Part 4

More than six years have passed away, producing little outward change in any of the inhabitants of Cerro Blanco whom we know by name, except in the Indian boy, who has grown a fine handsome stripling. His patron is well satisfied with his development, both mental and physical. This is fortunate, for with nothing else, either within or without himself, is poor Fray Fernando satisfied. His position at the mining-colony becomes increasingly uncomfortable. Passing disagreements with Diego Rascar have deepened and widened into a standing feud. The Spaniards and Creoles take part with Diego, while the negroes count for nothing, with the exception of Pepe, and he has his own reasons for bearing a grudge against the padre. This is particularly hard, since the padre’s real offence is that he has espoused the cause of the black men against the white. “A pity it is,” Diego sometimes says, “that this holy man never knows when to shut his eyes.”

During the last six years Fray Fernando has been growing every day more incapable of shutting his eyes to wrong and oppression. The old practice of “passing by on the other side,” so safe, so easy, and so convenient, has become not only distasteful, but impossible to him. If a man chooses to act, even once, the part of the good Samaritan, he must accept the cost. He will find that he cannot, if he would, descend again to the _rôle_ of the priest and the Levite.

But in proportion as Fray Fernando’s own heart became softer, it seemed to him that the hearts around him grew harder. He thought that the whites were sinking gradually to the level of the negroes, their barbarous half-caste families being even more degraded than themselves. In the blacks he saw no change worth speaking of, save a change for the worse in Pepe, who, on account of his strength, intelligence, and usefulness in managing the other slaves, was petted and pampered by Diego, and allowed to indulge his vicious propensities without a check. Often did the mournful words of the prophet ring in the ears of Fray Fernando: “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain.” And he could not take refuge in the strong confidence of faith, and add, “Surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God.” Fray Fernando thought his work nothing—words written on water, lines traced on sand. Or, if remembered at all, he believed it would only go to swell the vast amount of his sin, that burden already greater than he could bear.

But for the Indian youth, at least, he had not laboured in vain. Long ago José had displaced the clumsy Pepe as acolyte, to the great satisfaction of every one, Pepe himself alone excepted. He knew the “Doctrina de la Fé” as well as any intelligent Spanish lad of his age. He was diligent in the repetition of prayers, and the performance of every other religious duty enjoined on him. He had learned to read and write, and Fray Fernando was beginning to teach him Latin—a necessary labour, if the accomplishment of reading was to be of any use to him, as the few books his patron possessed were in that language. José learned quickly, for his memory was remarkably good, and the similarity between Latin and Spanish, which contrasted delightfully with the utter and perplexing difference between Spanish and Quichua, made the task a comparatively light one.

His instructor’s pleasure in his progress might have been somewhat lessened had he dreamed that his pupil imagined all the time that he was learning the language of the Jews. Was he not to read the Psalms of David in the Latin tongue, and was not David a king of the Jews? José believed that the Jews were a great but very wicked people, who lived, or had lived long ago (for his notions of chronology were vague in the extreme), on the other side of the Mother Sea. They were guilty, he knew, of the awful crime of having put to death the Son of God, and he thought that in righteous judgment the Spaniards, with the Pope at their head, made war upon them, and had driven them out of their country. He supposed the Pope to be a Spaniard, and the Catholic High Priest. He had a hazy idea that he never died, but lived on miraculously from age to age. He knew that various nations of white men, who were not Spaniards, lived beyond the great sea; and imagined they bore the same relation to the Spaniards, in power and civilization, as the barbarous tribes subdued by his Inca forefathers did to them. Perhaps Fray Fernando would not have dispelled this illusion, even if he could.

