III
The Marquis de la Torre's residence was half modern, half historical, with here and there quaint old-fashioned rooms and corners. Don Christobal was something of a collector, and had adorned his home with ancient paneling, carved galleries several centuries old, rude furniture dating back to before the conquest, faded tapestry—all so many relics of the various towns of old Peru which his ancestors had first sacked and then peopled. And each object recalled some anecdote or story which the host detailed at length to all willing listeners.
It was in one of these historical corners that Mr. Montgomery and his nephew were presented to two old ladies—two Velasquez canvases brought to life, yet striving to retain all their pictorial dignity. Attired after a fashion long since forgotten, Aunt Agnes and her duenna might almost have been taken for antiques of Don Christobal's collection: they lived altogether in another age, and their happiest moments were those passed in telling fear-inspiring legends. All the tales of old Peru had a home in this ancient room of theirs, and many an evening had been whiled away there by these narratives—the two Christobals, father and son, and little Infanta Isabella listening in one corner, while Maria-Teresa, at the other end of the room, went over her accounts and wrote her letters in a great splash of yellow lamplight.
Uncle Francis was delighted to meet in real life two such perfect types of the New Spain of yore, set in the very frame they needed. They were great friends at once, and the savant, taken to his own room, changed his clothes hurriedly to be able to rejoin them. At dinner, installed between the two, he begged for more legends, more stories. Maria-Teresa, thinking it time to talk of more serious matters, interrupted by telling her father of the trouble between the Indians and coolies.
When they heard that Maria-Teresa had discharged the Indians, Aunt Agnes shook her head doubtfully, and Irene openly expressed her disapproval. Both agreed that the young girl had acted imprudently, and particularly so on the eve of the Interaymi festival. This view was also taken by the Marquis, whose protest took an even more active form when he learned that Huascar had also left. Huascar had always been a very faithful servant, he argued, and his brusk departure was strange. Maria-Teresa explained shortly that for some time past Huascar's manner had displeased her, and that she had let him know it.
"That is another matter," said the Marquis. "But I am no more comfortable about it ... there is something in the air ... the Indians are not behaving normally.... The other day, in the Plaza Mayor, I heard extraordinary remarks being made by some half-breeds to a couple of Quichua chiefs."
"Yes, we did not meet a single Indian on the way from Callao, and I have not seen one in the city," said Dick. "Why is that, I wonder?"
"Because of the festival," interjected Aunt Agnes. "They have their secret meetings. They disappear into the mountains, or some warren of theirs—catacombs like the Early Christians. One day, the order comes from some corner of the Andes, and they vanish like shadows, to reappear a few days later like a swarm of locusts."
"My sister exaggerates a little," said the Marquis, smiling. "They are not so very dangerous, after all."
"But you yourself are worried, Christobal. You have just said so."
"Only because there might be some rioting...."
"Have they got it in them?" asked Mr. Montgomery. "They seem so nerveless...."
"They are not all like that.... Yes, we have had one or two native rebellions, but it was never anything very serious."
"How many of them are there in the country?" put in Dick.
"About two-thirds of the population," answered Maria-Teresa. "But they are no more capable of really rebelling than they are of working properly. It is the Garcia business that has unsettled them, coming after a long period of quiet." She turned to her father. "What does the President think of it all?"
"He does not seem to worry a great deal. This Indian unrest recurs every ten years."
"Why every ten years?" demanded Uncle Francis.
"Because of the Sun Festival," said old Irene. "The Quichuas hold it every ten years."
"Where?" Dick took a sudden interest.
"Nobody knows," replied Aunt Agnes, in a curiously strangled voice. "There are sacrifices ... and the ashes of the victims are thrown into rivers and streams ... to carry away the sins of the nation, the Indians believe."
"That is really very interesting!" exclaimed Uncle Francis.
"Some of the sacrifices are human," half groaned the old lady, dropping her head to her plate.
"Human sacrifices!"
