“Don’t be alarmed!” she said cheerfully to the guardian. “I am sorry to disturb you; but I wish to go to the Olives. Go to bed now, and be ready at six in the morning to accompany me.”
The man said no more. They questioned Iona as little as they did Dylar.
They were in the lower room. Iona went to the chamber above; but when she heard the upper door close, she came down again, unbarred the outside door, and went out into the Pines. Space was what she wanted,—space and solitude.
It was a sultry night, and the still air under the pines was heavily perfumed, not only with their branches, but with the oppressive sweetness of little flowering vines that ran about through the moss underneath them. A mist that was mingled of moisture and fragrance hung in the tree-tops, and above them, dimming the stars. It was stupefying.
Iona felt her way, step by step, over the slippery ground, and leaned against one of the great pine-boles, scarcely knowing where she was. There was left in her mind only a vague sense of ruin and a vague impulse to escape. She stood there and stared into the darkness till she was faint and weary, then sank down where she stood and sat on the ground. There was an absolute stillness all about her. The only motion perceptible was in the narrow strip of sky between the tree-tops and the rock, where one dim hieroglyph of stars slowly gave place to another. Once from some bird’s-nest not far away came a small complaining note. Perhaps a wing, or beak, or claw, of some little sleeper had disturbed its downy neighbor. Then all was still again. But the little plaintive bird-note touched the listener’s memory as well as her ear. The atmosphere of her mind was as heavy as that around her body, and the suggestion was dim. She had almost let it slip when it came of itself, a Turkish proverb: “The nest of the blind bird God builds.”
It was the first whisper of Divine help that had risen in her soul. Perhaps then it was an angel’s wing that had disturbed the bird in its sleep.
Iona glanced upward and saw the pale mists beginning to quicken with the coming day. “God help me!” she murmured listlessly, and rising, went into the house and to her chamber.
The early training of San Salvador was expressly calculated to give the child a few indelible impressions. One of these was to do no desperate nor extraordinary act without first taking counsel from some disinterested person, or taking a certain time “to see if the King would interpose.” In absenting herself for a while from San Salvador, Iona had obeyed the sudden command of necessity. But that step taken, her instinct was to do all as silently and calmly as possible.
“I will not mention Tacita Mora’s name, and I will work,” she thought. It was the one step in advance which she could see.
Shortly after sunrise she started for the Olives. Reaching the turn of the road where the green began, she descended from her donkey to walk to the castle, and the man went on to make the necessary gossip concerning her arrival. For some reason the first step on the greensward under those gray-green branches awakened her sleeping passion. Was it grief that the peacefulness of the scene knocked in vain at her heart for entrance? She would willingly have thrown herself down in those quiet shadows and wept. The strong check she drew on the impulse brought up its contrary, and she laughed lightly.