Chapter II: Part 2

The Inca’s child was no barbarian; he was the heir of a civilization, unique indeed and partial, but genuine. No inconsiderable heritage of high heroic memories had fallen to his lot. And up to the hour when he fell into Don Ramon’s hands his education had been carried on with unremitting industry. It is true that the arts of reading and writing were unknown to him; and, unacquainted with figures, he could only perform a few simple calculations by means of knots on a cord. But instead of these more mechanical acquirements, he had the lessons of a passionate-hearted, enthusiastic mother, who filled his young imagination day by day with the spirit-stirring legends of his race. These were to him religion, literature, fairy tales, all in one. No Hebrew boy, “exiled from Zion’s rest,” could have yearned more fondly towards Jerusalem than he did towards Cuzco, the sacred city, where were the stately palaces of his kindred, the golden temple of the Sun, and the thrones of the beneficent Inca kings, his adored forefathers. No young Italian patriot could have learned to love his country with more passionate ardour than glowed in his heart for Tahuantin Suyu. It was by this name, meaning “the four provinces,” that he always called the empire of the Incas: Peru was a word unknown to him; it owed its origin to a blunder of the Spaniards.

The strange sorrows that had fallen upon his young life—his kindred slain; his home in ruins; his mother setting herself free by death; he himself left desolate, a slave to the hated Spaniard—only served so to enamel those pictures of past glory, that the fragile vase upon which they were painted might indeed be shattered, but not a single line or hue of them could ever be effaced.

Fray Fernando was not slow in resuming the conversation. He wished, if possible, to discover in what manner and degree his _protégé_ was connected with the royal family; and how he happened to be found in a place so remote as one of the little isles of verdure that dotted the great desert of the southern coast.

“Are you, then, related to Huascar?” he asked.

“All the Children of the Sun are one family,” answered the boy. “But we are not of Huayna Capac’s children. We are of Viracocha’s _ayllu_.”[5]

“Viracocha? Who was he? I have never heard of him.”

“Never heard of Viracocha the Fair-haired!” exclaimed the child in great astonishment. “Almost the greatest of the Incas! The whole world is filled with his renown. And,” he added proudly, after a moment’s pause, “I am his son!”

“His renown has not reached Spain, however,” said Fray Fernando with a smile.

“I will tell you all about him,” said José, nothing loath to recount a story dear to his heart, and as familiar in all its details to his memory as the simplest Scripture narrative would be to a well-instructed European child of his age. “He was the seventh Inca after Manco Capac.” And here he paused again with doubtful look; so strange was the ignorance displayed by his benefactor, that he would not now have been astonished if the monk had asked, “And who was Manco Capac?”

Fray Fernando knew that, however. “I have heard,” he said, “that the founder of your monarchy, falsely called a Child of the Sun, taught agriculture and the useful arts to a people whom he found sunk in barbarism.”

“Our Father the Sun pitied the poor ignorant people, and he sent his children to teach them” said José, telling the tale as it had been told to him, and as indeed it is still usually told to us. “Manco Capac taught the men to sow and reap and build houses; and Mama Ocella, his wife, taught the women to spin and weave. Moreover, they both taught every one to be just and gentle, and to keep the five great laws:—‘Do not be idle; Do not lie; Do not steal; Do not commit adultery; Do not kill.’ The Incas who reigned after him, his sons and sons’ sons, did likewise. They built temples, and schools, and forts; they made good roads and inns, and great water-courses, that the earth might be watered and bring forth fruit, and that every one might have food to eat. And they ploughed the land with their own hands, that the poor man might not say the prince bade him do that which he would not do himself. They let no man want; they did justice to all; they were called the friends of the poor. That was the name best loved by the Inca—‘Friend of the Poor.’”

“But were they not also great warriors and conquerors?” asked Fray Fernando, thinking of the enormous tract of country over which the Inca’s sway extended at the time of the Spanish conquest.

“Yes; they spread the dominion of the Sun far and wide—partly because they were brave warriors, partly because men saw that it was good to obey them, for all their subjects had peace and plenty. Often wild tribes would send messengers to the Incas, asking them to rule over them and to teach them. But even to those who fought against them they were kind and gentle; many times offering them pardon and friendship, and sparing them and showing them mercy whenever they could.

“At length there came an Inca called Yahuar,[6] who was not such a brave warrior as his fathers. He was a man sad of heart; always fearing evil. Now it happened that his son, the young Auqui,[7] behaved himself perversely, and the Inca was very wroth with him. He drove him from his palace and his court, and from beautiful Cuzco, the golden city; and he bade him tend the sacred llamas amongst the lonely plains of Chita. But he was a youth of much—silence, thought[8]—how call you it? He used to lie for hours on the green grass beside one of the little seas where the water-fowl dip their white wings, and look up into the far blue sky, thinking—always thinking.

“One midsummer noon he was lying thus. Everything was still and quiet; not a breeze waving the long grass, not a tiny insect’s wing stirring the air. Behold! suddenly a bright figure stood before him. His dress was whiter than snow; his hair was like the tears of Ynty; his face was as a morning without clouds. The Auqui stood up upon his feet, and made low obeisance to him. Then the spirit spake, and said that his name was Viracocha; that he also was a Child of the Sun; and that he had come to reveal to his brethren that all the fierce nations round, who hated their mild laws and gentle manners, had banded together to destroy them, to waste their fields, and to lay Cuzco level with the ground. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and tell these things to thy father. But as for thyself, be brave and strong; for I will not forsake thee; and to thee it is given to deliver thy people.’”

