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The spirit of ancient Carthage must have breathed upon this “Very Royal and Loyal City” which Pedro de Heredia in the sixteenth century founded on the north coast of New Granada, and bequeathed to it a portion of its own romance and tragedy. Superbly placed upon a narrow, tongue-shaped islet, one of a group that shield an ample harbor from the sharp tropical storms which burst unheralded over the sea without; girdled by huge, battlemented walls, and guarded by frowning fortresses, Cartagena commanded the gateway to the exhaustless wealth of theCordilleras, at whose feet she still nestles, bathed in perpetual sunshine, and kissed by cool ocean breezes which temper the winds blowing hot from the steamingllanosof the interior. By the middle of the sixteenth century she offered all that the adventurous seeker of fame and fortune could desire, and attracted to herself not only the chivalry, but the beauty, wealth and learning which, mingled with rougher elements, poured into the New World so freely in the opening scenes of the great drama inaugurated by the arrival of the tiny caravels of Columbus a half century before.
The city waxed quickly rich and powerful. Its natural advantages of location, together with its massive fortifications, and its wonderful harbor, so extensive that the combined fleets of Spain might readily have found anchorage therein, early rendered it the choice of the Spanish monarch as his most dependable reservoir and shipping point for the accumulated treasure of his new possessions. The island upon which the city arose was singularly well chosen for defense. Fortified bridges were built to connect it with the mainland, and subterranean passageways led from the great walls encircling it to the impregnable fortress of San Felipe de Barajas, on Mount San Lázaro, a few hundred yards back of the city and commanding the avenues and approaches of the land side. To the east, and about a mile from the walls, the abrupt hill of La Popa rises, surmounted by the convent of Santa Candelaria, likewise connected by underground tunnels to the interior of the city, and commanding the harbor and its approaches from the sea. The harbor formerly connected with the open sea through two entrances, the Boca Grande, a wide, fortified pass between the island of Tierra Bomba and the tongue on which the city stands, and the Boca Chica, some nine miles farther west, a narrow, tortuous pass, wide enough to permit entry to but a single vessel at a time, and commanded by forts San Fernando and San Josè.
By the middle of the seventeenth century Cartagena, “Queen of the Indies and Queen of the Seas,” had expanded into a proud and beautiful city, the most important mart of the New World.84Under royal patronage its merchants enjoyed a monopoly of commerce with Spain. Under the special favor of Rome it became an episcopal See, and the seat of the Holy Inquisition. Its docks and warehouses, its great centers of commerce, its sumptuous dwellings, its magnificent Cathedral, its colleges and monasteries, and its proud aristocracy, all reflected the spirit of enterprise which animated its sons and found expression in a city which could boast a pride, a culture, and a wealth almost unrivalled even in the Old World.
But, not unlike her ancient prototype, Cartagena succumbed to the very influences which had made her great. Her wealth excited the cupidity of freebooters, and her power aroused the jealousy of her formidable rivals. Her religion itself became an excuse for the plundering hands of Spain’s enemies. Again and again the city was called upon to defend the challenge which her riches and massive walls perpetually issued. Again and again she was forced to yield to the heavy tributes and disgraceful penalties of buccaneers and legalized pirates who, like Drake, came to plunder her under royal patent. Cartagena rose and fell, and rose again. But the human heart which throbs beneath the lash of lust or revenge knows no barriers. Her great forts availed nothing against the lawless hordes which swarmed over them. Neither were her tremendous walls proof against starvation. Again and again, her streets filled with her gaunt dead, she stubbornly held her gates against the enemies of Spain who assaulted her in the name of religion, only at last to weaken with terror and throw them open in disgraceful welcome to the French de Pontis and his maudlin, rag-tag followers, who drained her of her last drop of life blood. As her gates swung wide and this nondescript band of marauders streamed in with curses and shouts of exultation, the glory of this royal mediaeval city passed out forever.
Almost from its inception, Cartagena had been the point of attack of every enterprise launched with the object of wresting from Spain her rich western possessions, so much coveted by her jealous and revengeful rivals. It was Spain herself who fought for very existence while Cartagena was holding her gates against the enemies of Holy Church. And these enemies knew that they had pierced the Spanish heart when the “Queen of the Indies” fell. And in no small measure did Spain deserve the fate which overtook her. For, had it not been for the stupendous amount of treasure derived from these new possessions, the dramatic and dominant part which she played in the affairs of Europe during the sixteenth century would have been impossible. This treasure she wrested from her South American colonies at a cost in the destruction of human life, in the85outraging of human instincts, in the debauching of ideals and the falsifying of hope, in hellish oppression and ghastly torture, that can never be adequately estimated. Her benevolent instruments of colonization were cannon and saintly relics. Her agents were swaggering soldiers and bigoted friars. Her system involved the impression of her language and her undemonstrable religious beliefs upon the harmless aborigines. The fruits of this system, which still linger after three centuries, are superstition, black ignorance, and woeful mental retardation. To the terrified aborigines the boasted Spanish civilization meant little more than “gold, liquor, and sadness.” Small wonder that the simple Indians, unable to comprehend the Christian’s lust for gold, poured the molten metal down the throats of their captives, crying, “Eat, Christian, eat!” They had borrowed their ideals from the Christian Spaniards, who by means of the stake and rack were convincing them that God was not in this western land until they came, bringing their debauched concept of Christianity.
