ANGELA.
"_Regardez mon père, regardez! Il va mieux, le pauvre homme._"
"_C'est ça, ma fille chérie, faites le boire._"
I open my eyes with an effort, for the dust of the desert has almost
blinded me.
I am in a beautiful garden, leaning against the body of the dead ostrich,
a lovely girl is holding a cup of water to my parched lips, and an old man
of benevolent aspect stands by her side.
"_Merci mademoiselle, vous etes bien bonne_," I murmur.
"Oh, father, he speaks French."
"This passes comprehension. Are you French, monsieur?"
"No, English."
"English! This is stranger still. But whence come you, and who bound you
on the nandu?"
"I will tell you--a little more water, I pray you, mademoiselle."
"Let him drink again, Angela--and dash some water in his face; he is
faint."
"_Le pauvre homme!_ See how his lips are swollen! Do you feel better,
monsieur?" she asked compassionately, again putting the cup to my lips.
"Much. A thousand thanks. I can answer your question now (to the old man).
I was bound on the nandu by order of the Queen of the Pachatupec Indians."
"The Pachatupec Indians! I have heard of them. But they are a long way
off; more than a hundred leagues of desert lies between us and the
Pachatupec country. Are you quite sure, monsieur?"
"Quite. And seeing that the nandu went at great speed, though not always
in a direct line, and we must have been going fifteen or sixteen hours, I
am not surprised that we have travelled so far."
"_Mon dieu!_ And all that time you have neither eaten nor drunk. No wonder
you are exhausted! Come with us, and we will give you something more
invigorating than water. You shall tell us your story afterward--if you
will."
I tried to rise, but my stiffened and almost paralyzed limbs refused to
move.
"Let us help you. Take his other arm, Angela--thus, Now!" And with that
they each gave me a hand and raised me to my feet.
"How was it? Who killed the nandu?" I asked as I hobbled on between them.
"We saw the creature coming toward us with what looked like a dead man on
his back, and as he did not seem disposed to stop I told Angela, who is a
famous archer, to draw her bow and shoot him. He fell dead where he now
lies, and when we saw that, though unconscious, you still lived, we
unloosed you."
"And saved my life. Might I ask to whom I am indebted for this great
service, and to what beautiful country the nandu has brought me?"
"Say nothing about the service, my dear sir. Helping each other in
difficulty and distress is a duty we owe to Heaven and our common
humanity. I count your coming a great blessing. You are the first visitor
we have had for many years, and the Abbé Balthazar gives you a warm
welcome to San Cristobal de Quipai. The name is of good omen, Quipai being
an Indian word which signifies 'Rest Here,' and I shall be glad for you to
rest here so long as it may please you."
"Nigel Fortescue, formerly an officer in the British Army, at present a
fugitive and a wanderer, tenders you his warmest thanks, and gratefully
accepts your hospitality--And now that we know each other, Monsieur
l'Abbé, might I ask the favor of an introduction to the young lady to whom
I owe my deliverance from the nandu?"
"She is Angela, monsieur. My people call her Señorita Angela. It pleases
me sometimes to speak of her as Angela Dieu-donnée, for she was sent to us
by God, and ever since she came among us she has been our good angel."
"I am sure she has. Nobody with so sweet a face could be otherwise than
good," I said, with an admiring glance at the beautiful girl which dyed
the damask of her cheek a yet deeper crimson.
It was no mere compliment. In all my wanderings I have not beheld the
equal of Angela Dieu-donnée. Though I can see her now, though I learned to
paint in order that, however inadequately, I might make her likeness, I am
unable to describe her; words can give no idea of the comeliness of her
face, the grace of her movements, and the shapeliness of her form. I have
seen women with skins as fair, hair as dark, eyes as deeply blue, but none
with the same brightness of look and sweetness of disposition, none with
courage as high, temper as serene.
To look at Angela was to love her, though as yet I knew not that I had
regained my liberty only to lose my heart. My feelings at the moment
oscillated between admiration of her and a painful sense of my own
disreputable appearance. Bareheaded and shoeless, covered with the dust of
the desert, clad only in a torn shirt and ragged trousers, my arms and
legs scored with livid marks, I must have seemed a veritable scarecrow.
Angela looked like a queen, or would have done were queens ever so
charming, or so becomingly attired. Her low-crowned hat was adorned with
beautiful flowers; a loose-fitting alpaca robe of light blue set off her
form to the best advantage, and round her waist was a golden baldrick
which supported a sheaf of arrows. At her breast was an orchid which in
Europe would have been almost priceless, her shapely arms were bare to the
shoulder, and her sandaled feet were innocent of hosen.
