"_Bien_, Padre," said Rosendo, concluding his dramatic and disconnected recital, "I plowed through the water--_Caramba!_ I knew not at what moment I should feel the jaws of a cayman seize upon me!
But the Virgin had heard my prayer. I must offer a candle this night.
But I did not land at Juncal. It was some half league farther west.
_Bien_, I was then glad, for had I appeared in the village, all would have said that I had murdered Diego! And so I struck out along the trail that skirts the lake, and followed it around until I came here.
_Caramba_! but see how my feet are cut! And the rain--H_ombre_! it beat me down--I fell again and again! And then, the fear that I was too late--_Ah, Dios_! But she is safe--_Caramba_! the Virgin be praised!"
"But, Rosendo," said Jose anxiously, "where can Diego--"
"He is here, _Caramba_! in Simiti! _Hombre_! but I shall set out at once and search every house! And he shall do well if he escape this time!"
But dusk was falling; and the old man, his strength sapped, listened not unwillingly to Jose"s better counsel. With the coming of night the rain ceased, and the clouds rolled up and slipped down behind the mountains, leaving the moon riding in splendor across the infinite blue. Then Jose, leaving Carmen with Rosendo, walked to and fro through the streets of the old town, listening and watching. He wandered down to the lake. He climbed the hill where stood the second church. He thought he caught the gleam of a light within the old edifice. He crept nearer. There were men inside. Their voices sounded ghostly to his straining ears.
"But, friend Ricardo, he set out before dawn, and is not yet returned.
I fear he has either abandoned us, or has walked into our good Rosendo"s jaws."
"Hold your tongue, bleating calf!" cried the other petulantly. "It is more likely that he and Don Mario lie pickled in rum under the palms of the Alcalde"s _patio_!"
Jose waited to hear no more. He hurried down through the main street and past the house of Don Mario. The door stood open, and he could see the portly figure of the official outlined against the back wall. It was evident that Diego was not there. He returned in perplexity to his house and sat far into the night, musing on the strange incident.
With the coming of the new day Rosendo appeared with fresh suggestions.
"_Bien_, Padre," he said, "there is nothing to do now but take the girl and flee to the Boque river and to the _hacienda_ of Don Nicolas."
Jose related his experience of the previous night. Rosendo whistled softly. "_Caramba!_" he muttered, "but this is a mystery! And--but here comes Juan."
The lad entered excitedly. "Your canoe, Don Rosendo--as I started out on the lake to fish I saw it, far in the distance. I brought it in.
There was neither pole nor paddle in it. And it was half full of water. It must have drifted all night. Did it break away from its mooring, think you?"
Rosendo looked at Jose. The latter replied quickly: "That is the most reasonable supposition, Juan. But Rosendo is very grateful to you for securing it again."
When the lad had gone, Rosendo sat with bowed head, deeply perplexed.
"The pole and paddle, Padre, were left on the island. I took them out when we landed. Diego pushed off without them. He--the boat--it must have drifted long. But--did he land? Or--"
He stopped and scratched his head. "Padre," he said, looking up suddenly with an expression of awe upon his face, "do you suppose--do you think that the Virgin--that she--made him fall from the canoe into the lake--and that a _cayman_ ate him? _Ca-ram-ba!_"
Jose did not vouchsafe a reply. But his heart leaped with a great hope. Rosendo, wrapped in profound meditation, wandered back to his house, his head bent, and his hands clasped tightly behind his back.
CHAPTER 29
The rainy season dragged its reeking length through the Simiti valley with fearful deliberation. Jose thought that he should never again see the sun. The lake steamed like a cauldron. Great clouds of heavy vapor rolled incessantly upward from the dripping jungle. The rain fell in cloud-bursts, and the narrow streets of the old town ran like streams in a freshet.
Then, one day, Rosendo abruptly announced, "Padre, the rains are breaking. The dry season is at hand. And the little Carmen is fourteen years old to-day."
It gave the priest a shock. He had been six years in Simiti! And Carmen was no longer a child. Youth ripens quickly into maturity in these tropic lands. The past year had sped like a meteor across an evening sky, leaving a train of mingled light and darkness. Of Diego"s fate Jose had learned nothing. Ricardo and his companion had disappeared without causing even a ripple of comment in Simiti. Don Mario remained quiet for many weeks. But he often eyed Jose and Rosendo malignantly through the wooden grill at his window, and once he ordered Fernando to stop Rosendo and ply him with many and pointed questions. The old man was noncommittal, but he left a dark suspicion, which was transmitted to the receptive mind of the Alcalde.
