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Meantime, six weeks had passed since Rosendo had departed to take up his lonely task of self-renouncing love. Then one day he returned, worn and emaciated, his great frame shaking like a withered leaf in a chill blast.
“It is theterciana, Padre,” he said, as he sank shuddering upon his bed. “It comes every third day. I went as far as Tachí––fifty leagues from Simití––and there the fever overtook me. I have been eight days coming back; and day before yesterday I ran out of food. Last evening I found a wild melon at the side of the trail. A coral snake struck at me when I reached for it, but he hit mymacheteinstead.Caramba!”
Josè pressed his wet hand, while Doña Maria laid damp cloths upon his burning forehead.
“The streams are washed out, Padre,” Rosendo continued sadly. “I worked at Colorado, Popales, and Tambora. But I got no more than fivepesosworth. And that will not pay for half of my supplies. It is there in a little bag,” pointing to his soaked and muddy kit.
Josè’s heart was wrung by the suffering and disappointment of the old man. Sadly he carried the little handful of gold flakes to Don Mario, and then returned to the exhausted Rosendo.
All through the night the sick man tossed and moaned. By morning he was delirious. Then Josè and Doña Maria became genuinely alarmed. The toil and exposure had been too much for Rosendo at his advanced age. In his delirium he talked brokenly of the swamps through which he had floundered, for he had taken the trail in the wet season, and fully half of its one hundred and fifty miles of length was oozy and all but impassable bog.
By afternoon the fever had greatly increased. Don Mario shook his head as he stood over him.
“I have seen many in that condition, Padre, and they didn’t wake up! If we had quinine, perhaps he might be saved. But there isn’t a flake in the town.”
“Then send Juan to Bodega Central at once for it!” cried Josè, wild with apprehension.
“I doubt if he would find it there either, Padre. But we can try. However, Juan cannot make the trip in less than two days. And I fear Rosendo will not last that long.”
Doña Maria sat by the bedside, dumb with grief. Josè wrung his hands in despair. The day drew slowly to a close. The Alcalde had dispatched Juan down to the river to signal any steamer that he should meet, if perchance he might purchase a few grains of the only drug that could save the sick man. Carmen had absented herself during the day; but she89returned in time to assist Doña Maria with the evening meal, after which she went at once to her bed.
Late at night, when the sympathizing townsmen had sorrowfully departed and Josè had induced Doña Maria to seek a few moments rest on herpetatein the living room, Carmen climbed quietly out of her bed and came to where the priest sat alone with the unconscious Rosendo.
Josè was bending over the delirious man. “Oh, if Jesus were only here now!” he murmured.
“Padre dear.”
Josè looked down into the little face beside him.
“People don’t die, you know. They don’t really die.” The little head shook as if to emphasize the words.
Josè was startled. But he put his arm about the child and drew her to him. “Chiquita, why do you say that?” he asked sorrowfully.
“Because God doesn’t die, you know,” she quickly replied. “And we are like Him, Padre, aren’t we?”
“But He calls us to Him,chiquita. And––I guess––He is––is calling your padre Rosendo now.”
Does God kill mankind in order to give them life? Is that His way? Death denies God, eternal Life. And––
“Why, no, Padre,” returned the innocent child. “He is always here; and we are always with Him, you know. He can not call people away from where He is, can He?”
Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.The Christ-principle, the saving truth about God and man, is ever present in an uncomprehending world.
Josè knew that there was no material dependence now. Something told him that Rosendo lay dying. There was no physician, no drug, in the isolated little town. There was none but God to save. And He––
But only sinners are taught by priests and preachers to look to God for help. The sick are not so taught. How much more deplorable, then, is their condition than that of the wicked!
“I told God out on the shales this afternoon that I just knew padre Rosendo wouldn’t die!” The soft, sweet voice hovered on the silence like celestial melody.
If ye ask anything in my name––in my character––it shall be given you. Carmen asked in the character of the sinless Christ, for her asking was an assertion of what she instinctively knew to be truth, despite the evidence of the physical senses. Her petitions were affirmations of Immanuel––God with us.
“Carmen,” whispered the priest hoarsely, “go back to your90bed, and know, justknowthat God is here! Know that He did not make padre Rosendo sick, and that He will not let him die! Know it for him––and for me!”
“Why, Padre, I know that now!” The child looked up into the priest’s face with her luminous eyes radiating unshaken trust––a trust that seemed born of understanding. Yea, she knew that all good was there, for God is omnipotent. They had but to stretch forth their hands to touch the robe of His Christ. The healing principle which cleansed the lepers and raised the dead was even with them there in that quiet room. Josè had only to realize it, nothing doubting. Carmen had done her work, and her mind now was stayed on Him. Infinite Intelligence did not know Rosendo as Josè was trying to know him, sick and dying. God is Life––and there is no death!
