Part 7

Honey Boy moved. “S-sh!” hissed Goldie in a whisper. “Senator Collamore is speaking. Oh, he is good! I have heard him speak twenty times before. He says this custom of setting aside a day especially to do honor to the soldier dead originated, in this country, in the South, though now every little town as well as every big city in the North celebrates its Memorial Day; and he says that as long as memory lives we of the South shall continue to pay this sincere tribute to our men encamped beneath the green grass awaiting the bugles of a better day.” Goldie nodded his head vigorously, softly patting his thin, little hands together in respectful applause--softly so that he should not disturb the speaker. “Yes, that’s good and true,” he whispered, “very true indeed.”

“Did you hear that?” he whispered again enthusiastically after a while, turning first toward Willie and then to Honey Boy. “That is Governor Marcus speaking now. ‘The South is loyal,’ he says, ‘and it never forgets.’ Ah, yes, that is so true, too.”

And so Goldie, as if some part of him sensed the fact that his two comrades were not getting all that he was getting, from time to time picked out and tossed to the tired and hungry boy and to his brother-in-arms whose mind was thousands of miles away some of the crumbs from the feast of oratory that only he could enjoy--gilded words and fancy phrases that the little soldier had hoarded lovingly in his memory for years.

Well, after a while the speeches were all made, but Goldie stayed on. In other times it had been a custom in Asphodel to guard the Confederate Cemetery the night of Memorial Day, and Goldie was certain that he had been ordered to do guard duty that night.

Weak and hungry though he was, Goldie had been heartened by what he had heard, and as he sat on the rusty-red old iron bench enthusiastically talking at Honey Boy and Willie his voice was almost loud.

“Look yonder!” he cried. “Every grave is a bank of flowers. And did you notice how many people were here? Every store and office in town must have closed up. It’s a grand day. I’m a proud man this Memorial Day, I can tell you. If President Davis could only see all this--and Lee! But, there, I must not speak that last name again. If I do I’m bound to cry, and I’m too old for that. Two words can always make me cry--‘mother’ and ‘Lee.’”

The mounds above most of the graves had been leveled by time, and over all of them was a rank growth of weeds and grass. Honey Boy stared hard at Goldie, then he began giggling. Suddenly his small gray eyes filled with tears; he twisted and wrung his hands, and began whimpering, “Honey Boy hungry. Honey Boy must go home right now.”

“Hungry?” said Goldie, in high scorn. “Why, you poor little fool, you don’t know what hunger is. A soldier often goes two or three days on a single meal. But wait; our ladies will presently bring a banquet for the guard of honor--chicken and cake, strawberries and cream, and coffee--oh, I don’t know what all, but it will be splendid. When the South does a thing it does it splendidly.”

But the hot, damp, still afternoon wore away and no feast appeared. The notion that he was to do guard duty that night finally drove Goldie to consider the wisdom of fortifying himself in advance with sleep.

“You know,” he explained to the unheeding ears of Willie and Honey Boy, “it is a serious offense to go to sleep on picket duty. In war-time it means courtmartial. There is no punishment here and now except a man’s conscience, but a conscience can be terrible sometimes. And do you boys know, ever since the war whenever I’ve been assigned to any duty at reunions or on Memorial Days I’ve had a feeling that if I didn’t do it right _he_ would know--General Lee.”

Creeping off to a secluded, shady spot some distance from the Confederate Cemetery, Goldie took off his coat, rolled it into a sort of pillow, and lay down in the deep grass, now wilted by the shimmering, moist heat. “This is how a soldier often has to sleep,” he said proudly, looking from one to the other of his comrades.

Honey Boy, now completely subdued by hunger and thirst and fatigue, but held by fear and perhaps also by some boyish emotion of loyalty from deserting the little brown man in gray, sat staring at him a few moments, and then he too sank back on the grass and closed his eyes. Willie, his immaculate white suit of the morning wrinkled and soiled, dropped his straw hat to the ground at his feet and sat leaning against a stump, studying Goldie’s face intently. Except for picketing the graves that night, Asphodel’s Memorial Day exercises in honor of its soldier dead were over.

In the great sweet-gum tree above the three odd companions a pair of bluejays brought frequent instalments of food to their young and feasted them with much excitement and noisy importance. Out in the well-kept sections of the graveyard six or seven women appeared at various times during the afternoon, pulled a weed or a blade of grass from a grave, put down fresh flowers, pottered lovingly about it for a while, and then went home. But no one came to the Confederate Cemetery, and Goldie was as still as his comrades who slept beneath the tangles of grass and that weed called bitter. Honey Boy, waking up from time to time, looked around hopelessly, then weepingly lay back down. Willie continued staring at Goldie’s face, as calm as death and as sweet as life.

