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“Pull off the old door, Padre!” cried Carmen excitedly. “And open all the shutters. Look! Look, Padre! There goes the bad angel that padre Rosendo was afraid of!” A number of bats, startled at the noise and the sudden influx of light, were scurrying out through the open door.
“Like the legion of demons which Jesus sent into the swine,” said Josè. “I will tell you the story some day,chiquita,” he said, in answer to her look of inquiry.
The day passed quickly for the child, nor did she seem to cast another thought in the direction of the cloud which hung over the sorrowing town. At dusk, Mendoza and Cárdenas came to the foot of the hill with food and blankets.
“Amado Sanchez has just died,” they reported.
“What!” cried Josè. “So soon? Why––he fell sick only yesterday!”
“No, Padre, he had been ailing for many days––but it may have been the plague just the same. Perhaps it was with us before Feliz brought it. But we have not exposed ourselves to the disease and––Padre––there is not a man in Simití who will bury Amado. What shall we do?”
Josè divined the man’s thought. “Bien, amigo,” he replied. “Go you back to your homes. To-night Rosendo and I will come and bury him.”
Josè had sent Carmen and Doña Maria beyond the church, that they might not hear the grewsome tidings. When the men had returned to their homes, the little band on the hilltop ate their evening meal in silence. Then a bench was swept clean for Carmen’s bed, for she insisted on sleeping in the old church with Josè when she learned that he intended to pass the night there.
Again, as the heavy shadows were gathering, Josè and Rosendo descended into the town and bore out the body of Amado Sanchez to a resting place beside the poor lad who had died the day before. To a man of such delicate sensibilities as Josè, whose nerves were raw from continual friction with a world with which he was ever at variance, this task was one of almost unendurable horror. He returned to the old church in a state bordering on collapse.
“Rosendo,” he murmured, as they seated themselves on the hillside in the still night, “I think we shall all die of the plague. And it were well so. I am tired, utterly tired of striving to live against such odds.Bien, let it come!”
“Courage,compadre!” urged Rosendo, putting his great arm about the priest’s shoulders. “We must all go some time, and perhaps now; but while we live let us live like men!”
“You do not fear death?”
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“No––what is it that the old history of mine says? ‘Death is not departing, but arriving.’ I am not afraid. But the little Carmen––I wish that she might live. She––ah, Padre, she could do much good in the world.Bien, we are all in the hands of the One who brought us here––and He will take us in the way and at the time that He appoints––is it not so, Padre?”
Josè lapsed again into meditation. No, he could not say that it was so. The thoughts which he had expressed to Carmen that morning still flitted through his mind. The child was right––Rosendo’s philosophy was that of resignation born of ignorance. It was the despair of doubt. And he did not really think that Carmen would be smitten of the plague. Something seemed to tell him that it was impossible. But, on the other hand, he would himself observe every precaution in regard to her. No, he would not sleep in the church that night. He had handled the body of the plague’s second victim, and he could not rest near the child. Perhaps exposure to the night air and the heavy dews would serve to cleanse him. And so he wrapped himself in the blanket which Doña Maria brought from within the church, and lay down beside the faithful pair.
In the long hours of that lonely night Josè lay beneath the shimmering stars pondering, wondering. Down below in the smitten town the poor children of his flock were eating their hearts out in anxious dread and bitter sorrow. Was it through any fault of theirs that this thing had come upon them, like a bolt from a cloudless sky? No––except that they were human, mortal. And if the thing were real, it came from the mind that is God; if unreal––but it seemed real to these simple folk, terribly so!
His heart yearned toward them as his thought penetrated the still reaches of the night and hovered about their lonely vigil. Yet, what had he to offer? What balm could he extend to those wearing out weary hours on beds of agony below? Religion? True religion, if they could but understand it; but not again the empty husks of the faith that had been taught them in the name of Christ! Where did scholastic theology stand in such an hour as this? Did it offer easement from their torture of mind and body? No. Strength to bear in patience their heavy burden? No. Hope? Not of this life––nay, naught but the thread-worn, undemonstrable promise of a life to come, if, indeed, they might happily avoid the pangs of purgatory and the horrors of the quenchless flames of hell! God, what had not the Church to answer for!
And yet, these ignorant children were but succumbing to the evidence of their material senses––though small good it would do to tell them so! Could they but know––as did Carmen––that177rejection of error and reception of truth meant life––ah, could they but know! Could he himself but know––reallyknow––that God is neither the producer of evil, nor the powerless witness of its ravages––could he but understand and prove that evil is not a self-existing entity, warring eternally with God, what might he not accomplish! For Jesus had said: “These signs”––the cure of disease, the rout of death––“shall follow them that believe,” that understand, that know. Why could he not go down to those beds of torture and say with the Christ: “Arise, for God hath made thee whole”? He knew why––“without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh of God must believe”––mustknow––“that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” The suffering victims in the town below were asleep in a state of religious dullness. The task of independent thinking was onerous to such as they. Gladly did they leave it to the Church to do their thinking for them. And thus did they suffer for the trust betrayed!