“What! Did he become the deliverer—he, the outcast, the evil-doer?” Fray Fernando asked, with a sudden flash of interest.

“He did as he was told,” the child answered simply. “He went to Cuzco and gave his message. At first the Inca would not believe him; but too soon he found that his words were true. The barbarous tribes, many as the waves of the sea, fierce as the pumas of the mountain, were sweeping down on the sacred city. Some of them were rebels; some had never yet been tamed or conquered. The old Inca was afraid of them, and fled away weeping towards the desert. But the Auqui stood forth brave and strong in the hour of need. He unfurled the great rainbow banner of the Incas; and he bade all who loved the Children of the Sun follow him to the fight.

“Then there was a battle, fierce and long. Thousands died on ‘the field of blood;’ for so the place has been called ever since. But the Children of the Sun prevailed at last, and put the wild hosts of the league to flight. There was no one who could withstand the conquering Auqui.”

“What did he then with the vanquished?”

“What should he do? Was he not a Child of the Sun? As soon as the fight was over he passed himself throughout all the plain, giving strict command that the dead should be buried, the wounded enemies succoured and cared for, the captives set free. And when, afterwards, the wives and children of the rebels came to meet him, carrying green branches and imploring his mercy, he said to them, ‘It was your husbands and fathers who offended, not you. And since I have already pardoned them, what have you to fear? Go in peace.’ Then he bade food to be given them, and great care to be taken of the widows and orphans of those who were slain in the battle. As for the chief of the rebels, he restored him to his place and his rule; and those tribes served the Incas loyally from that time forth.”[9]

“A good ending to your story,” said the monk, smiling.

“It is not quite the end,” José answered. “The Auqui came in triumph to the place where his father was. Then the old Inca took from his head the _llautu_—the sacred crimson fringe—and the black and white wing-feathers of the cora-quenque, and he put them on the head of the brave young Auqui; and he bade his captains bear him aloft in the golden chair, and salute him as mighty Inca, Child of the Sun, Friend of the Poor. Thenceforward the Auqui reigned gloriously. He took to himself the name of the bright spirit that appeared to him on the plains of Chita—Viracocha, ‘foam of the sea.’ He built a beautiful temple in his honour. The work was long, and took many years to finish; but he saw it finished, for he reigned until his hair was white as the snow of the Andes.

“It is told of him, moreover, that after he was settled in his kingdom, he went forth to do reverence to the Sun, as the Incas used, at the great feast of Raymi. He stood in the court of the temple before all the people, wearing the beautiful _uncu_[10] of blue wrought with golden threads, and the long mantle glittering with golden beads. But instead of making low obeisance to the glorious Ynty, he held himself erect, and even dared to raise his eyes to the awful burning face of our great Father.

“‘O Inca,’ said the high priest, ‘what you do is not good! You give the people strange thoughts, and cause them to wonder at you.’

“‘Is there any one,’ asked Viracocha, ‘who dares to bid me go whither he will?’

“‘How could any one be so bold?’ the priest answered.

“‘But if I bid one of my servants go here or there, will he disobey me?’ asked the Inca again.

“‘He will most certainly obey thee, Capac Inca, even unto death,’ the priest replied.

“‘Then,’ said the Inca, ‘I perceive that there must be some greater Lord whom our Father the Sun reveres, and at whose command he travels every day from one end of the heavens to the other.’

“And also the great Viracocha’s son, Pacha-cutec the Wise, and other of the Incas, in their hearts adored Pacha-camac, the Maker of the World, the eternally young, who created all things, even our Father the Sun.”[11]

Here the boy ended his story, the latter part of which had evidently been taught him word for word, with especial care, as a religious lesson of high importance. Of course, it is not to be supposed that he related it exactly as here set down. He experienced much difficulty in finding suitable Spanish equivalents for the familiar Quichua phrases, and made many verbal blunders in the attempt. He managed, however, not only to make himself intelligible to the monk, but to give him not a little food for thought.

On another occasion Fray Fernando asked the child how his parents came to fix their residence in so remote a spot as an oasis in the wild desert of Achapa. It was night, and they were enjoying the welcome blaze of a cheerful fire in Fray Fernando’s cell. The Indian boy, who loved the warmth, was seated close to the fire on his mat of vicuña skin; and his brown face glowed in the ruddy light, as he looked up to answer his benefactor’s question. “My father and mother,” he said, “with other Inca children who lost their parents in the war, were taken to the desert for safety by the faithful servants of their houses. There they grew up and married; but most of them afterwards went away to join our brave Inca Manco in the forests of Vilca-pampa.—Manco? Don’t you know he was Huascar’s brother, and rightful Inca after him? Don’t you remember how bravely he fought the Spaniards? Our _ayllu_—that is, Viracocha’s—were true to him to a man. In the last great fight at Cuzco, it was my mother’s father who defended the strongest of the three forts to the very end against the Spaniard. Long did he stand almost alone upon the wall, and strike down with his club every Spaniard who tried to scale it. But they mounted the wall at last, in many places at once, and sought to surround and take him alive. Then he sprang to the edge of the battlement, wrapped his mantle round his head, and flung himself down the precipice into the Colcampata. He would not live to serve the Spaniard. And he was right.”

