he does not believe. But give me that silver wire, and I will help you;
though I had rather the flowers were for the Inca’s garden than for the
shrine of Saint—I forget his name.—Viracocha, will you take the tinya,
and play and sing for us while we work?”
José complied; all the more readily because he had a very fine “yaravi”
to sing, which he had just composed in praise of his own bright star. But
his performance on this occasion was brought to a premature close by the
entrance of Yupanqui, who was accompanied by two chosen friends of Inca
race—Maricancha and Rimac.
Yupanqui looked upon José with that peculiar tender fondness which the
old sometimes feel for the young, in whom they see their own youth
reproduced, and through whom they hope to realize their own lost hopes
and ineffectual longings. He marked the budding attachment between his
young favourite and his grandchild even before they had become aware of
it themselves; and he watched its progress with interest and satisfaction.
If the conversation, previous to his entrance and that of his friends,
had been sufficiently dangerous—treasonable, in fact, to Spanish ears—it
became ten times more so afterwards. Since the death of Tupac Amaru,
the Indians of Inca race had been exposed to much unjust suspicion, and
to many persecutions from the Spaniards; treatment which, of course,
aggravated feelings of bitterness where such already existed, and excited
them in other cases. Some faint, floating rumour of a defeat recently
sustained at sea by the Spaniards, had just reached Cuzco. In this the
Indians secretly triumphed, greatly exaggerating its importance. Much
discussion followed as to who the victorious enemies could be. Yupanqui
and his friends had the vaguest possible ideas on the subject. No fable
could have been told them too wild or too monstrous for their faith.
José, who was just one degree less ignorant than the others, was listened
to as an oracle. It seemed a favourable opportunity for propounding his
cherished theory about the bearded, pale-faced strangers and their great
King. Not that he had hitherto been altogether silent on this topic, so
dear to his heart; but never before had he spoken of it so freely.
Yet the hopes that made the young, ardent heart of José throb and bound,
but faintly stirred the pulses of the aged men, whose spirits had been
crushed by nearly forty years of cruel oppression. They had learned
to bow beneath the yoke with sullen endurance; not acquiescent, not
resigned, but sorrowfully convinced of their own helplessness and the
power of the conquerors. It would not be quite true to say that they had
ceased to look for deliverance; but they looked passively, with tearful,
weary eyes, in which the light of hope was well-nigh quenched. Maricancha
expressed the feelings of all when he said,—
“These are fine words, my son Viracocha; but the Spaniards are not
conquered, nor like to be, in our day. Everything bows before them. They
are strong. God is on their side, and fights for them.”
“I doubt that,” José answered. “But the maize takes long to ripen, and
God’s plans may take longer.”
“If what the Spaniards tell us of His plans be true, He means them to
possess the whole earth.”
“No, no, my fathers!” José cried with energy; “never think that. Is
it not written in their own Sacred Book that the great King—who is no
Spaniard, believe me—shall have dominion from sea to sea, from the river
to the ends of the earth? that all kings shall fall down before Him, all
nations shall serve Him? He is the mighty King, the great Inca of the
East, to whom I look, and in whom I hope for deliverance. Oh, that I
could but find Him!” he concluded, in tones of thrilling earnestness.
“I know who He is,” said a soft, hesitating voice. All turned towards
Sumac, with eyes full of curiosity and interest. “Viracocha told us those
sacred words one day,” she continued; “and they were sweet in our ears
as the song of the tuya and wonderful as the spirit-music of Achapa.
So I kept them in my heart, and asked the nuns of Santa Clara what they
meant.” Here she paused.
“Well, my child, and what said they?” Yupanqui asked.
Sumac crossed herself reverently. “Sister Maria told me that the great
King is no other than the Lord Christ himself, the Son of God,”—she said.
But a chorus of grieved, protesting voices drowned her words. These men,
so willing to hear about the Christian religion, so ready to embrace
it, had yet learned from their instructors little more than a vague and
awful dread of Him who is its centre. They had been told of the pity and
tenderness of “Our Lady,” “the Mother of God.” But of His pity they had
never heard, save as shown through her intercession; from Him directly
they expected none. Every one except José, who remained silent, uttered
some exclamation expressive of disbelief or disappointment.
“He is the Judge!” “He is the God of the Spaniards, who gave them our
land and our people!” “He it is who will cast us into everlasting fire if
we neglect to have the sacraments and pay the priests!” “Ay, truly!—If it
were St. Christopher or St. James, one might understand. But the Son of
God Himself! How terrible!”
