Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online Page A

With the two months he had lived in Spain, and his good ear, he learned more quickly, certainly, and also more comprehensively than many of the British who had come to the country twenty years before him. At first, he concealed his too liberal political ideas, but soon he noticed that in every social gathering he was besieged with questions and always surrounded by a group of astonished listeners. His abolitionist, egalitarian, and democratic discourses shook those good people from their fog; they were the source of endless discussion among the men and horrified exclamations among the mature ladies, though inevitably they attracted the younger ones. He was catalogued in general opinion as a kind of harmless lunatic, and his incendiary ideas were considered entertaining; on the other hand, his mockery of the British royal family was badly received among members of the English colony for whom Queen Victoria, like God and Empire, was untouchable. His income—modest, though not to be sneezed at—allowed him to live with a certain ease without ever really having to work for a living, and that classified him as a gentleman. As soon as it was established that he was unattached there was no shortage of marriageable girls intent on capturing him, but after he met Rose Sommers he had no eyes for other women. He asked himself a thousand times why she had never married and all that occurred to that rationalist agnostic was that heaven intended her for him.
    â€œHow long are you going to go on tormenting me, Miss Rose? Aren’t you afraid I may get tired of chasing you?” he teased her.
    â€œYou won’t tire, Mr. Todd. Pursuing the cat is much more entertaining than catching it,” she replied.
    The bogus missionary’s eloquence was a novelty in those surroundings, and as soon as it was learned that he had conscientiously studied Holy Scripture, he was invited to speak. There was a small Anglican church, frowned upon by the Catholic powers-that-be, but the Protestant community also met in private homes. “Whoever heard of a church without virgins and devils? Those English folks are all heretics; they don’t believe in the Pope, they don’t know how to pray, they spend most of their time singing, and they don’t even take communion,” a scandalized Mama Fresia would grumble when it was the Sommers’ turn to hold Sunday service in their home. Todd planned to read briefly about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and then refer to the situation of immigrants who, like the biblical Jews, had to adapt to a strange land, but Jeremy Sommers introduced him to the congregation as a missionary and asked him to speak about the Indians in Tierra del Fuego. Jacob Todd could not have found Tierra del Fuego on the map, or told why it had the intriguing name Land of Fire, but he succeeded in moving his audience to tears with the story of three savages captured by a British captain and taken to England. In less than three years those unfortunate individuals, who lived naked in glacial cold and from time to time practiced cannibalism, he said, went about properly dressed, had become good Christians and learned civilized customs, including a tolerance for English food. He failed to mention, however, that as soon as they were repatriated they had returned to their old ways, as if they had never been touched by England or the word of Jesus. At Jeremy Sommers’ suggestion, a collection was taken up right there for Todd’s plan to spread the faith, with such fine results that the following day Jacob Todd opened an account in the Valparaíso branch of the Bank of London. The account was nourished weekly with contributions from the Protestants and grew despite the frequent drafts Todd drew to finance personal expenses when his income did not stretch to cover them. The more money that came in, the more the obstacles and pretexts for postponing the evangelical mission multiplied. And in that manner two