CHAPTER VIII.
The sun was high when Tacita woke the next morning. The chamber door was open, and an odor of coffee came up the stair. The window sash and curtain had been drawn back, admitting the pine-scented air and a rain of sunshine that fell over everything in large golden drops.
It was late. “But that does not matter,” Elena said, coming up with the coffee. “We could not have started sooner. My brother had to come for us; and it takes three hours. There were other things to do besides. And when they were all done, we talked over the incidents of a five years’ separation. How glad I was to see him!”
Tears were shining in her eyes. “There is no haste. My brother has to prepare some things. We go by an inner path, not the one Dylar took. We travel in a southwesterly direction across the mountains; and you will reach your chamber long before sunset. I have thought that you would not care to see any strangers to-night. Am I right? Well, now we will go down. But first, I have a word to say to you.”
There was something in her face that arrested attention, an excitement that was almost a trembling. “Tacita, do you remember all that yourmother and grandfather told you, which you refused to repeat to me?”
Tacita made no reply in words. Already she divined.
The nurse leaned to whisper a word in her ear, and give her a sign.
Tacita looked at her with a mild surprise.
The nurse went to look out the window, and returning, repeated her pantomime and whisper.
“Well?” said Tacita wonderingly.
“Dylar reproved me for having tried you in Seville,” the nurse said, and again repeated the whisper and the touch.
“I might have known!” Tacita exclaimed joyously, embracing her. “I did almost know. It is all that was needed to make me perfectly happy! And now, let us start for home. At last I can call it home! ‘By the side of a rock,’ my mother said.”
They went down stairs. There was no one visible, and the door was still barred. Elena led her companion into the niche under the stair, and tapped on the stone wall. Immediately, as though her light touch had pushed it, a part of the wall receded a few inches, was lifted a few inches, and swung slowly backward. It was a door of small stones set in a plank frame, the irregular edges fitting perfectly into the masonry about them. A narrow, dim passage was visible, leading downwards.
They descended, hand in hand, passing by a manwho stood there in the shadow; and the door was closed and barred behind them. It was hung on iron hooks that were round at the top, and square below. When the bars were removed, and the door freed from the wall, a pulley lifted it from the square to the round iron on which it swung.
The incline led to a small cave, scarcely larger than the room above. It was all open to the west, and an abyss separated it from a precipice, leaving only a narrow shelf of rock outside the cave’s mouth. Beside this shelf, no other egress was visible.
The place showed signs of having been recently used as a stable. For the rest, it might not have been visited for years. There was an old chest with rusty hinges, an old box full of pine-needles, and some discolored blocks of wood that might have served as seats.
“It is Arone, my brother!” said Elena, when the man came down to them after fastening the door.
He had a sunny face, and he resembled his sister so closely that an introduction was scarcely necessary. His dress set off a fine manly figure. It was a gray cloth tunic reaching to the knees, and girded with a dark blue fringed sash. Long gray stockings and a gray turban-shaped cap with a blue band completed his costume. The band of the cap was closed over the left ear with a small silver hand.
The shelf of rock proved to be their path. Holding by a rope fixed in iron hooks, they followed itscurve to a small platform of rock. From this, a bridge of two planks, over which the rope was continued, crossed the chasm to a second shelf. This was more dangerous than the first; for it was wet, and the sheer rock it followed was dripping. Beyond, in a wider path, were their guides of the day before, and the donkeys.
Holding the rope, Tacita passed the wet rock, not daring to look downward, and was received by her companions with a “Brava!”
The worst was over. She sat down to get her breath, and Arone returned to remove the ropes and plank.
“You are going to see, in a little while, why our path is wet,” Elena said. “Meantime, look about you. Do you see that window?” pointing to a fissure in the rock above the cave. Ropes extended from this point to another not visible to them, but in the direction of their pathway. “The closed door you saw next to our chamber leads to that room, and those ropes carry signals to a station that is visible to a second station farther on. From there they are repeated to a third, and that third station we see at home. Anything that takes place here can be known there in a few minutes. They must know already that we have passed the bridge. The house is not such a ruin as it appears, nor so far away from everybody. There are several decent rooms above; and it is only five miles round by the road to Castle Dylar. There are always two persons in the house as guard; and they are changedevery week. From an upper window, like this, hidden behind a fissure in the rock, all the roads outside are visible. There are tubes leading to the lower room through which the guard can converse, or listen.”
Tacita did not reply. She disliked mysteries, having had reason to mistrust them.
“We have no more secrets than we must, dear,” her friend said, perceiving the signs of distaste. “All that you have seen is necessary for the protection of good people who have not strength to defend themselves, and would not wish to use force, if they could.”