And so Cartagena fell, late in the seventeenth century, never to regain more than a shadow of her former grandeur and prestige. But again she rose, in a semblance of her martial spirit, when her native sons, gathering fresh courage and inspiration from the waning powers of the mother-country in the early years of the century just closed, organized that federation which, after long years of almost hopeless struggle, lifted the yoke of Spanish misrule from New Granada and proclaimed the Republic of Colombia. Cartagena was the first city of Colombia to declare its independence from Spain. And in the great war which followed the “Heroic City” passed through terrible vicissitudes, emerging from it still further depleted and sunken, a shell of massive walls and battered defenses, with desolated homes and empty streets echoing the tread of the mendicantpeon.
As the nineteenth century, so rich in invention, discovery, and stirring activity in the great States to the north, drew to a close, a chance visitor to this battle-scarred, mediaeval city would have found her asleep amid the dreams of her former greatness. Approaching from the harbor, especially if he arrived in the early hours of morning, his eyes would have met a view of exquisite beauty. Seen thus, great moss-grown structures rise from within the lofty encircling walls, with many a tower and gilded dome glittering in the clear sunlight and standing out in sharp relief against the green background of forest-plumed hills and towering mountains. The abysmal blue of the untainted tropical sky overhead contrasts sharply with the red-tiled roofs and dazzling white exteriors of the86buildings beneath; and the vivid tints, mingling with the iridescence of the scarcely rippling waters of the harbor, blend into a color scheme of rarest loveliness in the clear atmosphere which seems to magnify all distant objects and intensify every hue.
A closer approach to the citadel which lies within the landlocked harbor reveals in detail the features of the stupendous walls which guard this key to Spain’s former treasure house. Their immensity and their marvelous construction bear witness to the genius of her famous military engineers, and evoke the same admiration as do the great temples and monuments of ancient Egypt. These grim walls, in places sixty feet through, and pierced by numerous gates, are frequently widened into broad esplanades, and set here and there with bastions and watch towers to command strategic points. At the north end of the city they expand into an elaborately fortified citadel, within which are enormous fresh water tanks, formerly supplied by the rains, and made necessary by the absence of springs so near the coast. Within the walls at various points one finds the now abandoned barracks, storerooms, and echoing dungeons, the latter in the days of the stirring past too often pressed into service by the Holy Inquisition. Underground tunnels, still intact, lead from the walls to the Cathedral, the crumbling fortress of San Felipe de Barajas, and the deserted convent on the summit of La Popa. Time-defying, grim, dramatic reliques of an age forever past, breathing poetry and romance from every crevice––still in fancy echoing from moldering tower and scarred bulwark the clank of sabre, the tread of armored steed, and the shouts of exultingConquistadores––aye, their ghostly echoes sinking in the fragrant air of night into soft whispers, which bear to the tropical moon dark hints of ancient tragedies enacted within these dim keeps and gloom-shrouded tunnels!
The pass of Boca Grande––“large mouth”––through which Drake’s band of marauders sailed triumphantly in the latter part of the sixteenth century, was formerly the usual entrance to the city’s magnificent harbor. But its wide, deep channel, only two miles from the city walls, afforded too easy access to undesirable visitors in the heyday of freebooters; and the harassed Cartagenians, wearied of the innumerable piratical attacks which this broad entrance constantly invited, undertook to fill it up. This they accomplished after years of heroic effort and an enormous expenditure of money, leaving the harbor only the slender, tortuous entrance of Boca Chica––“little mouth”––dangerous to incoming vessels because of the almost torrential flow of the tide through it, but much more readily87defended. The two castles of San Fernando and San Josè, frowning structures of stone dominating this entrance, have long since fallen into disuse, but are still admirably preserved. Beneath the former, and extending far below the surface of the water, is the old Bastile of the Inquisition, occasionally pressed into requisition now to house recalcitrant politicians, and where no great effort of the imagination is required still to hear the groans of the tortured and the sighs of the condemned, awaiting in chains andsan benitosthe approachingauto da fé.
But the greater distance from the present entrance of the harbor to the city walls affords the visitor a longer period in which to enjoy the charming panorama which seems to drift slowly out to meet him as he stands entranced before it. The spell of romance and chivalry is upon him long ere he disembarks; and once through the great gateway of the citadel itself, he yields easily to the ineluctable charm which seems to hover in the balmy air of this once proud city. Everywhere are evidences of ancient grandeur, mingling with memories of enormous wealth and violent scenes of strife. The narrow, winding streets, characteristic of oriental cities; the Moorish architecture displayed in the grandiose palaces and churches; the grated, unglazed windows, through which still peep timidseñoritas, as in the romantic days of yore; the gaily painted balconies, over which bepowdereddoncellaslean to pass the day’s gossip in the liquid tongue of Cervantes, all transport one in thought to the chivalrous past, when this picturesque survival of Spain’s power in America was indeed the very Queen of the western world and the proud boast of the haughty monarchs of Castile.
