Part 17

Fray Fernando did not pay any particular attention to him, but observed the young Englishman with much compassion. Guessing pretty accurately what was passing in his mind, and willing to end his suspense, he departed from his usual practice by giving precedence to the younger. “I see, my young friend,” he said, “that you have finished your repast. I will therefore hear your confession first. Come with me.” And, rising from his seat, he led the way into the inner chamber, where was his oratory and confessional.

Anxiously had Walter prepared himself for this hour. He had planned and pondered, and formed many a resolution, which he dismissed, and then formed again, as to how he should speak, how he should act, when the important moment arrived. But now all vanished utterly from his memory. A strength and calmness, never felt before, descended suddenly upon him. No thought of fear occurred to him, nor indeed any thought at all save the one which wholly filled his heart. He was called to confess. And like a lightning flash, came those words across his mind: “He that confesseth me before men, him will I also confess before my Father and before the holy angels.” Repeating them over to himself, he followed Fray Fernando into the inner room.

José kindled a light for the matador, and supplied him with tobacco, and with a quaint cumbrous pipe covered with Indian carving. From what he had seen of the man, he respected and liked him; but neither had any wish to converse with the other. So they sat together in perfect silence, quite content to wait, and to enjoy their own meditations.

They could hear the voices of the monk and his penitent plainly enough, the thin partition being of cane covered with plaster. First, that of the young Englishman—calm, earnest, solemn—“I desire to confess”—but the end of the sentence escaped them. Then Fray Fernando’s voice, earnest also,—not quite his ordinary professional tone, which was well known to José. Then both, succeeding each other rapidly, sometimes even mingling, as the voices of men who dispute, and rather hotly. Then a brief sentence, mournfully spoken by Fray Fernando. Then, once more, the voice of Walter Grey, so full, so calm, so harmonious, that José thought he must be reciting some sweet yaravi of his native land, instead of making confession of his sins. Then a pause, followed by some low quiet words from Fray Fernando. These appeared to end the interview. A movement was heard within, and in another moment Fray Fernando opened the door. “Remember, I give you time,” they heard him say. “You are under my instruction. I must see you as often as I can.”

Walter Grey bowed, and walked into the outer room. Released from the hateful oar, he looked tall and stately; and in spite of his ragged jerkin and fettered ankles, a true English gentleman—“a Child of the Sun,” José called him in his heart. He placed himself in the seat at the table from which the matador had just risen, and resting his face upon his hands, seemed lost in thought.

The silence that followed was really hard for José to bear; he had hoped such great things from this interview, and taken such pains to procure it. Yet he respected the Englishman too much to intrude on his meditations. He waited for some time with exemplary patience; but at last, growing desperate from the fear of losing altogether the only opportunity he might ever enjoy, he ventured to ask,—

“Señor Englishman, will you speak with me?”

Walter Grey started, uncovered his face, and turned his frank blue eyes upon José, whose presence, up to that moment, he had completely forgotten.

“I should be ungrateful indeed if I would not, Don José,” he answered. “What do you want with me?”

“I have somewhat to say to you; somewhat also to hear from your lips,” said José, in his grave, sententious way. Then, rising from his seat, he stood before the Englishman.

For a minute’s space each gazed at the other in silence. They were a strange contrast—the Inca Indian and the Anglo-Saxon,—the heir of a civilization that had played out its part in the world’s history and was now fast fading, and the representative of the great race that held the world’s future in its hand, and was destined to slay the slayer, and to spoil the spoiler, of Tahuantin Suyu. It was like the morning sun looking in through unclosed windows on the pale tinted gleam of an alabaster lamp, accidentally left burning still—though its work was done and its use over.

José, like Walter, had prepared diligently for this hour; but unlike him, he did not at the critical moment forget all he had to say. Still it was with something like hesitation that he began,—

“Señor Englishman, you inquired my name the other day—”

“And gladly do I offer my grateful thanks to Don José Viracocha Inca for a thousand kindnesses,” Walter said heartily.

