THE WAKING OF GOLDEN STAR

’There is your royal, would-be lover, Ruth! Come, if you don’t believe me, you can hear from his own lips that upon you, and you alone, depends Golden Star’s return to life. Is not that so, Your Highness?’

It was Djama who said this, and as he said it, he caught Joyful Star by the hand and half led, half dragged her towards me from between the other two. But before he had come half the length of the room, Francis Hartness had overtaken him in a few swift strides. I saw his hand fall heavily on his shoulder, and with his other hand he took Ruth’s out of his. His blue eyes were nearly black with anger, and his bronzed face was grey and set and pale with the passion that his strong will was holding back, and his voice was low and clear, and vibrating like the sound of a distant bell when he spoke and said,

’I can’t stand that, Djama. Are you forgetting that your sister is a woman, and that you have brought her into the presence of the dead?’

‘You must be mad, Laurens!’ said Joyful Star, before her brother could reply. ’Surely this dreadful work of yours has turned your brain. Vilcaroya, what does all this mean? Is Golden Star dead or alive? Ah, how beautiful she is now! No, surely she cannot be dead!’

She had broken away from both her brother and Francis Hartness, and as she said the last words she was leaning over Golden Star’s pillow, softly stroking her hair; and then she stooped lower and kissed her forehead. Then the others came up to the bedside, Francis Hartness and Djama in front, and the professor standing silent and wondering behind them.

‘If Djama won’t speak, will you, Vilcaroya?’ said Hartness, looking at me with eyes that were still angry. ’What is that dagger in your hand for, and what is the meaning of this story that he has been telling me?’

‘The meaning is of life or death,’ I said. ’Laurens Djama will not give Golden Star’s life back to her if I will not swear to give her to him when she lives again, and I have sworn that he shall not restore her to life unless he swears to give Joyful Star to me, for I love her, and will have neither life nor empire without her.’

As I listened to my own voice saying these bold words, it seemed to me as though another were speaking, for, even in that hot moment of passion and desperate resolve, I could scarce believe them mine. For the instant, I thought Hartness would have struck me down where I stood, nor could I have used my dagger against him, for he was a man and I loved him, though I saw now that we both loved the same woman. But before either of us could move, Ruth had risen erect and come between us, her cheeks burning with shame and her eyes aglow with anger.

‘What!’ she said, ’Laurens give me to you, Vilcaroya! Don’t you know yet that no one can give an English girl away except herself, and that she only gives herself to the man she chooses of her own free will? Do you think I am a slave or a human chattel to be bartered away like that? Nonsense! And you, Captain Hartness, don’t look so fiercely at Vilcaroya. Remember that he is your friend and mine, or has been, and has not the same ideas as we have. If he had ’

‘He has,’ I said, breaking in upon her speech, ’since Joyful Star has spoken. He is not her lover but her slave, and she has shamed him. I will eat the words that should never have been spoken. Let Golden Star live! I will keep my oath and ask nothing in return.’

So the savage within me was tamed, and I, who but a few minutes before had been ready to take two lives at the prompting of a single word, dropped my dagger and stood with bowed head, humble as a chidden child before her whose lightest word was then my most sacred law. I raised my eyes and looked at her to see if my words had pleased her. As our eyes met she gave me a glance that I would have died to win from her, and then, pushing me and Francis Hartness gently aside, yet with a force that neither of us could have resisted, she took her brother by the arm and, leading him to the bedside with one hand, she laid the other on Golden Star’s brow, and said,

‘Laurens, can you really bring her back to life?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, and I could see that he did not dare to raise his eyes to hers, ‘but ’

’But you will only do it for a price, you think. For shame! Is that the way you would use this terrible power that you possess? Is my brother so mean a creature as that? You love her, you say, even as she lies there, neither dead nor alive? Well, when she lives, she will be worthy of any man’s love, but only of a man’s, Laurens, and you would not be a man, with all your learning and power, if you insisted on so mean an advantage as your skill gives you. Do you mean to tell me that you can look on such a beauty as that, knowing that you can restore it to life, and yet ask a price before you will do it? Come, Laurens, that is not like your old self. Use your power with the same generosity that it has been given to you, and then win Golden Star like a man if you can.’