"Oh, Auntie!" laughed Maria-Teresa.
"Curious," remarked the savant. "And there may be some truth in it I know that they were customary at the Festival of the Sun among the Incas. And Prescott makes it clear that the Quichuas have kept not only the language of their ancestors, but also many of the ancient customs."
"Yes, but they became Christians when the Spaniards conquered their country," suggested Dick.
"Not that that affects them much," commented the Marquis. "It gives them two religions instead of one, and they have mixed up the rites and beliefs of the two in a most amazing fashion."
"What do they want to do, then? Re-build the Empire of the Incas?"
"They don't know what they want," replied Maria-Teresa. "In the days of the Incas every living being in the Empire had to work, they were practically the slaves of the Sons of the Sun. When that iron discipline was removed they gradually learned to do nothing but sleep. Of course, that meant poverty and misery, which they attribute, not to their laziness, but to the fact that they are no longer ruled by the descendants of Mono-Capac! From what Huascar told me, they still hope for a return of the old kings."
"And they still go in for human sacrifice?" asked Dick.
"Of course not! What absolute nonsense!"
Aunt Agnes and Irene both turned to Uncle Francis.
"Maria-Teresa was brought up abroad, and does not know.... She cannot know.... But she is wrong to laugh at what she calls 'all these old stories.'... There is plenty of proof, and we are sure of it.... Every ten years—all great events were decennial among the Incas—every ten years, the Quichua Indians offer a bride to the Sun."
"A bride to the Sun?" exclaimed Uncle Francis, half horrified, half incredulous.
"Yes ... they sacrifice a young girl in one of those horrible Inca temples of theirs, where no stranger has ever gone!... It is terrible, but it is true."
"Really ... it is so difficult to believe.... Do you mean to say that they kill her?"
"They do ... as a sacrifice to the Sun."
"But how? By fire?"
"No, it is even more horrible than that. Death by fire is only for far more unimportant ceremonies. At the Interaymi, they wall up their victim alive.... And it is always a Spanish girl.... They kidnap one, as beautiful and of as good family as possible.... It is vengeance against the race that destroys theirs."
Maria-Teresa was frankly laughing at her aunt's intense seriousness, only equaled by the gravity with which Uncle Francis listened. The savant looked at her smiling face half disapprovingly, and brought his scientific knowledge to the defense of the old ladies. Everything they said corresponded perfectly with what well-known writers and explorers had been able to discover about the Virgins of the Sun. There was no doubt that human sacrifice had been rife among the Incas, both in honor of the Sun and for the King himself, many of the victims going to the altar of their own free will. This was particularly the case when an Inca died—it was like Suttee of the East.
"Prescott and Wienjer, the greatest authorities on the subject, are agreed," said Uncle Francis. "Prescott tells us that at one royal burial, more than a thousand people, wives, maids and servants of the Inca, were sacrificed on his tomb."
Aunt Agnes shuddered, while Irene, bending her head, made the sign of the Cross.
"All this is very true, my dear sir," said Don Christobal, carrying on the conversation, "and I see that our Geographical Society here will be able to give you very little that is new to you. Would it interest you to visit our latest excavations at Ancon to-morrow? There is ample proof there that Suttee was practised among the Incas."
"What exactly were these Virgins of the Sun?" asked Dick, turning to his uncle, who, delighted to be able to show his erudition, at once launched into an explanation.
"The Virgins of the Sun, or the 'elected ones,' as they were called, were young girls, vowed to the service of the divinity. They were taken from their families as children, and put into convents where they were placed under the care of women called mammaconas,—girls who had grown old in these monasteries. Under the guidance of these venerable matrons, the virgins were taught their religious duties, weaving and embroidery were their chief occupations, and it was they who made the fine vicuna wool for the hangings of the temples and the Inca's home and attire."
"Yes," said gray-haired Irene, "but their chief duty was to guard the sacred fire acquired anew by the temple at each Raymi festival."
