CHAPTER XV.
The sun was not yet in the town. Its beams had scarcely reached the Basilica in their progress down the western mountains when the two ladies mounted their donkeys at the Arcade to go to Castle Dylar. The master of the castle was to meet them on the mountain path above the college.
They found him waiting for them; and as they went up an easy serpentine road, and over bridges binding cliff to cliff, Dylar pointed out hills and streams where the small flocks and herds of San Salvador were kept.
From this path could be seen to the best advantage the rock on which the college was built, and the way the structure followed its outlines and imitated them in pinnacles and terraces of every size and shape. They found the mountains on which the pine-woods bordered, and, close at hand, the height from which the first Dylar had discovered the site of his future city.
San Salvador disappeared; then its gardens were no longer visible; and then the spaces that betrayed the presence of a plain, or valley, were filled in; and they no longer looked backward.
They entered upon a scene like that which had preceded Tacita’s first vision of San Salvador,scarcely a month before; and again she began to ask herself if it were not all a dream.
But a word from Dylar was enough to chase the phantom of unreality away. Tacita used every pretext that enabled her to glance at him. He was so picturesque and soldierly, he had such an uncommon figure with his firm profile and auburn-tinted hair; and the dark tunic and turban cap with its silver band were so graceful.
She and Elena had each a man at the bridle; but Dylar was at her side at every rough place or steep descent. Yet his manner could not be called lover-like. It was rather that of a kind and anxious guardian. She asked herself if he had indeed said but the day before that his fate was in her hands. It seemed impossible. It was he who held her fate. Under his guardianship, how sweet were the dark places, how welcome the giddy cliff edges!
Outwardly quiet, and with a face almost as colorless as an orange flower, Tacita was intoxicated with delight.
Near the end of their journey, they passed across the opening to a deep and dark ravine.
“There,” said the prince, pointing, “was found the gold which enabled the first Dylar to buy and cultivate land around the castle, and to found San Salvador. It was a rich mine; and we still find a few grains in it.”
A little later they reached a small plateau, and dismounted. Passing a corner of ledge, they cameto a long rough stair so shut in as to be in twilight. It descended and disappeared in a turn, and seemed to have been cut in the rock. It ended at a door that opened into a low-roofed cave.
“Courage!” said Dylar with a smile, and gave his hand to Tacita.
He led her through the cave, and up a stone stair lighted by a hanging lamp to a landing that had a narrow barred door at one side. Through this door, masked on its other side by shelves, they entered a large cellar such as one might expect to find under an old castle founded upon rocks.
Here were long vistas of vaults supported on piers of masonry, tracts of thick wall, both long and short, sometimes taking the place of pillars and arches. There were glistening rows of wine-hogsheads diminishing in the darkness; and shelves of jars gave a familiar domestic look to the place.
Dylar pointed out how cunningly the stair from the cave below was hidden. It was set between two walls that ran together like a wedge, a wall starting off diagonally from the point where they met, and pillars and arches so confusing the outlines that the wedge-shape could not be suspected.
From the large cellar they entered a small one surrounded by shelves of bottles.
“I am sorry to welcome you to my house by such a rough way,” Dylar said. “But it is, at least, an ascending one.”
“You are giving me a charming adventure,” Tacita said brightly. “I have entered many apalace and castle by theportone, but never before by a cavern and a masked door.”
The next stair led to a plainly-furnished study, or office. Dylar hastened to open a door into a noble baronial hall.
“At last, welcome to Castle Dylar!” he exclaimed. “May peace fill every hour you pass within its walls. Command here as if all were your own!”
They entered a drawing-room of which the walls were all a rich dimness of old frescos, and the oaken furniture was upholstered with purple cloth. The tall windows let in a brilliant sunshine through the upper panes; but all the lower ones were covered by shutters. Here the housekeeper came to welcome the ladies and show them to their chambers.
The wide stairway led to a circular gallery hung with tapestries in which was woven the story of Alexander the Great. There was nothing modern. But the two connecting chambers they entered were bright with sunshine, and fresh with green and white draperies. The windows were swathed with a thin gray gauze.
Tacita went eagerly to look out.
“We must not show ourselves,” Elena said. “You can look through the gauze.”
