Гастон Леру - The Bride of the Sun

Don Christobal was becoming irritated, and was sorry now that he had mentioned the matter to them. He could not, without appearing ridiculous, ask them not to speak of it, and he knew very well that within two hours every tea-table in the Plaza Mayor would be discussing the new topic. Maria-Teresa guessed his thoughts.

“As our guess was wrong, the whole thing rather loses point So we must wait until the generous donor comes and confesses. In the meantime, let it be forgotten.” And, slipping off the bracelet, she put it into her reticule.

“I wonder if it was Huascar,” suggested Dick, as the two young men left them.

“Huascar? Why Huascar?” asked the Marquis.

“Well, it’s an old Indian bracelet.... He’s the only Indian I know of, and I know he is very devoted to the family. Suppose he found the bracelet in some old ruin and didn’t know what to do with it…

“Oh, let us not talk of it any more,” interrupted Maria-Teresa, slightly troubled. “What does it matter!… Besides, we are bound to know, sooner or later.... Some day a friend of father’s, back from the Sierra, will ask me why I am not wearing his present. That is sure to happen.”

“Of course it is,” affirmed Dick.

The Marquis, far from satisfied, and still seeking a possible explanation, suddenly turned on Dick.

“You sent it!” he exclaimed, triumphant.

“I? Why, I have only just arrived in the country....”

“But you could very well have bought it when the liner put in at Guayaquil, and then sent it to some agent or other at Gajamarca to have it forwarded here.... You must have read the legend of the bracelet in one of your uncle’s books.”

“Really, Father!” protested Maria-Teresa. “Mr. Montgomery is an engineer....”

“Yes, yes, I know. Very hard-working.... Come here to try experiments with some new pump to clear the Cuzco gold-mines of water.... I know all that.... But that is no reason why he should not send you a bracelet.”

“But why should he, Father?”

“Is there not a reason why he should, my daughter?”

This time, Maria-Teresa blushed deeply and Dick tried to look unconcerned, while Don Christobal smiled at them quizzically.

“So you thought your old father was blind, eh?… You thought he guessed nothing… that he did not understand what you had left behind you in London?… Well, Dick?”

“Really, sir… I… I… hardly dared hope....”

“Didn’t you?… There, there, that’s enough.... You may put the bracelet on her arm again.... Pair of young fools.” Maria-Teresa slipped her arm through her father’s, and squeezed it.

“Dear Father!”

Then, turning to Dick and opening her reticule, she whispered rapidly:

“Say you sent it. What can it matter?” Dick, completely taken aback, clasped the bracelet on Maria-Teresa’s wrist without protest. He scarcely heard a word said by the Marquis, who was delighted to have solved the mystery.

“Well, young man, you can flatter yourself that you thoroughly mystified everybody.” And with that he hurried after Uncle Francis, who had been carried off to drink champagne by a group of admirers.

Dick and Maria-Teresa, left alone, exchanged looks. A moment later, they were brought to earth again by the advent of a horde of excited scientists.

“But what will your father say when he finds out who really sent the bracelet?”

“He will forgive you. I only made you tell the story to reassure him.... Between you and me, those old tales told by Aunt Agnes and Irene were worrying him a little.... He is rather a child in some ways.”

Carriages and motors were rapidly filling with people starting for the excavations outside the town, and then on by rail to Ancon, where Uncle Francis was to be shown the latest Inca discoveries. The Marquis and Mr. Montgomery passed them in one motor. Maria-Teresa waved to them, and walked on towards the town with Dick.

They were all to meet again that evening to dine and pass the night at the Marquis’ sea-side villa between Lima and Ancon. Uncle Francis would thus be able to begin his researches the very next morning, for Don Christobal’s villa, itself a treasure-house of antiques, stood in the very center of the excavations.

Meanwhile, the young people, less interested in things of death than the members of the Geographical and Archaeological Society, went to explore Lima. It was only after a long walk in the Pascos de Amancaes that they in their turn started by motor over an execrable road.

The approach of night could already be felt, and the great plain over which they were speeding was made even more desolate by the presence of the slow-flying gallinazos, or black vultures, overhead. These scavengers, half-starved in appearance, are the common adjuncts of scenery in Peru, tolerated and even respected, as they are, by a grateful municipality.

Here and there were haciendas, each with its group of pastures and grazing horses, kept from galloping into the surrounding waste by the four-foot mud walls. Otherwise, it was a sandy desert, at some points dotted with skeletons of a long-dead race dug up by curious scientists and then left to bleach in the sun.

“Not exactly cheerful,” commented Dick.

Maria-Teresa, intent on her driving, did not answer, but pointed with one gauntleted hand at a group of half-breeds playing bowls with human skulls at the corner of a hacienda.

They were soon in the outskirts of Ancon, and found the Marquis, Uncle Francis, and their fellow-scientists busily arguing in the center of an Inca cemetery. On all sides were opened tombs, each containing a mummy rudely drawn from its thousand-year sleep by the pick of the excavator. Dick and Maria-Teresa had left their motor, but did not join the others. Instead, they wandered silently, almost sadly, in another direction, and the car had started off again in the care of the negro chauffeur, to be garaged at Ancon.

“It is horrible,” said Maria-Teresa, pressing Dick’s hand. “Why cannot they leave them in peace?”

Seated on a little mound well out of sight of the others, they forgot their surroundings. And it was in this horrible burial-ground they exchanged their first true lovers’ kiss.

The sound of voices brought them back to reality. The president of the Society, followed by an interested retinue, was explaining the most interesting tombs.

“Walking through this necropolis,” he said, “it is no effort to evoke the shades of the Incas, and to feel for a minute as if one were living among them.... Here, six feet below ground, we first found a dog which had been sacrificed on its master’s tomb.... The dead man’s wife and chief servants also followed him to the next world.... We next found the wife’s body.... Like the dog, she had been strangled, probably because she had not had the courage to take her own life.... Finally, we heard the Indian workman cry ont, ‘Aqui esta el muerto.’ (Here is the dead one)… for to the native mind, the only body worthy of notice is that of the master.... When we cut the thongs and unrolled the wrappings about him—the man had evidently been a great chief—we found the mummy in an extraordinary state of preservation,—the head was almost intact.... Gentlemen, the ancient Egyptians did no better.”

At this moment, excited ones from another part of the cemetery attracted their attention, and a workman ran up to tell them that a sensational discovery had been made—the tomb of three Inca chiefs with strange-shaped skulls. Dick and Maria-Teresa followed the others to the spot indicated.

When they reached the newly-discovered tomb, workmen were passing up to the surface little sacks full of corn, jars which had once contained chicha—all the things necessary for a long voyage. Then came golden-vases, silver amphora, goblets, hammered statuettes, jewels:—a veritable treasure brought to light by one stroke of the pick. Finally, the three mummies were brought to the surface and unrolled with every precaution. One of the scientists present bent down to uncover the faces, and there was a murmur of horror from those present.