CHAPTER XXIII.
The week of commemoration passed by. On Saturday the children went in procession for the King’s blessing, the Basilica all theirs that day. No one else might enter save Tacita and Ion as leaders, and the mothers with their infants. Going, they left the place fragrant with their strown myrtle-twigs.
Easter came and went with its blush of roses everywhere, its rose petals mingled with the children’s myrtle on the pavement, roses between the lamps, and roses in the girdles of the people. The bread and wine, on silver trays borne by Dylar and the elders, was set at the foot of the Throne, and after prayer, and music sweet as any heard on earth, the people made their communion as the sun went down, having fasted all day since sunrise.
When it was over, Ion walked to the Arcade with Tacita.
“If only Iona were here!” she said. “And now we are to lose you also. Truly, our joy is not without a cloud.”
“What joy is cloudless longer than a hour?” the boy exclaimed. “For me, it is now hard to go. Only the thought that my sister is there attracts me. You were right, Lady! At the pointof leaving San Salvador, each little stone of it becomes precious to me.”
“Do not forget that love, dear Ion!” said Tacita. “And remember, too, that you have left behind you something tenderer than stones.”
“Dylar will bring you to England,” he said. “I imagine myself running to meet you; and that comforts me. I cried so when Iona went. I was like a baby. She made me almost laugh describing our next meeting. She would appear to me in a London street. She would be dressed in those fashions we laugh so at. I must not speak to her. If I should speak, she would call a policeman. I told her that I would run and kiss her in the street if I had to go to prison for it. How glad I shall be!”
He wiped his eyes.
The next morning all the people, all in white, a white wreath round the city, went with their lilies to the King, till they were piled, a fragrant drift, up to the very gold, and the lamps shone through them like stars through drifted snow.
All came as Dylar had said, and Tacita was betrothed to him before God and his people, the lights shining on them through the open portals which they reëntered then, but only with a few chosen ones, to repeat their vows before the Throne.
The people waiting outside strowed the way with flowers; and Dylar led his betrothed to her own door, and left her there. There was music in the afternoon, and at twilight the sun-dance in the Square.
At last the bride-elect was alone in her chamber, all the lights of the town extinguished. The shadows were soothing after the excitement of the day, and she was glad to be alone. She had refused to take a candle, and had even blown out the little watch-light. Yet sleep was impossible, though she felt the languor of fatigue. A tender melancholy oppressed her heart. Never had she so loved Dylar as at that moment. To be able to dream over his looks and words had been almost more pleasant than to be with him; for, gentle as he was, there was something in his impressive quiet and almost constant seriousness which made her sometimes fear lest she should seem to trifle. But now she longed for his presence.
“If I could see him but a moment!”
She watched a glow-worm coming up her balcony, its clear light showing the color and grain of the stone, itself unseen.
How lovely had been her betrothal! She went over it again in fancy, catching her breath again as when, her guard of matrons parting to disclose her, she had walked out before the whole town to place her hand in Dylar’s, and heard the simultaneous “Ah!” of the whole crowd set the deep silence rustling. “Why had he not come one step to meet her? Her eyes were downcast after the flashing glance that met her own when he had called her forth. She had not looked once in his face; and it had seemed to her that, had there been one step more, she could not have taken it, but must havefallen at his feet. True, his hands, both tremulous, had gathered hers most tenderly; but why had he not taken at least one step? Could it have been coldness that kept him fixed to that square stone he stood on? It was a smooth gray stone with little silvery specks in it, and a larger spot at one corner. Dylar’s right foot was a little advanced to that spot, a neat foot in a black shoe with a silver buckle, and the edge of his long white robe, open over the shorter tunic, just touched the instep. She had not raised her eyes above that white hem and the border of her own veil.
“Oh, why is he not here for one moment!”
She recollected Italian lovers. There were young men in the provinces who, late on the night before their marriage, went to scatter flowers from the door of their beloved one to the church door; and rude people even who went abroad at early morning would step carefully not to disturb a blossom dropped there for her feet to pass over. And then, the stolen interviews, the whispered words, the sly hand-pressure!