The first glance, vaulting over a mass of tree-tops and a great half-moon of verdure, saw a plain that extended to a low ripple of pale-blue mountains on the horizon. A few stunted groves were visibleon this wide expanse, and a few abrupt hills which seemed to be protruding ledges, the crevices of which had been gradually filled by the dust-bearing winds.
Tacita recollected Ion’s description of this scene, which had appeared to him so beautiful that San Salvador, compared with it, had seemed a prison.
“Poor boy!” she thought. “He will find nowhere else such freedom as that which he is so eager to leave.”
The near view compensated by its richness for the sterility of the distant. It was a vast fenceless garden radiating two miles, or more, in every direction from the front of the castle, and every foot of it was cultivated to the utmost. There were blocks of yellowing wheat, there was every green of garden, orchard, and vineyard; and through them all the ever-present olive-trees which gave the place its name. They were planted wherever a tree could go. Around the foot of the castle they were clustered so thickly that they hid even from its windows the green turf and gray steps of its semicircular terraces. The large houses of whitewashed stone with flat roofs were scattered about irregularly. By some of them stood groups of palm-trees; or a single tree waved its foliage above the terrace.
The visitors had their dinner in a quaint boudoir, cone-shaped, and frescoed to look like a forest aisle from the pavement to the apex of its ceiling.One could recognize the artist of the Basilica in those interwoven branches, those leaping squirrels, and the bird’s-nests with a gaping mouth or downy head visible over the rim.
“I will give you a more fitting service when you come here by way of the Pines,” Dylar said. “But on these stolen visits from below we live with closed doors and a single servant.”
“He eats,” thought Tacita. “Therefore he is human.” And she felt no need of puzzling over a major proposition, nor, indeed, of anything but what the painted cone contained.
“It should be a communicable thought which provokes that amused smile,” Dylar said when he caught her expression.
Tacita blushed. “I was telling myself that it is a real plate of soup before you, and a real spoon in your hand; and that therefore I need not expect to find myself presently in the Madrid gallery, and see you disappear into a picture-frame.”
“Shall I tell you something of that man’s history by and by?” asked Dylar. “It may help to lay his ghost.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “And, oh, yes!”
“When you shall have taken some repose, then,” he said, “come with me to the terrace of the tower. There, with the scene of my ancestor’s labors before our eyes, I will show you how to distinguish between him and me.”
“I cannot sleep, Elena,” said Tacita, when they were alone. “Yet a nap is just what I want.What a shame it is that our rebellious bodies do not know their duty better, and obey orders.”
“I fancy,” said Elena, “that the body could retort with very good reason when accused of being troublesome, and that it understands and does its business as well as the mind understands and does its own. Why should not body and soul be friendly comrades?”
“My respected friend and body,” said Tacita with great politeness, as she leaned back in a deep lounging-chair, “will you please to go to sleep?”
She closed her eyes, and was silent a little while, then opened them, and whispered, “Elena, it won’t!”
There was no reply. Elena had gone to sleep in the adjoining chamber.
Tacita sat looking out over the wide landscape. The nearest house visible over the olive-trees had a flame of nasturtium flowers on its lower walls, and a palm-tree lifting its columned trunk to hold a plumy green umbrella over the roof. The foliage waved languidly to and fro in a faint breeze, lifting and falling to meet its own shadow that lifted and fell responsive on the white walls and gray roof. There was something mesmeric in the motion; and the silence and “the strong sunshine settled to its sleep” were like a steadfast will behind the waving hands.
When Tacita woke, Elena was waiting to tell her that Dylar was in the drawing-room, and would show her the castle.
To one acquainted with old countries there was nothing surprising in the massive, half-ruined structure, with its rock foundations, and the impossibility of finding one’s way unguided from one part of the interior to the other. The ancient tapestries, the stone floors with their faded rugs from oriental looms, the stone stairways where a carpet would have looked out of place, and was, in fact, spread only as flowers are scattered for somefesta,—they were not strange to Tacita. But they were most interesting.
A round tower made the centre of the castle; and there was a wing at either side with a labyrinth of chambers. This tower formed a rude porter’s lodge on the ground, a fine hall above, a gallery by the sleeping-rooms, and the fourth floor was Dylar’s private study. From this room a narrow stair went up through the thickness of the wall to the roof terrace. There were secret passages, and loop-holes for observation everywhere.
