Mr. Fortescue Part 35

I am in a beautiful garden, leaning against the body of the dead ostrich, a lovely girl is holding a cup of water to my parched lips, and an old man of benevolent aspect stands by her side.

"_Merci mademoiselle, vous etes bien bonne_," I murmur.

"Oh, father, he speaks French."

"This pa.s.ses comprehension. Are you French, monsieur?"

"No, English."

"English! This is stranger still. But whence come you, and who bound you on the nandu?"

"I will tell you--a little more water, I pray you, mademoiselle."

"Let him drink again, Angela--and dash some water in his face; he is faint."

"_Le pauvre homme!_ See how his lips are swollen! Do you feel better, monsieur?" she asked compa.s.sionately, again putting the cup to my lips.

"Much. A thousand thanks. I can answer your question now (to the old man).

I was bound on the nandu by order of the Queen of the Pachatupec Indians."

"The Pachatupec Indians! I have heard of them. But they are a long way off; more than a hundred leagues of desert lies between us and the Pachatupec country. Are you quite sure, monsieur?"

"Quite. And seeing that the nandu went at great speed, though not always in a direct line, and we must have been going fifteen or sixteen hours, I am not surprised that we have travelled so far."

"_Mon dieu!_ And all that time you have neither eaten nor drunk. No wonder you are exhausted! Come with us, and we will give you something more invigorating than water. You shall tell us your story afterward--if you will."

I tried to rise, but my stiffened and almost paralyzed limbs refused to move.

"Let us help you. Take his other arm, Angela--thus, Now!" And with that they each gave me a hand and raised me to my feet.

"How was it? Who killed the nandu?" I asked as I hobbled on between them.

"We saw the creature coming toward us with what looked like a dead man on his back, and as he did not seem disposed to stop I told Angela, who is a famous archer, to draw her bow and shoot him. He fell dead where he now lies, and when we saw that, though unconscious, you still lived, we unloosed you."

"And saved my life. Might I ask to whom I am indebted for this great service, and to what beautiful country the nandu has brought me?"

"Say nothing about the service, my dear sir. Helping each other in difficulty and distress is a duty we owe to Heaven and our common humanity. I count your coming a great blessing. You are the first visitor we have had for many years, and the Abbe Balthazar gives you a warm welcome to San Cristobal de Quipai. The name is of good omen, Quipai being an Indian word which signifies 'Rest Here,' and I shall be glad for you to rest here so long as it may please you."

"Nigel Fortescue, formerly an officer in the British Army, at present a fugitive and a wanderer, tenders you his warmest thanks, and gratefully accepts your hospitality--And now that we know each other, Monsieur l'Abbe, might I ask the favor of an introduction to the young lady to whom I owe my deliverance from the nandu?"

"She is Angela, monsieur. My people call her Senorita Angela. It pleases me sometimes to speak of her as Angela Dieu-donnee, for she was sent to us by G.o.d, and ever since she came among us she has been our good angel."

"I am sure she has. n.o.body with so sweet a face could be otherwise than good," I said, with an admiring glance at the beautiful girl which dyed the damask of her cheek a yet deeper crimson.

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 p.r.o.nounce), "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 pa.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sented, for I was spent with fatigue and faint with hunger. Angela, however, after glancing at me compa.s.sionately 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 G.o.d!" 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 cl.u.s.ters.

"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 k.n.o.bs 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 G.o.ds, 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."