The next morning Josè read to Rosendo portions of the communication
from Wenceslas.
"Chiquinquía," commented the latter. "I remember that Padre Diego
collected much money from our people for Masses to be said at that
shrine."
"But where is it, Rosendo?" asked Josè.
"You do not know the story?" queried Rosendo in surprise. "Why, there
is not a shrine in the whole of Colombia that works so many cures as
this one. Your grandfather, Don Ignacio, knew the place. And it was
from him that my--that is, I learned the legend when I was only a boy.
It is said that a poor, sick young girl in the little Indian village
of Chiquinquía, north of Bogotá, stood praying in her shabby little
cottage before an old, torn picture of the blessed Virgin." He stopped
and crossed himself devoutly. Then he resumed:
"_Bueno_, while the girl prayed, the picture suddenly rose up in the
air; the torn places all closed; the faded colors came again as fresh
as ever; and the girl was cured of her affliction. The people of the
village immediately built a shrine, over which they hung the picture;
and ever since then the most wonderful miracles have been performed by
it there."
Josè laughed. "You don't believe that, do you, Rosendo?" he asked in
banter.
"_Hombre_, yes!" exclaimed the latter a bit testily. "I know it! Did
not Don Felipe go there when the doctor in Mompox told him the little
white spot on his hand was leprosy? And he came back cured."
Leprosy! Josè started as if he had received a blow. He looked
furtively at the scar on his own hand, the hand which the leper in
Maganguey had lacerated that dreadful night, and which often burned
and ached as if seared by a hot iron. He had never dared to voice the
carking fear that tightened about his heart at times. But often in the
depths of night, when dread anticipation sat like a spectre upon his
bed, he had risen and gone out into the darkness to wrestle with his
black thoughts. Leprosy! All the gladness and joy left his heart, and
a pall of darkness settled over his thought. He turned back into his
cottage and tried to find forgetfulness in the simple duties that lay
at hand.
"Why is it," he asked himself, as he sat wearily down at his little
table, "that I always think of evil first; while Carmen's first
thought is invariably of God?"
He looked at the ugly scar on his hand. What thought was externalized
in the loathsome experience which produced that? he wondered. Was it
the summation of all the fear, the weakness, the wrong belief, that
had filled his previous years? And now why was he finding it so
difficult to practice what Carmen lived, even though he knew it was
truth?
"Alas!" he murmured aloud, "it was the seminary that did it. For there
my thought was educated away from the simple teachings of Jesus. To
Carmen there is no mystery in godliness. Though she knows utterly
nothing about Jesus, yet she hourly uses the Christ-principle. It is
the children who grasp the simple truths of God; while the lack of
spirituality which results from increasing years shrinks maturer minds
until they no longer afford entrance to it. For godliness is broad;
and the mind that receives it must be opened wide."
As he sat with his bowed head clasped in his hands, a sweet, airy
voice greeted him.
"Why, Padre dear--ah, I caught you that time!--you were thinking that
two and two are seven, weren't you?" She shook a rebuking finger at
him.
Framed in the doorway like an old masterpiece, the sunlight bronzing
her heavy brown curls, the olive-tinted skin of her bare arms and legs
flushing with health, and her cheap calico gown held tightly about
her, showing the contour of her full and shapely figure, the girl
appeared to Josè like a vision from the realm of enchantment. And he
knew that she did dwell in the land of spiritual enchantment, where
happiness is not at the mercy of physical sense.
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God?"
"The Lord our God is a right-thinking God, and right-thinking is what
He desires in His people."
Josè thought of this as he looked at Carmen. This barefoot girl, who
walked humbly, trustingly, with her God, had she not supplied him with
a working formula for his every problem, even to the casting out of
the corroding fear planted in his heart by that awful experience in
Maganguey? Though he had suffered much, yet much had been done for
him. The brusque logic of the explorer had swept his mind clear of its
last vestige of theological superstition, and prepared it for the
truth which, under the benign stimulus of this clear-minded child,
would remake his life, if he could now yield himself utterly to it. He
must--he would--ceaselessly strive, even though he fell daily, to make
his life a pattern of hers, wherein there was no knowledge of evil!
