The Romance of Golden Star ...

G >> George Chetwynd Griffith >> The Romance of Golden Star ...

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'I am not jesting. As you love I love, and by the glory and majesty of
my Father the Sun I tell you if you do not say yes I will do with this
dagger what all your art will never repair, and then, if I must do that,
I will kill you too; and before to-morrow night has passed Joyful Star
shall be with me where none can find her. Now, what is your answer--yes,
or no?'

He looked at me and then at the dagger hanging in my hand, point
downwards, over the breast of Golden Star. Then his eyes fell upon the
still loveliness of her face. He knew that if he moved the dagger would
fall. His face, flushed a moment before, grew grey and pale again at the
sound of my words, and then I saw that he had not lied to me when he
said that his life would be worthless without her. Twice, thrice, his
lips moved without shaping a word. Then the words came. They were dry
and broken and trembling, for in the strength of my own love I had now
conquered my conqueror, and he said,--

'Yes, since it must be so. My sister for your sister. Well, I suppose
it's a fair exchange. We hate each other, you and I, but that's an
accident of fate. Take away your dagger. I know when I am beaten, and I
am beaten now. Will you swear that oath of yours again?'

'Yes,' I said, 'and you?'

I still kept the dagger within a span of Golden Star's heart, for I
still had but little trust in his faith. He rose from his chair,
throwing it over as he did so, and stood up and faced me, saying,--

'There is no need for oaths either from you or me. We have both too much
to lose to break faith. Put up your dagger and come away, and in ten
minutes from now you shall hear Golden Star draw the first breath of her
new life, and see her eyes open and look at you. That would be worth
more than any oath I could swear, wouldn't it?'

'Yes,' I said, 'but that is not all or enough. If you broke faith with
me after that, I should have to shed blood--my sister's and yours. Now I
need only make her life impossible. I will stop here. Go you and wake
your sister and bring her here. Then we will say more.'

'Bring Ruth here!' he cried, staring at me as though he wished, as no
doubt he did, that the fierce light in his eyes could blast and wither
me where I stood. 'Bring her here to see what no human eyes but mine
have ever seen. Bring her here to listen to what you have said--and if
her, why not Lamson and Hartness as well?'

'You may bring all, if you please,' I said, 'but Joyful Star must come,
no matter what she hears or sees. I have spoken--now go, or Golden Star
shall never wake again.'

He took a half pace towards me, with clenched hands and set teeth,
crouching like a mountain lion about to spring on its prey. The dagger
point dropped till it was only an inch from Golden Star's breast. If he
had made another step I would have driven it home. He read in my eyes
that I would do so, and he stopped. Then he hissed a curse at me through
his clenched teeth, and turned and walked away towards the door. As he
reached it he looked back, and saw me still standing there with the
dagger ready to do the work that could never be undone. I saw his lips
move, but heard no sound.

Then he unlocked the door, went out, and locked it after him, leaving me
there alone with my dead sister-love, whose new life, with all its
possibilities of love and happiness, or hate and misery, I had thrown
into the balance of Fate in the game that I was playing against him to
win that other love which had now become tenfold more dear to me.

When he had gone I took his chair and put it by the side of the bed and
sat down, still holding my bare dagger in my hand and looking on Golden
Star's dead loveliness, wondering what it would be like when the
sunshine of her new life should shine upon it, and on whom her first
glance would fall, or whose name be the first that her lips would speak,
and as I sat and watched and waited it seemed to me as though the ghosts
of those long dead were taking shape and ranging themselves about the
bed of her re-awakening as they had done about the bed of her falling
asleep and mine.

I saw Anda-Huillac and his brother priests of the Sun standing about me,
gazing at me and at her with sad and dreamy eyes, like phantoms of the
past looking upon the realities of the present. Then the shape of
Anda-Huillac seemed to glide towards me. His ghostly eyes looked into
mine, and a smile of pity and reproach moved his pale lips. I felt a
cold, soft hand laid upon mine, my grasp relaxed and the dagger fell
ringing to the floor.

The sound awoke me, and my vision vanished. How long it had lasted, or
whether it was a vision of sleep or waking, I know not, but I was awake
now for I heard the door creek on its hinges. I picked the dagger up
again and started to my feet, and, still guarding Golden Star's bed, I
turned and faced Djama as he came in, followed by the professor and
Francis Hartness, with Joyful Star between them.