Carmen was again asleep. Josè sat alone, his open Bible before him and his thought with his God.
Oh, for even a slight conception of Him who is Life! Moses worked “as seeing Him who is invisible.” Carmen lived with her eyes on Him, despite her dreary mundane encompassment. And Josè, as he sat there throughout the watches of the night, facing the black terror, was striving to pierce the mist which had gone up from the face of the ground and was separating him from his God. Through the long, dark hours, with the quiet of death upon the desolate chamber, he sat mute before the veil that was “still untaken away.”
What was it that kept telling him that Rosendo lay dying before him? Does matter talk? Did the serpent talk to Eve? Do fleshly nerves and frail bodily organs converse with men? Can the externalization of thought report back to the thought itself? Nay, the report came to him from the physical senses––naught else. And they reported––nothing! He was seeing but his own thoughts of mixed good and evil. And they were false, because they testified against God.
Surely God knew Rosendo. But not as the physical senses were trying to make Josè know him, sick and dying. Surely the subjective determines the objective; for as we think, so are we––the Christ said that. From his human standpoint Josè was seeing his thoughts of a dying mortal. And now he was trying to know that those thoughts did not come from God––that they had no authority back of them––that they were children of the “one lie” about God––that they were false, false as hell, and therefore impotent and unreal.
What, then, had he to fear? Nothing, for truth is beyond the reach of personal sense. So God and His ideas, reflected by the real Rosendo, were beyond the reach of evil.
If this were true, then he must clear his own mentality––even91as he now knew Carmen had done out on the shales that afternoon. He was no longer dealing with a material Rosendo, but with false beliefs about a son of God. He was handling mental concepts. And to the serpent, error, he was trying to say: “What is your authority?”
If man lives, he never dies. If man is, then he always has been. And he was never born––and never passes into oblivion. A fact never changes. If two and two make four to-day, they always have done so, and always will.
Can good produce evil? Then evil can have no creator. Rosendo, when moved by good, had gone into the wilds of Guamocó on a mission of love. Did evil have power to smite him for his noble sacrifice?
What is this human life of ours? Real existence? No, but a sense of existence––and a false sense, for it postulates a god of evil opposed to the one supreme Creator of all that really is. Then the testimony that said Rosendo must die was cruelly false. And, more, it was powerless––unless Josè himself gave it power.
Did Carmen know that? Had she so reasoned? Assuredly no! But she knew God as Josè had never known Him. And, despite the testimony of the fleshly eyes, she had turned from physical sense to Him.
“It is not practicable!” the world cries in startled protest.
But, behold her life!
Josè had begun to see that discord was the result of unrighteousness, false thought. He began to understand why it was that Jesus always linked disease with sin. His own paradoxical career had furnished ample proof of that. Yet his numberless tribulations were not due solely to his own wrong thinking, but likewise to the wrong thought of others with respect to him, thought which he knew not how to neutralize. And the channels for this false, malicious, carnal thought had been his beloved parents, his uncle, the Archbishop, his tutors, and, in fact, all with whom he had been associated until he came to Simití. There he had found Carmen. And there the false thought had met a check, a reversal. The evil had begun to destroy itself. And he was slowly awaking to find nothing but good.
The night hours flitted through the heavy gloom like spectral acolytes. Rosendo sank into a deep sleep. The steady roll of the frogs in the lake at length died away. A flush stole timidly across the eastern sky.
“Padre dear, he will not die.”
It was Carmen’s voice that awoke the slumbering priest. The child stood at his side, and her little hand clasped his.92Rosendo slept. His chest rose and fell with the rhythmic breathing. Josè looked down upon him. A great lump came into his throat, and his voice trembled as he spoke.
“You are right,chiquita. Go, call your madre Maria now, and I will go home to rest.”
CHAPTER 13
That day Rosendo left his bed. Two days later he again set out for Guamocó.
“Thereisgold there, and I must, Iwillfind it!” he repeatedly exclaimed as he pushed his preparations.
The courage of the man was magnificent. On its rebound it carried him over the protest of Doña Maria and the gloomy forebodings of his fellow-townsmen, and launched him again on the desolate trail.
But Josè had uttered no protest. He moved about wrapped in undefinable awe. For he believed he had seen Rosendo lifted from the bed of death. And no one might tell him that it was not by the same power that long ago had raised the dead man of Nain. Carmen had not spoken of the incident again; and something laid a restraint upon Josè’s lips.
The eyes of the Alcalde bulged with astonishment when Rosendo entered his store that morning in quest of further supplies.
“Caramba!Go back to your bed,compadre!” he exclaimed, bounding from his chair. “You are walking in your delirium!”
“Na, amigo,” replied Rosendo with a smile, “the fever has left me. And now I must have another month’s supplies, for I go back to Guamocó as soon as my legs tremble less.”
“Caramba! caramba!”
