Chapter V: Part 5

Then Sumac raised her head, and in a low, quiet voice made answer:—“Indeed, Coyllur,[33] that would be very sweet to me now. But—I am afraid.”

“Afraid!” Coyllur repeated in evident surprise; for never had the Children of the Sun been known to fear death for, or with, those they loved. “Afraid!—Of what?”

“Of the Lord Christ—that if I come to the gate when He has not called, He will not let me in.”

“Then they also are Christians,” thought José.

But Coyllur, who evidently did not quite understand her sister, presently resumed, in tones of passionate grief, yet with a kind of rhythm in her sweet voice, that made the words half a song, “Alalau! my sister, my heart is very sad for thee. For thou shouldst have sat on the golden throne beside our prince and lord; sharing his dominion and his splendour, as Quilla, the spouse of the great Ynty, shares the glory of the sky with the lord of day. And, hereafter, thou shouldst have had thy place on the awful thrones in the Curi-cancha,[34] where sit the Incas and the Coyas of days gone by, each with the royal robe, the llautu, and the sceptre; and the grand, calm face, sealed with the majesty of death, that changes not throughout the ages.”[35]

“Nay, but, Coyllur,” Sumac’s low voice interrupted, “do not talk thus. I never cared for being Coya; I never thought that he was Inca; I only knew that he was good and brave. Had he been a yanacona,[36] all would have been the same.”

But here José’s attention was diverted from the conversation by the hospitable cares of Yupanqui, which were not forgotten or omitted even in that hour of overwhelming sorrow. The old Inca caused an attendant to bring him two golden cups, of exactly the same size and shape. These he filled with chica, and having given one to José with his right hand, emptied the other himself. José, out of courtesy, did likewise; but he declined other refreshment, for it was meet that all who loved the Inca should keep solemn fast that day.

The next morning he told his host that it would be necessary for him to go in search of “the patre,” whom he had lost in the crowd on the preceding day.

“No great loss,” the old Indian remarked dryly. “If you want patres, you can find them here, all kinds—black, white, and gray. They swarm like ants, building their nests on the ruins of our fathers’ palaces.”

José explained that his patre was very unlike the others, and paid a grateful tribute to the benefits he had received from him.

“He did well to make a Christian of you,” Yupanqui admitted, with the sad tolerance of despair. “I also took care to have my grandchildren baptized. But for myself, I am too old to learn the white man’s religion.”

“My soul is ofttimes cut in two about these things,” José acknowledged candidly. “Yet the white man’s faith seems good to me, and I truly believe all that the patre has taught me of its mysteries.”

“So say my kinsmen and my grandchildren. They have been taught by the Holy Virgins, and Sumac often prays me to listen to their words. But I answer that what was good enough for the kings and heroes who were my forefathers is good enough for me. When I die, I would rather go where they are than to the cold, strange heaven of the Spaniard.—Do you know where to find your patre?”

“I know that he intended to go to the house of a great Spanish lord, the owner of the land where we dwelt—Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano.”

“Him he will not find here. His wife is our kinswoman, aunt to the children yonder.”

“How that? She is a daughter of Huayna Capac.”

“So was their mother, dead these twelve years. They are of Viracocha’s ayllu through their father, my only son—dead also; of Huayna Capac’s through their mother. Don Marcio is a good man, for a Spaniard. He prayed the viceroy, on bended knees, to spare the Inca’s life. When all was vain, he would not see the crime he could not prevent. He and the princess his wife are far away.”

“What shall I do then to find the patre? Must I stand in the street and watch for him? He is sure to pass some time.”

Even the phlegmatic Indian could not forbear a grave smile at the expedient José’s ignorance in the ways of cities suggested. “You might watch for him until the great flood comes again,” he said. “Nay, like always goes to like. Seek him at the house where the monks of his sort live.”

“He is a gray friar, of the Order of St. Francis.”

“One of my servants shall bring you to their house. It is built, like the rest, on the ruins of an Inca palace.”

“I long to walk through the city. I have been dreaming of it all my life.”

“Dreaming is dangerous in these days,” said the old Inca. “Yesterday’s scaffold was no dream, but dreaming brings a man to that,—or worse.”

“There be many things worse,” José remarked. “What Sayri Tupac did, for instance.”

“Well said, Child of the Sun,” Yupanqui answered, with grave approval. “Come, we will walk through the city together.”