But the fact was, that at the end of all those years of loving toil and care, Fray Fernando’s acquaintance with his _protégé_ was very superficial. He knew José well enough: the docile, affectionate child, who not only obeyed but anticipated his commands; the intelligent pupil, whose progress more than repaid the pains of his instructor. But there was another whom he knew not, who did not indeed speak with José’s tongue, for that was now well used to the sonorous accents of the Spaniard, but who often looked from José’s dark thoughtful eyes, and ever dwelt in the silent recesses of José’s heart. This was _Viracocha_, the Inca’s child, who cherished with passionate love the legends of his family, who still looked upon the Sun as his Father, and believed religiously in the ultimate triumph of his race. These ideas, crossed and interwoven with threads of Christian doctrine, made up a strange confused tangle of a creed, which changed its hue according as it was looked at in the light of Ynty’s beams, or in that of the tapers which burned before the crucifix.

That Fray Fernando knew nothing of all this was in some measure his own fault. “Silence,” it is said, “is golden;” but this is not always true. Sometimes it is sharp steel; keen to sunder bonds and separate chief friends even like the piercings of a sword. Naturally startled by the hold the ideas of his race had taken upon the mind of his little _protégé_, Fray Fernando fell into the common mistake of thinking,—“If I do not allow him to talk of these things, he will cease to think of them, and in time forget them altogether.” It was easy to carry out his plan. Nothing is easier than to silence a sensitive child. Few words, perhaps none, are needed. A look, a gesture, a tone of voice, a hasty turning from the subject, will suffice to render the stream of confidence “a fountain sealed.” It is the unsealing, in after-years, which will be difficult, perhaps impossible. It soon came as naturally to José to bury his thoughts as it does to his race to bury their treasures in the earth. Thus it happened that Fray Fernando was very much surprised by what occurred on the afternoon of Christmas-day, 1570.

After performing the service, he was sitting in his cell reading, when José came in. The lad was dressed in a full suit of Spanish costume, which his kind protector had been at the expense and trouble of procuring for him from Cuzco, being anxious, not merely to give him pleasure, but also to “Spaniardize” him, as the phrase ran, in every possible way. And indeed the doublet and hosen of fine blue cloth, with white silk stockings, set off the youth’s graceful figure to great advantage; and his handsome Indian face, and glossy black hair, had never looked so well as they did beneath the shade of the dark blue velvet montero.

On entering the cell, he removed the montero, and stood before the monk with a bow almost worthy of a Spanish cavalier.

“Well, my son?” said Fray Fernando kindly, looking up from his book.

“Patre,” said José, “it is Christmas-day; you have told me that in the country beyond the sea men give gifts to each other.”

“Ah! so you want a gift, José. Speak out, my boy; what is it?”

José hesitated; a rather unusual thing with him. He had few ways of expressing feeling, and seldom did express it at all.

Fray Fernando closed the volume he had been reading, and surveyed the youth attentively, and with much satisfaction. José was dear to him as his own son; he was yet more fond of him than he was proud of him, and that is much to say. “You make a very good hidalgo, José,” he remarked with a smile. “Is anything wanting to complete your equipment? Have you set your heart upon a cloak like Diego’s, or even upon a sword?”

“No, patre; I thank you. That which I desire is a thing of another kind. I desire—your leave to visit mine own people down yonder in the valley. Let the patre be good to me, his son and servant.” José spoke, according to his wont, very quietly. And having spoken, he stood perfectly motionless, awaiting an answer.

But the white man started, as if he had received a sudden blow. “What is this, José?” he asked. “Why do you want to leave me?”

“I do not want to leave the patre. I want to go to my own people.”

“But wherefore should you go, and to whom? You have no friends among your own people. Your father and mother are dead long ago. Besides, you are a Christian.”

“The patre speaks truth; I am a Christian.”

“Then wherefore forsake Christian instruction and communion? No, José; it is a vain, idle fancy. Give it up, and stay with me; for I love you, José.”

José’s slight fingers trembled, letting go their hold on the montero, which fell to the ground. But, after a moment’s pause, he drew nearer, and knelt before the monk. “The patre has been always good to me,” he said. “Let him be good to me now, and send me away, that I may go to my own people.”

“Stand up!” said Fray Fernando, with some displeasure in his tone. “Christian men should kneel to God alone. Wait a while; for I must think. You have troubled me, José.”