I was wondering who could have designed this costume, in which there was a
savor of the pictures of Watteau and the court of Versailles, how so
lovely a creature could have found her way to a place so remote as San
Cristobal de Quipai, when the abbé resumed the conversation.
"Angela came to us as strangely and unexpectedly as you have come,
Monsieur Nigel" (he found my Christian name the easier to pronounce),
"and, like you, without any volition on her part or previous knowledge of
our existence. But there is this difference between you: she came as a
little child, you come as a grown man. Sixteen years ago we had several
severe earthquakes. They did us little harm down here, but up on the
Cordillera they wrought fearful havoc, and the sea rose and there was a
great storm, and several ships were dashed to pieces against our
iron-bound coast, which no mariner willingly approaches. The morning after
the tempest there was found on the edge of the cliffs a cot in which lay a
rosy-cheeked babe. How it came to pass none could tell, but we all thought
that the cot must have been fastened to a board, which became detached
from the cot at the very moment when the sea threw it on the land. The
babe was just able to lisp her name--'Angela,' which corresponded with the
name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I
greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even
the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two
different vessels. The little waif was brought to me and with me she has
ever since remained."
"And will always remain, dear father," said Angela, regarding the old
priest with loving reverence. "All that I lost in the storm has he been to
me--father, mother, instructor, and friend. You see here, monsieur, the
best and wisest man in all the world."
"You have had so wide an experience of the world and of men, _mignonne_!"
returned the abbé, with an amused smile. "Sir, since she could speak she
has seen two white men. You are the second.--Ah, well, if I were not
afraid you would think we had constituted ourselves into a mutual
admiration society I should be tempted to say something even more
complimentary about her."
"Say it, Monsieur l'Abbé, say it, I pray you," I exclaimed, eagerly, for
it pleased me more than I can tell to hear him sound Angela's praises.
"Nay, I would rather you learned to appreciate her from your own
observation. Yet I will say this much. She is the brightness of my life,
the solace of my old age, and so good that even praise does not spoil her.
But you look tired; shall we sit down on this fallen log and rest a few
minutes?"
To this proposal I gladly assented, for I was spent with fatigue and faint
with hunger. Angela, however, after glancing at me compassionately and
saying she would be back in a few minutes, went a little farther and
presently returned with a bunch of grapes.
"Eat these," she said, "they will refresh you."
It was a simple act of kindness; but a simple act of kindness, gracefully
performed, is often an index of character, and I felt sure that the girl
had a kind heart and deserved all the praise bestowed on her by the abbé.
I was thanking her, perhaps more warmly than the occasion required, when
she stopped the flow of my eloquence by reminding me that I had not yet
told them why the Indian queen caused me to be fastened on the back of the
_nandu_.
On this hint I spoke, and though the abbé suggested that I was too tired
for much talking, I not only answered the question but briefly narrated
the main facts of my story, reserving a fuller account for a future
occasion.
Both listened with rapt attention; but of the two Angela was the more
eager listener. She several times interrupted me with requests for
information as to matters which even among European children are of common
knowledge, for, though the abbé was a man of high learning and she an apt
pupil, her experience of life was limited to Quipai; and he had been so
long out of the world that he had almost forgotten it. As for news, he was
worse off than Fray Ignacio. He had heard of the First Consul but nothing
of the Emperor Napoleon, and when I told him of the restoration of the
Bourbons he shed tears of joy.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, fervently, "France is once more ruled by a son
of St. Louis. The tricolor is replaced by the _fleur-de-lis_. You are our
second good angel, Monsieur Fortescue; you bring us glad tidings of great
joy--You smile, but I am persuaded that Providence has led you hither in
so strange a way for some good purpose, and as I venture to hope, in
answer to my prayers; for albeit our lives here are so calm and happy, and
I have been the means of bringing a great work to a successful issue, it
is not in the nature of things that men should be free from care, and my
mind has lately been troubled with forebodings--"
"And you never told me, father!" said Angela, reproachfully. "What are
they, these forebodings?"
"Why should you be worried with an old man's difficulties? One has
reference to my people, the other--but never mind the other. It may be
that already a way has been opened.--If you feel sufficiently rested,
Monsieur Nigel, I think we had better proceed. A short walk will bring us
to San Cristobal, and it would be well for us to get thither before the
heat of the day."
I protested that the rest and the bunch of grapes had so much refreshed me
that I felt equal to a long walk, and we moved on.
"What a splendid garden!" I exclaimed for the third or fourth time as we
entered an alley festooned with trailing flowers and grape-vines from
which the fruit hung in thick clusters.
