Early in the autumn Iona was to go out into the world, having instructed
Tacita thoroughly and lovingly in all her work, and seen with what a
modest dignity the girl she had thought almost childish could preside in
her place.
She was in haste to go, but solely from a conviction that she was needed
elsewhere.
“Wherever I am not absolutely needed, I am lost,” she said. “My life
here is, and has been for a long time, that of a Sybarite. I am
terrified when I think of a longer waste.”
“Stay till after the vintage,” they all urged her.
“I will stay on one condition,” she said to Dylar. “And that is that I
may plan, and help to prepare a house for you and your bride. Once
outside, I may not be able to come back and see you married; and it
would be cruel if I could have no part.”
“But, Iona, Tacita has not promised to marry me,” Dylar said, smiling.
“However, do as you please. May I ask what your plan is?”
She pointed to the college. As we have said, the building was large and
irregular, crowning a mass of rock that broke roughly toward the town,
and fell sheer on the mountain side, the narrow space spanned by a
bridge from the college gate to the Ring. A small part of the structure
toward the town was detached, a point of rock rising sharply between it
and the main building. The only mode of communication between the two
was by means of a stair at either side to a mirador built on the top of
this point of rock, and a narrow gallery hung over the steepest fall of
the rock. This semi-detached portion, containing but four rooms, was
Dylar’s private apartment.
“With two large rooms in addition,” Iona said, “that would make you a
charming apartment. There is yet space enough on the rock if we fill up
that narrow interstice with masonry solid from the plain. The two rooms
will be large, one a few steps higher than the other. They will be very
stately, with the steps and curtain quite across one end. Where the
stone breaks to right and left, a stair can start, double at the top,
and meeting over an arch midway, to separate again below. There will be
space also for a small terrace outside the door. It can be made
something ideal. You use but two of the four rooms now. The little
museum in the other two can be removed to the college. There is plenty
of room. This work should be begun at once, masonry takes so long to dry
well. But as your living-rooms would be the old ones, you need not put
off your marriage till it is quite dry. There is no time to be lost.”
“No one plans like you,” Dylar said. “It will be charming. Do as you
please. I will see if I can find a bride for your pretty house.”
He took his way to the library, where he had seen Tacita enter. She was
there alone, lighting up a shadowed corner with her fair face and golden
hair.
It was a very studious face at that moment. Her arms stretched out at
either side of a large volume, she read attentively. Other books were
piled at right and left. Now and then she put her hand to her forehead,
then made a note on a long strip of paper, writing with a serious
carefulness.
She was preparing a lecture on history for the youngest class of girls
in that study.
“It must be to the great complex subject what a globe with the great
circles only is to the whole geography of the earth. It must be as
though, on that globe with its few lines, you should draw at one point a
little black circumflex, and say: ‘Here is found the asp of the Nile.
The monarchs wore it in jewels on their diadem. One laid it alive on her
breast, and died. And here, where this black line goes past, and never
stops, but always returns, the Wise Men of the East found the Infant
Christ. And here grow roses, oh, such roses! in full fields, to make the
precious attar of. And here grows the pink coral, like that coral rose
Iona wears. No; the lesson must not be dry, nor yet too rich. It must
make them wish for more. Only a few sparse sweetnesses. O land of
France, what noblest, fairest deed for children to hear was ever done on
your soil since you were France?’”
So the young student was thinking, deep buried in her study, when she
heard a voice say:—
“O Minerva, may I come in? Is there a gorgon on your shield of folios?”
She looked up with a glad welcome. “Not for you. You are come in good
time, perhaps, to check my wild ambition. Do you know, prince, that I
aspire to become an historian?”
“Then I come indeed in good time,” he said. “For it is a history which I
wish you to write.”
She looked inquiringly; but he did not meet her glance.
“Will you come out to the terrace?” he said, indicating the one near
them toward the college.
And as they went, he said reproachfully: “You hide yourself from me. I
find you always surrounded. You seem to like me less and less every
day.”
Tacita’s lips parted. “Shall I tell him that I like him more and more?”
she thought. “No. Yet he must be satisfied.”
“I do not know what reply to make,” she said, somewhat breathlessly.
“Do you know what to think?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!”
“Would it pain me to know?”
“Oh, no!”
He smiled, even laughed a little; she had said, in fact, so much more
than she was aware.
“Look at the college,” he said. “Iona has a plan of a house there for
me.” He explained it. “She will remain till vintage time to see it well
started. Will you go there and live with me, Tacita, when it is done?”
“Yes!” she said quietly, her eyes on the college.
“Will you go next Easter?” he asked, after a pause.
“Yes!” she said again.
“God’s blessing on you!” he exclaimed fervently.
They stood a moment longer in silence.
Then: “Shall I go back to my writing?” asked Tacita, looking at Dylar
with an expression of entire contentment and confidence. And when he
answered her smile, and bowed assent, she left him there, to build up
his house with one swift flash of fancy, to bring his bride home
rose-veiled, to draw from her reluctant lips all that they now refused
to tell, to tear himself away presently with only a few gentle words,
and not even a pressure of the hand.
“You have made me very happy, my Tacita!” he said. “I leave you now only
because I must!”
In San Salvador engagements were very brief, as they could well be
between persons who had known each other from childhood; and whatever
friendly intimacy there might have been between them before, it ceased
in a great measure during that time. It might be said that courtship was
almost unknown; and between the betrothal and marriage the couple did
not meet alone. Tacita’s promise, therefore, remained a secret between
herself and Dylar.
