He started towards her as if to help her off her mule; but Mr. Ponsonby was detaining him by questions, and Mr. Ward, as usual, was at her rein. In a wonderfully brief time, as it seemed to her, all the animals were led off to their quarters; and Robson, coming up, explained that Madison's hut, the only habitable place, had been prepared for the ladies—the gentlemen must be content to sleep in their tent.
'The hut was at least clean,' said Robson, as he ushered them in; and Mary felt as if it were a great deal more. It was rudely built, and only the part near the hearth was lined with matting; the table and the few stools and chairs were rough carpentry, chiefly made out of boxes; but upon the wall hung a beautiful print from Raffaelle, of which she knew the giver as surely as if his name had been written on it; and the small bookcase suspended near contained, compressed together, an epitome of Louis's tastes—the choicest of all his favourites, in each class of book. Mary stood by it, reading the names, and trying to perceive Louis's principle of selection in each case. It jarred upon her when, as the gentlemen loitered about, waiting for the evening meal, they came and looked at the titles, with careless remarks that the superintendent was a youth of taste, and a laugh at the odd medley—Spenser, Shakspeare, 'Don Quixote,' Calderon, Fouque, and selections from Jeremy Taylor, &c.
Mary would hear no more comments. She went to the fire, and tried to persuade Rosita they would come safe down again; and then, on the apology for a mantelshelf, she saw some fossils and some dried grasses, looking almost as if Fitzjocelyn had put them there.
She did not see Madison that night; but the next morning he presented himself to act as their guide through the wonders of the extraordinary region where his lot had been cast. She found that this was only the first floor of the wondrous castle. Above and above, rose galleries, whence the ore was lowered down to the buildings here placed, where it underwent the first process of separation. The paths above were fit for none, save a chamois, or a barefooted Indian, or a sailor—for the midshipman was climbing aloft in such places, that Tom's chief work was to summon him back, in horror lest he should involve himself in endless galleries, excavated before the days of Atahualpa.
Much of the desperate scrambling which Madison recommended as plain-sailing, was beyond Mr. Ponsonby; but where he went, Mary went; and when he stopped, she, though she had not drawn since the master at her school had resigned her, as a hopeless case, applied herself to the perpetration of an outline of the rocks, that, as she said, 'her aunts might see what sort of place it was.' Her steady head, and firm, enterprizing hand and foot, enabled her to see the crowning wonder of the mountain, one of the ventanillas or windows. Mr. Ward, having visited it, came back bent on taking her thither; there was no danger, if she were not afraid. So, between him and Tom Madison, she was dragged up a steep path, and conducted into a gallery cut out in the living rock, growing gloomier and gloomier, till suddenly there was a spot of light on the sparkling floor, and Mary found herself beneath an opening through the mountain crown, right up into the sky, which, through the wild opening, looked of the deepest, most ultra-marine, almost purple blue, utterly beyond conception in the glory of intense colour, bringing only to her mind those most expressive, yet most inexpressive words, 'the body of heaven in His clearness.' She felt, what she had often heard said, that to all mountain tops is given somewhat of the glory that dwelt on Sinai. That ineffable blue was more dazzling than even the fields beyond fields of marvellous white that met her eye on emerging from the dark gallery.
'I never wish so much that Lord Fitzjocelyn should see anything as that,' said Tom Madison, when Mary, in her gratitude, was trying to say something adequate to the trouble she had given, though the beauty was beyond any word of admiration.
'He would—' she began to answer, but the rest died away, only answered by Tom with an emphatic 'He would!' and then began the difficulties of getting down.
But Mary had the pleasure at the next pause of hearing Mr. Ward say, 'That is a very fine intelligent young fellow, worthy of his library. I think your father has a prize in him!'
Mary's eyes thanked Mr. Ward, with all her heart in them. It was worth going up the Andes for such a sentence to put into a letter that Aunt Kitty would show to Louis.
Robson seemed anxious to monopolize the attention of the gentlemen, to the exclusion of Madison; and while Tom was thus thrust aside, Mary succeeded in having a conversation with him, such as she felt was a sort of duty to Louis. She asked him the names of the various mountain-peaks in sight, whose bare crags, too steep to support the snow, here and there stood out dark in salient contrast to the white scenery, and as he gave them to her, mentioning the few facts that he had been able to gather respecting them, she was able to ask him whether he was in the habit of seeing anything approaching to society. He smiled, saying that his nearest neighbours were many miles off—an engineer conducting some far more extensive mining operations, whom he sometimes met on business, and an old Spanish gentleman, who lived in a valley far down the mountain side, with whom he sometimes smoked his cigar on a Sunday, if he felt inclined for a perpendicular promenade on a Peruvian causeway for nearly four miles. Mary asked whether he often did feel inclined. No, he thought not often; he had generally worked hard enough in the week to make his book the best company; but he liked now and then to see something green for a change after these bare mountains and rocks, and the old Don Manrique was very civil and agreeable. Then, after a few minutes' conversation of this kind, something of the old conscious abruptness of tone seemed to come over the young man, and looking down, he said bluntly, 'Miss Ponsonby, do you think there would be any objection to my coming into Lima just for Christmas?'