Nor was the city more dear to the Spanish King than to the spiritual Sovereign who sat on Peter’s throne. The Holy See strove to make Cartagena the chief ecclesiastical center of the New World; and churches, monasteries, colleges, and convents flourished there as luxuriantly as the tropical vegetation. The city was early elevated to a bishopric. A magnificent Cathedral was soon erected, followed by other churches and buildings to house ecclesiastical orders, including the Jesuit college, the University, the women’s seminary, and the homes for religious orders of both sexes. The same lavish expenditure of labor and wealth was bestowed upon the religious structures as on the walls and fortifications. The Cathedral and the church of San Juan de Dios, the latter the most conspicuous structure in the city, with its double towers and its immense monastery adjoining, became the special recipients of the liberal outpourings of a community rich not only in material wealth, but in culture and refinement as well. The latter church in particular88was the object of veneration of the patrons of America’s only Saint, the beneficent Pedro Claver, whose whitened bones now repose in a wonderful glass coffin bound with strips of gold beneath its magnificent marble altar. In the centralplazaof the city still stands the building erected to house the Holy Inquisition, so well preserved that it yet serves as a dwelling. Adjacent to it, and lining theplaza, are spacious colonial edifices, once the homes of wealth and culture, each shaded by graceful palms and each enclosing its inner garden, or patio, where tropical plants and aromatic shrubs riot in richest color and fragrance throughout the year.
In the halcyon days of Cartagena’s greatness, when, under the protection of the powerful mother-country, her commerce extended to the confines of the known world, her streets and markets presented a scene of industry and activity wholly foreign to her in these latter days of her decadence. From her port the rich traffic which once centered in this thriving city moved, in constantly swelling volume, in every direction. In her marts were formulated those audacious plans which later took shape in ever-memorable expeditions up the Magdalena and Cauca rivers in search of gold, or to establish new colonies and extend the city’s sphere of influence. From her gates were launched those projects which had for their object the discovery of the mysterious regions where rivers were said to flow over sands of pure gold and silver, or the kingdom of El Dorado, where native potentates sprinkled their bodies with gold dust before bathing in the streams sacred to their deities. From this city the bold Quesada set out on the exploits of discovery and conquest which opened to the world the rich plateau of Bogotá, and ranked him among the greatest of theConquistadores. In those days a canal had been cut through the swamps and dense coast lowlands to the majestic Magdalena river, some sixty-five miles distant, where a riverine town was founded and given the name of Calamar, the name Pedro de Heredia had first bestowed upon Cartagena. Through thisdiquethe city’s merchant vessels passed to the great arterial stream beyond, and thence some thousand miles south into the heart of the rich and little known regions of upper Colombia. To-day, like the grass-grown streets of the ancient city, this canal, choked with weeds anddébris, is but a green and turbid pool, but yet a reminder of the faded glory of the famous old town which played such a dramaticrôlein that age of desperate courage.
In the finished town of Cartagena Spain’s dreams of imperial pomp and magnificence were externalized. In her history the tragedy of the New World drama has been preserved. To-day, sunk in decadence, surrounded by the old mediaeval flavor, and89steeped in the romance of an age of chivalry forever past, her muniments and donjons, her gray, crenelated walls and time-defying structures continue to express that dogged tenacity of belief and stern defiance of unorthodox opinion which for two hundred years maintained the Inquisition within her gates and sacrificed her fair sons and daughters to an undemonstrable creed. The heavy air of ecclesiasticism still hangs over her. The priests and monks who accompanied every sanguinary expedition of theConquistadores, ready at all times to absolve any desperado who might slay a harmless Indian in the name of Christ, have their successors to-day in the astute and untiring sons of Rome, who conserve the interests of Holy Church within these battered walls and guard their portals against the entrance of radical thought. Heredia had scarcely founded the city when King Philip sent it a Bishop. And less than a decade later the Cathedral, which to-day stands as the center of the episcopal See, was begun.
The Cathedral, though less imposing than the church of San Juan de Dios, is a fine example of the ecclesiastical architecture of the colonial era. Occupying a central position in the city, its ever-open doors invite rich and poor alike, citizen and stranger, to enter and linger in the refreshing atmosphere within, where the subdued light and cool shadows of the great nave and chapels afford a grateful respite from the glare and heat of the streets without. Massive in exterior appearance, and not beautiful within, the Cathedral nevertheless exhibits a construction which is at once broad, simple and harmonious. The nave is more than usually wide between its main piers, and its rounded arches are lofty and well proportioned. Excellent portraits of former Bishops adorn its white walls, and narrow rectangular windows at frequent intervals admit a dim, mellow light through their dark panes. Before one of these windows––apparently with no thought of incongruity in the exhibition of such a gruesome object attached to a Christian church––there has been affixed an iron grating, said to have served the Holy Inquisition as a gridiron on which to roast its heretical victims. Within, an ambulatory, supported on the first tier of arches, affords a walk along either side of the nave, and leads to the winding stairway of the bell tower. At one end of this ambulatory, its entrance commanding a full view of the nave and thecapilla mayor, with its exquisitely carved marble altar, is located the Bishop’ssanctum. It was here that the young Spanish priest, Josè de Rincón, stood before the Bishop of Cartagena on the certain midday to which reference was made in the opening chapter of this recital, and received with dull ears the ecclesiastical order which removed him still farther from the world and90doomed him to a living burial in the crumbling town of Simití, in the wilderness of forgotten Guamocó.
CHAPTER 13
“At last, you come!”