José stood up, and waited. Had the padre’s meditation lasted for hours, he would not have disturbed him by the motion of a limb or a muscle.

But he had not to wait so long. The padre spoke. “José,” he asked, “if I give you leave to go, will you come back to me again?”

“I will surely come back to you, patre.”

“You intend it. But your mind may change. I fear, if I let you go now, I shall see your face no more.”

“Patre,” said José, with deeper earnestness of voice, “I must needs come back. Do I not belong to you?”

“My son, we both belong to God.”

“I belong to you, patre. You bought me, and with something you were loath to part with, for I saw you kiss it ere you gave it into Don Ramon’s hand.”—A slight circumstance that Fray Fernando himself had forgotten—“Certainly I will return to you, patre.”

“Then go, in God’s name; and may He keep thee safe both in soul and body. May He also forgive me if I have sinned in giving thee this permission. For I misdoubt me sore thine errand is a foolish one.”

José started at daybreak next morning. His patron gave him much good advice; fearing, and not without reason, that his inexperience and utter ignorance of the world might involve him in difficulties and perils. One of the first thoughts that would occur to a European in contemplating a journey had no place at all in the mind of José. He suffered no perplexity about ways and means; he knew that every Indian whose hut he chanced to pass would freely and gladly afford him food and shelter. He had looked at money as a curiosity, and had heard its use explained, but he had never used it or seen it used. When Fray Fernando gave him some pieces of silver to take with him, he asked what he should do with them.

“You can give them, if you like, to those who entertain you and show you kindness,” said the monk.

José looked pleased. “I thank you, patre,” he said. “It is good to have something to give.”

The parting was an affectionate one. Fray Fernando accompanied his adopted son to the pass; there he embraced and blessed him,—and stood watching until the slight figure disappeared among the rocks. “Will he ever return?” sighed the monk. “Will my José ever come back to me again?”

The first question might have been answered in the affirmative,—but what of the second?

VII.

Viracocha Comes Back.

“To be wroth with what we love, Doth work like madness in the brain.”

COLERIDGE.

Troubles thickened round the path of Fray Fernando during the months that followed José’s departure. Pepe had a quarrel about a negro woman with one of his fellow-slaves named Zillo—a quiet, rather well-disposed man. He sought to fasten upon him a charge of robbery; and Diego was quite willing to assume his guilt, and to sacrifice him to the malice of his rival. Pepe must be kept in good-humour, or everything would go wrong both in the mine and in the galpon.

Fray Fernando was roused to indignation at the thought of a man whom he believed to be innocent undergoing a terrible punishment; but his remonstrances were received with coldness, even with disdain. He was far too much in earnest, however, to give up the contest. Such a monstrous injustice should not be done, if by any means he could prevent it. After exhausting all his eloquence in rebukes, persuasions, and expostulations, he drew the last arrow out of his quiver. “Señor Diego,” he said, “if you do it, I lay a statement of the whole matter before your lord, Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano.” A threat likely to cost him who uttered it far more than him who heard it. Nor was Fray Fernando ignorant of the peril in which he involved himself. He was alone, in the midst of lawless men, with sharp steel in their hands, and little reluctance to use it. They might well remember the Spanish proverb, “Dead men never bite.” What better could the meddlesome friar expect than a dagger through his heart some dark night, and a grave on the lonely mountain summit? And who could suspect any foul play from the decorous message that would, no doubt, be forwarded in due time to Don Marcio Serra, informing him, very regretfully, that the health of the holy father had given way under the rigours of that inhospitable climate?

In former days—which seemed to belong to another state of existence—men called him who now bore the name of Fray Fernando, bravest of the brave. But for ten miserable years he had called himself coward and recreant. Still he could brave death for the sake of a poor negro, toward whom he entertained no feeling warmer than compassion. Though, after all, not for his sake—for the sake of justice and mercy.