Late in the afternoon slim, dazzlingly white whips of lightning slashed about in the gray clouds that had been assembling above, thunder tumbled and mumbled and boomed, a quick shower of rain came sliding down the wind. It slipped under the waving branches of the tree above the sleepers and drenched them to the skin before they were fully awake. Willie now sat with his head leaning back against the stump, staring at the sky. He paid no attention to the rain or to his comrades.

Honey Boy began crying, his teeth chattering with cold, and he raised up and wrung his hands. “Oh, what is a little shower?” asked Goldie roughly, getting to his feet. “I have marched and slept a week in wet clothes.” Moving closer to the trunk of the sweet-gum tree, where it was almost dry, he laid his body down again and drifted away to sleep as sweetly as a child. Honey Boy beat his hands together and sobbed bitterly, but finally he crept close to Goldie, rolled himself into a ball, and was once more quiet.

And while two of them slept and one of them prowled desperately in the darkness of his mind for a lost thread a search-party that had been started by Mrs. Goldbaum came to the Confederate Cemetery, looked in, called loudly Goldie’s name, and went away.

When night, and it was a heavy, clouded night, came on, Goldie rose, put on his hat and coat, selected a fallen dead limb of a pine tree to serve as a gun, and proceeded to his post. Honey Boy stumbled along close behind him, now and then breaking out in a huge bellow of desperation. “Shut up!” hissed Goldie. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

But the frail, little, old soldier himself, reeling with weakness, often caught hold of the fence to steady his trembling legs. He was so tired that at the corners he sometimes stopped and rested his head against the flat-topped posts. But he had not been relieved of duty, so he kept on marching around the enclosure, often stumbling and falling in the dark, but always getting up and forcing himself along. Honey Boy flung himself into the deep grass near the paling fence and lay there moaning. Willie stood, a dozen yards away, against a tree intently studying Goldie.

Meanwhile searching parties were excitedly combing Asphodel and its environs for the missing men and Honey Boy; and some time after midnight a party made a second trip to the Confederate Cemetery. As the searchers approached, their lanterns and blazing pine-knots burning ragged yellow holes in the night, Goldie tried to shout and almost did shout, “Halt!”

“Is that you, Goldie?” some one called.

“This is Private Levi Goldbaum.”

“What are you doing out here, man? Your wife is crazy; she thinks you’re dead. Where have you been all day? You’re wet to the skin now, I’ll bet. You look like it, anyhow. What in the world are you doing here?”

“I took part in our Memorial Day exercises, of course. Now I am on picket duty, guarding the graves of my comrades. I should have been relieved at midnight, but I reckon something went wrong. Anyway, I couldn’t go until I was relieved, could I? Answer me that, Mr. Smarty. Don’t come any nearer. You can’t get through unless you’ve got the password. It’s a point of honor. I don’t care a rap who you are. Halt, there, you!”

Goldie stood up straight now, his bayonet pointing at the imprudent person who had come too near. The lights flickered over his frail figure, touching with yellow, beneath his slouch hat, the lower half of his cleanly shaven face, revealing the pale, thin, old lips drawn tightly across his false teeth.

The invaders gathered to talk among themselves, and as they whispered Goldie’s gun drooped slightly in his hands, dropped lower, and then the little old man moaned and crumpled stiffly to his knees.

He tried to rise and did, and fell again. He whispered, “Halt! You can’t pass here. It’s a point of honor, you see. If General Lee found out he would be--would be sorry for me.”

But the guard of honor had been relieved.

In his tracks stood another little soldier, this one clothed in white and shining with strength and fire and authority.

“Take him home, boys, but don’t step across the line he set. Don’t, don’t, I tell you! This is no joke. Lift him up gently now. He dropped just like my buddy over there--the picture, with the lights and everything, was just exactly the same. He has reminded me in a thousand ways all day of my buddy. But he’s only cold and hungry; my buddy was warm and dead. Take him home now, and when he comes to tell him not to worry; another soldier who remembers is covering his post. And General Lee will never know.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Copyright, 1925, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1926, by Barry Benefield.