Fray Fernando began to feel uneasy. The child’s enthusiasm was of a kind that might one day become dangerous. But he was too wise to fan the flame by contradiction. He merely asked, “What became of your father? Did he, when he grew up, join your Inca in his exile?”

“No; but he went forth from our little _paucar_[12] to see the great world, and to try if anything yet remained which a Child of the Sun might do there. I do not remember his going—it was a long time ago; but I well remember the day Chaqui—that was the servant who went with him—came back alone. Chaqui told my mother that my father had gone to help the men of Chili, who were still fighting bravely against the Spaniards. And there he died in battle. My mother wept, and taught me to weep for him. But we were glad that he died fighting with the cruel Spaniards.”

“José, I am a Spaniard.”

“No, you are a patre. You are good.” And he stroked the monk’s hand caressingly. “But,” he resumed, “Chaqui told us more. He told us that our brave Inca Manco was dead. Some Spaniards who had run away from their own people took shelter in his wild forest-home at Vilca-pampa. Being Inca, and Friend of the Poor, he was kind to them, and received them, and gave them food. One of them paid his kindness by slaying him. _Aucca!_ After that, Manco’s son, Sayri Tupac, had the right of wearing the sacred _llautu_. But to him the Spaniards sent messengers of his own kindred, who gave him many soft words and fair promises, until at last he agreed to go to their new city in the vale of Rimac,[13] there to give up to the stranger his claim to the throne of Tahuantin Suyu.” The boy said this with a bowed head, and in a low sad voice, as one who keenly felt the shame of such a surrender.

He went on,—“Chaqui told us that when the Inca made the black marks that meant to say he gave up the kingdom, he wept, and taking in his hand the velvet cloth that covered the table, he said, ‘Behold, the whole of this cloth belonged to my fathers, and now they satisfy me with a thread of the silken fringe!’ But when my mother heard that, she was very wroth. She said he was no Child of the Sun, and his tears were worthless. And Chaqui answered her,—‘But what could he do?’ ‘He could die,’ she said. ‘He _is_ dead,’ Chaqui told us then. The Spaniards gave him broad lands, and gold and silver, and they allowed him to live in the beautiful valleys where the homes of his fathers were. But nothing could make him happy; no, not even the fair palace of Yucay, the loved home of my father Viracocha, with the fruits and flowers of its wondrous gardens, some real, some still more beautiful, wrought out of the tears of Ynty; and its cool baths and fountains, where the water flows from the mouths of great silver llamas and dragons. The Inca pined away and died, for his heart was broken.” And José ended his tale, and sat in gloomy silence watching the embers, which were dying too.

“Then, I suppose there is no Inca now,” was Fray Fernando’s not very prudent remark.

“Oh yes,” said José eagerly. “There is always the Inca. There is still Manco’s youngest son, Tupac Amaru. And he will take from Spanish hands,” José continued, with kindling eyes, “not one thread of the crimson fringe, not one grain of the golden treasures of his fathers. He lives free in the forests of Vilca-pampa. Him we love, and him we will obey.”

There was another silence. Then José said thoughtfully, “When I was a little child I used to think that the Children of the Sun reigned yet at Cuzco, and that as soon as I was a man I should go thither, and see the Inca in his golden chair, and the palaces and temples, and hear the happy songs, and join in the dances at the great feasts. But now I know that the Spaniards have swept everything away, like the great earth-overturning flood.[14] Still, for all that, one day _the Inca will reign again_.” This was said with no outburst of childish feeling, but with a quiet slow gravity, born of intense conviction. That belief was the thing that lay deepest in the young child’s heart.

“How know you that?” asked Fray Fernando, a little surprised.

“Yachani—I know,” was all José would say in reply.

It was not one solitary childish voice alone that whispered, “The Inca will reign again.” For long years and years was that fair hope cherished, and held close to the heart of an oppressed people, to keep it from breaking in its helpless misery. The herdsman who tended the llamas on the hills of his fathers for the food of the cruel stranger, the slave who wove their fleeces into beautiful fabrics for his clothing, or dug gold and silver out of the earth to minister to his luxuries, alike consoled themselves under toil and starvation, under stripes and torture, with that sweet whisper of hope, “The Inca will reign again.” The Indian mother who sang to her babe, in cradle-songs sadder than requiems,—

“Seeking through the whole world
I should not meet my equal in misery;
Accursed be the night I was born;”[15]

yet taught him, as he grew, to look up to that faint star of promise, the only one that beamed on their darkness,—“The Inca will reign again.”

Nor even, when the long slow years had “rolled into the centuries,” was the light of that star extinguished. Still the hearts of the people yearned “with quenchless love profound” after their beneficent Incas,—after the kings who were the friends of the poor. It is not yet one hundred years since men—and women—died cheerfully, in heroic despair, with the word on their lips, “We have no king but our Inca.”

Very beautiful is this tenacity of love, of faith, of hope for the future, born of the memories of the past. Are not such instincts true prophecies, though in a different sense from any of which the poor untaught Indians could dream?

