The Romance of Golden Star ...

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Djama pulled the curtain aside, and said in a hoarse whisper,--

'Look, it has been hard work, and terrible work, too, but I have
succeeded. Do you see, he is breathing!'

The professor stared wide-eyed at the white pillow on which lay the head
of what, a week before, had been his mummy. Now it was the head of a
living man; the pale bronze of the skin was clear and moist with the dew
of life; the lips were no longer brown and dry, but faintly red and
slightly parted, and the counterpane, which was pulled close up under
the chin, was slowly rising and falling with the regular rhythm of a
sleeper's breathing. He looked from the face of him who had been dead
and was alive again to the face of the man whose daring science and
perfect skill had wrought the unholy miracle, and then he shrank back
from the bedside, pulling Djama with him, and whispering,--

'Good God, it is even more awful than it is wonderful! How did you do
it?'

'That is my secret,' whispered Djama, his dry lips shaping themselves
into a ghastly smile, 'and for all the treasures that that man ever saw,
I wouldn't tell it to a living soul, or do such hideous work again. I
tell you I have seen life and death fighting together for two days and
nights in this room--not, mind you, as they fight on a deathbed, but the
other way, and I would rather see a thousand men die than one more come
back out, of death into life. You see, he is sleeping now. He opened his
eyes just before daybreak this morning--that's nearly ten hours ago--but
if I lived ten thousand years I should never forget that one look he
gave me before he shut them again. Since then he has slept, and I stood
by that bed testing his pulse and his breathing for eight hours before I
wired you. Then I knew he would live, and so I sent for you.'

The professor looked at his friend with an involuntary and unconquerable
aversion rising in his heart against him; an aversion that was half
fear, half horror, and then he remembered that he himself had a share in
the fearful work which had been done--a work that could not now be
undone without murder.

With another backward look at the bed, he said, in a whisper that was
almost a smothered groan,--

'When will he wake?'

Before Djama could reply, the question was answered by a faint rustle,
and a low, long-drawn sigh from the bed. They looked and saw the Inca's
face turned towards them, and two fever-bright eyes shining through the
curtains.

'He is awake already, two hours sooner than I expected,' said Djama, in
a voice that he strove vainly to keep steady. 'Come, now, you are the
only man on earth who can talk to him. Let us see if he has come back to
reason as well as to life.'

'Yes, I will try,' said the professor, faintly. He took a couple of
trembling steps. Then the lights in the room began to dance, the
whitewashed walls reeled round him, and he pitched forward and fell
unconscious by the side of the bed.

When he came to himself he was lying on the floor of the laboratory, out
of sight of the bed, behind a great cupboard, glass-doored and filled
with bottles. Djama was kneeling beside him. A strong smell of ammonia
dominated the other smells peculiar to a laboratory, and his brow was
wet with the spirit that Djama was gently rubbing on it with his hand.

'What have I been doing?' he said, as, with the other's assistance, he
got up into a sitting position and looked stupidly about him. 'It isn't
true, that is it, I really saw--Good God no, it can't be; it's too
horrible. I must have dreamt it.'

'Nonsense, my dear fellow, nonsense! I should have thought you would
have had better nerves than that. Come, take a nip of this, and pull
yourself together. There is nothing so very horrible about it for you.
Now, if you had had the actual work to do--'

'Then it _is_ true! You really have brought him back to life again? That
was him I saw lying on the bed?' He looked up at Djama as he spoke with
a half-inquiring, half-frightened glance. His voice was weak and
unsteady, like the voice of a man who has been stunned by some terrible
shock, and is still dazed with the fear and wonder of it.

'Yes, of course it was,' said Djama; 'but I can tell you, I should have
hesitated before I introduced you so suddenly, if I hadn't thought that
the nerves of an old traveller like you would have been a good deal
stronger than they seem to be. It's a very good job that His Highness
was only about half conscious himself when you collapsed, or you might
have given him a shock that would have killed him again.'

'Again?' said the professor, echoing the last word as he got up slowly
to his feet. 'That sounds queer, doesn't it, to talk of killing a man
_again_? I am more sorry than I can say that I was weak enough to let my
feelings overcome me in such a ridiculous fashion. However, I am all
right now. Give me another drain of that brandy of yours, and then let
us talk. Is he still awake?'