THE BEGGAR OF ALCAZAR[5]

By KONRAD BERCOVICI

(From _The Century Magazine_)

Every Spaniard will tell you that Spain has the most beautiful women in the world. Every man from Andalusia, richly colored, sun-tinted, green-mountained Andalusia, will tell you that Andalusian women are the most beautiful of Spain; for have they not the smoothness and the hue of olive fruit and hair like black silk? And the men of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, old Seville with its crooked streets upon which abut blind walls, whitewashed and high-windowed--Seville, towered and domed by a thousand old churches and cathedrals and palaces built of huge stone mellowed and softened by biting time, Seville with its leisurely coursing river, the Guadalquivir, the great river, named so by the Moors in olden times, but which can be waded across at some times of the year; every Sevillan, prouder of the women of his town than of all the other marvels it contains, will tell you that the women of Seville are the most beautiful of the Province of Andalusia.

And Maria del Alcazar was the most beautiful woman of Seville.

She was the daughter of Don Hermanos, the head keeper of the Alcazar, the old palace of the Moors, planned and executed at the time when the Saracens had glided above the peak of virility and had become softened and fattened from tribute paid by vanquished nations, and effeminate from a long period of peace and the affluence come from plunder.

Maria’s father, Don Hermanos, had obtained the post of keeper in lieu of compensation for injuries he had sustained while fighting the wild tribes of the Spanish possessions in Africa. She was only ten years old when the family moved into one of the little whitewashed huts within the inclosure of the palace destined for the keeper. Black-eyed, with lustrous black hair, fine and silky like ebony filaments falling over her ivory-white neck, full-lipped, with a delicate chin, she was the pride of the family. Her mother, who came from Granada, instilled into her daughter that love for beautiful things and soft colors which had come to her with the blood of Moors that flowed in her veins. And with that she had also given to Maria that sinuous, graceful gait which holds both of the tiger and the angel--an imperceptible glide with slightly bent knees, while the arms sway softly like movements of invisible wings.

The Hermanos family had come to live at the Alcazar from one of the houses in the Triana, the crowded, squalid section across the river, where the poor of Seville live. The hut in which they had lived there was one in an immense yard in which fifty more little houses, leaning one on another, formed an open square; a _Casa Vesinante_ of the neighborhood. There was not much difference between the hut they were occupying in the Alcazar and it, and the mother and the father were frequently complaining about the uncomfortable and dilapidated condition of their new home. But not so Maria. She was not complaining, for she had the Alcazar all to herself. Daily, before the arrival of visitors from all over the world who came to see the old Moorish palace, and in the evenings after they had left, the big palace, with its jewel-studded, mosaic-wrought wings, with its stalactite ceilings, like frozen skies of crystal tears, and the ceramic walls, with the lemon alleys in the gardens and the intoxicating flowers and shrubs, with roses bigger than the full moon and redder than the reddest blood, with cypresses in pools of water and rose-veined marble colonnades and alleys, the whole palace belonged to her. It was hers to roam wherever she pleased, sit wherever she wanted, and dream her dreams. The very greatest treasure of the world was hers. For nowhere, nowhere she knew, was any other palace the like of that to be found in the universe. Roaming daily, she discovered for herself new treasures which were unknown to others. The beautiful marble columns that stuck out underneath the overlaid brick near the bathing-pool of the sultana, the paintings on the walls, which had stupidly been smeared over by careless repairers after the Moors had been driven out of Spain, the carved oak beams inlaid with mother-of-pearl mosaic in what was formerly the dressing room of the harem, and which had lain covered with cement. And panels of wood sawed so finely they were transparent when the light shone through them, and others cut so finely they were like spiderwebs, and which had lain there perhaps for centuries unobserved by any one, were hers to look at, hers alone, undefiled by other eyes, hers to bathe in their lacy softness of color and line.

True, she had to come into the hut late in the night and lie down on the bed within the squalid hut. But long before sunrise she would take her blanket and run out into the palace to sleep on the marble couch of the sultana, which faced the fountain of the Room of the Ambassadors; where once the sultan of the Saracens received the representatives of other nations, dressed in glittering silken garments, while black, nude, oiled slaves piled soft cushions under the guests and offered them refreshments in golden trays and from long silver vases.

The family had not been there long before all the keepers and the people in the neighborhood loved Maria. Shortly after their instalment, their daughter became known as “Maria del Alcazar.” Not because people felt that she belonged to the Alcazar, but that the Alcazar belonged to her. She could tell such beautiful stories of the things she saw. She kept them all entranced when she spoke of the palace and its beauties. No one referred to her as the daughter of Hermanos the keeper. She was Maria del Alcazar to the neighbors, Maria del Alcazar to the priest, as well as to the working-men continually busy restoring and fixing what should better be left as it was.

