CHAPTER X
A STOUT SWEETHEART
The sale of the Prince Alfonso brooch brought Pilar and her grandfather enough to live on for a week. Then once more Pilar was faced with having to give up the castanets.
Juan seemed eager to have them now. He said that the great dancing master had shown much interest in them.
This dancing master was the same one who had inquired about Pilar at the fiesta that night in Triana, though Juan, of course, did not know it.
At last the fatal day arrived when Pilar could no longer delay her visit to Juan's shop. What she would do after this last sale she had no idea. Unless her grandfather's health improved so that he might work again, things looked black for both of them.
Pilar went out onto the balcony of her house. Girl-draped balconies are as natural in Spain as donkey-dotted roads and child-filled doorways.
Pilar gazed down on the street. The morning was golden. Church bells clanged, and a knife grinder was piping on an Arab reed. A broom-maker squatted on the pavement across the way.
Pilar's eyes were full of tears as she took up the castanets and went with them into her grandfather's room.
"I am going out, Grandfather," she said.
But she mentioned nothing about selling the castanets. She could not trust herself to speak. However, her grandfather saw them in her hands, and his old eyes brightened.
"Some day I shall tell you – stories – about – those – " he breathed. "Your mother – loved – them – "
"Do not talk now, Grandfather. It will tire you," said Pilar.
She wanted to be off, to have it all over with as quickly as possible. She knew that if her grandfather told her a story about the castanets, it would be even harder to part with them. Poor Pilar! If she had listened to just one of those legends, she would not have dared to sell the wooden clappers.
"Good-bye, dear Grandfather."
She kissed him and left.
As she opened the gate that led out of the small court of their house, she ran into a stout, grinning boy.
"Oh, Pepe!" cried Pilar. "When did you get back?"
All summer Pepe had been away on a journey. Now here he was home again to follow and annoy Pilar.
Pepe liked to make believe that he was a cavalier. He liked to imitate his older brothers. For in Spain a man courts his lady in a very romantic way. He stands outside her window at night, and sometimes he sings love songs to her.
This funny, stout little Pepe often met Pilar at school and walked home with her. Once he had even tried to sing under her window. But a neighbor thought it was a tomcat howling and threw a bucket of water on his head.
Today Pilar was in no mood to be followed about. Today was a bitter day in her life. For this time there was no more hope of keeping the castanets. She knew that at last she must really give them up to Juan.
She started to walk on ahead of Pepe. But he followed her.
He puffed as he jogged along behind her, calling out, "Wait for me, Pilar. I have much to tell you. I have been to far-away places. Ho! Listen, Pilar. I have been to Algeciras (ăl´jē̍-sē´rȧs) and to the Rock of Gibraltar."
Pilar thought Pepe himself looked like the Rock of Gibraltar. She had seen pictures of the great, solid rock. It belongs to England, and just across Gibraltar Bay is the lazy little Spanish seaport town of Algeciras.
Pilar usually liked to listen to Pepe's tales of his travels. The boy's father often took him away to places where they saw interesting and curious sights.
But today it was impossible to pay attention. She tried to get away from Pepe and walked faster and faster.
He followed doggedly, breaking into a gallop and crying out in little gasps, "Hi! But listen, Pilar."
And so eager was he to reach her that he did not notice where he was going, and all of a sudden – pff! bang! He had crashed into a man wearing what looked like a ballet skirt of tin cans. They were milk cans.
They shot in all directions. The man began to scold Pepe and to wave his arms about. A crowd gathered, and in the noise and excitement, Pilar escaped from her stout little sweetheart.
Seville's great cathedral was just across the street – a massive giant, squatting in the sun. Pilar went inside. It was cool and peaceful there. Works of art filled the vast church – paintings, fine carvings, and the stately tomb of Christopher Columbus.
Pilar knelt before the altar, where a curious ceremony takes place every year. This ceremony is called "The Dance of the Six Boys."
Pilar prayed, her eyes closed, her lips moving. And clasped to her heart were the castanets – the magic castanets, about which another legend was woven – a legend around this very Dance of the Six.
CHAPTER XI
DANCE OF THE SIX
(A Legend of the Castanets)
The chorus had been sung, and now they were dancing to the steady, clicking rhythm of their castanets. It was a dignified dance, done by young boys wearing silken pages' costumes and wide, plumed hats.
Everybody felt the solemn beauty of the ceremony, and a hushed reverence had fallen over the cathedral. Two old people, a woman with a black shawl thrown over her head and an old man with a tanned, leathery face, sat silently weeping.
Fernando, their son, moved among those graceful figures beneath the altar. He was a part of the royal Dance of the Six, called the Sevillana.
How proud were these old people of their son Fernando! How happy to know that, each year, he would take his place in this age-old ceremony of their forefathers, in the dance which had been performed for centuries in Seville's cathedral!