And so the summer passed with no apparent change in their relations.
Autumn was always a stirring time in San Salvador. The whole town was
given up to the labors and pleasures of harvesting. Every one had some
task. Even the children were made useful. The vintage, as in all
grape-growing countries in times of peace, was a season of gayety, and
all its picturesque work, except the grape-gathering, was done in that
part of the outside road, or cornice, between the Arcade and the
kitchens. A crowd of children were seated here in groups on straw mats,
with awnings over them. Boys and men brought huge baskets of grapes
supported on poles over their shoulders. In the centre of each group of
six or seven was a large wooden tray heaped high with the fruit which
they picked from the stems into basins in their laps. Women, girls and
boys went about and gathered from these full basins into pails for the
wine presses. Dressed in the stained cotton tunics of former vintages,
their hands dyed a deep rose-color, the children chattered like magpies.
Even little lisping things, under the guidance of their elders, were
allowed to take a part in the business, or fancy that they did. Some of
the boys had taken a little two-years-old cupid and rubbed grape-skins
on his hands, face, legs and feet, till they were of a bright Tyrian
purple, and set a wreath of vine tendrils on his sunny hair; and he went
about from group to group vaguely smiling, not in the least
understanding the mirth which his appearance excited.
The boys capered about like goats when free from their burdens. One of
them ran to the Arcade, turning summersaults, walking on his hands,
running backward, went up the stairs, like a cat, and appeared in the
veranda, cap in hand.
Tacita was seated there by a little table, making notes of the harvest
as reports were brought her. The boy delivered his message like a
gentleman, bowed himself out, and became a monkey again.
Not far from the noisy grape-pickers, under another awning, were women
sorting nuts and olives. They suspended their work as Iona came down the
street and paused to speak to them. All looked up into her face with an
earnest and reverential gaze. They had not ceased to wonder at the
change in her, nor had they learned to define it; for while, in her
gentleness and simplicity of manner she was more like one of them, they
were yet conscious of a superiority which they had never before
recognized in her. It was as though a frost-lily should in a single
night be changed to a true lily, fragrant and still.
She spoke a few words to them, and then went up to the veranda to
Tacita.
“Stay with me a little while!” said Tacita eagerly, bringing her a
chair. “I think of you all the time, and cannot keep the tears out of my
eyes.”
Iona embraced her. “The same hand leads us both, dear. Do not grieve.
For me, I am in haste to go. You have yourself made me more eager with
your munificent gift.”
For Tacita, with Dylar’s approval, had given all her little fortune to
Iona to be disposed of “not in doing charity,” she said, “but in doing
justice.”
And Iona had replied: “Yes, justice! For though charity may move us to
act, that which we do of good is but a just restitution.”
“My heart is in anguish for the world’s poor,” she said now. “And not
for the beggar alone. I think of those who can indeed escape physical
starvation by constant labor, but whose souls starve in that weary round
that leaves them no leisure to look about the fair world in which they
exist like ants half buried in sand. I think of homeless men and women,
oh! and children, eating the bread of bitterness at the tables of the
coarse and insolent; of artistic souls cramped by some need that any one
of a thousand persons known to them could supply, could understand
without being told, if they had a spark of true human sympathy in their
hearts, but which they behold with the insensibility of stones. Your
fortune, my Tacita, will be a heaven’s dew to such. For your largess
will be given only to the silent, who ask not. I do not know the world
as well as many of our people do; but those who have had most experience
say that the almost universal motto acted on, if not confessed, is the
saying of Cain: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Now, I wish to have as my
motto that I am my brother’s keeper whenever and wherever one has need
of me. I will have nothing to do with agents nor organizations. I will
see the suffering face to face. Wherever I see the eyes of the Crucified
looking at me through a human face, there will I offer help. The King
shall send me to meet them.”
“There are those,” said Tacita, “who will affect anguish in order to
move you. They rob the real sufferer, and they create distrust and
hardness in the charitable.”
“I shall sometimes be deceived,” Iona said. “Who is not? Sovereigns are
deceived by their courtiers, husbands by their wives and wives by their
husbands, and friends deceive each other, and children deceive their
parents. I go with no romantic trustfulness, I assure you.”
The hour for her departure hastened to come.
On the last evening she went to the assembly, passed through all the
rooms, saying a few words, but none of farewell. Then she went to the
Basilica.
The rapture of her vigil had subsided; but the seal of it remained
stamped on her soul, never again to be overwhelmed in darkness. Doubt
and fear were gone forever, and she went on cheerful and assured, if not
always sensibly joyous.
It had seemed to her that on this last visit she should have a good deal
to say; but no words came. What she was doing and to do spoke for her.
She walked about, looking at the temple from different points, to
impress its features on her memory, and sat an hour before the throne in
quiet contemplation.
What her leave-taking was of that sacred place, we say not.
Early the next morning she was seen walking along the mountain path with
Ion at her side. At the last visible point of the path she turned,
stretched her arms out toward the town, then went her way.
Ion came back an hour later, his eyes swollen with weeping. “I shall see
her in the spring, in the spring, in the spring,” he kept repeating, to
comfort himself. And when Tacita came to meet him with both her hands
held out, “O Lady Tacita, I shall go out to her in the spring, in the
spring!” he said.