CHAPTER XXV.
They were gone; and San Salvador resumed its usual life, too happy to have a history. A messenger went out and a messenger came in once a month, and Dylar held in his hand the threads of all their delicate far-stretching web.
Iona before going had obtained his approval of some of her plans, which were in fact his own, and the first messenger from her went directly to the Olives, where he bought a large tract of land.
“Do not seek now to preserve a compact territory,” she said. “You may find yourself hemmed in. Buy some of the rising land southward along the river, and let the next purchase connect it with the Olives. Let that connection be made as soon as possible.”
“Iona has force and foresight,” Dylar said. “It is well. I sympathize with her impatience. But I know my duty to be more one of conservation than of enterprise.”
After leaving his wife for a week, which he spent at the castle, “I have bought land all along the river for two miles,” he told her; “and our friend has bought a tract crossing mine, but not joining it. It is sand and stones; but planted first with canes, can be coaxed to something better. Wateris going to be as important a question with us as it was with the Israelites. I thought of them as I walked over my parched domain, and it occurred to me as never before, that a spring of water is one of the most beautiful things on earth, to the mind as well as the eyes.”
“I am glad that you have gratified Iona’s first expressed wish,” his wife said. “Naturally, the first wind of the world in her face fanned the idea to a flame. She is now occupying herself with other thoughts.”
Iona was occupied with other thoughts.
Let us take two or three glimpses of her through a clairvoyant’s mind.
It is a wretched-looking street in an old city. A lady and a policeman stand on the sidewalk at an open door, inside which a stair goes up darkly.
Said the man:—
“You had better let me go up with you, lady. She’s always furious when she is just out of jail. We find it best to let her alone for a while.”
“I would rather go up alone,” the lady said. “Is the stair safe?”
“There’s no one else will touch you,” said the policeman. “It is the room at the head of the last stair. I will stay round till you come down. But you must be careful. She doesn’t like visitors, especially missionaries.”
The lady went upstairs. There were three dirty, discolored flights. She tapped once and again at the door of the attic chamber; but there was no response. She opened the door.
There was a miserable room where everything seemed to be dirt-colored. In one corner was a bed on the floor. There was not a thread of white about it. From some rolled-up garments that answered for a pillow looked out a wild face. The dark hair was tangled, the face hollow, dark circles surrounded the eyes. “What do you want?” came roughly from the creature as the door softly opened.
“Let me come in, please!” said a quiet voice. “I have knocked twice.”
“What do you want?” the voice repeated yet more roughly.
The lady came in and closed the door behind her. She stood a moment, hesitating. Then, hesitating still, approached the bed, step by step, saluted again fiercely by a repetition of the question, “What do you want?” the woman rising on one elbow as she spoke.
The visitor reached the side of the pallet. She was trembling, but not with fear. She fell on her knees, uttering a long tremulous “Oh!” and leaning forward, clasped the squalid creature in her arms, and kissed her on the cheek.
The woman tried to push her away. “How dare you!” she exclaimed, gasping with astonishment. “Do you know what I am? How dare you touch me? I am just out of jail!”
“You shall not go there again, poor soul!” the lady said, still embracing her. “Tell me how it came about. Was not your mother kind to you when you were a child?”
The woman looked dazed. “My mother!” she said. “She used to beat me. She liked my brother best.”
“Ah!” said Iona.
Another scene. It is a fine boudoir in a city in the New World. A coquettishly dressed young woman reclines on a couch. Before her, seated in a low chair and leaning toward her, gazing at her, fascinated, is a young man scarcely more than half her age. At the foot of the couch is a tall brasier of wrought brass from which rises a thread of incense-smoke. Heavy curtains half swathe two long windows opening on to a veranda that extends to the long windows of an adjoining drawing-room. In one of these windows, nearly hidden by the curtain, sits another lady with a bonnet on. She looks intently out into the street, as if watching some one, or waiting for some one. The curtain gathered before her head and shoulders, leaves uncovered a fold of a skirt of dark gray, and a silver chatelaine-bag.
“I hope that you will conclude to choose journalism,” said the lady on the lounge, continuing a conversation. “It so often leads to authorship. And I have set my heart on your being a famous poet.”
“I, madam!” exclaimed the young man, blushing. “I never attempted to write poetry. It is true that when with you I become aware of some mysterious music in the universe which I know not how to express.”
The lady smiled and made a quick, warning signal to remind him of the other occupant of the boudoir.
“I am, then, stirring your ambition,” she said. “I have done more. I have spoken of you to a friend of mine who is connected with a popular magazine. That would allow you leisure to cultivate your beautiful imagination.”
“How kind you are!” her visitor exclaimed. “But my principal depends on me; and I think that I can be useful to him.”
The lady made a pettish movement.
“He can get others to do his humdrum work. I heard him speak once, and did not like him. They call him ‘broad.’ Oh, yes! he is very broad. He reminds me of one of my school-lessons in natural philosophy. The book said that a single grain of gold may be hammered out to cover—I have forgotten how many hundreds of square inches. Not that I mean to call your principal a man of gold, though. Yes, he is broad, very broad. But he is, oh, so very thin!”