The girl came to the priest and leaned fondly against him. Then a
little sigh escaped her lips, as she looked down into his face with
pitying affection.
"Padre dear," she said, in a tone that echoed a strain of sadness,
"I--I don't believe--you love God very much."
The man was startled, and resentment began to well in his heart. "What
a thing to say, Carmen!" he answered reprovingly.
The girl looked up at him with great, wondering eyes. "But, Padre,"
she protested, "were you not thinking of things that are not true when
I came in?"
"No--I was--I was thinking of the future--of--well, _chiquita_, I was
thinking of something that might happen some day, that is all." He
stumbled through it with difficulty, for he knew he must not lie to
the child. Would she ever trust him again if he did?
"And, Padre, were you afraid?"
"Afraid? Yes, _chiquita_, I was." He hung his head.
Carmen looked at him reproachfully. "Then, Padre, I was right--for, if
you loved God, you would trust Him--and then you couldn't be afraid of
anything--could you? People who love Him are not afraid."
He turned his head away. "Ah, child," he murmured, "you will find that
out in the world people don't love God in this day and generation. At
least they don't love Him that way."
"They don't love Him enough to trust him?" she asked wistfully.
"No." He shook his head sadly. "Nobody trusts Him, not even the
preachers themselves. When things happen, they rush for a doctor, or
some other human being to help them out of their difficulty. They
don't turn to Him any more. They seldom speak His name."
"Have--they--forgotten Him?" she asked slowly, her voice sinking to a
whisper.
"Absolutely!" He again buried his head in his hands.
The child stood in silence for some moments. Then:
"What made them forget Him, Padre?"
"I guess, _chiquita_, they turned from Him because He didn't answer
their prayers. I used to pray to Him, too. I prayed hours at a time.
But nothing seemed to come of it. And so I stopped." He spoke
bitterly.
"You prayed! You mean--"
"I asked Him for things--to help me out of trouble--I asked Him to
give me--"
"Why, Padre! Why--that's the very reason!"
He looked up at her blankly. "What is the very reason? What are you
trying to tell me, child?"
"Why, He is everywhere, and He is right here all the time. And so
there couldn't be any real trouble for Him to help you out of; and He
couldn't give you anything, for He has already done that, long ago. We
are in Him, don't you know? Just like the little fishes in the lake.
And so when you asked Him for things it showed that you didn't believe
He had already given them to you. And--you know what you said last
night about thinking, and that when we think things, we see them?
Well, He has given you everything; but you thought He hadn't, and so
you saw it that way--isn't it so?"
She paused for breath. She had talked rapidly and with animation. But
before he could reply she resumed:
"Padre dear, you know you told me that Jesus was the best man that
ever lived, and that it was because he never had a bad thought--isn't
that so?"
"Yes," he murmured.
"Well, did he pray--did he ask God for things?"
"Of course he did, child!" the priest exclaimed. "He always asked Him
for things. Why, he was always praying--the New Testament is full of
it!"
Acting on a sudden impulse, he rose and went into the sleeping room
to get his Bible. The child's face took on an expression of
disappointment as she heard his words. Her brow knotted, and a
troubled look came into her brown eyes.
Josè returned with his Bible and seated himself again at the table.
Opening the book, his eyes fell upon a verse of Mark's Gospel. He
stopped to read it; and then read it again. Suddenly he looked up at
the waiting girl.
"What is it, Padre? What does it say?"
He hesitated. He read the verse again; then he scanned the child
closely, as if he would read a mystery hidden within her bodily
presence. Abruptly he turned to the book and read aloud:
"'Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.'"
The girl drew a long breath, almost a sigh, as if a weight had been
removed from her mind. "Did Jesus say that?" she asked in glad, eager
tones.
"Yes--at least it is so reported here," he answered absently.
"Well--_he_ knew, didn't he?"
"Knew what, child?"
"Why, Padre, he told the people to know--just _know_--that they
already had everything--that God had given them everything good--and
that if they would _know_ it, they would see it."
