I Bid You Stay.
“You have been here a month, Monsieur Nigel, living in close intimacy with Angela and myself,” said the abbé, as we sat on the veranda sipping our morning coffee. “You have mixed with our people, seen our country, and inspected the great azequia in its entire length. Tell me, now, frankly, what do you think of us?”
“I never passed so happy a month in my life, and—”
“I am glad to hear you say so, very glad. My question, however, referred not to your feelings but your opinion. I will repeat it: What think you of Quipai and its institutions?”
“I know of but one institution in Quipai, and I admire it more than I can tell.”
“And that is?”
“Yourself, Monsieur l’Abbé.”
The abbé smiled as if the compliment pleased him, but the next moment his face took the “pale cast of thought,” and he remained silent for several minutes.
“I know what you mean,” he said at length, speaking slowly and rather sadly. “You mean that I am Quipai, and that without me Quipai would be nowhere.”
“Exactly, Monsieur l’Abbé. Quipai is a miracle; you are its creator, yet I doubt whether, as it now exists, it could long survive you. But that is a contingency which we need not discuss; you have still many years of life before you.”
“I like a well-turned compliment, Monsieur Nigel, because in order to be acceptable it must possess both a modicum of truth and a soupçon of wit. But flattery I detest, for it must needs be insincere. A man of ninety cannot, in the nature of things, have many years of life before him. What are even ten years to one who has already lived nearly a century? This is a solemn moment for both of us, and I want to be sincere with you. You were sincere just now when you said Quipai would perish with me. And it will—unless I can find a successor who will continue the work which I have begun. My people are good and faithful, but they require a prescient and capable chief, and there is not one among them who is fitted either by nature or education to take the place of leader. Will you be my successor, Monsieur Nigel?”
This was a startling proposal. To stay in Quipai for a few weeks or even a few months might be very delightful. But to settle for life in an Andean desert! On the other hand, to leave Quipai were to lose Angela.
“You hesitate. But reflect well, my friend, before denying my request. True, you are loath to renounce the great world with its excitements, ambitions, and pleasures. But you would renounce them for a life free from care, an honorable position, and a career full of promise. It will take years to complete the work I have begun, and make Quipai a nation. As I said when you first came, Providence sent you here, as it sent Angela, for some good end. It sent the one for the other. Stay with us, Monsieur Nigel, and marry Angela! If you search the world through you could find no sweeter wife.”
My hesitation vanished like the morning mist before the rising sun.
“If Angela will be my wife,” I said, “I will be your successor.”
“It is the answer I expected, Monsieur Nigel. I am content to let Angela be the arbiter of your fate and the fate of Quipai. She will be here presently. Put the question yourself. She knows nothing of this; but I have watched you both, and though my eyes are growing dim I am not blind.”
And with that the abbé left me to my thoughts. It was not the first time that the idea of asking Angela to be my wife had entered my mind. I loved her from the moment I first set eyes on her, and my love has become a passion. But I had not been able to see my way. How could I ask a beautiful, gently nurtured girl to share the lot of a penniless wanderer, even if she could consent to leave Quipai, which I greatly doubted. But now! Compared with Angela, the excitements and ambitions of which the abbé had spoken did not weigh as a feather in the balance. Without her life would be a dreary penance; with her a much worse place than Quipai would be an earthly paradise.
But would she have me? The abbé seemed to think so. Nevertheless, I felt by no means sure about it. True, she appeared to like my company. But that might be because I had so much to tell her that was strange and new; and though I had observed her narrowly, I had detected none of that charming self-consciousness, that tender confusion, those stolen glances, whereby the conventional lover gauges his mistress’s feelings, and knows before he speaks that his love is returned. Angela was always the same—frank, open, and joyous, and, except that her caresses were reserved for him, made no difference between the abbé and me.
“A chirimoya for your thoughts, señor!” said a well-known voice, in musical Castilian. “For these three minutes I have been standing close by you, with this freshly gathered chirimoya, and you took no notice of me.”
“A thousand pardons and a thousand thanks, señorita!” I answered, taking the proffered fruit. “But my thoughts were worth all the chirimoyas in the world, delicious as they are, for they were of you.”
“We were thinking of each other then.”
“What! Were you thinking of me?”
“Si, señor.”
“And what were you thinking, señorita?”
“That God was very good in sending you to Quipai.”
“Why?”
“For several reasons.”
“Tell me them.”
“Because you have done the abbé good. Aforetime he was often sad. You remember his saying that he had cares. I know not what, but now he seems himself again.”
“Anything else?”
“Si, señor. You have also increased my happiness. Not that I was unhappy before, for, thanks to the dear abbé, my life has been free from sorrow; but during the last month—since you came—I have been more than happy, I have been joyous.”