VI.

Viracocha Visits His Brethren.

“But what hast thou lacked with me, that, behold, thou seekest
to go to thine own country And he answered, Nothing: howbeit
let me go in any wise.”

1 KINGS xi. 22.

More than six years have passed away, producing little outward change in any of the inhabitants of Cerro Blanco whom we know by name, except in the Indian boy, who has grown a fine handsome stripling. His patron is well satisfied with his development, both mental and physical. This is fortunate, for with nothing else, either within or without himself, is poor Fray Fernando satisfied. His position at the mining-colony becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Passing disagreements with Diego Rascar have deepened and widened into a standing feud. The Spaniards and Creoles take part with Diego, while the negroes count for nothing, with the exception of Pepe, and he has his own reasons for bearing a grudge against the padre. This is particularly hard, since the padre’s real offence is that he has espoused the cause of the black men against the white. “A pity it is,” Diego sometimes says, “that this holy man never knows when to shut his eyes.”

During the last six years Fray Fernando has been growing every day more incapable of shutting his eyes to wrong and oppression. The old practice of “passing by on the other side,” so safe, so easy, and so convenient, has become not only distasteful, but impossible to him. If a man chooses to act, even once, the part of the good Samaritan, he must accept the cost. He will find that he cannot, if he would, descend again to the _rôle_ of the priest and the Levite.

But in proportion as Fray Fernando’s own heart became softer, it seemed to him that the hearts around him grew harder. He thought that the whites were sinking gradually to the level of the negroes, their barbarous half-caste families being even more degraded than themselves. In the blacks he saw no change worth speaking of, save a change for the worse in Pepe, who, on account of his strength, intelligence, and usefulness in managing the other slaves, was petted and pampered by Diego, and allowed to indulge his vicious propensities without a check. Often did the mournful words of the prophet ring in the ears of Fray Fernando: “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain.” And he could not take refuge in the strong confidence of faith, and add, “Surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.” Fray Fernando thought his work nothing—words written on water, lines traced on sand. Or, if remembered at all, he believed it would only go to swell the vast amount of his sin, that burden already greater than he could bear.

But for the Indian youth, at least, he had not laboured in vain. Long ago José had displaced the clumsy Pepe as acolyte, to the great satisfaction of every one, Pepe himself alone excepted. He knew the “Doctrina de la Fé” as well as any intelligent Spanish lad of his age. He was diligent in the repetition of prayers, and the performance of every other religious duty enjoined on him. He had learned to read and write, and Fray Fernando was beginning to teach him Latin—a necessary labour, if the accomplishment of reading was to be of any use to him, as the few books his patron possessed were in that language. José learned quickly, for his memory was remarkably good, and the similarity between Latin and Spanish, which contrasted delightfully with the utter and perplexing difference between Spanish and Quichua, made the task a comparatively light one.

His instructor’s pleasure in his progress might have been somewhat lessened had he dreamed that his pupil imagined all the time that he was learning the language of the Jews. Was he not to read the Psalms of David in the Latin tongue, and was not David a king of the Jews? José believed that the Jews were a great but very wicked people, who lived, or had lived long ago (for his notions of chronology were vague in the extreme), on the other side of the Mother Sea. They were guilty, he knew, of the awful crime of having put to death the Son of God, and he thought that in righteous judgment the Spaniards, with the Pope at their head, made war upon them, and had driven them out of their country. He supposed the Pope to be a Spaniard, and the Catholic High Priest. He had a hazy idea that he never died, but lived on miraculously from age to age. He knew that various nations of white men, who were not Spaniards, lived beyond the great sea; and imagined they bore the same relation to the Spaniards, in power and civilization, as the barbarous tribes subdued by his Inca forefathers did to them. Perhaps Fray Fernando would not have dispelled this illusion, even if he could.

But the fact was, that at the end of all those years of loving toil and care, Fray Fernando’s acquaintance with his _protégé_ was very superficial. He knew José well enough: the docile, affectionate child, who not only obeyed but anticipated his commands; the intelligent pupil, whose progress more than repaid the pains of his instructor. But there was another whom he knew not, who did not indeed speak with José’s tongue, for that was now well used to the sonorous accents of the Spaniard, but who often looked from José’s dark thoughtful eyes, and ever dwelt in the silent recesses of José’s heart. This was _Viracocha_, the Inca’s child, who cherished with passionate love the legends of his family, who still looked upon the Sun as his Father, and believed religiously in the ultimate triumph of his race. These ideas, crossed and interwoven with threads of Christian doctrine, made up a strange confused tangle of a creed, which changed its hue according as it was looked at in the light of Ynty’s beams, or in that of the tapers which burned before the crucifix.

That Fray Fernando knew nothing of all this was in some measure his own fault. “Silence,” it is said, “is golden;” but this is not always true. Sometimes it is sharp steel; keen to sunder bonds and separate chief friends even like the piercings of a sword. Naturally startled by the hold the ideas of his race had taken upon the mind of his little _protégé_, Fray Fernando fell into the common mistake of thinking,—“If I do not allow him to talk of these things, he will cease to think of them, and in time forget them altogether.” It was easy to carry out his plan. Nothing is easier than to silence a sensitive child. Few words, perhaps none, are needed. A look, a gesture, a tone of voice, a hasty turning from the subject, will suffice to render the stream of confidence “a fountain sealed.” It is the unsealing, in after-years, which will be difficult, perhaps impossible. It soon came as naturally to José to bury his thoughts as it does to his race to bury their treasures in the earth. Thus it happened that Fray Fernando was very much surprised by what occurred on the afternoon of Christmas-day, 1570.