Externalization of thought? Yes; or rather, the externalization of
truth. Josè fell into abstraction, his eyes glued to the page. There
it stood--the words almost shouted it at him! And there it had stood
for nearly two thousand years, while priest and prelate, scribe and
commentator had gone over it again and again through the ages, without
even guessing its true meaning--without even the remotest idea of the
infinite riches it held for mankind!
He turned reflectively to Matthew; and then to John. He remembered the
passages well--in the past he had spent hours of mortal agony poring
over them and wondering bitterly why God had failed to keep the
promises they contain.
"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive."
All things--when ye ask _believing_! But that Greek word surely held
vastly more than the translators have drawn from it. Nay, not
believing only, but _understanding_ the allness of God as good, and
the consequent nothingness of evil, all that seems to oppose Him! How
could the translators have so completely missed the mark! And
Carmen--had never seen a Bible until he came into her life; yet she
knew, knew instinctively, that a good God who was "everywhere" could
not possibly withhold anything good from His children. It was the
simplest kind of logic.
But, thought Josè again, if the promises are kept, why have we fallen
so woefully short of their realization? Then he read again, "If ye
abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and
it shall be done unto you." The promise carries a condition--abiding
in his words--obeying his commands--keeping the very _first_
Commandment, which is that "Ye shall have no other gods before me"--no
gods of evil, sickness, chance, or death. The promises are fulfilled
only on the condition of righteousness--right-thinking about God and
His infinite, spiritual manifestation.
He turned to Carmen. "_Chiquita_," he said tenderly, "you never ask
God to give you things, do you?"
"Why, no, Padre; why should I? He gives me everything I need, doesn't
He?"
"Yes--when you go out to the shales, you--"
"I don't ask Him for things, Padre dear. I just tell Him I _know_ He
is everywhere."
"I see--yes, you told me that long ago--I understand, _chiquita_."
His spirit bowed in humble reverence before such divine faith. This
untutored, unlearned girl, isolated upon these burning shales, far,
far from the haunts of men of pride and power and worldly lore--this
barefoot child whose coffers held of material riches scarce more than
the little calico dress upon her back--this lowly being knew that
which all the fabled wealth of Ind could never buy! Her prayers were
not the selfish pleadings that spring from narrow souls, the souls
that "ask amiss"--not the frenzied yearnings wrung from suffering,
ignorant hearts--nor were they the inflated instructions addressed
to the Almighty by a smug, complacent clergy, the self-constituted
press-bureau of infinite Wisdom. Her prayers, which so often drifted
like sweetest incense about those steaming shales, were not
petitions, but _affirmations_. They did not limit God. She did not
plead with Him. She simply _knew_ that He had already met her needs.
And that righteousness--right-thinking--became externalized in her
consciousness in the good she sought. Jesus did the same thing, over
and over again; but the poor, stupid minds of the people were so
full of wrong beliefs about his infinite Father that they could not
understand, no, not even when he called Lazarus from the tomb.
"Ask in my name," urged the patient Jesus. But the poor fishermen
thought he meant his human name to be a talisman, a sort of "Open
Sesame," when he was striving all the time, by precept and deed, to
show them that they must ask in his _character_, must be like him, to
whom, though of himself he could do nothing, yet all things were
possible.
Josè's heart began to echo the Master's words: "Father, I thank Thee
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes." He put his arm about Carmen and drew her to
him.
"Little one," he murmured, "how much has happened in these past few
weeks!"
Carmen looked up at him with an enigmatical glance and laughed. "Well,
Padre dear, I don't think anything ever really _happens_, do you?"
"Why not?" he asked.
"Mistakes happen, as in solving my algebra problems. But good things
never happen, any more than the answers to my problems happen. You
know, there are rules for getting the answers; but there are no rules
for making mistakes--are there? But when anything comes out according
to the rule, it doesn't happen. And the mistakes, which have no rules,
are not real--the answers are real, but the mistakes are not--and so
nothing ever really happens. Don't you see, Padre dear?"
