Chapter VII: Part 7

“Speak of what you understand, my lad of watches and finger-rings,” George retorted contemptuously. “Would you wish a craft built for running to and fro in the Mediterranean to look like a cruiser for the Spanish main?”

“Is the _Royal Merchantman_ to sail the Spanish main?” asked Walter in an eager, nervous whisper.

“The _English Merchantman_, an it please you, cousin,” Will corrected aloud; “though, indeed,” he added mysteriously, “if all were known, the other name might not come so much amiss. My master more than hints there be high and mighty personages with him in his venture.”

“Will,” said his father, “don’t speak evil of dignities.”

“Where’s the evil, father?” Will asked briskly, yet respectfully. “Every one knows my master’s good conditions; and that which, in the way of gain or profit, would not soil _his_ fingers, is clean enough to be touched by the Queen’s gracious Majesty herself, God bless her.”

“Amen!” said Harry the soldier. “Will, my lad, ne’er fash thyself with scruples about the _English Merchantman_. Let her cleave the waves as merrily as she lists. Ay, and let her crew seize Spanish treasure,—what is that but robbing the robber, and spoiling the spoiler? And if they cut the throats of the men—say rather of the fiends—that guard it, they will serve them better than—”

“Harry! Harry!” It was his mother who spoke, and in a tone of grieved surprise. “Are these fit words for a Christian man to speak?”

“No fit words for you to hear, at all events; so I crave your pardon, mother,” he answered. “Yet, if you knew what I know of deeds done by the hands of Spanish men, I think that you—even _you_, could not weigh and measure out your words when you spoke of them.”

“Will,” whispered Walter, “will you take me to see the _English Merchantman_?”

“With all my heart,” Will answered.

He was quite ready to fulfil his promise. The next Saturday afternoon, the holiday of London ’prentices, was the time fixed upon. Will asked his cousin’s leave to bring with them his fellow-apprentice, and Walter somewhat reluctantly consented. He found Eustace Jenkyns, however, a notable addition to their party. He was a bold, merry scapegrace, who, to Walter’s surprise, seemed quite an authority upon nautical matters; but, as Will privately informed him, was “nowhere” in the business, and just now in disgrace with his master for sundry acts of gross inattention and carelessness. Naturally idle and restless, he had fallen in with some of the wild speculations current at the time, and these had filled his head with visions of money-getting, far more rapid than any the workshop or the counter could realize. He talked of the gold to be won in the far West by brave hearts and ready hands, even alluding to the legend, already well known to Walter, of the lake of Parima and the golden city of Manoa or El Dorado. Walter believed, for his part, that the Incas who had been dispossessed by the Spaniards were still reigning there in barbaric splendour; and many and many a time, as he sat in the window of the old hall in his childhood’s home with some early narrative of travel borrowed from the vicar before him, had he dreamed of finding and restoring them. Eustace Jenkyns did not care in the least for the lost Incas, but he cared for gold and for glory. Of these he talked, while Walter listened—and the poison shot through his veins like fire. Gold would be welcome, of course, to one who knew so well the pains and privations of poverty. But glory!—that was the bait that drew him irresistibly on.

He was not greatly shocked when at last Eustace trusted him with his grand secret. “I was not made for crying, ‘What do you lack, my masters?’ or for twisting steel wires and copper filings either,” he said. “My Christmas box is broken and spent long ago, my credit gone, my master turned against me. ’Twere no great matter to break my indentures too, and slip off in the dark next Friday se’nnight to the _English Merchantman_. So Master Nevit would lose a bad ’prentice, and the service would gain a good sailor. And what would you think, Master Walter, of flinging off that pretty scholar’s gown, crying, ‘Ho, for the high seas!’ and joining me!”

“Fie on you, Jenkyns!” cried Walter, turning away half angry, half amused. And yet the shaft hit.

A chain of circumstances, slight, yet strong, had woven itself around him, and by this he was being gradually drawn onwards to a deed from which, if boldly proposed to him at first, he would have turned away in horror. And yet, if his heart had not yielded already to temptation, these circumstances would have been as powerless to draw him as threads of gossamer.

It was quite natural that pretty Cousin Lilias should receive a large share of Master Walter’s attention and admiration. As the time was drawing near when he ought to quit his uncle’s hospitable roof for Oxford, it occurred to him to beg one of the young lady’s top-knots for a keepsake. This was fair enough, since he had spent much more than he should have done upon ribbons and trinkets for her. Happening to find her one evening alone—she was standing in a kind of lobby that had a window, with a balcony outside, overlooking the river—he modestly preferred his important request. At first he played the grown-up cavalier, made her the fairest compliments he could think of, and even indulged in some of the “euphemisms” which were then beginning to become fashionable.

But gradually his boyish nature reasserted itself, and forgetting his assumed manliness, he sprang forward and deftly tried to snatch the precious knot of blue ribbon; which, however, Lilias, for fear of surprise, had already taken from its place, and was holding high above her head. And thus for a minute’s space or so they fenced and parried, laughing lightly at their sport, like the children they really were.

So absorbed were they in their play that George drew near unnoticed. The young sailor was very proud of his sister, and had never been quite cordial with Walter Grey since he observed his attentions to her. He showed, therefore, more indignation than the occasion seemed to demand. “Sister Lilias, you are too old to play with unmannerly boys,” he remarked in an elder-brotherly tone of reproof. “Our mother is asking for you in the parlour.”

