Those first few days left little memory of their stupors and their nauseas and their pains, but when Rafael began to pay heed to life once more, he found himself thin and languid, to be sure, but the object of most gratifying attentions from the entire household. His cot had been placed – not without a pitched battle between Don Carlos and Tia Marta – under the old olive tree just before the door, and Grandfather, in his accustomed seat on the mosaic bench, had brightened up again into the best of entertainers. All this stir and excitement in the household seemed to have scattered the mists that had been creeping slowly over his brain. He was more alert than for many months and no longer played with oranges and snails. He knew his son-in-law now and while he had as many riddles in his white head as ever, he gave them out only as the children called for them. When Rafael saw that they amused his father, the boy began to hold them in higher esteem.
“They do well for girls at any time,” he confided to Rodrigo, “and for men when we are ill.” But he insisted that the answers should be guessed.
“Ask us each a riddle in turn, please, Grandfather,” he requested one marvelous Andalusian evening, when the earliest stars were pricking with gold the rich purple of the sky, “and I will pronounce the forfeits for those who fail.”
“With whom do I begin?” asked Grandfather.
“With my father, of course,” responded Rafael.
“No, no, my son. Always the ladies first,” corrected Don Carlos, drawing Pilarica to his side.
“Then it is Tia Marta who begins, for she is bigger than I am, and so she must be more of a lady,” observed Pilarica wisely.
Just then the five-minute evening peal from the old Watch-Tower rang out, and Grandfather, turning to Tia Marta, recited:
“Shut in a tower, I tell you truth,
Is a saintly woman with only one tooth;
But whenever she calls, this good old soul,
Sandals patter and carriages roll.”
“Bah!” ejaculated Tia Marta. “As if I had not known that ever since I could suck sugarcane! To ask a church-bell riddle of one who was born on the top of the Giralda!”
“I was born in a bell-tower;
So my mother tells;
When the sponsors came to my christening,
I was ringing the bells,”
sang Grandfather roguishly, strumming on his guitar.
“But this fiddling old grasshopper is enough to set the blood of St. Patience on fire,” snapped Tia Marta, who had been standing in the doorway and now indignantly popped back into her kitchen.
“Did Tia Marta ring the bells when she was a teenty tinty baby?” asked Pilarica.
“Not just that,” replied Don Carlos, who was seated in the hammock that he had swung beside Rafael’s cot in order to care for the sick boy at night, “but it is true that she was born high up in the Giralda, which, as she may have told you, is the beautiful old Moorish minaret, that looks as if it were wrought of rose-colored lace, close by the glorious cathedral of Seville. There are thirty bells in this tower and they all have names. One is Saint Mary, I remember, and one Saint Peter, and one The Fat Lady, and one The Sweet Singer. Tia Marta can tell you all the rest, for she spent the first seventeen years of her life among them, way up above the roofs of the city. The hawks that build their nests even higher, under the gilded wings of the crowning statue of Faith, used to drop their black feathers at her feet and she would wear them in her hair when she came down to the festivals of Seville. She was a wonderful dancer in those days, I have heard your grandfather say.”
“Ay, that she was,” chimed in the old man, speaking with unwonted animation. “I can see her now in her yellow skirt spangled all over with furbelows, wearing her wreath of red poppies with the best, while her little feet would twinkle to the clicking of the castanets.”
“But how did she happen to grow so old and ugly?” asked Rafael.
“Oh, Rafael!” exclaimed Pilarica, shocked by such unmannerly frankness.
“Very nobly,” answered Don Carlos, stroking his little daughter’s hair. “By love and by service. When her father, the bell-ringer, died, and a stranger took his rooms in the Giralda, Marta came down into the city and entered the home of your grandfather and sainted grandmother – ”
“May God rejoice her soul with the light of Paradise!” murmured Grandfather devoutly.
“There Marta was nurse-maid for your mother, then a little witch two or three years old,” continued Don Carlos. “And she grew so fond of her charge that she never left her, not even when your mother had the infinite goodness to marry me, and we moved to Cadiz, my naval station then. And now Tia Marta, for your mother’s blessed sake, spends all her strength and devotion upon you. We must never forget what we owe her, and we must always treat her with respect and affection.”
Rodrigo, who was pacing the tiled walks near by, trying to puzzle out a mathematical problem, turned to say:
“I’ll bring her a cherry ribbon from Granada to-morrow.”
“And she may wash my ears as hard as she likes,” magnanimously declared Rafael.
But Pilarica slipped from within the circle of her father’s arm and ran into the house to surprise Tia Marta with a sudden squeeze and shower of kisses.
By the time the little girl came out again, Grandfather had a riddle for her:
“When she wears her silvery bonnet,
My lady is passing fair;
But she’s always turning her head about,
Gazing here and there.”
As the child hesitated, Rodrigo pointed to the luminous horizon, and she promptly said: “The Moon.”
“But that’s not playing fair,” protested Rafael.
“Oh, we don’t expect girls to play fair,” laughed his brother.
“But I want to play fair,” urged Pilarica. “And I want to be punished, like Rafael, when I do wrong. Why wasn’t it just as bad in me to disobey Tia Marta and run off with the Alhambra children as it was in Rafael to leave me alone?”
“It’s hard to explain, Sugarplum,” said her father, “but the world expects certain things of a man, courage and faithfulness and honor, and a boy is in training for manhood.”
“And what is a girl in training for?” asked Pilarica.
“To be amiable and charming,” answered Rodrigo promptly.
“But I want to be faithful and hon’able, too,” persisted Pilarica.
“A man must do his duty,” declared Don Carlos, slowly and earnestly. “That is what manliness means. He must satisfy his conscience. But it is enough for a little girl if she content her father’s heart, as my darling contents mine. And when the years shall bring you a husband, then he will be your conscience.”
“But I want a conscience of my own,” pouted Pilarica. “And I do not want a husband at all. If I must grow up, I will be a nun and make sweetmeats.”
“Time enough to change your mind,” scoffed Rodrigo. “What is my riddle, Grandfather?”
“Wait till my father has had his turn,” jealously interposed Rafael.
Grandfather was all ready:
“Here comes a lady driving into town;
Softly the horses go;
Her mantle’s purple, and black her gown;
Gems on her forehead glow.”
“But