"Surely, I see," he acquiesced. Then, while he held the girl close to
him, he reflected: Good is never fortuitous. It results from the
application of the Principle of all things. The answer to a
mathematical problem is a form of good, and it results from the
application of the principle of mathematics. Mistakes, and the various
things which "happen" when we solve mathematical problems, do not have
rules, or principles. They result from ignorance of them, or their
misapplication. And so in life; for chance, fate, luck, accident and
the merely casual, come, not from the application of principles, but
from not applying them, or from ignorance of their use. The human mind
or consciousness, which is a mental activity, an activity of thought,
is concerned with mixed thoughts of good and evil. But _it operates
without any principle whatsoever_. For, if God is infinite good, then
the beliefs of evil which the human mind holds must be false beliefs,
illusions, suppositions. A supposition has no principle, no rule. And
so, it is only the unreal that happens. And even that sort of
"happening" can be prevented by knowing and using the principle of all
good, God. A knowledge of evil is not knowledge at all. Evil has no
rules. Has an accident a principle? He laughed aloud at the idea.
"What is it, Padre?" asked Carmen.
"Nothing, child--and everything! But we are neglecting our work," he
hastily added, as he roused himself. "What are the lessons for to-day?
Come! come! We have much to do!" And arranging his papers, and bidding
Carmen draw up to the table, he began the morning session of his very
select little school.
* * * * *
More than six months had elapsed since Josè first set foot upon the
hot shales of Simití. In that time his mentality had been turned over
like a fallow field beneath the plowshare. After peace had been
established in the country he had often thought to consecrate himself
to the task of collecting the fragmentary ideas which had been evolved
in his mind during these past weeks of strange and almost weird
experience, and trying to formulate them into definite statements of
truth. Then he would enter upon the task of establishing them by
actual demonstration, regardless of the years that might be required
to do so. He realized now that the explorer had done a great work in
clearing his mind of many of its darker shadows. But it was to
Carmen's purer, more spiritual influence that he knew his debt was
heaviest.
Let it not seem strange that mature manhood and extensive travel had
never before brought to this man's mind the truths, many of which have
been current almost since the curtain first arose on the melodrama
of mundane existence. Well nigh impassable limitations had been
set to them by his own natal characteristics; by his acutely morbid
sense of filial love which bound him, at whatever cost, to observe
the bigoted, selfish wishes of his parents; and by the strictness
with which his mind had been hedged about both in the seminary and
in the ecclesiastical office where he subsequently labored. The
first rays of mental freedom did not dawn upon his darkened thought
until he was sent as an outcast to the New World. Then, when his
greater latitude in Cartagena, and his still more expanded sense of
freedom in Simití, had lowered the bars, there had rushed into his
mentality such a flood of ideas that he was all but swept away in the
swirling current.
It is not strange that he rose and fell, to-day strong in the
conviction of the immanence of infinite good, to-morrow sunken in
mortal despair of ever demonstrating the truth of the ideas which were
swelling his shrunken mind. His line of progress in truth was an
undulating curve, slowly advancing toward the distant goal to which
Carmen seemed to move in a straight, undeviating line. What though
Emerson had said that Mind was "the only reality of which men and all
other natures are better or worse reflectors"? Josè was unaware of the
sage's mighty deduction. What though Plato had said that we move as
shadows in a world of ideas? Even if Josè had known of it, it had
meant nothing to him. What though the Transcendentalists called the
universe "a metaphore of the human mind"? Josè's thought was too
firmly clutched by his self-centered, material beliefs to grasp it.
Doubt of the reality of things material succumbed to the evidence of
the physical senses and the ridicule of his seminary preceptors. True,
he believed with Paul, that the "things that are seen are temporal;
the things that are unseen, are eternal." But this pregnant utterance
conveyed nothing more to him than a belief of a material heaven to
follow his exit from a world of matter. It had never occurred to him
that the world of matter might be the product of those same delusive
physical senses, through which he believed he gained his knowledge of
it. It is true that while in the seminary, and before, he had insisted
upon a more spiritual interpretation of the mission of Jesus--had
insisted that Christian priests should obey the Master's injunction,
and heal the sick as well as preach the gospel. But with the advent of
the troubles which filled the intervening years, these things had
gradually faded; and the mounting sun that dawned upon him six months
before, as he lay on the damp floor of his little cell in the
ecclesiastical dormitory in Cartagena, awaiting the Bishop's summons,
illumined only a shell, in which agnosticism sat enthroned upon a
stool of black despair.
