Mr. Fortescue Part 36

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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tons, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sage 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 ca.n.a.ls and wooden pipes to the seash.o.r.e. 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sured 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-pa.s.ses which n.o.body without some strong motive would care to traverse, and pa.s.sing ships might be trusted to give a wide berth to an iron-bound coast dest.i.tute alike of harbors and trade.

So it came to pa.s.s 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 a.s.siduously 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 sh.o.r.es 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."