But truth is omnipotent, and “one with God is a majority.” Jesus gave few rules, but none more fundamental than that “with God all things are possible.” Was he, Josè, walking with God? If so, he might arise and go down into the stricken town and bid its frightened children be whole. If he fully recognized “the Father” as all-powerful, all-good, and if he could clearly see and retain his grasp on the truth that evil, the supposititious opposite of good, had neither place nor power, except in the minds of mortals receptive to it––ah, then––then–––
A soft patter of little feet on the shales broke in upon his thought. He turned and beheld Carmen coming through the night.
“Padre dear,” she whispered, “why didn’t you come and sleep in the church with me?” She crept close to him. He had not the heart nor the courage to send her away. He put out his arm and drew her to him.
“Padre dear,” the child murmured, “it is nice out here under the stars––and I want to be with you––I love you––love you––” The whisper died away, and the child slept on his arm.
“Perfect love casteth out fear.”
178CHAPTER 20
Dawn brought Juan Mendoza and Pedro Cárdenas again to the hill, and with them came others. “Mateo Gil, Pablo Polo, and Juanita Gomez are sick, Padre,” announced Mendoza, the spokesman. “They ask for the last sacrament. You could come down and give it to them, and then return to the hill, is it not so?”
“Yes,” assented Josè, “I will come.”
“And, Padre,” continued Mendoza, “we talked it over last night, after Amado Sanchez died, and we think it would help if you said a Mass for us in the church to-day.”
“I will do so this afternoon, after I have visited the sick,” he replied pityingly.
Mendoza hesitated. Then––
“We think, too, Padre, that if we held a procession––in honor of Santa Barbara––perhaps she would pray for us, and might stop the sickness. We could march through the town this evening, while you stood here and prayed as we passed around the hill. What say you, Padre?”
Josè was about to express a vehement protest. But the anxious faces directed toward him melted his heart.
“Yes, children,” he replied gently, “do as you wish. Keep your houses this afternoon while I visit the sick and offer the Mass. I will leave thehostiaon the altar. You need not fear to touch it. Carry it with you in your rogation to Santa Barbara this evening, and I will stand here and pray for you.”
The people departed, sorrowing, but grateful. Hope revived in the breasts of some. But most of them awaited in trembling the icy touch of the plague.
“Padre,” said Rosendo, when the people had gone. “I have been thinking about the sickness, and I remember what my father told me he learned from a Jesuit missionary. It was that the fat from a human body would cure rheumatism. And then the missionary laughed and said that the fat from a plump woman would cure all diseases of mind and body. If that is so, Padre, and Juanita Gomez dies––she is very plump, Padre––could we not take some of the fat from her body and rub it on the sick––”
“God above, Rosendo! what are you saying!” cried Josè recoiling in horror.
“Caramba!”retorted the honest man. “Would you not try everything that might possibly save these people? What the missionary said may be true.”
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“No, my faithful ally,” replied Josè. “You did not get the sense in which he said it. Neither human fat nor medicine of any kind will help these people. Nothing will be accomplished for them until their fear has been removed. For, I––well, the symptoms manifested by poor Feliz may have been those of Asiatic cholera. But––I begin to doubt. And as for Sanchez––Bien, we do not know––not for certain.” He stopped and pondered the question.
“Padre,” pursued Rosendo, “I have used the liver of a lizard for toothache, and it was very good.”
“I have no doubt of it, Rosendo,” replied Josè, with a smile. “And in days past stranger remedies than that were used by supposedly wise people. When the eyesight was poor, they rubbed wax from the human ear upon the eyes, and I doubt not marvelous restorations of sight were made. So also dogs’ teeth were ground into powder and taken to alleviate certain bodily pains. Almost everything that could be swallowed has been taken by mankind to cure their aches and torments. But they still ache to-day; and will continue to do so, I believe, until their present state of mind greatly changes.”
When the simple midday meal of cornarepaand black coffee was finished, Josè descended into the quiet town. “It is absurd that we should be kept on the hill,” he had said to Rosendo, “but these dull, simple minds believe that, having handled those dead of the plague, we have become agents of infection. They forget that they themselves are living either in the same house with it, or closely adjacent. But it humors them, poor children, and we will stay here for their sakes.”