'No, he dozed off again almost immediately, and you have been here about
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Do you think you can stand another
look at him?'

'Oh, certainly,' said the professor, who, as a matter of fact, felt a
trifle ashamed of himself and his weakness, and was anxious to do
something that would restore his credit. He followed the doctor out into
the laboratory again, and stood with him for some moments without
speaking by the Inca's bedside. He was sleeping very quietly, and his
breathing seemed to be stronger and deeper than it had been. He had
slightly shifted his position, and was lying now half turned on his
right side, with his right cheek on the pillow.

'You see he has moved,' whispered Djama. 'That shows that muscular
control has been re-established. We shall have him walking about in a
day or so. Ah! he is dreaming, and of something pleasant, too. Look at
his lips moving into a smile. Poor fellow, just fancy a man dreaming of
things that happened three hundred years ago, and waking up to find
himself in another world. I'll be bound he is dreaming about his wife or
sweetheart, and we shall have to tell him, or rather you will, that she
has been a mummy for three centuries. Look now, his lips are moving; I
believe he is going to say something. See if you can hear what it is?'

The professor stooped down and held his ear so close that he could feel
on his cheek the gentle fanning of the breath that had been still for
three centuries. Then the Inca's lips moved again, and a soft sighing
sound came from them, and in the midst of it he caught the words,--

'_Cori-Coyllur, Nustallipa, Nusta mi!_'

Then there came a long, gentle sigh. The Inca's lips became still again,
shaped into a very sweet and almost womanly smile, as though his vision
had passed and left him in a happy, dreamless slumber.

'What did he say?' whispered Djama. 'Were you able to understand it?'

'Yes,' said the professor, 'yes, and you were right about the subject of
his dream. Come away, in case we wake him, and I will tell you.'

They went to the other end of the laboratory, and the professor went on,
still speaking in a low, half-whisper,--

'Poor fellow, I am afraid we have incurred a terribly heavy debt to him.
What he said meant, "Golden Star, my princess, my darling!" So you see
you were right, but poor Golden Star has been dead three hundred years
and more--that is, at least, if his Golden Star is the same as the
heroine of the tradition.'

'What tradition?' asked Djama.

'It's too long a story to tell you now, but if she is the same, then our
Inca's name is Vilcaroya, and he is the hero of the strangest story,
and, thanks to you, the strangest fate that the wildest romancer could
imagine. However, the story must keep, for I wouldn't spoil it by
cutting it short. The principal question now is--what are we going to do
with him? We can't keep him here, of course?'

'No, certainly not,' replied Djama, with knitted brows and faintly
smiling lips. 'His Highness must be cared for in accordance with his
rank and our expectations. I shall have him taken into the house and
properly nursed.'

'But what about your sister? You will frighten her to death if you take
in a living patient that has been dead for three hundred years.'

'Not if we manage it properly; there will be no need to tell Ruth the
story yet, at anyrate. I'll tell her that I am going to receive a
patient who is suffering from a mysterious disease unknown to medical
science. I'll say I picked him up in the Oriental Home in Whitechapel,
and have brought him here to study him, and you and I must smuggle him
into the house and put him to bed some time when she is out of the way.
Then I'll instal her as nurse; in fact, she will do that for herself;
and as there is no chance of her learning anything from him, we can
break the truth to her by degrees, and when His Highness is well enough
to travel we'll all be off to Peru and come back millionaires, if you
can only persuade him to tell you the secret of his treasure-houses.'

That night the doctor and the professor took turns in watching by the
bedside of their strange patient, whose slumber became lighter and
lighter until, towards midnight, he got so restless and apparently
uneasy that Djama considered that the time had come to wake him and see
if he was able to take any nourishment. So he set the professor to work,
warming some chicken broth over a spirit lamp, and mixing a little
champagne and soda-water in one glass and brandy and water in another.
Meanwhile, he filled a hypodermic syringe with colourless fluid out of a
little stoppered bottle, and then turned the sheet down and injected the
contents of the syringe under the smooth, bronze skin of the Inca's
shoulder. He moved slightly at the prick of the needle, then he drew
two or three deep breaths, and suddenly sat up in bed and stared about
him with wide open eyes, full, as they well might be, of inquiring
wonder.

