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.’”