The Rover of the Andes by Robert Michael Ballantyne (8 ebook reader .TXT) 📖

of his companion, shook it warmly.

"I go with you in every word, Pedro. You are a man after my own heart; and I say, God prosper you in your good work wherever you go!"

Manuela, who was standing near at the time, looked up at the enthusiastic youth quickly. Her knowledge of English must have been improving, despite the badness of her pronunciation, for she seemed to understand the conversation, and to regard Lawrence with profound interest.

The youth was so carried away with his feelings, however, that he did not observe the girl's look or expression.

"That is well," Pedro said, with a pleased look, as he returned his friend's grasp; "but I fear you won't find many of our way of thinking in this unhappy country. You are aware, no doubt, that it is frequently--I might almost say every three or four years--disturbed by factious quarrels which too often end in riot and bloodshed, though these are not often on so large a scale as to be styled civil war. Well, there is a party of peace-lovers even here, who do their best to bring about a better state of things, and a more settled and powerful government. Some of the men of influence at Buenos Ayres, and some even of the military men, are of this party. I am, as I have said, their secret agent--secret, because if I were to attempt the thing openly, or as a government agent, I should be treated with ridicule by some, or be murdered perhaps by others, in either of which cases my influence would be gone. Of course, as you have seen, I run considerable risk in travelling through the land on my mission, for I have been several times taken for a spy, but I don't object to run risk, the cause being a good one.

"As to the news, which I have received by mere chance from a passing Indian, it is another outbreak in the San Juan district which makes a change in the disposition of troops necessary; and as I have particular business with one of the officers, I must change my route and make for Buenos Ayres as straight as possible. That is all the mystery about it; so you see, as I said, it is not very profound."

"It is very interesting, however," returned Lawrence, "and you may depend on my falling in with your plans, whatever they are."

"Well, then," returned the guide, "the first part of my plan is simple enough--merely to start off to-morrow by the first peep of day. Will you go, therefore, and tell Quashy to get ready, while I have a talk with Manuela?"

We do not intend to inflict on the reader the whole of the conversation that took place in the Indian tongue between the little brown maiden and the guide. A small portion of it will suffice.

"I repeat, Manuela," said the latter, in a remonstrative tone, "that you are not wise."

"My kind protector forgets," replied the girl, with a modest look, "that I have never set up any claim to wisdom."

"But what will your father say?"

"I really cannot guess what he will say," she answered, with one of her prettiest little smiles.

"But you may be quite sure that the thing is impossible. Consider the immense difference between you, and, forgive me, Manuela, but I think it is not fair."

"Now my protector forgets _himself_," returned the maiden, drawing herself up and bestowing a look on the guide which was quite worthy of an Inca princess--supposing Lawrence to have been right in his conjecture on that point!

"Well, well, please yourself, Manuela," returned Pedro, with a laugh, in which exasperation slightly mingled, "but do me the justice to tell your father when you meet that I fairly remonstrated with and warned you. After all, nothing would please me better,--if it should ever come about."

He turned on his heel and went off, with a mingling of expressions on his handsome face, to look after the canoe and make preparations for an early start in the morning.

Canoe travelling appears to be rather slow work while it is going on, even when descending the current of a river. Each point of land seems to be reached and passed so gradually; every vista of the river seems so extensive, and the trees on shore drop so leisurely astern, that when you think of the hundreds of miles which lie in advance, you are apt to feel as if the journey or voyage would never come to an end. But when you forget the present and reflect on the past, when you think how many hundreds of miles now lie behind, although it seems but yesterday that you set out on the journey, then you realise the fact that the "power of littles," of steady, daily unremitting perseverance, has had too little weight with you in your estimates, and that, just as fast as your starting-point recedes from you, exactly so fast does your goal approach, although those misleading factors, your feelings, may have induced you to think otherwise.

Five days after the occurrence of the events on what we may style Turtle-beach, Lawrence found himself wondering at what appeared to be the far-off-ness of the spot, considering the slowness of the hourly progress, yet at the same time wondering if they should _ever_ traverse the nine hundred or a thousand miles that yet intervened between him and Buenos Ayres.

To do Lawrence Armstrong justice, however, he was by no means impatient. He was quite satisfied that things should go as slowly as they pleased, for was he not travelling through the most interesting of countries, in which the flora and the fauna and the geological features furnished abundant--ay, superabundant--food for the satisfaction of his scientific appetite, while his companions were of the pleasantest character? Pedro, since the opening up of his heart to him, had laid aside much-- though not all--of his reserve, and shown himself to be a man of extensive information and profound thought.

