HOW DJAMA PAID HIS DEBT

It is one of the mysteries of this lower life of ours that men, meaning to do good in all honesty of heart, may yet do evil in the doing of it, and it was thus with me in the hour of my first triumph and rejoicing.

I had pondered long and deeply over the strange treachery of Djama, and I had talked of it with Francis Hartness and the professor until I had come to see that he was in truth sorely afflicted with that madness which is born of the lust of gold, which, as they told me, is a disease of the soul that makes timid men rash and mild ones fierce and cunning, and may even turn the gentleness of woman into the pitiless rage of beasts of prey.

It was through thinking of this that I came to see that I was by no means blameless myself for his madness and the treachery that had come from it.

In my own days and among my own people gold was held precious only for its beauty and its usefulness. We had not learned the art of making it into money and buying men’s soul and bodies with it, but I had already lived enough of my new life to see that now, save for the few, gold was all and honour nothing; and knowing this, I should also have known what I was doing when I showed Djama the treasures in the Hall of Gold. The sight of them had made him mad, and, as my hand had shown them to him, the blame of what he had done in his madness was in part mine.

All this I remembered in the hour when my soul was filled with joy and my heart warm with love, and I thought how great a pleasure I should give to her who had given me the better part of my own joy if I looked upon Djama with pity and forgiveness and did an act of mercy as the first deed of my new reign.

So, when the ceremonial of my crowning was over, I bade Tupac take some of my body-guard and bring him before me from the place where he had been lodged after his release from his golden cell, and at the same time I quieted the fears of Joyful Star by telling her what was in my heart concerning him.

They brought him unbound, but well guarded by soldiers with bayonets on their rifles, up the broad avenue which the parted throng had made across the square in front of my throne.

I saw him stare wildly about him as he came near, gazing at the splendid sun-lit pageant like a man in a dream, or one just awakened into another world, as I had been after my long death-sleep. But when he came near, and saw me sitting in my royal state with Joyful Star on my right and Golden Star on my left, both robed as princesses of the Ancient Blood, his face grew dark with passion, and his eyes, losing their wonder, gazed in fixed and furious hate at me the man who was going to give him his life, and much more that he had coveted besides.

They placed him between two soldiers before me at the foot of the terrace steps above which my throne had been set, and I was about to speak and greet him kindly, when his anger already got the better of him, and, with a mocking smile on his lips, he said in a loud, rough voice that was most unlike his own quiet, even tones,

’Well, your Majesty, as I suppose you think yourself for the present, I expected something like this to be brought out into the midst of your fellow-savages and sentenced like a felon before my own sister and the woman who, like yourself, owes her life to me!’

Then he laughed one of his strange, joyless laughs, and went on before I could reply,

’Well, I suppose I mustn’t grumble. You have won, and to the victor go the spoils. Now that you have apparently bought the girl who was once my sister with your gold, and I have given you your own sister-wife back, you will be able to try an interesting experiment in your old form of matrimony ’

I saw Joyful Star shrink back in her seat and turn her head away from him with a little cry as he said these evil words, and they angered me so, that forgetting they were spoken by a man who stood helpless before me I cried,

’Silence, liar and speaker of evil! or your next words shall be the last that human ears shall hear you speak. Are you still mad, or have you forgotten that you were once a man?’

He smiled such a smile as you may have seen on the lips of one who has died in agony, and said with a swift change in his voice,

‘I beg your Majesty’s pardon, and and the ladies’ too. It was a most ungentlemanly thing to say, and one should not forget one’s manners on the threshold of the next world if there is one. But come, your Majesty, you are wasting your valuable time, and keeping all these interesting savages of yours waiting. You’ll find I shall take it quietly enough. What do you propose that it shall be something with boiling oil or red-hot pincers in it?’