Arone, who had come back to them, looked at the window over the cave, and blew a whistle. Instantly, a bunch of long, colored streamers ran along one of the ropes, and disappeared. While they waited, Elena gave her charge a first lesson in her mother’s native language, telling the names of their guides, their animals, the rocks, lichens, and the sky, with its light and sources of light. Then, pausing, she raised her hand, and listened. There was a stir, faint and far away, but coming nearer. It became a rushing sound, and a sound of waters. A huge white feather showed above the wet rock underneath which they had passed, and a foaming torrent leaped over its brink, plunged with a sharp stroke to the shelf, and fell into the abyss. Their whole path from the cave’s mouth to within a few feet of where they stood was covered with the wild rush of a mountain torrent.
“That is our beautiful gate,” Elena said. “It needs no bolt. Now we will go. From here the way is all plain.”
They rode for two hours over a hard mountain path, where nothing but dark rocks, pine-trees, and snow was visible. Then through a gap in the mountains an exquisite picture was seen, lower down, and not so far away but its features could be examined. There was a green hill with sheep and lambs, and a little cottage. Outside the door, under the shadow of an awning, sat a man and woman. The man was carving pieces of wood on a table before him; the woman had some work on her lap which kept her hands in constant motion. A young girl came out of the cottage and brought her mother something which they examined closely together. They were all dressed in gray with bright girdles.
“The man carves little olive-wood boxes and bowls,” Elena said. “The woman and her daughter make pillow lace. The girl is our very best lace-maker. Her work brings a high price when we send it out.”
The three continued tranquilly their occupations, unconscious of being observed; and an interposing mountain slope soon hid them from sight.
Tacita began to feel that she had rested but superficially the two past nights. She scarcely cared to look at the changing views where distant snow-peaks and occasional airy distances seemed to intimate that before long they might emerge from their mountain prison.
The path descended gradually; there were glimpses of pine-groves and olives. Suddenly they made a sharp turn, and entered a cave much like that they had started from.
“At last!” exclaimed Elena, and slipped from her saddle.
From the cave they went into a long corridor that led them to an ante-room with a curtained glass door at each of the four sides. There was no window. One of the doors stood open into a charming bed-chamber.
The one large window of this chamber was covered with a curtain of white linen in closely crowded flutings that shone with a reflected sunshine. The color of all the room was a delicate gray, with touches of gilding everywhere. They glimmered in a broad band of arabesques that ran round the walls at middle height; on a bronze vase with its long slender pen-sweep of a handle; on the lance-ends of the curtain-rod; on the railing around three sides of a little table that held a candlestick, bottle, and glass at the bedside. There was a glistening of gold all through the light shadow-tint.
“Welcome! A thousand welcomes to San Salvador!” exclaimed Elena, leading Tacita into the chamber and embracing her with fervor. “May all happiness and peace attend you here; and may the place be to you the gate of heaven!”
“And now, dear, your fatigues are all over,” she added. “You are at home!”
“San Salvador!” repeated Tacita, looking about her.
“Do you wish to see and know more now, at once?” the nurse asked smilingly. “There are no more secrets for you.”
“Oh, no! Just now I appreciate too well our Italian proverb: ‘The bed is a rose.’ And that sofa seems to speak.” She went to sink on to its soft cushions. “Go to your friends, Elena.”
“Presently. You must first be attended to. There is a woman here who will serve you in everything. She speaks French, and her name is Marie. What are your orders?”
“My wish is to rest on this motherly sofa an hour or two, without having to utter a word. Then I would like a little quiet dinner, all alone, after which I will go to bed and sleep as long as nature wills. Those are my wishes. My sole command is that you go to your friends at once, and do not return to me till to-morrow morning. My poor, dear Elena! What a care I have been to you! Now let me see you take some care of yourself. I have all that I want.”
The woman, Marie, appeared with a cup of broth on a tray. From her glad excitement, the tray trembled in her hands.
“Oh, welcome home, Elena!” she exclaimed. “Welcome to San Salvador, Tacita Mora! You are a thousand times welcome! May the place be to you the gate of heaven! I am so glad!”
She set the tray before Tacita, but could spare her only a glance as she uttered her hasty and tremulous welcome. Then she ran to embraceElena. “Oh, welcome! welcome! You are looking so well. You come laden with good news. Stay with us! We will not let you go again. We will give the moon in exchange for you!”
“Oh, I should miss the moon,” Elena said laughingly.
After a little while they went out together, leaving Tacita to rest.
“What, then, is San Salvador?” she wondered, sinking among the sofa-pillows.
Perhaps she might learn by lifting that sun-lighted curtain. But she did not wish to lift it. There was pleasure in tasting slowly the unfolding mystery. So far, each revelation had been brighter than the preceding. She slept content, and waked to see on the curtain the deep hue of sunset.