Then Carmen entered his life. And her beautiful love, which enfolded
him like a garment, and her sublime faith, which moved before him like
the Bethlehem star to where the Christ-principle lay, were, little by
little, dissolving the mist and revealing the majesty of the great
God.
In assuming to teach the child, Josè early found that the outer world
meant nothing to her until he had purged it of its carnal elements.
Often in days past, when he had launched out upon the dramatic recital
of some important historical event, wherein crime and bloodshed had
shaped the incident, the girl would start hastily from her chair and
put her little hand over his mouth.
"Don't, Padre dear! It is not true!" she would exclaim. "God didn't do
it, and it isn't so!"
And thereby he learned to differentiate more closely between those
historical events which sprang from good motives, and those which
manifested only human passion, selfish ambition, and the primitive
question, "Who shall be greatest?" Moreover, he had found it best in
his frequent talks to the people in the church during the week to omit
all reference to the evil methods of mankind in their dealings one
with another, and to pass over in silence the criminal aims and low
motives, and their externalization, which have marked the unfolding of
the human mind, and which the world preserves in its annals as
historical fact. The child seemed to divine the great truth that
history is but the record of human conduct, conduct manifesting the
mortal mind of man, a mind utterly opposed to the mind that is God,
and therefore unreal, supposititious, and bearing the "minus" sign.
Carmen would have none of it that did not reflect good. She refused
utterly to turn her mental gaze toward recorded evil.
"Padre," she once protested, "when I want to see the sun rise, I don't
look toward the west. And if you want to see the good come up, why do
you look at these stories of bad men and their bad thoughts?"
Josè admitted that they were records of the mortal mind--and the mind
that is mortal is _no_ mind.
"I am learning," he frequently said to himself, after Carmen had left
at the close of their day's work. "But my real education did not
commence until I began to see, even though faintly, that the Creator
is mind and infinite good, and that there is nothing real to the
belief in evil; that the five physical senses give us _no_ testimony
of any nature whatsoever; and that real man never could, never did,
fall."
Thus the days glided swiftly past, and Josè completed his first year
amid the drowsy influences of this little town, slumbering peacefully
in its sequestered nook at the feet of the green _Cordilleras_. No
further event ruffled its archaic civilization; and only with rare
frequency did fugitive bits of news steal in from the outer world,
which, to the untraveled thought of this primitive folk, remained
always a realm vague and mysterious. Quietly the people followed the
routine of their colorless existence. Each morn broke softly over the
limpid lake; each evening left the blush of its roseate sunset on the
glassy waters; each night wound its velvety arms gently about the
nodding town, while the stars beamed like jewels through the clear,
soft atmosphere above, or the yellow moonbeams stole noiselessly down
the old, sunken trail to dream on the lake's invisible waves.
Each month, with unvarying regularity, Rosendo came and went. At times
Josè thought he detected traces of weariness, insidious and
persistently lurking, in the old man's demeanor. At times his limbs
trembled, and his step seemed heavy. Once Josè had found him, seated
back of his cottage, rubbing the knotted muscles of his legs, and
groaning aloud. But when he became aware of Josè presence, the groans
ceased, and the old man sprang to his feet with a look of such grim
determination written across his face that the priest smothered his
apprehensions and forbore to speak. Rosendo was immolating himself
upon his love for the child. Josè knew it; but he would not, if he
could, prevent the sacrifice.
