CONCLUSION.
Never, I believe, were misery and joy so curiously mingled in the human
breast as when Harry and I stood--barely able to stand--gazing
speechlessly at the world that had so long been hidden from us.
We had found the light, but had lost Desiree. We were alive, but so
near to death that our first breath of the mountain air was like to be
our last.
The details of our painful journey down the mountain, over the rocks
and crags, and through rushing torrents that more than once swept us
from our feet, cannot be written, for I do not know them.
The memory of the thing is but an indistinct nightmare of suffering.
But the blind luck that seemed to have fallen over our shoulders as a
protecting mantle at the death of Desiree stayed with us; and after
endless hours of incredible toil and labor, we came to a narrow pass
leading at right angles to our course.
Night was ready to fall over the bleak and barren mountain as we
entered it. Darkness had long since overtaken us, when we saw at a
distance a large clearing, in the middle of which lights shone from the
windows of a large house whose dim and shadowy outline appeared to us
surrounded by a halo of peace.
But we were nearly forced to fight for it. The proprietor of the
hacienda himself answered our none too gentle knock at the door, and he
had no sooner caught sight of us than he let out a yell as though he
had seen the devil in person, and slammed the door violently in our
faces. Indeed, we were hardly recognizable as men.
Naked, black, bruised, and bleeding, covered with hair on our faces and
parts of our bodies--mine, of recent growth, stubby and stiff--our
appearance would have justified almost any suspicion.
But we hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree and
plight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by my
excellent Spanish--which could not, of course, be the tongue of the
devil--and convinced by our pitiable condition of our inability to do
him any harm, he at length reopened the door and gave us admittance.
When we had succeeded in allaying his suspicions concerning our
identity--though I was careful not to alarm his superstitions by
mentioning the cave of the devil, which, I thought, was probably well
known to him--he lost no time in displaying his humanity.
Calling in some hombres from the rear of the hacienda, he gave them
ample instructions, with medicine and food, and an hour later Harry and
I were lying side by side in his own bed--a rude affair, but infinitely
better than granite--refreshed, bandaged, and as comfortable as their
kindly ministrations could make us.
The old Spaniard was a direct descendant of the good Samaritan--despite
the slight difference in nationality. For many weeks he nursed us and
fed us and coaxed back the spark of life in our exhausted and wounded
bodies.
Our last ounce of strength seemed to have been used up in our desperate
struggle down the side of the mountain; for many days we lay on our
backs absolutely unable to move a muscle and barely conscious of life.
But the spark revived and fluttered. The day came when we could
hobble, with his assistance, to the door of the hacienda and sit for
hours in the invigorating sunshine; and thenceforward our convalescence
proceeded rapidly. Color came to our cheeks and light to our eyes; and
one sunny afternoon it was decided that we should set out for Cerro de
Pasco on the following day.
Harry proposed a postponement of our departure for two days, saying
that he wished to make an excursion up the mountain. I understood him
at once.
"It would be useless," I declared. "You would find nothing."
"But she was with us when we fell," he persisted, not bothering to
pretend that he did not understand me. "She came--it must be near
where we landed."
"That isn't it," I explained. "Have you forgotten that we have been
here for over a month? You would find nothing." As he grasped my
thought his face went white and he was silent. So on the following
morning we departed.
Our host furnished us with food, clothing, mules, and an arriero, not
to mention a sorrowful farewell and a hearty blessing. From the door
of the hacienda he waved his sombrero as we disappeared around a bend
in the mountain-pass; we had, perhaps, been a welcome interruption in
the monotony of his lonely existence.
We were led upward for many miles until we found ourselves again in the
region of perpetual snow. There we set our faces to the south. From
the arriero we tried to learn how far we then were from the cave of the
devil, but to our surprise were informed that he had never heard of the
thing.
We could see that the question made him more than a little suspicious
of us; often, when he thought himself unobserved, I caught him eyeing
us askance with something nearly approaching terror.
We journeyed southward for eleven days; on the morning of the twelfth
we saw below us our goal. Six hours later we had entered the same
street of Cerro de Pasco through which we had passed formerly with
light hearts; and the heart which had been gayest of all we had left
behind us, stilled forever, somewhere beneath the mountain of stone
which she had herself chosen for her tomb.
Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the arriero.
He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up on our mules.
Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and staring eyes as he
rose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as though fascinated.
I opened my mouth to call to him, but before the words left my lips he
had let out an ear-splitting yell of terror and bounded down the steps
and past us, with arms flying in every direction, running like one
possessed. Nor did he return during the few hours that we remained at
the hotel.
Two days later found us boarding the yacht at Callao. When I had
discovered, to my profound astonishment, at the hacienda, that another
year had taken us as far as the tenth day of March, I had greatly
doubted if we should find Captain Harris still waiting for us. But
there he was; and he had not even put himself to the trouble of
becoming uneasy about us.
As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of wine, he
"didn't know but what the senora had decided to take the Andes home for
a mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little matter of
transportation."
