Carmen Ariza Part 97

What was it that she had said to him that day, long gone, when Diego claimed her as his child? Ah, yes:

"Don't feel badly, Padre dear. His thoughts have only the minus sign--and that means nothing, you know."

And later, many weeks later:

"Padre, you can not think wrong and right thoughts together, you know.

You can not be happy and unhappy at the same time. You can not be sick and well together." In other words, the wise little maid was trying to show him that Paul spoke directly to such as he when he wrote: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are--?

"You can not have both good and evil, Padre," she had so often insisted. "You must want good--want it more than anything else. And then you must prepare for it by thinking right thoughts and unthinking wrong ones. And as you prepare for good, you must _know_ that it is coming. But you must not say how it shall come, nor what it shall look like. You must not say that it shall be just as you may think you would like to have it. Leave the--the externalization to G.o.d. Then it will meet all your needs.

"You see, Padre dear"--oh, how the memory of her words smote him now!--"you see, the good Jesus told the people to clean their window-panes and let in the light--good thoughts--for then these would be externalized in health, happiness, and all good, instead of the old, bad thoughts being externalized longer in sickness and evil.

Don't you see?"

Aye, he saw. He saw that the Christ-idea found expression and reflection in the pure mentality of this girl. He saw that that mentality was unsullied, uneducated in the lore of human belief, and untrained to fear. He saw that the resurrection of the Christ, for which a yearning world waits, was but the rising of the Christ-idea in the human mentality. And he saw, too, that ere the radiant resurrection morn can arrive there must be the crucifixion, a world-wide crucifixion of human, carnal thought. Follow Christ! Aye, follow him! But will ye not learn that following him means _thinking_ as he did? And his thoughts were G.o.d's.

But Jose had tried to think aright during those years in Simiti. True, but the efforts had been spasmodic. From childhood he had pa.s.sed through doubt, fear, scepticism, and final agnosticism. Then he had started anew and aright. And then had come the "day of judgment," the recurrent hours of sore trial--and he had not stood. Called upon to prove G.o.d, to prove the validity of his splendid deductions, he had vacillated between the opposing claims of good and evil, and had floundered helplessly. And now he stood confronting his still unsolved problem, realizing as never before that in the solving of it he must unlearn the intellectual habits of a lifetime.

There were other problems which lay still unsolved before him as he sat there that night. The sable veil of mystery which hung about Carmen's birth had never been penetrated, even slightly. What woman's face was that which looked out so sadly from the little locket?

"Dolores"--sorrowful, indeed! What tragedy had those great, mournful eyes witnessed? No, Carmen did not greatly resemble her. He used to think so, but not of late. Did she, he wondered, resemble the man? And had the mother's kisses and hot tears blurred the portrait beneath which he had so often read the single inscription, "Guillermo"? If so, could not the portrait be cleaned? But Jose himself had not dared attempt it. Perhaps some day that could be done by one skilled in such art.

And did Carmen inherit any of her unique traits from either of her parents? Her voice, her religious instinct, her keen mentality--whence came they? "From G.o.d," the girl would always answer whenever he voiced the query in her presence. And he could not gainsay it.

Seven years had pa.s.sed. And Jose found himself sitting beside the sleeping girl and dumbly yielding to the separation which now had come. Was his work finished? His course run? And, if he must live and solve his problem, could he stand after she had left? He bent closer to her, and listened to the gentle breathing. He seemed again to see her, as he was wont in the years past, flitting about her diminutive rose garden and calling to him to come and share her boundless joy.

"Come!" he heard her call. "Come, Padre dear, and see my beautiful thoughts!" And then, so often, "Oh, Padre!" bounding into his arms, "here is a beautiful thought that came to me to-day, and I caught it and wouldn't let it go!" Lonely, isolated child, having nothing in common with the children of her native heath, yet dwelling ever in a world peopled with immaculate concepts!

Jose shook his head slowly. He thought of the day when he had approached Rosendo with his great question. "Rosendo," he had said in deep earnestness, "where, oh, where did Carmen get these ideas? Did you teach them to her?"

"No, Padre," Rosendo had replied gravely. "When she was a little thing, just learning to talk, she often asked about G.o.d. And one day I told her that G.o.d was everywhere--what else could I say? _Bien_, a strange light came into her eyes. And after that, Padre, she talked continually about Him, and to Him. And she seemed to know Him well--so well that she saw Him in every thing and every place. Padre, it is very strange--very strange!"

No, it was not strange, Jose had thought, but beautifully natural. And later, when he came to teach her, his constant endeavor had been to impart his secular knowledge to the girl without endangering her marvelous faith in her immanent G.o.d. In that he had succeeded, for in that there had been no obstructing thoughts of self to overcome.

And now--

"For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee--"

The night shadows fled. Day dawned. Jose still sat at the girl's bedside, dumb and motionless. Carmen awoke, and threw her arms about him. But Rosendo appeared and hurried her out to the light morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o'clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from Simiti. Reed and Harris were bustling about, a.s.sembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men's backs. Dona Maria's eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. Jose wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced his determination not to accompany Rosendo and his party, but to go back and consult with Don Carlos Norosi in regard to the future. An hour later he left Simiti.