Much more was said. But it is too painful to record such words. Indeed,
they were not words so much as inarticulate cries—the cries of blind men,
groping in the dark bewildered, and striking ignorantly against the Hand
that would have saved and guided them—if they had but known!
“Sumac, my child—my dove! apple of my eye! daughter of my heart! what
grieves thee?”—It was old Yupanqui who spoke, in the words of endearment
and tenderness so richly supplied by the gentle _lengua del Inca_; for
Sumac had slipped down from her seat, and was crouching on the floor,
with her mantle thrown over her head, weeping quietly.
The girl’s slight frame thrilled to the caressing touch of the old
man, and taking his hand, she pressed it to her lips, saying with deep
emotion, “Oh, my father! do not let them speak so of Him—of Him—who died
for us!”
“For the Spaniards!” said Maricancha bitterly.
“For us also,” repeated Sumac—her voice increasing in strength, and her
eyes beaming softly through her tears;—“yes—for us also, the Children of
the Sun, to take away our sins.”
“The Children of the Sun do not sin, my darling,” said Yupanqui. “But pay
thy devotions as thou wilt to thy favourite God; no one shall speak a
word against Him.”
“He is the one God, grandfather. There is no other.”
“No other god! What canst thou mean, my child? For whose altar are those
flowers of thine? Every one knows the Christians honour hosts of gods
called santos and santas, besides the great goddess, the queen of heaven.
But worship whom thou wilt, my treasure, and may all gods comfort thee.”
Yupanqui, and indeed every one else, had grown very tender, not to say
reverent, towards Sumac, since the great sorrow had fallen upon her life.
The girl rose, carefully gathered up the completed flowers, and glided
softly from the room. Coyllur seemed to hesitate for a moment whether to
follow her; but the attraction of the dreams and aspirations that were
being eagerly discussed by her countrymen proved too strong, and she
remained.
XVII.
In the Convent Parlour.
“Why should I live? Do I not know
The life of woman is full of woe?
Toiling on, and on, and on,
With breaking heart and tearful eyes,
And silent lips, and in the soul
The secret longings that arise,
Which this world never satisfies!
Some more, some less, but of the whole
Not one quite happy,—no, not one!”
LONGFELLOW.
Accompanied by a female attendant, who carried a little basket containing
the golden flowers, Sumac crossed the great square, and shortly
afterwards entered by a side-door the gardens which had formerly belonged
to the Virgins of the Sun, but which were now appropriated to the
nuns of Santa Clara. The stately terraces, faced with dark stone, and
reaching down to the banks of the Huatanay, had once been adorned with
all the flowers of that prolific clime, in their rich variety of form
and colouring. And it is said that rarer flowers, silver pale or golden,
wrought by the skilful hands of the Virgins of the Sun, mingled with
the scarlet salvias, the crimson fuchsias, the variegated calceolarias,
and the many-tinted orchids, looking as if they had grown up with them
side by side. But now such flowers as these were esteemed too highly—not
for the art that fashioned, but for the metal that composed them—to be
left exposed to the changes of the elements. The terraces were beginning
already to fall into ruin; and while some of the hardier flowers grew
luxuriantly in sweet tangled thickets, others had perished, or become
poor and scanty, under the less careful hand of the stranger.
When they entered the garden, the old Indian domestic resigned her basket
to her young mistress, and then sat down on one of the terrace steps to
wait, crooning a Quichua song.
Sumac slowly climbed the hill to the convent door. Even the short walk
had wearied her, and the steep ascent tried her powers still further.
Her breath came and went, and two or three times she stopped to rest.
Reaching the door at last, she found it open, and entered.
“Tell my mother, Lucia wants her,” she said in Spanish to a novice whom
she happened to meet; for Sumac and Coyllur had been taught Spanish
by the nuns. They had also their Christian names, used seldom amongst
themselves, but often in their intercourse with the Spaniards. Sumac’s
was Lucia, Coyllur’s Victoria.
The novice, to whom she was well known, led her at once into a parlour,
saying, “I will tell Sister Maria.”
Sumac waited a while, first seated on a bench, then standing to gaze,
with much admiration, on a very indifferent painting, in her eyes a
wonderful work of art, representing Christ blessing the little children.
