Mr. Fortescue by William Westall

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It was no mere compliment. In all my wanderings I have not beheld the
equal of Angela Dieu-donnee. Though I can see her now, though I learned to
paint in order that, however inadequately, I might make her likeness, I am
unable to describe her; words can give no idea of the comeliness of her
face, the grace of her movements, and the shapeliness of her form. I have
seen women with skins as fair, hair as dark, eyes as deeply blue, but none
with the same brightness of look and sweetness of disposition, none with
courage as high, temper as serene.

To look at Angela was to love her, though as yet I knew not that I had
regained my liberty only to lose my heart. My feelings at the moment
oscillated between admiration of her and a painful sense of my own
disreputable appearance. Bareheaded and shoeless, covered with the dust of
the desert, clad only in a torn shirt and ragged trousers, my arms and
legs scored with livid marks, I must have seemed a veritable scarecrow.
Angela looked like a queen, or would have done were queens ever so
charming, or so becomingly attired. Her low-crowned hat was adorned with
beautiful flowers; a loose-fitting alpaca robe of light blue set off her
form to the best advantage, and round her waist was a golden baldrick
which supported a sheaf of arrows. At her breast was an orchid which in
Europe would have been almost priceless, her shapely arms were bare to the
shoulder, and her sandaled feet were innocent of hosen.

I was wondering who could have designed this costume, in which there was a
savor of the pictures of Watteau and the court of Versailles, how so
lovely a creature could have found her way to a place so remote as San
Cristobal de Quipai, when the abbe resumed the conversation.

"Angela came to us as strangely and unexpectedly as you have come,
Monsieur Nigel" (he found my Christian name the easier to pronounce),
"and, like you, without any volition on her part or previous knowledge of
our existence. But there is this difference between you: she came as a
little child, you come as a grown man. Sixteen years ago we had several
severe earthquakes. They did us little harm down here, but up on the
Cordillera they wrought fearful havoc, and the sea rose and there was a
great storm, and several ships were dashed to pieces against our
iron-bound coast, which no mariner willingly approaches. The morning after
the tempest there was found on the edge of the cliffs a cot in which lay a
rosy-cheeked babe. How it came to pass none could tell, but we all thought
that the cot must have been fastened to a board, which became detached
from the cot at the very moment when the sea threw it on the land. The
babe was just able to lisp her name--'Angela,' which corresponded with the
name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I
greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even
the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two
different vessels. The little waif was brought to me and with me she has
ever since remained."

"And will always remain, dear father," said Angela, regarding the old
priest with loving reverence. "All that I lost in the storm has he been to
me--father, mother, instructor, and friend. You see here, monsieur, the
best and wisest man in all the world."

"You have had so wide an experience of the world and of men, _mignonne_!"
returned the abbe, with an amused smile. "Sir, since she could speak she
has seen two white men. You are the second.--Ah, well, if I were not
afraid you would think we had constituted ourselves into a mutual
admiration society I should be tempted to say something even more
complimentary about her."

"Say it, Monsieur l'Abbe, say it, I pray you," I exclaimed, eagerly, for
it pleased me more than I can tell to hear him sound Angela's praises.

"Nay, I would rather you learned to appreciate her from your own
observation. Yet I will say this much. She is the brightness of my life,
the solace of my old age, and so good that even praise does not spoil her.
But you look tired; shall we sit down on this fallen log and rest a few
minutes?"

To this proposal I gladly assented, for I was spent with fatigue and faint
with hunger. Angela, however, after glancing at me compassionately and
saying she would be back in a few minutes, went a little farther and
presently returned with a bunch of grapes.

"Eat these," she said, "they will refresh you."

It was a simple act of kindness; but a simple act of kindness, gracefully
performed, is often an index of character, and I felt sure that the girl
had a kind heart and deserved all the praise bestowed on her by the abbe.

I was thanking her, perhaps more warmly than the occasion required, when
she stopped the flow of my eloquence by reminding me that I had not yet
told them why the Indian queen caused me to be fastened on the back of the
_nandu_.

On this hint I spoke, and though the abbe suggested that I was too tired
for much talking, I not only answered the question but briefly narrated
the main facts of my story, reserving a fuller account for a future
occasion.

