The day after the news of his uncle’s murder reached him, Ramon lay on his
bed in his darkened room fully dressed in a new suit of black. He was not
ill, and anything would have been easier for him than to lie there with
nothing to do but to think and to stare at a single narrow sunbeam which
came through a rent in the window blind. But it was a Mexican custom, old
and revered, for the family of one recently dead to lie upon its beds in
the dark and so to receive the condolences of friends and the consolations
of religion. To disregard this custom would have been most unwise for an
ambitious young man, and besides, Ramon’s mother clung tenaciously to the
traditional Mexican ways, and she would not have tolerated any breach of
them. At this moment she and her two daughters were likewise lying in
their rooms, clad in new black silk and surrounded by other sorrowing
females.
It was so still in the room that Ramon could hear the buzz of a fly in the
vicinity of the solitary sunbeam, but from other parts of the house came
occasional human sounds. One of these was an intermittent howling and
wailing from the _placita_. This he knew was the work of two old Mexican
women who made their livings by acting as professional mourners. They did
not wait for an invitation but hung about like buzzards wherever there was
a Mexican corpse. Seated on the ground with their black shawls pulled over
their heads, they wailed with astonishing endurance until the coffin was
carried from the house, when they were sure of receiving a substantial
gift from the grateful relatives. Ramon resolved that he would give them
ten dollars each. He felt sure they had never gotten so much. He was
determined to do handsomely in all things connected with the funeral.
He could also hear faintly a rattle of wagons, foot steps and low human
voices coming from the front of the house. A peep had shown him that
already a line of wagons, carriages and buggies half a block long had
formed in the street, and he could hear the arrival of another one every
few minutes. These vehicles brought the numerous and poor relations of Don
Delcasar who lived in the country. All of them would be there by night.
Each one of them would come into Ramon’s room and sit by his bedside and
take his hand and express sympathy. Some of them would weep and some would
groan, although all of them, like himself, were profoundly glad that the
Don was dead. Ramon hoped that they would make their expressions brief.
And later, he knew, all would gather in the room where the casket rested
on two chairs. They would sit in a silent solemn circle about the room,
drinking coffee and wine all night. And he would be among them, trying
with all his might to look properly sad and to keep his eyes open.
All the time that he lay there in enforced idleness he was longing for
action, his imagination straining forward. At last his chance had come—his
chance to have her. And he would have her. He felt sure of it. He was now
a rich man. As soon as the will had been read and he had come into his
own, he would buy a big automobile. He would go to her, he would sweep
away her doubts and hesitations. He would carry her away and marry her.
She would be his.… He closed his eyes and drew his breath in sharply.…
But no; he would have to wait … a decent interval. And the five thousand
dollars must be gotten to Archulera. That was obviously important. And
there might not be much cash. The Don had never had much ready money. He
might have to sell land or sheep first. All of these things to be done,
and here he lay, staring at the ceiling and listening to the wailing of
old women!
There was a knock on the door.
“_Entra!_” he called.
The door opened softly and a tall, black-robed figure was silhouetted for
a moment against the daylight before the door closed again. The black
figure crossed the room and sat down by the bed, silent save for a faint
rustle.
Although he could not see the face, Ramon knew that this was the priest,
Father Lugaria. He knew that Father Lugaria had come to arrange for the
mass over the body of Don Delcasar. He disliked Father Lugaria, and knew
that the Father disliked him. This mutual antipathy was due to the fact
that Ramon seldom went to Church.
There were others of his generation who showed the same indifference
toward religion, and this defection of youth was a thing which the Priests
bitterly contested. Ramon was perfectly willing to make a polite
compromise with them. If Father Lugaria had been satisfied with an
occasional appearance at early mass, a perfunctory confession now and
then, the two might have been friends. But the Priest made Ramon a special
object of his attention. He continually went to the Dona Delcasar with
complaints and that devout woman incessantly nagged her son, holding
before him always pictures of the damnation he was courting. Once in a
while she even produced in him a faint twinge of fear—a recrudescence of
the deep religious feeling in which he was bred—but the feeling was
evanescent. The chief result of these labours on behalf of his soul had
been to turn him strongly against the priest who instigated them.
Father Lugaria seemed all kindness and sympathy now. He sat close beside
Ramon and took his hand. Ramon could smell the good wine on the man’s
breath, and could see faintly the brightness of his eyes. The grip of the
priest’s hand was strong, moist and surprisingly cold. He began to talk in
the low monotonous voice of one accustomed to much chanting, and this
droning seemed to have some hypnotic quality. It seemed to lull Ramon’s
mind so that he could not think what he was going to say or do.
The priest expressed his sympathy. He spoke of the great and good man the
Don had been. Slowly, adroitly, he approached the real question at issue,
which was how much Ramon would pay for a mass. The more he paid, the
longer the mass would be, and the longer the mass the speedier would be
the journey of the Don’s soul through purgatory and into Paradise.