CHAPTER VI

THE WAKING OF GOLDEN STAR

'There is your royal, would-be lover, Ruth! Come, if you don't believe
me, you can hear from his own lips that upon you, and you alone, depends
Golden Star's return to life. Is not that so, Your Highness?'

It was Djama who said this, and as he said it, he caught Joyful Star by
the hand and half led, half dragged her towards me from between the
other two. But before he had come half the length of the room, Francis
Hartness had overtaken him in a few swift strides. I saw his hand fall
heavily on his shoulder, and with his other hand he took Ruth's out of
his. His blue eyes were nearly black with anger, and his bronzed face
was grey and set and pale with the passion that his strong will was
holding back, and his voice was low and clear, and vibrating like the
sound of a distant bell when he spoke and said,--

'I can't stand that, Djama. Are you forgetting that your sister is a
woman, and that you have brought her into the presence of the dead?'

'You must be mad, Laurens!' said Joyful Star, before her brother could
reply. 'Surely this dreadful work of yours has turned your brain.
Vilcaroya, what does all this mean? Is Golden Star dead or alive? Ah,
how beautiful she is now! No, surely she cannot be dead!'

She had broken away from both her brother and Francis Hartness, and as
she said the last words she was leaning over Golden Star's pillow,
softly stroking her hair; and then she stooped lower and kissed her
forehead. Then the others came up to the bedside, Francis Hartness and
Djama in front, and the professor standing silent and wondering behind
them.

'If Djama won't speak, will you, Vilcaroya?' said Hartness, looking at
me with eyes that were still angry. 'What is that dagger in your hand
for, and what is the meaning of this story that he has been telling me?'

'The meaning is of life or death,' I said. 'Laurens Djama will not give
Golden Star's life back to her if I will not swear to give her to him
when she lives again, and I have sworn that he shall not restore her to
life unless he swears to give Joyful Star to me, for I love her, and
will have neither life nor empire without her.'

As I listened to my own voice saying these bold words, it seemed to me
as though another were speaking, for, even in that hot moment of passion
and desperate resolve, I could scarce believe them mine. For the
instant, I thought Hartness would have struck me down where I stood, nor
could I have used my dagger against him, for he was a man and I loved
him, though I saw now that we both loved the same woman. But before
either of us could move, Ruth had risen erect and come between us, her
cheeks burning with shame and her eyes aglow with anger.

'What!' she said, 'Laurens give me to you, Vilcaroya! Don't you know yet
that no one can give an English girl away except herself, and that she
only gives herself to the man she chooses of her own free will? Do you
think I am a slave or a human chattel to be bartered away like that?
Nonsense! And you, Captain Hartness, don't look so fiercely at
Vilcaroya. Remember that he is your friend and mine, or has been, and
has not the same ideas as we have. If he had--'

'He has,' I said, breaking in upon her speech, 'since Joyful Star has
spoken. He is not her lover but her slave, and she has shamed him. I
will eat the words that should never have been spoken. Let Golden Star
live! I will keep my oath and ask nothing in return.'

So the savage within me was tamed, and I, who but a few minutes before
had been ready to take two lives at the prompting of a single word,
dropped my dagger and stood with bowed head, humble as a chidden child
before her whose lightest word was then my most sacred law. I raised my
eyes and looked at her to see if my words had pleased her. As our eyes
met she gave me a glance that I would have died to win from her, and
then, pushing me and Francis Hartness gently aside, yet with a force
that neither of us could have resisted, she took her brother by the arm
and, leading him to the bedside with one hand, she laid the other on
Golden Star's brow, and said,--

'Laurens, can you really bring her back to life?'

'Yes,' he answered, and I could see that he did not dare to raise his
eyes to hers, 'but--'

'But you will only do it for a price, you think. For shame! Is that the
way you would use this terrible power that you possess? Is my brother so
mean a creature as that? You love her, you say, even as she lies there,
neither dead nor alive? Well, when she lives, she will be worthy of any
man's love, but only of a man's, Laurens, and you would not be a man,
with all your learning and power, if you insisted on so mean an
advantage as your skill gives you. Do you mean to tell me that you can
look on such a beauty as that, knowing that you can restore it to life,
and yet ask a price before you will do it? Come, Laurens, that is not
like your old self. Use your power with the same generosity that it has
been given to you, and then win Golden Star like a man if you can.'