“You don’t want me to go, then?”
“O señor! Want you to go! How can you—what have I done or said?” exclaimed the girl, impetuously and almost indignantly. “Surely, sir, you are not tired of us already?”
“Heaven forbid! If you want me to stay I shall not go. It is for you to decide. Angela mia, it depends on you whether I go away soon—how or whither I know not—or stay here all my life long.”
“Depends on me! Then, sir, I bid you stay.”
“Oh, Angela, you must say more than that. You must consent to become my wife; then do with me what you will.”
“Your wife! You ask me to become your wife?”
“Yes, Angela. I have loved you since the day we first met; every day my love grows stronger and deeper, and unless you love me in return, and will be my wife, I cannot stay; I must go—go at once.”
“Quipai, señor,” said Angela, archly, at the same time giving me her hand.
“Quipai! I don’t quite understand—unless you mean—”
“Quipai,” she repeated, her eyes brightening into a merry smile.
“Unless you mean—”
“Quipai.”
“Oh, how dull I am! I see now. Quipai—rest here.”
“Si, señor.”
“And if I rest here, you will—”
“Do as you wish, señor, and with all my heart; for as you love me, so I love you.”
“Dearest Angela!” I said, kissing her hand, “you make me almost too happy. Never will I leave Quipai without you.”
“And never will I leave it without you. But let us not talk of leaving Quipai. Where can we be happier than here with the dear abbé? But what will he say?”
“He will give us his blessing. His most ardent wish is that I should be your husband and his successor.”
“How good he is? And I, wicked girl that I am, repay his goodness with base ingratitude. Ah me! How shall I tell him?”
“You repay his goodness with base ingratitude? You speak in riddles, my Angela.”
“Since the waves washed me to his feet, a little child, the abbé has cherished me with all the tenderness of a mother, all the devotion of a father. He has been everything to me; and now you are everything to me. I love you better than I love him. Don’t you think I am a wicked girl?” And she put her arm within mine, and looking at me with love-beaming eyes, caressing my cheek with her hand.
“I will grant you absolution, and award you no worse penance than an embrace, ma fille cherie,” said the abbé, who had returned to the veranda just in time to overhear Angela’s confession. “I rejoice in your happiness, mignonne. To-day you make two men happy—your lover and myself. You have lightened my mind of the cares which threatened to darken my closing days. The thought of leaving you without a protector and Quipai without a chief was a sore trouble. Your husband will be both. Like Moses, I have seen the Promised Land, and I shall be content.”
“Talk not of dying, dear father or you will make me sad,” said Angela, putting her arms round his neck.
“There are worse things than dying, my child. But you are quite right; this is no time for melancholy forebodings. Let us be happy while we may; and since I came to Quipai, sixty years ago, I have had no happier day than this.”
As the only law at Quipai was the abbé’s will, and we had neither settlements to make, trousseaux to prepare, nor house to get ready (the abbé’s house being big enough for us all), there was no reason why our wedding should be delayed, and the week after Angela and I had plighted our troth, we were married at the church of San Cristobal.
The abbé’s wedding-present to Angela was a gold cross studded with large uncut diamonds. Where he got them I had no idea, but I heard afterward—and something more.
All this time nothing, save vague generalities, had passed between us on the subject of religion—rather to my surprise, for priests are not wont to ignore so completely their raison d’être, but I subsequently found that Balthazar, albeit a devout Christian, was no bigot. Either his early training, his long isolation from ecclesiastical influence, or his communings with Nature had broadened his horizon and spiritualized his beliefs. Dogma sat lightly on him, and he construed the apostolic exhortations to charity in their widest sense. But these views were reserved for Angela and myself. With his flock he was the Roman ecclesiastic—a sovereign pontiff—whom they must obey in this world on pain of being damned in the next. For he held that the only ways of successfully ruling semi-civilized races are by physical force, personal influence, or their fear of the unseen and the unknown. At the outset Balthazar, having no physical force at his command, had to trust altogether to personal influence, which, being now re-enforced by the highest religious sanctions, made his power literally absolute. Albeit Quipai possessed neither soldiers, constables, nor prison, his authority was never questioned; he was as implicitly obeyed as a general at the head of an army in the field.
I have spoken of the abbé’s communings with Nature. I ought rather to have said his searchings into her mysteries; for he was a shrewd philosopher and keen observer, and despite the disadvantages under which he labored, the scarcity of his books, and the rudeness of his instruments, he had acquired during his long life a vast fund of curious knowledge which he placed unreservedly at my disposal. I became his pupil, and it was he who first kindled in my breast that love of science which for nearly three-score years I have lived only to gratify.