Acting-Bishop Wenceslas likewise was growing apprehensive as the weeks went by, and both Jose and Don Mario were the recipients of letters of inquiry from him regarding the whereabouts of the priest Diego. In the course of time came other letters from Cartagena, and at length an order for a most scrutinizing search to be made for the Bishop"s confidential agent.
It was of no avail. Rosendo"s oft-repeated testimony revealed nothing.
The citizens of Simiti had not seen the man. The Alcalde had nothing but his suspicions to offer. And these might have fallen harmlessly upon the acting-Bishop"s well occupied thought, had it not been for the complicating influence of certain other events. The first of these was the exhaustion of the gold which Jose and Carmen had discovered in the old church. The other was the outbreak of the religio-political revolution which Diego had predicted some six years before, and which, in these latter days, Don Jorge, on his infrequent journeys through Simiti had repeatedly announced as inevitable and imminent. Their combined effect was such as to wrest Carmen away from Jose, and to set in a new direction the currents of their lives.
For some time past Jose had patched with growing anxiety the shrinking of his gold supply, and had striven to lessen the monthly contributions to Cartagena, meanwhile trying to know that the need now looming daily larger before him would be met. He had not voiced his apprehension to Carmen. But he and Rosendo had discussed the situation long and earnestly, and had at length resolved that the latter should again return to Guamoco to wash the Tigui sands.
The old man sighed, but he uttered no protest. Yet each day Jose thought he grew quieter. And each day, too, he seemed to become more tender of his sad-faced daughter, Ana, and of the little grandson who had come into his humble home only a few weeks before. He delayed his preparations for specious reasons which Jose knew cost him much effort to invent. He clung to Carmen. He told his rosary often before the church altar, and with tears in his eyes. And at night he would come to Jose and beg him to read from the Bible and explain what he thought the Saviour had really meant to convey to the humble fishermen of Galilee.
Jose"s heart was wrung. But at last the day arrived when he had nothing to send to Cartagena beyond the mere pittance which the poor members of his little parish contributed. But this he sent as usual.
The next month he did the same. Then came a letter from Wenceslas, requesting an explanation. And then it was that Jose realized that in his excess of zeal he had fallen into his own trap. For, having established the custom of remitting a certain amount to the Bishop each month, he must not resent now the implication of dishonesty when the remittances fell off, or ceased altogether. He took the letter to Rosendo. "_Bien_, Padre," said the latter slowly, "the time has come.
I set out for Guamoco at dawn."
In the days that followed, Jose could frame no satisfactory reply to Wenceslas, and so the latter wrote to the Alcalde. Don Mario eagerly seized the proffered opportunity to ingratiate himself into ecclesiastical favor. Rosendo was again in the hills, he wrote, and with supplies not purchased from him. Nor had he been given even a hint of Rosendo"s mission, whether it be to search again for La Libertad, or not. There could be no doubt, he explained in great detail, of Jose"s connivance with Rosendo, and of his unauthorized conduct in the matter of educating the girl, Carmen, who, he made no doubt, was the daughter of Padre Diego--now, alas! probably cold in death at the violent hands of the girl"s foster-father, and with the priest Jose"s full approbation. The letter cost the portly Don Mario many a day of arduous labor; but it brought its reward in another inquiry from Cartagena, and this time a request for specific details regarding Carmen.
Don Mario bestrode the clouds. He dropped his customary well-oiled manner, and carried his head with the air of a conqueror. His thick lips became regnant, imperious. He treated his compatriots with supercilious disdain. And to Jose he would scarce vouchsafe even a cold nod as they pa.s.sed in the street. Again he penned a long missive to Cartagena, in which he dilated at wearisome length upon the extraordinary beauty of the girl, as well as her unusual mental qualities. He urged immediate action, and suggested that Carmen be sent to the convent in Mompox.