The Alcalde acted as if he were in the presence of a ghost. But at length becoming convinced that Rosendo was there on matters of business, and in his right mind, he checked further expression of wonder and, with a shrug of his fat shoulders, assumed his wonted air of a man of large affairs.
“I can allow you fivepesos oroon account of the gold which theCurabrought me yesterday,” he said severely. “But that leaves you still owing tenpesosfor your first supplies; and thirty if I give you what you ask for now. If you cannot pay this amount when you return, you will have to work it out for me.”
His little eyes grew steely and cold. Rosendo well knew what the threat implied. But he did not falter.
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“Bien, compadre,” he quietly replied, “it will be as you say.”
Late that afternoon Juan returned from Bodega Central with a half ounce of quinine. He had made the trip with astonishing celerity, and had arrived at the riverine town just as a large steamer was docking. The purser supplied him with the drug, and he immediately started on his return.
The Alcalde set out to deliver the drug to Rosendo; but not finding him at home, looked in at the parish house. Josè and Carmen were deep in their studies.
“A thousand pardons,Señor Padre, but I have the medicine you ordered for Rosendo,” placing the small package upon the table.
“You may set it down against me, Don Mario,” said Josè.
“No!” exclaimed the Alcalde, “this must not be charged to the parish!”
“I said to me,amigo,” replied the priest firmly.
“It is the same thing, Padre!” blurted the petty merchant.
The priest’s anger began to rise, but he restrained it. “Padre Diego is no longer here, you must remember,” he said quietly.
“But the parish pays your debts; and it would not pay the full value of this and Juan’s trip,” was the coarse retort.
“Very well, then, Don Mario,” answered Josè. “You may charge it to Rosendo. But tell me first how much you will place against him for it.”
The Alcalde reflected a moment. “The quinine will be fivepesos oro, and Juan’s trip three additional. Is it not worth it?” he demanded, blustering before Josè’s steady gaze. “If Rosendo had been really sick it would have saved his life!”
“Then you do not believe he was dangerously ill?” asked Josè with some curiosity.
“He couldn’t have been really sick and be around to-day––could he?” the Alcalde demanded.
The priest glanced at Carmen. She met the look with a smile.
“No,” he said slowly, “notreallysick.” Then he quickly added:
“If you charge Rosendo eightpesosfor that bit of quinine, Don Mario, you and I are no longer working together, for I do not take base advantage of any man’s necessities.”
The Alcalde became confused. He was going too far. “Na, Señor Padre,” he said hastily, with a sheepish grin. “I will leave the quinine with you, and do you settle the account with Juan.” With which he beat a disordered retreat.
Josè was thankful that, for a few months, at least, he would have a powerful hold on this man through his rapacity. What94would happen when the Alcalde at length learned that Rosendo was not searching for Don Ignacio’s lost mine, he did not care to conjecture. That matter was in other hands than his, and he was glad to leave it there. He asked now only to see each single step as he progressed.
“Did Don Mario say that stuff would cure padre Rosendo?” asked Carmen, pointing to the quinine.
“Yes,chiquita.”
“Why did he say so, Padre?”
“Because he really believed it,carita.”
“But what is it, Padre––and how can it cure sick people?”
“It is the bark of a certain tree, little one, that people take as medicine. It is a sort of poison which people take to counteract another poison. A great school of medicine is founded upon that principle, Carmen,” he added. And then he fell to wondering if it really was a principle, after all. If so, it was evil overcoming evil. But would the world believe that both he and Rosendo had been cured by––what? Faith? True prayer? By the operation of a great, almost unknown principle? Or would it scoff at such an idea?
But what cared he for that? He saw himself and Rosendo restored, and that was enough. He turned to the child. “They think the quinine cures fever, little one,” he resumed.
“And does it?” The little face wore an anxious look as she put the question.
“They think it does,chiquita,” replied the priest, wondering what he should say.
“But it is just because they think so that they get well, isn’t it?” the girl continued.
“I guess it is, child.”
“And if they thought right they would be cured without this––is it not so, Padre dear?”
“I am sure of it––now,” replied the priest. “In fact, if they always kept their thoughts right I am sure they would never be sick.”
“You mean, if they always thought about God,” the child amended.
“Yes––I mean just that. If they knew,really knew, that God is everywhere, that He is good, and that He never makes people sick, they would always be well.”
“Of course, Padre. It is only their bad thoughts that make them sick. And even then they are not really sick,” the child concluded. “They think they are, and they think they die––and then they wake up and find it isn’t so at all.”
