Part 20

“Have I not said, ‘Thou, indeed, teachest me to forget’?” José answered. Presently he added, with a smile, “It is not told in the Play; but for my part, I have always believed that Ollantā stretched out his hand that day to the general who was his enemy and sought his life, and said to him, ‘Let us be friends for the Inca’s sake.’—But I am sorry for Don Ramon de Virves. He is gone where my pardon cannot reach him. I have told all to the King; and I have asked Him to let me show some of them how He teaches to forget.”

“Don José, you ought to tell Fray Fernando what you have just told me. I would die without a shadow on my heart if only he—he too—”

“_He?_ the patre? Of course he has known all this, and far more, for many a year—from his childhood, I suppose. I wish indeed from my heart that I could tell Señor Hualter, who is far away from us now. He it was who first told me about Christ the King. Instead of the gem I sought—the hope of deliverance for my people—he put that day into my outstretched hand a little seed, like a grain of sand. I was grieved and angry, for to my eyes it had no beauty: it did not burn and quiver in the light like the stones of fire. But I buried it in my heart; and lo! it sprang up and grew, until at last there came forth a living flower, brighter and more glorious than a thousand cold dead stones.—But the patre, oh,—he knows everything!”

“I am sure God has marked him for His own,” said Melchior—“‘chosen him in the furnace of affliction,’ as he read yesterday from the good Book. But if it were not for the hope in Him, life would be a sad thing enough for my brother and for me, Don José. Does he seem to you an old, broken, world-weary man, with the wrinkles on his brow and the gray streaks in his hair? In years he is yet almost young. If he has numbered eight and thirty, it is the utmost.”

“I know he has suffered as few suffer, even in this sad world.”

“You may well say that. Think of those long, dark, weary years! And now I go hence—I who have cost him so much, and been able to give him back so little. But I turn to you, Don José. All that I would have been to him, all that I would have done for him, and never can be or do, I leave to you—you, his adopted son. I pray you to help him, guard him, watch over him.”

“I vowed to do that, Melchior, ere I ever saw your face.”

“Yet promise now once more, to please a dying man.”

“With all my heart I promise. Perhaps,” he added, “you may be able to watch over him yourself, from your place in yonder sky.”

“I do not think that, Don José. What do we know, after all, save so much as that Book tells us? And it tells us scarce anything of the dead, but that they are ‘with the Lord.’—Ah, there is Señor Don Alfonso at the door. I would know his step amongst a thousand.”

Another was at the door also, though neither José nor Fray Fernando heard his footsteps. But at midnight he entered unbidden, touched Melchior with his shadowy hand, and whispered the gentle yet imperative summons, “Arise, and go hence.” Not always without a struggle does the flesh leave the spirit free to obey that call. With Melchior the struggle lasted “until the breaking of the day.” But in the end there was peace. For the last time on earth, the foster-brothers held converse together. What passed was unheard, even by José, who kept watch in the outer room. If “the rites of the Church” were administered, José did not know it, and was amazed at the apparent omission.

And when the sun arose in glory, the weary spirit won its freedom. There was one more look and smile for “Señor Don Alfonso,” there was a murmured word of grateful farewell for José, and then the brave and faithful heart of Melchior del Salto ceased to beat.

Fray Fernando closed his eyes, and sat down and wept beside him.

But José said, “You should not weep for him, patre. He sees the King in His beauty.”

Yet Fray Fernando did well to weep. There are tears that bring help and healing with them. Of such were the tears he shed over the lifeless form of the brother whom God had given back to him so strangely from the dead. Instead of the thoughts of restless anguish, of remorse and shame, that had haunted him for sixteen weary years, he could think of Melchior del Salto, now and henceforward, with tender regret; not indeed unmixed with pain, but still calm and soothing. Meanwhile, for himself, the long conflict of his life seemed over. Peace and reconciliation had come to him at last, breathed softly by dying lips. And with peace there came strength also. Possibilities of new life, of a life of healthful, holy activity, began from that day forward to open out before him. Even yet he might serve the God to whom Melchior del Salto had lifted up his heart in the hour of need, and who had heard him, and saved him out of all his distresses.

