The Gilded Man: A Romance Of The Andes - free ebook by Clifford Smyth

THE GILDED MAN A ROMANCE OF THE ANDES

BY CLIFFORD SMYTH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE BONI AND LIVERIGHT NEW YORK 1918 Copyright, 1918 By Boni &amp; Liveright, Inc. TO BEATRIX THE GILDED MAN...

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FOREWORD

Two dreams have persistently haunted the imagination of man since dreams began. You find them in all mythologies, and, perhaps most dramatically, in the Arabian Nights: the dream of the Water of Immortality, and the dream of the Golden City. Within recent times—that is, during the sixteenth century—both were lifted out of the region of fairy lore, and men as far from “dreamers,” in the ordinary sense, as the “conquistador” Ponce de Leon and Sir Walter Raleigh raised them into the sphere of somet

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I IN WHICH COMET GOES LAME

When, one evening in the late Autumn, David Meudon reached the entrance to Stoneleigh Garden, where Una Leighton awaited him, it was evident something unusual had happened. “You are late,” she said, as he clasped the slender hand extended to him in welcome. “I could ride no faster. Comet is lame.” The tired bay, belying his name, stood dejectedly, one white foreleg slightly bent, as if seeking relief from a weight it was weary of bearing. By the friendly way in which he stretched forth his muzzl

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II IN UNA’S GARDEN

Until David told her that evening in the garden at Stoneleigh, Una had not known that her uncle opposed her marriage. No reason was given for his opposition—and David’s attitude was quite as much of a puzzle. He talked of some shadow in his past, and was on the point of telling Una what it was. But she stopped him. Their love, she said, had to do with the present, the future; it had nothing to do with the past. Nevertheless, she wished David had set himself right with Leighton. “Why didn’t you a

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III A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS

A strange thing happened that night at Stoneleigh. For the first time in the annals of the younger Rysdale generation, the great bare room at the top of the house, adjoining Harold Leighton’s laboratory, had a guest. In the days of the St. Maur Brotherhood the monks used this room as an oratory. The shadowy outline of a crucifix, which had once risen above an unpretentious altar, could still be traced in the rough plaster on the narrow east wall. At either side of this crucifix the blackened mar

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IV THE GHOST OF THE FORGOTTEN

“Modern rack and thumbscrew,” exclaimed David, eyeing curiously the machine whose gleaming surface of glass and polished metal was in striking contrast with the somber oratory. Harold Leighton paid no heed to the comment. He was apparently too busied with some detail in the complicated mechanism before him to attend to anything else. David and Una, on the other hand, were more amused than impressed with the odd kind of entertainment chosen for this memorable evening of their betrothal by the ecc

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V THE SEARCH FOR EL DORADO

“Leave him with me,” said Leighton. “Wait for us with Mrs. Quayle.” “No! No!” answered the girl passionately, kneeling beside David, who was lying on the couch. “You have killed him!” “Don’t talk nonsense,” he said coldly, yet with sympathy in his keen gray eyes. “This had to be, and I took my own way about it. Now, go. He is all right. He is safe with me.” David drew a long breath. He looked vacantly at Leighton, then turned to Una. “Do as he says,” he whispered. “David, I will stay with you.”

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VI EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH

There is in Bogota a street, the Calle de Las Montanas, that meanders down from the treeless foothills of the gray mountain ridge overlooking the city, and broadens out into a respectable thoroughfare before losing itself in the plaza upon which, facing each other diagonally, stand the venerable Catedral de Santa Fe and the National Capitol. This street, resembling the bed of a mountain stream, in the first half mile of its course runs through a huddle of lowly houses whose thatched roofs and wh

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VII LA REINA DE LOS INDIOS

“Felicita, where is this Senor?” “Ah, Dios mio! safe enough, in the sala. But for thee—nina Sa’pona, how scared I’ve been! And they called thee queen, thou who art our queen indeed, beautiful, brave one! But thou shouldst not do this—not for so ugly a senor—my beautiful nina!” With the great door closed, and the noise from the peons growing fainter in the distance, the stern dignity of the Indian girl vanished before the simple talk of her old nurse. Queen of the Indians, as the peons called her

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VIII A RIVER INTERLUDE

On the deck of the wheezy, palpitating river steamer, “Barcelona,” toiling slowly up the turbid waters of the Magdalena, sat the usual throng of passengers who are compelled to sacrifice two weeks of their lives every time they travel from the seacoast to Colombia’s mountain capital. Fortunate such travelers count themselves if their lumbering, flat-bottomed craft, its huge stern wheel lifted high above the down-rushing eddies and whirlpools, escapes the treacherous mudbanks which form and disso

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IX ON INDIAN TRAILS

Doctor Miranda was right about Andrew. By the time he had finished moving his party and their luggage from the stifling railroad shed to the cool courtyard of Honda’s principal inn, the schoolmaster had been beaten in his last feeble fight for liberty and had become the victim to an unlimited amount of quininizing. No need now to force his eyelids apart to reveal the telltale yellow within. Even a tyro in such matters could see from his jaundiced appearance, his quick breathing, his general iner

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X AN OLD MYSTERY

The vanishing of David Meudon in broad daylight while traveling on one of the main thoroughfares of the Republic became the sensation of the hour in Bogota. It excited more interest even than the return of General Herran and his party from Panama. The tale of David’s disappearance three years before was revived, and gossip found plenty of material from which to weave wild romance as to what had happened on both occasions. But you can’t build up a durable romance without some solid fact to base i

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XI IN WHICH ANDREW IS FOUND

Puzzled at not finding Sajipona, uncertain how to take up the promise he had given in regard to her, an altogether unexpected turn of events awaited Raoul at Leighton’s hotel the next morning. Andrew Parmelee had been found. In the custody of two delighted police officers the missing schoolmaster, bewildered, quite speechless from his nocturnal experience, had made his appearance, scarcely an hour before Raoul’s arrival. When, thanks to Miranda’s persistent prodding, backed by the calm questioni