“Caramba!and they have made us their sextons!” muttered Rosendo.
Josè shuddered. The clammy hand of fear again reached for his heart. He turned to Carmen, who was busily occupied in the shade of the old church.
“Your lessons,chiquita?” he queried, going to her for a moment’s abstraction.
“No, Padre dear,” she replied, smiling up at him, while she quickly concealed the bit of paper on which she had been writing.
“Then what are you doing, little one?” he insisted.
“Padre dear––don’t––don’t always make me tell you everything,” she pleaded, but only half in earnest, as she cast an enigmatical glance at him.
“But this time I insist on knowing; so you might as well tell me.”
“Well then, if you must know,” she replied, her face beaming with a happiness which seemed to Josè strangely out of180place in that tense atmosphere, “I have been writing a question to God.” She held out the paper.
“Writing a question to God! Well––!”
“Why, yes, Padre dear. I have done that for a long, long time. When I want to know what to do, and think I don’t see just what is best, I write my question to God on a piece of paper. Then I read it to Him, and tell Him I know He knows the answer and that He will tell me. And then I put the paper under a stone some place, and––well, that’s all, Padre. Isn’t it a good way?” She beamed at him like a glorious noonday sun.
The priest stood before her in wonder and admiration. “And does He tell you the answers to your questions,chiquita?” he asked tenderly.
“Always, Padre dear. Not always right away––but He never fails––never!”
“Will you tell me what you are asking Him now?” he said.
She handed him the paper. His eyes dimmed as he read:
“Dear, dear Father, please tell your little girl and her dear Padre Josè what it is that makes the people think they have to die down in the town.”
“Dear, dear Father, please tell your little girl and her dear Padre Josè what it is that makes the people think they have to die down in the town.”
“And where will you put the paper, little girl?” he asked, striving to control his voice.
“Why, I don’t know, Padre. Oh, why not put it under the altar in this old church?” she exclaimed, pleased with the thought of such a novel hiding place.
“Excellent!” assented Josè; and together they entered the building. After much stumbling over rubbish, much soiling of hands and disturbing of bats and lizards, while Carmen’s happy laugh rang merrily through the gloomy old pile, they laid the paper carefully away behind the altar in a little pocket, and covered it with an adobe brick.
“There!” panted the girl, the task finished. “Now we will wait for the answer.”
Josè went down into the ominous silence of the town with a lighter heart. The sublime faith of the child moved before him like a beacon. To the sick he spoke words of comfort, with the vision of Carmen always before him. At the altar in the empty church, where he offered the Mass in fulfillment of his promise to the people, her fair form glowed with heavenly radiance from the pedestal where before had stood the dilapidated image of the Virgin. He prepared the sacred wafer and left a part of it on the altar for the people to carry in their procession to Santa Barbara. The other portion he took to the sick ones who had asked for the sacrament.
Two more had fallen ill that afternoon. Mateo Gil, he181thought, could not live the night through. He knelt at the loathsome bedside of the suffering man and prayed long and earnestly for light. He tried not to ask, but to know. While there, he heard a call from the street, announcing the passing of Guillermo Hernandez. Another one! His heart sank again. The plague was upon them in all its cruel virulence.
Sadly he returned to the hill, just as the sun tipped the highest peaks of theCordilleras. Standing on the crest, he waited with heavy heart, while the mournful little procession wended its sad way through the streets below. An old, battered wooden image of one of the Saints, rescued from the oblivion of thesacristía, had been dressed to represent Santa Barbara. This, bedecked with bits of bright colored ribbon, was carried at the head of the procession by the faithful Juan. Following him, Pedro Gonzales, old and tottering, bore a dinner plate, on which rested thehostia, while over the wafer a tall young lad held a soiled umbrella, for there was no canopy.
A slow chant rose from the lips of the people like a dirge. It struck the heart of the priest like a chill wind.“Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!”Tears streamed from his eyes while he gazed upon his stricken people. Slowly, wearily, they wound around the base of the hill, some sullen with despair, others with eyes turned beseechingly upward to where the priest of God stood with outstretched hands, his full heart pouring forth a passionate appeal to Him to turn His light upon these simple-minded children. When they had gone back down the road, their bare feet raising a cloud of thick dust which hid them from his view, Josè sank down upon the rock and buried his face in his hands.
“I know––I think I know, oh, God,” he murmured; “but as yet I have not proved––not yet. But grant that I may soon––for their sakes.”
Rosendo touched his shoulder. “There is another body to bury to-night, Padre. Eat now, and we will go down.”
Standing over the new grave, in the solemn hush of night, the priest murmured: “I am the resurrection and the life.” But the mound upon which Rosendo was stolidly heaping the loose earth marked only another victory of the mortal law of death over a human sense of life. And there was no one there to call forth the sleeping man.