After performing the service, he was sitting in his cell reading, when José came in. The lad was dressed in a full suit of Spanish costume, which his kind protector had been at the expense and trouble of procuring for him from Cuzco, being anxious, not merely to give him pleasure, but also to “Spaniardize” him, as the phrase ran, in every possible way. And indeed the doublet and hosen of fine blue cloth, with white silk stockings, set off the youth’s graceful figure to great advantage; and his handsome Indian face, and glossy black hair, had never looked so well as they did beneath the shade of the dark blue velvet montero.

On entering the cell, he removed the montero, and stood before the monk with a bow almost worthy of a Spanish cavalier.

“Well, my son?” said Fray Fernando kindly, looking up from his book.

“Patre,” said José, “it is Christmas-day; you have told me that in the country beyond the sea men give gifts to each other.”

“Ah! so you want a gift, José. Speak out, my boy; what is it?”

José hesitated; a rather unusual thing with him. He had few ways of expressing feeling, and seldom did express it at all.

Fray Fernando closed the volume he had been reading, and surveyed the youth attentively, and with much satisfaction. José was dear to him as his own son; he was yet more fond of him than he was proud of him, and that is much to say. “You make a very good hidalgo, José,” he remarked with a smile. “Is anything wanting to complete your equipment? Have you set your heart upon a cloak like Diego’s, or even upon a sword?”

“No, patre; I thank you. That which I desire is a thing of another kind. I desire—your leave to visit mine own people down yonder in the valley. Let the patre be good to me, his son and servant.” José spoke, according to his wont, very quietly. And having spoken, he stood perfectly motionless, awaiting an answer.

But the white man started, as if he had received a sudden blow. “What is this, José?” he asked. “Why do you want to leave me?”

“I do not want to leave the patre. I want to go to my own people.”

“But wherefore should you go, and to whom? You have no friends among your own people. Your father and mother are dead long ago. Besides, you are a Christian.”

“The patre speaks truth; I am a Christian.”

“Then wherefore forsake Christian instruction and communion? No, José; it is a vain, idle fancy. Give it up, and stay with me; for I love you, José.”

José’s slight fingers trembled, letting go their hold on the montero, which fell to the ground. But, after a moment’s pause, he drew nearer, and knelt before the monk. “The patre has been always good to me,” he said. “Let him be good to me now, and send me away, that I may go to my own people.”

“Stand up!” said Fray Fernando, with some displeasure in his tone. “Christian men should kneel to God alone. Wait a while; for I must think. You have troubled me, José.”

José stood up, and waited. Had the padre’s meditation lasted for hours, he would not have disturbed him by the motion of a limb or a muscle.

But he had not to wait so long. The padre spoke. “José,” he asked, “if I give you leave to go, will you come back to me again?”

“I will surely come back to you, patre.”

“You intend it. But your mind may change. I fear, if I let you go now, I shall see your face no more.”

“Patre,” said José, with deeper earnestness of voice, “I must needs come back. Do I not belong to you?”

“My son, we both belong to God.”

“I belong to you, patre. You bought me, and with something you were loath to part with, for I saw you kiss it ere you gave it into Don Ramon’s hand.”—A slight circumstance that Fray Fernando himself had forgotten—“Certainly I will return to you, patre.”

“Then go, in God’s name; and may He keep thee safe both in soul and body. May He also forgive me if I have sinned in giving thee this permission. For I misdoubt me sore thine errand is a foolish one.”

José started at daybreak next morning. His patron gave him much good advice; fearing, and not without reason, that his inexperience and utter ignorance of the world might involve him in difficulties and perils. One of the first thoughts that would occur to a European in contemplating a journey had no place at all in the mind of José. He suffered no perplexity about ways and means; he knew that every Indian whose hut he chanced to pass would freely and gladly afford him food and shelter. He had looked at money as a curiosity, and had heard its use explained, but he had never used it or seen it used. When Fray Fernando gave him some pieces of silver to take with him, he asked what he should do with them.

“You can give them, if you like, to those who entertain you and show you kindness,” said the monk.

José looked pleased. “I thank you, patre,” he said. “It is good to have something to give.”

The parting was an affectionate one. Fray Fernando accompanied his adopted son to the pass; there he embraced and blessed him,—and stood watching until the slight figure disappeared among the rocks. “Will he ever return?” sighed the monk. “Will my José ever come back to me again?”

The first question might have been answered in the affirmative,—but what of the second?

VII.

Viracocha Comes Back.

“To be wroth with what we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.”

COLERIDGE.

Troubles thickened round the path of Fray Fernando during the months that followed José’s departure. Pepe had a quarrel about a negro woman with one of his fellow-slaves named Zillo—a quiet, rather well-disposed man. He sought to fasten upon him a charge of robbery; and Diego was quite willing to assume his guilt, and to sacrifice him to the malice of his rival. Pepe must be kept in good-humour, or everything would go wrong both in the mine and in the galpon.

