Carmen Ariza Part 60

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 formulae, 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 the _hostia_ to an a.s.s, which on beholding the sacred dough immediately kneeled! Good G.o.d!"

"_Ca-ram-ba!_ But you speak hard words, Padre!" muttered Rosendo, vague speculations flitting through his brain as to the priest's mental state.

"G.o.d!" continued Jose 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 and drugs, 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 G.o.d 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. Jose 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 G.o.d and see Him as infinite good, without taint or trace of evil! The flames of h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d, and she will lead you straight to Him. And as you follow her, your foolish ideas of purgatory, h.e.l.l, 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."

Carmen and Dona Maria sat against the wall of the old church, waiting for them. The child ran through the darkness and grasped Jose'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--"

Jose 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

Jose rose from his hard bed stiff and weary. Depression sat heavily upon his soul, and he felt miserably unable to meet the day. Dona 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. Jose struggled to his feet and went forth to meet them. A familiar voice greeted him cheerily.

"_Hola, Senor Padre Jose!_ _Dios mio_, but your hill is steep!"

Jose 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, _Senor Padre_?" he cried, slapping Jose 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 good _Cura_. 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 G.o.d-forsaken spot! Well, what is it? Speak, man!"

Jose collected his scattered thoughts. "The cholera!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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."

Jose 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 Simiti, 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."

With the truth slowly dawning upon his clouded thought, Jose 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 Jose.

"Yes, senor," 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," a.s.sented Jose, "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 Jose could not share in the merriment. The awful consequences of the innkeeper's coa.r.s.e 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 the _plaza_, her eyes streaming.

"Padre," she wailed, "my man Pedro has the sickness! He is dying!"

"Nothing of the kind, Ramona!" loudly cried Jose; "there is no cholera here!" He hastened to the bedside of the writhing Pedro.