XXXIV.

The King Followed.

“So I go on not knowing; I would not if I might! I would rather walk in the dark with God, Than walk alone in the light; I would rather walk with Him by faith, Than walk alone by sight.”

ANON.

A year has passed away since all that was mortal of Melchior del Salto found a quiet resting-place beneath the shadow of the new church of Callao. To Fray Fernando it has been “the beginning of years,” the first year of a new life. Its days and nights have been filled to overflowing with thought and action. Inward change and progress have kept pace with outward activity; “great searchings of heart” with valiant work of head and hand. And yet the Fray Fernando who raises his eyes from his book, with a pleasant smile of greeting for José as he enters, looks a healthier, happier, and even a younger man than he who brought the dying galley-slave to his home. Nay more: Fray Fernando looks younger now than he did when he bought the best blessing of his life, some fifteen years ago, from Don Ramon de Virves with the tooth of St. Joseph.

The book he is reading—his favourite, almost his only study—is still the Vulgate. From its pages he has learned many things. Important side lights have been thrown upon their teaching by numerous conversations with Walter Grey (now once more at Callao, after a long coasting expedition)—by the simple faith that upheld Melchior del Salto in the hour of death—by Fray Constantino’s well-worn volume. But another light, without which these would have been useless, has illumined the sacred page for Fray Fernando—even “the candle of the Lord,” which is his Spirit. The result of all may be briefly told:—at the year’s end his faith differed widely from the recognized creed of that Church with which he still remained in outward communion.

No man who thinks profoundly and feels keenly can change his ancestral faith for another without many a fear and misgiving and many a pang. In deep soil the roots strike deepest: even to lay the branches low the tempest must put forth the fierceness of its strength; what then if the roots be torn away? Surely the soil will come up with them—the heart itself be convulsed to its depths.

Yet Fray Fernando, who had suffered so much already, suffered less than might have been expected during the progress of this momentous change. It was in his favour that he had grasped truth with a firm hand before he felt the call to abandon error. Moreover, action was with him not only the companion of thought, but its precursor. The cumbrous armour of superstition was not torn from him by violence so much as laid down voluntarily piece by piece, as he found that it hindered instead of helping him in his daily conflict with sin and ignorance. Experience taught him, also, that the truths his own soul lived upon were life and peace to the sick and dying to whom he ministered continually—to the crowd of Negroes, Creoles, and mariners to whom he preached on the shore every Sunday and holiday; and that whatever was not found in the Vulgate was not good for them any more than for himself.

And, added to all, he had José—José, the most appreciative of scholars, the most sympathetic of friends—“answering him like silver bells lightly touched.” Everything he learned was imparted almost immediately to José, and the joy it gave more than doubled by the process. José himself would have originated nothing in this line. He was content, and would have been content, to the end of his days, to eat the heavenly manna as his fathers ate their maize, simply as they got it, without the aid of the stones that bruise or the fan that winnows. He would have gone on, satisfied and happy, loving his King, living for Him, and willing at need to die for Him, but never suspecting the mode of worship he had learned at Cerro Blanco not to be altogether well pleasing and acceptable in His sight. If anything he had been taught had ever chanced to perplex him, as appearing contrary to some other thing that his heart held dear, he would have told himself, “It is a mystery of the faith,” and have rested satisfied.

What Fray Fernando taught him, however, he understood thoroughly, and felt profoundly. Moreover, he was the safest confidant the monk could have chosen. No man ever knew better how to keep his mouth and his tongue, and in so doing to keep his soul from troubles. He was the guardian of many deadly secrets about his own people; and he was just as likely to betray Maricancha or Rimac to the Viceroy, as he was to compromise Fray Fernando with the Inquisition.