Ere long a worn and faded woman, in a dark serge robe, entered the room.
She was not young, she was not beautiful—perhaps she had never been so;
but when she looked at the Indian girl, there was a yearning, motherly
tenderness in her face, which it may be the angels think a fairer thing
than what we call beauty.
As she folded the slight form in an affectionate embrace, she exclaimed
sorrowfully, “My poor child is almost a shadow now. I sometimes fear,
Lucia, that you will soon vanish from our sight altogether.”
“And what if I do, mother?” asked the girl, seating herself beside her,
and gazing fondly into her dim blue eyes with dark ones that were all too
perilously bright. “Since they slew the Inca, I have not wished to live.
Tell me, mother, is that also sin?”
Sister Maria sighed, as she answered, “It is always sin, my child, if we
love the creature more than the Creator.”
Sumac crossed herself, and pointed to the picture. “You told me He takes
away sin; you said He died for our sins on the cross.”
Amidst much darkness, ignorance, and confusion, that one grand and simple
truth had found its way, like healing balm, into the crushed heart of the
Indian girl; for Sister Maria, having learned that truth herself, was
able to teach it. In early days—days far off, and tenderly remembered
now—some pure and unadulterated drops of the water of life had fallen
to her lot through the ministrations of the celebrated Fray Constantine
Ponce de la Fuente, in Seville. Many years since then had she lived “in a
dry and thirsty land where no water is,” yet, like the lotus flower, she
had treasured up a little store of the precious liquid, enough to quench
the thirst of a weary wanderer in the desert. Thus it was that, happily,
one poor mourner was not bid to look, as too many were, for comfort, to
the “Madre Dolorosa,” our Lady of Sorrows, but to the Man of Sorrows
Himself, who is also the Lord of Life and Glory.
Half unconsciously, Sister Maria murmured a few lines of the noble old
Latin hymn, “Dies Iræ.”
“What do those words say, mother?” Sumac asked.
The nun gave a free Spanish translation of them, somewhat resembling
ours:—
“Think, O Saviour, for what reason
Thou endured’st earth’s pain and treason
Do not lose me in that season.”
But Sumac did not approve.
“That does not seem a good prayer, mother,” she said. “How could He lose
me? He is God.”
“Keep that faith, my child,” replied the nun, a little sorrowfully.
_She_ was conscious of many a keen pulsation of fear, not that He would
lose her, but that she might somehow lose Him, which would be the same
thing practically. But why should she cast the shadow of her own doubt
upon her pupil’s more simple trust?
Sumac broke the pause that followed. “Mother, I have now a great sin, I
am afraid,” she said, in faltering tones.
Upon a few occasions—very few—Sumac and Coyllur had attended confession.
They had been gently dealt with; yet they both hated it. Coyllur was
nearly driven to open rebellion by the requirement; while to Sumac it was
a dreaded and formidable ordeal. Yet she liked well to pour her simple
confessions into the ear of her chosen teacher and friend; her “mother,”
as the motherless girl—motherless almost since the dawn of memory—loved
to call her.
“What is this sin, my daughter?” asked the nun, tenderly taking and
holding the small, brown, transparent hand.
“I have much sin, because it hurts me that Coyllur and Viracocha love
each other,” was Sumac’s faltering acknowledgment.
“What, my child! And do they?” asked the nun, with a perceptible start.
“Yes,” said the Indian girl, surprised in her turn at her friend’s
surprise. “It is right. He is noble, beautiful, and good; and he is one
of our own.”
“How far has the matter gone? Does Coyllur really care for him? Is
anything settled?” asked Sister Maria, with much more eagerness than
might have been expected from her. She pitied the conquered race, and
would fain spare them one wrong more, if she could.
Sumac looked at her, wondering. “Mother,” she said, “surely you do not
wish Coyllur to be a holy virgin? I might, if I live; but never Coyllur.
She is too bright, too glad. She is like the little tuyas that go singing
all the day from bough to bough. God, when He made her, meant her to be
always happy, I am sure.”
“May it indeed be so,” said the nun. “No, Lucia, I do not wish to see her
undertake the religious life; she has no vocation for it. But, my child,
does Prince Paullu know what you have told me now? or even your aunt,
Doña Beatriz Coya?”