Spotted Tiger was a splendid specimen, physically and mentally, of the sons of the soil, in the contemplation of whom he could expend whatever smattering he possessed of ethnological science. Then Quashy--was not that negro the very soul and embodiment of courage, fidelity, and good-humour, the changes of whose April face alone might have furnished rich material for the study of a physiognomist or a Rembrandt.

And as for Manuela--we cannot analyse his thoughts about her. It is probable that he could not have expounded them himself. Take the following sample of them, as overheard by us one day when he had strayed into the wild woods alone, and was seated on the roots of a mighty tree, pencil in hand, attempting unsuccessfully to make a sketch.

"I do believe," he murmured, with a gesture of impatience--for he had drawn a small convolvulus, hanging from a tree, with such disregard for the rules of linear perspective that it was the proportionate size of an omnibus--"I do believe that that girl has come between me and my wits. Of course it is not love. That is quite out of the question. A white man _could_ not fall in love with a black woman."

Yes, he did the poor girl the injustice, in his perplexed indignation with himself, to call her black, although it must have been obvious to the most careless observer that she was only reddish-brown, or, to speak more correctly, brownish-red.

"I can't understand it," he continued to murmur in that low, slow, absent far-away tone and manner characteristic of artists when at work. "No doubt her nose is Grecian, and her mouth small, as well as exquisitely formed, her chin full and rounded, her teeth faultless, her eyes gorgeous, and her whole contour perfect, but--but--she's black--at least," (correcting himself with a touch of compunction), "she's brown. No; I see what it is--it's--(well that's more like a balloon than a water-lily)--yes, it _must_ be that I am in love with her spirit. That's it! I've said so before, and--and--I say it again."

He drew back his head at this point, and looked critically--even sternly--at the sketch. There was room both for criticism and indignation, for the display, in so small a compass, of bad drawing, vile composition, ridiculous chiaro-oscuro, and impossible perspective, could only have been justified by the supposition that his intellect had been warped through the heart, in consequence of an unheard of perplexity connected therewith.

"Yes," he continued, resuming his work with the air of an invincible man, "there is something distinctly and exasperatingly wrong here. I am in love with her spirit, and not with her person! Is it possible that the human race, descending from Adam and Eve, should have reached the nineteenth century without such a case ever having been heard of before, and that I--I should be the first wretched example--or--or victim! It is like loving the jewel without caring for the cas--no, that's a bad simile, for one could throw away a casket and keep the jewel, which could not conveniently be done in this case. I wonder what it is that makes the rules of perspective so difficult, and the practice so im--"

His meditations were checked at this point by a sound so sweet that his heart almost stood still, his pencil remained suspended over the sketch, and the half-formed word remained in the half-opened mouth. It was as if an angel had come to earth, and were warbling the airs of paradise.

Peeping through the bushes, Lawrence saw that it was Manuela! She was sauntering along pensively, humming as she went. He sat still, amazed and silent. From what cause we know not, but the Indian girl had not until that day opened her mouth in song. The youth's surprise was increased when she came near enough to let him hear that the words were Spanish; but suddenly remembering that English girls sometimes learned Italian songs by rote, like parrots, his surprise partly abated--why should not an Indian girl learn Spanish songs by rote?

Manuela passed close to the tree behind which our hero sat. On observing him she stopped, and blushed intensely red. Evidently she had thought herself quite alone, and experienced the usual dislike of humanity to being caught in the act of singing to itself!

In a burst of great enthusiasm Lawrence sprang up, overturned his drawing materials, seized the girl's hand, and dropped it again as if it had burnt him, as he exclaimed--

"I wish--oh! I _wish_, Manuela, that I were your _brother_!"

The lightning flash is said to be quick, and we suppose, relatively speaking, it is so, but we are quite sure that lightning cannot hold a candle to thought in this respect. Lawrence, as the reader has doubtless observed, was not a man of much more than average intelligence, or action of mind, yet between the first "wish" and the word "brother," he had perceived and condemned the impropriety of exhibiting strong feeling in thus grasping Manuela's hand; the unmanliness of doing or saying anything to her that had the remotest approach to love-making while in circumstances where the poor girl could not get out of his way, however much she might wish to do so, and the meanness, not to say absurdity, of showing anything like a lover's affection for a spirit which could only make itself known through the medium of a brown visage. Hence Lawrence, who was the soul of honour and gallantry, got out of the