The Virgin of the Sun

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THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN

By H. Rider Haggard


First Published in 1922.




DEDICATION

My Dear Little,

Some five-and-thirty years ago it was our custom to discuss many
matters, among them, I think, the history and romance of the vanished
Empires of Central America.

In memory of those far-off days will you accept a tale that deals with
one of them, that of the marvellous Incas of Peru; with the legend also
that, long before the Spanish Conquerors entered on their mission of
robbery and ruin, there in that undiscovered land lived and died a White
God risen from the sea?

Ever sincerely yours, H. Rider Haggard. Ditchingham, Oct. 24, 1921.

James Stanley Little, Esq.





THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN



INTRODUCTORY

There are some who find great interest, and even consolation, amid the
worries and anxieties of life in the collection of relics of the past,
drift or long-sunk treasures that the sea of time has washed up upon our
modern shore.

The great collectors are not of this class. Having large sums at their
disposal, these acquire any rarity that comes upon the market and add
it to their store which in due course, perhaps immediately upon their
deaths, also will be put upon the market and pass to the possession of
other connoisseurs. Nor are the dealers who buy to sell again and thus
grow wealthy. Nor are the agents of museums in many lands, who purchase
for the national benefit things that are gathered together in certain
great public buildings which perhaps, some day, though the thought
makes one shiver, will be looted or given to the flames by enemies or by
furious, thieving mobs.

Those that this Editor has in mind, from one of whom indeed he obtained
the history printed in these pages, belong to a quite different
category, men of small means often, who collect old things, for the most
part at out-of-the-way sales or privately, because they love them, and
sometimes sell them again because they must. Frequently these old things
appeal, not because of any intrinsic value that they may have, not
even for their beauty, for they may be quite unattractive even to the
cultivated eye, but rather for their associations. Such folk love to
reflect upon and to speculate about the long-dead individuals who have
owned the relics, who have supped their soup from the worn Elizabethan
spoon, who have sat at the rickety oak table found in a kitchen or an
out-house, or upon the broken, ancient chair. They love to think of the
little children whose skilful, tired hands wrought the faded sampler and
whose bright eyes smarted over its innumerable stitches.

Who, for instance, was the May Shore ("Fairy" broidered in a bracket
underneath, was her pet name), who finished yonder elaborate example on
her tenth birthday, the 1st of May--doubtless that is where she got
her name--in the year 1702, and on what far shore does she keep her
birthdays now? None will ever know. She has vanished into the great
sea of mystery whence she came, and there she lives and has her being,
forgotten upon earth, or sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. Did she die young
or old, married or single? Did she ever set _her_ children to work other
samplers, or had she none? was she happy or unhappy, was she homely or
beautiful? Was she a sinner or a saint? Again none will ever know. She
was born on the 1st of May, 1692, and certainly she died on some date
unrecorded. So far as human knowledge goes that is all her history, just
as much or as little as will be left of most of us who breathe to-day
when this earth has completed two hundred and eighteen more revolutions
round the sun.

But the kind of collector alluded to can best be exemplified in the
individual instance of him from whom the manuscript was obtained, of
which a somewhat modernized version is printed on these pages. He has
been dead some years, leaving no kin; and under his will, such of his
motley treasures as it cared to accept went to a local museum, while
the rest and his other property were sold for the benefit of a mystical
brotherhood, for the old fellow was a kind of spiritualist. Therefore,
there is no harm in giving his plebeian name, which was Potts. Mr.
Potts had a small draper's shop in an undistinguished and rarely visited
country town in the east of England, which shop he ran with the help
of an assistant almost as old and peculiar as himself. Whether he made
anything out of it or whether he lived upon private means is now unknown
and does not matter. Anyway, when there was something of antiquarian
interest or value to be bought, generally he had the money to pay for
it, though at times, in order to do so, he was forced to sell something
else. Indeed these were the only occasions when it was possible to
purchase anything, indifferent hosiery excepted, from Mr. Potts.

Now, I, the Editor, who also love old things, and to whom therefore Mr.
Potts was a sympathetic soul, was aware of this fact and entered into
an arrangement with the peculiar assistant to whom I have alluded, to
advise me of such crises which arose whenever the local bank called Mr.
Potts's attention to the state of his account. Thus it came about that
one day I received the following letter:--

Sir,

The Guv'nor has gone a bust upon some cracked china, the ugliest that
ever I saw though no judge. So if you want to get that old tall clock at
the first price or any other of his rubbish, I think now is your chance.
Anyhow, keep this dark as per agreement.