Lilias took the hint and vanished; although she did not present herself in the well-lighted parlour until she had cooled her burning cheeks with fresh water. George meanwhile gave Walter the full benefit of his angry scorn.

“You poor little scholar boy!” he cried. “Prithee, keep to your Latin grammar, and leave ladies’ top-knots for those who can win them in something better than child’s play. If you had not been all your life tied to your mother’s apron, you would know by this time that my sister Lilias—”

“At least I know what you, sir, seem to have forgotten—that your sister is a lady,” interrupted the indignant Walter. “How dare you chide her as an ill-conditioned child? And as for myself, though I have the misfortune to be a scholar, I hope at least to show you that I am a man. Will you fight me, sirrah?”

“I’ll put thee in my pocket, and carry thee over the Bridge and along Cheapside, with all the ’prentice lads and serving-lasses to look on and cry Lack-a-day!” returned George, laughing heartily. “Nay, nay,” he added presently, glancing at Walter’s flushed face and lowering brow, “’tis but sailor’s nonsense, Cousin Walter. I mean no harm. There, give me your hand. One must be careful of a girl like Lilias, though.”

But Walter turned haughtily from him, and leaning against the casement, looked out upon the waters of the Thames, gliding peacefully far below.

“The lad is dumpish,” thought George. “Well, I can’t help that. To-morrow I will buy for him that book I saw him eye so lovingly in old Spicer’s booth the other day, to show I bear no malice.” Comforting himself with this resolve, he walked away, carelessly whistling some sailor’s melody.

Walter stood and gazed—in a listless, unhappy mood, discontented with his lot in life, angry with every one, but most of all with himself. If he could but go away, win gold and glory, and then come back and show his cousins the worth of the “little scholar boy” they despised! What was it that just then shot noiselessly from under the arch of the bridge? A wherry, barely visible through the darkening gloom. But he marked it as it glided past; and he knew its errand well. Had not Eustace Jenkyns told him all? What mattered the details of the plot—how serving men and lasses were bribed, and the suspicions of the city watch laid to rest by a plausible story, accounting for the appearance of the wherry at that unseasonable hour? All he cared to think of was the rapturous joy with which the freed apprentice would set his foot that night on the deck of the _English Merchantman_. And then,—away to the distant West, to the land of gold and glory, of romance and dreams!

Why should Eustace Jenkyns, the goldsmith’s runaway apprentice, taste that joy, and Walter Grey, scholar and gentleman, be shut out from it all? Was not his own life in his hand to do what he pleased with? For one delicious maddening moment he seemed to feel the spicy gales from those distant shores already fanning his cheek. And then his eye rested on the boat, gliding slowly past once more, _two_ men in it now.

Another moment and the opportunity would be gone—gone for ever. There was no time for thought. From the ship he would write to his mother, explain all, and excuse himself—if he could. Now he must act; now or never. He took out a white kerchief, and waved it. The signal was noticed by the men in the wherry—one of them raised his oar to a perpendicular position by way of answer.

Now, what should he do? At this hour the doors would be shut and all the lower windows of the house securely fastened, nor could he open them without attracting attention. But he remembered that George had once descended from the balcony to the river,—a perilous, but practicable feat, which he had heard him describe, with all its circumstances, for the benefit of James and Ned. Walter, naturally brave, was capable in this hour of excitement of the wildest daring. His head was steady, and his limbs were light and agile. In a moment he was out on the balcony, over it, clinging to it with both hands while he sought foothold beneath. He had not, fortunately, to intrust himself to a trim, modern building, smooth as glass from attic to basement. The kitchen window, an old statue of a saint in a niche, uneven stones here and there, tufts of grass, weeds, lastly the bridge buttress, gave him the support he needed, and enabled him at length to drop exhausted, but unhurt, into the dark cold waters beneath. He was soon helped into the boat by the astonished, but admiring Eustace Jenkyns.

And thus Walter Grey, by one egregious act of folly, or rather of madness, falsified the promise of his thoughtful childhood and precocious boyhood, gave the lie to all his past life, and utterly changed all his future.

XXIII.

Where it Led.

“Oh! what a tale to shadow with its gloom
That happy home in England. Idle fear!
Would the winds tell it?”

HEMANS.

Three years have passed away since Walter Grey so suddenly and strangely forsook his home and his friends. During that time he has had his heart’s desire—in part, at least. He has seen how the sunlight glistens on the waters of the Spanish main, his foot has pressed the flowery shores of unknown islands, and his hand has borne part, not unworthily, in England’s great naval contest with the enemies of her creed and her race.

But for all this he has paid a heavy price. He has taken his own way, and whither has it led him? Haply to an early grave, amongst the shells and sea-weed, fathoms deep below the blue waters he so longed to look upon? Had such been his fate, many might have mourned, but some would have envied him; and certainly, no forebodings of an early, honourable death would have done aught to deter him from the path he had chosen. But the English mariner who in those days dared to invade the Spanish main, the Pope’s gift to his favourite son, had to brave dangers far more terrible. The Holy Inquisition stretched its ghastly arm over half the globe, and with a touch, “cold, strong, passionless, like a dead man’s clasp,” claimed and held every English prisoner that fell into Spanish hands.