Had the child made this remark to him a few weeks before, he had crushed it with the dull, lifeless, conventional formulæ95of human belief. To-day in penitent humility he was trying to walk hand in hand with her the path she trod. For he was learning from her that righteousness is salvation. A few weeks ago he had lain at death’s door, yearning to pass the portal. Yesterday he believed he had again seen the dark angel, hovering over the stricken Rosendo. But in each casesomethinghad intervened. Perhaps that “something not ourselves that makes for righteousness,” the unknown, almost unacknowledged force that ceases not to combat evil in the human consciousness. Clinging to his petty egoisms; hugging close his shabby convictions of an evil power opposed to God; stuffed with worldly learning and pride of race and intellect, in due season, as he sank under the burden of his imaginings, the veil had been drawn aside for a fleeting moment––and his soul had frozen with awe at what it beheld!
For, back of the density of the human concept, the fleeting, inexplicable medley of good and evil which constitutes the phenomenon of mortal existence,he had seen God! He had seen Him as all-inclusive mind, omnipotent, immanent, perfect, eternal. He had caught a moment’s glimpse of the tremendous Presence which holds all wisdom, all knowledge, yet knows no evil. He had seen a blinding flash of that “something” toward which his life had strained and yearned. With it had come a dim perception of the falsity of the testimony of physical sense, and the human life that is reared upon it. And though he counted not himself to have apprehended as yet, he was struggling, even with thanksgiving, up out of his bondage, toward the gleam. The shafts of error hissed about him, and black doubt and chill despair still felled him with their awful blows. But he walked with Carmen. With his hand in hers, he knew he was journeying toward God.
On the afternoon before his departure Rosendo entered the parish house in apprehension. “I have lost myescapulario, Padre!” he exclaimed. “The string caught in the brush, and the whole thing was torn from my neck. I––I don’t like to go back without one,” he added dubiously.
“Ah, then you have nothing left but Christ,” replied Josè with fine irony. “Well, it is of no consequence.”
“But, Padre, it had been blessed by the Bishop!”
“Well, don’t worry. Why, the Holy Father himself once blessed this republic of ours, and now it is about the most unfortunate country in the whole world! But you are a good Catholic, Rosendo, so you need not fear.”
Rosendo was, indeed, a good Catholic. He accepted the faith of his fathers without reserve. He had never known any other. Simple, superstitious, and great of heart, he held with96rigid credulity to all that had been taught him in the name of religion. But until Josè’s advent he had feared and hated priests. Nevertheless, his faith in signs and miracles and the healing power of blessed images was child-like. Once when he saw in the store of Don Mario a colored chromo of Venus and Cupid, a cheap print that had come with goods imported from abroad, he had devoutly crossed himself, believing it to be the Virgin Mary with the Christ-child.
“But I will fix you up, Rosendo,” said Josè, noting the man’s genuine anxiety. “Have Doña Maria cut out a cloth heart and fasten it to a stout cord. I will take it to the church altar and bless it before the image of the Virgin. You told me once that the Virgin was the Rincón family’s patron, you know.”
“Bueno!” ejaculated the pleased Rosendo, as he hastened off to execute the commission.
Several times before Rosendo went back to Guamocó Josè had sought to draw him into conversation about his illness, and to get his view of the probable cause of his rapid recovery. But the old man seemed loath to dwell on the topic, and Josè could get little from him. At any mention of the episode a troubled look would come over his face, and he would fall silent, or would find an excuse to leave the presence of the priest.
“Rosendo,” Josè abruptly remarked to him as he was busy with his pack late the night before his departure, “will you take with you the quinine that Juan brought?”
Rosendo looked up quickly. “I can not, Padre.”
“And why?”
“On account of Carmen.”
“But what has she to do with it,amigo?” Josè asked in surprise.
Rosendo looked embarrassed. “I––Bien, Padre, I promised her I would not.”
“When?”
“To-day, Padre.”
Josè reflected on the child’s unusual request. Then:
“But if you fell sick up in Guamocó, Rosendo, what could you do?”
“Quien sabe, Padre! Perhaps I could gather herbs and make a tea––I don’t know. She didn’t say anything about that.” He looked at Josè and laughed. Then, in an anxious tone:
“Padre, what can I do? The little Carmen asks me not to take the quinine, and I can not refuse her. But I may get sick. I––I have always taken medicine when I needed it and could get it. But the only medicine we have in Simití is the stuff97that some of the women make––teas and drinks brewed from roots and bark. I have never seen a doctor here, nor any real medicines but quinine. And even that is hard to get, as you know. I used to make a salve out of the livers ofmápinasnakes––it was for the rheumatism––I suffered terribly when I worked in the cold waters in Guamocó. I think the salve helped me. But if I should get the disease now, would Carmen let me make the salve again?”
He bent over his outfit for some moments. “She says if I trust God I will not get sick,” he at length resumed. “She says I must not think about it.Caramba!What has that to do with it? People get sick whether they think about it or not. Do you believe, Padre, this newescapulariowill protect me?”
The man’s words reflected the strange mixture of mature and childish thought typical of these untutored jungle folk, in which longing for the good is so heavily overshadowed by an educated belief in the power of evil.