“Behold, I give you power over all things,” said the marvelous Jesus. The wondrous, irresistible power which he exerted in behalf of suffering humanity, he left with the world when he went away. But where is it now?
“Still here,” sighed the sorrowing priest, “still here––lo,182always here––but we know it not. Sunken in materiality, and enslaved to the false testimony of the physical senses, we lack the spirituality that alone would enable us to grasp and use that Christ-power, which is the resurrection and the life.”
“Padre,” said Rosendo, when they turned back toward the hill, “Hernandez is now with the angels. You gave him the sacrament, did you not?”
“Yes, Rosendo.”
“Bien, then you remitted his sins, and he is doubtless in paradise. But,” he mused, “it may be that he had first to pass through purgatory.Caramba!I like not the thought of those hot fires!”
“Rosendo!” exclaimed Josè in impatience. “Your mental wanderings at times are puerile! You talk like the veriest child! Do not be deceived, Hernandez is still the same man, even though he has left his earthly body behind. Do not think he has been lifted at once into eternal bliss. The Church has taught such rubbish for ages, and has based its pernicious teachings upon the grossly misunderstood words of Jesus. The Church is a failure––a dead, dead failure, in every sense of the word! And that man lying there in his grave is a ghastly proof of it!”
Rosendo looked wonderingly at the excited priest, whose bitter words rang out so harshly on the still night air.
“The Church has failed utterly to preserve the simple gospel of the Christ! It has basely, wantonly betrayed its traditional trust! It has fought and slain and burned for centuries over trivial, vulnerable non-essentials, and thrown its greatest pearls to the swine! It no longer prophesies; it carps and reviles! It no longer heals the sick; but it conducts a purgatorial lottery at so much a head! It has become a jumble of idle words, a mumbling of silly formulæ, a category of stupid, insensate ceremonies! Its children are taught to derive their faith from such legends as that of the holy Saint Francis, who, to convince a heretic, showed thehostiato an ass, which on beholding the sacred dough immediately kneeled! Good God!”
“Ca-ram-ba!But you speak hard words, Padre!” muttered Rosendo, vague speculations flitting through his brain as to the priest’s mental state.
“God!” continued Josè heatedly, “the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master’s day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and183drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched from the systems of philosophy of every land and age, and after bedaubing them with her own gaudy colors, has foisted them upon unthinking mankind as divine decrees and mandates! She has foully insulted God and man!––”
“Caramba, Padre! You are not well!Hombre, we must get back to the hill! You are falling sick!”
“I am not, Rosendo! You voice the Church’s stock complaint of every man who exposes her shams: ‘He hath a devil!’”
Rosendo whistled softly. Josè went on more excitedly:
“You ask if Hernandez is in paradise or purgatory. He is in a state no better nor worse than our own, for both are wholly mental. We are now in the fires of as great a purgatory as any man can ever experience! Yes, there is a purgatory––right here on earth––and it follows us after death, and after every death that we shall die, until we learn to know God and see Him as infinite good, without taint or trace of evil! The flames of hell are eternal to us as long as we eat of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’––as long as we believe in other powers than God––as long as we believe sin and disease and evil to be as real and as potent as good! When we know these things as awful human illusions, and when we recognize God as the infinite mind that did not create evil, and does not know or behold it, then, and then only, will the flames of purgatory and hell in this state of consciousness which we mistakenly call life, and in the states of consciousness still to come, begin to diminish in intensity, and finally die out!”
He walked along in silence for some moments. Then he turned to Rosendo and put his hand affectionately upon the old man’s shoulder. “My good friend,” he said more calmly, “I speak with intense feeling, for I have suffered much through the intolerance, the unspirituality, and the worldly ambition of the agents of Holy Church. I suffer, because I see what she is, and how widely she has missed the mark. But, worse, I see how blindly, how cruelly, she leads and betrays her trusting children––and it is the thought of that which at times almost drives me mad! But never mind me, Rosendo. Let me rave. My full heart must empty itself. Do you but look to Carmen for your faith. She is not of the Church. She knows God, and she will lead you straight to Him. And as you follow her, your foolish ideas of purgatory, hell, and paradise, of wafers and virgins––all the tawdry beliefs which the Church has laid upon you, will drop off, one by one, and melt away as do the mists on the lake when the sun mounts high.”
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Carmen and Doña Maria sat against the wall of the old church, waiting for them. The child ran through the darkness and grasped Josè’s hand.
“I wouldn’t go to sleep until you came, Padre!” she cried happily. “I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t sleep anywhere else than right next to me.”