Rashly—perhaps too rashly—the _English Merchantman_ measured her strength against a great Spanish galleon and two smaller vessels, with which she fell in off Juan Fernandez. Gallant was the fight maintained by the English ship, but it was too unequal even for that day of marvellous naval achievements. After five hours’ hard fighting she was glad to get away, crippled and sorely raked, yet unconquered. But Walter Grey was reported missing. No man saw his face again, after that first mad rush upon the enemies’ deck in which he had borne his part so bravely.

And could his comrades have seen his face six months afterwards they would not have recognized him. Well would it have been for him had he died of the wound that separated him from his countrymen, and left him a helpless captive in the hands of the Spaniards, and at the mercy of the Holy Inquisition. By that hideous magician the bright-eyed, fair-haired English youth was soon transformed into a gaunt skeleton, old in misery, if still young in years. In pursuance of his sentence at an auto-da-fé in Lima, he took his place on the narrow wooden bench of a Spanish galley, and chained to three other wretches, toiled with them at the task of moving one of its forty great oars.

Here—it is a fellow-sufferer who speaks—his food was a scanty allowance of “coarse black biscuit and water, his lodging was the bare boards and planks of the galley, and hunger, thirst, cold, and stripes he lacked none.”[44]

But, it will be asked, had Walter Grey no alternative? Did men come forth from the gates of that gloomy “Santa Casa,” only to take their places in Spanish galleys? Not always. Some there were who wrestled boldly with the Inquisition fiend and overcame him, finding man’s worst God’s best, and death the gate of glory. But each of these crowned conquerors possessed a talisman, whose marvellous virtue bore them through the fiercest conflict,—even that white stone “wherein is written a new name, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.”

Walter Grey had not this talisman. Yet for the honour of his country, for the remembrance of the lessons learned beside his mother’s knee, he had borne much, and with heroic spirit. He knew that the creed he had been taught in childhood was true. But then he did not know that its promises were true _for him_. Perhaps they were, perhaps they were not; and like far wiser men, Walter Grey found it “hard to die for a perhaps.” So at last his heart failed him. He became a Penitent; and he experienced the tender mercies of the Inquisition towards returning penitents. He was sent to the galleys—for twenty years, or for life. He scarcely knew how the sentence ran; and in fact it did not matter.

Here, at first, he breathed rather than lived. He took no note of time, for “his soul was black, and knew no change of night or day.” His fettered limbs moved at their hateful task like parts of a machine, and thus he suffered little beyond the mere outward bodily miseries of his lot. He might have died thus erelong; and then, his chains loosed at last, he would have been flung into the sea with no more thought or ceremony than a dead hound. But he was roused at last from his torpor by a slight accidental circumstance.

One day the commissary, or overseer of the slaves, was as usual walking up and down the narrow gangway that separated the two tiers of benches on which the rowers sat. Something was amiss with the handle of the great Manita whip he carried in his hand, and he took out a strong knife to mend it. But the blade snapped across near the haft and fell down amongst the slaves, close to the place where Walter sat. He had often, in a vague, dreamy way, wished himself dead and out of his misery. Now the thought flashed across his mind that with this weapon he could kill himself. He snatched it up, and hid it in the sleeve of his tattered red jerkin. As at that moment the attention of the commissary was diverted to something that was taking place on the other side of the vessel, the action passed unobserved, at least by him.

Walter had now a definite purpose, and his mind awoke from its lethargy to deliberate on the best means of executing it. The desire to die actually helped to bring him back to life. He would kill himself, and be done with all this pain; no further did his thoughts travel. But how to do the deed?

It seemed very easy; now that he was provided with a weapon, it might be done at any moment. But he could not dismiss the fear that his ever-watchful enemies might by some means or other bar even _this_ door of escape from their cruelty; indeed, the instinct of a hunted, baited creature was sufficient in itself to make him conceal his movements. So he determined upon waiting until nightfall, when the miserable slaves, bending over their oars, snatched a few hours of comfortless repose.

Night came at last. All was still on board the galley. Walter looked cautiously around him—then took out his weapon. For one moment, and no more, he hesitated: by this time he was naturalized to horrors, and deliberately and of set purpose “his soul chose death rather than life.” But the broken blade hurt his hand; and he lost another moment, in the very act of turning it against his own heart, in trying so to grasp it as to avoid this trifling pain. So ineradicable is the natural instinct of self-preservation.

In that instant his arm was seized somewhat roughly, and the voice of the slave who sat next him whispered in his ear, “Camerado, what are you doing?”

“No harm to you,” answered Walter, who had by this time been schooled by hard necessity in the tongue of the stranger.

“No good to yourself,” rejoined the other; and he wrenched the broken blade from the poor boy’s nerveless hand, and flung it overboard.

“Oh! why did you take it from me?” cried Walter. “It was cruel!—I needed it.” And leaning over his oar, he gave way to a passionate fit of weeping.

Since he came on board the galley, he had not shed a tear. Nor could he have told any one why he wept now. He would have said, if asked, that his tears were for the lost fragment of steel, for which he felt an unreasoning, childish regret.

The weather-beaten slave beside him laid a fettered, bony hand on his. The gesture was friendly, but friendly gestures were so strange to Walter now, that he started and sobbed in his alarm, “Do not betray me.”

“God forbid!” replied the other. “I have not spent fifteen years at the oar for nothing. Do not weep, camerado. Pray God to forgive your sin, and go to sleep.”

“I cannot sleep,” Walter answered. “Would to God I could die!”