“Rosendo,” said Josè, finding at last his opportunity, “tell me, do you think you were seriously ill day before yesterday?”
“Quien sabe, Padre! Perhaps it was only theterciana, after all.”
“Well, then,” pursuing another tack, “do you think I was very sick that day when I rushed to the lake––?”
“Caramba, Padre! But you were turning cold––you hardly breathed––we all thought you must die––all but Carmen!”
“And what cured me, Rosendo?” the priest asked in a low, steady voice.
“Why––Padre, I can not say.”
“Nor can I, positively, my friend. But I do know that the little Carmen said I should not die. And she said the same of you when, as I would swear, you were in the fell clutches of the death angel himself.”
“Padre––” Rosendo’s eyes were large, and his voice trembled in awesome whisper––“is she––the little Carmen––is she––anhada?”
“A witch?Hombre!No!” cried Josè, bursting into a laugh at the perturbed features of the older man. “No,amigo, she is not anhada! Let us say, rather, as you first expressed it to me, she is an angel––and let us appreciate her as such.
“But,” he continued, “I tell you in all seriousness, there are things that such as you and I, with our limited outlook, have never dreamed of; and that child seems to have penetrated the veil that hides spiritual things from the material vision of men like us. Let us wait, and if we value that ‘something’ which she seems to possess and know how to use, let us cut off our right hands before we yield to the temptation to place any98obstacle in the way of her development along the lines which she has chosen, or which some unseen Power has chosen for her. It is for you and me, Rosendo, to stand aside and watch, while we protect her, if haply we may be privileged some day to learn her secret in full. You and I are the unlearned, while she is filled with wisdom. The world would say otherwise, and would condemn us as fools. Thank God we are out of the world here in Simití!”
He choked back the inrush of memories and brushed away a tear.
“Rosendo,” he concluded, “be advised. If Carmen told you not to think of sickness while in Guamocó, then follow her instructions. It is not the child, but a mighty Power that is speaking through her. Of that I have long been thoroughly convinced. And I am as thoroughly convinced that that same Power has appointed you and me her protectors and her followers. You and I have a mighty compact––”
“Hombre!” interrupted Rosendo, clasping the priest’s hand, “my life is hers––you know it––she has only to speak, and I obey! Is it not so?”
“Assuredly, Rosendo,” returned Josè. “And now a final word. Let us keep solely to ourselves what we have learned of her. Our plans are well formulated. Let us adhere to them in strict silence. I know not whither we are being led. But we are in the hands of that ‘something’ that speaks and works through her––and we are satisfied. Are we not?”
They clasped hands again. The next morning Rosendo set his face once more toward the emerald hills of Guamocó.
As the days passed, Josè became more silent and thoughtful. But it was a silence bred of wonder and reverence, as he dwelt upon the things that had been revealed to him. Who and what was this unusual child, so human, and yet so strangely removed from the world’s plane of thought? A child who understood the language of the birds, and heard the grass grow––a child whom Torquemada would have burnt as a witch, and yet with whom he could not doubt the Christ dwelt.
Josè often studied her features while she bent over her work. He spent hours, too, poring over the little locket which had been found among her mother’s few effects. The portrait of the man was dim and soiled. Josè wondered if the poor woman’s kisses and tears had blurred it. The people of Badillo said she had died with it pressed to her lips. But its condition rendered futile all speculation in regard to its original. That of the mother, however, was still fresh and clear. Josè conjectured that she must have been either wholly Spanish, or one of the more refined and cultured women of Colombia. And she99had doubtless been very young and beautiful when the portrait was made. With what dark tragedy was that little locket associated? Would it ever yield its secret?
But Carmen’s brown curls and light skin––whence came they? Were they wholly Latin? Josè had grave doubts. And her keen mind, and deep religious instinct? Who knew? He could only be sure that they had come from a source far, far above her present lowly environment. With that much he must for the present be content.
Another month unfolded its length in quiet days, and Rosendo again returned. Not ill this time, nor even much exhausted. Nor did the little leathern pouch contain more than a fewpesosin gold dust. But determination was written grim and trenchant upon his black face as he strode into the parish house and extended his great hand to the priest.
“I have only come for more supplies, Padre,” he said. “I have some threepesosworth of gold. Most of this I got around Culata, near Don Felipe’s quartz vein, the Andandodias.Caramba, what veins in those hills! If we had money to build a mill, and knew how to catch the gold, we would not need to wash the river sands that have been gone over again and again for hundreds of years!”
But Josè’s thoughts were of the Alcalde. He determined to send for him at once, while Rosendo was removing the soil of travel.
Don Mario came and estimated the weight of the gold by his hand. Then he coolly remarked: “Bien, Señor Padre, I will send Rosendo to myhaciendato-morrow to cut cane and makepanela.”
“And how is that, Don Mario?” inquired Josè.
