“I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
Who feed, and hoard, and sleep, and know not me.”
TENNYSON.
FRAY FERNANDO has been nearly a year in his new home. But it seems a mockery to call it by that sacred name: since not to any living thing was Cerro Blanco a home in the true sense of the word. Yet between forty and fifty miners, with their families, ate, drank, and slept in the cluster of cabins that nestled, almost literally, in a cleft of the rock, for protection against the stormy winds of the Andes. These cabins were built of adobes, or mud-bricks dried in the sun; and were thatched, very neatly and carefully, with the strong grass called ychu. All this work had been done, before the arrival of the Black people, by the Indians of the valley, as part of the labor required from them by way of tribute to their lord. They were also obliged to provide the little colony with the necessaries of life. At stated intervals they might be seen treading the steep and winding mountain-paths in long procession, bearing on their heads or their shoulders large baskets of maize, of potatoes, or of quinoa—the rice of the country—as food for the Black people. Nor would they fail to bring also a couple of alpacas, and a good supply of chica, or native beer, to suit the more luxurious tastes of the Spanish intendant of the mine, and his servants. For in that elevated situation few things would grow (at least, without very careful cultivation), except stunted grass and little mountain-flowers, mostly blue and yellow.
Still higher than the village—indeed, on the very summit of the mountain—was the mine, which was worked in rude and primitive fashion. The ore extracted from the earth by the labor of the Black people was smelted, after the manner of the Indians, in a large oven made of clay, and placed in such a situation that the strong mountain-winds seldom failed effectually to fan the furnace. The gold thus obtained was transmitted twice a year to the intendant of Nasca, who accounted for it to his lord, Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano.
Some strong motive was certainly necessary to make a lengthened residence in such a spot tolerable to a free man, who could go elsewhere if he would. The intendant, Diego Rascar, his four Spanish and two Creole servants, were bound to their post by the strong cords of avarice. But Fray Fernando had no such tie. His life was very empty; there was neither the love of gold, nor, to speak truth, the love of souls, to fill it. He did his duty, so far as he understood it, to his dusky flock. He baptized the infants; he married the young men and maidens; he buried the dead. He even tried to repress gross crimes amongst the black people, and to prevent gross cruelties on the part of the Spaniards: he sought to keep the latter from lapsing into utter heathenism, and he taught the former to hasten to the little chapel at the sound of the bell, and to fall on their knees at the elevation of the host. It did not occur to him that he ought to teach them anything more, or that it would be possible to do so. The Negro slaves were savages, but one grade removed from the lowest type; a type differing very greatly and very sadly from the imaginary picture of the "noble and virtuous savage" which a sickly and sentimental civilization has amused itself by delineating.
With these degraded beings—whom, in his pride, he accounted scarcely human—Fray Fernando had nothing in common; and he felt nothing towards them save contempt and disgust, sometimes mingled with pity, stirred by their sufferings. How could it have been otherwise? With deep truth has it been said, “There is but one Mediator between man and man, as well as between God and man—the man Christ Jesus." But Fray Fernando knew the man Christ Jesus not at all as Mediator; he only knew him as Judge. He could not therefore say, with the noble Las Casas, "I have left in the Indies Jesus Christ our Lord, suffering stripes and afflictions and crucifixions, not once, but thousands of times, at the hands of the Spaniards." The love that embraces all men for the sake of Him who took man's nature upon Him, and delighted to call Himself the Son of man, was as far above Fray Fernando's comprehension as the brilliant stars of the Southern Cross were above his head. And thus it was that in that barren lonely place no love, human or divine, came to soothe and soften his heart, and to efface the deep, jagged characters graven there by the iron pen of pain.
Could the beauties of Nature have taken the place of human interests, Fray Fernando need not have felt forlorn, even on the summit of Cerro Blanco. He had but to ascend the height where the miners' shaft had been sunk, to command a view sublime and glorious as the imagination could conceive. Far above, the magnificent snow-clad peaks of the Andes pierced the cloudless sky; while as far beneath, the rich and cultivated vale of Nasca wound like a variegated thread from the mountain's base through the sandy desert to the distant ocean. It is true that often, while the mountain-peaks glistened in sunshine, a thick veil of mist obscured all that lay beneath; yet even then the scene had a wild, weird grandeur of its own.
