The Gilded Man: A Romance of the Andes Read online

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  THE GILDED MAN

  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 & LIVERIGHT, INC.

  TO BEATRIX

  CONTENTS

  _Page_ INTRODUCTION xi _Chapter_ I. IN WHICH COMET GOES LAME 1

  II. IN UNA'S GARDEN 10

  III. A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS 19

  IV. THE GHOST OF THE FORGOTTEN 30

  V. THE SEARCH FOR EL DORADO 41

  VI. EMBOLADORES ON THE MARCH 55

  VII. LA REINA DE LOS INDIOS 71

  VIII. A RIVER INTERLUDE 89

  IX. ON INDIAN TRAILS 105

  X. AN OLD MYSTERY 125

  XI. IN WHICH ANDREW IS FOUND 145

  XII. A DEAD WALL 157

  XIII. MRS. QUAYLE TAKES THE LEAD 170

  XIV. THE BLACK MAGNET 189

  XV. AT THE SIGN OF THE CONDOR 212

  XVI. NARVA 230

  XVII. A SONG AND ITS SEQUEL 251

  XVIII. SUBTERRANEAN PHOTOGRAPHY 274

  XIX. A QUEEN'S CONQUEST 293

  XX. LEGEND AND REALITY 302

  XXI. DREAMS 312

  XXII. A PEOPLE'S DESTINY 325

  XXIII. THE GILDED MAN 344

  THE GILDED MAN

  FOREWORD

  Two dreams have persistently haunted the imagination of man since dreamsbegan. You find them in all mythologies, and, perhaps most dramatically,in the Arabian Nights: the dream of the Water of Immortality, and thedream of the Golden City. Within recent times--that is, during thesixteenth century--both were lifted out of the region of fairy lore, andmen as far from "dreamers," in the ordinary sense, as the "conquistador"Ponce de Leon and Sir Walter Raleigh raised them into the sphere ofsomething like Elizabethan practical politics. Whether or not Ponce deLeon did actually discover the Fountain of Eternal Youth on the BiminiIslands concerns us but incidentally here. At all events, he seems tohave died without drinking of it; as death on the scaffold was thepenalty for Raleigh's failure to discover El Dorado. So practically hadthe courts of Elizabeth and James regarded the dream of the Golden City,and so firm had been Raleigh's own belief in it. Though Raleigh's nameis most conspicuously and tragically connected with it, of course ithad been Spanish adventurers for several generations before--exploringthat "Spanish Main" which they had already, and in romance forever, madetheir own--who had given that dream its local habitation and its name.Martinez had been the first to tell how, having drifted on the coast ofGuiana, he had been taken inland to a city called Manoa, whose kingwas in alliance with the Incas. Manoa, said he, to opened mouths andwondering eyes, on his return to Spain, was literally built, walls androofs, houses big and little, of silver and gold. His tale, garnishedwith many other mysterious matters, soon speeded expedition afterexpedition, dreaming across those

  "perilous seas In fairyland forlorn."

  All came back with marvels on their tongues. All had caught glimpsesof the gilded domes of the city, but that was all. Gonzales Ximinezde Quesada from Santa Fe de Bogota was "warmest," perhaps; but he toofailed. Many a daring sailor since has vainly gone on a like quest. Evenin our prosaic times--in the true Elizabethan spirit, that, for alltheir romance, actually animated those enterprises of old time--whenmen sought real gold as now, not "faery-gold"--an enterprise, witha prospectus, shareholders, and those dreams now known as promiseddividends, has made it its serious "incorporated" business to go inquest of El Dorado.

  But, elaborate as all previous expeditions and enterprises have been,and dauntless as the courage of the individual explorer, one and allhave failed--till now. Till now, I say--for at last El Dorado _has_ beendiscovered, and it is my proud privilege to announce, for the firsttime, the name of its discoverer--Dr. Clifford Smyth.

  Dr. Smyth has chosen the medium of fiction for the publication ofhis discovery, like other such eminent discoverers as the authors of_Erewhon_ and _Utopia_, but that fact, I need hardly say, in nowiseinvalidates the authenticity and serious importance of his discovery.Though truth be stranger than fiction, it has but seldom its charm, and,to use the by-gone phrase, Dr. Smyth's relation of happenings which wenever doubt for a rapt moment did happen "reads as entertainingly as afiction." In fact, the present writer--who confesses to the idleness ofkeeping _au courant_ with the good and even merely advertised fictionof the day, recalls no fiction in some years that has seemed to himcomparable in imaginative quality with _The Gilded Man_, or has givenhim, in any like degree, the special kind of delight which Dr. Smyth'snarrative has given him. For any such thrill as the latter part of thebook in particular holds, he finds that his memory must travel back, nodifficult or lengthy journey, to Mr. Rider Haggard's _King Solomon'sMines_--a book which one sees more and more taking its place as one ofthe classics of fantastic romance, the kind of romance which combinesadventure with poetic strangeness; though, at its publication, "superiorpersons," with the notable exception of that paradoxical most superiorperson, and man of genius, Andrew Lang, disdained it as a passing"thriller."