“When your time comes, He will call you. Perhaps to-night. The more need you should ask His forgiveness.”

Walter feared to be drawn into any talk about religion, lest he should implicate himself by some unguarded word, and fall again into the cruel hands of the Inquisition. So he only said, rather sullenly, “I am an Englishman.”

“Englishmen pray to God, and He hears them. I once saw two Englishmen die, and I am very sure God was with them.”

“Where was that?” asked Walter, with some faint stirrings of curiosity, and a strange feeling, half pleasure half pain, at the mention of his countrymen.

“At a great auto-da-fé. They were burned alive—”

“Hush!” Walter interrupted with a shudder. “Don’t talk of that.”

“Not if it troubles you, señor.” This fellow-slave of Walter’s knew him to be a gentleman, and addressed him as such; an attention not without its effect on the mind of the unhappy youth. “Yet that was no worse than this,” he added,—“not so bad, as I think sometimes. I was very near proving it too.”

“Why, what have you done?”—Walter had often heard the other slaves talk carelessly, and even boastfully, of their crimes; but he never knew this man to make the slightest allusion to his past history.

“I was thought to have done something which had almost lit the pile for me. I might have shared the fate of those two Englishmen—well if I had shared their hope.”

“Are you not afraid to talk thus?” Walter asked. “Is it not dangerous?”

“You speak of danger!—you, who tried just now to kill yourself! Had you succeeded, where would you be?”

“At least not in the Inquisition,” was Walter’s murmured answer.

“O camerado! don’t you know that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God?”

“I ought to know it,” Walter answered sadly. “Has He not sent me here for my sins?” With a long shuddering sigh he thought of his treason to his mother, and his weak denial of his mother’s faith. And again he wept—wept and sobbed aloud. For after a long drought the rain-clouds are apt to hang heavily; and it is not the first shower or the second that will clear the sky.

“Weep on,” said his comrade. “God has set you two lessons. One—your own sin—you are learning now; the other He will teach you by-and-by.”

But though Walter’s right hand neighbour desired him to weep on, his “oar-fellow,” who sat on the bench above him, was of another mind. This man, who had been captain of a gang of robbers in the wilds of the Sierra Morena, bestowed a hearty kick and curse on his young comrade. “Hold your peace, English heretic,” he said; “else I will call the commissary, and put it to his conscience as a good Catholic, whether it is not penance enough to be beaten all day like a hound, without being kept awake all night like an owl.”

Walter thought it best to take this gentle hint. He rested his weary head upon his oar, the only pillow it had known for months, and tried to sleep.

But sleep would not come to him. Thoughts came instead, crowding thick and fast upon him—thoughts of home, of his mother. No wonder that he wept on still, though noiselessly, lest he should awaken his companions.

At last he raised his head quietly; and through the mild gloom of the tropical night, which was not darkness, he looked cautiously at his right-hand neighbour, or—as in thought he had already begun to call him—his friend.

Doubtful whether the thin gray hair that fell over the oar concealed the face of a sleeper, Walter gently touched the ragged sleeve.

“_Quien va?_” the Spaniard responded, turning to him at once, with a questioning look in his keen dark eyes, where the fire burned still, undimmed by the sorrows that had turned his raven hair to gray, and worn his stalwart frame to a skeleton.

“That _other lesson_? What is it? Tell me, camerado.”

For a minute’s space the galley-slave was silent. Then, in a voice scarcely raised above a whisper, but so clear and distinct that every word stood out as if read by a lightning flash, he repeated,—“‘The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him, He also will hear their cry, and will save them.’ Ay, señor, even in the galleys!”

XXIV.

At the Oar.

“Old faces look upon me,
Old forms go crowding past.”

AYTOUN.

Walter Grey slept at last; weariness of body gaining the victory over sorrow of heart. He was wakened from a dream of home, more vivid than any he had known for months, by curses and blows and cries of pain, the usual matins of the galley-slave.

He put his stiff and weary limbs into the position necessary for their accustomed toil, and grasped his oar. But he did not escape a rough admonition from his comrade the bandit, seasoned with a couple of oaths.

“Look alive there, Englishman, and take your own share of the pulling; else you are pretty likely to take your own share of the lash by-and-by!”

It happened, however, that they received orders to pull gently. There was no occasion for haste, for the sea was calm, and they were near land. If he pleased, Walter might look about him as he rowed.

And right glorious was the sight that greeted his dim and tearful eyes. The water beneath was a sheet of liquid light, silver and rose; and before him stretched the green and pleasant shore of the Bay of Callao, with the giant Andes towering far above in the distance, the cold of their everlasting snows kindled into flame by the magic of the sunrise.

It was long since the crushed heart of Walter Grey had thrilled to the beauty of earth and sea. But this morning, like the Ancient Mariner, he “blessed them unawares;” and, like him, he felt the blessing return into his own bosom.

“Look, camerado!” he whispered to his friend, taking his right hand from the oar to point to the snowy mountains.

“_Quiton_!” murmured his older and more cautious companion—for the commissary was near. Too late! The cruel lash swung, quivered, descended. Walter’s cry of pain rang through the clear morning air, startling his own ear with its echo, and making him ashamed of his weakness. Next time, he vowed, he would give no sign.