Both listened with rapt attention; but of the two Angela was the more
eager listener. She several times interrupted me with requests for
information as to matters which even among European children are of common
knowledge, for, though the abbe was a man of high learning and she an apt
pupil, her experience of life was limited to Quipai; and he had been so
long out of the world that he had almost forgotten it. As for news, he was
worse off than Fray Ignacio. He had heard of the First Consul but nothing
of the Emperor Napoleon, and when I told him of the restoration of the
Bourbons he shed tears of joy.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, fervently, "France is once more ruled by a son
of St. Louis. The tricolor is replaced by the _fleur-de-lis_. You are our
second good angel, Monsieur Fortescue; you bring us glad tidings of great
joy--You smile, but I am persuaded that Providence has led you hither in
so strange a way for some good purpose, and as I venture to hope, in
answer to my prayers; for albeit our lives here are so calm and happy, and
I have been the means of bringing a great work to a successful issue, it
is not in the nature of things that men should be free from care, and my
mind has lately been troubled with forebodings--"

"And you never told me, father!" said Angela, reproachfully. "What are
they, these forebodings?"

"Why should you be worried with an old man's difficulties? One has
reference to my people, the other--but never mind the other. It may be
that already a way has been opened.--If you feel sufficiently rested,
Monsieur Nigel, I think we had better proceed. A short walk will bring us
to San Cristobal, and it would be well for us to get thither before the
heat of the day."

I protested that the rest and the bunch of grapes had so much refreshed me
that I felt equal to a long walk, and we moved on.

"What a splendid garden!" I exclaimed for the third or fourth time as we
entered an alley festooned with trailing flowers and grape-vines from
which the fruit hung in thick clusters.

"All Quipai is a garden," said the abbe, proudly. "We have fruit and
flowers and cereals all the year round, thanks to the great _azequia_
(aqueduct) which the Incas built and I restored. And such fruit! Let him
taste a _chirimoya ma fille cherie_."

From a tree about fifteen feet high Angela plucked a round green fruit,
not unlike an apple, but covered with small knobs and scales. Then she
showed me how to remove the skin, which covered a snow-white juicy pulp of
exquisite fragrance and a flavor that I hardly exaggerated in calling
divine. It was a fruit fit for the gods, and so I said.

"We owe it all to the great _azequia_," observed the abbe. "See, it feeds
these rills and fills those fountains, waters our fields, and makes the
desert bloom like the rose and the dry places rejoice. And we have not
only fruit and flowers, but corn, coffee, cocoa, yuccas, potatoes, and
almost every sort of vegetable."

"Quipai is a land of plenty and a garden of delight."

"A most apt description, and so long as the great _azequia_ is kept in
repair and the system of irrigation which I have established is maintained
it will remain a land of plenty and a garden of delight."

"And if any harm should befall the _azequia_?"

"In that case, and if our water-supply were to fail, Quipai, as you see it
now, would cease to exist. The desert, which we are always fighting and
have so far conquered, would regain the mastery, and the mission become
what I found it, a little oasis at the foot of the Cordillera, supporting
with difficulty a few score families of naked Indians. One of these days,
if you are so disposed, you shall follow the course of the _azequia_ and
see for yourself with what a marvellous reservoir, fed by Andean snows,
Nature has provided us. But more of this another time. Look! Yonder is San
Cristobal, our capital as I sometimes call it, though little more than a
village."

The abbe said truly. It was little more than a village; but as gay, as
picturesque, and as bright as a scene in an opera--two double rows of
painted houses forming a large oval, the space between them laid out as a
garden with straight walks and fountains and clipped shrubs, after the
fashion of Versailles; in the centre a church and two other buildings, one
of which, as the abbe told me, was a school, the other his own dwelling.

The people we met saluted him with great humility, and he returned their
salutations quite _en grand seigneur_, even, as I thought, somewhat
haughtily. One woman knelt in the road, kissed his hand, and asked for his
blessing, which he gave like the superior being she obviously considered
him. It was the same in the village. Everybody whom we met or passed stood
still and uncovered. There could be no question who was master in San
Cristobal. Abbe Balthazar was both priest and king, and, as I afterward
came to know, there was every reason why he should be.