At last Rosendo's voice rang out in a great shout:

"_Ya esta! Vamonos!"_

"Bully-bueno!" responded Harris, waving his long arms.

The _cargadores_ moved forward in the direction of the Boque trail.

The Americans, with a final _adios_ to Dona Maria and the priest, swung into line behind them. Rosendo again tenderly embraced his weeping spouse, and then, turned to Jose.

"The Virgin watch over you and Maria, Padre! I leave her in your care.

If the war comes, flee with her to the Boque."

He threw an arm about the priest and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, calling to Carmen, he turned and started after the others.

The girl rushed into Jose's arms. Her tears flowed freely.

"Padre," she murmured, clinging to him and showering him with kisses, "I love you, love you, love you! I will wait for you up there. You will come--or I will come back to you. And I will work for you every day. I will know that you are G.o.d's child, and that you will solve your problem!"

Rosendo, half way down the road, turned and called sharply to her. The girl hurried after him. But again she stopped, turned around, and flew back to Jose, as he knelt in the dust and, with tongue cleaving to his mouth, held out his trembling arms.

"Padre, dearest, dearest Padre," she sobbed, "I love you, I love you!

And--I had forgotten--this--it is for you to read every day--every day!" She thrust a folded paper into his hand. Again she tore herself away and ran after the impatient Rosendo. In a moment they were out of sight.

A groan of anguish escaped the stricken priest. He rose from his knees and followed stumbling after the girl. As he reached the shales he saw her far in the distance at the mouth of the trail. She turned, and waved her hand to him. Then the dark trail swallowed her, and he saw her no more.

For a moment he stood like a statue, striving with futile gaze to penetrate that black opening in the dense bush that had engulfed his very soul. His bloodshot eyes were wild. His lips fluttered. His hand closed convulsively over the paper which the girl had left with him.

Mechanically he opened it and read:

"Dearest, dearest Padre, these four little Bible verses I leave with you; and you will promise your little girl that you will always live by them. Then your problem will be solved.

"1. Thou shall have no other G.o.ds before me.

"2. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

"3. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

"4. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

"And, Padre, my dearest, dearest Padre, _G.o.d is everywhere_."

His hand fell. His brain reeled, and he swayed like a drunken man. He turned about, muttering incoherently. Dona Maria stood behind him.

Tenderly taking his arm, she led him back to the forlorn little house.

Its ghastly emptiness smote him until his reason tottered. He sank into a chair and gazed with dull, stony eyes out over the placid lake, where the white beams of the rising sun were breaking into myriad colors against the brume.

CHAPTER 37

The two hundred miles which lay before Rosendo and his little band stretched their rugged, forbidding length through ragged canons, rus.h.i.+ng waters, and dank, virginal forest. Only the old man, as he trudged along the worn trail between Simiti and the Inanea river, where canoes waited to transport the travelers to the little village of Boque, had any adequate conception of what the journey meant. Even the _cargadores_ were unfamiliar with the region which they were to penetrate. Some of them had been over the Guamoco trail as far as Culata; a few had ascended the Boque river to its farthest navigable point. But none had penetrated the inmost reaches of the great canon through which the headwaters tumbled and roared, and none had ever dreamed of making the pa.s.sage over the great divide, the _Barra Princ.i.p.al_, to the Tigui beyond.

To the Americans, fresh from the luxury and convention of city life, and imbued with the indomitable Yankee spirit of adventure, the prospect was absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping mouth at every turn of the sinuous trail. From the outset, he had const.i.tuted himself Carmen's special protector, although much to Rosendo's consternation, for the lank, awkward fellow, whose lean shoulders bent under the weight of some six-feet-two of height, went stumbling and tripping along the way, swaying against every tree and bush that edged the path, and constantly giving noisy vent to his opinions regarding trails in general, and those of the tropics in particular. His only accouterment was a Winchester rifle of tremendous bore, which he insisted on carrying in constant readiness to meet either beasts of prey or savage Indians, but which, in his absent-mindedness and dreamy preoccupation, he either dragged, muzzle up, or carried at such dangerous angles that the natives were finally obliged, in self-protection, to insist that he hand the weapon over to Rosendo. To Carmen, as the days pa.s.sed and she gradually recognized his sterling qualities, he became a source of delight. Hour after hour she trotted along after him, chatting merrily in her beloved English tongue, poking fun at his awkwardness, and laughing boisterously over his quaint slang and nave Yankee expressions. She had never heard such things from Jose; nor had the priest, despite his profound knowledge, ever told her such exciting tales as did Harris, when he drew from his store of frontier memories and colored his narratives with the rich tints furnished by his easy imagination.

The first day out had been one of mental struggle for the girl. She had turned into the trail, after waving a last farewell to Jose, with a feeling that she had never experienced before. For hours she trudged along, oblivious of her environment, murmuring, "It isn't true--it isn't true!" until Harris, his curiosity aroused by the constant repet.i.tion which floated now and then to his ears, demanded to know what it was that was so radically false.

"It isn't true that we can be separated," she answered, looking at him with moist eyes.

"We?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, G.o.d's children--people--people--who--love each other," she replied. Then she dropped her eyes in evident embarra.s.sment, and refused to discuss the topic further.