The Crimson Conquest 36

The Crimson Conquest 36

Hearts Revealed and Sundered*_

 

 

Now, when two human hearts are throbbing under the mysterious influence

of the spell called Love, be it noted that the universe pauses in its

majestic routine to take a part. Our good Mother Nature lends a more

benevolent smile. The breeze touches with softer caress and gentler

whispering. The trees and herbage are greener, the flowers yield a

sweeter fragrance and wear an added loveliness. The Sun himself shines

with brighter effulgence and more generous warmth; at his setting,

paints the heavens and gray old earth in hues of unwonted brilliancy,

and gives way to twilights more tender than twilights seen at other

times. And the Moon—what splendor in her radiance then! and in the

stars! The world—the non-human part of it, for our fellowmen are often

less benignant and sometimes roughen love’s pathway most lamentably—the

world takes on new charms and promises things untold; conspiring with

the insistent young archer and with a thousand circumstances to lure the

lovers on to their silently coveted happiness. Let all mankind unite in

a commanding "Nay!" yet the two hear a still voice in more urgent "Yea,

yea!" and read approval in Nature’s kindly face. Be their resistance

never so strong in the beginning, it must surely be overcome by a fatal

languor at a fatal moment, and the archer triumphs.

 

Often, when Cristoval sat beside her in the hemicycle in meditative

silence, Rava would take up Maytalca’s _tinya_[1] and sing to its

accompaniment. The melodies were simple, soft, and plaintive, and she

sang with the sympathy and sweetness of her nature, her voice quivering

from the fulness of her heart. The music was the one thing needful to

complete the agony of Cristoval’s self-denial. He heard her at first

with wonder, then with unaffected ravishment.

 

 

[1] Tinya = a stringed instrument something like the guitar.

 

 

One moonlight evening—alas, a moonlight evening!—Rava had been telling

him the great Peruvian classic, "Apu-Ollanta." Ollanta, the hero of the

drama, born in obscurity, had risen by bravery and soldierly skill to

the command of the armies of the Inca Pachacutec Yupanqui, and was his

most trusted and beloved lieutenant. In an unfortunate hour he had

loved and gained the love of Cusi-Coyllur, the Inca’s daughter. The

attachment, forbidden by the laws of Tavantinsuyu because of Ollanta’s

ignoble birth, was punishable with death. It was the story which has

furnished a theme for poets through the ages. They loved in secret, and

when at length concealment became no longer possible, Ollanta braved the

laws and the Inca’s wrath, and demanded Cusi-Coyllur in marriage. He

was denied and banished from Cuzco, and when a child was born to the

unhappy princess she was cast into prison. Ollanta hurried to his army

in one of the provinces, raised his soldiers in rebellion, and led them

to rescue his love. The war raged through ten long years, and after the

death of Pachacutec Yupanqui, was carried on by his son. At last

Ollanta, vanquished and a captive, was taken in chains to Cuzco; but the

young Inca, more generous than his father, and moved by the rebel’s

constancy, pardoned him and led him to the dungeon of the princess.

Years of confinement and sorrow had aged her prematurely, but Ollanta

saw only the long-lost adored one of his youth and their child,

and—well, they were married and restored to happiness and honor.

 

The story was long, and Rava told it with the simple candor of

innocence, repeating with feeling and __EXPRESSION__ quite without

consciousness of self, those passages whose beauty most appealed to her,

from time to time taking up her instrument for the songs in the play.

She finished, and sat with hands clasped, looking out upon the moon-lit

lake, preoccupied and musing, apparently expecting no comment from

Cristoval. He had listened with rapt attention, leaning forward with

cheek upon his hand, less mindful of the story itself than of her low

voice and the emotion on her sensitive features. He sat contemplating

the calm beauty of the dark eyes, until, conscious of his gaze, she

turned toward him. He roused from his reverie.

 

"It is a beautiful story, Ñusta Rava," he said, gently drawing the

_tinya_ from her lap.

 

There was a shadow of doubt in her look as she replied, "Didst find it

so, Cristoval? It telleth little of war."

 

"Little of war, to be sure," he answered, failing to notice her tone;

"but perhaps the better for that. I have heard its like before," he

went on, fingering the strings.

 

"Yes?" she asked, with slight surprise.

 

"Yes, Ñusta Rava. Why not?" responded Cristoval, in turn surprised at

the slight incredulity in her voice. "Stories of hopeless love and happy

endings? Why not, my dear?"

 

"But do you have love-stories in Castile? I thought—"

 

"What didst think? We have love-stories and love-songs a-many."

 

"Thou hast never told me one," she said, with a shade of reproach; "nor

have I ever heard thee sing except of soldiers and horrid battles."

 

"Why, mayhap ’t is true," said Cristoval, reflectively. "But I know more

of such than of the other, though once—" He paused, then added with

more of suppressed emphasis and resolution than seemed to be required,

"I will sing thee one now, Ñusta Rava!"

