Yupanqui was found one morning, lying dead on the blanket of biscache
wool that served him for a couch. But his death was opportune, and
saved him much sorrow. Almost immediately afterwards, the storm that
had been gathering over the Inca family since the apprehension of Tupac
Amaru, broke at last. The suspicion of the Spaniards and the tyranny of
the Viceroy found expression in a severe decree, banishing nearly all
the Children of the Sun from the beloved city of their fathers. Doña
Beatriz Coya took the dejected and sorrowful Coyllur to her own home.
Her grief for her grandfather was wild; but her aunt comforted her as
best she could, promising to supply the place of a parent to her. From
that day forward, the orphan girl was of necessity thrown entirely upon
the protection and guidance of Doña Beatriz, and of the Spaniards,
or Spaniardized Indians, who surrounded her. So the end could not be
wondered at. The next day, in the Church of Santa Aña, Coyllur was to
give her hand to the Spanish cavalier, Don Francisco Solis de Toledo.
Don José Viracocha Inca did honour to the memory of his ancestors by
his manner of receiving this intelligence. A Spaniard would at least
have sworn by all the saints in heaven to have his rival’s blood. But
the Inca’s son had trained himself “the fierce extremes of good and ill
to brook impassive.” Therefore he spoke no word; he gave no sign. He
silently emptied his coca-bag into the withered hands of the poor woman;
then he walked quietly on to the door of the stately mansion of Don
Marcio Serra de Leguisano.
The door-keeper was an Indian; which is equivalent to saying that he was
the humble servant of Viracocha. From him he learned that the nũsta was
at that moment in the courtyard. “I would go thither, my brother,” said
Viracocha; and the Indian of course admitted him.
The taste of Doña Beatriz had transformed the courtyard into a pretty
garden, rich with tropical glories, and having in the centre a fountain
of limpid water. Coyllur, who was gathering flowers, still wore her
graceful national costume; but a Spanish head-dress of black silk and
lace hung down over her pure white mantle of vicuña wool. On seeing
Viracocha, she allowed the flowers to fall from her hands, and, trembling
from head to foot, cried out in Spanish, “Santa Maria!”
Viracocha approached, knelt before her, and kissed her passive hand. Then
he rose, and quietly withdrew a few paces. “Coyllur nũsta,” he said, of
course in his native tongue, “I know all.—But will you, for the sake of
the past, answer me one question this day? That done, I shall trouble you
no more.”
Coyllur hung her head; and clutched nervously at the graceful bells of
a tall fuchsia, near which they were standing. A spray came off in her
hand, and she tore it to fragments.
Viracocha stood motionless, patiently awaiting her reply. It came at
last:—“Ask what you will of me,” she murmured.
“Is this thing your own free choice, Coyllur nũsta?” Viracocha asked,
with almost as much outward calmness as if merely inquiring what she
meant to do with the flowers that lay neglected at her feet.
“Why ask that?” she faltered, in a very different tone from his.
“Because—if _Yes_—I go home, never more to see your face. If _No_”—his
dark eyes kindled, and unconsciously he advanced one step nearer,—“I
fling this mantle round you, and thus I bear you safe to the dwellings of
my people, let who will bar my way. Coyllur, star of Heaven, trust me—I
will save you.”
She shrank a little, as if frightened by his vehemence; and José,
instantly recollecting himself, recoiled also.
“I am afraid for you,” she faltered. “If _he_ should come and find you
here, he would kill you.”
“Let him try,” said José with a haughty smile. “But fear not. In your
presence there shall be no bloodshed. Nũsta, I await your answer.”
Coyllur wrung her hands, as one in pain. “O Viracocha, Viracocha!” she
cried at last, “why have you come to torture me? Why do you bring the old
times back again to me? And yet—and yet—”
José took from his bosom Sumac’s little book. Carefully preserved and
pressed between its leaves lay the crimson passion-flower. This he gently
removed, and placed in the trembling hand of Coyllur. “If you think the
heart next which it has lain ever since worth your keeping, keep it,” he
said. “But if indeed you have given yours to the Spaniard, then give it
back to me, for it will be all that I have left on earth.”