“Listen! There are three names there. _Don José_, my Spanish name, is like that.” He unclasped his mantle and flung it from him, standing before Walter in his simple tunic of fine white cotton, fastened at the waist by an embroidered belt. “It is an outside garment, assumed, thrown off, as lightly. And no dearer do I hold my Spanish manners, and tongue, and learning. Then, there remains _Viracocha_, the name my mother gave me when she had my first hair cut. That is my own name,—myself. It means ‘Foam of the Sea.’ Well, let that go too! Let the foam flash and fade and die away into nothing! Who cares? It was never meant to last. But there remains still the best, the most precious name of all.—No nobler, I think, is spoken anywhere on earth.—That shall last, when all the rest have perished. I am _Inca_, Child of the Sun.

“Yes, Señor Englishman, I repeat it proudly, Child of the Sun. I know what I say. In the midst of our sorrow and degradation, I can smile myself for very scorn at the insolent scorn of the Spaniards, who call this a vain heathenish superstition of ours. How are children known save by their likeness to their father? And my race bore their father’s image, plain as the light of day. Like Ynty the glorious, they shed abroad life, joy, fruitfulness, far and wide, wherever their sway extended. I tell you, Englishman, in days to come, you will find our tongue spoken, our name honoured, our laws reverenced, far away amongst wild tribes you have not dreamed of yet. For we were great kings and mighty conquerors; and it was our glory that we did not reign or conquer for ourselves.

“But the Spaniards came, few in number, yet so strong. Why has God given the white man such terrible strength? They had fire-breathing clubs, and horses, and great ships. But more than all these, they had strange craft and cunning, wherewith they deceived us. They called themselves messengers of God, and we believed them.” José paused sorrowfully.

“I know the story of the conquest of Peru,” Walter threw in, thinking to spare him a painful recital.

“Peru!” José repeated with a smile. “What is Peru? That barbarous word was not known amongst us until the Spaniards came. Yet it is meet they should call the land by a new name. Tahuantin Suyu, the empire of my fathers, they have never known,—and never shall they know! But again I tell you, Señor Englishman, Tahuantin Suyu is not dead. No! though they have laid waste her fair fields and terraced hills, and destroyed her roads and water-courses—No! though they have steeped the land in blood, from the Mother Sea to the White Mountains, and again from the White Mountains to the pathless forest—No! though they have taken the true heir of Manco Capac, and dragged him to Cuzco, and though I have seen—I myself—his head fall beneath the Spanish axe. No!—_The Inca will reign again._”

José’s hope was buried, but it was still there. Like the treasures of Yupanqui, of which the secret hiding-place had been revealed to him by Maricancha, who had himself helped to inter them, he knew where to find it, and could produce it when he chose.

The firm conviction and the intense earnestness that breathed in his every look and tone, impressed Walter Grey. He asked, as Fray Fernando long ago had asked, “How know you that?”

José took up a curious, many-tinted shell which lay on the table. “There, put that to your ear, Señor Hualter” (the nearest approach he could make to the pronunciation of “Walter”). “Do you hear nothing?”

“I hear a murmur, like that of the ocean.”

“What does that murmur say?”

Walter smiled as he answered, “I scarcely know. Perhaps—that it has come from the ocean, its home.”

“True,” said José. “And thus I too have put my ear to the beating heart of my people. I hear a murmur there, never ceasing, never changing. That murmur says, ‘The Inca shall reign again!’”

There was a pause. Walter looked at him, wondering, interested, yet bewildered.

“Shall I tell you something else which is murmured in the heart of my people?” José resumed. “There are dim prophecies floating here and there amongst us, of strangers, great and brave—fair-haired, bearded, children of light—yet to come from beyond the Mother Sea, who shall avenge our wrongs, and help to restore our ancient dominion.”

Walter’s eyes kindled, but he did not speak.

“Señor Englishman, I read in your face that you understand me.”

“Yes—oh yes! Would that we could help you!”