Under the guidance of his new friend, José traversed the great square, the “pleasant hill” of the Incas, through the centre of which the Huatanay flowed, crossed by numerous footbridges of stone. Then he ascended the height of Sachsahuaman, and explored, with mingled pride in the past and bitter indignant sorrow for the present, the ruins of the great Inca fortress. He made Yupanqui point out to him the spot whence his grandfather flung himself into the Colcampata. Thence they looked down on the whole city, which lay beneath them spread out like a map. “There,” said the old Indian—“there once stood the glorious Curi-cancha, glittering with gold and gems. What you see now is the temple and house of the Black Monks. Yet the wall on one side is still standing. Look, you may know it by its dark colour.”

“But the grand golden door and cornice, the massive golden vases, the emerald-studded sun—”

“You see all the spoiler has left,” Yupanqui interrupted gloomily. “Yonder was the palace of our father, Viracocha. The Christians have built their great temple on its ruins. Those lofty buildings are all theirs. They take our houses, that have better walls than they can make, and set their outlandish towers and balconies upon them, as if the roofs that sheltered princes and heroes were not good enough for them.”

All this, and much more, was poured into the ears of José, while his eyes were feasted (a mournful festival!) with all that remained of the glories of the City of the Sun. When, after traversing nearly the whole town under Yupanqui’s guidance, he reached at last the gate of the Franciscan monastery, his heart was more full than ever of the wrongs of Tahuantin Suyu and the crimes of the white man.

The door-keeper informed José that Fray Fernando had left Cuzco that morning; then asked if he were Don José Viracocha Inca, and on receiving his answer handed him a billet from the monk. This informed him that Fray Fernando, on reaching the Franciscan monastery, found a summons awaiting him from the prior of his order at Lima. The command did not brook delay; but it was a fortunate circumstance that Don Marcio Serra’s country residence lay almost in his way, so that he need not forego the opportunity of obtaining speedy justice for the poor negroes at Cerro Blanco. He added, that as he did not yet know whither the prior might intend to send him, it seemed best for his dear son José to remain with the friends he was certain to find or make at Cuzco amongst his own people, till he should write directing him to rejoin him, which he would not fail to do as speedily as he might.

José keenly regretted this sudden and unexpected separation from his beloved patre. Yet, dearly as he loved Fray Fernando, that love opposed, after all, but a feeble barrier to the fascination with which his own race was once more drawing him into its bosom. The spell of its memories, full of glory—of its wrongs, its hopes, its passions—was laid upon him more strongly than ever. Day after day did he spend wandering up and down the streets and squares of the ancient city, the home of his fathers, examining, with the eager eye of enthusiasm, the ruins of temple, palace, and fortress, until he knew almost their every stone by heart. Then he would return to Yupanqui’s house, to drink enchantment of another kind, as he listened to the sweet Quichua songs of the young princesses, interchanged his store of national legends with theirs, admired their skilful spinning and weaving, or aided them in their more graceful work of fashioning artificial flowers from thin plates and wires of gold and silver.

He soon became aware that the dwelling of Yupanqui was a gathering-place for those of the Inca family residing at Cuzco who still in their hearts detested the rule of the Spaniards; as was the palace of Prince Paullu on the Colcampata for those who cheerfully accepted the present state of things. Yupanqui’s guests would drop in—usually by twos and threes—to share the frugal evening meal of the family, who, like all the Incas, only ate twice a day—in the early morning, and again at sundown. When, after they had partaken of the boiled maize seasoned with red pepper, the bitter herbs, and the charqui, chica was brought in, each would dip his finger in his cup and sprinkle a few drops in the air by way of thanksgiving. Then, as they drank together, their conversation was sure to turn upon the former days that were better than these, and the crimes and cruelties of the Spaniards. José soon made friends amongst them, and ere long was on terms of the closest intimacy with his dusky cousins, Don Fernando, Don Juan, and Don Diego, whom however, he always called by more uncouth and less familiar ancestral names.