His own life at this time was quite as busy, and probably quite as useful, as that of his patron. Most of the surviving members of the Inca family, who had been banished from Cuzco and its neighbourhood, were forced to take up their residence at Lima, where, severed from the associations dear to their hearts, and exposed to the influences of an unhealthy climate, they withered away like trees transplanted into ungenial soil.[51] Every hour that José could spare from attendance on the patre he devoted to the task of comforting and ministering to these his brethren. It is true that the common wants of the body, such as food and clothing, he seldom had to supply. Impoverished though the Incas were, they still had treasures at command in the love and reverence with which every Indian heart regarded them. “We were wrong, indeed,” said the baptized Indians, when taunted by the Spaniards with having worshipped their ancient kings—“we were wrong; for now we know they were not gods, but men. Yet, having received so much good from them, we cannot think them less than of divine race; and if you show us such men now, needs must that we pay them the same veneration.”

Yet much remained that José could do for his friends. His familiarity with the white man’s language, learning, and habits, enabled him to perform many important services for them. But best of all was his power to comfort them with strange sweet words spoken in the tongue of their fathers, and linked in a thousand ways to all their cherished thoughts and traditions, yet strong with a strength and wise with a wisdom that was not theirs. Earnestly did he labour to inspire the hearts of his brethren with his own passionate love and reverence for the King, the great Inca of the East, upon whom all his hopes were resting.

To return to that particular evening, just one year after the death of Melchior del Salto. José came in, hot and tired, from a walk to Lima, undertaken as escort and guide to a Dominican friar, newly arrived from the West Indies. The monk had spent the preceding day and night with Fray Fernando, being ill from the effects of a long and uncomfortable voyage. He was not too ill, however, for much conversation, or rather controversy, with his kind-hearted host.

“Well, José, did you deliver up your charge in safety?” Fray Fernando asked with a smile.

José’s face wore a rather curious expression as he answered, “I did. Two years ago, patre, I should have been pleased to see a Spaniard treat his own countrymen as Spaniards everywhere treat Indians.”

“I had hoped, José,” said Fray Fernando a little sadly, “that those old thoughts of bitterness were of the past.”

“The old bitterness, yes; the old thoughts—_never_!” José was silent a moment, then resumed in a different tone. “This good friar seems to imagine that we of Rimac are all fast asleep, and that he has come to wake us. He thinks we are poor, silly, ignorant folk, understanding nothing; just as the Spaniards think of my people. All the time it is _they_ who cannot understand. How can they, when they despise us? We know secrets that are sealed from them for ever.”

“Did you follow our long argument to-day, José?” Fray Fernando asked somewhat anxiously.

“I followed you,” said José, “and I went before you, and all round you, and away from you, and back again to you, twenty times, at least, while you were talking.”

“Ah, José! I shall never get the slightest idea of logic into your head. How could you possibly think out a chain of reasoning after that fashion?”

“I do not think my thoughts, patre, in chains, with one link holding on to another. My thoughts grow up like flowers—here, there, anywhere they list.”

“Then read this, and tell me what thoughts ‘grow up’ in your mind about it.” And Fray Fernando handed him a letter, a fair, well-written document, with a mitre on its seal. It was in Latin, but that was now no impediment to José.

He laid it down again with a look of satisfaction. Evidently “the words of the wise had been heard in quiet;” the fame of the patre’s simple yet fervid eloquence had reached at last the dignitaries of his Church, and induced them to pay him a high, but well-merited compliment. “My heart is glad,” said José. “You will make the walls of that great cathedral echo to grand, glorious words of truth. And on Easter-day, too! You will tell them Christ is risen!”

But Fray Fernando’s face did not reflect the joy that beamed from the dusky countenance of José. On the contrary, it wore an expression of anxious thought. “How can I tell them Christ is risen,” he said, “without telling them also—Oh, my son, do you not perceive the strait I am in?”

José understood him; and the gladness faded from his face. But he placed his hand on Fray Constantino’s book. “Have you not told me that _he_ preached for years in the cathedral of Seville, and no man even suspected him of believing as you do?”

“Not quite as I do. That last terrible mystery”—his eyes sought the little silver casket, rarely used of late—“having dared to let _that_ go, José—”

“We keep Christ, the King. He will guide us,” José said reverently.

