CHAPTER XXVIII.
Pierre was to go to the station the next morning to meet Elena; and in consultation with his advisers it was decided that he should set out early and alone. He could then warn her of the presence of these strangers. A considerable quantity of provisions would come by the same train; but as a part of them were to be left at the Pines, they would be brought later in the day.
The strangers could therefore go at any hour they might choose, needing no guide, and leave the donkeys at the station.
The gentlemen set out as soon as they had eaten their breakfast, and half way to the Pines met Pierre coming back on foot.
He had been taken sick on the way, he said, and a friend whom he had fortunately encountered would go to the station for him. It was a sickness he sometimes had, and it would last him several days. He declined their offer to return with him; and they took leave of each other, and went on their separate ways. But Pierre had not gone many steps farther before doubts began to assail him.
“I might have waited there till these men had gone by,” he thought.
He turned the situation over in his mind.
Alexander and his wife were the guardians of the week. There was no woman in San Salvador better able to take care of the house than Alexander’s wife. She knew every signal, was prompt and courageous. Above all, she would do exactly as she was ordered to do if the skies should fall on her for it. And both he and her husband had charged her not to leave her signal-post a minute, and to give instant notice to San Salvador of anything that might happen.
“I wish I had asked if the door was unbarred,” he thought uneasily. It occurred to him that the men inside would have left San Salvador early in the morning, before it was known that these strangers were at the Olives. Alexander and his wife had not known it till he told them that morning. “When he passed the evening before, stopping purposely that they might observe well his companions, they had been occupied in receiving orders from San Salvador, and had not known that he was not alone.
He grew more uneasy every moment.
“Of course they wouldn’t unbar the door till it was needed,” he muttered. “And of course Alexander spoke to them before he started. But I might have waited.”
In fact, Alexander had called to the men; but they were out of sight and hearing. They had retired to a more convenient place to wait, knowing that they would not be needed for several hours.
“I wish that I had waited!” Pierre repeated over and over. “I could have waited.”
He recollected stories of men who had been faithful even to death to interests committed to their charge; and when had greater interests been at stake than this of the secret of San Salvador!
Texts of gold wrote themselves in the air all about him, and on the dark earth under his feet.
“He that endureth to the end shall be saved.”
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
“Watch and pray.”
The guardianship of the house in the Pines was in the hands of a hundred men, each of whom served a week at a time, with any one whom he might choose as a companion. Dylar himself took his turn. The rules were strict. Pierre remembered them when it was too late.
When the three travelers reached the house, therefore, there was a woman alone on guard, with strict orders to signal everything, but on no account to allow herself to be seen nor heard; and the hidden door was unbarred, and the torrent that shut the road to San Salvador was turned away.
They alighted and tied their donkeys to a post, where they could drink or browse at will.
“My opinion,” said the viscomte, “is that this old building was not always so innocent as it probably is now. It was perhaps a hiding-place for plunder or prisoners, used by the wicked old family which preceded the Dylars at the castle.”
They hung their basket of luncheon to a pine-branch,set their bottle of wine in the running water, and looked about them. To men accustomed to the luxuries of civilization, and for a time, at least, weary of them, there was something delightful in this superb solitude of rock and tree, this silence stirred only by the sweetest and most delicate sounds of nature. It seemed but a day since a pushing crowd had surrounded them, the paving-stones of a city had been beneath their feet, and the Gleipnir cord of social etiquette had bound them; and to-morrow again all that world would possess them, and this scene become as a fairy dream in their memories.
They wandered about a while under the trees, explored a few rods of the northward road, and came back to eat their luncheon, sitting on the moss and pine-needles.
The Frenchman looked up at the beetling rock that overtopped the house before them. “I have a vision,” he said. “I am clairvoyant. I see through the rock yonder into a long succession of low caves where you must walk stooping. At the entrance of these caves sits ‘une blanche aux yeux noirs,’ and all the floor is strewn with ingots of pure gold. As you look along the windings for miles, that gold lights the place up like a fire.”
“I also am clairvoyant,” said the Italian. “I see beyond those mountains a happy country where ambition never thwarts true love, and partings are unknown. It is the promised land of the heart.”
“I see farther yet,” said the German. “Beneaththat cliff is your El Dorado. Beside it is your Love’s paradise. But farther yet, hemmed in by precipices, is a great black castle of which Castle Dylar is but an offshoot. There dwells a princess held in bonds by a fierce giant. He wishes to marry her, would give her all the gold you see, and make her queen over your paradise; and she will not. If I could pass this wall, if I could thread the labyrinth of gorges leading to that castle, I should find her there, dark and splendid and stately. She is as free and fierce as an Arab. She is as tender as a dove. She looks like a goddess. Her name is—is—Io.”
They ate their luncheon in the green fragrant shadows. The viscomte went into the house while the other two smoked their cigarettes, dreaming with half-closed eyes, till they were startled by an excited call from the house: “Come here! Come!”
They hastened to obey.
“I have found a secret door!” said the Frenchman’s voice from under the stair. “It is surely a door! The wall moves. See! it retreats an inch or two without displacing a stone. Let us get sticks and pry it open. We are on the eve of a discovery!”