They had all accepted the outward badges of Christianity; indeed, the rites of their old religion were now forbidden by the conquerors. Yupanqui was almost the only person who contrived to evade their laws; or else his disobedience was connived at by the authorities through special favour. But in fact nearly all the Inca Indians had received the new faith, not only willingly, but joyfully. José, himself a heathen in his early childhood, and of late well-nigh moved to cast off Christianity again by the enormities he had witnessed in its professors, felt and expressed some astonishment at the unaffected (though unenlightened) devotion of his kinsmen. But an old Inca, named Maricancha, an intimate friend of Yupanqui’s, and certainly no well-wisher of the Spaniards, took him gravely to task for his irreverence. “You must indeed have been bred in the desert, young man,” he said, “if you never heard the last charge of the great Huayna Capac, when, in dying, he left his peace with us. These were his words, hearken well to them: ‘In a few years after my death a new nation will invade you, and they shall become your lords and masters. Wherefore I charge you to serve them as men; for _their Law is better than yours_.’ It was because of these words (confirmed by many omens of strange significance,[37] which I will relate to you at a more convenient season), that, when the Spaniards came to us, we received them as messengers from heaven. We thought them the sons of Viracocha, who appeared to your father in the plains of Chita; wherefore to this day many of us call them Viracochas. And we would not hurt or offend them in any wise, but obeyed them, and believed all they told us. In truth, we were never conquered,—we were betrayed. Even at Caxa-marca, when they fell upon us without cause and without warning, in the midst of a peaceful discourse, and slew us by thousands, was there one of us that so much as raised his hand against them? Those who stood around Atahualpa (whom they esteemed for their Inca) shielded him with their own bodies, and died in silence like the rest, but never struck a blow. Since then the Spaniards have heaped upon us misery after misery. They themselves, we suspect now, are the children, not of Pacha-camac, but of Supay. Still, their Law is good and true, and it is the will of Pacha-camac that we should receive it.”

Yet these Indians had but a very imperfect knowledge of the faith they professed so heartily. It had not been difficult for them to pass from one religion of forms and ceremonies and outward observances to another. Their children were sprinkled with water instead of having their first hair cut; their youths were confirmed instead of being belted; they kept fasts and festivals with different names and at rather different seasons, but much in the same manner as their fathers; they offered cakes and flowers to the Madoña instead of to Quilla; and whereas they had been used to pay homage to canopas and huacas, they now adored equally numerous santos and santas. Little had been done by their instructors to stir their intellects; less to touch their hearts. Instead of the bread of life, for which they asked, the conqueror gave them a stone.

It could not have been otherwise. God honours not hands like those of the conquistadors of Peru to build His spiritual temple; nor lips like those of the notorious Valverde, the first bishop of Cuzco, to carry His message of peace and good-will to men. But it would be unjust to forget that amongst the Spaniards there were some, both Churchmen and laymen, who not only deplored in secret, but dared to denounce openly, the crimes and cruelties of their compatriots. All honour to these truly noble men, who, if they could not redeem the Spanish name from infamy and the Spanish race from just retribution, at least delivered their own souls. In rebuking the sins of their countrymen, they bear mournful and emphatic witness to the conquered race, that they were a people singularly apt to learn, if their conquerors had only been as apt to teach. “If God in past times,” writes one such large-hearted Spaniard,[38] “had granted them men who with Christian zeal would have given them a full knowledge of our holy religion, they were a people very open to good impressions, as their works testify, which remain to this hour.” But the burning anathemas that fell from the lips of divine love against those “hypocrites who shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, neither going in themselves nor suffering them that are entering to go in,” belong not alone to the scribes and Pharisees of old;—they are the portion of all who tread in their footprints.

XVI.

A Star.

“And I—my harp should prelude woe—
I cannot all command the strings;
The glory of the sum of things
_Will_ flash along the chords, and go.”

TENNYSON.

Eight or nine months have glided by, all too swiftly, since José Viracocha became an inmate of Yupanqui’s home, and no tidings from Fray Fernando have reached him yet.

One afternoon he turned his steps as usual to the cheerful apartment where the princesses, or _nũstas_, were to be found. The maidens were seated near the open door; for the daylight was precious, and not too large a share fell to the lot of the Children of the Sun in dwellings built by themselves. Sumac was diligently at work on some golden flowers. Coyllur’s hand was upon her much-loved tinya—the national Peruvian guitar of seven chords. Both were still dressed in soft, fine robes of gray, the Incas’ mourning, for the head of their royal house; but Coyllur wore ornaments that Sumac had discarded. Bands of gold, interwoven with her beautiful hair, relieved its glossy blackness; which was still further set off by a simple yet tasteful wreath of red and white begonias.

Both sisters looked up as José entered; but Sumac immediately resumed her work, without the slightest change of expression in her worn and sorrowful face, while Coyllur’s large dark eyes beamed with redoubled lustre, and a visible blush kindled her features through their soft, dusky hue. José saw no one but her. He approached, and, with tender reverence in his look and manner, laid at her feet a small fowling-piece. But the young lady glanced rather doubtfully at this token of homage.

“Are you quite sure, Viracocha,” she asked, “that his mother is not still inside?”