For a little while she lay looking about her, recollecting herself, and examining her surroundings. The floor was of yellow tiles, all the furniture and bed-covers were of pale gray linen as glossy as satin, the wicker chairs were graceful in shape, and the tables gave a restful idea of what tables are meant for, undefeated by sprawling legs and impertinent corner-twiddlings. They were of fine solid wood, dignified and useful, and set squarely on strong legs.
Glancing at the band of arabesques around the walls, Tacita perceived that it had a meaning. It was all letters—but letters run to flower or to animal life. They budded, they ended in tendrils, they were birds and insects, but always letters; andas she studied them, they became letters that made words in all the languages that she knew; and doubtless those which she could not decipher were words of languages unknown to her. And of all those which she could read, every one repeated the same words, over and over, whole, or in fragments, each phrase held up as a honey-dropping flower:
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
It was set down in clear text. Then a bird flew with a part of it in his beak.Like a shepherd, Like a shepherd.And the wordshepherdstood alone, all bloomed out with little golden lilies. Dragon-flies and butterflies bore the promise on their wings; and where it bore roses, every rose had a humming-bird or bee sucking its sweetness out. The quick squirrel ran with what seemed a vine hanging from his upturned mouth; and the vine was a promise.
It was the Moorish idea. She had seen among their arabesques the motto of Ibn-l-ahmar: “There is no conqueror but God,” so interwoven with ornamentation. But that solemn Moorish reverence and piety did not touch the heart like this consoling tenderness.
Dinner was served on a table set before the window. It was a charming little dinner: a shaving of broiled ham; a miraculous soup; a bit of fish in a shell; a few ribs, crisp and tender, of roasted kid; rice in large white kernels; an exquisite salad of some tender herbs with lemon juice and oil that waslike honey; a conserve of orange-blossoms, rich and thick; a tiny flask of red wine from which all acrid taste of seed and stem had been excluded; and lastly, a sip or two of coffee which defied criticism.
Evidently the cook of San Salvador was nothing less than acordon-bleu.
The dinner done a healthy justice to, and praised, Tacita was once more left to herself. But first Marie brought a vase of olive oil and water with a floating flame, and set it in a little glazed niche in the wall that had its own pipe-stem of a chimney; and she drew back the window curtain. The lower part of it had lost the sun; but a bar of orange light crossed the top.
Tacita waited till the door closed, then looked out eagerly.
There were still mountains in a rugged magnificence of mass and outline; but the color left no room for disappointment. They faced the west with the kindled torch of a snow-peak above a tumult of gold and purple and deep-red. There were pines along the lower heights, and olives, and, lower still, fruit-trees. A rock protruding close to either side of the window narrowed the lower view. But only a few rods distant, a wedge of smooth green turf was visible, with a crowd of gayly-dressed children playing on it, tossing grace-hoops, chasing each other, and dancing.
Presently the air was filled with a sweet, tinkling music. The children ceased their play at the sound, and formed themselves in procession, withsubsiding kitten-like skips, and passed along the green, and out of sight.
As she watched them, it occurred to Tacita for the first time to think that youth is beautiful. It is a thought that seldom occurs to the young, youth being a gift that is gone as soon as recognized. Her aching languor and weariness taught her the value of that elastic activity, and her sorrow suggested the charm of that unclouded gayety. Yes, it is beautiful, she thought, that evanescent blush of life’s morning forever hovering about the sterner facts of human existence.
She sat and looked out till the color faded from the heights, leaving only a spot of gold aloft; and, thinking that she must not go to sleep in her chair, fell sound asleep in it.
It was about midnight when she waked, and with so vivid an awakening that to sleep longer seemed impossible. In place of the languid quiescence of the evening before, there was a consuming impatience to know all without an hour’s delay. Close to her was the unsolved mystery of her mother’s birth and of her own fate. She could wait no longer.
She lighted her candle, and went softly out into the ante-room. All was still. She tried the door opposite her own. It opened on a broad stair that descended between two blank walls.
Closing the door noiselessly behind her, she went down, candle in hand, and reached a corridor and a second stair. Across the foot of this secondstair shone a soft light. It was the same light that shone outside her window above,—a passing moonlight that had gathered to itself all the star-beams in the air and all the frosty reflections of its own crescent splendor from snow-clad heights and icy peaks, and fused them in a lambent silver.
Tacita set her candle on the stair, and went down into a long hall, of which the whole outer side was an arcade, and beyond the arcade was a piazza open to the night, and with a wide space beyond its parapet. As in a dream, she passed the arcade; and before her lay San Salvador, the city of the Holy King!