“Padre,” admonished Rosendo anxiously, “do you think you ought to let her come close to you now? The plague––”
Josè turned to him and spoke low. “There is no power or influence that we can exert upon her, Rosendo, either for good or evil. She is obeying a spiritual law of which we know but little.”
“And that, Padre?”
“Just this, Rosendo:‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.’”
The late moon peeped timidly above the drowsing treetops. Its yellow beams stole silently across the still lake and up the hillside to the crumbling church. When they reached the four quiet figures, huddled close against the ghostly wall, they filtered like streams of liquid gold through the brown curls of the little head lying on the priest’s shoulder. And there they dwelt as symbols of Love’s protecting care over the trusting children of this world, until the full dawn of the glorious sun of Truth.
CHAPTER 21
Josè rose from his hard bed stiff and weary. Depression sat heavily upon his soul, and he felt miserably unable to meet the day. Doña Maria was preparing the coffee over a little fire back of the church. The odor of the steaming liquid drifted to him on the warm morning air and gave him a feeling of nausea. A sharp pain shot through his body. His heart stopped. Was the plague’s cold hand settling upon him? Giddiness seized him, and he sat down again upon the rocks.
In the road below a cloud of dust was rising, and across the distance a murmur of voices floated up to his ears. Men were approaching. He wondered dully what additional trouble it portended. Rosendo came to him at that moment.
“Muy buenos dias, Padre.I saw a boat come across the lake some minutes ago. I wonder if Don Mario has returned.”
The men below were ascending the hill. Josè struggled to his feet and went forth to meet them. A familiar voice greeted him cheerily.
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“Hola, Señor Padre Josè!Dios mío, but your hill is steep!”
Josè strained his eyes at the newcomer. The man quickly gained the summit, and hurried to grasp the bewildered priest’s hand.
“Love of the Virgin! don’t you know me,Señor Padre?” he cried, slapping Josè roundly upon the back.
The light of recognition slowly came into the priest’s eyes. The man was Don Jorge, his erstwhile traveling companion on the Magdalena river.
“And now a cup of that coffee, if you will do me the favor, my goodCura. And then tell me what ails you here,” he added, seating himself. “Caramba, what a town! Diego was right––the devil himself made this place! But they say you have all taken to dying! Have you nothing else to do?Caramba, I do not wonder! Such a God-forsaken spot! Well, what is it? Speak, man!”
Josè collected his scattered thoughts. “The cholera!” he said hoarsely.
“Cholera!Caramba!so they told me down below, and I would not believe them! But where did it come from?”
“One of our men brought it from Bodega Central.”
“Bodega Central!” ejaculated Don Jorge. “Impossible! I came from there this morning myself. Have been there two days. There isn’t a trace of cholera in the place, as far as I know! You have all gone crazy––but small wonder!” looking out over the decrepit town.
The priest’s head was awhirl. He felt his senses leaving him. His ears were reporting things basely false. “You say––” he began in bewilderment.
“I say what I have said,amigo! There is no more cholera in Bodega Central than there is in heaven! I arrived there day before yesterday, and left before sunrise this morning. So I should know.”
Josè sank weakly down at the man’s side. “But––Don Jorge––Feliz Gomez returned from there three nights ago, and reported that a Turk, who had come up from the coast, had died of the plague!”
Don Jorge’s brows knit in perplexity. “I recall now,” he said slowly, after some moments of study. “The innkeeper did say that a Turk had died there––some sort of intestinal trouble, I believe. When I told him I was bound for Simití, he laughed as if he would split, and then began to talk about the great fright he had given a man from here. Said he scared the fellow until his black face turned white. But I was occupied with my own affairs, and paid him little attention. But come, tell me all about it.”
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With the truth slowly dawning upon his clouded thought, Josè related the grewsome experiences of the past three days.
“Ca-ram-ba!”Don Jorge whistled softly. “Who would have thought it! But, was Feliz Gomez sick before he went to Bodega Central?”
“I do not know,” replied Josè.
“Yes, señor,” interposed Rosendo. “He and Amado Sanchez both had bowel trouble. Their women told my wife so, after you and I, Padre, had come up here to the hill. But it was nothing. We have it here often, as you know.”
“True,” assented Josè, “but we have never given it any serious thought.”
Don Jorge leaned back and broke into a roar of laughter. “Por el amor del cielo!You are all crazy,amigo––you die like rats of fear! Did you ever put a mouse into a bottle and then scare it to death with a loud noise?Hombre!That is what has happened to you!” The hill reverberated with his loud shouts.
But Josè could not share in the merriment. The awful consequences of the innkeeper’s coarse joke upon the childish minds of these poor, impressionable people pressed heavily upon his heart. Bitter tears welled to his eyes. He sprang to his feet.