“God knows how many deeds of darkness these hidden chambers may have witnessed!” Dylar said. “If it had not seemed possible that they may be useful in the future, some of them would have been torn down before this. If any large agricultural work were attempted, it might be necessary to lodge the workmen here for a while. When these houses you see were being built, a hundred men dined every day in a hall in the eastern wing.”
They had stepped out on to the terrace, where chairs had been placed for them, screened fromsight by the parapet, so that as they sat only a green and gold rim of the settlement was visible.
“How beautiful it would be,” said Tacita, “if all that plain were wheat and corn and vines and orchards, with the hills crowned with small separate cities, all stone, with not a green leaf, only boxes of pinks outside the windows.”
“Just my thought!” Dylar exclaimed, blushing with pleasure. “Who knows but it may be some day? We own some land outside our farms, and have begun by planting it with canes. It is that unbroken green band you see yonder. It is larger than it looks.”
They were silent a little while. There was no word that could have added to their happiness. Then the prince began his story.
“Three hundred years ago the name of Dylar was well known in some of the great cities of Europe and the East. The family had occupied high places, and the head of it at that time, whose portrait you have seen, was a brave soldier. He was fortunate in everything,—too fortunate, for he excited envy. He had a beautiful wife and a young son and a daughter.
“His wife died, and with her departed his good fortune. While he mourned for her, forgetful of everything but grief, those who envied him were busy. I need not enter into details. His life is all recorded, and you can read it if you will. It is enough to say that his enemies succeeded in depriving him of place, and in multiplying their ownnumber. They changed the whole face of the earth for him.
“He found himself in that position where a man sees open before him the abyss of human meanness. Trivial minds dropped off their childish graces and showed their childish brutality. Nothing is capable of a greater brutishness than a trifler. Fine sentiments came slipping down like gorgeous robes from dry skeletons. Prudence took the place of magnanimity, its weazened face as cold as stone. Ceremonious courtesy met him where effusive affection had been. In short, he had the experience of a man who has lost place and power with no prospect of regaining them.
“He had no wish to regain them, and would have refused them had they been offered. To astonishment, incredulity, and indignation succeeded a profound disgust. His only wish was to shake off all his former associations, and seek a place where he might forget them.
“He sold his property, and with his two children abandoned a society that was not worthy of him. A nurse and a man-servant only clung to his fortunes, and refused to be separated from him and his children.
“For a time he was a wanderer, thinking many thoughts.
“He had been noble and honorable, but not religious. It is probable that now, when humanity had so failed him, he raised his eyes to inquire of that Deity of whose existence he had formerlymade only a respectful acknowledgment. The Madrid picture must have been painted about this time. It expresses his state of mind.
“Doubtless some of the plans which he afterward put in execution were already floating in his imagination when in one of his journeys he came upon this place, for he immediately resolved to purchase it. It is recorded that he exclaimed, ‘It was made for me!’
“The place must have looked uninviting at that time to one who had not already plans which would make works of improvement a welcome necessity; for what is now a garden was then a waste almost as barren as that you see beyond; and in place of these houses, which, in a rustic way, are fine, noble structures, were a few miserable huts inhabited by tenants as ignorant, and even vicious, as they were poor.
“Probably Dylar had that feeling from the first which has been ever since one of our principles of action, to take the worst, that which no one else would take, in men and things, and work at their reformation.
“At all events, he set out at once to find the owner of the place, a young man who might be in Paris, or London, or Rome, but most surely, at the gaming-table. Found at last, after a long search, he consented readily to sell, but he did not consent gladly. He could not hesitate, for he was reduced almost to living by his wits; but he suffered.
“Dylar had compassion on him. He saw inhim the victim of an evil education involved in a life from which he was too weak to escape. But it was impossible to approach such a man with the same help which he could give to others. He only begged that if ever the young man, or his children, should wish to live in retirement for a while, they would still look upon the castle of their ancestors as a home to which they would be ever welcome.
“Then he set himself to change the face of his desolate possessions. He gathered a score of outcasts, men and women to whom every door of hope was closed, and brought them to the castle till other shelter could be provided for them. More than one of them had crimes to confess; but they were the crimes of misery and desperation rather than of malice.
“Of a different class of the needy, he added to his own household. There was an elderly lady who gladly took the place of duenna to his daughter; and an old book-worm who was starving in unhonored obscurity became his son’s tutor, and later an important agent in the success of his plans.