 

He was familiar with the guitar, and the _tinya_ was therefore not so

strange that he could not, without difficulty, find the chords. He had,

moreover, taken it up when Rava was not by, and so made its

acquaintance; so that after retuning he picked out a fair accompaniment

and began. His song was one of those sweet Spanish airs which breathe

passion in every line, and he sang with true feeling, with the richness

of voice native to his race.

 

Rava listened to a song utterly strange and in an unknown tongue. But

music, said to be the universal language, surely is the universal

language of love, and her heart beat in response to every measure. Had

she been indifferent to the singer she could not have been unmoved; but

her unspoken longing made her doubly vibrant to his emotion, and the

close left her pale and strangely quiet.

 

Cristoval laid aside the _tinya_. The moon was shining full in Rava’s

face as she leaned back, and he glanced into eyes from which the deep

melancholy had gone. They were no longer doubtful, but swimming with

happiness that struggled with timidity. The song was a revelation. It

had solved the riddle of this good, brave Viracocha, and had shown him a

man. He was no longer the demigod, reserved, with breast invulnerable,

but of flesh and blood. She did not need to know the meaning of his

words. Every inflection had said more than words. Her own voice was

tremulous and almost inaudible.

 

"It was a love-song, Cristoval?"

 

"A love-song," he replied, looking away.

 

"Then thou—then the Viracochas can love?" she faltered, after a pause.

 

Cristoval turned quickly. "Can love, child!" he exclaimed. "Why, what

dost think us? Men without souls?"

 

"But I mean _love_, Cristoval," she said, with timid earnestness. "The

love that is not cruel, and merciless, and savage, like that of the

Viracochas at Caxamalca; nor yet—" She hesitated, and dropped her eyes.

 

"Nor yet?" asked Cristoval, bending forward.

 

She looked at him again waveringly.

 

"Nor yet?" he persisted. "What wouldst say?"

 

Her eyes fell once more. "Nor yet," she murmured, "the love that is all

unselfishness, like that of a father for his child. Oh, Cristoval, I

know not what I would say, but there was in the song what I thought the

Viracochas could not feel."

 

He replied impetuously: "Thou hast thought that? Thou hast dreamed we

could not love? Shall I tell thee how we can love? We can worship,

Ñusta Rava, and yet, hopeless, be silent until death were happiness."

 

She regarded him in wonder. "Hopeless, Cristoval?" she asked, in a

voice so low that he barely heard it, and the question threw him off his

guard. He answered it quickly and desperately, and in giving voice to

the torture of his soul for weeks, forgot to be impersonal.

 

"Hopeless!" he repeated, turning away again. "How else? What art

thou?—a princess. And I?—" He stopped. When he looked again his eyes

met that in hers which a lover should be willing to give his life to

see. Darkened by the moonlight, they regarded him with strange, intent

abstraction, serious, gentle, and ineffably fond. This time Cristoval

did not turn away. He must have been more than human—or less—to have

turned away.

 

For an instant, as a drowning man reviews a lifetime, he had a hundred

thoughts of deprecation, each a stab. He spurned them. The dross of

common things faded into due perspective. The world’s cares and dangers

grew shadowy. His hands sought hers. As they yielded, the deep eyes

deepened, and her lips parted with a sigh, almost a sob.

 

 

The _tinya_ had slipped to the ground at their feet. Rava unclasped her

hands from his neck and drew back her head to look into his eyes. "Ah,

Cristoval, then thou canst love?—truly, thou canst love, and dost love

me?"

 

Cristoval kissed the upturned lips and eyes and brow. "God knoweth I

love thee, Rava, and have loved thee long. I had not purposed to tell

thee."

 

"That would have been wrong and cruel," said Rava. "Why wouldst thou not

have told me?"

 

"I thought we must part, my own, and would have spared thee an aching

heart."

 

"Thou wouldst have denied me the only solace for a broken heart," she

sighed, clinging more closely. "But now, we shall never part,

Cristoval."

 

"Never! Never, with the help of Heaven!" he whispered.

 

But at length, the leave-taking for the night. A score of leave-takings

before the last wafted kiss from her doorway, and the beloved form

vanished in its shadow. Then Cristoval, alone, sought to realize his

happiness. In his room he raised his sword, and kissed its hilt—the

soldier’s cross.

 

 

Ware happiness complete! Evil hath no harbinger more sure. Their

glimpse of it was fleeting, as always. Even while they dreamed it would

endure, the blow was falling. One day, a second, and a third—days with

hours like minutes, speeding on so quickly to the evening, the evening

so quickly into night, that the lovers seemed hardly met before it was

time to part again and lie in fevered longing for the dawn, each with a

thousand thoughts untold. Ah, Time! Capricious, perverse and always

cruel; swift as light when the moments are of joy; grudging and

niggardly in their measure when mortals would have them long; but

unsparing, lavish, prodigal, when thou metest hours of sorrow!