He kept a large establishment, for the country, and lived in considerable
state. On entering his house, which was surrounded by a veranda and
embowered in trees, the abbe, asked if I would like a bath, and on my
answering in the affirmative ordered one of the servants, all of whom
spoke Spanish, to take me to the bath-room and find me a suit of clothes.

The bath made me feel like another man, and the fresh garments effected as
great a change in my personal appearance. There was not much difficulty
about the fit. A cotton undershirt, a blue jacket with silver buttons, a
red sash, white breeches, loose at the knee, and a pair of sandals, and I
was fully attired. Stockings I had to dispense with. They were not in
vogue at San Cristobal.

When I was ready, the servant, who had acted as my valet, conducted me to
the dining-room, where I found Angela and the abbe.

"_Parbleu!_" exclaimed the latter, who occasionally indulged in
expressions that were not exactly clerical. "_Parbleu!_ I had no idea that
a bath and clean raiment could make so great an improvement in a man's
appearance. That costume becomes you to admiration, Monsieur Nigel. Don't
you think so, Angela?"

"You forget, father, that he is the only caballero I ever saw. Are all
caballeros like him?"

"Very few, I should say. It is a long time since I saw any; but even at
the court of Louis XV. I do not remember seeing many braver looking
gentlemen than our guest."

As I bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment Angela gave me a quick
glance, blushed deeply, and then, turning to the abbe, proposed that we
should take our places at the table.

I was so hungry that even an indifferent meal would have seemed a
luxurious banquet, but the repast set before us might have satisfied an
epicure. We had a delicious soup, something like mutton-cutlets,
land-turtle steaks, and capon, all perfectly cooked; vegetables and fruit
in profusion, and the wine was as good as any I had tasted in France or
Spain. After dinner coffee was served and the abbe inquired whether I
would retire to my room and have a sleep, or smoke a cigarette with him
and Angela on the veranda.

In ordinary circumstances I should probably have preferred to sleep; but I
was so fascinated with Mademoiselle Dieu-donnee, so excited by all that I
had seen and heard, so curious to know the history of this French priest,
who talked of the court of Louis XV., who had created a country and a
people, and contrived, in a region so remote from civilization, to
surround himself with so many luxuries, that I elected without hesitation
for the cigarettes and the veranda.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ABBE BALTHAZAR.

Though my wounds had not ceased their smarting nor my bones their aching
my happiness was complete. The splendid prospect before me, the glittering
peaks of the Cordillera, the gleaming waters of the far Pacific, the
gardens and fountains of San Cristobal, the charm of Angela's presence,
and the abbe's conversation made me oblivious to the past and careless of
the future. The hardships and perils I had lately undergone, my weary
wanderings in the wilderness, the dull monotony of the Happy Valley, the
passage of the Andes, my terrible ride on the _nandu_, all were forgotten.
The contrast between my by-gone miseries and present surroundings added
zest to my enjoyment. I felt as one suddenly transported from Hades to
Elysium, and it required an effort to realize that it was not all a dream,
destined to end in a rude awaking.

After some talk about Europe, the revolt of the Spanish colonies, and my
recent adventures, the abbe gave me an account of his life and adventures.
The scion of a noble French family, he had been first a page of honor at
Versailles, then an officer of the _garde du corps_, and among the gayest
of the gay. But while yet a youth some terrible event on which he did not
like to dwell--a disastrous love affair, a duel in which he killed one who
had been his friend--wrought so radical a change in his character and his
ideals that he resigned his commission, left the court, and joined the
Society of Jesus, under the name of Balthazar. Being a noble he became an
abbe (though he had never an abbey) as a matter of course, and full of
religious ardor and thirsting for distinction in his new calling he
volunteered to go out as a missionary among the wild tribes of South
America.

After long wanderings, and many hardships, Balthazar and two fellow
priests accidentally discovered Quipai, at that time a mere collection of
huts on the banks of a small stream which descended from the gorges of the
Cordillera only to be lost in the sands of the desert. But all around were
remains which showed that Quipai had once been a place of importance and
the seat of a large population--ruined buildings of colossal dimensions,
heaps of quarried stones, a cemetery rich in relics of silver and gold;
and a great _azequia_, in many places still intact, had brought down water
from the heart of the mountains for the irrigation of the rainless region
of the coast.