"That is so," replied the savant. "They lived absolutely alone. From the moment they entered the home, they were entirely cut off from their families and friends. The Inca alone, and his queen, the Coya, were allowed within the sacred precincts. The most rigid discipline and supervision were exercised over them."
"And woe to the girl who transgressed," added Aunt Irene. "By Inca law she was buried alive, while the town or village from which she came was razed to the ground and 'sown with stones,' so that all memory of it should be lost"
"You are perfectly right, madam," agreed Uncle Francis.
"Sweet country!" Dick exclaimed.
"What an amazing civilization they must have possessed," continued Uncle Francis. "The ceremonies of their temples are almost identical with those of ancient Rome.... Little did Christopher Columbus think, when he saw a few painted savages, that on the other seaboard, behind this belt of primitive land and tribes, there was a whole world with its customs, monuments, laws and conquests. Two empires, sir: that of the Aztecs in Mexico, that of the Incas in Peru. And with civilizations rivaling that of the Mediterranean. It is as if an Eastern prince, reaching the steppes of Scythia, had claimed the discovery of Europe, returning to his States without knowing that Rome existed, and convinced that the rest of the world was a howling waste!"
"He must have been a bit of a fool," hazarded Dick. "A true conqueror guesses there are new lands to conquer even before he sees them."
"Like Pizarro and Cortes!" exclaimed the Marquis.
"Who came to destroy everything ..." began Uncle Francis. Fortunately, Don Christobal did not hear him, and he stopped in time. Maria-Teresa, seated opposite the savant, had trodden on his foot, and he bit his lip, remembering that de la Torre, the Marquis' ancestor, had been one of Pizarro's "destroyers."
Both old ladies, however, had heard, and opened their eyes at this denunciation of a cause which to them was that of the true faith against the infidel. Maria-Teresa, anxious to smooth matters over, quickly brought them back to their Inca legends.
"All this is very fine," she said, "but there is nothing to show that the Indians still sacrifice human beings."
"How can you say that!" they exclaimed in chorus.
"Well, has anybody ever had definite proof of it?"
Aunt Agnes was not to be shaken in her convictions.
"When I was a little girl," she declared, "I had an old nurse who belonged to one of the Lake Titicaca tribes of Quichuas. She told me that she herself had seen three Spanish girls walled up alive at three successive Interaymi fêtes."
"Where did the girls come from?" asked Dick.
"They were Lima girls."
"But then, any number of people must have known of it," he answered, secretly amused by the grave airs of the two old ladies.
"It was, and is, common property," retorted Aunt Agnes. "The names of their last two victims were known to everybody. One vanished ten years ago, and the other ten years before that."
"Yes, yes, common property!" laughed Don Christobal.
"There is nothing to laugh about, Christobal," said Aunt Agnes drily.
And the duenna repeated in a low voice, "No, no, nothing to laugh about."
The Marquis was determined to have his laugh.
"Let us mourn the poor children," he said, groaning. "Cut off from the affection of their parents at so early an age! How terrible!"
"Christobal, can you tell me what became of Amelia de Vargas and Marie Cristina de Orellana?"
"Yes, what became of them?" urged Irene.
"There we are! ... the old story! I expected it!" exclaimed the Marquis.
"You might speak seriously! You knew Amelia de Vargas...."
"A charming girl ... the sweetest smile in the city! ... That was twenty years ago... . How time flies!... Yes, she disappeared ... with a poor cousin."
"I heard the other day that it was a toreador," interjected Maria-Teresa. "They revive that old story every ten years, at the time of the Interaymi."
"She disappeared outside the bull-ring," explained Aunt Agnes. "There was a fight in the crowd, and she was separated from her parents. Nobody ever saw her again. Afterwards, some people remembered catching sight of her surrounded by a group of Indians. She died at their hands, walled up alive."
"What a gorgeous imagination crowds have! But the fact remains that that poor cousin of hers disappeared about the same time."