“Perhaps it were best to accept this call, and, once for all, tell out all the truth in the face of the great congregation!”

José shuddered inwardly. He knew the Holy Inquisition as a vague, dark shadow, nothing more. Neither Walter Grey, nor Melchior del Salto, nor Fray Fernando himself, would ever talk of it. Presently he drew close to the patre, laid his hand, as a son might do, on his shoulder, and began to speak—eagerly, fluently—in low, soft, pleading words, that fell from his lips like ripe fruit “dropped in a silent autumn night.”

Tears glistened in Fray Fernando’s eyes. “My son,” he answered tenderly, “it must be God’s will even before yours. If He has given me back—after all those years of anguish—light, joy, hope, liberty,—is it too much that I should bring Him a thank-offering?”

“Many thank-offerings you will bring Him, patre; such as the soul of that poor man who died yester-even calling upon Christ the Saviour.”

“It may be He has other work for me. But I know not. Rest content, José; I will go nowhere, I will do nothing, save as He leads my footsteps.”

“I ought to rest content with that, patre. The King will lead you, and by the right way.”

There was a pause, which Fray Fernando broke at last. “José, do you remember—long ago, on our journey from Cerro Blanco to Cuzco—that moment when, suddenly emerging from the darkness of the rock-hewn passage, we came in sight of the deep ravine of the Apurimac, spanned by the bridge of sogas?”

“I remember it well, patre; but what brings it to your mind just now?”

“At first I knew not. In an instant I saw all—mountains, rocks, river tumbling at their base, slight strong bridge of osiers—as if revealed by a lightning flash. But now I know. It was some chance words of yours, spoken then, ‘Our people trusted the Inca. And they knew that every way he made for them would lead them safely to the Golden City.’”

José smiled, then murmured softly, “Yachani” (I know). He had still a habit of dropping a word or two in his native tongue when anything touched his heart. “I know” in Spanish only meant “I am aware.” “I know” in Quichua meant, “_I feel_, _I am satisfied_.”

XXXV.

Easter-Day.

“Christ hath sent us down the angels; And the whole earth and the skies Are illumed by altar candles Lit for blessed mysteries; And a Priest’s hand through creation Waveth calm and consecration.”

E. B. BROWNING.

It was Easter-day in the City of the Kings, the capital of the New World. The bells of the Christian churches rang out glad peals of triumph; banners and tapestry adorned the principal streets, which were thronged by Spaniards, Creoles, and Indians in their gayest costumes. But in the great Square the throng was thickest, and all were pouring onwards in a steady stream towards the new cathedral.

This singular building stood before them, in all the glory of its painted façade of glaring red and yellow, its lath and plaster towers, and its three wide green doors, now thrown open for every one to enter. But once within, the bad taste that planned the exterior was forgotten, and nothing felt but admiration. Decorations of the most costly kind abounded in rich profusion; and the numerous altars literally groaned beneath the weight of silver vessels, massive enough for a monarch’s ransom.

It was very early, yet the spacious building was already filling rapidly. Perhaps rather with eager sight-seers than with devout worshippers or attentive hearers. For there was much to be seen that day, if there was also something to be heard. Places were reserved in the nave for the friars of the four great monasteries—the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Augustinians, and the Mercedarios; and by-and-by they defiled slowly in, wearing their appropriate costumes. The Franciscans looked the best satisfied and the most interested: the sermon of the day was to be preached by a Franciscan monk.

Few Indians were visible; not that they would not have liked well enough to witness the pageant, but the Spaniards and Creoles, as was natural, had the best places, and left little room for their dusky brethren. One Indian enjoyed, however, by special favour, an excellent seat, whence he could both see and hear everything.

With a heart full of the deepest anxiety, José (who, with Fray Fernando, had come in from Callao the day before) took his place amongst the hearers of his patron’s Easter sermon. He knew that for some days previously the monk had been continually in prayer. But he had spoken little, indeed nothing whatever, about his own intentions, or the possible issues of the day.

