had gone down in gallant fight, they found in the engine-room the body of her Chief Engineer. His hand still gripped the lever. He had died at his post. He had done his duty.”

The lad stood erect, with folded arms, as he had stood by the Sultana Fountain on that April night that seemed so long ago.

“That is a beautiful story,” said Pilarica, who had not understood.

“All stories are beautiful if one has a magic cap,” answered Big Brother, smiling down into the winsome little face, but not with his old gay smile. Yet there was something sweeter in it than before.

“No,” corrected Pilarica, who was kissing the empty sleeve over and over. “It is Rafael who has the magic cap. It turns badnesses into gladnesses.”

“And it will turn this pain into splendor, my brother,” said Rodrigo, reeling from weakness and catching at Rafael’s shoulder with the one thin hand. “Have you a bit of chocolate about you, laddie? How tall you have grown! And how you have come to look like Father! That is his own courage I am seeing in your face.”

“I will run on ahead to Tia Marta, who will make you a feast,” cried Pilarica, so lost in rapture that still she did not catch the meaning of what Rodrigo had said.

“Bread and cheese will be feast enough, especially if Tia Marta adds her pinch of pepper,” replied Rodrigo, with a queer little ghost of a laugh. “The Geography Gentleman—Heaven reward him!—cared for me and a dozen more of us at Granada and gave me gold for the railroad journey north to you; but there were so many of my half-starved comrades on the train that the money was all gone before we had reached Leon and I have been walking and living on the charity of berry-bushes and walnut-trees ever since. But bide a wee, Caramel Heart! I have grand news for you. You are to go to school,—a real girls’ school. What do you think of that? It is in charge of a lady from over the sea, Doña Alicia, a lady who loves Spain and was kind to us poor fellows in the hospital. Father would, I know, be glad to have you go to her and learn.”

“It will be lovely to learn,” trilled Pilarica, the leaves rustling a song of their own under her tripping feet. “And when Father comes home, we’ll be just as happy under the sky as the angels are on top. Grandfather says they dance all night and sometimes they jostle down a star. And Father will come home soon, for the pillar prayers are always answered. Only see! Dolores’ prayer and mine are answered already.”

“Mine was answered first,” said Rafael, and his voice, though a sob broke through it, was proud,—the voice of a hero’s son.