The professor, who had turned at the sound of the hurried breathing, saw
him as he raised himself, and heard him say in the clear and somewhat
high-pitched tone of a dweller among the mountains,--

'Has the morning dawned again for the Children of the Sun? Am I truly
awake, or am I only dreaming that the death-sleep is over? Where is
Golden Star, and where am I? Tell me--you who have doubtless brought me
back to the life we forsook together--was it last night or how many
nights or moons ago?'

The words came slowly at first, like those of a man still on the
borderland between sleep and waking; but each one was spoken more
clearly and decisively than the one before it, and the last sentence was
uttered in the strong, steady tones of a man in full possession of his
faculties.

'Come here, Lamson,' said Djama, a trifle nervously; 'bring the soup
with you, and some brandy, though I don't think he needs it. Do you
understand what he said?'

[Illustration: "Am I only dreaming that the death-sleep is over?"

_To face page 26._]

'Yes,' replied the professor, coming to the bedside with a cup of soup
in one hand and a glass of brandy and water in the ether. Both hands
trembled as he set the cup and the glass down on a little table. He
looked at the Inca like a man looking at a re-embodied spirit, and said
to him in Quichua,--

'I am not he who has brought you back to life, but my friend here, who
is a great and skilled physician, and master of the arts of life and
death. You are in his house, and safe, for we are friends, and have
nursed you back to health and waking life after your long sleep.'

'But Golden Star,' said the Inca, interrupting him with a flash of
impatience in his eyes. 'Where is she--my bride who went with me into
the shades of death? Have you not brought her, too, back to life?'

The professor stared in silence at the strange speaker of these strange
words, which told him so plainly that the old legend of the death-bridal
of Vilcaroya-Inca and Golden Star was now no legend at all, but a true
story which had come down almost unchanged from generation to
generation. Then an infinite pity filled his heart for this lonely
wanderer from another age, whose friends and kindred had been dead for
centuries, and whose very nation was now only a shadowy name on a
half-forgotten page of history.

'What does he say?' said Djama, breaking in upon his reverie. 'I suppose
he wants to know where he is, and what has become of that sweetheart of
his he was dreaming about?'

'Yes,' replied the professor; 'but you won't understand properly until I
have told you the story. Poor fellow! I suppose we shall have to tell
him the ghastly truth. Good Heavens! fancy telling a man that his wife
has been dead for three hundred years or more! Look here, Djama, this
business can't stop here, you know. What a fool I was, after all, not to
see if there wasn't another chamber beside the one I found him in! Of
course there must be, and I have no doubt she is lying there at this
present moment. We shall have to go and find her, and you must restore
her as you have done him. Phew! where is it all going to end, I wonder!'

'And suppose we can't find her, or suppose I fail, even if I can bring
myself to undertake that horrible work all over again?' said Djama,
looking almost fearfully at the Inca, who was still sitting up in the
bed glancing mutely from one to the other, as though waiting for an
answer to his question. Then, keeping his voice as steady as he could,
the professor told him the story of his resuscitation, addressing him by
his own name and ending by asking him if he remembered when he and
Golden Star had devoted themselves to die together, as the tradition
said they had done.

'Yes, I remember!' said Vilcaroya, with brightening eyes and faintly
flushing cheeks. 'How could I forget it? It was when the bearded
strangers from the north had come and taken the usurper Atahuallpa
prisoner in the midst of his conquering host at Cajamarca. It was after
the Inca Huascar had been slain by stealth with a traitor's knife. It
was on the night of the feast of Raymi, when our Father the Sun had left
the Sacred Fleece unkindled, and when was fulfilled the prophecy that
the night should fall over the land of the Children of the Sun. Now,
tell me, you who speak the language of my people, how long have I been
sleeping?'

Instead of replying directly, he offered the Inca the cup of broth, and
asked him first to take the nourishment that he must need so greatly
after his long fast, telling him that it was needful to prevent him
losing his new-found strength again. When he had eaten and drunk a
little, then he would tell him what he could.

He took the broth and a little bread obediently, and while he was eating
and drinking, the professor translated what he had said to the doctor.
When he had finished, Djama looked at the Inca, sitting there taking
food and drink like any other human being, and with evident relish, too,
and said,--

'That happened in 1532--three hundred and sixty-five years ago! It
sounds utterly incredible, doesn't it, and yet there he is, eating and
drinking and talking with us just like any other man. I can hardly
believe the work of my own hands, and I am beginning to half wish I had
never begun it. Just imagine the awful loneliness to which we shall have
condemned this poor fellow, supposing we can't find his Golden Star and
restore her to him! Still perhaps you had better tell him the truth at
once. I think he can stand it. He has been a long time coming round, but
I don't think there is much the matter with him now.'