"So you are pleased to say, Christobal. But what of Maria Cristina de Orellana?"
"Oh, that was another matter ... a very sad case. She was out for a walk with her father round the Cuzco, and went into one of the caves, never to reappear. She lost her way in the old subterranean passages, of course. The government had all the entrances blocked up after that."
"And since then," commented Aunt Agnes, "her poor father has been a madman. For the past ten years, he has haunted the Cuzco ruins, calling in vain to his daughter. He, at all events, will not believe that she was not carried off by the Indians."
"But you yourself say he is mad."
"He lost his reason when he acquired the certitude that she had perished in their temple. A few days before she vanished, Maria-Cristina mysteriously received a very old and very heavy gold bracelet. That bracelet had a center plaque representing the sun...."
"My dear Agnes, you know that in this country jewelers stick the sun in wherever and whenever they can."
"That bracelet was the real one ... the same one that was sent to Amelia."
"Are you not exaggerating, Agnes? Really, really!... And with stories like these running about, they expect poor historians to be accurate!... I hope you are not taking notes of all this, Mr. Montgomery."
"I am exaggerating nothing," retorted Aunt Agnes obstinately. "It was the real Golden Sun bracelet.... Every ten years since Atahualpa, the last Inca king, was burned alive by Pizarro, the Inca priests have sent it to a Spanish girl they had chosen to be the Bride of the Sun. And every one of them has been walled up alive.... I remember that poor Orellana girl laughing and joking about the Golden Sun bracelet! The whole town knew about it"
"The whole town always does have a pretty lively imagination at the time of the Interaymi," insisted the Marquis. He turned to Mr. Montgomery. "You have no idea, my dear sir, how hard it is for our Society to get away from all these weird legends."
"Legends are not things to be despised in research work," disagreed Uncle Francis. "For my part, I am delighted to have found a country where they are still so living."
At this moment a servant came in with a small parcel on a silver tray.
"A registered package, señorita," he said. "Will the señorita sign here?"
Maria-Teresa, having signed, was turning the box over in her fingers.
"It is from Cajamarca," she remarked. "Who from, I wonder? I know nobody there.... Will you excuse me?"
The young girl cut the string, broke the seals and opened the little wooden box.
"A bracelet!" she exclaimed, and laughed a little nervously. "What an extraordinary coincidence!... Why, it is the Golden Sun bracelet! It is, really! The bracelet of the Bride of the Sun!"
Every person in the room had risen, with the exception of the two old ladies, who sat as if stunned. All eyes were turned on the heavy bracelet in darkened old gold, with its sun-adorned center plaque on which the rays seemed blurred out by the dust of centuries.
"Well, that is funny!" laughed Maria-Teresa.
"Of course!" exclaimed the Marquis, whose voice had changed a little. "Evidently a joke by Alonso de Cuelar. You refused him, my dear, and he has invented rather a pretty revenge. His little vengeance on the Bride of the Sun... . All the young men of the town call you that because you refuse to marry.... Well, what are we looking so blue about over there? Surely, Agnes, you are not going to make yourself ill over a harmless joke like this?"
Maria-Teresa was showing the bracelet to Uncle Francis and Dick.
"Father!" she exclaimed. "I think I shall keep it! Tell Don Alonso I shall wear it as a token of friendship.... It really is a beauty!... What do you think of it, Mr. Montgomery?"
"It seems to me at least three or four hundred years old."
"Pieces like that are still occasionally found in excavations round royal tombs, but they are rare," said the Marquis. "I am not surprised Don Alonso had to go to Cajamarca for that one."
"Where is Cajamarca?" asked Dick.
"Cajamarca," said the savant, horrified at his nephew's ignorance, "is the Caxamarxa of the Incas, their second capital in Pizarro's day...."
"And the city where their last king was burned at the stake!" groaned Aunt Agnes.
They rushed to her side, for she was on the point of fainting and had to be carried to her room. The old duenna followed them, as white as her lace, and crossing herself tremulously.