“My grandfather will tell Paullu when it is necessary,” Sumac answered,
not without a look that betrayed the distrust and dislike which even her
gentle heart harboured towards the Inca who made himself the willing tool
of the Spaniard. “My aunt,” she added, “must be well aware of it already;
they are both often at her house. And, in sooth, they never go there that
I am not filled with fear lest Viracocha should fight with some Spanish
caballero for paying attention to my sister.”
“He could not be so mad as to fight with a Spaniard! Lucia, my child, if
there be still time, if remonstrance still avails—it is for her sake I
speak, and for his—”
“But what is it you would say, my mother?” Sumac asked, with momentarily
increasing agitation. “It _is_ too late; they love each other. Who could
be so cruel as to sunder them? What have you heard? What do you know?”
“I _know_ nothing, my child;”—which was true: at least, Sister Maria only
knew that the Mother Abbess was a kinswoman of the Viceroy, Don Francisco
de Toledo; that three proud and needy young cavaliers—the nephews of
both—were waiting in Cuzco for whatever fortune and their powerful
kinsfolk might send them; and that the youngest and proudest of the three
had cast his fiery dark eyes on the sweet face of Coyllur, and sworn to
have her for his bride. And woe betide the Indian slave who should dare
to cross the path of his master, the white man!
However, there were still a hundred possibilities in the future. Some one
might change—something might happen; at all events, the trembling form,
the eager parted lips, the wistful anxious eyes of her best-loved pupil
were more at that moment to poor Sister Maria than any distant dangers
that might menace Coyllur and Viracocha. To turn her thoughts from the
subject that alarmed her, she asked,—
“But, my Lucia, why should it hurt _you_ that they love each other?”
“I don’t know,” faltered Sumac, her head drooping more and more, until
at last her face was quite overshadowed by her long and beautiful hair;
“I can’t tell. Only, mother,” she added, looking quickly up into the
nun’s kind sorrowful eyes, “my heart pains me—_here_. It is hungry—it is
empty—it is tired. When Viracocha speaks low and soft to Coyllur, it says
within me—‘_You_ will never hear such words any more, Sumac—never any
more!’ O mother, mother! there be many voices sweet to others; one voice
only was sweet to Sumac,—but it will never speak again! Dark and evil it
seems to me that he is dead, and that I am left alive.”
And Sumac laid herself, like a tired child, in her friend’s pitying arms,
and wept. It was not often that she spoke such words or wept such tears.
If she had, she might have lived longer. Sister Maria mingled her tears
of sympathy with the hot and passionate drops of Sumac’s bitter sorrow.
At last she said,—
“Lucia, my child, would you desire to change your lot for that of Coyllur
now?”
It was rather a strange question for a nun to ask. But Sister Maria had
been a woman before she became a nun; and in spite of conventual life and
discipline, the woman’s heart throbbed in her bosom still.
“Oh no, no! Mother, don’t you remember that _I_ was to have been the sole
Inca’s bride?”
“Is it, then, because you esteem it so great an honour to be, as you call
it, Coya—”
“Oh, hush, mother! what use is all that? Indeed, I never heeded such
words when they spoke them; and I think there is much talk like the
mountain snow, that melts when you take it in your hand. But, mother, you
know I saw him. Once he laid aside the llautu, and the crimson tunic, and
the white wing-feathers of the cora-quenque, and he put on the dress of
a poor man, and came unknown to Cuzco, that he might look upon the city
of his fathers;—that he might look too upon this poor face of mine, that
has no beauty now. And then he said—he said—No, mamallay, I will not tell
what he said—not even to you. Those words are all my own; they are the
one thing poor Sumac has in this dark, cold world. Had he bidden me then,
I would have gone forth gladly to the wild desert with him—for was he not
the Inca? But he did not; he told me he would come again. He _did_ come
again—you know how. They would not let me see him. Perhaps it was best;
my face might have troubled him—might have shadowed with a thought of
pain the noble calm of the look he wore, as beseemed him, to the last.
It does not matter now—for me. I ought not to weep;—you tell me I may
pray for him. And he received Holy Baptism,—most gladly, as they say.
Moreover, he left his cause to God;—Christ is God.”
After one more gush of passionate tears came a sudden change of tone:
“Give _him_—give _his_ memory up for Viracocha! Give the emerald of
the mine for one of those green leaves in the garden yonder! Not that
Viracocha is not good and brave. I love him well,—as my brother. But
there are ten thousand green leaves for one green stone, mother.”