Balthazar had moreover heard of the marvellous system of irrigation
whereby the Incas had fertilized nearly the whole of the Peruvian desert;
and as he surveyed the ruins he conceived the great idea of restoring the
aqueduct and repeopling the neighboring waste. To this task he devoted his
life. His first proceeding was to convert the Indians and found a mission,
which he called San Cristobal de Quipai; his next to show them how to make
the most of the water-privileges they already possessed. A reservoir was
built, more land brought under cultivation, and the oasis rendered capable
of supporting a larger population. The resulting prosperity and the abbe's
fame as a physician (he possessed a fair knowledge of medicine) drew other
Indians to Quipai.

After a while the gigantic undertaking was begun, and little by little,
and with infinite patience and pain accomplished. It was a work of many
years, and when I travelled the whole length of the _azequia_ I marvelled
greatly how the abbe, with the means at his command, could have achieved
an enterprise so arduous and vast. The aqueduct, nearly twenty leagues in
length, extended from the foot of the snow-line to a valley above Quipai,
the water being taken thence in stone-lined canals and wooden pipes to the
seashore. In several places the _azequia_ was carried on lofty arches over
deep ravines: and there were two great reservoirs, both remarkable works.
The upper one was the crater of an extinct volcano, of unknown depth,
which contained an immense quantity of water. It took so long to fill that
the abbe, as he laughingly told me, began to think that there must be a
hole in the bottom. But in the end it did fill to the very brim, and
always remained full. The second reservoir, a dammed up valley, was just
below the first; it served to break the fall from the higher to the lower
level and receive the overflow from the crater.

A bursting of either of the reservoirs was quite out of the question; at
any rate the abbe so assured me, and certainly the crater looked strong
enough to hold all the water in the Andes, could it have been got therein,
while the lower reservoir was so shallow--the out-flow and the loss by
evaporation being equal to the in-take--that even if the banks were to
give way no great harm could be done.

I mention these particulars because they have an important bearing on
events that afterward befell, and on my own destiny.

Only a born engineer and organizer of untiring energy and illimitable
patience could have performed so herculean a labor. Balthazar was all
this, and more. He knew how to rule men despotically yet secure their
love. The Indians did his bidding without hesitation and wrought for him
without pay. In the absence of this quality his task had never been done.
On the other hand, he owed something to fortune. All the materials were
ready to his hand. He built with the stone quarried by the Incas. His work
suffered no interruption from frost or snow or rain. His very isolation
was an advantage. He had neither enemies to fear, friends to please, nor
government officers to propitiate.

On the landward side Quipai was accessible only by difficult and little
known mountain-passes which nobody without some strong motive would care
to traverse, and passing ships might be trusted to give a wide berth to an
iron-bound coast destitute alike of harbors and trade.

So it came to pass that, albeit the mission of Quipai was in the dominion
of the King of Spain, none of his agents knew of its existence, his writs
did not run there, and Balthazar treated the royal decree for the
expulsion of the Jesuits from South America (of which he heard two or
three years after its promulgation) with the contempt that he thought it
deserved. Nevertheless, he deemed it the part of prudence to maintain his
isolation more rigidly than ever, and make his communications with the
outer world few and far between, for had it become known to the
captain-general of Peru that there was a member of the proscribed order in
his vice-royalty, even at so out of the way a place as Quipai he would
have been sent about his business without ceremony. The possibility of
this contingency was always in the abbe's mind. For a time it caused him
serious disquiet; but as the years went on and no notice was taken of him
his mind became easier. The news I brought of the then recent events in
Spain and the revolt of her colonies made him easier. The viceroy would
have too many irons in the fire to trouble himself about the mission of
Quipai and its chief, even if they should come to his knowledge, which was
to the last degree improbable. We sat talking for several hours, and
should probably have talked longer had not the abbe kindly yet
peremptorily insisted on my retiring to rest.