Minute after minute passed away, and still the shadows chased each other
over the agitated face of the Indian girl, whose heart was torn by
contending emotions. But at last the fight was over; the day was won. It
was the proud Castilian knight who proved the conqueror;—with his fair
face and splendid courtesy, and the masterful ways wherewith he seemed to
rule man’s will and woman’s heart as easily as he controlled his noble
steed. Pity, esteem, and old familiar kindness Coyllur still felt for the
son of her people;—but she loved the Spaniard. Silently, tremblingly,
with bowed head and sorrowful heart, she gave the withered flower back
again to Viracocha.
Without a word he replaced it in his bosom. Then he said, calmly enough,
“God bless you, nũstallay,” and turned to go. But, turning again for a
moment, he added, “I shall see your face no more. Unless, indeed, you or
yours ever need the help of the children of your people. Then I will know
it, and be near you.”
Coyllur watched him until he disappeared in the long dark passage that
led to the outer door. Then she fled for refuge to her aunt, whom she
actually terrified by an outburst of passionate weeping.
Doña Beatriz Coya, who had laboured much to bring about this Spanish
match, soothed and comforted her niece by every tender art in her power.
“You have no idea, my child,” she said, “with how many sad misgivings
of heart I gave my hand, in my day, to the stranger. Nor was I quite so
fortunate as you are. Every one knows Don Francisco Solis is of the best
blood in Spain—blue blood, as they say;—while Don Marcio Serra (whom
the saints preserve!), you know, was—was not—well, no matter now; he is
as good as the best of them, and better. But was it not told you how I
braved the anger of Paullu, and of all my kindred, because I could not
endure the thought of him? And at last, all that Paullu could wring from
me, by prayers and threats and promises, was just this, ‘Perhaps I will
have him, and perhaps I will not.’” And the good lady indulged in a
laugh at the recollection of her own girlish wilfulness. “But there was
no perhaps with my Uncle Paullu,” she continued. “At that time he dared
not, for his head, disoblige one of the conquistadors. So I was married,
in spite of myself, to the best of husbands. And I have had, since then,
everything my heart could desire; besides the power to help my people,
which I have not failed to use, God and the saints enabling me.”
Whilst Coyllur was thus receiving from her kind-hearted aunt the
time-honoured conventional consolation,
“She herself was not exempt,
Doubtless she herself had suffered,”
Viracocha was wandering, with his broken heart, amongst the ruins of his
ancestors’ fortress on the Sachsahuaman hill.
At length he threw himself down amongst the tumbled stones, on a patch of
emerald grass variegated with blue and golden wild-flowers. Then came
his hour of weakness. All his proud stoicism gone, he bowed his head and
wept—such tears as a man may weep unblamed who has just lost everything
that made life precious.
What dried his tears at last was not any thought of comfort, but the
fierce and passionate hatred that like a bitter flood rushed over his
heart, leaving no room for softer feelings there. How he hated these
enemies of his race—these cruel Spaniards! His own gentler language
supplied no words fit for his rage: he was fain to curse them, and that
aloud, in the tongue they had taught him to speak. The crushing sense
of their all-conquering power, and his and his nation’s impotence, only
intensified his hatred a thousandfold.
Now for the first time he thoroughly recognized and acknowledged to
himself the strength that God had given to the white man. It was not
their fire-breathing clubs, not their horses, not their iron tools, it
was their strength that won them the victory—strength not of limb and
muscle alone, but of heart and brain. They were not better than his own
people,—not braver, truer, kinder,—far otherwise,—but they were stronger.
And before this terrible strength, this force and weight of manhood
in the pale-faced stranger, had perished, or was perishing, all the
gentle grace and beauty of the old time; so fair even in its ruins, yet
powerless to touch the hearts of the destroyers.
Viracocha’s outburst of agony ended in a dumb, crushed hopelessness,
worse than agony. Wherefore contend with this resistless might? It was
the vicuña in the paw of the jaguar, the gentle dove in the talons of the
mighty condor of the Andes.
Then came softer thoughts. Had all men united to tell him Coyllur could
have proved untrue, he would have flung back a scornful denial. Even now,
scarcely her own lips could convince him—lips that had spoken the soft
musical “Vaya con Dios!” that haunted his memory still—that would haunt
him for ever. O Coyllur, Coyllur! Star of his life, set for ever! And
again his tears fell like rain, as over and over he murmured the beloved
name.