Will it be believed that Fray Fernando's steps but seldom led him to the spot that commanded such a prospect? Not that he was unimpressed by its sublimity; rather otherwise,—he felt it too keenly. The everlasting hills shadowed and oppressed his spirit with the sense of a Power and Presence too awful and too near for his peace. "Surely God is in this place!" was the language of his heart; and, unhappily, God was a terror to him. He desired nothing so much as to forget Him; or, if that had been possible, to hide himself in secret places where He could not see him.
From part of the pathway between the mine and the galpón, or square—as tilt miners' village was called—might be seen the mountain-pass by which travelers sometimes made their way from the valleys of the coast into the interior of the country. Such travelers, if Spaniards, were usually glad to accept shelter and hospitality from the little mining colony; and it need not be said that the intelligence they brought with them from the civilized world was considered ample payment by the exiles. But if the wayfarers were of Indian race, their fleet footsteps only grew all the fleeter until the lair of the hated and dreaded Spaniards was well out of sight.
It became a habit with Fray Fernando to walk to the spot whence the pass could be seen. Why he did this it is not easy to say. Perhaps, in spite of himself, he clung to the shadow of the social life now shut out from him; or perhaps he dreaded visitors rather than hoped for them. However this may have been, a restless impulse seemed to drive him thither two or three times in the day, and sometimes even late at night. But this might have been because he slept little.
One bright, cold, moonlight night he was taking this walk as usual, when the sound of a wild, peculiar chant, somewhat mellowed by distance, broke upon his ear. Startled, but not greatly surprised, he paused and listened. "Yes," thought he,” it must be so!—Those five civilized Spaniards, who are lords and masters here, and bound to show these black people an example of Christian living, have made themselves drunk with new chica,—and the most active and daring of the slaves have managed to elude their vigilance, and to steal out of their quarters for the purpose of enacting some forbidden and detestable heathen rite.”
Guided by his ear, Fray Fernando bent his steps towards the spot whence the sounds proceeded. On a little grassy plateau amongst the rocks, some dozen Black people were engaged in performing a wild mystic dance. Hand in hand they moved; now keeping time to some barbarous tune led by one of their number—now setting time and tune at defiance, and leaping, shouting, screaming like hideous maniacs. But the unexpected appearance of the monk's gray cowl and mantle brought the weird ceremony to a hasty close.
“Shame, shame on you!" he cried, as the dusky group scattered in all directions. "Shame on you!" he repeated once again, advancing to the center, and raising his arm in a threatening attitude. "You— Christian men, neofitos, reducidos! —you to return to these vile heathen abominations—to worship the devil!—you who have been taught to know the one living and true God, who made heaven and earth, and all that in them is! Are you not afraid lest He strike you dead, and cast you into the fire that burneth forever and ever?”
The Black people were far from comprehending every word in this address, yet they well understood its general import, and were duly impressed by the solemn tone and threatening gestures of the speaker. They were thoroughly cognizant also of the fact that the Spaniards were the masters and they the slaves. They fled in all directions with the activity of fear; some clambering up the rocks, some running down them, and others hiding in their crevices. Few stayed to hear the cogent and thoroughly intelligible peroration with which the friar concluded his harangue:—
“If there be a man among you not found within his quarters ere the moon has passed from beneath yonder cloud, Señor Diego shall reckon with him in the morning.”
One only of the Black people—a stalwart ebony giant, recently brought from the wilds of Africa, where he had been a petty chieftain—stood his ground fearlessly, and looked Fray Fernando boldly in the face.
"You, Pepe!" said the monk. "I expected better things from you.”
The African threw out his great bare arms with a gesture of despairing sorrow.
“What would you?" said he, in broken Spanish.—"If we worship the Zombi, the Spaniards scourge us, and we die;—if we worship not the Zombi, he sends the small-pox, and we die. —Either way, we die.”
“Not so, Pepe," the monk answered more gently. "The Zombi is an evil spirit, a devil: he cannot harm you if you trust in God, for God is stronger than he. Put your confidence in God and in our Lady, and no evil can befall you.”
“Look, padre," said the negro: "I said to our Lady the prayer you taught me; yet all the same, Señor Diego—”
But, not waiting to finish his sentence, he turned quickly, first his head, then his whole body—and bounding or scrambling over whatever rocky impediments lay before him, he began a headlong career down the hill towards the pass that wound beneath it. His senses, sharpened by the exigencies of his previous savage life, told him correctly that a party of travelers halted there, and were calling for guidance or help of some kind, aware that the mining village was at hand. He knew well that his services in bringing them safely thither would be rewarded with a holiday, plenty of sora, or spirits, and certain other indulgences which he highly valued.