“Come, Rosendo!” he cried. “We must go down and tell these people the truth!”
Don Jorge joined them, and they all hastened down into the town. Ramona Chaves met them in theplaza, her eyes streaming.
“Padre,” she wailed, “my man Pedro has the sickness! He is dying!”
“Nothing of the kind, Ramona!” loudly cried Josè; “there is no cholera here!” He hastened to the bedside of the writhing Pedro.
“Up, man!” he shouted, seizing his hand. “Up! You are not sick! There is no cholera in Simití! There is none in Bodega Central! Feliz did not bring it! He and Amado had only a touch of the flux, and they died of fear!”
The priest’s ringing words acted upon the man like magic. He roused up from his lethargy and stared at the assemblage. Don Jorge repeated the priest’s words, and added his own laughing and boisterous comments. Pedro rose from his bed, and stood staring.
Together, their little band augmented at every corner by the startled people, they hurried to the homes of all who lay upon beds of sickness, spreading the glad tidings, until the little town was in a state of uproar. Like black shadows before187the light, the plague fled into the realm of imagination from which it had come. By night, all but Mateo Gil were up and about their usual affairs. But even Mateo had revived wonderfully; and Josè was confident that the good news would be the leaven of health that would work a complete restoration within him in time. The exiles left the hilltop and the old church, and returned again to their homes. Don Jorge took up his abode with Josè.
“Bien,” he said, as they sat at the rear door of the priest’s house, looking through the late afternoon haze out over the lake, “you have had a strange experience––Caramba! most strange!––and yet one from which you should gather an excellent lesson. You are dealing with children here––children who have always been rocked in the cradle of the Church. But––” looking archly at Josè, “do I offend? For, as I told you on the boat a year ago, I do not think you are a good priest.” He laughed softly. “Bien,” he added, “I will correct that. You are good––but not a priest, is it not so?”
“I have some views, Don Jorge, which differ radically from those of the faith,” Josè said cautiously.
“Caramba!I should hope so!” his friend ejaculated.
“But,” interposed Josè, anxious to direct the conversation into other channels, “may I ask how and where you have occupied yourself since I left the boat at Badillo?”
“Ah,Dios!” said Don Jorge, shaking his head, although his eyes twinkled. “I have wandered ever since––and am poorer now than when I started. I left our boat at Puerto Nacional, to go to Medellin; and from there to Remedios and Guamocó. But while in the river town I met anotherguaquero––grave hunter, you know––who was preparing to go to Honda, to investigate the ‘castles’ at that place. There is a strange legend––you may have heard it––hanging over those rocks. It appears that a lone hermit lived in one of the many caverns in the great limestone deposits rising abruptly from the river near the town of Honda. How he came there, no one knew. Day after day, year after year, he labored in his cave, extending it further into the hillside. People laughed at him for tunneling in that barren rock, for gold has never been found anywhere in it. But the fellow paid them no attention; and gradually he was accepted as a harmless fanatic, and was left unmolested to dig his way into the hill as far as he would. Years passed. No one knew how the fellow lived, for he held no human intercourse. Kind people often brought food and left it at the mouth of his cavern, but he would have none of it. They brought clothes, but they rotted where they were left. What he ate, no one could discover. At last some good soul188planted a fig tree near the cave, hoping that the fruit in time would prove acceptable to him. One day they found the tree cut down.Bien, time passed, and he was forgotten. One day some men, passing the cave, found his body, pale and thin, with long, white hair, lying at the entrance. But––Caramba! when they buried the body they found it was that of a woman!”
He paused to draw some leaves of tobacco from his wallet and roll a thick cigar. The sudden turn of his story drew an expression of amazement from the priest.
“Bien,” he resumed, “where the woman came from, and who she was, never was learned. Nor how she lived. But of course some one must have supplied her with food and clothes all these years. Perhaps she was some grand dame, with a dramatic past, who had come there to escape the world and do penance for her sins. What sorrow, what black tragedy that cave concealed, no one may ever know! Nor am I at all interested in that. The point is, either she found gold there, or had a quantity of it that she brought with her––at least so I thought at the time. So, when theguaqueroat Puerto Nacional told me the story, nothing would do but I must go with him to search the cave.Caramba!We wasted three full months prying around there––and had our labor for our pains!”
He tilted his chair back and puffed savagely at his cigar.
“Well, then I got on the windy side of another legend, a wild tale of buried treasure in the vicinity of Mompox. Of course I hurried after it. Spent six months pawing the hot dirt around that old town. Fell in with your estimable citizen, Don Felipe, who swindled me out of a hundred goodpesos oroon a fraudulent location and a forged map. Then I cursed him and the place and went up to Banco.”
