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. Water is 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. He looked 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 the North. 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 economize the 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
in them; 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 could be 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.