“Better still,” the Dictator said. “Now I may have your persuasion to offer him a crutch; or shall we say a rest?”
Both Sard and Margarita had been dazed by the doings of the morning. Sard, who had been cut, battered and bruised, was weary from fighting and in pain from his arm. He was not able to speak. He felt like one who had had an immense day’s work, which was now done and well done. Margarita was at his side; that was a happiness; his dream had come true; that was a marvel.
The carriages moved out into the light of the dawn through the white-blossomed thorn-tree avenue which led to Cachopos. The sun was just clear of the sea: the birds were going out and the flower-sellers coming in. Sard had Margarita at his side and the Dictator and a doctor opposite. The little white pennons of the lances of the escort fluttered like butterflies. Off Cachopos, a lofty English barque was coming in on the last of the breeze. She stole along like a ghost, white to the trucks, with a roll of brighter white at her lips which she seemed to stoop to drink. From the church of Santa Alba there came the exquisite pure sound of singing.
The carriages swung away from all this towards the palace, which shone above them among the forest. Behind it, far away, were the mountains, peak upon peak, some of them forested, some snowy; one, with a brow of crag, streaked with cataracts.
The Dictator pointed towards the sea, now shut from sight by many snowy branches. “That is shut from you now, Harker mio,” he said; “but when one door shuts another opens. Here is all this land waiting for you. To me, this land has only given work; to you, I see, it has already given all things; let me then add work to those.”
“When my arm is mended,” Sard said. “But your Excellency will have to ask my wife.”
THE END
THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, ST. GILES WORKS, NORWICH
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