CHALLONER'S PILGRIMAGE
There were two more shocks that night, the first at five minutes past
one, the second half an hour before sunrise. James Challoner sat in
the centre of the most open space he could find, his overcoat drawn
close about him and his daughter clasped tightly to his breast. But it
was almost unconsciously that he held her so. His brain was dazed, and
the only image at all clear in his mind was that of his dead wife's
hand protruding beneath the great stone and directing against him its
mute accusation. But, even so, it was the limp look of the fingers
which chiefly troubled him, and that only troubled him from time to
time. For the greater part of the interval before daybreak he sat
watching the roofs of the buildings below him burst in tongues of fire
and topple down with a clatter of slates in bright showers of sparks,
much as a child sits open-mouthed at the fireworks. Now he huddled his
coat close about him, now some spire of flame towering skyward more
terribly beautiful than the rest, drew a cry from his lips; and now
again, looking out over the quiet pond of the bay, he asked dully,
"Why is there no tidal wave?"
Morning came at last over the hill behind him, gray and
extraordinarily cold. All about him he saw people, huddled like
himself upon the slopes, men, women, and children, shivering in their
night-attire and their bare feet bloody from the stones. All at once
Challoner was aware that he was hungry. His little daughter reached
out her arms and wailed. Hunger, too, as the sun rose, mastered the
fears of the refugees upon the hill-side. One by one, group by group,
they rose stiffly and straggled down to the ruined ways by the
water-side. Challoner went with the rest; and half-way down they all
began to hurry, beset by the same fear. There would not be food enough
for all. The thought seemed to sweep like a wind across the face of
the hill, and the hurry became savage.
Along the open esplanade families were squatting side by side. A few
of the more fortunate had somehow secured and erected tents; and
others were crowded into storage sheds. But the most of them were
sitting in the open waiting desolately for they knew not what. And
already in that town, though the earthquake was barely six hours old,
catastrophe had made its sharp division between the sheep and the
goats. For whereas upon the esplanade men and women, and amongst them
many unexpected figures, were already organizing succor for the
outcasts, amongst the smoking ruins the marauders were already at
work, robbing, murdering. There was no longer any law in Valparaiso.
Challoner made his way to the esplanade. A man whom he knew, the agent
of a steamship company, hurried past him. Challoner stopped him.
"Where can I get food?" he asked.
Challoner was a strongly built, tall man, and the agent answered
roughly.
"You? You will have to wait. You are able to;" and then he caught
sight of the child in Challoner's arms, still wrapped about with her
bedclothes. His voice changed to friendliness.
"Yours?" he asked.
Challoner nodded.
"Where's its mother?"
Challoner answered simply:
"Dead."
The agent took out a piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket.
"Sorry," he said. "Of course, that alters the case." He wrote a line
upon the paper and gave it to Challoner. Then he pointed to a tin
shed, around which a crowd was already collecting.
"We are distributing a little food there. You'll be given your share,
for you have a child to look after. But I should advise you to look
slippy;" and the agent hurried off.
Challoner did look slippy. Because of his child he got food for
himself as well as for his child; and as he sat on the ground, in the
shadow of a low wall, after his meal, that fact set him thinking.
There is much loving kindness for children in South America. From east
to west it runs across the continent, just as from east to west human
life is cheap, provided that it is grown up. You might, anywhere in
those days, and, in some places you may still, slay your neighbor and
avoid anything like excessive inconvenience as a result of your
slaying. But if you kick a boy into the gutter because he refuses to
desist from whistling, to your distraction, outside your office
window, you are liable to be fined heavily, and you may be sent to
prison. For you have hurt the _dignidad del hombre_. Challoner was
aware generally of the consideration for children which prevailed. But
now it was brought very practically home to him in the particular. His
little daughter Doris was a definite asset to him. He looked down upon
her with new eyes as she slept on the ground at his side, with a
chubby hand thrown across his knee. She was no longer a nuisance. She
was as good as money--better, indeed, since money could not buy food
to-day in Valparaiso. And there had been a moment when he had stood,
up there before the ruins of his house, doubting whether he should
leave her behind or no. James Challoner was quite chilled by the
thought of the mistake he had almost made, and the fool he had almost
been.
Doris moved her head in her sleep.
"Precious one," he said affectionately; and he proceeded in his turn
to sleep.
He woke up in time to see two great Chilian cruisers sweep round the
point into the bay, and a stoutly built, square captain, whom he could
have mistaken for an Englishman, come ashore with his sailors, to take
command of the town. He obtained shelter in a hut for that night, and
during the hours of darkness he thought out his own immediate problem.
Valparaiso was not, and for some months would not be. Even when it
should be rebuilt there would be no work for him, since--in his
thoughts he clung to euphemisms--his enemies had ruined his good name.
Therefore he must get away and he had his daughter at his hand to
assist him.