“If death were all!”—he said to himself, as he realized the full peril of his situation, in the lonely hour that succeeded his stormy altercation with Diego—“if death were all! But—_after death_!” This was the key-note of a long, mournful meditation, into which we cannot, perhaps dare not, follow him. At last, to relieve his burdened heart by action, he set forth upon his daily walk—never omitted—to the pass whence José might be seen returning. The Indian youth had now been more than six months away—a lengthened absence, which gave Fray Fernando much uneasiness, for José was the one solitary joy and hope of his dreary life.

It was evening—about an hour before the rapid tropical sunset. Fray Fernando soon saw an Indian ascending the winding pathway with the fleet footsteps of his race. As the wayfarer gradually drew nearer, he perceived a burden on his shoulder; and saw that he wore a white cotton tunic, fastened at the waist by an embroidered belt; a _yacollo_, or mantle; short native trousers, reaching a little below the knees; and _usutas_, or native sandals. But when his features became visible, the monk cried aloud in astonishment—for they were José’s.

José, who had now attained his full height, and assumed an air of manly independence quite new to him, gravely took the burden from his shoulder, and laid it at the feet of Fray Fernando. It was the monk’s first impulse to embrace his adopted child; but some momentary, unaccountable feeling, shared probably by both, checked the impulse, and held them apart.

“How is this, my son?” Fray Fernando questioned, in anxious and displeased surprise. “Where is the Spanish dress I gave you?”

José pointed to the burden at their feet. His countenance seemed as much changed as his dress. Fray Fernando thought its expression sullen, almost fierce.

“I hope,” he said, “that you have not put off the heart of the Christian with the clothing of the Spaniard.”

Perhaps his words were the less gentle from the state of irritation in which his mind had been left by his recent altercation with Diego.

“I am clothed as my fathers were,” José answered. “I am no Spaniard; I am a Child of the Sun.”

“You should be ashamed to recall those heathenish fables,” the monk returned. “Have I to repeat to _you_, after seven years of careful instruction, that the sun is nothing but a ball of fire, made by God to give light to the earth, and for that purpose travelling round it every day?”

“I don’t know what Ynty is. I know what the Spaniards are; and may Ynty slay me with his arrows if henceforward I wear their dress or learn their ways!”

José flung out his words with eager, sharp abruptness, naturally increased by the difficulty with which, in a moment of excitement, he translated his rapid thoughts from Quichua into Spanish.

“José! José!” cried the monk, in angry amazement; “is this the reward of all the love and care I lavished on you?”

“I have no wish to grieve _you_, patre,” said the youth, in a softened tone.

“No wish to grieve me!—yet your words are enough to bring down God’s vengeance on us both. Go to! You disappoint me, José. You are like all the rest—ungrateful.”

Words such as these would have brought the docile, affectionate José of six months ago to his knees, to ask forgiveness with tears. But Viracocha stood erect and motionless; in Fray Fernando’s eyes, a bronze statue of defiance. Yet, unseen by Fray Fernando, there was a quivering of the lip, a gathering mist in the eye.

“Patre,” he said at length, “if you will only listen.” Here he faltered—stopped—and began his sentence again in a different form. “Patre, hear what I have seen and heard, and then tell me if I ought to speak the tongue or worship the gods of the race who are trampling my people into dust.”

“Nothing you have seen or heard can excuse the insolent tone you have thought proper to assume,” said the monk. He continued, however, in a voice less firm, even almost hesitating—“I do not deny that there have been many instances of oppression; but still—”

“_But still_—they make good and just laws in the council at Seville, beyond the Mother Sea. I know that,” said the Indian bitterly. “But I know, too, how those laws are kept down in yonder valleys. Cain the murderer said to God, ‘I am not my brother’s keeper.’ But the Spaniard says to God and man, ‘I _am_ my brother’s keeper;’ and then he slays him by the sword, by famine, by torture. It would be more merciful to kill us all at once, and make the land a desert, as he has done elsewhere.”

“Oh, José, you have need to repent, and to ask God to forgive your wicked words.”

“It is not your God I worship now,” retorted José in desperation.

“Then what has brought you here? Better have remained amongst your own people than come back to insult and defy me.”

“But why do you say that to me?” asked José, with apparent simplicity. “You bought me.”