Already a change had begun in him; he was growing gradually more like his former self. And as days passed on, life and feeling returned to him, slowly but surely. It was a fettered hand, like his own, that had plucked him back from the gates of the grave. And that hand had also pointed upwards to a star of hope. Again and again did Walter’s pale lips murmur over those words: “‘He also will hear their cry, and will save them’—even in the galleys.”

But with hope came memory—fast-thronging memories of the past—of his home, his mother, his faith. Sharp, sudden stings of remorse followed. Conscience spoke aloud, and would not be silenced; telling of his home abandoned—his mother wronged and deceived, perhaps heart-broken—his faith forsaken, his God denied. Could there be forgiveness for such as he?

For a considerable time the _San Cristofero_ lay quietly at anchor in the Bay of Callao; so he had leisure enough for thought. Indeed, we are assured by no less an authority than that of Cervantes, that there was “plenty of leisure in the galleys of Spain.”

His look of deep dejection, and the tears that often, at this period, fell silently from his eyes, were not unnoticed by his compassionate comrade. This man went amongst his companions by the name of the “Matador;” for almost all the galley-slaves had quaint _sobriquets_, by which they were distinguished, their real names being rarely known, and still more rarely used. Nor could Walter help remarking that he was singularly unlike the rest. He never joined in the revolting blasphemies with which the rowers’ benches so often resounded; he never tried to evade his share of the work, but rather exerted himself to shield and spare his weaker companions; and neither under the blazing tropical sun nor the drenching rains, neither in toil, in hunger, nor in pain, was he ever heard to murmur. By degrees Walter began to talk with him, to confide in him. And one day he abruptly uttered the substance of many a brooding thought,—

“I hope they think me dead in England!”

“Why hope that, señor?”

“Better dead, than _here_. Better dead twice over, than a slave—and an apostate.” The last word, it need scarcely be said, was breathed in a low and cautious whisper.

“That depends,”—the matador replied, with equal caution. Walter felt sorry he had ventured so far, and held his peace.

But the matador resumed presently, of his own accord, “Life is better than death, señor.”

“This is not life; it is living death,” Walter answered.

“Not so, my young camerado. It is written, ‘The dead cannot praise Thee.’”

“_Praise_! If you spoke of prayer, I might understand you. But who ever yet praised God in the galleys?”

“One, at least, señor. A poor man who, long ago, in the depths of his despair, ‘cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’”

“Do you mean—” Walter stopped and hesitated. “I wish,” he continued, looking at him with interest, “I wish you would tell me who you are; and what misfortune—crime I cannot believe it to have been—has brought you hither.”

“Whereto would that serve, señor? Mine is an humble name, unknown to fame. And I do not, like you, suffer for my faith. I am here for the deeds wrought by my own right hand.”

These words destroyed a hope, or rather a surmise, about the matador, that had of late been growing up silently in the mind of Walter. The old galley-slave went on,—

“Do you think, my young camerado, that no man save yourself ever cursed the day of his birth, and sought death and found it not? The first year I spent at the oar, I would have thanked any man to give me a heave overboard, or to pass a sword through my body.”

“The first year!” Walter echoed, with a long sigh. “I have been but seven months here, and they seem a lifetime. More years to follow!—More years! God help me!”

“Amen. God comfort you, as He has comforted me.”

“How?”

“By showing you Himself, señor Englishman,—Himself, the God of all comfort, the Saviour from sin and sorrow, the Lord who binds up the broken in heart;” and the worn, bronzed, weather-beaten face kindled and glowed at the words.

Walter asked in surprise, “Where—how did you learn all this?”

“Where? Sitting on this bench, chained to this oar. How? Through the goodness of God in bringing back to me what I heard, but little heeded, in happier days.”

“Heard, but little heeded,” Walter sighed again. “Just my own case. But—one thing perplexes me.”

“What is that?”

“From whose lips _you_ can have learned all this.” For Walter believed, and not unnaturally, that there was only light in the land of Goshen, the countries of the Reformation, and that all the rest of the world lay in Egyptian darkness. Of the gleams that here and there illumined that darkness he had never heard.

The matador smiled, a little sadly. “Perhaps,” he said, “I would scarce tell you _that_ did I not think my own hour near—my hour of deliverance. We feel the water calm and calmer under the keel as we draw nigh the shore. What could not be spoken once, for tears, is easily enough said now. She taught me, whom I loved best on earth.”

His quiet tones sounded more sorrowfully in Walter’s ears than a burst of emotion would have done. It may be sadder to walk dryshod over the deep channel of a great grief passed away and done with, than to cross the shallow, noisy stream of a present sorrow. “It is bitter,” he said falteringly, “to be parted for ever from what we love. I too—I—”

“Shall meet the loved again—up yonder,” said the matador, pointing with his fettered hand to the cloudless azure above them.

“It was all my own folly, my own sin! Ah, you know not how deeply I have sinned!”

“But God knows. Arise, and go to your Father, and say unto Him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.’”

Walter’s tears flowed too fast to allow him to utter the answer that trembled on his lips. But eyes and thoughts were raised upwards, and the cry that reached no mortal ear was heard by Him who bindeth up the broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.

Some days afterwards the matador seized a quiet moment in which to whisper to his friend, “I have been asking God to comfort you.—Has He?”

Walter answered with brightening eyes, “Not yet with the best robe, and the ring, and the fatted calf. But even now with the word, ‘_This, My son_.’ And that is enough.”

XXV.