Wenceslas mused long over the Alcalde"s letters. Many times he smiled as he read. Then he sent for a young clerical agent of the See, who was starting on a mission to Bogota, and requested that he stop off a day at Badillo and go to Simiti to report on conditions in that parish. Incidentally, also, to gather what data he might as to the family of one Rosendo Ariza.
In due course of time the agent made his report. The parish of Simiti stood in need of a new _Cura_, he said. And the girl--he found no words to describe or explain her. She must be seen. The Church had need of prompt action, however, to secure her. To that end, he advised her immediate removal to Cartagena.
Again Wenceslas deliberated. Aside from the girl, to whom he found his thought reverting oftener than he could wish in that particular hour of stress, his interest in Simiti did not extend beyond its possibilities as a further contributor to the funds he was so greatly needing for the furtherance of his complex political plans. As to the Alcalde--here was a possibility of another sort. That fellow might become useful. He should be cultivated. And at the same time warned against precipitate action, lest he scatter Rosendo"s family into flight, and the graceful bird now dwelling in the rude nest escape the sharp talons awaiting her.
He called for his secretary. "Send a message to Francisco, our Legate, who is now in Bogota. Bid him on his return journey stop again at Simiti. We require a full report on the character of the Alcalde of that town."
Meantime, Jose did not permit his mental torture to interfere with Carmen"s education. For six years now that had progressed steadily. And the results? Wonderful, he thought--and yet not wholly attributable to his peculiar mode of tutelage. For, after all, his work had been little more than the holding of her mind unwarped, that her instinctive sense of logic might reach those truthful conclusions which it was bound to attain if guided safely past the tortuous shifts of human speculation and undemonstrable theory. To his great joy, these six years had confirmed a belief which he had held ever since the troublous days of his youth, namely, that, as a recent writer has said, "adolescent understanding is along straight lines, and leaps where the adult can only laboriously creep." There had been no awful hold of early teaching to loosen and throw off; there were no old landmarks in her mind to remove; no tenacious, clinging effect of early a.s.sociations to neutralize. And, perhaps most important of all, the child had seemed to enter the world utterly devoid of fear, and with a congenital faith, amounting to absolute knowledge, in the immanence of an omnipotent G.o.d of love. This, added to her eagerness and mental receptivity, had made his task one of constant rejoicing in the realization of his most extravagant dreams for her.
As a linguist, Carmen had become accomplished. She spoke English fluently. And it was only a matter of practice to give her a similar grasp of French, Italian, and German. As for other instruction, such knowledge of the outside world as he had deemed wise to give her in these six years had been seized upon with avidity and as quickly a.s.similated. But he often speculated curiously--sometimes dubiously--upon the great surprises in store for her should she ever leave her native village. And yet, as often as such thought recurred to him he would try to choke it back, to bar his mind against it, lest the pull at his heartstrings snap them asunder.
Often as he watched her expanding so rapidly into womanhood and exhibiting such graces of manner, such amiability of disposition, such selfless regard for others, combined with a physical beauty such as he thought he had never before gazed upon, a great yearning would clutch his soul, and a lump would rise in his throat. And when, as was so often the case, her arms flew impulsively about his neck and she whispered words of tender endearment in his ear, a fierce determination would seize him, and he would clutch her to himself with such vehemence as to make her gasp for breath. That she might marry he knew to be a possibility. But the idea pierced his soul as with a sword, and he thought that to see her in the arms of another, even the man of her choice, must excite him to murder. One day, shortly after her fourteenth birthday, she came to him and, perching herself as was her wont upon his knees, and twining her arms about his neck, said, with traces of embarra.s.sment, "Padre dear, Juan--he asked me to-day to marry him."
Jose caught his breath. His ears rang. She--marry a peon of Simiti! To be sure, Juan had often reminded him of the request he had made for her hand long ago. But Jose had not considered the likelihood of the lad"s taking his question directly to her. And the girl--
"And what did you reply?" he asked thickly.
"Padre dear--I told him that--" She stopped abruptly.
"Well, _chiquita_; you told him--what?" His voice trembled.
She flushed, still hesitating. He held her back from him and looked squarely into her wide eyes.
"You told him, _chiquita_--"
"That--well, Padre dear, I told him that--that I might never marry."
Jose sighed. "And do you think, little girl, that you will always hold to that resolution?"
"Yes, Padre, unless--"