Then the professor told Vilcaroya the, to him, so terrible truth, that
of all men in the world he was the most lonely, separated as he was from
all that he had known and loved by an impassable gulf of nearly four
long centuries--that his well-loved Golden Star was but a memory known
to few, a name in a vague tradition; that the resting-place, even of her
mummy, was unknown, and that all that the darkest prophecy could have
foretold had in very truth fallen upon the land of the Incas and the
Children of the Sun.

Vilcaroya heard him to the end in silence; then, raising his hands to
his forehead, he bowed his head and said,--

'It is the will of our Father, foretold by the lips of his priests, but
other things were foretold which shall be fulfilled as well as these.
Golden Star is not dead; she only sleeps as I did. If I have awakened,
why shall not she? I know where she lies--where Anda-Huillac swore to me
they would lay her. Come, let us go! I will take you to the place, and
you shall restore her to me, warm and living and loving as she was when
I kissed her good-bye in the Sanctuary of the Sun, and I will give you
treasures of gold and silver and jewels such as you have never dreamed
of in exchange for her.'

THE STORY OF VILCAROYA

CHAPTER I

BACK THROUGH THE SHADOWS

As the time passes between dreaming and waking, so for me did the long
years pass, flowing like a smooth and silent stream seen from afar, out
of the darkness that fell so slowly and so sweetly over my eyes that
night when I sank into the death-trance beside Golden Star, my beloved,
in the bridal chamber that they made for us in the Temple of the Sun,
into the light that shone into them when they opened upon a scene so
different, and saw a white, haggard face bending over me, and two black,
burning eyes looking into them.

Then I closed them again and slept, and when I woke again there were two
faces looking at me, both white and full of fear and wonder, and I saw
two beings who seemed very strange to me, such as I had never seen among
the Children of the Sun, standing by the couch on which I lay, and one
of them fell down as though sore stricken, and I tried to think what
this could mean, and, thinking, fell asleep again.

Then I dreamt a long, sweet dream of the days that I now know were far
past, when I, Vilcaroya, son of the great Huayna-Capac, lived in the
Land of the Four Regions, a prince among princes, a warrior and a child
of the Sacred Race, whose blood had flowed unmixed through many
generations from the divine fountain of life and light, our Father the
Sun. I dreamt of Golden Star, and the days when I loved her in timid
silence, for she was the fairest of all our race, and so, as it seemed
to me, destined to no less a lot than the motherhood of a long line of
Incas, in whom should live and grow to ever greater splendour the
glories of the race that owned no earthly origin.

I called her in my dream, but she made no answer. I saw her lying by my
side in that well-remembered chamber, with the shadowy forms of the
priests standing about us as I had seen them long before; but, alas! she
lay still with closed eyes and lips which seemed to have forgotten how
sweetly they once could smile. I whispered her name, mingled with many a
loving word, into her ear, and still she moved not. I put my arms about
her and kissed her, and instantly I shrank back shivering with a fear
unspeakable, for the form that should have been so warm and soft and
yielding, was chilled and pulseless and rigid, as though some foul magic
had changed it into stone, and the lips that should have given me back
kiss for kiss were still and cold and senseless.

Then I saw, as it seemed with half-closed eyes, that dear shape of hers
being borne away from me, while I, longing to snatch her from the hands
of those who were robbing me of her, yet lay helpless on the couch,
without strength to move or speak, until all grew dim around me, and I
felt myself raised by invisible hands, and borne far away through the
darkness--and so my dream melted away into the night of sleep.

Then, yet again, I woke and saw the two strange men that I had seen
before, and one came and spoke to me kindly in my own tongue, and called
me by my own name, and gave me food and drink, and told me in a few, but
to me terrible, words that the dreams I had dreamed were dreams
indeed--dreams of a time that was long gone by, of things that had
passed away, perchance for ever, and men and women whose names were only
memories.