The Friend of the Poor.

“We two walk on in our grassy places,
On either marge of the moonlit flood,
With the moon’s own sadness in our faces,
Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.”

JEAN INGELOW.

If mental ability is unequally distributed, so also is that energy of character without which it is of comparatively little use, and which, indeed, sometimes supplies its place. Some men are so largely endowed with this valuable quality, that, after ordering their own affairs, they have abundance remaining to bestow upon their neighbours; and, fortunately for society, energy and benevolence are qualities very often found in combination. But these benevolent persons occasionally violate the sacred rights of individuality by taking the concerns of others too unceremoniously into their own hands; consequently it is their trial—and a very keen and bitter one—to find their excellent arrangements too often set aside, with or without good reason, by the very persons for whose benefit they are designed.

Don Fray Tomas de San Martin, prior of the Franciscan Monastery at Lima, was a man of this temper—at once energetic and benevolent. And it must be allowed that for such the Church of Rome makes admirable provision. As the head of a wealthy and influential religious house in the capital of the New World, Fray Tomas found ample exercise for his gifts; and eventually they were brought under the notice of his ecclesiastical superiors during a mission to Spain, which he undertook for the purpose of obtaining the establishment of a university in Lima. Shortly afterwards he was appointed to a post calculated to afford them yet wider exercise—the bishopric of Chiquisaca. This was an onerous charge, especially in a country that had yet to be reclaimed almost entirely from heathenism.

It was to his credit that, amidst his preparations for undertaking it, he found time to recall to memory the pale, fiery-eyed, thoughtful-faced young monk whom he had sent eight or nine years ago to the heights of Cerro Blanco. He considered Fray Fernando just the material out of which a model missionary to the Indians might be moulded. Hence the summons that awaited the monk at the Franciscan convent in Cuzco.

When Fray Fernando at length presented himself before the prior of his Order, Fray Tomas received him very cordially, and explained to him, with much affability and condescension, the important part he intended him to perform in spreading the faith amongst the Indians of his new diocese. For this work he conceived him eminently fitted by the zeal and the talents he had observed in him during his novitiate; and no doubt he would find the Indian youth, whom he had with so much Christian charity redeemed from slavery, baptized, and educated, an efficient interpreter. For the Indians of Chiquisaca had, fortunately, been subjects of the Inca, so they all spoke the “lengua general.”

He then proceeded to display before the eyes of Fray Fernando a vista of future usefulness combined with peril and adventure, and showing at the end some far-off glimpse of a possible crown of martyrdom. If he had been dealing with a Churchman of an ambitious, worldly temper, he would have substituted the more material attraction of a bishop’s mitre; but he told himself that he “knew his man.”

It was soon evident, however, that he did not know his man at all. Fray Fernando stood before him—paler, more fiery-eyed than ever, and with some traces in his raven hair of the snows he had dwelt amongst. He was respectful, for that was his duty; obedient, for he had sworn to obey. He thanked the prior for his remembrance of him, his commendations, and his confidence; for he could do no less. But his thanks were too plainly words of course—withered flowers, out of which the sap was dried and the colouring faded. He only acquired a little animation of manner when he went on to say, that while prepared to obey his lord the prior in everything, he would yet make his very humble supplication that the duties of a preacher might not be imposed on him, as he did not feel himself capable of fulfilling them.

“Some scruple of conscience, no doubt,” thought the half-offended but still patient and considerate Fray Tomas. “Poor man! he has had little to do on that lonely mountain save to set up scruples and to knock them down again, else he might have died from sheer inaction. I ought to deal gently with him.”

Scruples are weeds that luxuriate in the soil of monasticism. It is full of the elements that minister to their growth—idleness, solitude, introspection, and the habit of magnifying trifles. Don Fray Tomas was well acquainted with every variety of the species—foolish scruples, morbid scruples, honest scruples, and the not uncommon kind that may truly be called dishonest, since they are used to lead the thoughts away from some real sin which the heart is not willing to surrender. As he abounded both in tact and kindness, he was quite an adept in the art of uprooting these troublesome weeds; and he had no objection to use his skill in the service of Fray Fernando.

But the younger monk was impervious to his well-meant hints: he would neither give confidence nor receive consolation. He even turned a deaf ear to the intimation that his superior would be quite willing to become his confessor. Fray Fernando had not confessed once for the last sixteen years without believing that he committed mortal sin by abusing a sacrament of the Church. He neither wished to do this oftener than he could help, nor to impose an incomplete and therefore invalid confession upon a man so astute as the prior.

So the patience of Fray Tomas came to an end at last. He thought Fray Fernando brain-sick and conceited, both in the old and the modern sense of the word. He regretted the trouble he had taken in summoning him from Cerro Blanco, and made up his mind that he would get the Indians converted without his help. Yet he was too benevolent to send him back, or to consign him to his monastery under circumstances that might leave a slur upon his character in the eyes of his brethren. He procured for him therefore the office of attending to the spiritual wants of the seamen who frequented the port of Callao; and Fray Fernando, really grateful for this undeserved kindness, addressed himself to his new duties with diligence and zeal.