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XII A DEAD WALL

Mrs. Quayle objected to being parted from Una. She objected vigorously—vigorously, at least, as compared to her usual manner of taking things. She complained that guarding the baggage in a strange country, where it was impossible to make even her simplest wants intelligible, was not the sort of thing she was there for. But she could not turn Una from her purpose; nor was it any easier, once his consent was given, to move Leighton to a reconsideration of the matter. Only one thing was left for he

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XIII MRS. QUAYLE TAKES THE LEAD

Miranda was not dreaming—the tunnel had vanished. That may be a strong word for it; but anyway, whatever had happened, the tunnel was not to be found. Returning by the path upon which they had entered the subterranean chamber, they were confronted by a wall of rock where the entrance to the tunnel should have been. They were perfectly certain that when they passed out of the tunnel, less than half an hour before, into the main body of the cave, this wall had not been there. Where it had come fro

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XIV THE BLACK MAGNET

For once Doctor Miranda had nothing to say. To the eager queries of those about him he returned a grimace and a scowl of rage. Then he asked savagely for Mrs. Quayle. “There is her neckalace,” he said indignantly, letting go his hold on that extraordinary piece of jewelry and scrambling to his feet with as much dignity as was left to him. “Will you tell me what all this means?” demanded Leighton sternly. “How I know?” retorted Miranda, glaring venomously at him. “I pull the neckalace from the ne

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XV AT THE SIGN OF THE CONDOR

There is no doubt about it; Miranda had much the worst of it in his tilt with Anitoo. The Indian’s point blank question as to why the explorers were in the cave was not easily answered. The more Miranda thought it over the less able was he to discover—or at least explain—just that very thing: why he and his companions were there. To say they were looking in a cave on the Bogota plateau for a man who had disappeared many miles away on the Honda road sounded rather unreasonable, now that he looked

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XVI NARVA

To return to the explorers, left prostrate on the field of battle, it must be recorded that, for once in his career, Miranda, after his first taste of active fighting, and seeing how the fortunes of the day were going against them, repressed his natural impulsiveness and developed a prudence and caution that would have become a general seasoned in strategy. “For me it is not good to be here,” he whispered sepulchrally to his companions as they lay face downward about him. “We cannot fight. We ha

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XVII A SONG AND ITS SEQUEL

Narva’s forbidding presence promised little in the way of cheer or warmth of welcome to her wearied companions. The singular dwelling into which the latter were ushered recalled, at first glance, the gloomy abode of some medieval anchorite to whose theory of existence anything approaching luxury was to be shunned, rooted out, as an obstruction to the soul’s growth. Whether or not Narva’s mode of living was actually based on these mystical considerations, her home, at least, in its lack of visibl

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XVIII SUBTERRANEAN PHOTOGRAPHY

At first he did not see Una. His glance wandered dreamily off in the distance and then, recalled, as if by the sudden disappearance of some idle fancy, fixed itself upon Sajipona. A smile of satisfaction passed over his features as he came out to meet her. “Why did you stop singing?” he asked, in a voice that was almost inaudible. “I missed you.” “Some one is here to see you,” she said, ignoring the question. David turned to Una. One would have said that he had not seen her before, although in h

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XIX A QUEEN’S CONQUEST

Surrounded by her people, the ancient diadem of the Chibchas, with its great, smouldering emerald, on her head, Sajipona waited at the entrance to the court. Without, the motionless flowers and shrubbery of the garden were steeped in a pale, quivering light outlining every object with a weird intensity sharper, yet more indefinable than gleams from moon-drenched skies. In this spectral scene the cavemen stood in rows, like carven statues; even Sajipona, mobile, versatile of mood, seemed a woman

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XX LEGEND AND REALITY

As soon as she reëntered the palace, Sajipona dismissed her courtiers, the cavemen who acted as guards, and even the few female attendants she was accustomed to have near her. Of her own people, Narva alone remained. Facing Raoul and Una in the deserted hall, flooded with light from the magic sun that a short while since had traced in moving characters of fire the approach of her enemies, Sajipona told of her purpose in bringing them there. She spoke as if she had long foreseen and even planned

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XXI DREAMS

David welcomed Sajipona with genuine pleasure, with an eagerness suggesting that he had been awaiting her coming impatiently. Heedless of his greeting, however, and regarding him earnestly, she asked if he remembered the visitor who had been with him a short time before. “Yes! Yes!” he exclaimed. Then he went on, betraying a certain degree of anxiety in tone and manner, explaining how this visitor’s face had haunted him as if it belonged to one he had seen in his dreams, one upon whom he had unw

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XXII A PEOPLE’S DESTINY

Miranda and, in a lesser degree, those who were with him in the palace garden, were indignant at their enforced separation from Una and Sajipona. The doctor, priding himself especially on Raoul’s discomfiture, considered the queen guilty of the basest ingratitude, and even suspected that she might be, at that moment, plotting their destruction. Leighton and Herran scoffed at this, but it appealed to Mrs. Quayle, and that lady, clinging nervously to Andrew, followed Miranda’s explosive talk with

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XXIII THE GILDED MAN

After leaving Sajipona, Una found herself in an apartment small compared with the spacious courts and chambers she had seen elsewhere in the palace. This apartment differed, also, in its furnishings—a few uncompromising stone benches along the walls and nothing more—while the dim light gave to everything a gloomy, uninviting character. But Una was in no mood to linger; the queen’s words had filled her with an anxiety that must be appeased at once. Hurrying down the middle of the long room, she r

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