Each month their contributions were sent to Cartagena; and as
regularly came a message from Wenceslas, admonishing them to greater
efforts. With the money that was sent to the Bishop went also a
smaller packet to the two women who were caring for the unfortunate
Maria's little babe. The sources of Josè's remittances to Cartagena
were never questioned by Wenceslas. But Simití slowly awakened to the
mysterious monthly trips of Rosendo; and Don Mario's suspicion became
conviction. He bribed men to follow Rosendo secretly. They came back,
footsore and angry. Rosendo had thrown them completely off the scent.
Then Don Mario outfitted and sent his paid emissary after the old man.
He wasted two full months in vain search along the Guamocó trail. But
the fever came upon him, and he refused to continue the hunt. The
Alcalde counted the cost, then loudly cursed himself and Rosendo for
the many good _pesos_ so ruthlessly squandered. Then he began to ply
Josè and Rosendo with skillfully framed questions. He worried the
citizens of the village with his suggestions. Finally he bethought
himself to apprise the Bishop of his suspicions. But second
consideration disclosed that plan as likely to yield him nothing but
loss. He knew Rosendo was getting gold from some source. But, too, he
was driving a good trade with the old man on supplies. He settled back
upon his fat haunches at last, determined to keep his own counsel and
let well-enough alone for the present, while he awaited events.
Rosendo's vivid interest in Carmen's progress was almost pathetic.
When in Simití he hung over the child in rapt absorption as she worked
out her problems, or recited her lessons to Josè. Often he shook his
head in witness of his utter lack of comprehension. But Carmen
understood, and that sufficed. His admiration for the priest's
learning was deep and reverential. He was a silent worshiper, this
great-hearted man, at the shrine of intellect; but, alas! he himself
knew only the rudiments, which he had acquired by years of patient,
struggling effort, through long days and nights filled with toil. His
particular passion was his Castilian mother-tongue; and the precision
with which he at times used it, his careful selection of words, and
his wide vocabulary, occasioned Josè no little astonishment. One day,
after returning from the hills, he approached Josè as the latter was
hearing Carmen's lessons, and, with considerable embarrassment,
offered him a bit of paper on which were written in his ample hand
several verses. Josè read them, and then looked up wonderingly at the
old man.
"Why, Rosendo, these are beautiful! Where did you get them?"
"I--they are mine, Padre," replied Rosendo, his face glowing with
pleasure.
"Yours! Do you mean that you wrote them?" Josè queried in astonishment.
"Yes, Padre. Nights, up in Guamocó, when I had finished my work, and
when I was so lonely, I would sometimes light my candle and try to
write out the thoughts that came to me."
Josè could not keep back the tears. He turned his head, that Rosendo
might not see them. Of the three little poems, two were indited to the
Virgin Mary, and one to Carmen. He lingered over one of the verses of
the latter, for it awoke responsive echoes in his own soul:
"Without you, the world--a desert of sadness;
But with you, sweet child--a vale of delight;
You laugh, like the sunbeam--my gloom becomes gladness;
You sing--from my heart flee the shadows of night."
"I--I have written a good deal of poetry during my life, Padre. I will
show you some of it, if you wish," Rosendo advanced, encouraged by
Josè's approbation.
"Decidedly, I would!" returned Josè with animation. "And to think,
without instruction, without training! What a lesson!"
"Yes, Padre, when I think of the blessed Virgin or the little Carmen,
my thoughts seem to come in poetry." He stooped over the girl and
kissed her. The child reached up and clasped her arms about his black
neck.
"Padre Rosendo," she said sweetly, "you are a poem, a big one, a
beautiful one."
"Aye," seconded Josè, and there was a hitch in his voice, "you are an
epic--and the world is the poorer that it cannot read you!"
But, though showing such laudable curiosity regarding the elements
which entered into their simple life in Simití, Rosendo seldom spoke
of matters pertaining to religion. Yet Josè knew that the old faith
held him, and that he would never, on this plane of existence, break
away from it. He clung to his _escapulario_; he prostrated himself
before the statue of the Virgin; he invoked the aid of Virgin and
Saints when in distress; and, unlike most of the male inhabitants of
the town, he scrupulously prayed his rosary every night, whether at
home, or on the lonely margins of the Tiguí. He had once said to Josè
that he was glad Padre Diego had baptised the little Carmen--he felt
safer to have it so. And yet he would not have her brought up in the
Holy Catholic faith. Let her choose or formulate her own religious
beliefs, they should not be influenced by him or others.