I knew that a man who could speak thus, believing that he was about to die, must be in a pitiful plight, and so I answered him sternly, and yet without anger,

’Laurens Djama, I have not brought you here to jest with you, nor yet, as you think, to condemn you to die, though your life is justly forfeit to me and my people, whom you would have betrayed again to their oppressors. Now, listen! You brought me back from death to life, and for my life I will give you yours, and for Golden Star’s I will pay you the price agreed on and something more. It was by my foolish act that the madness of the gold-hunger came upon you, and for that I will give you your freedom; but not now, for that would not be safe for me or my people, since you have betrayed us once, and, knowing what you do, might do so again. You shall be taken hence to a pleasant and fertile valley, where you shall have all freedom, save permission to leave it until this war is over and I am undisputed lord of the land of my fathers. Then you shall take the wealth that shall be yours and go to your own country, or wherever you please, so long as you do not remain in mine, for here there is no place for you, since my people do not forgive as easily as I do. Now I have spoken; if there is anything more that you can ask, and I can give with safety, ask it.’

Most men who had sinned as he had done would have very willingly taken such forgiveness, and Laurens Djama might have taken it but for a seemingly small thing. While I was speaking to him his eyes had wandered from mine and were looking into Golden Star’s. As I ceased I felt her hands clasping my arm, and heard her voice say tremblingly in our own tongue,

’Save me, my lord and brother, save me! Evil Eyes is looking into my heart and turning it cold!’

This Djama saw, though he did not understand her words, and the sight brought the madness into his blood again. He shouted with a voice like the cry of a wild beast in pain,

’Curse you! I will have neither life nor liberty from you, but I’ll have your life for mine, and that will pay me better!’

As the last word left his lips he made a movement so quick that my eyes could not follow it. The next instant he had wrenched the rifle from the hands of the soldier on his right hand and levelled it at me. Even as he did so Joyful Star flung herself with a scream upon my breast and Hartness sprang forward from behind my throne-seat.

The rifle flashed. I heard a hissing sound close to my ear and a deep groan and the fall of a body behind me. In the same moment Djama was seized and flung to the ground, where he lay quite still and silent. I rose to my feet, clasping Joyful Star for the first time in my arms, and looked round. Hartness stood beside me unharmed, but old Ullullo, the first friend that I had made in my new life among my own people, lay dead behind my throne with a bullet through his forehead.

I had not forgotten that old training which taught an Inca warrior to look on near-approaching death with unmoved eyes and unshaken heart, and this was only such a hazard as I had taken a score of times before. I bade Hartness lead Ruth and Golden Star into the temple behind us, so that they should not see what was about to be done. Then I took my place on the throne again and ordered Djama to be raised and stood on his feet.

He rose of himself, very pale but calm and strong in his own evil strength, fearing nothing, as became a man for whom death had no terrors and, it might be, few secrets. We looked each other in the eyes in silence, and in the midst of an utter stillness that had fallen on the vast throng, until Hartness came back. Then I said,

’That is enough, Laurens Djama. Choose now what death you will die, but, for your own sake and Joyful Star’s, choose a quick one.’

Although my voice was as the voice of doom to him, yet he did not quail even then, for if his heart was black it was very strong, and fear had never entered into it. He drew himself up to the full height of his stature and, looking me full in the eyes, he said as quietly as I had ever heard him speak,

’That choice is always mine, whether you give it to me or not. You have threatened me with death before and I have told you that you could not kill me. Now watch and see if I spoke the truth.’

Then, with a soldier holding each of his arms and two others grasping his shoulders, he drew a quick, deep, gasping breath. The blood rushed into his face till its pallor became purple. The next instant it became deathly white again. His jaw dropped, his eyes grew fixed and blindly staring, and then his shape seemed to shrink together like an empty bag, and he sank down between those who were holding him.

They pulled him upright again, and his head dropped forward on his breast. He was dead dead as though the Llapa itself had struck him and so Laurens Djama, master of the arts of life and death, passed out of the world of living men by the act of his own will, though not of his own hand.