But when I informed him that "the senora" was no more, his face grew
sober with genuine regret and sorrow. He had many good things to say
of her then; it appeared that she had really touched his salty old
heart.
"She was a gentle lady," said the worthy captain; and I smiled to think
how Desiree herself would have smiled at such a characterization of the
great Le Mire.
We at once made for San Francisco. There, at a loss, I disposed of the
remainder of the term of the lease on the yacht, and we took the first
train for the East.
Four days later we were in New York, after a journey saddened by
thoughts of the one who had left us to return alone.
It was, in fact, many months before the shadow of Desiree ceased to
hover about the dark old mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, incongruous
enough among the ancient halls and portraits of Lamars dead and gone in
a day when La Marana herself had darted like a meteor into the hearts
of their contemporaries.
That is, I suppose, properly the end of the story; but I cannot refrain
from the opportunity to record a curious incident that has just
befallen me. Some twenty minutes ago, as I was writing the last
paragraph--I am seated in the library before a massive mahogany table,
close to a window through which the September sun sends its golden
rays--twenty minutes ago, as I say, Harry sauntered into the room and
threw himself lazily into a large armchair on the other side of the
table.
I looked up with a nod of greeting, while he sat and eyed me
impatiently for some seconds.
"Aren't you coming with me down to Southampton?" he asked finally.
"What time do you leave?" I inquired, without looking up.
"Eleven-thirty."
"What's on?"
"Freddie Marston's Crocodiles and the Blues. It's going to be some
polo."
I considered a moment. "Why, I guess I'll run down with you. I'm
about through here."
"Good enough!" Harry arose to his feet and began idly fingering some of
the sheets on the table before me. "What is all this silly rot,
anyway?"
"My dear boy," I smiled, "you'll be sorry you called it silly rot when
I tell you that it is a plain and honest tale of our own experiences."
"Must be deuced interesting," he observed. "More silly rot than ever."
"Others may not think so," I retorted, a little exasperated by his
manner. "It surely will be sufficiently exciting to read of how we
were buried with Desiree Le Mire under the Andes, and our encounters
with the Incas, and our final escape, and--"
"Desiree what?" Harry interrupted.
"Desiree Le Mire," I replied very distinctly. "The great French
dancer."
"Never heard of her," said Harry, looking at me as if he doubted my
sanity.
"Never heard of Desiree, the woman you loved?" I almost shouted at him.
"The woman I--piffle! I say I never heard of her."
I gazed at him, trembling with high indignation. "I suppose," I
observed with infinite sarcasm, "that you will tell me next that you
have never been in Peru?"
"Guilty," said Harry. "I never have."
"And that you never climbed Pike's Peak to see the sunrise?"
"Rahway, New Jersey, is my farthest west."
"And that you never dived with me from the top of a column one hundred
feet high?"
"Not I. I retain a smattering of common sense."
"And that you did not avenge the death of Desiree by causing that of
the Inca king?"
"So far as that Desiree woman is concerned," said Harry, and his tone
began to show impatience, "I can only repeat that I have never heard of
the creature. And"--he continued--"if you're trying to bamboozle a
gullible world by concocting a tale as silly as your remarks to me
would seem to indicate, I will say that as a cheap author you are
taking undue liberties with your family, meaning myself. And what is
more, if you dare to print the stuff I'll let the world know it's a
rank fake."
This threat, delivered with the most awful resolution and sincerity,
unnerved me completely, and I fell back in my chair in a swoon.
When I recovered Harry had gone to his polo game, leaving me behind,
whereupon I seized my pen and hastened to set down in black and white
that most remarkable conversation, that the reader may judge for
himself between us.
For my part, I do swear that the story is true, on my word of honor as
a cynic and a philosopher.
[end of text]
Note: I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE PARA. LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
2 1 2 sursounding surrounding
22 6 2 hunderd hundred
24 9 1 La Mire Le Mire
32 1 1 ager eager
36 4 5 earthqakes earthquakes
45 5 2 tossd tossed
56 10 1 then than
58 8 1 or our
69 8 2 geting getting
74 1 3 unstead unsteady
87 13 1 Whey Why
106 5 1 placng placing
112 4 2 aggreeable agreeable
115 1 to some some
123 1 2 Desiree arms Desiree's arms
125 3 5 had made has made
129 11 4 But was But it was
140 4 1 Lords knows Lord knows
158 5 6 begin towed being towed
168 6 2 dicussing discussing
178 6 3 Pachacamas Pachacamac
179 7 3 cabin cavern
185 2 1 was wild was a wild
192 8 3 carvern cavern*
196 8 1 perservation preservation
196 9 4 dour days four days
204 6 1 litte little
208 2 1 on my on me
209 3 4 aked asked
210 5 2 retuned returned
211 8 3 said side
212 3 3 touch tough
224 6 2 Soliel Soleil
226 5 5 aproaching approaching
243 1 3 serius serious
247 5 5 forseen foreseen
247 6 1 They The
259 4 5 peceptibly perceptibly