Where my strength had been vanquished, her sweet wisdom conquered. The man who had laughed at my threats, and told me without a quiver in his voice how he could, and would, slay himself rather than I should do what he knew I could do, stood humbled and abashed before the righteous and yet gently-spoken reproach of her who was pleading for the life of a sister woman.

I saw Djama’s hands meet behind his back, and his fingers begin to twine about each other. I saw him look from Ruth to Golden Star, from the living woman who was his sister to her lifeless counterpart. Then came over him one of those swift changes of mood which we had so often seen before. All the cold cruelty of his long-chained-up passion vanished. His face, from being stone, became flesh again. The fierce glitter, as of a sword’s point, died out of his eyes, and they grew warm and soft again, and his voice was almost as sweet and gentle as Ruth’s, and strangely like it, too, as he answered her and said,

’You are right, Ruth. I was not myself. I was a brute, unworthy either of love or power. Let her die! Good God, I would die myself a thousand times rather than do that! I must have been out of my senses even to think of such a crime for a moment, but if you were a man and had lived through what I have lived through for the last two days and nights, you would understand me, and perhaps forgive me. Yes, she shall live. How could I ever have thought of letting her die!’

Then he rose from his half-stooping posture over the bed, and came to where I stood at the foot, and, with his hand outstretched and a smile on his lips, said,

’You have heard what I have just said, Vilcaroya. You have withdrawn your conditions; now I will take back mine. It is no use for you and me to be enemies. We have had our fight, and I confess myself beaten. Now let us try to be friends for Ruth’s sake and Golden Star’s, and I promise you that to-morrow morning you shall be telling her the story of your resurrection and her own.’

For a moment I stared at him in, speechless wonder, striving to understand how it could be that those eyes, which had, but a short time before, been glaring hate at me, could now be looking so kindly and frankly into mine; and how those lips, which had just been sneering so coldly and cruelly alike at my love and my hate, could shape such friendly and honest-sounding words. Then I looked at Ruth, asking her with my eyes what she would have me do, and in instant obedience to what I saw took Djama’s hand in mine and said,

’So be it! The evil in our hearts has spoken, now let the good that is there speak, and let us be friends; and, when Golden Star awakes, with my lips she shall bless you and her who has made peace between us where there was strife.’

’Miss Ruth, you really must allow me to congratulate you on your success as a peacemaker,’ said the professor, speaking now for the first time since he had come into the room, and coming forward to where Joyful Star still stood by the bedside. ’It would have been ten thousand pities if this ah this little affair had ended any other way, for all of the exquisitely perfect subjects ’

‘Subjects, professor?’ said Ruth, interrupting him with a laugh. ’Do you venture to call Golden Star a subject, just as you do those awful things in your dissecting-rooms? Look at her a subject indeed! Don’t call her that again in my hearing, please!’

’Oh, ah, of course, I beg your pardon a thousand times, and Her Highness’s too. Really, I spoke quite thoughtlessly and most improperly.’ he answered, laughing at her mock displeasure, ’And now, Djama, since we have had two declarations of love and a peacemaking, don’t you think it would be cruel to keep Her Highness waiting any longer on the threshold of her new life? Come, Hartness, you and I have no more business here at present. Don’t you think we had better go and wait somewhere else for the working of the miracle?’

‘Just what I was going to say,’ replied Hartness, who had gone away a little distance from the bed while we were talking, and had been standing by the table, seeming to examine the strange instruments that were scattered about it. ’Of course the doctor will wish to finish his work alone.’

‘May not Vilcaroya and I stay, Laurens?’ asked Joyful Star, looking at him with appealing eyes. ’You know it will be much better for her to see another woman by her when she awakes, and then she will recognise Vilcaroya, and that will tell her that she is among friends.’

But Djama shook his head and said,

’No, Ruth, not yet. There is something else to be done before that something, well, something that only a medical man ought to see or do, and you really must leave me to do it alone. You forget, it is not merely a matter of waking. She is not alive yet; but if you will leave me alone for about half-an-hour, I promise you that I will call you and Vilcaroya back before she actually wakes.’