Fray Fernando was roused to indignation at the thought of a man whom he believed to be innocent undergoing a terrible punishment; but his remonstrances were received with coldness, even with disdain. He was far too much in earnest, however, to give up the contest. Such a monstrous injustice should not be done, if by any means he could prevent it. After exhausting all his eloquence in rebukes, persuasions, and expostulations, he drew the last arrow out of his quiver. “Señor Diego,” he said, “if you do it, I lay a statement of the whole matter before your lord, Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano.” A threat likely to cost him who uttered it far more than him who heard it. Nor was Fray Fernando ignorant of the peril in which he involved himself. He was alone, in the midst of lawless men, with sharp steel in their hands, and little reluctance to use it. They might well remember the Spanish proverb, “Dead men never bite.” What better could the meddlesome friar expect than a dagger through his heart some dark night, and a grave on the lonely mountain summit? And who could suspect any foul play from the decorous message that would, no doubt, be forwarded in due time to Don Marcio Serra, informing him, very regretfully, that the health of the holy father had given way under the rigours of that inhospitable climate?

In former days—which seemed to belong to another state of existence—men called him who now bore the name of Fray Fernando, bravest of the brave. But for ten miserable years he had called himself coward and recreant. Still he could brave death for the sake of a poor negro, toward whom he entertained no feeling warmer than compassion. Though, after all, not for his sake—for the sake of justice and mercy.

“If death were all!”—he said to himself, as he realized the full peril of his situation, in the lonely hour that succeeded his stormy altercation with Diego—“if death were all! But—_after death_!” This was the key-note of a long, mournful meditation, into which we cannot, perhaps dare not, follow him. At last, to relieve his burdened heart by action, he set forth upon his daily walk—never omitted—to the pass whence José might be seen returning. The Indian youth had now been more than six months away—a lengthened absence, which gave Fray Fernando much uneasiness, for José was the one solitary joy and hope of his dreary life.

It was evening—about an hour before the rapid tropical sunset. Fray Fernando soon saw an Indian ascending the winding pathway with the fleet footsteps of his race. As the wayfarer gradually drew nearer, he perceived a burden on his shoulder; and saw that he wore a white cotton tunic, fastened at the waist by an embroidered belt; a _yacollo_, or mantle; short native trousers, reaching a little below the knees; and _usutas_, or native sandals. But when his features became visible, the monk cried aloud in astonishment—for they were José’s.

José, who had now attained his full height, and assumed an air of manly independence quite new to him, gravely took the burden from his shoulder, and laid it at the feet of Fray Fernando. It was the monk’s first impulse to embrace his adopted child; but some momentary, unaccountable feeling, shared probably by both, checked the impulse, and held them apart.

“How is this, my son?” Fray Fernando questioned, in anxious and displeased surprise. “Where is the Spanish dress I gave you?”

José pointed to the burden at their feet. His countenance seemed as much changed as his dress. Fray Fernando thought its expression sullen, almost fierce.

“I hope,” he said, “that you have not put off the heart of the Christian with the clothing of the Spaniard.”

Perhaps his words were the less gentle from the state of irritation in which his mind had been left by his recent altercation with Diego.

“I am clothed as my fathers were,” José answered. “I am no Spaniard; I am a Child of the Sun.”

“You should be ashamed to recall those heathenish fables,” the monk returned. “Have I to repeat to _you_, after seven years of careful instruction, that the sun is nothing but a ball of fire, made by God to give light to the earth, and for that purpose travelling round it every day?”

“I don’t know what Ynty is. I know what the Spaniards are; and may Ynty slay me with his arrows if henceforward I wear their dress or learn their ways!”

José flung out his words with eager, sharp abruptness, naturally increased by the difficulty with which, in a moment of excitement, he translated his rapid thoughts from Quichua into Spanish.

“José! José!” cried the monk, in angry amazement; “is this the reward of all the love and care I lavished on you?”

“I have no wish to grieve _you_, patre,” said the youth, in a softened tone.

“No wish to grieve me!—yet your words are enough to bring down God’s vengeance on us both. Go to! You disappoint me, José. You are like all the rest—ungrateful.”

Words such as these would have brought the docile, affectionate José of six months ago to his knees, to ask forgiveness with tears. But Viracocha stood erect and motionless; in Fray Fernando’s eyes, a bronze statue of defiance. Yet, unseen by Fray Fernando, there was a quivering of the lip, a gathering mist in the eye.

“Patre,” he said at length, “if you will only listen.” Here he faltered—stopped—and began his sentence again in a different form. “Patre, hear what I have seen and heard, and then tell me if I ought to speak the tongue or worship the gods of the race who are trampling my people into dust.”

“Nothing you have seen or heard can excuse the insolent tone you have thought proper to assume,” said the monk. He continued, however, in a voice less firm, even almost hesitating—“I do not deny that there have been many instances of oppression; but still—”

“_But still_—they make good and just laws in the council at Seville, beyond the Mother Sea. I know that,” said the Indian bitterly. “But I know, too, how those laws are kept down in yonder valleys. Cain the murderer said to God, ‘I am not my brother’s keeper.’ But the Spaniard says to God and man, ‘I _am_ my brother’s keeper;’ and then he slays him by the sword, by famine, by torture. It would be more merciful to kill us all at once, and make the land a desert, as he has done elsewhere.”