“You _can_ help. All is not yet told. I have learned, by long silent thought and study, that the Spaniards too have prophecies—strange prophecies—telling of a king to come, and from you.”

“From us? From our nation? Do you mean an Englishman?”

“Yes. An Englishman—a Jew. A son of David, your king.”

Walter looked blank astonishment. “You are under some strange delusion,” he said. “We are not Jews; nor was David our king.”

“You are heretics, are you not? And heretics are Jews.”

“Heretics indeed they call us; but we are not Jews. Don José, did your padre teach you this?”

Walter’s surprise was not unmixed with amusement; but José was profoundly earnest, and moved to his inner depths. “The patre,” he explained, “is wise and good. But he dared not teach me, what none of his people would wish ours to know, that there will yet be a greater king than theirs. Nay, it may be that they themselves do not understand, or believe, that their boasted empire is doomed one day to fall in the dust before that great Inca of the West, who ‘shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth!’”

A faint glimmer of light now began to break on Walter’s mind. “You are quoting Holy Scripture,” he said.

José sought Fray Fernando’s Breviary, and opening at the Seventy-second Psalm, he pointed to it, saying, “You will understand it, because it is written in your own language.”

“Latin is not my language,” explained Walter, “but I can read it.” And his eyes rested on the page, whilst his bewildered mind strove in vain to find a clue by which to unravel José’s tangle of ideas.

José drew nearer. “Kind and good Englishman,” he entreated, “tell me who that king is, and where I shall find him.”

Walter looked up from the book, and gazed at him intently. “Do you indeed desire to know?” he asked.

“Does the thirsting earth desire the rain of heaven? Have I not made a solemn vow that I will lay the cause of my people at his feet, and implore him to do justice and judgment between us and the Spaniards?”

Walter pondered. “I fear you will be troubled, disappointed, when you hear all,” he said at last.

“Only try me.”

“That King,” said Walter gravely, “is reigning even now; though not in England, nor in Spain. Hearken, Don José. Long ago He came to the people of His choice. But they rejected, insulted, slew Him. Yet He will come again, perhaps soon; and take to Him His great power, and reign in righteousness over all the earth, from the rising of the sun till the going down thereof. Of that reign, all kings who have ever reigned in righteousness and judged the poor and needy—as David and Solomon; even, for aught I know, as your own Incas—have given the world imperfect images, and a faint shadow. All the hopes they have awakened He will fulfil.”

“They slew Him?—yet He will come again?” José questioned, his eyes intently reading the face of Walter.

Then there was a pause. At length, drawing from its place in his chuspa, or coca-bag, a little crucifix Fray Fernando had given him, he kissed it, laid it reverently down, and made the sign of the cross upon his forehead.

“Yes, you are right,” Walter went on. “_He_ is the great King. He it is who shall judge the people with righteousness, and the poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.”

Here he stopped suddenly; for two large, heavy tears fell from the dark eyes of José, blotting the pages of the book.

“Why do you weep?” he asked kindly.

José’s words came slowly out of a depth of quiet despair,—

“For my lost hope. I thought there was a real king. But it is only a mystery of the Faith.—One said so to me long ago. I ought to have believed her.”

“O Don José, you do not understand! He is truly all—more than all—your heart desires. And as surely as to-morrow’s sun shall rise, He will come again, and reign upon this very earth on which we stand now, to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.”

“But He is the Judge of all. He is the God of the Spaniards. He takes their part now—hereafter, perhaps?”

“Hereafter the proud Spaniards and their master, the Pope of Rome, shall lick the dust beneath His feet. Their plagues shall come in one day—death and mourning and famine; and the word shall be fulfilled to them, ‘Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her.’” Then, with a sudden change of tone, and growing pale,—“But I should not speak thus. I forget myself. Don José, I have put my life into your hands. You will not betray me?”

José placed his hand in his.

“Do not I also hate the Spaniards?” he said. “But your words cut my heart in two, like a sword. I thought I had grasped a strong hand to help my people; and lo! it is but a dream—a shadow. There is no help for us, in heaven or on earth.”