Your obedient, Tom.

(He always signed himself Tom, I suppose to mystify, although I believe
his real name was Betterly.)

The result of this epistle was a long and disagreeable bicycle ride in
wet autumn weather, and a visit to the shop of Mr. Potts. Tom, alias
Betterly, who was trying to sell some mysterious undergarments to a fat
old woman, caught sight of me, the Editor aforesaid, and winked. In a
shadowed corner of the shop sat Mr. Potts himself upon a high stool, a
wizened little old man with a bent back, a bald head, and a hooked
nose upon which were set a pair of enormous horn-rimmed spectacles that
accentuated his general resemblance to an owl perched upon the edge of
its nest-hole. He was busily engaged in doing nothing, and in staring
into nothingness as, according to Tom, was his habit when communing with
what he, Tom, called his "dratted speerits."

"Customer!" said Tom in a harsh voice. "Sorry to disturb you at your
prayers, Guv'nor, but not having two pair of hands I can't serve a
crowd," meaning the old woman of the undergarments and myself.

Mr. Potts slid off his stool and prepared for action. When he saw,
however, who the customer was he bristled--that is the only word for it.
The truth is that although between us there was an inward and spiritual
sympathy, there was also an outward and visible hostility. Twice I
had outbid Mr. Potts at a local auction for articles which he desired.
Moreover, after the fashion of every good collector he felt it to be
his duty to hate me as another collector. Lastly, several times I
had offered him smaller sums for antiques upon which he set a certain
monetary value. It is true that long ago I had given up this bargaining
for the reason that Mr. Potts would never take less than he asked.
Indeed he followed the example of the vendor of the Sibylline books in
ancient Rome. He did not destroy the goods indeed after the fashion
of that person and demand the price of all of them for the one that
remained, but invariably he put up his figure by 10 per cent. and
nothing would induce him to take off one farthing.

"What do _you_ want, sir?" he said grumpily. "Vests, hose, collars, or
socks?"

"Oh, socks, I think," I replied at hazard, thinking that they would
be easiest to carry, whereupon Mr. Potts produced some peculiarly
objectionable and shapeless woollen articles which he almost threw at
me, saying that they were all he had in stock. Now I detest woollen
socks and never wear them. Still, I made a purchase, thinking with
sympathy of my old gardener whose feet they would soon be scratching,
and while the parcel was being tied up, said in an insinuating voice,
"Anything fresh upstairs, Mr. Potts?"

"No, sir," he answered shortly, "at least, not much, and if there were
what's the use of showing them to you after the business about that
clock?"

"It was L15 you wanted for it, Mr. Potts?" I asked.

"No, sir, it was L17 and now it's 10 per cent. on to that; you can work
out the sum for yourself."

"Well, let's have another look at it, Mr. Potts," I replied humbly,
whereon with a grunt and a muttered injunction to Tom to mind the shop,
he led the way upstairs.

Now the house in which Mr. Potts dwelt had once been of considerable
pretensions and was very, very old, Elizabethan, I should think,
although it had been refronted with a horrible stucco to suit modern
tastes. The oak staircase was good though narrow, and led to numerous
small rooms upon two floors above, some of which rooms were panelled
and had oak beams, now whitewashed like the panelling--at least they had
once been whitewashed, probably in the last generation.

These rooms were literally crammed with every sort of old furniture,
most of it decrepit, though for many of the articles dealers would have
given a good price. But at dealers Mr. Potts drew the line; not one of
them had ever set a foot upon that oaken stair. To the attics the place
was filled with this furniture and other articles such as books, china,
samplers with the glass broken, and I know not what besides, piled in
heaps upon the floor. Indeed where Mr. Potts slept was a mystery; either
it must have been under the counter in his shop, or perhaps at nights he
inhabited a worm-eaten Jacobean bedstead which stood in an attic, for
I observed a kind of pathway to it running through a number of legless
chairs, also some dirty blankets between the moth-riddled curtains.