“Oh, José, you have need to repent, and to ask God to forgive your wicked words.”

“It is not your God I worship now,” retorted José in desperation.

“Then what has brought you here? Better have remained amongst your own people than come back to insult and defy me.”

“But why do you say that to me?” asked José, with apparent simplicity. “You bought me.”

“In an evil hour. Would I had never seen your face! Leave me, and return to your people.”

And Fray Fernando turned to go. But José placed himself before him in the path.

“Hear me, patre,” he cried—“only hear me; then do with me what you will.”

“Were you the José of six months ago, there is nothing I would not hear from your lips; but an evil spirit has entered into you.”

“Am I worse in your eyes than Pepe or Zillo? Yet even them you would not condemn unheard.”

“Speak, then, if you will; but in words fit for a Christian man to listen to.”

“Patre, I went down to the valley by the road my fathers made; and I saw the water-courses they fashioned, which lead so far up into the mountains no man knoweth where they end. In the great _puquios_[16] I could almost stand upright. I examined them well. They are all carefully and cunningly made, and lined with great stones deftly hewn and fashioned. They divide themselves into many little _puquios_—so many, that every corner of the thirsty land is watered by the streams of the snowy Antis, and brings forth maize, fruit, and flowers for the joy of man. Such things my fathers made. But the Spaniards destroy the roads, and break up the water-courses, taking the hewn stones to build houses for themselves.”

“Not in Nasca,” Fray Fernando interposed. “Don Marcio has strictly forbidden the practice.”

José had gained his point—he was listening.

“I know it,” he answered. “Don Marcio is not like others—he fears God. But they do it, all through the country; so that, where we tended gardens, our children will wander through thirsty deserts—if, indeed, there are any of us left alive. Yet the Spaniards behold these roads and water-courses with wonder and admiration. They say there be none like them in their country; all their power and all their skill could not have fashioned them.”

“Yet the destruction of roads and aqueducts, though greatly to be deplored, scarcely warrants such fierce anger.”

“But it is the men and women, and little children, who are destroyed throughout the land, and no man pities them. Listen, patre. I found my people down yonder in the vale of Nasca sad of countenance, though they did not complain. They miss the joyous feasts of the olden time, the frequent holidays, the dances in honour of Ynty and Quilla.[17] Always they toil hard, often they starve, that they may pay their tribute to the Spaniards. It is very much that they have to pay, and if they fail, they are beaten and tortured. Once I came to a little village, where I found great grief and mourning. The Spaniards, who were taking up the tribute, had bound a poor, helpless boy to a tree, and were beating him most cruelly. The women were weeping and wringing their hands; the men—some of them begging for mercy, others searching their huts for maize, or charqui, or cords of maguey, to appease the wrath of the Spaniards. I asked what the boy had done, what law he had broken; and as I talked Spanish, the Spaniards listened to me, and told me he would not pay his tribute. I did not understand; so I turned for explanation to my own people. They said the tribute was required of all above eighteen, but that it was a common practice to demand it of boys under age, and to ill-use them cruelly till their friends paid the claim, though their own share had left them well-nigh starving. That time the silver you gave me saved the boy. But what use to save _one_—every day they do these things.” He paused for a few moments; then went on sorrowfully:—“Ere long I came to Nasca, where there is a town and a fort. There some Spaniards have come to live. May the curse of God—”

“Hush, José! you must not curse.”

José caught the edge of his yacollo with his teeth, and bit it, a common gesture with his race when moved to anger. Then he resumed:—

“In Nasca and its neighbourhood I found the doors all shut and barred—a strange thing in Tahuantin Suyu. When first our people saw the Spaniards bolt and bar their doors, they marvelled, and could not forbear to ask the reason—did they fear we would murder them? They answered, ‘No; we do it for fear of thieves.’ Whereat our people marvelled all the more, for there were no thieves amongst them. The Inca said, ‘You shall not steal.’ A man who went a journey would lay a little stick across his threshold, just to say, ‘I am not at home;’ and although his house were filled with gold and silver, none would enter it.[18] But now—_now_ all is changed. Now we ourselves learn to steal, like the wicked Spaniards. O Ynty, Ynty, will _you_ not help us?” And he turned and looked towards the sun, now descending to the west.

“Call not on Ynty, who cannot hear you,” the monk interposed.

“But, bad as the tribute was,” José continued, recovering calmness, and turning again towards the monk, “men did not curse it, as they did the mita. It was long before I could understand aright what the mita was. I stayed in Nasca, to learn the laws of my people from the old men there; and then I went northwards. Having crossed a desert, I came to another valley, broad and fertile. It was evening. A little village lay amongst fields of quinoa. I thought it had a lonely look. Soon I saw a group of women returning thither from their work. But I saw no men. The women walked hand in hand, chanting a mournful yaravi:—

‘The stranger has taken our husbands to work in his mines,
And we toil in the fields for our children’s bread.’

When I talked with them, they told me the Spaniards take away every seventh man to work in the mines and the obregas.[19] If that is not enough, they take more. The men die quickly, and more and more are ever needed. Year after year fewer men in the villages; year after year more men in the mines and obregas.—Where will it end, patre?”