“Banco!” Josè’s heart began beating rapidly. Don Jorge went on:
“Your genial friend Diego is back there. Told me about his trip to Simití to see his little daughter.”
“What did he say about her,amigo?” asked Josè in a controlled voice.
“Not much––only that he expected to send for her soon. You know, Rosendo’s daughter is living with him. Fine looking wench, too!”
“But, Don Jorge,” pursued Josè anxiously, “what think you, is the little Carmen Diego’s child?”
“Hombre!How should I know? He no doubt has many.”
“She does not look like him,” asserted Josè, clinging to his note of optimism.
“No. And fortunate she is in that!Caramba, but he looks like an imp from sheol!”
189
Josè saw that little consolation was to be derived from Don Jorge as far as Carmen was concerned. So he allowed the subject to lapse.
“Bien,” continued Don Jorge, whose present volubility was in striking contrast to his reticence on the boat the year before, “I had occasion to come up to Bodega Central––another legend, if I must confess it. And there Don Carlos Norosí directed me here.”
“What a life!” exclaimed Josè.
“Yes, no doubt it appears so to you,Señor Padre,” replied Don Jorge. “And yet my business, that of treasure hunting, has in times past proved very lucrative. The Indian graves of Colombia have yielded enormous quantities of gold. The Spaniards opened many of them; and in one, that of a famous chieftain, discovered down below us, near Zaragoza, they found a solid gold pineapple, a marvelous piece of workmanship, and of immense value. They sent it to the king of Spain.Caramba! it never would have reached him if I had been there!
“But,” he resumed, “we have no idea of the amount of treasure that has been buried in various parts of Colombia. This country has been, and still is, enormously rich in minerals––a veritable gold mine of itself. And since the time of the Spanish conquest it has been in a state of almost constant turmoil. Nothing and nobody has been safe. And, up to very recent times, whenever the people collected a bit of gold above their daily needs, they promptly banked it with good Mother Earth. Then, like as not, they got themselves killed in the wars, and the treasure was left for some curious and greedy hunter like myself to dig up years after. The Royalists and Tories buried huge sums all over the country during the War of Independence. Why, it was only a year or so ago that two men came over from Spain and went up the Magdalena river to Bucaramanga. They were close-mouthed fellows, well-dressed, and evidently well-to-do. But they had nothing to say to anybody. The innkeeper pried around until he discovered that they spent much time in their room poring over maps and papers. Then they set off alone, with an outfit of mules and supplies to last several weeks.Bueno, they came back at last with a box of good size, made of mahogany, and bound around with iron bands.Caramba!They did not tarry long, you may be sure. And I learned afterward that they sailed away safely from Cartagena, box and all, for sunny Spain, where, I doubt not, they are now living in idleness and gentlemanly ease on what they found in the big coffer they dug up near that old Spanish city.”
Josè listened eagerly. To him, cooped up for a year and190more in the narrow confines of Simití, the ready flow of this man’s conversation was like a fountain of sparkling water to a thirsty traveler. He urged him to go on, plying him with questions about his strange avocation.
“Caramba, but the old Indian chiefs were wise fellows!” Don Jorge pursued. “They seemed to know that greedy vandals like myself would some day poke around in their last resting places for the gold that was always buried with them––possibly to pay their freight across the dark river. And so they dug their graves in the form of an L, in the extreme tip of which the royal carcasses were laid. In this way they have deceived many a grave-hunter, who dug straight down without finding the body, which was safely tucked away in the toe of the L. I have gone back and reopened many a grave that I had abandoned as empty, and found His Royal Highness five or six feet to one side of the straight shaft I had previously sunk.”
“I suppose,” mused Josè, “that you now follow this work because of its fascination––for you must have found and laid aside much treasure in the years that you have pursued it.”
“Caramba!”ejaculated theguaquero. “I have been rich and poor, like the rising and setting of the sun! What I find, I spend again hunting more. It is the way of the world. The man who has enough money never knows it. And his greed for more––more that he needs not, and cannot possibly spend on himself––generally results, as in my case, in the loss of what he already has. But there are reasons aside from the excitement of the chase that keep me at it.”
He fell strangely silent, and Josè knew that there were aroused within him memories that seared the tissues of the brain as they entered.
“Amigo,” Don Jorge resumed. His voice was low, tense and cold. “There are some things which I am trying to forget. This exciting and dangerous business of mine keeps my thought occupied. I care nothing now for the treasure I may discover. But I crave forgetfulness. Do you understand?”
“Surely, good friend,” replied Josè quickly; “and I ask pardon for recalling those things to you.”