High Mass was first celebrated, with more than the usual pomp attendant on that chief ceremonial of the Romish ritual. The solemn tones of the organ, recently brought from Spain; the sweet chants of the white-robed choristers; the gorgeous dresses of the priests, with the bright harmonies of their varied colouring; the beautiful children swinging censers; the clouds of fragrant incense;—all these filled the soul of José—keenly susceptible of such influences—with exquisite pleasure. He gave himself up without reserve to the spell that stole over him. For the time—only for the time—he forgot all Fray Fernando’s anxious questionings, all his great searchings of heart, about the sacrifice of the Mass; and at the elevation of the Host he bowed himself to the ground with as little scruple or hesitation as any man in the vast congregation.

And very soon afterwards he enjoyed the proud triumph of seeing the patre—still in the simple dress of his order, though waited upon by gorgeously attired acolytes—ascend the stately pulpit in the sight of all.

For a few moments, heedless of the crowd beneath, Fray Fernando lifted up his heart in silent prayer. Then in a voice, apparently not loud, but clear enough to be heard throughout the great building, he repeated the few simple words he had chosen for his text, “The Lord is risen indeed.”

The Lord is risen—_the Son of God_. Therefore all He said is true, and His claim to Divine Sonship established for ever.

The Lord is risen—_the Redeemer of man_. Therefore the redemption is accomplished, the debt paid to the uttermost farthing. For the prison gate is thrown open, and the Surety has gone forth in triumph.

The Lord is risen—_the First-fruits of the Resurrection_. Therefore all shall rise; earth and ocean shall give up their dead; not one lacking of the countless millions that are slumbering there. For “since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead.”

The Lord is risen—_the Head of the Church_. Therefore those who are His body, made one with Him by a living faith, are already by faith risen with Him. Let such “seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.”

These were the thoughts that, clothed in a rich drapery of imaginative, perhaps even to a modern taste fanciful illustration, Fray Fernando presented that day to thousands of wondering hearers. The manner was not strikingly unlike that of his brethren—the gift of fervid eloquence was shared by many amongst them—but the matter of the sermon was new and startling.

Yet two at least of the truths he told, Rome has preserved well and carefully amidst all her errors. Nor were the two others, as he stated them, in any open contradiction to her teaching. But the utter absence of much that they were wont to hear—and, even more, the power and vital force that dwelt in what they heard—awed, impressed, amazed the intelligent amongst his audience. If the comparison be not derogatory to such high personages as the Archbishop and Chapter of Ciudad de los Reyes, it may be said that they felt as felt the witch of Endor, when at her call from the earth arose—no counterfeit, no pale shadowy image,—but dread reality, the very prophet of Israel, come from the world of spirits with a message of doom for those that awaked him.

José’s simple heart, meanwhile, beat high with exultation. Those truths, whatever they might be to others, to him were life and joy and peace. Christ was risen indeed for him.

The preacher also had a place in his thoughts. _Now_, at last, would all men see how great, how wise the patre was! And, casting a triumphant glance around, he read admiration in a thousand faces, whilst his own was saying, “Is not the patre great?”

But amongst the faces upon which his eye rested, he marked _one_—unlike the others—that of the Dominican from Cuba. It did not speak admiration: it was doubtful, dark, anxious. And José felt as if from that moment the light grew dim; and a chill mist of fear rose up and overshadowed everything around.

In his cell in the Franciscan monastery, he had a strange dream that night. He thought that it happened to him to go with the patre on board a ship which lay at anchor in the bay. Alone, they drifted somehow out to sea together. No mariners, no rudder, no compass there. Nothing but white sails set, wild waves around, fast fading land behind. And they looked each on the other in blank dismay.

Then suddenly, as things happen in dreams, the storm arose, the wild wind shrieked and howled, the ship tossed helplessly. José stretched forth his hands and cried aloud, “Lord, save, or we perish!”

When—behold! a Form appeared, treading the stormy deep. And a Hand touched his;—with the thrill of _that_ touch José awoke, and lo! it was a dream.

But he could not forget that dream.

XXXVI.