Ah! Dylar would never love in that way. Perhaps he had no ardor of feeling toward her. And yet—and yet—
She smiled, remembering.
There was the sound of a step below, and some one stopped underneath her window. Her heart gave a bound, half joy and half fright, and she ran to lean over the railing. No; it was not Dylar.
“I am the college porter,” said a voice below.“I bring you a note. Drop me a ball of cord, and I will send it up.”
She flew to find the cord, dropped it, holding an end, and in a minute held the note in her hand.
“I will come back in fifteen minutes to see if there is any answer,” the man said. “The prince, my Lady’s betrothed, told me to wait.”
After all, it was better so. His presence would have agitated her. Besides, he was obeying the rules of the place.
But the light to read her letter by! For the first time in her life, it seemed, she had no light at hand, and this of all times in her life when most it was needed. Neither was there a match in her chamber, nor match nor candle in the ante-room, nor in the dining-room. “Fool that I was!” she cried desperately, and ran to the balcony again. The porter would be sure to have a taper with him.
She spoke; but there was no reply. The man had gone away.
There was no reply from him; but was this a reply, this little lambent shining at her hand? The glow-worm she had seen was on the rail. As it lightened, a spot of light like sunshine lit the stone.
Tacita in breathless haste brought a large sheet of card-board and set it in the blessed little creature’s path; and when she had enticed it, carried the sheet to her table, cut the silken thread that bound her letter, and slipped the page alongtoward the spot of light that, ceasing for a while, began again.
Turning the paper cautiously, her heart palpitating, her lips parted with quick breaths, she read her letter, word by word, till the whole message was deciphered.
“I cannot sleep nor rest for thinking of you,” he wrote. “I have to put a strong force on myself not to go and speak from under your window. I am drawn by chains. I have a thousand words of love to say to you. How can I wait a week to say them! I have been whispering them across the dark to you. How you came to me to-day, my own! I know just how many steps you took, and I shall set a white stone in place of the gray one where you stopped.
Dylar.”
Dylar.”
Dylar.”
Dylar.”
She found pencil and paper, and aided by the same fitful lamp wrote her answer.
“My Love, like you I could not sleep nor rest. You have made me happy. I have only a glow-worm to read and write by. Sleep now, and love your
Tacita.”
Tacita.”
Tacita.”
Tacita.”
The man came, and she gave him her note; then, finding her love’s lamp-bearer, she set it carefully on the railing of the balcony.
“Dearer than Sirius, or the moon, good-night!” she said.
The marriage differed but little from the betrothal. It was the only marriage possible in San Salvador, a solemn pledge of mutual fidelity made in the presence of God and of the people. Dylarcame to the Arcade for his bride, and led her over the flower-strown path to the Basilica, which they were the first to enter.
It was a white day, all being dressed as on the Monday before, except the bride, who was in rose-color, robe and veil, and the bridegroom, who wore dark blue.
That afternoon they set out for the castle, going through the Pines.
The preparations at the Olives were not less joyous. It was long since a Dylar had brought a bride home to them; and they looked on Tacita, with her white and golden beauty, as an angel.
For a time the bride and bridegroom lived only for each other. They had all their past lives to bring in and consecrate by connecting it with the new. It seemed to them that every incident in those lives had been especially designed to bring them together.
Then, after a fortnight, they returned as they had come, and walked over flowers to their new abode, to finish which half San Salvador had been like a beehive while they were gone.
The two new rooms were noble and picturesque, the difficulties of approach had been cleared away, and the background of the college-buildings gave a palatial air to their modest home. Whatever defects of newness there were were covered artfully, and the whole was made a bower of beauty.
Then began their quiet home-life, and the brief stir of change subsided to the calm of a higher level.
The week after their return Elena was to go out. A dozen little children had been sent out to different houses, and she would gather and take them to their new homes. A day or two later, twenty young men, Ion among them, would go.