‘Very well,’ she said, moving away from the bedside. ’I don’t want to pry into your mysteries.’ Then she turned to me, and said, with a faint smile on her lips, ’Vilcaroya, come into the dining-room, I have something to say to you.’

She went down the room after the professor and Francis Hartness, and I followed her with beating heart and anxious thoughts, wondering what new lesson it was she was about to teach me.

Djama closed and locked the door after us. She led the way to the dining-room, where there was a light burning. It was empty, for the others, hearing what she had said to me, had gone out into the courtyard. Then she turned and faced me with her back to the light; but in spite of that I could see that her eyes were bright, and her fair face flushed as she said to me in a low voice that trembled a little,

’Vilcaroya, I am going to forget everything that was said in the room yonder, and and you must forget it too. It was no time or place for such things to be said, and you and Laurens were not yourselves when you said them. If you do not forget them, we cannot be friends any more. You understand me, don’t you?’

Gentle and sweetly spoken as the words were, they fell upon my heart like snow upon a fainting flame; yet I felt that, like all her words, they were true and just. I crossed my hands on my breast with one of my old-world gestures, and, standing so before her with bowed head, I said,

’The will of Joyful Star is my law. Let what I spoke in my madness be forgotten as you have said. Who am I that I should say such things? a poor savage that has wandered from his own world into hers, where he is a stranger!’

’No, not a savage, Vilcaroya. You must never say that word again. How could Golden Star’s brother be a savage? How could I but there, we have said enough for the present. We have other things to think of now.’

With that she turned away and sat down in a long, low chair, resting her cheek upon her hand, and looking out of one of the windows at the stars, while I went and stood before another to look at the same stars that she was looking at, and so we waited in silence until the door opened, and we heard Djama’s voice telling us that the long-expected moment of Golden Star’s awakening had come at last.

As Joyful Star went to the door I stood aside and waited for her to pass me and go out first. As she went by our eyes met for a moment, and I saw that hers were bright with tears. My heart leapt at the sight, and then fell still again and well nigh fainting. What had she said to me but a few minutes before? How dare I dream that those sweet tears could be for me?

I followed her and Djama into the room, but half-way between the door and the bed I stopped, not daring to go on, held back by some impulse I could not name. I saw her lean over the pillow for a moment in silence that for me was breathless. Then came a soft, sweet sound, and then a little cry. Was it her’s or Golden Star’s?

Djama beckoned to me. I went with swift, silent steps to the foot of the little bed, and saw Golden Star’s eyes wide open and looking wonderingly up into Ruth’s face, and her red lips smiling at her. The miracle had been completed. She had awakened her with a kiss.

‘Come and give her your welcome back to life, Vilcaroya,’ she whispered, rising and turning her fair face with its wet cheeks and smiling lips towards me. I went and stood over the pillow, and laid my trembling lips on Golden Star’s brow, and then I said, in the words that had been the first of my own new life,

‘Cori-Coyllur Nustallipa, Nusta mi!’

She looked at me, but there was no more recognition in her gaze than in that of a newborn child, nor was there any answering smile upon her lips. Unheeding this for the moment, I went on and said, still speaking very gently and softly in our own tongue,

’Thou art thrice welcome back from the shades of night into the bright presence of our Father the Sun, oh, Golden Star! Dost thou not remember me, Vilcaroya, thy brother, who went into the darkness with thee long ago, and has been permitted to return before thee that he might greet thee and bid thee welcome?’

Her eyes wandered from my face to Joyful Star’s, and then she smiled again, but no answering words came from her parted lips. Now, as we looked from one another to her, a great fear came into all our hearts, and Ruth gave it voice.

‘Laurens,’ she whispered, laying her hands upon his arm, ’what is the matter? Vilcaroya spoke at once, didn’t he? Why doesn’t she speak? Oh, surely it can’t be that she is that she has come back to life without memory or or her reason? What is it?’