Where my strength had been vanquished, her sweet wisdom conquered. The
man who had laughed at my threats, and told me without a quiver in his
voice how he could, and would, slay himself rather than I should do what
he knew I could do, stood humbled and abashed before the righteous and
yet gently-spoken reproach of her who was pleading for the life of a
sister woman.

I saw Djama's hands meet behind his back, and his fingers begin to twine
about each other. I saw him look from Ruth to Golden Star, from the
living woman who was his sister to her lifeless counterpart. Then came
over him one of those swift changes of mood which we had so often seen
before. All the cold cruelty of his long-chained-up passion vanished.
His face, from being stone, became flesh again. The fierce glitter, as
of a sword's point, died out of his eyes, and they grew warm and soft
again, and his voice was almost as sweet and gentle as Ruth's, and
strangely like it, too, as he answered her and said,--

'You are right, Ruth. I was not myself. I was a brute, unworthy either
of love or power. Let her die! Good God, I would die myself a thousand
times rather than do that! I must have been out of my senses even to
think of such a crime for a moment, but if you were a man and had lived
through what I have lived through for the last two days and nights, you
would understand me, and perhaps forgive me. Yes, she shall live. How
could I ever have thought of letting her die!'

Then he rose from his half-stooping posture over the bed, and came to
where I stood at the foot, and, with his hand outstretched and a smile
on his lips, said,--

'You have heard what I have just said, Vilcaroya. You have withdrawn
your conditions; now I will take back mine. It is no use for you and me
to be enemies. We have had our fight, and I confess myself beaten. Now
let us try to be friends for Ruth's sake and Golden Star's, and I
promise you that to-morrow morning you shall be telling her the story of
your resurrection and her own.'

For a moment I stared at him in, speechless wonder, striving to
understand how it could be that those eyes, which had, but a short time
before, been glaring hate at me, could now be looking so kindly and
frankly into mine; and how those lips, which had just been sneering so
coldly and cruelly alike at my love and my hate, could shape such
friendly and honest-sounding words. Then I looked at Ruth, asking her
with my eyes what she would have me do, and in instant obedience to what
I saw took Djama's hand in mine and said,--

'So be it! The evil in our hearts has spoken, now let the good that is
there speak, and let us be friends; and, when Golden Star awakes, with
my lips she shall bless you and her who has made peace between us where
there was strife.'

'Miss Ruth, you really must allow me to congratulate you on your success
as a peacemaker,' said the professor, speaking now for the first time
since he had come into the room, and coming forward to where Joyful Star
still stood by the bedside. 'It would have been ten thousand pities if
this--ah--this little affair had ended any other way, for all of the
exquisitely perfect subjects--'

'_Subjects_, professor?' said Ruth, interrupting him with a laugh. 'Do
you venture to call Golden Star a subject, just as you do those awful
things in your dissecting-rooms? Look at her--a _subject_ indeed! Don't
call her that again in my hearing, please!'

'Oh, ah, of course, I beg your pardon a thousand times, and Her
Highness's too. Really, I spoke quite thoughtlessly and most
improperly.' he answered, laughing at her mock displeasure, 'And now,
Djama, since we have had two declarations of love and a peacemaking,
don't you think it would be cruel to keep Her Highness waiting any
longer on the threshold of her new life? Come, Hartness, you and I have
no more business here at present. Don't you think we had better go and
wait somewhere else for the working of the miracle?'

'Just what I was going to say,' replied Hartness, who had gone away a
little distance from the bed while we were talking, and had been
standing by the table, seeming to examine the strange instruments that
were scattered about it. 'Of course the doctor will wish to finish his
work alone.'

'May not Vilcaroya and I stay, Laurens?' asked Joyful Star, looking at
him with appealing eyes. 'You know it will be much better for her to see
another woman by her when she awakes, and then she will recognise
Vilcaroya, and that will tell her that she is among friends.'

But Djama shook his head and said,--

'No, Ruth, not yet. There is something else to be done before
that--something, well, something that only a medical man ought to see or
do, and you really must leave me to do it alone. You forget, it is not
merely a matter of waking. She is not alive yet; but if you will leave
me alone for about half-an-hour, I promise you that I will call you and
Vilcaroya back before she actually wakes.'