Yet those tears relieved him; they did him good. They gradually recalled
him to himself. He remembered his promise that she should see his face
no more. This was the last service he could render her. He would leave
Cuzco—and depart—whither? He knew not—he cared not. But ere he went, it
behoved him to render account of his stewardship, and make full report
of all he had seen and heard during the last ten months. Amancaes had
informed him that Maricancha, in spite of the decree of banishment,
contrived still to linger in Cuzco, under cover of a disguise, and she
had told him where to find him. To him therefore he must go, and at once.
He rose and retraced his steps to the city. He was successful in finding
Maricancha; but when his interview with him was over, he wandered once
more towards what had been Yupanqui’s house, feeling utterly desolate and
alone. But near the door he met a young son of Doña Beatriz Coya’s Indian
porter, who had evidently been sent in search of him.
The boy brought him a sealed letter, which he said had been left for him
some time ago at his master’s, by a messenger from the house of the gray
monks.
It was addressed, “A Don José Viracocha Inca, à Cuzco.” José cut the silk
that secured it with his useless Spanish sword, and read these words:—
“MY SON,—I am sick in body and sick at heart. Come to me if
thou canst. I need thee. Ask for me here at the Franciscan
monastery.
“Thy unworthy father in God,
“Fernando, Brother of the First Order of St. Francis.
“Given at Ciudad de los Reyes, on the vigil of San Antonio, in
the year of grace 1573.”
Nearly a year ago! Late in the day as it was already, José Viracocha had
put three good leagues between himself and the Golden City ere he saw the
sun drop in flame behind the snowy peak of Vilcañota.
XXI.
Old England.
“That mother’s face,
Its grave sweet smile yet wearing in the place
Where so it ever smiled.”
HEMANS.
It now becomes necessary for us to pass, with the rapidity of thought,
from one side of the globe to the other, that we may visit for a little
while the shores of “Merrie England”—the England of Queen Elizabeth and
the Reformation.
It was a glorious hour in England’s day—the hour that followed the
sunrise. Everywhere life was awakening—life of the intellect and
imagination, and, through God’s blessing, that yet higher life which is
his best and purest gift. Therefore living works were wrought, of which
the memory shall last as long as this earth endures.
But our concern is not now with the brilliant workers of that busy age.
We shall not visit the starry court of the maiden Queen, nor allow
ourselves to linger fondly over names—such as Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney,
Shakespeare—which have become “music more than any song” to every English
ear. Rather shall we glance at the interior of a modest home, where dwelt
in those days an English matron, who, though unknown to fame, was truly
one of the noble band without whom the England of Elizabeth and the
Reformation never could have been.
In the weald of Kent, where the trim hop-gardens flourish now, there
stood at that time a half-ruined keep, built in the stormy age of the
Wars of the Roses. It was much out of repair, and quite destitute of what
were then accounted modern improvements. Its principal apartment was
still the great hall, which was heated by a fire on the hearth, strewn
with rushes, and furnished with massive, quaintly-carved oaken benches,
cupboards, and tables.
But some women have the faculty of transforming any place, however
dreary, formal, or comfortless, into a home. Of such was Marion Grey,
widow of Walter Grey, a gentleman of Kent, of ancient lineage and good
repute.
It is evening; and Marion Grey sits at the centre table, an oil lamp
illuminating the space around her, but leaving the greater part of the
gloomy hall in twilight. She is busy adorning the sleeve of a cambric
shirt with very fine “pearling;” her deft fingers moving rapidly, while
her eyes are seldom raised from her work, save for a hasty glance at
the lamp, which scarcely affords the amount of light needful for such
delicate embroidery.
“Shall I trim it, mother?” asks her companion, a fair boy, who does not
seem equally loath to look up from the pages of a great book he has been
reading aloud. The volume, “imprinted at London, by John Day and William
Seres,” consists of the collected theological writings of the Reformer
Thomas Becon, and certainly is not just what an ordinary boy would have
chosen for his private enjoyment. But Walter Grey is not an ordinary
boy; and if he had been, those were days in which young people did the
pleasure of their elders, not their own.
“I think it needs not,” the mother answered. Then, perhaps surmising that
the boy was tired of reading, she asked him, “Dost remember any of thy
cousins, Walter?”
“None but George, mother. Do you not mind the year you had the great
fever, and my aunt came here to tend you? How she brought George, a ten
years’ bairn, with her; for she said he was so masterful, and of such
high stomach, none of the maids durst attempt to keep him under? And a
proper life we led each other, he and I. The very night he came we fought
together. He called me an outlandish imp, and no true Englishman, because
I was born at Geneva; and I for answer fetched him a buffet on the cheek.”