But the extreme heat of the climate—the burning suns, and the heavy clinging mists—told upon his constitution, now accustomed to a clear and bracing mountain air. It was not until he had more than once had the calenture severely, that he yielded to the longing, often felt, for the presence of his adopted son; and, as we are already aware, the letter that summoned José to his side lay unclaimed at Cuzco for nearly a year. When at last the monk and his adopted son met once more, the Indian youth, according to his character, expressed but little, either joy or sorrow; yet not the less did he feel profoundly that his father and teacher was bound, at no distant time, for that far-off, mysterious Christian heaven, of which he had heard so much and knew so little.

A circumstance that occurred shortly after his arrival confirmed his forebodings. José never spoke of Coyllur—never even named her, if he could help it; but he was quite willing to talk about the gentle Sumac, and to tell Fray Fernando the story of her life and death. He dwelt especially upon her strong attachment to the Christian faith, and how that faith had enabled her to die in peace; and with a reverence not altogether free from superstition, he showed his patron the little book which had been her dying gift.

Fray Fernando took it from his hand, and looked at it with interest.

“I have heard Fray Constantino preach in the cathedral of Seville,” he remarked presently; “and a wonderful preacher he was. Pity that his heart was lifted up within him, and so he fell into the snare of the devil! He became a heretic, and ended his days in the prison of the Inquisition.—But lend me this book for a little space, José; I should like to read it.”

Pleased to give him pleasure, José complied, and, leaving Fray Fernando to read at his leisure, wandered out to the bay to feast his eyes upon the marvels of the shipping. On returning to the humble lodging of his patron, he was greatly alarmed to find him lying senseless on the floor. But he had seen Sumac swoon, and he knew what remedies to adopt. He ran for cold water, bathed the monk’s forehead with it, and chafed his hands. Fray Fernando ere long recovered consciousness, looked about him, drank the water José raised to his lips, and told him not to be frightened. Then, availing himself of his help, he rose and placed himself in his usual seat.

“What has happened, patre?” José asked affectionately, “Are you ill?”

“No,” the monk answered slowly, as with eye and hand he sought for the little book. It had fallen to the ground, but José picked it up and gave it to him.

“Tell me”—he began, but his voice faltered—died away. He paused a moment, then resumed more calmly, “Tell me—who gave this book to the Palla?”[45]

José opened the first page, and pointed to the inscription, “Doña Rosa Merçedes y Guevara.”

Fray Fernando gazed on the faded writing with eager kindling eyes;—gradually they changed, softened, grew dim with a mist of gathering tears. At last he said very gently, “That name was once dear to me.” And he said no more.

But José drew nearer, and of his own accord put his arm round his neck, laying his hand on his shoulder.

By-and-by the monk inquired, still with the same gentleness of manner, “How did the Palla become possessed of that book?”

“Dear patre,” José answered, “I will tell you all I know. Sumac Nũsta loved to go to the House of the Holy Virgins—the nuns of Santa Clara. This book belonged to one of them, who was Sumac’s dear and chosen friend. Sister Maria was her holy name; the name she had from her father and mother was—what you find written there.”

“Enough, José; my past comes back to me. The happy, happy past before—Strange—wonderful—that we have been near each to other, have breathed the same air, trod the streets of the same city—never knowing! Well—better so! Both dead—dead hearts in living bodies.”

Then silence fell on the two. José stood like a statue of bronze; Fray Fernando sat, and dreamed of the past.

At length he spoke again. “José, is there anything I have for which you would give me this book in exchange?”

José smiled as he answered, “Nothing, patre. Take it from the son to whom you have given everything. Sumac Nũsta would wish you to take it,” he added, seeing the monk hesitate.

“Thank you, José,” said Fray Fernando, grasping the Indian’s slender hand. “What I have said is safe with you,” he added, and the subject dropped—for ever.

How was it in the meantime with José himself? He was passing through the furnace of a bitter anguish. Many men, whose love was true as his, have had to do the same. But few come forth from that furnace unscarred, scarce one unscathed. Some hearts its fire burns hard, turning them to stone; some hearts consume in it like dry wood, leaving only ashes behind; while some, perhaps, are melted there, that they may be refined and purified like gold.

José could not forget. There was in his nature a dumb, persistent tenacity, both of purpose and of affection. The river might flow for leagues underground, yet its still, strong current would know no change. He rather brooded than thought, rather dreamed than reflected. After that one outburst of fierce agony on the Sachsahuaman Hill, he uttered no complaint, even to himself. Perhaps eventually the doom of his race might come upon him, and stoicism pass gradually into apathy.

A Spaniard in his circumstances would have acted differently. Had the rival of Don Francisco Solis been of his own race, the successful suitor would have worn a shirt of mail beneath his broidered doublet, and barred his windows well. For “Honour,” that idol of chivalry—a bloody idol, too, propitiated by many a costly hecatomb—sanctioned almost every kind of treason and violence when glozed over by the name of love. It was fortunate for Don Francisco that he had not torn his prize from a Spanish hidalgo, but from a simple Inca Indian, who reverenced from his heart the Quichua laws of his ancestors, and the Ten Commandments he had learned from Fray Fernando.