The querulous tones of the aged Bishop eddied the brooding silence within the Cathedral. Without waiting for a reply he turned again to his table and took up a paper containing a list of names.
“You wait until midday,” he continued testily; “but you give me time to reflect and decide. The parish of Simití has long been vacant. I have assigned you to it. The Honda touches at Calamar to-morrow, going up-river. You will take it.”
“Simití! Father––!”
“Bien; and would you dispute this too!” quavered the ill-humored Bishop.
“But––Simití––you surely cannot mean––!”
The Bishop turned sharply around. “I mean that after what I learn from Rome I will not keep you here to teach your heresies in our University! I mean that after what I hear this morning of your evil practices I will not allow you to spend another day in Cartagena!” The angry ecclesiastic brought his bony fist hard against the table to emphasize the remark.
“Madre de Dios!” he resumed, after some moments of nursing his choleric feelings. “Would you debate further! The Holy Father for some unexplained reason inflicts a madman upon me! And I, innocent of what you are, obey his instructions and place you in the University––with what result? You have the effrontery––the madness––to lecture to your classes on the heresies of Rome!”
“But––”
“And as if that were not burden enough for these old shoulders, I must learn that I have taken a serpent to my bosom––but that you are still sane enough to propagate heresies––to plot revolution with the Radicals––and––shame consume you!––to wantonly ruin the fair daughters of our diocese! But, do you see now why I send you where you can do less evil than here in Cartagena?”
The priest slowly petrified under the tirade.
“The fault is not mine if I must act without instruction from Rome,” the Bishop went on petulantly. “Twice have I warned you against your teachings––but I did not suspect then, for only yesterday did I learn that before coming to me you had been91confined in a monastery––insane! But––Hombre! when you bring the blush of shame to my cheeks because of your godless practices––it is time to put you away without waiting for instruction!”
Godless practices! Was the Bishop or the priest going mad?
“Go now to your room,” the Bishop added, turning again to his table. “You have little enough time to prepare for your journey. Wenceslas will give you letters to the Alcalde of Simití.”
Wenceslas! The priest’s thought flew back over the events of the morning. Marcelena––Maria––the encounter below with––!Dios!Could it be that Wenceslas had fastened upon him the stigma of his own crime? The priest found his tongue.
“Father!––it is untrue!––these charges are false as hell!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I demand to know who brings them against me!”
The testy Bishop’s wrath flared up anew. “You demand! Am I to sit here and be catechised byyou? It is enough that I know what occurs in my diocese, and am well informed of your conduct!”
The doorway darkened, and the priest turned to meet the object of his suspecting thought.
Bestowing a smile of patronage upon Josè, and bowing obsequiously before the Bishop, Wenceslas laid some papers upon the table, remarking as he did so, “The letters, Your Grace, to introduce our Josè to his new field. Also his instructions and expense money.”
“Wenceslas!” The priest confronted him fiercely. “Do you accuse me before the Bishop?”
“Accuse,amigo?” Wenceslas queried in a tone of assumed surprise. “Have I not said that your ready tongue and pen are your accusers? But,” with a conciliatory air, “we must remember that our good Bishop mercifully views your conduct in the light of your recent mental affliction, traces of which, unfortunately, have lingered to cause him sorrow. And so he graciously prepares a place for you,caro amigo, where rest and relief from the strain of teaching will do you much good, and where life among simple and affectionate people will restore you, he hopes, to soundness of mind.”
The priest turned again to the Bishop in a complexity of appeal. The soft speech of Wenceslas, so full of a doubleentendu, so markedly in contrast with the Bishop’s harsh but at least sincere tirade, left no doubt in his mind that he was now the victim of a plot, whose ramifications extended back to the confused circumstances of his early life, and the doubtful purposes of his uncle and his influence upon the sacerdotal directors92in Rome. And he saw himself a helpless and hopelessly entangled victim.
“Father!” In piteous appeal Josè held out his hands to the Bishop, who had turned his back upon him and was busy with the papers on his table.
“Amigo, the interview is ended,” said Wenceslas quietly, stepping between the priest and his superior.
Josè pushed wildly past the large form of Wenceslas and seized the Bishop’s hand.
“Santa Maria!” cried the petulant churchman. “Do you obey me, or no? If not, then leave the Church––and spend your remaining days as a hounded ex-priest and unfrocked apostate,” he finished significantly. “Go, prepare for your journey!”
Wenceslas slipped the letter and a fewpesosinto the hand of the smitten, bewildered Josè, and turning him to the door, gently urged him out and closed it after him.
Just why the monastery gates had opened to him after two years’ deadening confinement, Josè had not been apprised. All he knew was that his uncle had appeared with a papal appointment for him to the University of Cartagena, and had urged his acceptance of it as the only course likely to restore him both to health and position, and to meet the deferred hopes of his sorrowing mother.
“Accept it,sobrino mío,” the uncle had said. “Else, pass your remaining days in confinement. There can be no refutation of the charges against you. But, if these doors open again to you, think not ever to sever your connection with the Church of Rome. For, if the Rincón honor should prove inadequate to hold you to your oath, be assured that Rincón justice will follow you until the grave wipes out the stain upon our fair name.”
“Then,tío mío, let the Church at once dismiss me, as unworthy to be her son!” pleaded Josè.
“What, excommunication?” cried the horrified uncle. “Never! Death first! Are you still mad?”