“Of course, agriculture was their first need; and the tutor was far in advance of his time in this science—so far as to have been considered a visionary. Dylar found him able to realize these visions.
“Before long, the land began to reward them. Huts had been built for the new-comers, and all worked with a will. Dylar had confided somethingof his plans to these poor people, and had inspired them with an ambition to build here a city of refuge, and to look forward to a time when they might say to the world which had condemned them, Behold! a higher judge has absolved us.
“Whether the thought occurred first to Dylar, or to his son’s tutor, we do not know; but they agreed that gold must exist in large quantities in the mountains, and they secretly searched for it. Some grains had been found in a little stream that issued from the mountains where the river now is. To guess how difficult it was to get at the source of this stream you would have to examine the conformation of the mountains about the castle. In fact, they were reduced to the necessity of descending inside by ropes from the castle itself.
“You understand that they succeeded, and found gold in large quantities. You will also understand that they must have confided their secret to others.
“Here was an immense difficulty. Had this discovery been made known to his people, Dylar’s community would have been ruined, his plans overset forever.
“He hit upon a device. He made another visit to the outside world, and brought back seven men who might be called desperate criminals. He asked them to work for him five years, separated from the world, with no other companionship than their own, and, the term expired, to go far away taking oath never to divulge what they had seenand done. On his side, he would provide for all their needs, and give them a sum of money which to them would be riches.
“They agreed readily, not doubting but they were wanted to commit some crime. When the term of their service was ended, they were no longer criminals; and among their descendants have been the most faithful guardians of San Salvador.
“These men lived at first in a cave in the ravine. Then they built them huts. Later, wives were found for them, and they made homes for themselves. Long before the five years were ended the plain of San Salvador was discovered, the city planned, and the lower entrance to the castle begun. Outside, land was purchased and cultivated, and the houses which preceded the present ones were built. Many new people had been brought in, and some sent out to study a handicraft or science. Building and agriculture were the chief studies of the people.
“You will see that the story can only be touched here and there.
“Everything succeeded, because all were in sympathy with their leader, and his prosperity was their prosperity. These men and women who had found themselves here, perhaps, for the first time in their lives, treated with respect, had no desire to withdraw the veil so mercifully let down between their human present and their infernal past. They were faithful from self-interest and from a passionate sense of gratitude.
“Now and then a new-comer was hard to assimilate; but indulgence was shown. A mind long embittered may almost outgrow the possibility of peace, not from any deformity of character, but from a profound sense of injustice. A man or woman of middle age who can remember no happy childhood, no aspiration of enthusiastic youth which was not crushed by disappointment and mortification, has amassed a sense of wrong which help comes too late then to cancel.
“Dylar’s conviction, which still holds with us, was that a person so unfortunate as to have become an outcast from civilization is most probably the victim of some atrocious wrong in his birth, or in his early training, or that some supreme injustice has been done him later in life. Enlightened by his own experience and by subsequent observation, he perceived a wide and cruel barbarism hidden beneath the fair semblance of what calls itself civilization. Christianity he recognized as the only true civilizer; but Christianity was an individual, not a social fact. There was no Christian society.
“As time passed, some persons of a different character, though all needy, began to be drawn into the Olives,—a mourner who desired to spend the remnant of a blighted life in retirement, or a hopeless invalid, or some student whose life was consecrated to study and starvation. He was astonished to find how many accomplished people in the world were poor.
“He was, therefore, in no want of teachers.Some remained for a time; some never left him. To the latter only the existence of San Salvador was known.
“In the lifetime of the first Dylar the necessity for preparing for outside colonies was already felt, and his successor began them. He made large investments, and had agents. All young orphans were sent out, and all beyond a certain number in families. Sometimes a whole family will go. Their relatives are their hostages.
“It was the third Dylar, called Basil, who built the Basilica. There had been only a shrine for a throne of acacia wood. This throne Basil made with his own hands. It was he also who planned and began the cemetery; and he was the first one to be laid in it.
“Basil went out young into the world. He made himself first a carpenter, then studied architecture and mining. He never married. I am descended from his brother.
“Volumes might be filled with beautiful stories that were told of him, and with legends, half true, half false, which the people wove about him. His sudden appearances and disappearances at the castle after he returned to San Salvador were held by some to be miraculous. He lived a hundred years, and was found dead on the summit of the mountain of the cemetery. There is a grassy hollow at the top that is called ‘Basil’s Rest.’