Quietly, and without a word spoken on either side, José resumed his old position towards Fray Fernando; only he was, if possible, more assiduous than before in rendering those personal ministrations which the monk’s feeble health now made doubly acceptable. A prince amongst his own people, he had yet no sense of degradation in performing even the lowliest offices for his adopted father. He loved him; that was enough. Moreover, in common with all his race, he held the paramount sanctity of the bond of ownership, believing that it ought to supersede, not only every personal consideration, but every other claim. “I am his; he bought me,” was a plea strong enough to justify the most unbounded devotion.[46]

When Fray Fernando was engaged in his spiritual ministrations, José always accompanied him as his acolyte; and from this office he reaped the great advantage of being able freely to visit all the ships in the bay. It was not long until his attention was arrested by the miserable condition of the slaves on board the galleys. Not all the wonders of the great galleons, with their tall masts and spreading sails, and their strange monstrous guns, could turn his eyes and his thoughts from those black unsightly hulks, where sat the long and serried rows of degraded wretches; brown, haggard, filthy, fettered to their places. “Are they men?” was his first question to Fray Fernando. When told they were criminals, enduring a severe but well-merited punishment, he remarked, “The king ought rather to kill them. Why does he not?” For José was himself the son of kings, whose stroke often dealt death, swift and remediless, but who never knew the fiendish delight of torturing their victims.

Then Fray Fernando said, “We will bring alms to the slaves on board the galleys.”

“Chachau!” José answered. “My Fathers were the Friends of the Poor.” And they did so.

XXVI.

The Fruits of the West.

“And when you see fair hair, be pitiful.”

GEORGE ELLIOT.

The good galley _San Cristofero_ was doomed to lie at rest for a lengthened period in the port of Callao. She needed repairs; and since these repairs had to be accomplished by Spanish hands, and “To-morrow is the god of the Spaniard,” a great many to-morrows came and went before they were completed. And even when at length they had come to an end, the galley had still to await, for an indefinite time, the pleasure of the stately man-of-war she was destined to escort.

These delays were no cause of regret to the slaves on board. They gained thereby some trifling alleviation of the miseries of their lot. The rowers who sat on the first bench, and who had the severest toil, but the greatest privileges, were often permitted to go on shore; their peculiar dress, and the iron anklet they always wore, being considered sufficient securities against the possibility of an escape. Although this welcome relief to the monotony of their life was not usually granted to the others, they also sometimes received small sums in charity, which their more fortunate comrades used to lay out for them. Moreover, there was little to be done. The rowers might sleep through the sultry hours of the tropical day, or sit idle, leaning against their oars, and gazing on the fair sights that met their eyes—the crystal waters, the green shore, the white and distant mountains.

One very hot day a cry ran along the benches that the commissary had fallen down dead. And almost immediately afterwards the slaves saw him carried along the gangway into the little covered recess in the forecastle. No very kindly interest in a man from whom they had received little save curses and blows could be expected from them; but in their present state of inaction any event was sure to be eagerly discussed. By-and-by they learned that he was not dead, only suffering from a sunstroke. But his condition was thought sufficiently dangerous to require the immediate services of a priest.

There stepped on board accordingly a Franciscan monk, accompanied by a handsome well-dressed Indian, who carried the little silver bell intended to warn all who heard it of the presence of their Creator. Even the slaves were expected to prostrate themselves at the signal. The matador had, apparently, no scruples about this ceremony; but to Walter Grey it was a bowing of the knee to Baal, which in his heart he detested, though he was not yet strong enough to challenge martyrdom by a refusal.

He was not particularly pleased to meet the keen dark eyes of the Indian fixed upon him with an earnest and, as he fancied, a suspicious gaze. Nothing, indeed, could be more unlikely than that an Indian should observe his reluctance or scrutinize its motives; but he had suffered so much that his apprehensions were not always under the control of his reason.

The slaves maintained a respectful silence, or conversed only in whispers, until the monk had performed his ministrations, and with his attendant re-entered the boat that was to convey him on shore. They then began to discuss the occurrence amongst themselves. “Did you see the monk’s face, comrades?” one of them inquired. “On my faith, he might be a brother of ours. He looks as lean and hollow-eyed as if he had sat for a twelvemonth at the oar.”

“Yet what an eye he has, the holy man!” remarked Walter’s oar-fellow, the Quatrero. “He looked at me for a moment, and I had to turn away lest he should begin to reckon up to me on his rosary all the sins of my life.”

“If he began _that_ bead-roll he would be here till sundown, and not half through then,” said another dryly.

“Hush mates!” a third interposed. “Here comes the dark-faced sacristan again, and with a basket of fine fruit on his arm. Enough to make us all die of thirst this burning day. What lucky fellow has got a real to spend?”

“What good in that? He will serve our betters first. Well if he comes our way at all.”

And now the “dark-faced sacristan” stood on the deck, holding parley with a soldier who acted as sentinel. All took notice of his gallant air and manly bearing, and saw that he wore his handsome national costume with as much stately grace as a Spanish cavalier could wear his cloak and sword. “A fine bird that, and in fine feathers,” muttered the Quatrero. Meanwhile the soldier conducted José Viracocha to the captain, of whom he made some request, which appeared to be granted immediately. The captain politely accompanied him to the gangway, and by a motion of his hand indicated that the slaves were permitted to hold communication with him.

José stepped at once to the bench where sat the English youth, whose golden hair and fair complexion rendered him conspicuous amongst the swarthy Spaniards and dusky Creoles and Mulattoes. With a bow and a smile he placed his basket of fruit in his hand.

Walter, in his surprise, at first took it mechanically. Then reflecting that the Indian probably wished to sell, and that he had no money, he tried to convey as much by signs.

“Perhaps, señor, you speak Spanish?” said José, making use of that language.

“I do,” Walter answered, more and more surprised.