The young man looked grave. “I am pained that you do not esteem him. Perhaps you do not quite understand his character.”
“Now, you,” said the lady, fixing her eyes on his, “you seem to me to have great depth of feeling and profound convictions.”
There was an abrupt rustling sound at the window. The lady there had risen and stepped out into the veranda. They could hear her go to the drawing-room window and enter.
“She is so much at her ease!” said the lady of the lounge. “She was recommended to me by a friend as a companion with whom I could keep up my French. We speak no other language to each other. But she does not act in the least like a dependent. I must really get rid of her.”
A servant opened the door to say that the carriage the gentleman expected had come.
“Must you go?” the lady exclaimed reproachfully.
“I promised to go the moment the carriage should come. I don’t know what it is for; but it is some business of importance. I am sorry to go. When may I come again?”
“To-morrow.” She held out her hand.
He took it in his, hesitated, bent to kiss the delicate fingers, blushed, and turned away.
She looked smilingly after him, bent her head as he turned and bowed lowly at the door, and when it closed, laughed softly to herself. “Beautiful boy!” she murmured. “It is too amusing. He is as fresh as a rose in its first dawn and as fiery as Pegasus.”
The young man entered hastily the close carriage at the step before perceiving that a lady sat there. She was thickly veiled.
“I beg your pardon!” he began.
Without taking any notice of him, she leaned quickly, shut the door with a snap and pulled the curtain down, and left a beautiful ringless, gloveless hand resting advanced on her knee. Helooked at the hand, and his lips parted breathlessly. He tried in vain to see the face through that thick veil.
The lady pushed the mantle away from her shoulders and arms, so that her form was revealed.
The young man made a start forward, then recoiled; for, hanging down the gray folds of the lady’s skirt was the silver chatelaine-bag he had seen in the boudoir. What did her companion want of him?
The lady flung her veil aside.
“Oh, Iona!” he cried, and fell into his sister’s embrace.
After a moment she put him back, looking at him reproachfully.
“Oh, Ion, so soon in trouble! I heard of you in the hands of a Delilah, and I left everything. I obtained the place which would enable me to know all—her guile and your infatuation. She amuses herself with you. She has said to me that you are in love with her, and do not know it. Her husband is angry, and people talk. So soon! So soon! Oh, Ion!”
“She said it!” he stammered, becoming pale.
“She said it to me laughing. She described you gazing at her. She laughs at your innocence.”
The boy shuddered. “I will never see her again!”
Again the clairvoyant.
It is a bleak November day in a city of theNorth. Pedestrians hurry along, drawing their wrappings about them. Standing close to the walls of a church in one of the busiest streets, an old man tries to shelter himself from the wind. He is thin and pale and poorly clad, but he has the air of a gentleman, though an humble one. There is delicacy and amiability in his face; his fine thin hair, clouded with white, is smoothly combed, and his cotton collar is white. On his left arm hangs a small covered basket, and his right hand holds a pink wax rose slightly extended to the passers-by, with a patient half smile ready for any possible purchaser.
For a week he had stood there every day, cold, weary and tremulous with suspense, and no one had even given him a second glance. But that he did not know, for he was too timid to look any one in the face.
The afternoon waned. People were going to their homes; but the old man still stood there holding out the pink wax rose. Perhaps the most pitiful thing about him was that what he offered was so worthless, and he did not know it. Some, glancing as they passed, had, in fact, laughed at his flower and him.
At length a lady, walking down the other side of the street, caught a glimpse of him. She stopped and looked back, then crossed over and passed him slowly by, giving a sidelong, searching look into his face. Having passed, she turned and came back again.
“Have you flowers in the basket also, sir?” she courteously asked.
He started, and blushed with surprise and agitation.
“Yes,” he said, and opened the little basket with cold and shaking fingers, displaying his pitiful store.
“What is your price for them all?” the lady asked.
He hesitated, still trembling. “If you would kindly tell me what you think they are worth,” he said. “I do not know. My daughter made them when she went to school.”
“Does she make them now?” the lady asked, taking both rose and basket from his hands.
A look of woe replaced his troubled smile. “She is dead!” he said with a faint moan.
“Have you other children?” was the next question.
“No. My daughter left a little girl who lives with us, my wife and me.”
“Will you be satisfied with this?” the lady asked, and gave a larger sum than the old man had dreamed of asking. “If you think they are worth more, please tell me so.”
“I didn’t expect so much,” he said. “It was my child’s hands that gave them their value to me.”
Tears ran down his cheeks. He tried to restrain them, and to hide that he must wipe them with his sleeve.
The lady slipped a folded handkerchief into his hand. “Farewell, and take comfort,” she said hastily. “God will provide.”
She turned to a man who had followed, and paused near her.
“Find out who he is, what he is, and where he lives, and tell me as soon as possible,” she said in a low voice.
The same evening, in a suburb of the city: a little unpainted cottage, black with age, set on a raw clay bank. A railroad has undermined the bank and carried away the turf.
A faint light showed through one window. In a room with a bed in one corner an elderly woman was making tea at a small open fire of sticks. In the adjoining kitchen Boreas reigned supreme. All the warmth that they could have was gathered in this room, where the child also would sleep on an old lounge.