'Very well,' she said, moving away from the bedside. 'I don't want to
pry into your mysteries.' Then she turned to me, and said, with a faint
smile on her lips, 'Vilcaroya, come into the dining-room, I have
something to say to you.'

She went down the room after the professor and Francis Hartness, and I
followed her with beating heart and anxious thoughts, wondering what new
lesson it was she was about to teach me.

Djama closed and locked the door after us. She led the way to the
dining-room, where there was a light burning. It was empty, for the
others, hearing what she had said to me, had gone out into the
courtyard. Then she turned and faced me with her back to the light; but
in spite of that I could see that her eyes were bright, and her fair
face flushed as she said to me in a low voice that trembled a little,--

'Vilcaroya, I am going to forget everything that was said in the room
yonder, and--and you must forget it too. It was no time or place for
such things to be said, and you and Laurens were not yourselves when you
said them. If you do not forget them, we cannot be friends any more. You
understand me, don't you?'

Gentle and sweetly spoken as the words were, they fell upon my heart
like snow upon a fainting flame; yet I felt that, like all her words,
they were true and just. I crossed my hands on my breast with one of my
old-world gestures, and, standing so before her with bowed head, I
said,--

'The will of Joyful Star is my law. Let what I spoke in my madness be
forgotten as you have said. Who am I that I should say such things?--a
poor savage that has wandered from his own world into hers, where he is
a stranger!'

'No, not a savage, Vilcaroya. You must never say that word again. How
could Golden Star's brother be a savage? How could I--but there, we have
said enough for the present. We have other things to think of now.'

With that she turned away and sat down in a long, low chair, resting her
cheek upon her hand, and looking out of one of the windows at the
stars, while I went and stood before another to look at the same stars
that she was looking at, and so we waited in silence until the door
opened, and we heard Djama's voice telling us that the long-expected
moment of Golden Star's awakening had come at last.

As Joyful Star went to the door I stood aside and waited for her to pass
me and go out first. As she went by our eyes met for a moment, and I saw
that hers were bright with tears. My heart leapt at the sight, and then
fell still again and well nigh fainting. What had she said to me but a
few minutes before? How dare I dream that those sweet tears could be for
me?

I followed her and Djama into the room, but half-way between the door
and the bed I stopped, not daring to go on, held back by some impulse I
could not name. I saw her lean over the pillow for a moment in silence
that for me was breathless. Then came a soft, sweet sound, and then a
little cry. Was it her's or Golden Star's?

Djama beckoned to me. I went with swift, silent steps to the foot of the
little bed, and saw Golden Star's eyes wide open and looking wonderingly
up into Ruth's face, and her red lips smiling at her. The miracle had
been completed. She had awakened her with a kiss.

'Come and give her your welcome back to life, Vilcaroya,' she whispered,
rising and turning her fair face with its wet cheeks and smiling lips
towards me. I went and stood over the pillow, and laid my trembling lips
on Golden Star's brow, and then I said, in the words that had been the
first of my own new life,--

'_Cori-Coyllur Nustallipa, Nusta mi!_'

She looked at me, but there was no more recognition in her gaze than in
that of a newborn child, nor was there any answering smile upon her
lips. Unheeding this for the moment, I went on and said, still speaking
very gently and softly in our own tongue,--

'Thou art thrice welcome back from the shades of night into the bright
presence of our Father the Sun, oh, Golden Star! Dost thou not remember
me, Vilcaroya, thy brother, who went into the darkness with thee long
ago, and has been permitted to return before thee that he might greet
thee and bid thee welcome?'

Her eyes wandered from my face to Joyful Star's, and then she smiled
again, but no answering words came from her parted lips. Now, as we
looked from one another to her, a great fear came into all our hearts,
and Ruth gave it voice.

'Laurens,' she whispered, laying her hands upon his arm, 'what is the
matter? Vilcaroya spoke at once, didn't he? Why doesn't she speak? Oh,
surely it can't be that she is--that she has come back to life without
memory or--or her reason? What is it?'