The Alcalde began to bluster. “He owes me thirtypesos oro, less this, if you wish me to keep it. I see no likelihood that he can ever repay me. And so he must now work out his debt.”
“How long will that take him,amigo?”
“Quien sabe?Señor Padre,” the Alcalde replied, his eyes narrowing.
The priest braced himself, and his face assumed an expression that it had not worn before he came to Simití. “Look you now, my friend,” he began in tones pregnant with meaning. “I have made some inquiries regarding your system of peonage. I find that you pay yourpeonesfrom twenty to thirty cents a day for their hard labor, and at the same time charge them as much a day for food. Or you force them to buy from you tobacco and rum at prices which keep them always in your debt. Is it not so?”
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“Na, Padre, you have been misinformed,” the Alcalde demurred, with a deprecating gesture.
“I have not. Lázaro Ortiz is now working for you on that system. And daily he becomes more deeply indebted to you, is it not so?”
“But, Padre––”
“It is useless for you to deny it, Don Mario, for I have facts. Now listen to me. Let us understand each other clearly, nor attempt to dissimulate. That iniquitous system of peonage has got to cease in my parish!”
“Caramba, but Padre Diego hadpeones!” the Alcalde exploded.
“And he was a wicked man,” added Josè. Then he continued:
“I know not what information you may have from the Bishop regarding me, yet this I tell you: I shall report you to Bogotá, and I will band the citizens of Simití together to drive you out of town, if you do not at once release Lázaro, and put an end to this wicked practice. The people will follow if I lead!”
It was a bold stroke, and the priest knew that he was standing upon shaky ground. But the man before him was superstitious, untutored and child-like. A show of courage, backed by an assertion of authority, might produce the desired effect. Moreover, Josè knew that he was in the right. And right must prevail!
Don Mario glared at him, while an ugly look spread over his coarse features. The priest went on:
“Lázaro has long since worked out his debt, and you shall release him at once. As to Rosendo, he must have the supplies he needs to return to Guamocó. You understand?”
“Caramba!” Don Mario’s face was purple with rage. “You think you can tell me what to do––me, the Alcalde!” he volleyed. “You think you can make us change our customs!Caramba!You are no better than the priest Diego, whom you try to make me believe so wicked!Hombre, you were driven out of Cartagena yourself! A nice sort to be teaching a little girl––!”
“Stop, man!” thundered Josè, striding toward him with upraised arm.
Don Mario fell back in his chair and quailed before the mountainous wrath of the priest.
A shadow fell across the open doorway. Glancing up, Josè saw Carmen. For a moment the girl stood looking in wonder at the angry men. Then she went quickly to the priest and slipped a hand into his. A feeling of shame swept over him,101and he went back to his chair. Carmen leaned against him, but she appeared to be confused. Silence fell upon them all.
“Cucumbra doesn’t fight any more, Padre,” the girl at length began in hesitation. “He and the puppy play together all the time now. He has learned a lot, and now he loves the puppy.”
So had the priest learned much. He recalled the lesson. “Bien,” he said in soft tones, “I think we became a bit too earnest, Don Mario. We are good friends, is it not so? And we are working together for the good of Simití. But to have good come to us, we must do good to others.”
He went to his trunk and took out a wallet. “Here are twentypesos, Don Mario.” It was all he had in the world, but he did not tell the Alcalde so. “Take them on Rosendo’s account. Let him have the new supplies he needs, and I will be his surety. And, friend, you are going to let me prove to you with time that the report you have from Cartagena regarding me is false.”
Don Mario’s features relaxed somewhat when his hand closed over the grimy bills.
“Do not forget,amigo,” added Josè, assuming an air of mystery as he pursued the advantage, “that you and I are associated in various business matters, is it not so?”
The Alcalde’s mouth twitched, but finally extended in an unctuous grin. After all, the priest was a descendant of the famous Don Ignacio, and––who knew?––he might have resources of which the Alcalde little dreamed.
“Cierto, Padre!” he cried, rising to depart. “And we will yet uncover La Libertad! You guarantee Rosendo’s debt?Bien, he shall have the supplies. But I think he should take another man with him. Lázaro might do, no?”
It was a gracious and unlooked for condescension.
“Send Lázaro to me, Don Mario,” said Josè. “We will find use for him, I think.”
And thus Rosendo was enabled to depart a third time to the solitudes of Guamocó.