She merely meant to inquire whether the gun was not still loaded; the Peruvians styling the spiritual essence which they believed to inhabit most inanimate things their “mama,” or mother; and Coyllur, not unnaturally, supposing the charge the spirit of the gun.

“Coyllur nũsta must know that her slave Viracocha would turn the fire-breathing club ten thousand times against his own breast, rather than suffer it to hurt a hair of her head,” was José’s answer.

“Viracocha should turn the fire against the enemies of his people.”

“Perhaps, one day—if a star shines on his path to guide him.”

The star beamed brightly enough upon him at that moment: though Coyllur’s lips were sealed by pride and maidenly reserve, she was too young and artless to silence the mute eloquence of her eyes.

“How do you prosper in your attempt to teach your companions the use of that terrible weapon?” she asked presently.

“Well, nũsta. The difficult part of the undertaking was to teach myself first. That done, the rest is easy enough.”

“I hope the place chosen for your exercise is—_safe_?”

“Safe as the rocks of the Antis. It is the field of Quepaypan, which, you know, is a good league from the city. Few save our own people ever come near it; and for fear of any surprise, we have scouts stationed all around at convenient distances.”

“You should by all means procure a horse. A man looks so brave and noble upon horseback.”

“You are always right, nũsta. At present, however, that would be dangerous. We can learn to use our guns, and no Spaniard the wiser; but a troop of ‘los Indios’ on horseback would scarcely be an agreeable sight to my lord the Viceroy—at least in his present temper.”

“The bloodthirsty Toledo? May he live to see many sights less agreeable.”

“Ay, nũsta; but the time is not come. You remember the words of the wise Pacha-cutec—‘Impatience is the sign of a base mind.’”

Here Sumac’s voice, low and soft as the cooing of a dove, broke in with the request,—

“Wilt thou help me, sister? Thy fingers shape the delicate maize-ears more deftly than mine.”

“Chachau, since you wish it, my Sumac. But why such haste with the work?”

“I promised the flowers this evening to the nuns of Santa Clara.”

“I am tired of the nuns of Santa Clara,” said Coyllur petulantly. “I think they would have us work for them like yanaconas.”

“Nay, Coyllur, they are very good to us; they teach us the holy faith. Besides,” she added, in a somewhat lower tone, “you know how kind the lady abbess has been in persuading her kinsman the Viceroy to close his eyes for the present to—to what we are all sorry for.”

“_I_ at least am not sorry that our grandfather will not profess what 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.”

“San Martin, my child; whose feast we celebrate to-morrow. Truly, Lucia, these are very beautiful,” said the nun, as she removed the fine cotton cloth that covered the basket, and took out, with admiring carefulness, the golden stalks of maize, with their rich golden grains sheathed in broad leaves of silver, and ornamented with tassels of delicate silver thread.

“San Martin. Was he the good man who, you told me, gave his cloak to the beggar? Will he be pleased with our flowers, do you think, mother? I am glad. But, mother, I want to make some now for our Lord Christ Himself. May I?”

“When it comes near Easter time, you shall. But now, dear child, the Lady Abbess bade me tell you she would fain you wrought a few for us, that we might send them to Spain, as an offering to the Mother House at Valladolid.”

“You shall have them, mother,” said the girl. “But I would like, best of all, to make some to give to our Saviour.”

“Give Him your heart, my child. That gift will please Him more than any other,” said the nun, as she kissed her affectionately. “Now I must hasten, or I shall have to do a penance for coming late to prayers.”

XVIII.

At Home.

“Trust!—the blessed deathly angels
Whisper Sabbath hours at hand.
By the heart’s wound when most gory
By the longest agony,
Smile!—behold, in sudden glory
The Transfigured smiles on thee!
And ye lifted up your head,
And it seemed as if He said—
‘My beloved, is it so?
Have ye tasted of my woe?
Of my bliss ye shall not fail.’
He stands brightly where the shade is,
With the keys of Death and Hades.”

E. B. BROWNING.

It was midday. Sumac lay sleeping, or seeming to sleep, on a low couch, called a pununa. A favourite attendant sat near, converting a little heap of wool into delicate threads by means of a spindle which she turned with a curiously-carved handle, and looking from time to time, with a mute and wistful sorrow, on the wasted face of her beloved nũsta.