Josè looked into the cold, emotionless eyes of the man and shuddered. The ancient spirit of the Holy Inquisition lurked there, and he cowered before it. But at least the semblance of freedom had been offered him. His numbed heart already had taken hope. He were indeed mad not to acquiesce in his uncle’s demands, and accept the proffered opportunity to leave forever the scenes of his suffering and disgrace. And so he bowed again before the inexorable.
Arriving in Cartagena some months before this narrative opens, he had gradually yielded himself to the restorative effects93of changed environment and the hope which his uncle’s warm assurances aroused, that a career would open to him in the New World, unclouded by the climacteric episode of the publishing of his journal and his subsequent arrogant bearing before the Holy Father, which had provoked his fate. Under the beneficent influences of the soft climate and the new interests of this tropic land he began to feel a budding of something like confidence, and the suggestions of an unfamiliar ambition to retrieve past failure and yet gratify, even if in small measure, the parental hope which had first directed him as a child into the fold of the Church. The Bishop had assigned him at once to pedagogical work in the University; and in the teaching of history, the languages, and, especially, his beloved Greek, Josè had found an absorption that was slowly dimming the memory of the dark days which he had left behind in the Old World.
But the University had not afforded him the only interest in his new field. He had not been many weeks on Colombian soil when his awakening perceptions sensed the people’s oppression under the tyranny of ecclesiastical politicians. Nor did he fail to scent the approach of a tremendous conflict, in which the country would pass through violent throes in the struggle to shake off the galling yoke of Rome. Maintaining an attitude of strict neutrality, he had striven quietly to gauge the anticlerical movement, and had been appalled to find it so widespread and menacing. Only a miracle could save unhappy Colombia from being rent by the fiercest of religious wars in the near future. Oh, if he but had the will, as he had the intellectual ability, to throw himself into the widening breach!
“There is but one remedy,” he murmured aloud, as he sat one evening on a bench in theplazaof Simón Bolívar, watching the stream of gaily dressed promenaders parading slowly about on the tesselated walks, but hearing little of their animated conversation.
“And what is that, may I ask, friend?”
The priest roused up with a start. He had no idea that his audible meditations had been overheard. Besides, he had spoken in English. But this question had been framed in the same tongue. He looked around. A tall, slender man, with thin, bronzed face and well-trimmed Van Dyke beard, sat beside him. The man laughed pleasantly.
“Didn’t know that I should find any one here to-night who could speak my lingo,” he said cordially. “But, I repeat, what is the remedy?”
“Christianity,” returned the amazed Josè, without knowing what he said.
“And the condition to be remedied?” continued the stranger.
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“This country’s diseased––but to whom have I the honor of speaking?” drawing himself up a little stiffly, and glancing about to see who might be observing them.
“Oh, my credentials?” laughed the man, as he caught Josè’s wondering look. “I’m quite unknown in Cartagena, unfortunately. You must pardon my Yankee inquisitiveness, but I’ve watched you out here for several evenings, and have wondered what weighty problems you were wrestling with. A quite unpardonable offense, from the Spanish viewpoint, but wholly forgivable in an uncouth American, I’m sure. Besides, when I heard you speak my language it made me a bit homesick, and I wanted to hear more of the rugged tongue of the Gentiles.”
Laughing again good-naturedly, he reached into an inner pocket and drew out a wallet. “My name’s Hitt,” he said, handing Josè his card. “But I didn’t live up to it. That is, I failed to make a hit up north, and so I’m down here.” He chuckled at his own facetiousness. “Amos A. Hitt,” he went on affably. “There used to be a ‘Reverend’ before it. That was when I was exploring the Lord’s throne. I’ve dropped it, now that I’m humbly exploring His footstool instead.”
Josè yielded to the man’s friendly advances. This was not the first American he had met; yet it seemed a new type, and one that drew him strongly.
“So you think this country diseased, eh?” the American continued.
Josè did not answer. While there was nothing in the stranger’s appearance and frank, open countenance to arouse suspicion, yet he must be careful. He was living down one frightful mistake. He could not risk another. But the man did not wait for a reply.
“Well, I’m quite agreed with you. It haspriest-itis.” He stopped and looked curiously at Josè, as if awaiting the effect of his bold words. Then––“I take it you are not really one of ’em?”
Josè stared at the man in amazement. Hitt laughed again. Then he drew forth a cigar and held it out. “Smoke?” he said. The priest shook his head. Hitt lighted the cigar himself, then settled back on the bench, his hands jammed into his trousers pockets, and his long legs stuck straight out in front, to the unconcealed annoyance of the passers-by. But, despite hisbrusquerieand his thoughtlessness, there was something about the American that was wonderfully attractive to the lonely priest.
“Yes, sir,” Hitt went on abstractedly in corroboration of his former statement, “Colombia is absolutely stagnant, due to Jesuitical politics, the bane of all good Catholic countries. If she could shake off priestcraft she’d have a chance––provided she didn’t fall into orthodox Protestantism.”
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Josè gasped, though he strove to hide his wonder. “You––” he began hesitatingly, “you were in the ministry––?”
“Yes. Don’t be afraid to come right out with it. I was a Presbyterian divine some six years ago, in Cincinnati. Ever been there?”
Josè assured him that he had never seen the States.
