The Bride of the Sun

Again he bent oyer the rigid face of a long-forgotten Coya.

Dick fell to the ground as if stunned. But Orellana was already at work again, setting him the example, and the young engineer was on his feet in a moment. It must be that other one on the left, then! Once again he wrenched the pick from the old man’s feeble hands and hammered on the granite.... The minutes are flying… flying. And She may be dying behind that slab, struggling for breath!… The thunder of blows echoed through the hall… the stone moved… slipped… fell.... At last.... No!… Another dead woman.... Another, another!… Not Maria-Teresa!

“Maria Cristina! My daughter! Dearest, I am coming! Your father is here!”

While Dick staggered to the wall, staring before him with blind eyes, the old man, peering into the tomb, had recognized his child.

“Maria Cristina! Dearest! Wait, wait! Only one more stone, and you will be out of your prison!”

Sobbing and laughing in turn, Orellana worked desperately, finding the strength of his youth anew.

Then Dick fell on him.

“Give me that pick. You’re wasting time on a dead woman. Give it to me, I say!”

There was a terrible struggle between the two, and Dick, triumphant, whirled the tool over his head at another tomb, while Orellana, by the last effort of his life, tore the second stone from its socket, drew the dead body of his daughter to him and covered it with kisses and tears. Old madman and dead girl fell to the floor together.

Orellana was dead, but he had found his daughter.

Dick saw and heard nothing. Another tomb open… and another dead Coya of long ago.... The gods of the Temple of Death were ready to give up their dead, but not the living bride....

Crying, calling, driving his nails into his bleeding palms; ready to offer himself up to the ferocious spirit that guarded those tombs, Dick staggered, fell, and got up again, dragging behind him the pick, which he no longer knew where to use, striving to reason and understand.

There was nothing here to help him! His eyes wandered hopelessly round the circular temple, trying to find a guiding point. Nothing! Perhaps chance would give him what his reasoning had failed to secure.... Yes, that was it… why not try here?… It might be this tomb as well as any other.... He set to work again, but heavily… oh, so heavily… and the pick weighed down his hands terribly.

Exhausted, he dropped it.... He could do no more.... And she was dying… dying… while the dead, torn from their eternal sleep, stared back at him with unseeing eyes.

How many hours had he been toiling? He did not know. The oblique rays of the sun had gradually risen on the walls, then vanished. Then the light which succeeded them faded in its turn.... Twilight had fallen… then darkness had come.

Stretched out on the altar steps, whither he had dragged himself with his last remaining strength, he closed his eyes and waited… waited for sleep or death. What did it matter, since Maria-Teresa was dead?

VI

In which it is seen that lovers should never despair of Providence

One morning, as the little steamboat which runs between the Island of Titicaca and the mainland, was plowing its way through the waters of the lake, it was hailed by a tall Quichua Indian, standing upright in his pirogue. In the bottom of the frail craft lay a white man, and the captain, seeing the prostrate figure, hove to for a moment to pick it up. Thus did Dick Montgomery return to civilization.

Among the passengers of the Yavari was a good-hearted alpaca merchant of Punho who took pity on the fever-stricken stranger and had him removed to his own home, where the whole household devoted itself to nursing the young man back to life. The Indian who brought him to the steamer explained that he had found the stranger, probably some tourist, unconscious among the ruins of the sacred island. He had therefore dosed him with pink water for the fever, and had brought him back to people of his own race. The Indian refused all reward, and the captain was the more surprised at this when, on searching Dick, he found a considerable sum of money in his pockets. For a Quichua not to strip a helpless man was indeed remarkable.

When Dick had sufficiently recovered to understand what was being said, he immediately recognized the Indian described to him as Huascar. In his quality as high-priest, Huascar had probably returned to the temple late at night, and had there found Dick, surrounded by gaping tombs, and the corpses of Orellana and the three Guardians of the Temple. Coldly calculating in his hatred, the Indian had decided to inflict the worst possible torture on Dick, leaving him to live after the death of Maria-Teresa.

That torture would not last long, the young man decided. The idea that he might have saved Maria-Teresa had he not lost his head, and that her death lay at his door, tormented him without ceasing. He realized that he would never be able to free himself of this obsession and that it would finally drive him mad. Better to end it all at once.

Only he did not wish to die among these awful mountains, mute witnesses of the horrors that had cost him his self-respect and happiness. The Maria-Teresa who was constantly before his mind’s eye was not the terrible mummy-like figure he had last seen, but the dainty silhouette in the homely surroundings of the office at Callao, among the big green registers, where they had met again after so long an absence and where they had exchanged words of love. He would go there to rejoin her.

Once this decision was taken, he grew rapidly better, and one day, after warmly thanking his host and showering presents on the whole family, he took the train to Mollendo, where he would join some ship for Callao. The voyage seemed an interminable one. At Arequipa, he visited the little adobe house by the rio de Chili, and thought of the vain appeal they had made to that scoundrel Garcia. There also, for the first time since his illness, he thought of his traveling companions.

What had happened to Uncle Francis, Don Christobal and Natividad? Perhaps their bones were then bleaching in some inaccessible corner of the Corridors of Night. The Marquis, at all events, had not endured the torture of impotently witnessing the murder of his two children.