I waited for Djama’s answer as a man might wait for words that were to tell him whether he was to live or die. He put us both gently away from the bed, and then, laying his hand on Golden Star’s brow, he looked long and steadfastly into her eyes. It seemed to me as though Ruth and I could hear each other’s hearts beating and counting off the seconds until he raised his head again and said in the slow, even tones of the man of science who, for the time, had overcome and banished the lover,

’Memory, perhaps, even probably; but reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have to be written.’

‘Thank God for that!’ she murmured, and I, too, echoed her words in my heart, though I did not know then how much she meant by them.

Then once more she turned and went to Golden Star’s pillow, laying her hand upon her brow again, and looking fondly for a moment on the silent and yet eloquent face that was looking up at her. Then she said to her brother,

’But is she well now? I mean, is her physical life certain? Will she live and grow well and strong again?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ’I have done everything that it is in my power to do. I have fulfilled my promise to His Highness. The rest is, as it was with him, merely a matter of care and nourishment and nursing.’

‘Then,’ she said, with a swift, subtle change coming over her manner, ’the care and the nursing must be mine, and you two must say good-bye to her for the present, until I have nursed her back to health. Of course you may see her when necessary, as her doctor, but only as her doctor, mind. And you, Vilcaroya, must possess yourself with what patience you can until my part of the work is done as well. Now, go away, both of you. I am mistress here for the present. Laurens, you go and get ready the nourishment that you think she should take, and come back in half-an-hour, and tell me how it is to be taken.’

It was easy for us to see the deep yet kindly meaning of her lightly-spoken words, for in them she had told us that Golden Star was now once more a living woman. No longer a mummy, or a corpse, or a ‘subject,’ as the professor had called her no longer an inanimate thing that had neither sex nor claim to human rights but a sister woman of her own kind whose wants could only be supplied by her. So we obeyed her, and went away, leaving her there to perform the most sacred task save one that a loving woman could perform.

Djama went to prepare the food that Golden Star would soon need, and I went in search of the professor and Francis Hartness, and told them all that had happened, and then, when the professor had gone to bed to finish his broken night’s rest, I and he who was my rival in love, and who was to be my brother-in-arms, went out from the courtyard into the patio which lay in front of the house, sloping down towards the entrance of the little valley in which the hacienda lay, and there, walking to and fro side by side, we talked long and earnestly of many things upon the doing of which my heart was set, and which might now be freely entered upon, seeing that the first object of our journey was already achieved.

Our talk, as you may well believe, was of war and not of love, though it would be hard to say which of the two at that hour most filled our secret thoughts; but, as I have told you, this English soldier was a true man, and I trusted him, knowing well that though, when the imperial Llautu once more encircled my brows, I might find courage to seek openly the love of her into whose eyes I had already seen him look with love, yet no falsehood or hatred could ever come between us. So I told him freely of the treasures that I had only to take from their hiding-places to make them mine, and spoke once more of the use that I would make of them, and took his advice as to the best method of that use.

This he was well able to give me, for I soon found that since he had resolved to throw in his lot with us, he had applied himself diligently to the task of studying the work that was to be ours, and seeking the best and readiest means of doing it. In Lima and Arequipa he had bought books and papers from which he had learned, as far as could be learned, the resources and power of the government of Peru, the number of its soldiers and their stations, the names and characters of the men who made the government, and of those who were opposed to them, seeking, as he told me was now ever the case in the countries of South America, to overturn the government and to take for themselves the honours and the profits of rule.

He told me which events soon proved to be the truth that not many months would pass by before civil war once more broke out. The President and the ministers, who were the tools of his tyranny, had oppressed the people with grievous burdens till they could endure them no longer, and already people in the towns of the interior were refusing to pay taxes, and were arming themselves in secret and meeting in bands among the mountains to practise themselves with their weapons, and make ready for the war which was so soon to come.

All this, as he soon showed me, was happening as though the Fates which rule the world had especially prepared it for my coming. The people had no leader save a man who had been himself a tyrant before, and none trusted him, but looked to him only to serve their own ends. Those who had the power were hated, and those who sought to seize it were distrusted.