“H’m,” mused the ex-preacher; “great country––wonderful––none like it in the world! I’ve been all over, Europe, Asia, Africa––seen ’em all. America’s the original Eden, and our women are the only true descendants of mother Eve. No question about it, that apple incident took place up in the States somewhere––probably in Ohio.”
Josè caught the man’s infectious humor and laughed heartily. Surely, this American was a tonic, and of the sort that he most needed. “Then, you are––still touring––?”
“I’m exploring,” Hitt replied. “I’m here to study what ancient records I may find in your library; then I shall go on to Medellin and Bogotá. I’m on the track of a prehistoric Inca city, located somewhere in the Andes––and no doubt in the most inaccessible spot imaginable. Tradition cites this lost city as the cradle of Inca civilization. Tampu Tocco, it is called in their legends, the place from which the Incas went out to found that marvelous empire which eventually included the greater part of South America. The difficulty is,” he added, knotting his brows, “that the city was evidently unknown to the Spaniards. I can find no mention of it in Spanish literature, and I’ve searched all through the libraries of Spain. My only hope now is that I shall run across some document down here that will allude to it, or some one who has heard likely Indian rumors.”
Josè rubbed his eyes and looked hard at the man. “Well!” he ejaculated, “you are––if I may be permitted to say it––an original type.”
“I presume I am,” admitted the American genially. “I’ve been all sorts of things in my day, preacher, teacher, editor. My father used to be a circuit rider in New England forty years ago or more. Pious––good Lord! Why, he was one of the kind who believe the good book ‘from kiver to kiver,’ you know. Used to preach interminable sermons about the mercy of the Lord in holding us all over the smoking pit and not dropping us in! Why, man! after listening to him expound the Scriptures at night I used to go to bed with my hair on end and my skin all goose-flesh. No wonder I urged him to send me to the Presbyterian Seminary!”
“And you were ordained?” queried Josè, dark memories rising in his own thought.
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“Thoroughly so! And glad I was of it, too, for I had grown up as pious and orthodox as my good father. I considered the ordination a through ticket to paradise.”
“But––now––”
“Oh, I found myself in time,” continued the man, answering Josè’s unspoken thought. “Then I stopped preaching beautiful legends, and tried to be genuinely helpful to my congregation. I had a fine church in Cincinnati at that time. But––well, I mixed a trifle too much heresy into my up-to-date sermons, I guess. Anyway, the Assembly didn’t approve my orthodoxy, and I had as little respect for its heterodoxy, and the upshot of it was that I quit––cold.” He laughed grimly as he finished the recital. “But,” he went on gravely, “I now see that it was due simply to my desire to progress beyond the acceptance of tradition and allegory as truth, and to find some better foundation upon which to build than the undemonstrable articles of faith embraced in the Westminster Confession. To me, that confession of faith had become a confession of ignorance.” He turned his shrewd eyes upon Josè. “I was in somewhat the same mental state that I think you are in now,” he added.
“And why, if I may ask, are you now exploring?” asked Josè, disregarding the implication.
“Oh, as for that,” replied the American easily, “I used to teach history and became especially interested in ancient civilizations, lost cities, and the like, in the Western Hemisphere. Long before I left the ministry oil was struck on our little Pennsylvania farm, and––well, I didn’t have to work after that. So for some years I’ve devoted myself strictly to my particular hobby of travel. And in my work I find it necessary to discard ceremony, and scrape acquaintance with all sorts and conditions. I especially cultivate clergymen. I’ve wanted to know you ever since I first saw you out here. But I couldn’t wait for a formal introduction. And so I broke in unceremoniously upon your meditations a few moments ago.”
“I am grateful to you for doing so,” said Josè frankly, holding out a hand. “There is much that you can tell me––much that I want to know. But––” He again looked cautiously around.
“Ah, I understand,” said Hitt, quickly sensing the priest’s uneasiness. “What say you, shall we meet somewhere down by the city wall? Say, at the old Inquisition cells?”
Josè nodded his acquiescence, and they separated. A few minutes later the two were seated in one of the cavernous archways of the long, echoing corridor which leads to the deserted barracks and the gloomy, bat-infested cells beneath. A vagrant breeze drifted now and then across the grim wall above them,97and the deserted road in front lay drenched in the yellow light of the tropic moon. There was little likelihood of detection here, where the dreamy plash of the sea drowned the low sound of their voices; and Josè breathed more freely than in the populousplazawhich they had just left.
“Good Lord!” muttered the explorer, returning from a peep into the foul blackness of a subterranean tunnel, “imagine what took place here some three centuries ago!”
“Yes,” returned Josè sadly; “and in the reeking dungeons of San Fernando, out there at the harbor entrance. And, what is worse, my own ancestors were among the perpetrators of those black deeds committed in the name of Christ.”
“Whew! You don’t say! Tell me about it.” The explorer drew closer. Josè knew somehow that he could trust this stranger, and so he briefly sketched his ancestral story to his sympathetic listener. “And no one knows,” he concluded in a depressed tone, “how many of the thousands of victims of the Inquisition in Cartagena were sent to their doom by the house of Rincón. It may be,” he sighed, “that the sins of my fathers have been visited upon me––that I am now paying in part the penalty for their criminal zeal.”