When Dick reached Mollendo there was a howling gale on, but he at once went down to the harbor. It was deserted save for two shadows, which rushed toward him with cries of joy. Yes, they were alive and breathing:—Uncle Francis and Natividad! Though white and sad-looking, they did not seem to have suffered a great deal. Dick clasped their hands, and they, seeing him so pale and thin, said no word.

Together they walked along for a few minutes, deep in thoughts. At last Mr. Montgomery turned to his nephew:

“What happened to Don Christobal? Do you know?”

“I thought he was with you.” Dick’s voice was toneless, detached from all things of this world.

It was only then that Natividad, without being asked, explained how he and Uncle Francis, after the frustrated attempt in the House of the Serpent, had been thrown into a dungeon in which they passed four days, and in which the illustrious scientist had at last become convinced of the reality of their adventure. At the end of those four days, finding the prison doors open and unguarded, they had fled.

Apparently all the Indians were bolting to the mountains from Cuzco, and the explanation for this they had found on reaching Sicuani. President Veintemilla, risking his all on one bold stroke, had surprised Garcia’s forces in the middle of the Interaymi fêtes, and the four squadrons of his escort which remained faithful had cut up and routed the thousands of Quichua riflemen. Barely five hundred in all, but of Spanish blood, they had repeated Pizarro’s exploit on those same plains of Xauxa, while the same ancient walls, with the impassability of immortal things, again stared down on the struggle of the races.

Garcia had escaped over the Bolivian frontier, and was on the point of blowing out his brains when he heard of a revolution in Paraguay which made life worth living again. So he crossed into Paraguay with his lawless “cabinet,” to the great satisfaction of the President of Bolivia.

Prom Sicuani, Uncle Francis and Natividad had gone straight to Mollendo, hoping to find the Marquis there, if the new fortunes of the republic had also opened the doors of his prison. As to Dick, they had not expected to see him until Lima, “after he had done everything to save Maria-Teresa.”

It was the first time that they had pronounced her name before him, and Dick saw a very real and very great sympathy in their faces.

“She is dead,” he said, gripping his uncle’s shoulder.

“Poor boy!”

They paced up and down again, silently, before the raging breakers of the Pacific, which had already kept two of them prisoners in Mollendo for the past ten days. Dick would not say another word, and his companions, ignorant of what had happened, could not even try to give him hope.

Eight more days passed by, and the elements still held them prisoners at Mollendo. His uncle and Natividad watched Dick closely, but his outward calm finally dispelled their fears, and once aboard a ship for Callao, they even questioned him. He told them what he had seen in the Temple of Death, while they listened in horror to the simply-worded narrative, made in a singularly quiet voice. Afterwards, Uncle Francis locked himself in his cabin and sat for a long time with his head between his hands, staring at an unopened note-book.

Dick, leaning over the ship’s side, was now gazing idly at the rapidly approaching coast on which he had landed with so much hope and joy. The Peru of Pizarro and the Incas, the fabulous land of gold and legends, the Eldorado of his young ambition and of his love! Dead were his love and his ambition. There lived only the legends, at which they had laughed, which had killed all their dreams and which was to kill him after sending Maria-Teresa to a living tomb! And they had laughed, laughed at the warning of those two stately old ladies, Velasquez canvases brought to life and striving to retain all their pictorial dignity!

As on that first day, he was the first man off the liner, dropping over the side into the swaying craft of a noisy boatman. This time, though, he did not need to ask where the Galle de Lima lay, and his eyes hardly left the part of the city to which he had hastened so full of hope, where Maria-Teresa had waited for him.

He did not hurry on reaching land. Walking slowly he entered the network of tortuous streets, passed through the labyrinth of alleys, and finally reached the point whence he could see the verandah.... There he had come to greet her every night, there he had come one night to find her gone. Never again would he see that dear face, that dainty figure bent over the big green books, while the slim fingers toyed with a golden pencil attached to her supple waist with a long gold chain.

Suddenly Dick stopped, staggered, and put his hand to his side with a choking intake of breath.... It hurt, that hallucinating apparition on the verandah.... Or perhaps it is true that the shades of the dear departed come back to people the spots they loved best, that they have the power of showing themselves to those they loved.... For Maria-Teresa is there, leaning out as she used to, turning her sweet face as she used to.... How pale she is, how diaphanous; her well-remembered gestures are no more than the ghosts of those gestures!…

He hardly dared breathe, fearing that the vision would vanish at the sound of his voice-… He advanced cautiously, stealthily, like a child stalking a butterfly.

“Dick!”

“Maria-Teresa!”

They are in each other’s arms. The cry which has come from those pale lips is a living one. They clung to each other, trembling, laughing, crying, and would have fallen in their weakness had not other shadows come to their aid.

Aunt Agnes and her duenna, Irene, held up Maria-Teresa, while Don Christobal, running out into the street, caught the young engineer under the arm, and led him slowly in.

Little Christobal, dancing at the door of the office, shouted with glee and clapped his hands together.

“I told you so, Maria-Teresa! I told you he wasn’t dead!… Now you’ll get better, Maria-Teresa!”

Maria-Teresa, in Dick’s arms again, was sobbing.