Soon as Fray Fernando understood the matter, he too hastened to the nearest point whence the pass could be seen. In the struggling moonlight he discerned a little band of Spaniards on horseback, with glittering calques, and a long file of attendant Indians with burdens on their shoulders. He saw the leader engaged in an earnest parley with Pepe; and soon became aware that the party had put themselves under his guidance, and would reach the galpón in a few minutes.
Rather ashamed of the state of things they were likely to find there, the monk quickened his steps, that he might give warning of their approach. Diego and his servants were aroused, with difficulty, from their heavy slumbers, and soon every soul in the galpón was astir. Fortunately, food was plentiful,—the Indians of the valley having brought their tribute recently. The flesh of the alpaca was prepared as speedily as possible by the Negro women, and set before the Spaniards with cakes of maize and skins of chica. Nor were the Indians forgotten. Fray Fernando pitied these poor people, who seemed exhausted with fatigue, and benumbed by the cold of the mountains, to which they were unaccustomed. He gave them maize and chica, and found room for them to sleep in the huts of the Black people. While busied in these kindly duties, he noticed amongst them, with awakened feelings of warmer compassion, a boy about ten years old, beautiful in form and feature, and distinguished from the rest by his peculiar costume. Unlike these, whose clothing was coarse and scanty, this child wore a pretty tunic of fine white cotton, fastened on each shoulder by some precious stone. He was bound to one of his adult companions, as a prisoner whose safe keeping was considered an object of importance. Fray Fernando gave him some fruit, which the boy took with a look half shy, half confiding, in his dark eyes, large and soft as those of the mountain antelope. But almost immediately the little hands dropped their burden, and the weary child sank down at the feet of his companion in a profound sleep.
After he had seen the Indians comfortably accommodated, Fray Fernando repaired to Diego's "house" (so called by way of eminence), to sup with the Spaniards, and to hear the news from the civilized world. But they had none. Their leader, calling himself Don Ramon de Virves, was on his return from an expedition along the coast, undertaken to "reduce" some of the still independent Indians under the dominion of the King of Spain and the Pope of Rome. So he styled it, in high-sounding Castilian; but in plain rough English, it was a marauding expedition. He had amassed in its course considerable treasures in gold and silver, a few valuable specimens of emerald and turquoise, and some other things not deserving particular enumeration. He seemed pleased to find a churchman in that remote solitude; and said he should be glad to confess and hear mass before going on his way next morning.
Fray Fernando guessed the reason for this request. Men did not usually come back from such excursions as Don Ramon's with clean hands. He naturally would find it easier to pour the tale of his sins into the ears of a stranger whose face he might never see again, than to lay it bare for the inspection of one whose accusing eye might meet his too often, and with too much meaning for his peace. The monk granted his desire, all the more readily because the morrow happened to be a saint's day—the festival of St. Joseph. The matter settled, Fray Fernando speedily quitted a scene of coarse revelry that had no charms for him.
Late as it now was, he could not sleep. But sleeplessness was no new thing with him; in broken rest he was growing continually worse. Too often did he spend the long silent hours of the night in living over the past—a record not to be dwelt on without keen and bitter anguish. At times, when sleep overcame him, he would start in terror at hideous forms and faces that seemed to stand before him. One especially, a face familiar and loved in early youth; but pale, distorted, and with strange fear and horror in dilated eyes. In truth, of late, since his coming to Cerro Blanco, a change had passed over him that cost him many a cold and secret shudder. Sometimes these visions haunted him when not asleep. Sometimes, while sitting with eyes open, and senses all awake, they drew near—they seemed to come within his grasp—and then would vanish—how and whither he could not tell. Even in the solitary mud-cabin called his cell from habit, he never felt alone, and least of all at night.
In order to banish these "temptations of the evil one" (as he called them), he tried fasting. This only aggravated the symptoms of his malady. He tried prayer—still they came. But his prayer was not real prayer; it was merely the repetition of a form,—a shadow, a lifeless thing.
And yet, sometimes, prayer and fasting gave relief—relief that almost grew to ecstasy. He dreamed that other visions might one day come—visions of glory, not of terror. Sinful as he was, such grace might be given him—and on some blessed day the white wings of angels might suddenly descend, and sweep away the demon host that pursued and tortured him.
Fray Fernando now stood at a place where two ways met. One of two destinies awaited him: either to become a saint, after Rome's most approved pattern, or—to become insane.