Not far from this bedstead, propped in an intoxicated way against the
sloping wall of the old house, stood the clock which I desired. It was
one of the first "regulator" clocks with a wooden pendulum, used by the
maker himself to check the time-keeping of all his other clocks, and
enclosed in a chaste and perfect mahogany case of the very best style of
its period. So beautiful was it, indeed, that it had been an instance of
"love at first sight" between us, and although there was an estrangement
on the matter of settlements, or in other words over the question of
price, now I felt that never more could that clock and I be parted.

So I agreed to give old Potts the L20 or, to be accurate, L18 14s. which
he asked on the 10 per cent. rise principle, thankful in my heart that
he had not made it more, and prepared to go. As I turned, however, my
eye fell upon a large chest of the almost indestructible yellow cypress
wood of which were made, it is said, the doors of St. Peter's at Rome
that stood for eight hundred years and, for aught I know, are still
standing, as good as on the day when they were put up.

"Marriage coffer," said Potts, answering my unspoken question.

"Italian, about 1600?" I suggested.

"May be so, or perhaps Dutch made by Italian artists; but older than
that, for somebody has burnt 1597 on the lid with a hot iron. Not for
sale, not for sale at all, much too good to sell. Just you look inside
it, the old key is tied to the spring lock. Never saw such poker-work in
my life. Gods and goddesses and I don't know what; and Venus sitting
in the middle in a wreath of flowers with nothing on, and holding two
hearts in her hands, which shows that it was a marriage chest. Once it
was full of some bride's outfit, sheets and linen and clothes, and God
knows what. I wonder where she has got to to-day. Some place where the
moth don't eat clothes, I hope. Bought it at the break-up of an
ancient family who fled to Norfolk on the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes--Huguenot, of course. Years ago, years ago! Haven't looked into
it for many years, indeed, but think there's nothing there but rubbish
now."

Thus he mumbled on while he found and untied the old key. The spring
lock had grown stiff from disuse and want of oil, but at length it
turned and reopened the chest revealing the poker-work glories on the
inner side of the lid and elsewhere. Glories they were indeed, never had
I seen such artistry of the sort.

"Can't see it properly," muttered Potts, "windows want washing, haven't
been done since my wife died, and that's twenty years ago. Miss her
very much, of course, but thank God there's no spring-cleaning now. The
things I've seen broken in spring-cleaning! yes, and lost, too. It was
after one of them that I told my wife that now I understood why the
Mahomedans declare that women have no souls. When she came to understand
what I meant, which it took her a long time to do, we had a row, a
regular row, and she threw a Dresden figure at my head. Luckily I caught
it, having been a cricketer when young. Well, she's gone now, and no
doubt heaven's a tidier place than it used to be--that is, if they will
stand her rummagings there, which I doubt. Look at that Venus, ain't she
a beauty? Might have been done by Titian when his paints ran out, and
he had to take to a hot iron to express his art. What, you can't see
her well? Wait a bit and I'll get a lantern. Can't have a naked candle
here--things too valuable; no money could buy them again. My wife and
I had another row about naked candles, or it may have been a paraffin
lamp. You sit in that old prayer-stool and look at the work."

Off he went crawling down the dusky stairs and leaving me wondering
what Mrs. Potts, of whom now I heard for the first time, could have been
like. An aggravating woman, I felt sure, for upon whatever points men
differ, as to "spring-cleaning" they are all of one mind. No doubt he
was better without her, for what did that dried-up old artist want with
a wife?

Dismissing Mrs. Potts from my mind, which, to tell the truth, seemed
to have no room for her shadowy and hypothetical entity, I fell to
examining the chest. Oh! it was lovely. In two minutes the clock was
deposed and that chest became the sultana in my seraglio of beauteous
things. The clock had only been the light love of an hour. Here was
the eternal queen, that is, unless there existed a still better chest
somewhere else, and I should happen to find it. Meanwhile, whatever
price that old slave-dealer Potts wanted for it, must be paid to him
even if I had to overdraw my somewhat slender account. Seraglios, of
whatever sort, it must be remembered, are expensive luxuries of the rich
indeed, though, if of antiques, they can be sold again, which cannot be
said of the human kind for who wants to buy a lot of antique frumps?