“So you think your own portion the best, and would rather keep it,
with all its sorrow? Well, my child, I believe you are right,” said
the woman’s heart of Sister Maria. “Though, of course, earthly love is
nothing, compared with heavenly—mere dust and dross,” the nun interposed.
“Still, God knows,” the woman said, taking up the parable again, “it is
less bitter to have once been loved, truly and nobly, and then to have
been separated by man’s hate and cruelty, than to find the trusted false,
and to see what looked like gold fade away into tinsel.”
Sumac looked up, with interest and curiosity in her tearful eyes. The old
wound ceased to throb, while she wondered whether some similar scar might
not be found beneath the serge robe of a holy virgin.
“I scarcely know whether I ought to tell you foolish old stories,” said
the nun, as the colour mantled to the roots of her thin hair, touched
with gray. “Of course, all is past and gone—and no matter now. It seems
as if it happened to some different person, long ago, in another life.
Yet, not so long, after all. It is not easy in the convent to tell how
time passes. I make strange mistakes sometimes. I think I have told you
that I was born and brought up in Seville.”
“Seville! That is the great city beyond the Mother Sea, like Cuzco here,”
said Sumac, who had heard José talk of Seville.
“Not just like Cuzco; for there be many cities as great, or greater, in
the Old World—though Seville is a fair city certainly.”
“Viracocha has told us of it. His patre, Fray Fernando, was born there.
And I think he must be the best and kindest Spaniard that ever lived.
Viracocha loves him more than any one on earth, save Coyllur.”
“It was in Seville that I spent my happy childhood. Father and mother,
sisters and brothers, all loved me, the youngest, and made a little queen
of me. It was that they were good and tender, not that I was beautiful.
Even when I was young and gay, I do not think my face was as lovely as
many other faces in my native land. You might see a hundred fairer any
day on the Prado. Still, God had given me the fair hair people care for
in my country, I suppose because it is not often seen; and these dim eyes
were what men called _zarca_. They said I stole their azure from the sky.
What idle tales to tell you now! All the saints forgive me! Our Lady,
with the seven swords in her breast, be merciful to me! What has tempted
me to talk thus to thee, poor child, whom I should be seeking to edify?”
“But, you know, I want to hear what happened,” said Sumac innocently.
“_Nothing_ happened, Lucia; and that was just the trouble that made the
blue eyes grow dim, and took the gold from the hair you see so dull and
scanty. That was the trouble too that, God be thanked, made me think of
Him. Then I remembered Fray Constantino’s sermons, that we used to go and
hear in the great church; and then, at last, I gave Him all that was left
of my poor life.”
“But was there no one—,” Sumac began, then stopped. “I don’t know the
right Spanish words to use,” she said apologetically.
“Yes,” Sister Maria confessed, with a faint flush on her faded cheek.
“One there was who praised the blue eyes like the rest, but did not look
like the rest when he praised them. Wherever I went, there he was, with
that great brow and earnest face—saying so much in one word, looking
so much in one glance. He was the only son of a very proud and noble,
though not wealthy, family. And I thought—. But I am speaking idle words
again. I will only tell you that, all at once, he vanished—without word,
without sign. It was said that he had gone away to seek his fortune in
this strange New World. If so, at least he might have bowed or looked
farewell. He never came again. I never heard what became of him; and I
shall never hear on this side the grave.”
“You may be sure he was killed in battle, mother,” said Sumac, tenderly
suggesting what seemed to her the most honourable and enviable fate.
“I know not. I only know that I was very sinful and very miserable. I
thought more of him than of God. I prayed all the saints to send him
back; and I had my heart full of wicked thoughts about them, because
they did not, or could not. Then other troubles came: my kind and tender
parents died, my brothers were scattered over the world, my sisters
were married—not all happily. One brother, my favourite, was killed in
Flanders, fighting against the heretics.”
“I know.—The English?”
“It did happen, strangely enough, that he fell by the hand of an
Englishman. Then my proud heart broke at last. I gave up earthly hope,
and turned, as I have told you, to God for comfort. My child, He does
comfort the sorrowful, He does bind up the broken heart; though He takes
more than a day to do His work.”
“He is good,” said Sumac gently. Then hearing the sound of a bell,
which she knew was meant to summon the nuns to prayer, she rose to go.
Remembering her basket of flowers, she took it up, and put it in her
friend’s hand. “Here are flowers for the holy saint, mother,” she said.
“I am so stupid that I have forgotten his name.”