The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes

by Clifford Smyth

The fanciful story, the fabulous antiquity claimed for the palace before her, increased the sense of unreality and mystery filling Una’s mind as she listened to Narva. The story itself was not unlike others of the kind, handed down from one generation to another, explaining the origin of some ancient South American race. In the telling of it Narva, for the first time, forgot her reserve, and her simple eloquence, her apparent belief in the quaint old fable she was telling, added greatly to its impressiveness. And there stood the great palace before her, with its flying condor guarding forever the descendants of that mythical old zipa! Una was unable to go back in imagination to that primeval past, especially as it had to do with a country and a people of which she knew nothing. But the tale itself, and the grace and beauty of the palace about which it had been woven, reminded her of much that she had heard and read in other than Indian mythology and literature. Pageants from medieval legend, with their phantom castles in haunted forests, engaged her fancy as she listened. For the moment she half expected to see a troop of Arthurian knights, intent upon some mystic quest, issue forth from the stately portal, bringing with them a flash of vivid light and movement that as yet the picture lacked. A zipa she had never seen, had never heard of before—and even a condor filled a place in her imagination that was not much more real than that occupied by the roc, the giant bird of the Arabian tales. But neither Christian knight nor pagan zipa was here. The silence, now that Narva had finished her tale, was profound. The murmur of voices, distinctly heard a short time before, was lost in the distance. The apparent isolation of a building so rich in possibilities of usefulness, so well preserved architecturally, was its most inexplicable feature. Una was almost persuaded that the palace before her was uninhabited, abandoned. If it belonged, as Narva said, to the dim past of a vanished race, it stood now merely as a monument to forgotten greatness. Or—did it still serve as a refuge, a protection, to the descendants of that condor-born zipa of Narva’s legend?

Then, suddenly, as Una was thinking of these ancient, far-off things, from one of the wings of the palace there rose the clear, high notes of a woman’s voice in a melody not unlike the one Anitoo and his band had used for a marching song. But Anitoo’s song had something of martial swing and vigor in it; this, although wild in spirit, permeated by the chanting, wailing quality characteristic of primitive music, thrilled with strains of passionate tenderness unlike anything Una had heard. The words of the song were not distinguishable, nor were they needed to convey the theme inspiring the invisible singer. The latter seemed to pass from joy to despair, rising again to a solemn pitch of intensity that partook of the dignity and earnestness of religious rhapsody. A pagan priest, presiding over ancient rites from which the faithful expect a miracle, might thus have modulated the notes of his incantation. As in all music of the kind, the emotion portrayed was simple, unmixed with the shadings and intellectual complexities that play so important a part in modern song. The voice interpreting this emotion showed no great degree of cultivation. Unskilled in the nicer subtleties of the vocal art, it depended upon a natural, unrestrained sincerity, enriched by a birdlike clearness and resonance, for its effects. Its plaintiveness, from the very first strains of the ringing melody, appealed deeply to Una.

Narva, alive to the sympathetic response aroused in her companion by the song, laid her hand gently upon Una’s arm and drew her in the direction of the distant portion of the palace from whence, apparently, the notes came.

“Have care, say nothing!” she repeated impressively.

Una, still absorbed by the weird beauty of the scene and the strange legends with which it was connected, scarcely noted the reiterated warning. Her own spirit kindled with friendly warmth for the singer whose mingled joys and sorrows were so eloquently expressed. She followed Narva almost unconsciously, eager, and yet half afraid to reach the climax of their adventure; fearful, likewise, lest by some misstep or imprudence of theirs the spell of music should be broken.

No sign of life was visible in the great rambling palace that loomed high above them. The rows of lanceolated openings, that in the distance appeared to be ordinary windows, upon a nearer view proved to be unglazed—or, if they were fitted with glass it was too thick to reveal to an outsider the interior of the palace. That some kind of vitreous substance filled these openings was evident from the flashes of light reflected on their surface. Considering the antiquity of the building, however, and the unknown methods and materials employed by its architect, it was more likely that the substance used for windows was a crystal gathered, perhaps, from the queen’s garden—the flower from those alluring bushes that had first caught Una’s attention—rather than manufactured glass that must have been unknown to these Andean cavemen. Even though the first zipa was the reputed offspring of stars or condors, it was not likely that in building his palace thousands of years ago—to quote Narva’s estimate—he had been able to fit it with modern improvements.

Owing to the thickness of these windows, therefore, it was impossible to make out anything of the interior of the apartments of the palace for which they were, apparently, intended to serve for light. A close approach, right under the palace walls, revealed nothing more than could be seen at a distance; and as Narva avoided the great central entrance, it appeared to Una that the mystery which so fascinated her was to remain unsolved. An abrupt angle in the building, however, brought them suddenly within a little portico, extending between two massive towers jutting out from the main structure, the existence of which came as a complete surprise. On the side of this portico away from the palace clung a vine of pale green foliage, starred with white and crimson flowers similar to those in the Queen’s Garden, forming with its delicate festoons a cloistered way that had a subtle attractiveness amidst the imposing lines and columns of the huge edifice rising above it.

Here Narva and her companion paused, listening to the wild melody coming to them in a clear rush of sound. At the other end of the portico, leaning against the side of a long latticed window standing partly open, they could see the singer, her face turned to the apartment within, one arm encircling a lyre-shaped instrument the strings of which were lightly touched by the fingers of her right hand. The long white drapery in which she was clothed scarcely stirred with the movement from her playing, while the upward poise of her head, with its masses of dark hair flowing downward over her shoulders, indicated the rapt intensity with which she voiced the passion of her song. Apparently she was alone. The semi-obscurity of the apartment, however, at the entrance to which she stood, might have screened effectively from an outsider any one who was within.