“Do not think so. The King will help you, if you come to Him.”

“How can I come to Him?”

“Has not the padre taught you to pray?”

“Surely. But what use in that? It is only speaking words. As well might I speak to the spirits of my ancestors—and better, since they are my own race: I know them.”

“And Him you do not know? Ask Him, Don José, to reveal Himself to you. He loves you—died for you.”

So engrossed were José and Walter Grey in their conversation, that it occurred to neither to observe the very unusual length to which the matador seemed to be protracting his confession. Instead of wondering, as they might well have done, at the delay, they felt like men suddenly awakened from a dream, when the slight cane door of the partition was thrown open, and the matador came forth. He looked, Walter thought, as though he had been weeping; yet his brown cheek was flushed, his eyes were bright with animation, and his bent form seemed for the time to have regained the erect stateliness of youth.

José, for his part, did not spend a thought, scarcely even a glance, on the matador. He had abundant occupation for his thoughts at home. Yet, preoccupied as he was, the moment he saw Fray Fernando, he was struck by a strange alteration in his appearance also. Bidding a hasty, though warm and grateful, farewell to Walter Grey, he turned, full of affectionate solicitude, to his adopted father.

The monk, however, put him aside with a gesture. He said “I will walk down to the _San Cristofero_ with—_my friend_.”

XXIX.

After Many Days.

“Think! the shadow on the dial, For the nature most undone, Marks the passing of the trial, Proves the presence of the sun.”

E. B. BROWNING.

Fray Fernando had not been unmoved by his interview with Walter Grey. The young Englishman had avowed to him, frankly and fearlessly, that he had been taught to confess his sins to God, and to Him alone. And yet, he added, to such a man as Fray Fernando, who had shown him much kindness, and who for years, and he doubted not for wisdom also, might be truly called his father, he would not refuse, nay, he should be glad to make a candid confession of his past misdeeds, which were many. Fray Fernando thought this speech evinced some hopeful dispositions, but at the same time great ignorance, if not wilful misunderstanding, of the true nature of confession. He therefore essayed the necessary explanations; and these in turn gave rise to numerous questions from Walter, most respectfully and even deferentially worded, yet very difficult to answer satisfactorily. Fray Fernando found it a hard task to prove the necessity of confession and the virtue of penance. For Walter had been taught controversy almost from his cradle, and did no discredit to the teaching.

More than once Fray Fernando had well-nigh lost patience with him; but his utter helplessness, and the terrible penalties that hung suspended over his head, moved the compassion of the friar, and made him forbearing. And at last he succeeded in winning from the lips of the Englishman the admission, that although his scruples as to some parts of the doctrine and discipline of the Church were as yet unremoved, he was desirous of receiving instruction upon these subjects. Professing himself contented with this _for the present_, he agreed to postpone the ceremony of confession to a future occasion; and in the meantime to allow Walter to tell his story, not as penitent to priest, but as man to man.

The simple narrative, frankly and naturally told, was not without its effect upon the monk. Of the horrors of the inquisitorial dungeon Walter said little, almost nothing—and yet Fray Fernando shuddered. Good Catholic as he had lived up to this hour, and thoroughly free, in thought and word, from the stain of heresy, he still regarded the prisons of the Holy Office with terror, not quite unmixed with a strange fascination. Perhaps this was because his own faith was so far above suspicion, that he could freely afford to pity the victims of heresy. Or perhaps it was because his heart, or that of some one he loved, had once bled beneath the relentless sword of St. Dominic.

But whatever he felt on the subject, he said nothing. He merely observed, that a mark of divine grace had already been bestowed upon “Señor Valter” (as he called Walter), in that he had been outwardly reconciled with the Church; and he doubted not that He who had begun the good work would complete it in due time. For his own part, he would use all his influence with the authorities to obtain for his young friend ample opportunity of receiving such instruction as might remove his scruples and promote his edification in the faith. And with these words he dismissed him, and summoned the matador.