“Ill-conditioned boy! Even at seven years old, you should have known
better than to strike your little guest.”
“Marry, mother, he paid me, and with usury,” laughed Walter. “But if I
had had the wit, I might have given him a better answer. I might have
said he would have been born at Geneva too, an his father had not thought
more of his silks and satins than of his conscience.”
“Therein thou wouldst have shown thine unwisdom as well as thy
discourtesy. In Queen Mary’s days thine Uncle Noble did not yet know the
gospel; how then could he go into exile for it? In truth, it was what he
saw, in those evil times, of the faith and patience of the saints that,
with God’s blessing, won him to a better mind. I have heard him say
so myself. And as for thy comrade George,” she added more lightly, “I
daresay his love of fighting stands him in good stead now, when he meets
the Dons upon the high seas.”
Walter’s face, naturally fair and pale, was overspread in an instant by a
crimson flush, telling of some strong hidden feeling suddenly awakened.
But it passed as quickly as it came; and he said, in his ordinary tone,
“Mother, I pray you, tell me the names of all my cousins. ’Twere as well
I knew them, at least after a fashion, ere I saw them.”
“Willingly, my boy. Thine aunt hath said so much of them in her letters,
that I almost think I can see the six stalwart lads gathered round her,
with the one fair girl they are all so fond and proud of. First, then,
there is Thomas, good steady lad, as for old times’ sake they call him
still, though he must be near his thirtieth year now. He is his father’s
right hand and faithful helper. Next comes Harry, the soldier; he has
volunteered, I told you, in aid of the persecuted Protestants in the Low
Countries. Your uncle can send him thither better furnished forth than
many a peer’s son. Will, the third in age, is ’prentice to Master Nevet,
the jeweller.”
“’Prentice!” cried Walter in high disdain. “O mother! Only think of one
of our blood standing at the door of a shop, and crying ‘What do ye lack;
what do ye lack, my masters?’ as Sir John Carr says the London ’prentices
are wont to do.”
Mrs. Grey looked steadily at her son with her clear, soft blue eyes, and
said, flushing faintly, “Then what think you, Walter, of one of our blood
sitting up whole nights to work English broidery on the robes of a Geneva
citizen’s dame, carrying them to her with her own hands afterwards, and
taking thankfully the silver she gave in payment?”
“And did you do that, mother?” asked Walter, with softened look. “What
dreadful times they must have been!”
“Not dreadful _then_, for God sent them, and each day had but one day’s
burden to bear. But sometimes now they seem dreadful to look back
upon.—Of whom was I speaking? Of Will? George the sailor comes next in
age. And I suspect Master James will never rest till he follows the same
way of life,—for all his father’s talk of needing his help himself.”
“Has James then told his father that he wants to go to sea?” asked Walter
abruptly, and in a tone more blunt and eager than that in which he
usually addressed his mother.
“He has spoken of his wishes more than once, I believe; but he obeys his
father, as in duty bound.—Take care, Walter; you will spoil my book. Pity
lads are not taught to sew, since it is hard to keep idle hands out of
mischief.—After James comes the fair maiden Lilias, the pet and pride of
all her brave brothers; she will be about thy age, I reckon. Lastly,
there is little Ned, the scholar of the family; he was thirteen at
Christmas. Be kind to Ned, Walter, and let him look to you as to an elder
brother; for I wot his father means to send him to Oxford, and you may be
a good friend to him there, being the elder by three years. There,—that
is finished, and makes the eighth of your new shirts.—Be very careful,
Walter, whom you trust for the washing of them; for cambric and Holland
are light to rend and ill to mend.”
“Yes, mother,” said Walter, with a sigh.
The next day he was to leave the home of his childhood and to begin a new
life amongst strangers. Yet dearly as he loved his mother (and good right
he had to love her dearly), it was not the thought of parting that wrung
that sigh from the boy’s heart. He was thinking of what had just been
said about his cousin, James Noble.