But better than all was the utter, and, as far as all men, save ourselves, could see, the hopeless poverty of the country. Long years of plundering had emptied the treasury. Commerce was leaving the shores, and industries were languishing throughout the land. No man trusted his neighbour, for nearly all were in debt, and none could get paid, and my own people, the slaves of the children of the Spaniards, and the sport of their blind and brutal jesting, had borne their heavy burdens till their backs were sore, sore as their patient hearts were, and they would bear them no longer.

From the country which is called Ecuador, and which in my other life had been Quito, the kingdom of Atahuallpa, to the southern confines of Bolivia, which had once been part of the Land of the Four Regions, the dominions of my own father, all were ready to throw down their long-borne burdens and turn and rend their oppressors and those whose fathers had robbed them of the land that had once been theirs.

I well remember the very words in which Francis Hartness told me all this at much greater length than I have set it down here; and this is what he said when, as the stars were paling in the sky above us and the eastern mountains were beginning to stand out sharply against the growing light of the coming dawn, our long talk drew to its close,

’In short, Vilcaroya, if I were given to that sort of thing, I could believe that the very Fates themselves had conspired to prepare the way for you. You have come back to the world and to your own country at the very moment that these miserable wretches are getting ready to tear each other to pieces. The government is as hopeless as it is impossible, and the popular party, as they call themselves, have neither a leader that they can trust, nor money to buy weapons and pay their soldiers with. The treasury is empty, for, so to speak, almost the last dollar had been stolen. The native troops have had no regular pay for months, and I believe they would desert to a regiment if they once believed that you are what you are, and that you possess, as you do, the means of paying them well and honestly for their help.

’And, after all, I don’t know that even I, as a soldier, could call it desertion under such circumstances. You are of their own blood, the son of one of their ancient kings. These people, these Peruvians, are only mongrel descendants of those who have plundered and oppressed them for centuries. They owe them no allegiance that is worth the name; but you they would hail, not only as their lawful king, but almost as a god as, indeed, they could well be pardoned for doing, seeing what a marvellous fate yours has been.

’The only thing to do at present, and the only thing in which I see any difficulty, is to get into communication with them in such a way that they shall come to know you without the authorities knowing anything about you or your treasures. If that could be done, I think all the rest would be easy, and then I believe that the moment you raised the flag of the old Incas, they would flock to it in thousands, and after that it would only be a matter of military management and leadership.’

‘And if I will charge myself with that, my friend,’ I said, as he paused for a moment; ’if I will promise you that before six more suns have risen and set, the news of my coming shall be spread far and wide through the land, and yet in such a manner that none but the faithful, the Children of the Blood themselves, shall know anything that could work us harm, will you give me the help of your skill and your knowledge of the arts of this new warfare which is so strange to me? Will you lead my armies to battle against the oppressors of my people? Will you help me to free this land of my fathers from the yoke of its tyrants, and be the war-chieftain of my people, and stand by my throne in the days when the Rainbow Banner shall once more float over the battlements of the Sacsahuaman and the City of the Sun? If you will, you shall have riches and power and all that the heart of man can desire.’

‘Not all, I am afraid, Vilcaroya!’ he said, interrupting me with a laugh that had but little mirth in it. ’Not all; but that would not be in your hands to give. Never mind, it is the fortune of war, or perhaps I should rather say of love. But for the rest, yes. I believe your cause is a just and righteous one, and what I can do to help it I will. Henceforth we are brothers-in-arms, even though we may perhaps be rivals in love. There, you have my hand upon it, and with it the word of an Englishman who never broke his word yet to man or woman.’

How shall I tell you of the great joy with which those brave, honest-spoken words of his filled me? He, the man whom I had feared most, even as I had learned to love him most, was the first to bid me hope and hope I did now, in spite of all things. So, saying nothing, for my heart was too full for speech, I put my hand in his, and there, as the dawn brightened over the mountains, we clasped hands in silence and sealed our compact, and when the sun rose swiftly over the now glittering peaks, I let go his hand and bowed myself before it, greeting it as the bringer of a new day which was to end the long night that had fallen over my land and my people when the light of my last life was quenched in the darkness of my death-sleep.