CHAPTER 14
With Rosendo again on the trail, Josè and Carmen bent once more to their work. Within a few days the grateful Lázaro was sent to Rosendo’shacienda, biding the time when the priest should have a larger commission to bestow upon him. With the advent of the dry season, peace settled over the sequestered town, while its artless folk drowsed102away the long, hot days and danced at night in the silvery moonlight to the twang of the guitar and the drone of the amorous canzonet. Josè was deeply grateful for these days of unbroken quiet, and for the opportunity they afforded him to probe the child’s thought and develop his own. Day after day he taught her. Night after night he visited the members of his little parish, getting better acquainted with them, administering to their simple needs, talking to them in the church edifice on the marvels of the outside world, and then returning to his little cottage to prepare by the feeble rays of his flickering candle Carmen’s lessons for the following day. He had no texts, save the battered little arithmetic; and even that was abandoned as soon as Carmen had mastered the decimal system. Thereafter he wrote out each lesson for her, carefully wording it that it might contain nothing to shock her acute sense of the allness of God, and omitting from the vocabulary every reference to evil, to failure, disaster, sin and death. In mathematics he was sure of his ground, for there he dealt wholly with the metaphysical. But history caused him many an hour of perplexity in his efforts to purge it of the dross of human thought. If Carmen were some day to go out into the world shemustknow the story of its past. And yet, as Josè faced her in the classroom and looked down into her unfathomable eyes, in whose liquid depths there seemed to dwell a soul of unexampled purity, he could not bring himself even to mention the sordid events in the development of the human race which manifested the darker elements of the carnal mind. Perhaps, after all, she might never go out into the world. He had not the faintest idea how such a thing could be accomplished. And so under his tutelage the child grew to know a world of naught but brightness and beauty, where love and happiness dwelt ever with men, and wicked thoughts were seen as powerless and transient, harmless to the one who knew God to be “everywhere.” The man taught the child with the sad remembrance of his own seminary training always before him, and with a desire, amounting almost to frenzy, to keep from her every limiting influence and benumbing belief of the carnal mind.
The decimal system mastered, Carmen was inducted into the elements of algebra.
“How funny,” she exclaimed, laughing, “to use letters for numbers!”
“They are only general symbols, little one,” he explained. “Symbols are signs, or things that stand for other things.”
Then came suddenly into his mind how the great Apostle Paul taught that the things we see, or think we see, are themselves but symbols, reflections as from a mirror, and how we103must make them out as best we can for the present, knowing that, in due season, we shall see the realities for which these things stand to the human mind. He knew that back of the mathematical symbols stood the eternal, unvarying, indestructible principles which govern their use. And he had begun to see that back of the symbols, the phenomena, of human existence stands the great principle––infinite God––the eternal mind. In the realm of mathematics the principles are omnipotent for the solution of problems––omnipotent in the hands of the one who understands and uses them aright. And is not God the omnipotent principle to the one who understands and uses Him aright in the solving of life’s intricate problems?
“They are so easy when you know how, Padre dear,” said Carmen, referring to her tasks.
“But there will be harder ones,chiquita.”
“Yes, Padre. But then I shall know more about the rules that you call principles.”
She took up each problem with confidence. Josè watched her eagerly. “You do not know what the answer will be,chiquita,” he ventured.
“No, Padre dear. But I don’t care. If I use the rule in the right way I shall get the correct answer, shall I not? Look!” she cried joyfully, as she held up her paper with the completed solution of a problem.
“But how do you know that it is correct?” he queried.
“Why––well, we can prove it––can’t we?” She looked up at him questioningly. Then she bent again over her task and worked assiduously for some moments in silence.
“There! I worked it back again to the starting point. And it is right.”
“And in proving it, little one, you have proved the principle and established its correctness. Is it not so,chiquita?”
“Yes, Padre, it shows that the rule is right.”
The child lapsed into silence, while Josè, as was becoming his wont, awaited the result of her meditation. Then:
“Padre dear, there are rules for arithmetic, and algebra, and––and for everything, are there not?”
“Yes, child, for music, for art, for everything. We can do nothing correctly without using principles.”
“And, Padre, there are principles that tell us how to live?” she queried.
“What is your opinion on that point,queridita?”
“Justoneprinciple, I guess, Padre dear,” she finally ventured, after a pause.
“And that, little one?”
“Just God.”
104
“And God is––?” Josè began, then hesitated. The Apostle John had dwelt with the Master. What had he urged so often upon the dull ears of his timid followers?
The child looked up at the priest with a smile whose tenderness dissolved the rising clouds of doubt.
“And God is––love,” he finished softly.
“That’s it, Padre!” The child clapped her little hands and laughed aloud.
Love! Jesus had said, “I and my Father are one.” Having seen him, the world has seen the Father. But Jesus was the highest manifestation of love that tired humanity has ever known. “Love God!” he had cried in tones that have echoed through the centuries. “Love thy neighbor!” Aye, love everything, everybody! Apply the Principle of principles, Love, to every task, every problem, every situation, every condition! For what is the Christ-principle but Love? All things are possible to him who loves, for Love casteth out fear, the root of every discord. Men ask why God remains hidden from them, why their understanding of Him is dim. They forget that God is Love. They forget that to know Him they must first love their fellow-men. And so the world goes sorrowfully on, hating, cheating, grasping, abusing; still wondering dully why men droop and stumble, why they consume with disease, and, with the despairing conviction that God is unknowable, sinking at last into oblivion.