It has been said that some women “have no language at all for their profoundest experiences, except to pine away and die.” Of such was Sumac. We have little right to look down from the proud height of our “Aryan” or “Caucasian” superiority upon our dusky brethren and sisters, as though their love and sorrow, compared with ours, “were as moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine.” Well have the race to which Sumac belonged asserted their claim to the love that proves itself stronger than death. Of Sumac’s own kindred was the Inca girl, Manco’s young wife, who endured every torture the Spaniards could invent without groan or murmur, and died at last smiling—because she died for him. Which of us could do more for earthly, not to say for heavenly love? And frail and shadowy as Sumac looked, within her slight frame there dwelt a spirit capable of the same devotion.

Viracocha entered the room gently through the open door, opposite to which Sumac’s couch had been placed. He was now dressed in full Inca costume. Above his uncu, with its belt of embroidered cloth, he wore a short mantle of vicuña wool, white and very fine, and adorned with a broad yellow border. On his head was a stately cap or coronal of egret’s feathers, bearing underneath the much-prized sacred cord of yellow and carnation, the insignia of the Children of the Sun. Viracocha was “a very handsome youth, well-shaped, and of a lovely countenance, as were all the other Incas.”[39] His chest was broad, his limbs slight, his head well-formed and graceful, his complexion a comely olive-brown; the oval face smooth as a maiden’s, yet thoroughly manly in expression—the parted lips revealing snow-white teeth—the nose aquiline—the eyes black and piercing, but capable of the tenderest softness—the black hair worn short according to custom, but very abundant and beautifully fine and glossy.

No wonder that such a youth was considered a highly ornamental addition to the numerous and splendid religious processions, upon the effect of which the Spanish friars seem to have placed their main reliance for the conversion of the Indians. He was also received into the best Spanish society Cuzco afforded, and pronounced by the Dons whom he enjoyed the privilege of meeting at the house of Doña Beatriz Coya and elsewhere, “_Homo tan formal y complida que Nosotros_”—(As formal and well-bred a man as Ourselves)—a high eulogium from Spanish lips. The Inca’s son was a gentleman as truly as any European prince or noble. He had not to learn courtesy from the Spaniards; he had but to translate its outward expression from the language of one set of observances into that of another. Moreover, Viracocha was born a poet; and the perilously sensitive and susceptible organization has its compensating advantages. At least, it enables a man to adapt himself to circumstances, not hypocritically affecting what he does not feel, but throwing himself readily into different forms of feeling. Ministering to Fray Fernando, pleading with unaffected eloquence the cause of his people, planning their deliverance, making love to Coyllur, taking part in a Corpus Christi procession, or exchanging Castilian courtesies in pure Castilian speech with the gentlemen of the Viceroy’s suite, Viracocha was still, for the time being, “a whole man to that one thing,” doing it with all his heart, and consequently doing it well. But this, though it was not hypocrisy, might yet easily become so.

All this time he is standing motionless, patiently waiting to be assured whether Sumac sleeps or not. At last his patience is rewarded—the girl opens her large languid eyes, and looks the question she does not need to speak.

“Dear nũsta, I have not been successful,” said Viracocha gently, as he came to her side, “although I preferred my request to the great mother of all the holy virgins.”

“To the Mother Abbess?”

“Yes. I entreated her, for the love of God, to allow Sister Maria to come and see you. But she refused me. She says it is against their law for any holy virgin to leave the house.”

“So near—only a few steps from their garden gate to this!” said Sumac plaintively.

“The Mother said that to permit it would be a great sin. But to speak plainly, nũsta, I think she is no better than an ugly old toad. If sin there be, what should hinder her doing penance?”

The Lady Abbess, it must be owned, had not been particularly courteous to Viracocha, whom she regarded as her nephew’s rival; nor very anxious to grant the request of which he was the bearer from the sister of Coyllur, who had of late bestowed sundry spirited rebuffs on that young nobleman.

“Then I shall never see Mamallay again!” said Sumac sadly, large tears gathering in her eyes. Presently she spoke to the attendant, “Amancaes,[40] bring me my book.”

Sumac possessed a book, which she regarded with half-superstitious awe as a wonderful and mysterious treasure, and with intense affection as the gift of her beloved “Mamallay.” It was a small, brown, well-worn volume—“The Sum of Christian Doctrine,” by Fray Constantino Ponce de la Fuente. Sister Maria had taught her to read, but she was far from perfect in the art; and if she had been, much that the book contained was quite beyond her comprehension.

She took it reverently in her thin hands and opened its first page. Some faded writing was there, upon which she pressed her lips fondly once and again. Then, showing it to Viracocha—“That is Mamallay’s name,” she said; “the name she had before she became a holy virgin.”