Walter Grey’s life hitherto had been rather a singular one for a boy. He
was born at Geneva, during his parents’ exile for conscience’ sake; and
he barely remembered their departure from that friendly city, and his
father’s death on the homeward journey. The young widow and her orphan
boy were most kindly received in London by the worthy merchant to whom
her sister had been induced to give her hand, at a time when every one
thought she sorely disgraced her family by so doing. But now the wheel of
Fortune had turned so far that good Master Noble, mercer and warden of
his craft, had more to spend on the education of any one of his six sons
than sufficed Mistress Marion Grey to maintain the state of a gentlewoman
in the home of her husband’s ancestors.
It was well that she was not obliged to delegate the important task
of her only son’s education to any hands but her own. Like many noble
women of the sixteenth century, Marion Markham and her sister Lilias had
received from their father an excellent classical education. So good
a teacher was she, and so apt a pupil did Walter prove, that when at
length, distrusting her own powers, she sent him to the vicar of the
parish, Sir John Carr, to be examined in Greek and Latin, that worthy
gentleman, whose store of learning was not ample, found the scholar of
fifteen quite too much for him. He prudently sent him back to his mother
with a highly complimentary letter, in which he compared her to Minerva,
to Cornelia, and, what was more to the purpose, to the sainted “twelve
days’ queen,” her husband’s distant relative.
Nor were studies yet more important than Greek and Latin forgotten.
Walter was made familiar from his earliest childhood with the Book that
his mother held dearer than life, and constant were her prayers that its
holy lessons might be written on his heart.
Walter had another teacher, moreover, a stern but very efficient one.
In the school of poverty he learned self-denial; and well has it been
remarked that “the worst education that teaches self-denial is better
than the best that teaches everything else, and leaves that out.”
And yet, in spite of all, there was one defect—only one, but that a great
one—in Walter’s education. The boy had no boyhood. A truly healthful,
happy childhood he had enjoyed in its season; for the child dwells in his
own little world, safe as the fairy in her crystal globe from the cares
and sorrows and most of the dangers of maturity. Almost all the little
child really needs is love. Give him _that_, and no matter how poor and
bare and narrow his surroundings may be, imagination will make them a
kingdom. But it is otherwise when
“Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Around the growing boy.”
Then, in proportion as his wants increase, his dangers multiply. His
animal nature grows and expands, while imagination pales and fades,
leaving him very dependent on the common world that surrounds him, often
very curious about it, asking a great deal from it, and influenced by it
in ten thousand ways. Through this stage he must needs pass, if he is to
prove hereafter a complete and well-developed man.
Walter Grey, however, was expected to grow at once, and without any
interval, from the thoughtful child into the thoughtful man. Boyhood,
with “its unchecked, unbidden joy, its dread of books and love of fun,”
was not for him. Instead of sharing the sports of merry schoolmates, this
boy shared his mother’s cares and anxieties as her friend and confidant,
sometimes even already her counsellor. Instead of planning victories at
prisoner’s base and trap ball, and raids upon orchards and nut-woods, he
planned how to find bread and beer enough for their household, and still
to have somewhat over to give to him that needed. Virgil and Plato were
to him what “The Seven Champions of Christendom” were to other boys. It
is true that he was taught to ride, and to shoot with the bow and arrow,
and he could do these as well as any lad of his years; but he did them,
as he did everything else, gravely and with a purpose. They were part of
his education.
It is not easy to defraud Nature of her due. Often, for the time, she
seems to acquiesce,—at least she takes it patiently, and makes no sign.
But she silently keeps account of every debt; and it is well if some day
she does not suddenly present a bill for the sum total, and demand an
acquittance, admitting of no denial.
Late that night Walter sat in thoughtful mood upon his tresseled bed. His
chest, packed by his mother’s careful hand in readiness for the morrow’s
journey, lay so near, that his feet, as he swung them back and forwards,
sometimes touched it. His doublet was off; his fair hair, tumbled by his
restless hands, fell in disorder over his neat Holland shirt. There was
no light in the room, save what the moonbeams shed through the narrow,
unglazed slit that served for a window.
The boy was asking himself a question, often well-nigh the most
important a boy can ask, “Shall I tell my mother?” He asked it the more
sincerely and earnestly because he had just been repeating the evening
prayer his mother taught him, and not without some simple additions,
the promptings of his own heart. And now he had a great mind to delay
no longer, but to step softly to the door of his mother’s room (where
he well knew the light would still be burning), to seek admittance, to
kneel down beside her chair—just as he knelt when he learned his first
prayer—and to tell her all.