"All Quipai is a garden," said the abbé, proudly. "We have fruit and
flowers and cereals all the year round, thanks to the great _azequia_
(aqueduct) which the Incas built and I restored. And such fruit! Let him
taste a _chirimoya ma fille chèrie_."
From a tree about fifteen feet high Angela plucked a round green fruit,
not unlike an apple, but covered with small knobs and scales. Then she
showed me how to remove the skin, which covered a snow-white juicy pulp of
exquisite fragrance and a flavor that I hardly exaggerated in calling
divine. It was a fruit fit for the gods, and so I said.
"We owe it all to the great _azequia_," observed the abbé. "See, it feeds
these rills and fills those fountains, waters our fields, and makes the
desert bloom like the rose and the dry places rejoice. And we have not
only fruit and flowers, but corn, coffee, cocoa, yuccas, potatoes, and
almost every sort of vegetable."
"Quipai is a land of plenty and a garden of delight."
"A most apt description, and so long as the great _azequia_ is kept in
repair and the system of irrigation which I have established is maintained
it will remain a land of plenty and a garden of delight."
"And if any harm should befall the _azequia_?"
"In that case, and if our water-supply were to fail, Quipai, as you see it
now, would cease to exist. The desert, which we are always fighting and
have so far conquered, would regain the mastery, and the mission become
what I found it, a little oasis at the foot of the Cordillera, supporting
with difficulty a few score families of naked Indians. One of these days,
if you are so disposed, you shall follow the course of the _azequia_ and
see for yourself with what a marvellous reservoir, fed by Andean snows,
Nature has provided us. But more of this another time. Look! Yonder is San
Cristobal, our capital as I sometimes call it, though little more than a
village."
The abbé said truly. It was little more than a village; but as gay, as
picturesque, and as bright as a scene in an opera--two double rows of
painted houses forming a large oval, the space between them laid out as a
garden with straight walks and fountains and clipped shrubs, after the
fashion of Versailles; in the centre a church and two other buildings, one
of which, as the abbé told me, was a school, the other his own dwelling.
The people we met saluted him with great humility, and he returned their
salutations quite _en grand seigneur_, even, as I thought, somewhat
haughtily. One woman knelt in the road, kissed his hand, and asked for his
blessing, which he gave like the superior being she obviously considered
him. It was the same in the village. Everybody whom we met or passed stood
still and uncovered. There could be no question who was master in San
Cristobal. Abbé Balthazar was both priest and king, and, as I afterward
came to know, there was every reason why he should be.
He kept a large establishment, for the country, and lived in considerable
state. On entering his house, which was surrounded by a veranda and
embowered in trees, the abbé, asked if I would like a bath, and on my
answering in the affirmative ordered one of the servants, all of whom
spoke Spanish, to take me to the bath-room and find me a suit of clothes.
The bath made me feel like another man, and the fresh garments effected as
great a change in my personal appearance. There was not much difficulty
about the fit. A cotton undershirt, a blue jacket with silver buttons, a
red sash, white breeches, loose at the knee, and a pair of sandals, and I
was fully attired. Stockings I had to dispense with. They were not in
vogue at San Cristobal.
When I was ready, the servant, who had acted as my valet, conducted me to
the dining-room, where I found Angela and the abbé.
"_Parbleu!_" exclaimed the latter, who occasionally indulged in
expressions that were not exactly clerical. "_Parbleu!_ I had no idea that
a bath and clean raiment could make so great an improvement in a man's
appearance. That costume becomes you to admiration, Monsieur Nigel. Don't
you think so, Angela?"
"You forget, father, that he is the only caballero I ever saw. Are all
caballeros like him?"
"Very few, I should say. It is a long time since I saw any; but even at
the court of Louis XV. I do not remember seeing many braver looking
gentlemen than our guest."
As I bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment Angela gave me a quick
glance, blushed deeply, and then, turning to the abbé, proposed that we
should take our places at the table.
I was so hungry that even an indifferent meal would have seemed a
luxurious banquet, but the repast set before us might have satisfied an
epicure. We had a delicious soup, something like mutton-cutlets,
land-turtle steaks, and capon, all perfectly cooked; vegetables and fruit
in profusion, and the wine was as good as any I had tasted in France or
Spain. After dinner coffee was served and the abbé inquired whether I
would retire to my room and have a sleep, or smoke a cigarette with him
and Angela on the veranda.
In ordinary circumstances I should probably have preferred to sleep; but I
was so fascinated with Mademoiselle Dieu-donnée, so excited by all that I
had seen and heard, so curious to know the history of this French priest,
who talked of the court of Louis XV., who had created a country and a
people, and contrived, in a region so remote from civilization, to
surround himself with so many luxuries, that I elected without hesitation
for the cigarettes and the veranda.