“But,” said Fray Fernando, “the term of their service is only a year.”

“So said I to the women in my simplicity—‘Your husbands will come back to you in a year.’ And they answered, weeping, ‘They will never come back—no, never again. They will die. Or if haply they live, the Spaniards will say—they are in debt,—and will keep them for yanaconas[20] for ever.’”

“Is such done?” asked Fray Fernando.

“Every day,” answered José. “At last I said to the poor women of Yea, ‘I will go and see your husbands at the mine.’—They blessed and thanked me, and gave me a store of coca leaves to carry to them, such as I have here” (touching a little ornamental bag, curiously woven of twisted threads in different colours, which hung by his side). “One, the widow of a curaça, gave me this dress to put on; for everywhere the children fled from me in terror, because I was clothed as a Spaniard. It was the holiday dress of her only son. Two years ago a Spanish traveller had taken him by force, with another youth, to carry his baggage to Cuzco. Neither of them ever returned.”

“This again is a practice forbidden by the laws,” said Fray Fernando.

“What good are _your_ laws? We obeyed the laws of our Inca, because we both loved and feared him. But Spaniards fear nothing, and love nothing—except gold.”

“José! José!”

“True, patre,—too true. As I journeyed to the mine, I met a sorrowful company of women, some leading children by the hand. They said they were going to their husbands, at work in the obregas, else they would never see them again. When I said, ‘I am going to the mine,’ they answered me, ‘Tell the miners to thank Ynty for their lot.’ This I thought strange, for the women of Yea had talked to me of the miseries of the miners till my heart was sore. But these said, ‘Better is it with those who dig the silver from the depths of the earth, than with those who weave the llama’s fleece in the obregas.’ Worked far beyond their strength, fed with food we would not offer to a beast, beaten cruelly, or else—patre, I could not tell you all. But God has mercy on them, and they die. They die soon; but others must be found to fill their places—ay, though they have to be hunted with blood-hounds. Now they take little children, six or seven years old. I saw myself—” But here José stopped, and covered his face with his hands. Soon large tears fell slowly through them. “No words!” he cried passionately; “no words. Only tears. Would they were tears of blood! And this is Tahuantin Suyu, that my fathers made so happy!”[21]

Fray Fernando was moved to compassion for the gentle unoffending race, the unresisting victims of such cruel wrongs. “A poor and harmless people, created of God, and that might have been won to his knowledge,” as Sir Walter Raleigh says pathetically. He answered in a softened tone, “You could say with the prophet, ‘O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.’”

“The daughter of my people!” José repeated, with eyes that turned his tears to sparks of fire. “O patre, I have not told half—I cannot! They have broken into the houses of the Virgins of the Sun. They have taken them away by violence. I know now—too well!—why my mother died rather than be captive to the Spaniard. They have left us nothing sacred, nothing holy—not even the grave. They have dug open the tombs of our fathers to search for hid treasures. They have torn the ornaments from our temples; they have turned them into stables for their horses. They have robbed our store-houses, where the Incas laid up maize, quinoa, wool, cotton, to supply the people in years of scarcity. They have slaughtered by thousands the gentle, useful llamas, that bore our burdens and clothed us with their fleeces—only that they may feast upon their brains!—Are these the favourites and messengers of Pacha-camac, sent to teach us his will? No; they are the children of Supay—the devil. I will never believe God loves them, or commands us to obey them. I will never become as one of them, to learn their ways, to wear their dress, to serve their gods—”

“José, hush!” interposed the monk. Five minutes ago those two hearts had been very near, had almost met. But José’s words, blasphemous in the ears of Fray Fernando, broke down the bridge between them. “I can hear my countrymen reproached,” he said, “and I sorrowfully admit there is too much cause;—but I cannot hear my Faith blasphemed. Still,” he added, more gently, “I would fain believe your heart does not mean all your lips have said. Changed as you are, I can hardly think you have forgotten all the past—you whom I taught, watched over, tended in sickness. See, here is the holy emblem of our Faith.” He took the crucifix, with the rosary attached, from his girdle, and held it out to José. “Take it, my son; kiss it, in token of your penitence and your attachment to the Christian faith; and I will forgive your wild words and forget them.”

José took the crucifix,—but held it at arm’s length.

“Kiss it, my son,” said the monk.

José did not move.

“Kiss it,” Fray Fernando repeated more sternly. Unfortunately he added,—“as a sign that you renounce the vain idols of your race.”

What! Was Ynty an idol—Ynty the glorious? What then was this bit of wood—not even gold or silver—to which the patre bade him do reverence. José’s anger was not often roused, but when roused, it was incontrollable. He made a step forward towards a steep cliff, near the edge of which he was standing. The crucifix swung and shook over the precipice in his extended hand.

“Dare you?” cried the monk, springing forward to arrest him, horror-stricken at his profanity.

“I dare!” the Indian answered, the wrongs of his race all crowding on his memory, and the cross seeming nothing, in that moment’s passion, save an emblem of the creed of the destroyer. “Behold!”

The deed was done. His passion began to die away the moment it was indulged. And at the same time the last rays of the sun were dying from the sky.