CHAPTER XXIX.
Meantime, San Salvador, unconscious of danger, was all joyful expectation. The coming home of Elena was always a holiday for them.
True, Iona was to go out again the next day; but Iona had never taken the hold on their familiar life that Elena had always maintained. Besides, they had this pleasure connected with her going, that she would take messages to their friends. Many were busy preparing letters and little gifts.
Dylar was busiest of all. He had gone up to his cottage, which might still be called his study, to prepare letters of direction, and plans which would be supplemented by Iona’s word.
In the little terrace of their house sat Tacita and Iona with the child.
“Spare yourself a little for our sakes,” the princess was saying.
“Never fear, my princess!” said Iona with a smile. “I have a presentiment that I shall come back here at last to die. It is the only thing that I ask for myself. If I should not be so happy, I know that you will bring my body back. It is pleasant to think of lying asleep in our great quiet dormitory when one can work no longer.”
“The whole earth should not hide you from us, nor keep you back!” was the fervent reply.
“Inaction, or even moderate action, is impossible with the vision that I have of the world,” Iona went on. “You think that you know it. Ah, you do not know a thousandth part! You were safe in your family, guarded and protected. What if you had been poor and friendless? I tell you that to such human society is sometimes a society of wolves and tigers. Nor is an active and conscious malignity necessary. Narrow sympathies, self-complacent egotism and conventional slavery suffice. Why, who shall say that a tiger may not rend a man, or a child, with an approving conscience, if conscience he have!
“Life has become like a cane-brake duel, where two men enter, each from an opposite side, creeping and searching for each other with the dagger-hand drawn back, and the blade up-pointed for thestoccata. Ah! Let us not think of it. For the work needed to-day, the soul must not stop to think, but must march straight on in the name of God. I will think of my coming back and of my rest at last. It is sweet. Carry me up at sunrise, and give me a rose in my hand. I would that I could have a palm. But a rose is the flower of love; and whether it has seemed so, or not, I have loved so much! I have loved so much!”
She bent, and softly kissed the sleeping infant; and rising to go away, glanced back toward the unseen cemetery.
As she looked, a swift change passed over her face, a keen present interest took the place of herforward-looking. Her raised brows fell and were drawn together. She was facing the signal-station connected with the Pines, and it changed as she looked. Already they knew by signals from the castle that three strangers had passed the night at the Olives, that a messenger was coming in to give them details, that Pierre was on his way to the station to meet Elena, and that the strangers had also gone. From the Pines they knew that all was prepared for Elena’s entrance.
“What does this mean?” said Iona. “Can it be that Alexander’s wife is alone at the Pines! Tacita, will you call Dylar?”
Tacita went to the gallery from which she could see her husband’s cottage, and him sitting at a table covered with papers inside the open door, and she blew a trilling note on a silver whistle she carried in her girdle.
He looked up quickly, and came out. It was the first time she had ever called him down.
She waved her hand toward the signal-station, and he understood, and turned that way. Another signal had been added.
“Yes,” said Iona. “Pierre has returned home, and Alexander gone to the station, against the rules. Pierre has sometimes severe attacks of sickness, and he feels them coming on. But why did not they call one of the men from inside, and send him to the station?”
She was talking to herself. Tacita glanced up the hill, and saw Dylar standing on his terracewatching intently the signals. They changed again. The strangers were at the Pines, and the men from San Salvador were not there.
Without a word, Iona hastened down and went to the Arcade. Half way across the town she turned to look again. The whole situation was signaled now. The torrent was off, the door unbarred, the men out of sight and hearing, and three strangers were at the Pines.
“Impossible!” she exclaimed, and began to run.
When Dylar reached his house and read the signals, which had been hidden from him as he came down, he looked across and saw Iona coming out on to the mountain path above the Arcade. This road ran for half a mile along the rock in sight of the town. Then it turned backward and out of sight, joining the road from the Pines, and that lower one by which Tacita had come to San Salvador. Near this junction of the roads was the water-gate by which the torrent was turned.
“Impossible!” Dylar also had exclaimed on reading the signals. To escape for almost three hundred years, and fall to-day! So many accidents and incidents, so many items of neglect coinciding to form a crime and a supreme calamity, were incredible! It was impossible that accident could do so much. A vision of treachery rose before his mind.
He ran down to the town where people were gathering on the housetops and in the streets. He called for two of the swiftest runners and climbersto follow Iona to the water-gate; and they sprang out like greyhounds. It was useless for him to go. There was nothing to be done but turn the torrent on again. He stood silent and white, watching with a stern face the signals, and glancing across the town to the mountain path along which moved Iona’s flying feet.
The people gathered about him; but no one spoke. A vague alarm, mingled with, or alternating with incredulity, showed in every face.
The gate was turned by a beam acting as windlass, and two men were always sent to turn it on at the Pines. It was less difficult than to turn it off; for when the beam was once started, and the water got a wedge in, it carried the gate round of itself.
Iona remembered this as she fled along. She had not seen the men who were sent to follow her. They had taken the inner road, which was a little shorter.
From all the road she followed and from the water-gate, the signals were visible; and running breathlessly, she yet kept them in view.
They changed.
The strangers were searching the house!
They changed. The door was discovered!
Even at that distance it seemed to Iona that she heard a sharp outcry rise from the town as that signal slid out, the first time that it had ever been run out in San Salvador.
Their secret was gone!
But her hope was not gone. In ten minutes she would be at the gate; and it must turn for her. To have discovered the door was not infallibly to open it; or, opening it, there must be some delay.
Moreover, the cave was prepared to detain the strangers a few minutes, at least.
And then an awful question presented itself to her mind. Should she turn the gate if the strangers were on the bridge? What were the lives of three intruders to the existence of San Salvador! An insinuating whisper made itself heard in her heart: “Run and turn the gate. You need not look at the signal!”
It was the voice of the world, the voice of the serpent.
“A l’aide, mon Dieu!” she panted. “I will do no evil. If we fall, we fall!”
Was it the heavenly voice once heard, or but an echo of it in her memory, which now seemed repeating those words of miracle:Come unto me—thewell donethat had accepted and rewarded her plea for help! Her fleet feet skimmed the mountain path, her panting lungs drew in the mountain air; but her mind saw once more the golden dusk of the Basilica, the rich molten coloring of the walls, the words of God sparkling out here and there in letters of gold, the Throne and the tiara; and her soul felt the coming of that Presence which had filled the sacred cloister. Half unconscious of her body, she seemed to be borne along by wings set in her fluttering temples.
Then the path turned, and the water-gate was before her. One swift glance over her shoulder told that the door was not yet open.
Iona ran to the beam, and leaning on it, pushed with all her strength. It did not stir. As she leaned, she saw the signal-station on the opposite mountains. It had not changed. The door was discovered; efforts had been made to open it; but it was not open.
With a frantic effort she pushed. The beam trembled, but did not move.
“A l’aide, mon Roi!” she whispered, and threw her whole being against the beam, while her ears rang, and her temples ached with the strain.
It started, moved; the water caught the gate. Iona was carried along, her glazing eyes fixed on the signal.
The course of the beam ended against a mossy bank. When it stopped, Iona’s failing form rested as if kneeling on the moss, her arms on the beam, her cheek resting on the moss above it. And over her lips, and over the wood, the moss, and the rock flowed a stream of bright red blood.
Her head drooped slowly, and she fell asleep!
So intense had been that flash and strain of soul out through the flesh, it might be said that the cry she had uttered was not more on earth than in heaven, as she sank and rose upon its threshold, having earned her palm!