“O, my little brother in Christ!” droned the priest in his vibrant
sing-song, “I must not let you neglect this last, this greatest of things
which you can do for the uncle you loved. It is unthinkable of course that
his soul should go to hell—hell, where a thousand demons torture the soul
for an eternity. Hell is for those who commit the worst of sins, sins they
dare not lay before God for his forgiveness, secret and terrible sins—sins
like murder. But few of us go through life untouched by sin. The soul must
be purified before it can enter the presence of its maker.… Doubtless the
soul of your uncle is in purgatory, and to you is given the sweet power to
speed that soul on its upward way.…
“Don Delcasar, we all know, killed.… More than once, doubtless, he took
the life of a fellow man. But he did it in combat as a soldier, as a
servant of the State.… That is not murder. That would not doom him to
hell, which is the special punishment of secret and unforgiven murder.…
But the soul of the Don must be cleansed of these earthly stains.…”
The strong, cold grip of the priest held Ramon with increasing power. The
monotonous, hypnotic voice went on and on, becoming ever more eloquent and
confident. Father Lugaria was a man of imagination, and the special home
of his imagination was hell. For thirty years he had held despotic sway
over the poor Mexicans who made up most of his flock, and had gathered
much money for the Church, by painting word-pictures of hell. He was a
veritable artist of hell. He loved hell. Again and again he digressed from
the strict line of his argument to speak of hell. With all the vividness
of a thing seen, he described its flames, its fiends, the terrible stink
of burning flesh and the vast chorus of agony that filled it.… And for
some obscure reason or purpose he always spoke of hell as the special
punishment of murderers. Again and again in his discourse he coupled
murder and hell.
Ramon was wearied by strong emotions and a shortness of sleep. His nerves
were overstrung. This ceaseless iteration of hell and murder, murder and
hell would drive him crazy, he thought. He wished mightily that the priest
would have done and name his price and go. What was the sense and purpose
of this endless babble about hell and murder?… A sickening thought struck
him like a blow, leaving him weak. What if old Archulera had confessed to
the priest?
Well; what if he had? A priest could not testify about what he had heard
in confessional. But a priest might tell some one else.… O, God! If the
man would only go and leave him to think. Hell and murder, murder and
hell. The two words beat upon his brain without mercy. He longed to
interrupt the priest and beg him to leave off. But for some reason he
could not. He could not even turn his head and look at the man. The priest
was but a clammy grip that held him and a disembodied voice that spoke of
hell and murder. Had he done murder? And was there a hell? He had long
ceased to believe in hell, but hell had been real to him as a child. His
mother and his nurse had filled him with the fear of hell. He had been
bred in the fear of hell. It was in his flesh and bones if not in his
mind, and the priest had hypnotized his mind. Hell was real to him again.
Fear of hell came up from the past which vanishes but is never gone, and
gripped him like a great ugly monster. It squeezed a cold sweat out of his
body and made his skin prickle and his breath come short.…
The priest dropped the subject of hell, and spoke again of the mass. He
mentioned a sum of money. Ramon nodded his head muttering his assent like
a sick man. The grip on his hand relaxed.
“Good-bye, my little brother,” murmured the priest. “May Christ be always
with you.” His gown rustled across the room and as he opened the door,
Ramon saw his face for a moment—a sallow, shrewd face, bedewed with the
sweat of a great effort, but wearing a smile of triumphant satisfaction.
Ramon lay sick and exhausted. It seemed to him that there was no air in
the room. He was suffocating. His body burned and prickled. He rose and
tore loose his collar. He must get out of this place, must have air and
movement.
It was dusk now. The wailing of the old women had ceased. Doubtless they
were being rewarded with supper. He began stripping off his clothes—his
white shirt and his new suit of black. Eagerly rummaging in the closet he
found his old clothes, which he wore on his trips to the mountains.
In the dim light he slipped out of the house, indistinguishable from any
Mexican boy that might have been about the place. He saddled the little
mare in the corral, mounted and galloped away—through Old Town, where
skinny dogs roamed in dark narrow streets and men and women sat and smoked
in black doorways—and out upon the valley road. There he spurred his mare
without mercy, and they flew over the soft dust. The rush of the air in
his face, and the thud and quiver of living flesh under him were
infinitely sweet.
He stopped at last five miles from town on the bank of the river. It was a
swift muddy river, wandering about in a flood plain a quarter of a mile
wide, and at this point chewing noisily at a low bank forested with
scrubby cottonwoods.
Dismounting, he stripped and plunged into the river. It was only three
feet deep, but he wallowed about in it luxuriously, finding great comfort
in the caress of the cool water, and of the soft fine sand upon the bottom
which clung about his toes and tickled the soles of his feet. Then he
climbed out on the bank and stood where the breeze struck him, rubbing the
water off of his slim strong body with the flats of his hands.
When he had put on his clothes, he indulged his love of lying flat on the
ground, puffing a cigarette and blowing smoke at the first stars. A
hunting owl flitted over his head on muffled wing; a coyote yapped in the
bushes; high up in the darkness he heard the whistle of pinions as a flock
of early ducks went by.
He took the air deeply into his lungs and stretched out his legs. In this
place fear of hell departed from his mind as some strong liquors evaporate
when exposed to the open air. The splendid healthy animal in him was again
dominant, and it could scarcely conceive of death and had nothing more to
do with hell than had the owl and the coyote that killed to live. Here he
felt at peace with the earth beneath him and the sky above. But one
thought came to disturb him and it was also sweet—the thought of a woman,
her eyes full of promise, the curve of her mouth.… She was waiting for
him, she would be his. That was real.… Hell was a dream.
He saw now the folly of his fears about Archulera, too. Archulera never
went to church. There was no danger that he would ever confess to any one.
And even if he did, he could scarcely injure Ramon. For Ramon had done no
wrong. He had but promised an old man his due, righted an ancient wrong.…
He smiled.
Slowly he mounted and rode home, filled with thoughts of the girl, to put
on his mourning clothes and take his decorous place in the circle that
watched his uncle’s bier.