“It would be worth your while to go there some morning before sunrise, to hear the larks. Thestory of his finding there, and of the people bringing his body down, is like a song.
“The first and second Dylars called the unfortunates they brought here ‘children of Despair.’ Basil named those he brought ‘children of Hope’!
“I have told you that the first Dylar made friendly offers and promises to the man of whom he bought this castle. His acts were in conformity with his words. He kept a watch over the family, especially after he had discovered gold. He held himself more solemnly bound to them by that discovery. When any one of them was in difficulty, he went to the rescue. But it was long before one of them was admitted to San Salvador. Then a widow came with her young infant. This widow married the fourth Dylar. From the little girl, her daughter, Iona and Ion are descended.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Tacita. “Iona!”
“Yes, Iona! In her and her brother alone we recognize now the blood of the original possessors of Castle Dylar. Their presence here satisfies our sense of justice. The girl I speak of married in San Salvador, and she and her husband went out to have the charge of our affairs in France. One of their sons became a messenger, that is, a person who keeps a regular communication between all the children of San Salvador, reports births and deaths, carries verbal messages, and does whatever business may be necessary in his province. It is a messenger who buys and brings all our supplies and carries out all our produce.
“The son of this messenger became himself a messenger. He was Iona’s grandfather. He was named Zara for a Greek friend of the family. He was restless and adventurous, like all his race. He went to the East. This was in the time of my grandfather. He married an Arab woman—ran away with her, indeed. But the circumstances of the escapade were such as to render it pardonable.
“He lived but a short time after this marriage, and his widow with her only child, afterward Iona’s mother, came to San Salvador. Iona’s father was a relative of mine.
“What Iona is I need not tell you; for you know her. She is one of Nature’s queens, and of the rarest; and Ion is worthy to be her brother. In both that restless fire of him who, for very impatience, sacrificed his birthright is intensified by this spark from Araby. But they have reason and discipline, and will have opportunity.
“I am telling you too long and dull a story. But having these outlines, you may afterward take pleasure in learning many details of our history. It is full of romantic adventure and Christian heroism.
“Have I wearied you?”
“So far from it,” Tacita said, “that I would gladly listen longer. But you also may be weary. Tell me, these details of your history, are they all written?”
“Not all. The simple facts are all written. Our archives are perfect. The rest is left to thememory of the people. We write no books of adventure, and no novels; but we talk them; and our story-tellers are as inexhaustible as Scheherezade. You have not yet listened to one of them, though you may have seen an audience gathered about one in the booths above the Arcade. There is one whom I must soon take you to hear. He is a gardener, and understands more about olives and the making of oil than any other man in San Salvador. His story-telling is picturesque and poetical. He does not change the facts, but he transfigures them. His mind has a golden atmosphere. There is another, a baker, who will tell you stories as lurid as the fires that heat his ovens. One of the elders sometimes tells stories of heroic virtue in our pioneers, or in historical characters of the world. When our messengers come in, they always give a public account, sometimes very prosaic, of their travels.”
“Has there never been a traitor in San Salvador?” Tacita asked timidly, fearing to awaken some painful recollection.
“Never!” was the prompt reply. “In the first place, even of persons born here of our most highly-honored citizens, but sent out very young, no one can know that such a place exists till he has returned to it. This is your own case. Those who go out adults are persons who have been tried. Any notable wealth or luxury of living is forbidden, or discouraged, in our people; and having thus nothing which will attract flatterers, they seethe world more nearly as it is. Self-interest helps. Besides, with the training our children have, no Judas can come out of San Salvador. We will have no weak mothers here. If a young child shows vicious dispositions, it is taken from its mother and carried outside for training. Perhaps it may never return.”
“She cannot go with it?” Tacita asked.
“She cannot go. Did she give birth to an immortal creature for her own amusement in seeing it ruining itself and others? I do not speak of any mere infirmity of temper in the child, but of some dishonest propensity which persists.”
Tacita bethought her to speak of Ion’s affairs, as she had promised; and after discussing the subject awhile, they went down through darkening stairs and passages to where supper awaited them, set out in an illuminated corner of the great hall.
“I had supper here that you might see the castle shadows,” Dylar said. “Seen from our little lighted corner, all this space seems to be crowded with dusky shapes. Do you see?”