He obtained, through his good Samaritan, the agent, a rough suit for
himself and some clothing for his child and a parcel of food. He slung
the parcel over his shoulders, lifted his child in his arms, and
walked out that afternoon from Valparaiso up the great post-road
toward the Andes. He was strong and his girl inherited of his
strength. It was summer, a summer of no rain. He tramped along the
valleys of Chile, and his daughter was his passport and franked his
way. He secured a night's shelter at a farm-house here, food and a
trifle of money there, a ride for Doris upon a mule one day, a lift
for both of them in a cart the next. The valley narrowed, the green
floor of it became stones, the trees thinned, the great barrier of the
cordilleras closed in about James Challoner and towered higher and
higher above his head. The road wound sharply upward, now backward,
and forward in a desolate, wild country of gray rock splashed with
orange and yellow and deep red. He started early one morning and stood
on the top of the Cumbre Pass, thirteen thousand feet above the sea,
by mid-day. On the very summit he was overtaken by the post and driven
down at a gallop to Las Cuevas. From Las Cuevas he walked to Punta del
Inca. And at Punta del Inca he took his ease for a week, with the
great snow-mass of Aconcagua showing in a gap of the hills across the
valley.
It was the season of the baths at Punta del Inca. The hotel was full
and James Challoner prospered, as from the beginning he had thought
that he would. He had reckoned upon Punta del Inca on that night in
Valparaiso when he had determined upon his journey. He sat by the
natural bridge, with his little daughter in his arms, a travel-stained
and patient figure, and amongst those gigantic hills he told his
moving story to such as passed and would listen. He went up to the
hotel at night, and under the lights of the veranda he told it again.
Amongst the many qualities which he misused was a vivid gift of
narrative, and he possessed, at this time at all events, a gentle
voice with an admirable note of emotion. Thus all was in his favor.
The beauty and peace of the scenery, his manner, the prettiness of his
child--even the story which he had to tell. But it was not quite the
story which would have been told at Valparaiso where, to be sure, he
had, as we know, enemies.
"Why did you come to South America?" some curious soul would ask.
"I was a younger son," he would answer; and then, with a charming
modesty for the benefit of any English who might be present, "I am of
the Dorsetshire Challoners. These old properties.... Land isn't what
it was.... An estate mortgaged to the hilt. How could any one take an
allowance that must be wrung from it at the cost of the very laborers?
No, I thought I would make my own way in the new lands."
He spoke without any arrogance of virtue, any contempt for other
younger sons who had not his own compunction, any consciousness of
heroism. He went on to tell the romantic story of his marriage and
elopement.
"I made my way," he continued, "at least I was making it. My wife, of
course, helped me--" and perhaps here his voice would falter ever so
slightly, he would turn his face aside and whisper to the stars, yet
so that the whisper was audible to people nearer than the stars--"My
God, how she helped me! We had dug out our little corner in
Valparaiso. There was just room in it for a wife and a child and
myself. And then the earthquake came and ruined all."
He made no complaint; he stated the simple facts; he was reticent
concerning his wife's death. But by his reticence he managed to wring
from it the last ounce of profit; he did not, for instance, describe
how he had found her leaning upon her elbow in the darkness, with the
walls of her room tottering about her. James Challoner had not
forgiven her for that. She had made it so plain that she preferred for
her child and herself an appalling death beneath the bricks than the
slower decline into misery which awaited them. He tried to omit that
remembrance from his mind, as he certainly did from his story.
A collection was made for him to send him on his way. He accepted it
with dignity.
"I do not ask for your names," he said. "It would be the merest
pretence. I cannot promise to pay you back. I take it as from one man
to another." And so with his pocket full he journeyed downward to the
vineyards of Mendoza.
At Mendoza he took the train and in a night and a day came to Buenos
Ayres. It was in the cool of the evening that he stepped out upon the
platform. He was in no doubt what he should do. He had stopped in
Buenos Ayres for a month on his way out from England; and he had
thought out his plan very carefully during his last night in
Valparaiso. He took a train for Barracas, and in the train he tied an
old bootlace about his daughter's arm. He left the train before it
crossed the bridge, and walked up a hill where great houses stand back
behind walls and gardens much as one may see them in Clapham. Some way
up the hill he stopped in front of one of these houses.
It was noticeable amongst the houses, because a curious turnstile was
let into the garden wall. The turnstile supported a small circular
platform partitioned off with screens. James Challoner placed his
child upon the platform, rang the bell, and turned the stile. The
platform revolved, the child disappeared from view within the garden,
and the screens were so arranged that those who received the child
within could not see James Challoner outside.
James Challoner went back into the middle of the road, yawned, and
stretched his arms above his head. To-day you may cross the Andes from
Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres in forty-eight hours. James Challoner had
taken four months. He thought of his journey with a chuckle. His
daughter had made his way easy.
"Nine hundred miles and I've done 'em on eiderdown," he said. "That's
the only bit of comfort I've ever got out of my marriage."
He had left his child in a foundling hospital kept by some wealthy old
ladies. He had tied a bootlace round her arm, rather because it was
the conventional thing to do, than with any intention of reclaiming
her. He was now a free man. He lit his pipe and stuck his hands in his
pockets. With a pleasant sense of lightness, he strolled down to
exploit his freedom in the bright streets of Buenos Ayres.