There were plenty of things in the chest, such as some odds and ends of
tapestry and old clothes of a Queen Anne character, put here, no doubt,
for preservation, as moth does not like this cypress wood. Also there
were some books and a mysterious bundle tied up in a curious shawl with
stripes of colour running through it. That bundle excited me, and I drew
the fringes of the shawl apart and looked in. So far as I could see it
contained another dress of rich colours, also a thick packet of what
looked like parchment, badly prepared and much rotted upon one side
as though by damp, which parchment appeared to be covered with faint
black-letter writing, done by some careless scribe with poor ink that
had faded very much. There were other things, too, within the shawl,
such as a box made of some red foreign wood, but I had not time to
investigate further for just then I heard old Potts's foot upon the
stair, and thought it best to replace the bundle. He arrived with the
lantern and by its light we examined the chest and the poker work.

"Very nice," I said, "very nice, though a good deal knocked about."

"Yes, sir," he replied with sarcasm, "I suppose you'd like to see it
neat and new after four hundred years of wear, and if so, I think I can
tell you where you can get one to your liking. I made the designs for
it myself five years ago for a fellow who wanted to learn how to
manufacture antiques. He's in quod now and his antiques are for sale
cheap. I helped to put him there to get him out of the way as a danger
to Society."

"What's the price?" I asked with airy detachment.

"Haven't I told you it ain't for sale. Wait till I'm dead and come and
buy it at my auction. No, you won't, though, for it's going somewhere
else."

I made no answer but continued my examination while Potts took his
seat on the prayer-stool and seemed to go off into one of his fits of
abstraction.

"Well," I said at length when decency told me that I could remain no
longer, "if you won't sell it's no use my looking. No doubt you want to
keep it for a richer man, and of course you are quite right. Will you
arrange with the carrier about sending the clock, Mr. Potts, and I will
let you have a cheque. Now I must be off, as I've ten miles to ride and
it will be dark in an hour."

"Stop where you are," said Potts in a hollow voice. "What's a ride in
the dark compared with a matter like this, even if you haven't a lamp
and get hauled before your own bench? Stop where you are, I'm listening
to something."

So I stopped and began to fill my pipe.

"Put that pipe away," said Potts, coming out of his reverie, "pipes mean
matches; no matches here."

I obeyed, and he went on thinking till at last what between the chest
and the worm-eaten Jacobean bed and old Potts on the prayer-stool, I
began to feel as if I were being mesmerized. At length he rose and said
in the same hollow voice:

"Young man, you may have that chest, and the price is L50. Now for
heaven's sake don't offer me L40, or it will be L100 before you leave
this room."

"With the contents?" I said casually.

"Yes, with the contents. It's the contents I'm told you are to have."

"Look here, Potts," I said, exasperated, "what the devil do you mean?
There's no one in this room except you and me, so who can have told you
anything unless it was old Tom downstairs."

"Tom," he said with unutterable sarcasm, "Tom! Perhaps you mean the
mawkin that was put up to scare birds from the peas in the garden, for
it has more in its head than Tom. No one here? Oh! what fools some men
are. Why, the place is thick with them."

"Thick with whom?"

"Who? why, ghosts, of course, as you would call them in your ignorance.
Spirits of the dead I name them. Beautiful enough, too, some of them.
Look at that one there," and he lifted the lantern and pointed to a pile
of old bed posts of Chippendale design.

"Good day, Potts," I said hastily.

"Stop where you are," repeated Potts. "You don't believe me yet, but
when you are as old as I am you will remember my words and believe--more
than I do and see--clearer than I do, because it's in your soul, yes,
the seed is in your soul, though as yet it is choked by the world, the
flesh, and the devil. Wait till your sins have brought you trouble; wait
till the fires of trouble have burned the flesh away; wait till you have
sought Light and found Light and live in Light, then you will believe;
_then_ you will see."

All this he said very solemnly, and standing there in that dusky room
surrounded by the wreck of things that once had been dear to dead men
and women, waving the lantern in his hand and staring--at what was he
staring?--really old Potts looked most impressive. His twisted shape and
ugly countenance became spiritual; he was one who had "found Light and
lived in Light."

"You won't believe me," he went on, "but I pass on to you what a woman
has been telling me. She's a queer sort of woman; I never saw her
like before, a foreigner and dark-hued with strange rich garments and
something on her head. There, that, _that_," and he pointed through the
dirty window-place to the crescent of a young moon which appeared in
the sky. "A fine figure of a woman," he went on, "and oh! heaven, what
eyes--I never saw such eyes before. Big and tender, something like those
of the deer in the park yonder. Proud, too, she is, one who has ruled,
and a lady, though foreign. Well, I never fell in love before, but I
feel like it now, and so would you, young man, if you could see her, and
so I think did someone else in his day."