Thus did I come from the evening of one age into the morning of another,
falling asleep in the prime of my strength and manhood, and waking again
even as I had fallen asleep--though those who had closed my eyes had
been dead for many generations, and the name of our ancient race was
but a bitter memory to the sons and daughters of my own land amidst the
mountains.

Then I went forth into the wondrous new world into which I had awakened,
the world which you who read this hold so common, and which I found
crowded with wonders so many and marvellous that if it had not been for
the loving care of her who guided my first footsteps on my new journey,
as she might have guided those of a little child, my re-awakening reason
must soon have been quenched in the night of madness.

Many and strange as were the things that happened to me during the first
days and months of my awakening, there is little need that I should now
write of them at any length. Yet something I must say of them in order
that the still stranger things of which I shall have to tell may be the
better understood.

And first I must tell of her whose gentle hand led me from weakness to
strength, and guided my unwonted footsteps through the mazes of that new
wonderland in which I had awakened, and from whose lips I learnt the
first words that I spoke of the strong and stately English speech in
which I am striving so lamely and imperfectly to write down the story of
my new life.

This was Ruth, the sister of Djama, whose smile was the first ray of
sunshine that shone into my second life, and whose laugh was so sweet
and gladsome, that when it first sounded in my ears, like an echo from
the dear dead past, I named her forthwith Cusi-Coyllur, which in English
means Joyful Star--after that royal maiden of my own race who loved the
handsome rebel Ollantay, and, refusing all others, waited for him in the
House of the Virgins of the Sun until he came in triumph to claim her.
She came with us to the south, rejecting all contrary counsel and
braving the labours of the long, toilsome journey, so that she might be
the first woman to welcome Golden Star back into the world of life.

Yet what words can I find in this new speech that I have yet but half
learnt to tell fitly of her beauty and sweet graciousness, and of all
the magic which made her seem in my eyes like an angel that had come
down from the Mansions of the Sun to greet me in a world in which I was
a stranger? Better that you who may read what I write should learn to
know her for yourself through the sweetness and grace of her own words
and deeds, as I shall strive, however unworthily, to tell of them. So,
then, let it be.

But there is another of whom I must say something before I go on to tell
of my return to my own land--now, alas! mine no longer--and that is
Francis Hartness, a captain among the warriors of the English, and a
friend of him who was called the professor, because of his learning--he
who had helped Djama to bring me back into the world of living men.

He was a man of about thirty years, tall of stature and strong of limb,
brief of speech and straight of tongue, with eyes as blue as the skies
which shine on Yucay, and hair and beard golden and bright as the rays
which flow from the smile of our Father the Sun. Him we met by chance
one evening in the square of the town which is called Panama, named,
they told me, after that older city, whence the conquerors of my people
sailed to ravish the realms of Huayna-Capac. There was peace in his own
land and all the neighbouring countries, and so he was journeying to the
region which is now called South America, where the descendants of the
Spaniards are nearly always fighting among themselves over the spoils of
my people, to see what work he could find to keep his sword from
rusting.

As he was greatly skilled in that strange, new warfare of flame and
thunder and far-smiting bolts, which had but begun to be when our Father
the Sun hid his face from the eyes of his children, I took counsel with
Joyful Star--who was ever my wisest as well as my most faithful guide
in all things--and we together told him my story as we went south, and
after that I had asked him if he would help me in the task which I was
going to essay, which was nothing less than the taking back of the land
of my fathers, and the raising of the children of my people to the
ancient glories of that state which I alone of living men remembered. To
this, after some shrewd questioning, he consented--for it was a
desperate venture, such as his brave heart loved--and when he had given
me his hand on it, and promised, after the simple fashion of his nation,
to be true to me in peace and war, I told him of the means that I could
employ to gain my end, and how I would use that lust of gold which had
led to the ruin of my people, so that it should conquer the children of
their conquerors and give me back the empire that had been my father's.

At Panama we took ship again and travelled swiftly and straightly south,
driven by that wondrous power which had come into the world to serve men
like a tireless giant since I had fallen asleep; and day after day on
the southward voyage I walked alone up and down the deck, or stood
gazing, rapt in thought, at the desert foreshore along which the steamer
was running, and at the great masses of the dark brown barren mountains,
as they towered range beyond range till they overtopped the clouds
themselves and stood serene and sharply outlined against the blue
background of the upper sky.

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