She sat in the corner of the chimney now, wistfully watching the preparations for supper.
In the other corner sat her grandfather. He had taken a blanket from the bed and wrapped it round him. He was shivering.
“It was hard to part with the flowers,” the man was saying. “They were all that we have left of her! But to a person like that,—a lady, a Christian, an angel!—it seemed like giving them to a friend who will keep them more safely than we can.” He choked, and wiped his eyes.
“Well,” said the wife drearily; “we must economizethe money she gave you for them. We have nothing else to sell.”
They were silent, trying not to think, and daring not to speak. They had once been in comfortable circumstances; and now beggary stared them in the face, and the horror of the almshouse loomed before them, not for themselves alone, but for the child. If they found a home for her, she might not be happy there; and they would see her no more.
Suddenly the old man burst out crying. “I can’t stand it!” he sobbed. “I can’t stand it! I almost wish I hadn’t seen the lady. I was growing hardened. I was forgetting that any one had ever addressed me as a gentleman. It was becoming an ugly dream to me, all this downfall! And she has waked me up!” He sobbed aloud.
“Don’t! Don’t!” said the woman. “And there is some one knocking. Nellie, take the candle, and go to the door.”
The old man got up, throwing the blanket from his shoulders; and the two stood in darkness, holding their breath.
There was a murmur of voices at the door, and the candle came shining into the room again, and steps were heard, both light, as if two children were about to enter.
Then a lady appeared on the threshold, looking in eagerly with bright eyes.
“Ah, ’tis you, sir!” she said. “I am sure that you expected me. I am so glad to have found you! Your troubles are all over!”
One more glimpse through space.
A train of cars is going through the Alps, from Lugano southward. Four persons occupy one of the easy first-class compartments. There are two talkative ladies in the back seat who seem quite willing to dazzle the gentleman sitting opposite them. He has an interesting face, an athletic frame, and gray eyes that are at once enthusiastic and laughing. When serious, the face is very serious, and the attitude changes a little, assuming more dignity. He is evidently enchanted with the scene, for he smiles faintly when lifting his eyes to the snowy heights with their cascades, or leaning close to the window to see the green waters below dashed into foam among the rocks.
Once he glanced at the ladies before him as if for sympathy, but perceiving none, restrained some expression of admiration which he had seemed about to utter.
More than once he glanced at a lady who sat in the farthest corner of the compartment, looking out in the opposite direction. She had a somewhat dusky oval face, dark eyes with long lashes, and black hair heavy about the forehead. She looked like a grand lady, though she was traveling alone. She wore a simple costume of a dark dull purple and a full scarf of yellow-tinted lace loosely tied around her neck.
She took no notice of her traveling companions. The wild grandeur of the scene was reflected in her uplifted eyes, and woke an occasional sparkle inthem; but she seemed not strange to the mountains.
Once, when the rock wall shut close to her side of the carriage, she turned toward the other side, just skimming the three strangers with a glance. At that moment their progress unrolled an exquisite mountain picture, and the gentleman turning toward her quickly, they exchanged an involuntary smile.
“I never was so enamored of the Alps as some people are,” said one of the other ladies to her companion. She had caught this sign of sympathy. “They are so theatrical.”
Her friend laughed. “You remind me,” she replied, “of the man who said that there was a good deal of human nature in God.”
The stranger lady started.
“Madam!” she exclaimed.
The one who had spoken shrugged her shoulders.
The gentleman changed his seat for one opposite the stranger.
“Madam,” he said, removing his hat, “if you will not allow me the liberty of expressing to you the delight I have in these mountains, I shall be forced to soliloquize. I find it impossible to contain myself.”
“Speak freely, sir!” she said with a pleasant look, but some stateliness. “If I were not a daughter of the mountains, I think this scene would force me to speak, if I had to soliloquize.”
“I have never been here before,” the gentleman said. “I had not known that Mother Earth couldbe so beautiful, so eloquent. Does she not speak? Does she not sing? Who will interpret to us her language, her messages?”
“Once upon a time,” the lady said, “a saintly ruler showed his people a grain of gold that had been dug out of a wild rough place in the earth; and he told them that where he found it the earth had given him a message for them. It was this:
“‘Dig for your gold, my children! says Earth, your Mother. Deep in your hearts it lies hidden.’”
The gentleman looked out of the window in silence for awhile. Then he opened a hand-bag that lay on the seat by his side, and wrote a few words in a note-book there. The book was a little red morocco one, with the name Ludwig von Ritter in gilt letters on the cover.
They spoke of the scenery as they went on, and presently approached a station.
“I shall in future take my recreation in traveling,” the gentleman said. “I have heretofore taken it in the social pleasures of Paris or Vienna. One spends time very gayly in either of those capitals.”
The lady was silent a moment, then murmured as if to herself:
“E poi?”
He looked at her with a smile. “Why, then,” he said, “it is true that one sometimes has a headache, and is willing to resume one’s duties.”
The train drew up. The lady called a porter, and, with a courteous but distant salutation to the gentleman, departed.