"What did she say to you?" I asked, for by now I was interested enough.
Who wouldn't be when old Potts took to describing beautiful women?

"It's a little difficult to tell you for she spoke in a strange tongue,
and I had to translate it in my head, as it were. But this is the gist
of it. That you were to have that chest and what was in it. There's a
writing there, she says, or part of a writing for some has gone--rotted
away. You are to read that writing or to get it read and to print it so
that the world may read it also. She said that 'Hubert' wishes you to
do so. I am sure the name was Hubert, though she also spoke of him with
some other title which I do not understand. That's all I can remember,
except something about a city, yes, a City of Gold and a last great
battle in which Hubert fell, covered with glory and conquering. I
understood that she wanted to talk about that because it isn't in the
writing, but you interrupted and of course she's gone. Yes, the price is
L50 and not a farthing less, but you can pay it when you like for I know
you're as honest as most, and whether you pay it or not, you must have
that chest and what's in it and no one else."

"All right," I said, "but don't trust it to the carrier. I'll send a
cart for it to-morrow morning. Lock it now and give me the key."



In due course the chest arrived, and I examined the bundle for the other
contents do not matter, although some of them were interesting. Pinned
inside the shawl I found a paper, undated and unsigned, but which from
the character and style of the writing was, I should say, penned by a
lady about sixty years ago. It ran thus:--

"My late father, who was such a great traveller in his young days and so
fond of exploring strange places, brought these things home from one of
his journeys before his marriage, I think from South America. He told
me once that the dress was found upon the body of a woman in a tomb and
that she must have been a great lady, for she was surrounded by a number
of other women, perhaps her servants who were brought to be buried with
her here when they died. They were all seated about a stone table at the
end of which were the remains of a man. My father saw the bodies near
the ruins of some forest city, in the tomb over which was heaped a great
mound of earth. That of the lady, which had a kind of shroud made of the
skins of long-wooled sheep wrapped about it as though to preserve the
dress beneath, had been embalmed in some way, which the natives of the
place, wherever it was, told him showed that she was royal. The others
were mere skeletons, held together by the skin, but the man had a long
fair beard and hair still hanging to his skull, and by his side was a
great cross-hilted sword that crumbled to fragments when it was touched,
except the hilt and the knob of amber upon it which had turned almost
black with age. I think my father said that the packet of skins or
parchment of which the underside is badly rotted with damp was set under
the feet of the man. He told me that he gave those who found the tomb a
great deal of money for the dress, gold ornaments, and emerald necklace,
as nothing so perfect had been found before, and the cloth is all worked
with gold thread. My father told me, too, that he did not wish the
things to be sold."

This was the end of the writing.

Having read it I examined the dress. It was of a sort that I had never
seen before, though experts to whom I have shown it say that it is
certainly South American of a very early date, and like the ornaments,
probably pre-Inca Peruvian. It is full of rich colours such as I have
seen in old Indian shawls which give a general effect of crimson. This
crimson robe clearly was worn over a skirt of linen that had a purple
border. In the box that I have spoken of were the ornaments, all of
plain dull gold: a waist-band; a circlet of gold for the head from which
rose the crescent of the young moon and a necklace of emeralds, uncut
stones now much flawed, for what reason I do not know, but polished and
set rather roughly in red gold. Also there were two rings. Round one
of these a bit of paper was wrapped upon which was written, in another
hand, probably that of the father of the writer of the memorandum:--

"Taken from the first finger of the right hand of a lady's mummy which I
am sorry, in our circumstances, it was quite impossible to carry away."

This ring is a broad band of gold with a flat bezel upon which something
was once engraved that owing to long and hard wear now cannot be
distinguished. In short, it appears to be a signet of old European make
but of what age and from what country it is impossible to determine.
The other ring was in a small leathery pouch, elaborately embroidered
in gold thread or very thin wire, which I suppose was part of the lady's
costume. It is like a very massive wedding ring, but six or eight times
as thick, and engraved all over with an embossed conventional design of
what look like stars with rays round them, or possibly petalled flowers.
Lastly there was the sword-hilt, of which presently.