Early next morning we started on an excursion to the valley lake, each of
us mounted on a fine mule from the abbe's stables, and attended by an
_arriero_. North as well as south of San Cristobal (as the village was
generally called) the country had the same garden-like aspect. There was
none of the tangled vegetation which in tropical forests impedes the
traveller's progress; except where they had been planted by the roadside
for protection from the sun, or bent over the water-courses, the trees
grew wide apart like trees in a park. Men and women were busy in the
fields and plantations, for the abbe had done even a more wonderful thing
than restoring the great _azequia_--converted a tribe of indolent
aborigines into an industrious community of husbandmen and craftsmen;
among them were carpenters, smiths, masons, weavers, dyers, and cunning
workers in silver and gold. The secret of his power was the personal
ascendancy of a strong man, the naturally docile character of his
converts, the inflexible justice which characterized all his dealings with
them, and the belief assiduously cultivated, that as he had been their
benefactor in this world he could control their destinies in the next.
Though he never punished he was always obeyed, and there was probably not
a man or woman under his sway who would have hesitated to obey him, even
to death.

The lake was small yet picturesque, its verdant banks deepening by
contrast the dark desolation of the arid mountains in which it was
embosomed. Some three thousand feet above it rose the extinct volcano, the
slopes of which in the days of the Incas were terraced and cultivated.
Angela and I half rode, half walked to the top; but the abbe, on the plea
that he had some business to look after, stayed at the bottom.

The crater was about eight hundred yards in diameter and filled nearly to
the brim with crystal water, which outflowed by a wide and well made
channel into the lake, the supply being kept up by the in-flow from the
_azequia_, whose course we could trace far into the mountains.

The view from our coigne of vantage was unspeakably grand. Behind us rose
the stupendous range of the Andes, with its snow-white peaks and smoking
volcanoes; before us the oasis of Quipai rolled like a river of living
green to the shores of the measureless ocean, whose shining waters in that
clear air and under that azure sky seemed only a few miles away, while, as
far as the eye could reach, the coast-line was fringed with the dreary
waste where I had so nearly perished.

The oasis, as I now for the first time discovered, was a valley, a broad
shallow depression in the desert falling in a gentle slope from the foot
of the Cordillera to the sea, whereby its irrigation was greatly
facilitated.

"How beautiful Quipai looks, and how like a river!" said Angela. "That is
what I always think when I come here--how like a river!"

"Who knows that long ago the valley was not the bed of a river!"

"It must be very long ago, then, before there was any Cordillera.
Rain-clouds never cross the Andes, and for untold ages there can have been
no rain here on the coast."

"You are right. Without rain you cannot have much of a river, and if the
_azequia_ were to fail there would be very little left of Quipai."

"Don't suggest anything so dreadful as the failure of the _azequia_. It is
the Palladium of the mission and the source of all our prosperity and
happiness. Besides, how could it fail? You see how solidly it is built,
and every month it is carefully inspected from end to end."

"It might be destroyed by an earthquake."

"You are pleased to be a Job's comforter, Monsieur Nigel. Damaged it might
be, but hardly destroyed, except in some cataclysm which would destroy
everything, and that is a risk which, like all dwellers in countries
subject to earthquakes, we must run. We cannot escape from the conditions
of our existence; and life is so pleasant here, we are spared so many of
the miseries which afflict our fellow-creatures in other parts of the
world--war, pestilence, strife, and want--that it were as foolish and
ungrateful to make ourselves unhappy because we are exposed to some remote
danger against which we cannot guard, as to repine because we cannot live
forever."

"You discourse most excellent philosophy, Mademoiselle Angela."

"Without knowing it, then, as Monsieur Jourdan talked prose."

"So! You have read Moliere?"

"Over and over again."

"Then you must have a library at San Cristobal."

"A very small one, as you may suppose; but a small library is not
altogether a disadvantage, as the abbe says. The fewer books you have the
oftener you read them; and it is better to read a few books well than many
superficially."

"The abbe has been your sole teacher, I suppose?"

"Has been! He is still. He has even written books for me, and he is the
author of some of the best I possess--But don't you think, monsieur, we
had better descend to the valley? The abbe will have finished his business
by this time, and though he is the best man in the world he has the fault
of kings; he does not like to wait."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

I BID YOU STAY.

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