“De nada, amigo!”said Don Jorge, with a gesture of deprecation. Then: “I told you on the boat that I had lost a wife and girl. The Church got them both. I tell you this because I know you, too, have grievances against her.Caramba!Yet I will tell you only a part. I lived in Maganguey, where my wife’s brother kept a store and did an excellent commission business. I was mining and hunting graves in the Cauca region, sometimes going up the Magdalena, too, and working on both sides of the river. Maganguey was a convenient place191for me to live, as it stands at the junction of the two great rivers. Besides, my wife wished to remain near her own people.Bien, we had a daughter. She grew up fair and good. And then, one day, the priest told my wife that the girl was destined to a great future, and must enter a convent and consecrate herself to the Church.Caramba!I am not a Catholic––was never one! My parents were patriots, and both took part in the great war that gave liberty to this country. But they were liberal in thought; and I was never confirmed to the Church.Bien, the priest made my life a hell––my wife became estranged from me––and one day, returning from the Cauca, I found my house deserted. Wife and girl and the child’s nurse had gone down the river!”
The man’s face darkened, and hard lines drew around his mouth.
“They had taken my money chest, some thousands of pesos. I sought the priest. He laughed at me, and––Caramba! I struck him such a blow between his pig eyes that he lay senseless for hours!”
Josè glanced at the broad shoulders and the great knots of muscle on the man’s arms. He was of medium height, but with a frame of iron.
“Bien, Señor Padre, I, too, fled wild and raving from Maganguey that night, and plunged into the jungle. Months later I drifted down the river, as far as Mompox. And there one day I chanced upon old Marcelena, the child’s nurse. Like acaymanI seized her and dragged her into an alley. She confessed that my wife and girl were living there––the wife had become housekeeper for a young priest––the girl was in the convent.Caramba!I hurled the woman to the ground and turned my back upon the city!”
Josè’s interest in the all too common recital received a sudden stimulus.
“Your daughter’s name, Don Jorge, was––”
“Maria,Señor Padre.”
“And––she would now be, how old, perhaps?”
“About twenty-two, I think.”
“Her appearance?”
“Fair––complexion light, like her mother’s. Maria was a beautiful child––and good as she was beautiful.”
“But––the child’s nurse remained with her?”
“Marcelena? Yes. She was devoted to the little Maria. The woman was old and ugly––but she loved the child.”
“Did you not inquire for them when you were in Mompox a few months ago?” pursued Josè eagerly.
“I made slight inquiry through the clerk in the office of192the Alcalde. I did not intend to––but I could not help it.Caramba!He made further inquiry, but said only that he was told they had long since gone down to Cartagena, and nothing had been heard from them.”
The gates of memory’s great reservoir opened at the touch of this man’s story, and Josè again lived through that moonlit night in Cartagena, when the little victim of Wenceslas breathed out her life of sorrow and shame in his arms. He heard again the sobs of Marcelena and the simple-minded Catalina. He saw again the figure of the compassionate Christ in the smoke that drifted past the window. And now the father of that wronged girl sat before him, wrapped in the tatters of a shredded happiness! Should he tell him? Should he say that he had cared for this man’s little grandson since his advent into this sense of existence that mortals call life? For there could be no doubt now that the little Maria was his daughter.
“Don Jorge,” he said, “you have suffered much. My heart bleeds for you. And yet––”
“Na, Padre, there is nothing to do. Were I to find my family I could only slay them and the priests who came between us!”
“But, Don Jorge,” cried Josè in horror, “you surely meditate no such vengeance as that!”
The man smiled grimly. “Señor Padre,” he returned coldly, “I am Spanish. The blood of the old cavaliers flows in my veins. I have been betrayed, trapped, fooled, and my honored name has been foully soiled. What will remove the stain, think you? Blood––nothing else!Caramba!The priest of Maganguey who poured the first drop of poison into my wife’s too willing ears––Bien, I have said enough!”
“Hombre!You don’t mean––”
“I mean,Señor Padre, that I drifted down the river, unseen, to Maganguey one night. I entered that priest’s house. He did not awake the next morning.”
“God!” exclaimed Josè, starting up.
“Na, Padre, not God, but Satan! He rules this world.”
Josè sank back in his chair. Don Jorge leaned forward and laid a hand upon his knee. “My friend,” he said evenly, “you are young––how old, may I ask?”
“Twenty-seven,” murmured Josè.
“Caramba!A child!Bien, you have much to learn. I took to you on the boat because I knew you had made a mess of things, and it was not entirely your fault. I have seen others like you. You are no more in the Church than I am. Now why do you stay here? Do I offend in asking?”