The explorer sat for some time in silent meditation. “Perhaps,” he said, “your family fell under the spell of old Saint Dominic. You know the legend? How God deliberated long whether to punish the wickedness of mankind by sending down war, plague, or famine, and was finally prevailed upon by Saint Dominic to send, instead, the Holy Inquisition. Another choice example of the convenient way the world has always had of attributing the foulest deeds of men to the Almighty. No wonder religion has so woefully declined!”
“But is it so up in the great North?” asked Josè. “Tell me, what is the religious status there? My limitations have been such that I have––I have not kept abreast of current theological thought.”
“In the United States the conventional, passive submission to orthodox dogma is rapidly becoming a thing of the past,” the explorer replied. “The people are beginning to think on these topics. All human opinion, philosophical, religious, or scientific, is in a state of liquefaction––not yet solidified. Just what will crystallize out of the magma is uncertain. The country is experiencing a religious crisis, and an irresistible determination toknowis abroad in the land. Everything is being turned upside-down, and one hardly dares longer say what he believes, for the dogma of to-day is the fairy-tale of to-morrow. And, through it all, as some one has tersely said, ‘orthodoxy is hanging onto the coat-tails of progress in a vain attempt to stop98her.’ We are facing in the United States the momentous question, Is Christianity a failure? Although no one knows what Christianity really is. But one thing is certain, the brand of Christianity handed out by Protestant and Catholic alike is mighty close to the borderline of dismal failure.”
“But is there in the North no distinct trend in religious belief?” queried Josè.
The explorer hesitated. “Yes,” he said slowly, “there is. The man who holds and promulgates any belief, religious or scientific, is being more and more insistently forced to the point of demonstration. The citation of patristic authority is becoming daily more thoroughly obsolete.”
“And there is no one who demonstrates practical Christianity?”
“No. Do you? Is there any one in your Church, or in the Protestant faith, who does the works which Christ is reported to have done? Is there any one who really tries to do them? Or thinks he could if he tried? The good church Fathers from the third century down could figure out that the world was created on the night before the twenty-third of October, four thousand and four B. C., and that Adam’s fall occurred about noon of the day he was created. They could dilatead nauseamon transubstantiation, the divine essence, and the mystery of the Trinity; they could astonishingly allegorize the Bible legends, and read into every word a deep, hidden, incomprehensible sense; they could prove to their own satisfaction that Adam composed certain of the Psalms; that Moses wrote every word of the Pentateuch, even the story of his own death and burial; and that the entire Bible was delivered by God to man, word for word, just as it stands, including the punctuation. And yet, not one of them followed the simple commands of Jesus closely enough to enable him to cure a toothache, to say nothing of generally healing the sick and raising the dead! Am I not right?”
“Yes––I am sorry to have to admit,” murmured Josè.
“Well,” went on the explorer, “that’s what removed me from the Presbyterian ministry. It is not Christianity that is a dismal failure, but men’s interpretation of it. Of true Christianity, I confess I know little. Oh, I’m a fine preacher! And yet I am representative of thousands of others, like myself, all at sea. Only, the others are either ashamed or afraid to make this confession. But, in my case, my daily bread did not depend upon my continuance in the pulpit.”
“But supposing that it had––”
“The result doubtless would have been the same. The orthodox faith was utterly failing to supply me with a satisfying interpretation99of life, and it afforded me no means of escaping the discords of mundane existence. It could only hold out an undemonstrable promise of a life after death, provided I was elected, and provided I did not too greatly offend the Creator during the few short years that I might spend on earth. If I did that, then, according to the glorious Westminster Confession, I was doomed––for we are not so fortunate as you in having a purgatory from which we may escape through the suffrages of the faithful,” he concluded with a chuckle.
Josè knew, as he listened, that his own Church would hold this man a blasphemer. The man by his own confession was branded a Protestant heretic. And he, Josè, wasanathemafor listening to these sincere, brutally frank confidences, and tendering them his warm sympathy. Yet he sat spellbound.
“And so I retired from the ministry,” continued the explorer. “I had become ashamed of tearing down other men’s religious beliefs. I was weary of having to apologize constantly for the organization to which I was attached. At home I had been taught a devout faith in revealed religion; in the world I was thrown upon its inquiring doubts; I yearned for faith, yet demanded scientific proof. Why, I would have been satisfied with even the slight degree of proof which we are able to advance for our various physical sciences. But, no, it was not forthcoming. I must believe because the Fathers had believed. I struggled between emotion and reason, until––well, until I had to throw it all over to keep from going mad.”
Josè bowed in silence before this recital of a soul-experience so closely paralleling his own.
“But, come,” said the explorer cheerily, “I’m doing all the talking. Now––”
“No! no!” interrupted the eager Josè. “I do not wish to talk. I want to hear you. Go on, I beg of you! Your words are like rain to a parched field. You will yet offer me something upon which I can build with new hope.”
“Do not be so sanguine, my friend,” returned the explorer in a kindly tone. “I fear I shall be only the reaper, who cuts the weeds and stubble, and prepares the field for the sower. I have said that I am an explorer. But my field is not limited to this material world. I am an explorer of men’s thoughts as well. I am in search of a religion. I manifest this century’s earnest quest for demonstrable truth. And so I stop and question every one I meet, if perchance he may point me in the right direction. My incessant wandering about the globe is, if I may put it that way, but the outward manifestation of my ceaseless search in the realm of the soul.”