I waited for Djama's answer as a man might wait for words that were to
tell him whether he was to live or die. He put us both gently away from
the bed, and then, laying his hand on Golden Star's brow, he looked long
and steadfastly into her eyes. It seemed to me as though Ruth and I
could hear each other's hearts beating and counting off the seconds
until he raised his head again and said in the slow, even tones of the
man of science who, for the time, had overcome and banished the lover,--

'Memory, perhaps, even probably; but reason, no. These are not the eyes
of an imbecile or an idiot, but they _are_ the eyes of a child. It is
possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect
blank--a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have to be
written.'

'Thank God for that!' she murmured, and I, too, echoed her words in my
heart, though I did not know then how much she meant by them.

Then once more she turned and went to Golden Star's pillow, laying her
hand upon her brow again, and looking fondly for a moment on the silent
and yet eloquent face that was looking up at her. Then she said to her
brother,--

'But is she well now? I mean, is her physical life certain? Will she
live and grow well and strong again?'

'Yes,' he answered. 'I have done everything that it is in my power to
do. I have fulfilled my promise to His Highness. The rest is, as it was
with him, merely a matter of care and nourishment and nursing.'

'Then,' she said, with a swift, subtle change coming over her manner,
'the care and the nursing must be mine, and you two must say good-bye to
her for the present, until I have nursed her back to health. Of course
you may see her when necessary, as her doctor, but only as her doctor,
mind. And you, Vilcaroya, must possess yourself with what patience you
can until my part of the work is done as well. Now, go away, both of
you. I am mistress here for the present. Laurens, you go and get ready
the nourishment that you think she should take, and come back in
half-an-hour, and tell me how it is to be taken.'

It was easy for us to see the deep yet kindly meaning of her
lightly-spoken words, for in them she had told us that Golden Star was
now once more a living woman. No longer a mummy, or a corpse, or a
'subject,' as the professor had called her--no longer an inanimate thing
that had neither sex nor claim to human rights--but a sister woman of
her own kind whose wants could only be supplied by her. So we obeyed
her, and went away, leaving her there to perform the most sacred task
save one that a loving woman could perform.

Djama went to prepare the food that Golden Star would soon need, and I
went in search of the professor and Francis Hartness, and told them all
that had happened, and then, when the professor had gone to bed to
finish his broken night's rest, I and he who was my rival in love, and
who was to be my brother-in-arms, went out from the courtyard into the
_patio_ which lay in front of the house, sloping down towards the
entrance of the little valley in which the hacienda lay, and there,
walking to and fro side by side, we talked long and earnestly of many
things upon the doing of which my heart was set, and which might now be
freely entered upon, seeing that the first object of our journey was
already achieved.

Our talk, as you may well believe, was of war and not of love, though it
would be hard to say which of the two at that hour most filled our
secret thoughts; but, as I have told you, this English soldier was a
true man, and I trusted him, knowing well that though, when the imperial
Llautu once more encircled my brows, I might find courage to seek openly
the love of her into whose eyes I had already seen him look with love,
yet no falsehood or hatred could ever come between us. So I told him
freely of the treasures that I had only to take from their hiding-places
to make them mine, and spoke once more of the use that I would make of
them, and took his advice as to the best method of that use.

This he was well able to give me, for I soon found that since he had
resolved to throw in his lot with us, he had applied himself diligently
to the task of studying the work that was to be ours, and seeking the
best and readiest means of doing it. In Lima and Arequipa he had bought
books and papers from which he had learned, as far as could be learned,
the resources and power of the government of Peru, the number of its
soldiers and their stations, the names and characters of the men who
made the government, and of those who were opposed to them, seeking, as
he told me was now ever the case in the countries of South America, to
overturn the government and to take for themselves the honours and the
profits of rule.

He told me--which events soon proved to be the truth--that not many
months would pass by before civil war once more broke out. The President
and the ministers, who were the tools of his tyranny, had oppressed the
people with grievous burdens till they could endure them no longer, and
already people in the towns of the interior were refusing to pay taxes,
and were arming themselves in secret and meeting in bands among the
mountains to practise themselves with their weapons, and make ready for
the war which was so soon to come.

All this, as he soon showed me, was happening as though the Fates which
rule the world had especially prepared it for my coming. The people had
no leader save a man who had been himself a tyrant before, and none
trusted him, but looked to him only to serve their own ends. Those who
had the power were hated, and those who sought to seize it were
distrusted.

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