"You can never make me believe, Padre," he would sometimes say to the
priest, "that the little Carmen was not left by the angels on the
river bank."
"But, Rosendo, how foolish!" remonstrated Josè. "You have Escolastico's
account, and the boat captain's."
"Well, and what then? Even the blessed Saviour was born of a woman;
and yet he came from heaven. The angels brought him, guarded him as he
lay in the manger, protected him all his life, and then took him back
to heaven again. And I tell you, Padre, the angels brought Carmen, and
they are always with her!"
Josè ceased to dispute the old man's contentions. For, had he been
pressed, he would have been forced to admit that there was in the
child's pure presence a haunting spell of mystery--perhaps the mystery
of godliness--but yet an undefinable _something_ that always made him
approach her with a feeling akin to awe.
And in the calm, untroubled seclusion of Simití, in its mediaeval
atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring
past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a
nature that communed incessantly with her God, and that read His name
in every trivial incident, in every stone and flower, in the sunbeams,
the stars, and the whispering breeze. In that ancient town, crumbling
into the final stages of decrepitude, she dwelt in heaven. To her, the
rude adobe huts were marble castles; the shabby rawhide chairs and
hard wooden beds were softest down; the coarse food was richer than a
king's spiced viands; and over it all she cast a mantle of love that
was rich enough, great enough, to transform with the grace of fresh
and heavenly beauty the ruins and squalor of her earthly environment.
"Can a child like Carmen live a sinless life, and still be human?"
Josè often mused, as he watched her flitting through the sunlit hours.
"It is recorded that Jesus did. Ah, yes; but he was born of a virgin,
spotless herself. And Carmen? Is she any less a child of God?" Josè
often wondered, wondered deeply, as he gazed at her absorbed in her
tasks. And yet--how was she born? Might he not, in the absence of
definite knowledge, accept Rosendo's belief--accept it because of its
beautiful, haunting mystery--that she, too, was miraculously born of a
virgin, and "left by the angels on the river bank"? For, as far as he
might judge, her life was sinless. It was true, she did at rare
intervals display little outbursts of childish temper; she sometimes
forgot and spoke sharply to her few playmates, and even to Doña Maria;
and he had seen her cry for sheer vexation. And yet, these were but
tiny shadows that were cast at rarest intervals, melting quickly when
they came into the glorious sunlight of her radiant nature.
But the mystery shrouding the child's parentage, however he might regard
it, often roused within his mind thoughts dark and apprehensive.
Only one communication had come from Padre Diego, and that some four
months after his precipitous flight. He had gained the Guamocó trail,
it said, and finally arrived at Remedios. He purposed returning to
Banco ultimately; and, until then, must leave the little Carmen in the
care of those in whom he had immovable confidence, and to whom he
would some day try, however feebly, to repay in an appropriate manner
his infinite debt of gratitude.
"_Caramba!_" muttered Rosendo, on reading the note. "Does the villain
think we are fools?"
But none the less could the old man quiet the fear that haunted him,
nor still the apprehension that some day Diego would make capital of
his claim. What that claim might accomplish if laid before Wenceslas,
he shuddered to think. And so he kept the girl at his side when in
Simití, and bound Josè and the faithful Juan to redoubled vigilance
when he was again obliged to return to the mountains.
Time passed. The care-free children of this tropic realm drowsed
through the long, hot days and gossiped and danced in the soft airs of
night. Rosendo held his unremitting, lonely vigil of toil in the
ghastly solitudes of Guamocó. Josè, exiled and outcast, clung
desperately to the child's hand, and strove to rise into the spiritual
consciousness in which she dwelt. And thus the year fell softly into
the yawning arms of the past and became a memory.
Then one day Simití awoke from its lethargy in terror, with the
spectre of pestilence stalking through her narrow streets.