And after a few years the reputation of Maria’s beauty spread far and wide, as spreads a river after it has gone out from its bed. And many were the young men who, dressed in their best velvet, pale blue and dark brown, costumes, with wide-brimmed _flamenco_ hats in their hands, now came to visit the Alcazar after their afternoon siesta, paying their good _pesetas_ for the hope of catching a glimpse of Maria. They loitered and looked interested in the walls and gardens and trees and pools and fountains, but their long-lashed eyes were continually watching for an apparition. And many of them carried their guitars under their coats to begin their courting then and there should occasion present itself. The whole young malehood of Triana, remembering her as a child, would come to bid _buenos dias_ to her father, with the hope of catching a glimpse of his daughter.

But during the day Maria was busy helping her mother. She had no interest in the Alcazar during that time. It belonged to strangers who came from all the corners of the world, to tread with unsympathetic feet the ground she considered holy and defile with their eyes and harsh voices, whispering, and pointing to one another the walls and the gardens she loved so much. It was only after they had gone that the Alcazar belonged to Maria, and after they had gone, all had to go. And so, reluctantly, the young men of Triana turned their backs and slowly shuffled out of the palace after the keeper had called out the evening hour. They would then remain outside the gate, waiting yet, pining for a glimpse before sighing deeply and departing slowly to their homes. And the young women of Triana bitterly clamored that because of Maria they were themselves unsung and unwooed by the young men of the neighborhood.

All this was happening unknown to Maria, for she lived not in this world. And after the late autumn had shaken the leaves of the crooked, brown-trunked olive trees in the garden and made the ceramic walls colder than they had ever been, she was the undisputed owner, the only one to enjoy the marvels of the Alcazar all to herself. While the winter rains were beating down upon the town of Seville, thus keeping away the visitors, Maria was happy. She grew and developed very fast, looking more and more like one of the Moorish sultanas who had for centuries queened over the palace. She imagined herself to be one of them, never thinking of sultans; as if the place had never been peopled by any others but women. For there seemed to be no trace of any male residence there. The delicate tracery of the rooms and the alcoves, every nook and corner, seemed to her to have been erected by delicate and whimsical hands of angels who had first dreamed about all this on some huge canvas which they had embroidered upon.

And yet work was going on continually, repairing here and there, and reconstructing. It seemed to her outrageous that the hands of men should have any right to touch such divinely delicate dreams in wood and stone. More than once she spoke angrily to the architect who was directing the work, telling him again and again the old Moorish legend current to this day all through Andalusia, that the Alcazar was never built, but appeared one day, called thither by the magic wand of some great magician in the employ of the sultan.

II

One afternoon early in the spring, when the buds in the lemon trees had begun to burst and had spread their little sweet-sour blossoms all over the place, Jose, the bullfighter, a lad who had already won his first spurs in the bull-ring of Seville--Jose who had been one of her neighbors while they were living in Triana, stopped on his way to the ring to see Don Hermanos. He had been attracted by tales of the beauty of Maria del Alcazar, and had for a long time tried to see her without succeeding. But dressed in the costume of the matador, with a gold-laced black cap on his head, and a colored, spangled coat over the narrow, red-velvet breeches, tightened at the knees over the white stockings with green tassels, Don Jose felt he could dare make the attempt to see her. He braved bulls; why should he step back from meeting a woman?

While the hundred and one urchins cried, “There goes Don Jose!” he crossed into the vaulted entrance of the Alcazar and was received at the gate by Don Hermanos, who had been attracted by the outside noise.

“What great honor!” bowed Maria’s father, shaking the decoration dangling on his breast.

“The honor indeed is mine,” answered Don Jose, bowing profoundly. “For, if you recall, we have been neighbors in Triana. And my mother has repeatedly spoken of Doña Hermanos, your wife, and of Señorita Maria.”

“May I lead you through the Alcazar, if you want to see it?” Don Hermanos asked, while the other keepers had gathered about him and were looking at the handsome young matador with great admiration.

“I shall follow you with pleasure,” Jose answered.

And throwing a handful of copper and silver to the urchins following him, he walked rhythmically behind Don Hermanos, while the other keepers were complimenting upon his recent exploits.

Jose was just a little over twenty, with the brown young eyes matured from facing danger and death, although only a thin down covered his long upper lip. He was not very tall, but so well proportioned that he looked taller than he really was. He was even then only a short hour from one of the battles in the great bull-ring.

“It is curious,” he said wistfully to Don Hermanos, catching up with him and putting an arm familiarly on his shoulder, much to the envy of the other keepers who followed behind, “but I have never been in the Alcazar, and had thought of coming only after an Englishman with whom I had become acquainted had spoken to me so enthusiastically about its beauties. To live near such beauty and never see it!”

Don Hermanos was now showing him the oak-beamed and mosaic ceiling of the reception hall.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed the bull-fighter, with ecstasy.