“Wait and see!” laughed Dolores. “You know it will be just as Lady Mother and I say.” And then she flew back into her father’s arms to kiss away his very feeble effort at a rebuking frown.
At once the guests were hurried home to pottage. And such a pottage! Egg and chicken cut into small pieces, bits of ham, red peppers and green string beans! But they could not linger over their plates, for all the world was scurrying through the streets toward the cathedral to see the fireworks.
“Drops of water must run with the stream,” said Uncle Manuel, thrusting his dripping spoon behind his ear, like a pen, in his haste; but Grandfather was too weary for junketing, and Tia Marta could not be persuaded to leave Juanito.
“A Christian child is holier than fireworks,” she declared, standing in the doorway, under the carven cockleshell, with the sleepy baby fretting in her arms.
“And quite as noisy,” came back as a parting shot from Don Manuel, who might seem to have had enough to do, without that, in shepherding his party of women and children through the surging throng.
Although Rafael’s head, still sensitive from the bump, was aching hard when they all came home an hour before midnight, and Pilarica had to pull her hair and pinch herself to keep a certain pair of pansy eyes from drawing their silk curtains, yet both children loyally felt that they must do their best to make up to Tia Marta for the ravishing sights she had missed.
Much relieved that Doña Barbara left it for her to put her darlings to bed, Tia Marta listened demurely to all their drowsy wonder-tales of cascades of fire, showers of falling stars, flaming rivers flowing through the night, golden trees blossoming with rubies and emeralds and amethysts, the colossal lizard that sprang up with a crash, turning to a glistening green dragon that tried to chase the stars, and, best of all, a million-tinted Alhambra which changed, in one splendid instant, to lustrous silver, to an intense and awful white, and then vanished, with a series of deafening thunders, as a sign of Santiago’s victory over the Moors. Yes, Tia Marta listened to everything they could keep awake long enough to tell her, and never once confessed how she had seen all this, and more, from the roof of the house, with Pedrillo sitting close beside her, his hand over hers, to reassure her in case the explosions should be too loud for Andalusian nerves to bear.
The fiesta lasted for several days. There were solemn ceremonies in the cathedral, stately processions through the streets, fairs, sports, open-air music and dancing. Pilarica’s height of rapture was reached when the King of Censers, the great, silver incense-burner of the Middle Ages, swung by a system of chains and pulleys from the vaulting of the central cupola, flashed its majestic curves through the cathedral, a tremendous fire-bird dipping and rising in a cloud of fragrance over the upturned faces of the vast, hushed congregation. But Rafael took a boy’s delight in the eight giants, hollow wicker images some twelve feet high, representing mediæval pilgrims, Moors, Turks and modern tourists, an absurd array that strutted at the head of the processions and even danced, to the music of pipe and tabor, before the High Altar. He was puzzled to understand how they were propelled until he saw peering out at him from the waistband of that chief booby, John Bull, the rueful face of Hilario. A teasing troop of dwarfs were trying to trip and upset this particularly clumsy giant, and Rafael struck in gallantly to the rescue, serving Hilario at cost of a bloody nose. He pelted the dwarfs with melon rinds, while Bastiano, concealed inside the British Matron, John Bull’s towering escort, gathered up his calico petticoats and pounded at them with his pasteboard head. Rafael described this, with high glee, at the supper table, but, remembering Don Juan Bolondron, was silent as to his own exploits.
In the motley assemblage of pilgrims the children came often upon their friends of the road. They were all conducting themselves most decorously now. The dreamy-eyed pilgrim was too deeply absorbed in his devotions for more than a dim smile at Pilarica, and even the wild peasant woman was doing a weary penance, dragging herself on her bruised knees up the long flight of stone steps to the great west doors and on over the worn pavement of the nave to where the enthroned statue of St. James welcomes his worshippers.
After the feast of Santiago there came, in the end of August, the wedding of Tia Marta. Pedrillo had decided, or, rather, she had decided for him, to give up the road and try to make a living out of the soil, whereat Don Manuel, who counted Pedrillo his right-hand man, was sorely vexed.