For in the far distant past, the Pope, hearing about the Sevillana, wished to see for himself what sort of dance it was. In those days, it would have been considered shocking for girls to dance before the Pope. So six boys were taught the steps of the Sevillana and taken to the Vatican in Rome.
Here they danced, dressed in their beautiful silken costumes. The Pope was so well pleased that he granted permission to use this dance during certain ceremonies at the cathedral. But the privilege was to last only so long as the boys' costumes lasted.
Today these costumes are still in use. But what a deal of patching and mending must have taken place during those hundreds of years!
When the dance was over, Fernando went into his room and pulled off his quaint, plumed hat. The reverent little dancer had changed to a furious, red-faced youth. He threw the hat down on the floor in a fit of anger.
"Never!" he cried. "Never will I dance it again!"
His sister Maria stood trembling at the door.
"Do not say that, Fernando," she begged. "Think of our parents. You would break their hearts were you never to dance in the cathedral again. These past three days have been for them the happiest of their lives."
"I shall never dance again," repeated Fernando firmly. "It is girls' work, and I am a boy. I shall run away and work with men – and be a man!"
Fernando picked up his castanets, which had fallen to the floor.
"Miguel will take my place in the chorus," he said. "I shall have no more use for these castanets, and so I shall give them – "
"No! No!" cried Fernando's sister. She ran over to him and caught him by the arm. "You must never give away those castanets. Surely you have heard about their magic power and the legends attached to them. Ill luck to him who loses or gives away – "
"Nonsense!" scoffed Fernando. "I do not believe such tales. They are old women's twaddle!"
"Perhaps," agreed his sister. "Yet remember what our grandmother once told us. She said that the castanets have always been a power for good. And whenever we do things which we should not do, they bring misfortune to us and to our family."
Then she recited:
"Castanets, with magic spell,
Never lose or give or sell;
If you do, then grief and strife
Will follow you through all your life."
"Yes, I know," said Fernando shortly. "But," and he grinned, "I shall change that verse to:
'Castanets, you have no spell;
If I lose or give or sell,
I shall live in manly strife,
Not be a sissy all my life!'"
One night many years later, this same Fernando, now a man, glided along in a boat on a river near the border of France. With him were several other men, and all of them were smugglers.
Fernando had long lived in the Pyrenees (pĭr´ē̍-nēz) Mountains. He had joined a band of people who secretly smuggled forbidden goods from Spain to France in the dead of night. They led a dangerous life and were always in fear of the customs men.
As their boat now moved gently along the water, Fernando's companions slept. All night they had labored, and they were weary. But Fernando could not sleep. Somehow his thoughts kept taking him to Seville, to his parents and his sister Maria. What had become of them?
In all these years he had heard no word from them, and until now, he had barely given them a thought. But tonight – How strange that they should creep into his mind!
A shot rang out hideously. The customs men were after them! Another shot! And another and another! One by one, the smugglers in the little boat crumpled where they sat. Then the small craft itself began to sink – down, down.
All was silent upon the surface of the water. All was silent for a long time, and then Fernando, holding to a floating board, slowly raised his head.
The morning had begun to dawn over the Spanish Pyrenees. A hoarse church bell rang out. Fernando looked about him. The customs men had gone back to France. The smugglers, too, had gone, but not to France; to the bottom of the river.
Fernando swam to shore, and the next day he set off for Seville. He had one aim: to find his family and to try to make up for the heartache he had caused them.
But Fernando was never to see his parents again. Long since the old people had died, and only his sister Maria remained. He found her living in a poor and squalid alley. Yet when he walked into her shabby room, she did not seem in the least surprised to see him.
"I knew that you would come back, Fernando," she said quietly. "I expected you."
Puzzled, he started to speak, but she silenced him.
Then thrusting her hand inside her blouse, she drew out the magic castanets, saying, "They were brought back to me, Fernando!"
Fernando stood fixed to the spot, his eyes upon the old clappers, which he had given away so many years ago in a fit of boyish rage. Then a sudden curious idea occurred to him.
"When were they returned to you?" he asked Maria.
She told him, and he knew then that it had been upon the very same night when his life had been spared, out there upon those dangerous waters – the very same night when he had been thinking so earnestly of his family.
His sister listened while he told her of his many adventures as a smuggler. He promised to give it all up, to help her, and to become an honest man.
"For," he ended, laughing, "there is an old Basque saying, 'If a smuggler is an honest man, then legends are the truth.'"
"But surely, Fernando," said his sister, "you must believe in the legends of the castanets after what has happened to us."
Fernando shook his head.
"I believe only in the power for good," he replied.
Some years later, Fernando had a little son of his own who danced in the cathedral of Seville. And do you see those two old people who sit there watching, solemn-eyed and happy?
They are Fernando and his wife, and they are very proud that their boy is taking his place in this age-old ceremony of their forefathers.