For some minutes Fray Fernando sat in silence, pondering Walter’s case, and scarcely heeding the poor man who stood before him, patiently awaiting his pleasure. Looking up at last, he saw a tall, stooping, emaciated figure, a face nearly as brown as José’s, thin gray hair, and a long gray beard. “My friend,” he said compassionately, “I can see that yours have been lengthened sufferings. But Holy Church is a tender mother, who abandons not the most unfortunate or the most erring amongst her children. I trust her consolations are not unwelcome to you.”

The matador, who, since he entered the apartment, had scarcely averted his dark eyes for a moment from the face of the monk, made answer instantly: “They are most welcome, reverend father.” The faith upon which he lived was, in truth, the same as that of Walter Grey; but he had not enjoyed the same opportunities of instruction. Those gleams of light that had sufficed to illuminate this world and the next for him had come to him from the Lutheran Church of Seville; and up to the last, the members of that Church had been forced to continue in external communion with Rome; nor, it seems, had the consciences of the greater number amongst them reproached them for so doing. How could the poor galley-slave see farther than his teachers, or attempt the task of bringing the articles of his creed into logical consistency with each other. But if there was some confusion in his head, there was no contradiction in his heart. He knew that God had forgiven his sins for His Son’s sake; even though he did kneel down meekly before Fray Fernando, and submit himself obediently to all prescribed forms, taxing his memory to recall the most trivial words and deeds recorded there, in the hope of receiving an absolution of which he had no need.

But the substance of his confession caused Fray Fernando great surprise. He felt like one who has prepared himself to drink a bitter potion to the dregs, but finds the draught instead some rare old wine, fragrant with the sunshine and the dews of the summers of long ago. It was no pleasant task to hear the confessions usually made by the galley-slaves. But the soul of this poor man seemed sensitive to the touch of sin, as polished metal to the lightest sullying breath. He did not, like the others, regard _his sins_ as so many debts, to be paid somehow or somewhere, lest disagreeable consequences should follow. He had learned to look upon _his sin_ as something which interposed an unwelcome cloud between a reconciled Father and a loving child. Indeed, he spoke as one who knew a secret, which, to say the truth, was as yet unrevealed even to his earnest and conscientious father-confessor.

Fray Fernando listened with compassion and interest, not unmixed with a strange kind of reverence. The very dialect in which the matador spoke deepened the impression of his words. It was the soft liquid “Andaluz,” which he himself, in his early days, had been accustomed to hear spoken in his native city of Seville.

Willingly, and with slight penance imposed, he bestowed his absolution and his blessing. And when the matador had risen from his knees, he said to him, “Stay a minute,—I would willingly know something more of you. I think you are not destitute of the grace of God, who giveth to all men as He will.”

The matador, be it observed, had not in his confession revealed his real name, or the crime for which he suffered. Such a revelation, though usual, was not obligatory; unless it happened to be the penitent’s first confession since the commission of the crime.

“God has been very good to me,” he answered quietly. “I am, moreover, grateful to you for your kindness, holy father.”

“I have done little for you; I would willingly do more, if I knew how. Something occurs to me at this moment. I have no doubt you are from the old country? Probably a native of Seville?”

The matador bowed.

Fray Fernando checked some remark that rose to his lips, ere he said, “My position here gives me many opportunities, did I care to use them, of holding communication with Spain. It may be you have friends or relatives yet living there to whom you would gladly send a letter. Can you write?”

“I could write once, your reverence; but my hands have held the oar too long to hold the pen now.”

“I will then, if you wish it, write at your dictation.”

“I thank you, reverend father,” the matador answered, slowly and rather doubtfully.

Fray Fernando rose to procure the necessary materials from the next room.

But the matador stayed him. “If you please, father,” he said with hesitation, “I do not think—I do not know”—and he slowly raised his worn right hand to his forehead, and held it there horizontally, lightly touching his brow with its fingers.