“In an evil hour. Would I had never seen your face! Leave me, and return to your people.”

And Fray Fernando turned to go. But José placed himself before him in the path.

“Hear me, patre,” he cried—“only hear me; then do with me what you will.”

“Were you the José of six months ago, there is nothing I would not hear from your lips; but an evil spirit has entered into you.”

“Am I worse in your eyes than Pepe or Zillo? Yet even them you would not condemn unheard.”

“Speak, then, if you will; but in words fit for a Christian man to listen to.”

“Patre, I went down to the valley by the road my fathers made; and I saw the water-courses they fashioned, which lead so far up into the mountains no man knoweth where they end. In the great _puquios_[16] I could almost stand upright. I examined them well. They are all carefully and cunningly made, and lined with great stones deftly hewn and fashioned. They divide themselves into many little _puquios_—so many, that every corner of the thirsty land is watered by the streams of the snowy Antis, and brings forth maize, fruit, and flowers for the joy of man. Such things my fathers made. But the Spaniards destroy the roads, and break up the water-courses, taking the hewn stones to build houses for themselves.”

“Not in Nasca,” Fray Fernando interposed. “Don Marcio has strictly forbidden the practice.”

José had gained his point—he was listening.

“I know it,” he answered. “Don Marcio is not like others—he fears God. But they do it, all through the country; so that, where we tended gardens, our children will wander through thirsty deserts—if, indeed, there are any of us left alive. Yet the Spaniards behold these roads and water-courses with wonder and admiration. They say there be none like them in their country; all their power and all their skill could not have fashioned them.”

“Yet the destruction of roads and aqueducts, though greatly to be deplored, scarcely warrants such fierce anger.”

“But it is the men and women, and little children, who are destroyed throughout the land, and no man pities them. Listen, patre. I found my people down yonder in the vale of Nasca sad of countenance, though they did not complain. They miss the joyous feasts of the olden time, the frequent holidays, the dances in honour of Ynty and Quilla.[17] Always they toil hard, often they starve, that they may pay their tribute to the Spaniards. It is very much that they have to pay, and if they fail, they are beaten and tortured. Once I came to a little village, where I found great grief and mourning. The Spaniards, who were taking up the tribute, had bound a poor, helpless boy to a tree, and were beating him most cruelly. The women were weeping and wringing their hands; the men—some of them begging for mercy, others searching their huts for maize, or charqui, or cords of maguey, to appease the wrath of the Spaniards. I asked what the boy had done, what law he had broken; and as I talked Spanish, the Spaniards listened to me, and told me he would not pay his tribute. I did not understand; so I turned for explanation to my own people. They said the tribute was required of all above eighteen, but that it was a common practice to demand it of boys under age, and to ill-use them cruelly till their friends paid the claim, though their own share had left them well-nigh starving. That time the silver you gave me saved the boy. But what use to save _one_—every day they do these things.” He paused for a few moments; then went on sorrowfully:—“Ere long I came to Nasca, where there is a town and a fort. There some Spaniards have come to live. May the curse of God—”

“Hush, José! you must not curse.”

José caught the edge of his yacollo with his teeth, and bit it, a common gesture with his race when moved to anger. Then he resumed:—

“In Nasca and its neighbourhood I found the doors all shut and barred—a strange thing in Tahuantin Suyu. When first our people saw the Spaniards bolt and bar their doors, they marvelled, and could not forbear to ask the reason—did they fear we would murder them? They answered, ‘No; we do it for fear of thieves.’ Whereat our people marvelled all the more, for there were no thieves amongst them. The Inca said, ‘You shall not steal.’ A man who went a journey would lay a little stick across his threshold, just to say, ‘I am not at home;’ and although his house were filled with gold and silver, none would enter it.[18] But now—_now_ all is changed. Now we ourselves learn to steal, like the wicked Spaniards. O Ynty, Ynty, will _you_ not help us?” And he turned and looked towards the sun, now descending to the west.

“Call not on Ynty, who cannot hear you,” the monk interposed.