He paused. Then, reaching out and laying a hand upon the100priest’s knee, he said in a low, earnest voice, “My friend,somethinghappened in that first year of our so-called Christian era. What it was we do not know. But out of the smoke and dust, the haze and mist of that great cataclysm has proceeded the character Jesus––absolutely unique. It is a character which has had a terrific influence upon the world ever since. Because of it empires have crumbled; a hundred million human lives have been destroyed; and the thought-processes of a world have been overthrown or reversed. Just what he said, just what he did, just how he came, and how he went, we may not know with any high degree of accuracy. But, beneath all the myth and legend, the lore and childish human speculation of the intervening centuries, theremustbe a foundation of eternal truth. And it must be broad––very broad. I am digging for it––as I dug on the sites of ancient Troy and Babylon––as I have dug over the buried civilizations of Mexico and Yucatan––as I shall dig for the hidden Inca towns on the wooded heights of the Andes. And while I dig materially I am also digging spiritually.”
“And what have you found?” asked Josè hoarsely.
“I am still in the overburden ofdébriswhich the sedulous, tireless Fathers heaped mountain high upon the few recorded teachings of Jesus. But already I see indications of things to come that would make the members of the Council of Trent and the cocksure framers of the Westminster Confession burst from their graves by sheer force of astonishment! There are even now foreshadowings of such revolutionary changes in our concept of God, of the universe, of matter, and the human mind, of evil, and all the controverted points of theological discussion of this day, as to make me tremble when I contemplate them. In my first hasty judgment, after dipping into the ‘Higher Criticism,’ I concluded that Jesus was but a charlatan, who had learned thaumaturgy in Egypt and practiced it in Judea. Thanks to a better appreciation of the same ‘Higher Criticism’ I am reconstructing my concept of him now, and on a better basis. I once denounced God as the creator of both good and evil, and of a man who He knew must inevitably fall, even before the clay of which he was made had become fairly dry. I changed that concept later to Matthew Arnold’s ‘that something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’ But mighty few to-day recognize such a God! Again, in Jesus’ teaching that sin brought death into the world, I began to see what is so dimly foreshadowed to-day, thementalnature of all things. ‘Sin’ is the English translation of the original ‘hamartio,’ which means, ‘to miss the mark,’ a term used in archery. Well, then, missing the mark is the mental result of nonconformity to law, is it101not? And, going further, if death is the result of missing the mark, and that is itself due to mental cause, and, since death results from sickness, old age, or catastrophe, then these things must likewise be mental. Sickness, therefore, becomes wholly mental, does it not? Death becomes mental. Sin is mental. Spirit, the Creator, is mental. Matter is mental. And we live and act in a mental realm, do we not? The sick man, then, becomes one who misses the mark, and therefore a sinner. I think you will agree with me that the sick man is not at peace with God, if God is ‘that which makes for righteousness.’ Surely the maker of that old Icelandic sixteenth-century Bible must have been inspired when, translating from Luther’s Bible, he wrote in the first chapter of Genesis, ‘And God created man after His own likeness, in the likeness ofMindshaped He him.’ Cannot you see the foreshadowing to which I have referred?”
Josè kept silence. The current of his thought seemed about to swerve from its wonted course.
“What is coming is this,” continued the explorer earnestly, “a tremendous broadening of our concept of God, a more exalted, a more worthy concept of Him as spirit––or, if you will, as mind. An abandonment of the puerile concept of Him as a sort of magnified man, susceptible to the influence of preachers, or of Virgin and Saints, and yielding to their petitions, to their higher sense of justice, and to money-bought earthly ceremonies to lift an imaginary curse from His own creatures. And with it will come that wonderful consciousness of Him which I now begin to realize that Jesus must have had, a consciousness of Him as omnipotent, omnipresent good. As I to-day read the teachings of Jesus I am constrained to believe that he was consciousonlyof God and God’s spiritual manifestation. And in that remarkable consciousness the man Jesus realized his own life––indeed, that consciousnesswashis life––and it included no sense of evil. The great lesson which I draw from it is that evil must, therefore, be utterly unreal and non-existent. And heaven is but the acquisition of that mind or consciousness which was in Christ Jesus.”
“But, Mr. Hitt, such ideas are revolutionary!”
“True, if immediately and generally adopted. And so you see why the Church strives to hold the people to its own archaic and innocuous religious tenets; why your Church strives so zealously to hold its adherents fast to the rules laid down by pagan emperors and ignorant, often illiterate churchmen, in their councils and synods; and why the Protestant church is so quick to denounce as unevangelical everything that does not measure to its devitalized concept of Christianity. They do not practice what they preach; yet they would not have you102practice anything else. The human mind that calls itself a Christian is a funny thing, isn’t it?”
He laughed lightly; then lapsed into silence. The sea breeze rose and sighed among the great, incrusted arches. The restless waves moaned in their eternal assault upon the defiant walls. The moon clouded, and a warm rain began to fall. Josè rose. “I must return to the dormitory,” he announced briefly. “When you pass me in theplazato-morrow evening, come at once to this place. I will meet you here. You have––I must––”
But he did not finish. Pressing the explorer’s hand, he turned abruptly and hurried up the dim, narrow street.