Josè, if he knew aught, knew that Carmen greatly loved––loved all things deeply and tenderly as reflections of her immanent God. She had loved the hideous monster that had crept toward her as she sat unguarded on the lake’s rim. Unguarded? Not so, for the arms of Love were there about her. She had loved God––good––with unshaken fealty when Rosendo lay stricken. She had known that Love could not manifest in death when he himself had been dragged from the lake that burning afternoon a few weeks before.
“God is the rule, isn’t He, Padre dear?” The child’s unexampled eyes glowed like burning coals. “And we can prove Him, too,” she continued confidently.
Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Prove Him, O man, that He is Love, and that Love, casting out hate and fear, solves life’s every problem! But first––Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house.Bring your whole confidence, your trust, your knowledge of the allness of good, and the nothingness of evil. Bring, too, your every earthly hope, every mad ambition,105every corroding fear, and carnal belief; lay them down at the doorway of mine storehouse, and behold their nothingness!
As Carmen approached her simple algebraic problems Josè saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the probable results was an idle waste of time. And she likewise knew instinctively that fear of inability to solve them would paralyze her efforts and insure defeat at the outset.
Nor could she force solutions to correspond to what she might think they ought to be––as mankind attempt to force the solving of their life problems to correspond to human views. She was glad to work out her problems in the only way they could be solved. Love, humility, obedience, enabled her to understand and correctly apply the principle to her tasks. The results were invariable––harmony and exceeding joy.
Josè had learned another lesson. Again that little hand had softly swept his harp of life. And again he breathed in unison with its vibrating chords a deep “Thank God!”
“Padre dear.” Carmen looked up from a brown study. “What does zero really mean?”
“It stands for nothing, child,” the priest made reply, wondering what was to follow this introduction.
“And the minus sign in algebra is different from the one in arithmetic. What does it mean?”
“Less than nothing.”
“But, Padre, if God is all, how can you say there is nothing, or less than nothing?”
The priest had his answer ready. “They are only human ways of thinking,chiquita. The plus sign always represents something positive; the minus, something negative. The one is the opposite of the other.”
“Is there an opposite to everything, Padre?”
The priest hesitated. Then:
“No,chiquita––not arealopposite. But,” he added hastily, “we may suppose an opposite to everything.”
A moment’s pause ensued. “That is what makes people sick and unhappy, isn’t it, Padre?”
“What, child?” in unfeigned surprise.
“Supposing an opposite to God. Supposing that there can be nothing, when He is everywhere. Doesn’t all trouble come from just supposing things that are not so?”
Whence came such questions to the mind of this child? And why did they invariably lead to astonishing deductions in106his own? Why did he often give a great start as it dawned again upon him that he was not talking to one of mature age, but to a babe?
He tore a strip from the paper in his hand. Relatively the paper had lost in size and quantity, and there was a distinct separation. Absolutely, such a thing was an impossibility. The plus was always positive and real; the minus was always relative, and stood for unreality. And so it was throughout the entire realm of thought.Every real thing has its suppositional opposite.The difficulty is that the human mind, through long ages of usage, has come to regard the opposite as just as real as the thing itself. The opposite of love is hate; of health, disease; of good, evil; of the real, the counterfeit. God is positive––Truth. His opposite, the negative, is supposition. Oh, stupid, blundering, dull-eared humanity, not to have realized that this was just what Jesus said when he defined evil as the lie about God! No wonder the prophet proclaimed salvation to be righteousness, right thinking! But would gross humanity have understood the Master better if he had defined it this way? No, they would have stoned him on the spot!
Josè knew that when both he and Rosendo lay sick unto death Carmen’s thought had been positive, while theirs had been of the opposite sign. Was her pure thought stronger than their disbelief? Evidently so. Was this the case with Jesus? And with the prophets before him, whom the world laughed to scorn? The inference from Scripture is plain. What, then, is the overcoming of evil but the driving out of entrenched human beliefs?
Again Josè came back to the thought of Principle. Confucius had said that heaven was principle. And heaven is harmony. But had evil any principle? Mankind are accustomed to speak lightly and knowingly of their “principles.” But in their search for the Philosopher’s Stone they have overlooked the Principle which the Master used to effect his mighty works––“that Mind which was in Christ Jesus.” The Principle of Jesus was God. And, again, God is Love.
The word evil is a comprehensive term, including errors of every sort. And yet, in the world’s huge category of evils is there a single one that stands upon a definite principle? Josè had to admit to himself that there was not. Errors in mathematics result from ignorance of principles, or from their misapplication. But are the errors real and permanent?
“Padre, when I make a mistake, and then go back and do the problem over and get it right, what becomes of the mistake?”
Josè burst out laughing at the tremendous question. Carmen joined in heartily.