  Perhaps it is not indiscreet to say that one circumstance of Dr.Smyth's life gave him exceptional opportunities for that dreaming onhis special object which is found to be the invariable incubation, soto say, preceding all great discoveries. For some years Dr. Smyth wasUnited States consul at Carthagena, that unspoiled haunted city of theSpanish Main, which, it may be recalled, furnishes a spirited chapterin the history of Roderick Random, Esquire, of His Majesty's Navy. Hewas, therefore, seated by the very door to that land of enchantment,which, as we have been saying, had drawn so many adventurous spiritsunder roaring canvas across the seas, in the spacious days. He was buta short mule-back journey from that table-land raised high in the upperAndes where Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is situated, the regionaround which all those "superstitions" retailed by Indians to thoseearly adventurers centre. Descendants of the same Indians still tellthe same stories, and still the average prosaic mind laughs at themas "superstitions." El Dorado! as if any one could take it seriouslynowadays! Has not the term long been a picturesque synonym for The Cityof Impossible Happiness, the Land of Heart's Desire, the Paradise ofFools, and all such cities and realms and destinations and states ofbeing, as the yearning heart of man, finding nowhere on the earth heknows, imagines in the sun-tipped cloudland of his dreams, and towardwhich he pathetically turns his eyes, and stretches out his arms to theend?

  But what if El Dorado were no such mere figment of man's aching fancy,after all; what if the El Dorado, so passionately believed in by thoseeminently practical Elizabethans, did all the time, as they surmised,exist upon this solid earth, and should still quite concretely existthere....

  Is it not likely that such might be the musings of a man situated as wasDr. Smyth, in the very heart of the mystery, a man of affairs, touchedwith imagination, as all really capable men of affairs are; and, as helistened to the old Indian tales, and talked with miners, and all mannerof folk acquainted with the _terrain_ of the legend, what could he dobut fall under the same spell that had
laid its ghostly hand on themighty heart of Raleigh centuries before, and follow its beckoning, asthe other inspired madmen before him?

  But, as we have seen, his doom was to be different. For so longgenerations of dead men had come crying, like those three old horsemenin Morris's _Glittering Plain_: "Is this the Land? Is this the Land?" toturn broken-hearted away; but from him, of all men born, throughout thegenerations, was to be heard at last the joyous, ringing cry: "This _is_the Land! This _is_ the Land!"

  Pause for one moment more and think what El Dorado has meant to mankind,think with all your might; and then think what must have been thefeelings of the man who stood looking upon it, and knew that he--that_he_--had found it. In such moments of transfiguring realization menoften lose their reason, and, as we say, it is not a little surprisingthat Dr. Smyth is alive to tell the tale. The lovely knowledge mightwell have struck him as by lightning, and the secret once more have beenburied in oblivion.

  I have all along taken it for granted that Dr. Smyth's _The GildedMan_ is a genuine narrative, the true story of a wonderful happening.If any one should come to me and tell me that I am simple-minded, thatit is no such thing, and that, as the children say, Dr. Smyth "made itup all out of his own head," I should still need a lot of convincing,and, were conviction at last forced upon me, I could only answer thatDr. Smyth must then possess a power of creating illusion such as fewromancers have possessed. For there is a plausibility, a particularity,a concreteness about all the scenes and personages in _The Gilded Man_that make it impossible not to believe them true and actual, howeverremoved from common experience they may seem. I should like very muchto be more particular, but I cannot very well be so without betrayingthe story--or "true and veracious history," whichever it may turn outto be. Still I can hint at one or two matters without betraying toomuch. The mysterious queen, Sajipona, for example, seems not only real,but she and her love-story make one of the loveliest idylls in what,for want of a better word, one may call "supernatural" romance that hasever been written. And all the dream-like happenings in the great cave,though of the veritable "stuff that dreams are made of," are endowedwith as near and moving a sense of reality as though they were enactedon Broadway.

  Of the cave itself, which may be said to be the Presiding Personage ofthe book, it seems to me impossible to speak with too great admiration.It is, without exaggeration, an astonishing piece of invention; Irefer not merely to the ingenuity of its mechanical devices, though Imight well do that, for they are not merely devised with an exceedingcleverness, but the cleverness is of a kind that thrills one with aromantic dread, the kind of awe-inspiring devices that we shudderat when we try to picture the mysteries of the temples of Moloch.Dr. Smyth's invention here is of no machine-made, puzzle-constructedorder. We feel that he has not so much invented these devices, butdreamed them--seen them himself with a thrill of fear and wonder ina dream. And the great device of them all, that by which the cave islighted so radiantly and yet so mystically, outsoars ingenuity, andis nothing short of a high poetic inspiration. But all these details,each in itself of a distinguished originality, gain an added value ofimpressiveness from the atmosphere of noble poetic imagination whichenfolds them all, that atmosphere which always distinguishes a work ofcreation from one of mere invention. I do not wish to seem to speak insuperlatives, but, in my opinion, Dr. Smyth's cave of The Gilded Manbelongs with the great caves of literature. I thought of _Vathek_ as Iread it, though it is not the least the same, except in that quality ofimaginative atmosphere.

  With the purely "human" interest of the book, the daylight scenes anddoings, he is no less successful. His plot is constructed with greatskill and is full of surprises. The manner in which he "winds" into itis particularly original. Then, too, his characters are immediatelyalive, and there is some good comedy naturally befallen. General Herranand Doctor Miranda are delightfully drawn South American characters,and the atmosphere of a little South American republic convincinglyconveyed, evidently from sympathetic experience. Nor must the absurdMrs. Quayle be forgotten, and particularly her jewels, which play suchan eccentric part in the story--one of Dr. Smyth's quaintest pieces ofcleverness.

  But it is time I ended my proud role of showman, and allowed the show tobegin. So this and no more: If Dr. Smyth has, as I personally believefrom the convincing manner of his book, discovered El Dorado, he isto be congratulated alike on the discovery and his striking method ofpublishing forth the news; but if he has merely dreamed it for ourbenefit, then I say that a man whom we have long respected as a wise andgenerous critic of other men's books, should lose no time in writingmore books of his own.

  RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

  THE GILDED MAN