Carmen Ariza Part 38

_Costumbre del pais!_ It is a final answer all through South America.

No matter how unreasonable a thing may be, if it is the custom of the country it is a Medean law.

"But you know this is subversive of Church discipline!" Jose retorted warmly. "Look you, Don Mario," he added suggestively, "you and I are to work together, are we not?"

The Alcalde blinked his pig eyes, but thought hard about La Libertad.

_"Cierto, Senor Padre!"_ he hastened to exclaim.

"Then I demand that you summon before me every man and woman who are living together unmarried."

With a thought single to his own future advantage, the wary Alcalde complied. Within the week following this interview Jose married twenty couples, and without charge. Some offered him a few _pesos_. These he took and immediately turned over to Don Mario as treasurer of the parish. Those couples who refused to be married were forced by the Alcalde to separate. But of these there were few. Among them was one Julio Gomez. Packing his few household effects upon his back, and muttering imprecations against the priest, Gomez set out for the hills, still followed by his woman, with a babe slung over her shoulders and two naked children toddling at her bare heels.

Verily, the ancient town was being profoundly stirred by the man who had sought to find his tomb there. Gradually the people lost their suspicions and distrust, bred of former bitter experience with priests, and joined heartily with Jose to ameliorate the social status of the place. His sincere love for them, and his utter selflessness, secured their confidence, and ere his first month among them closed, he had won them, almost to a man.

Meantime, six weeks had pa.s.sed since Rosendo had departed to take up his lonely task of self-renouncing love. Then one day he returned, worn and emaciated, his great frame shaking like a withered leaf in a chill blast.

"It is the _terciana_, Padre," he said, as he sank shuddering upon his bed. "It comes every third day. I went as far as Tachi--fifty leagues from Simiti--and there the fever overtook me. I have been eight days coming back; and day before yesterday I ran out of food. Last evening I found a wild melon at the side of the trail. A coral snake struck at me when I reached for it, but he hit my _machete_ instead. _Caramba!_"

Jose pressed his wet hand, while Dona Maria laid damp cloths upon his burning forehead.

"The streams are washed out, Padre," Rosendo continued sadly. "I worked at Colorado, Popales, and Tambora. But I got no more than five _pesos_ worth. And that will not pay for half of my supplies. It is there in a little bag," pointing to his soaked and muddy kit.

Jose's heart was wrung by the suffering and disappointment of the old man. Sadly he carried the little handful of gold flakes to Don Mario, and then returned to the exhausted Rosendo.

All through the night the sick man tossed and moaned. By morning he was delirious. Then Jose and Dona Maria became genuinely alarmed. The toil and exposure had been too much for Rosendo at his advanced age.

In his delirium he talked brokenly of the swamps through which he had floundered, for he had taken the trail in the wet season, and fully half of its one hundred and fifty miles of length was oozy and all but impa.s.sable bog.

By afternoon the fever had greatly increased. Don Mario shook his head as he stood over him.

"I have seen many in that condition, Padre, and they didn't wake up!

If we had quinine, perhaps he might be saved. But there isn't a flake in the town."

"Then send Juan to Bodega Central at once for it!" cried Jose, wild with apprehension.

"I doubt if he would find it there either, Padre. But we can try.

However, Juan cannot make the trip in less than two days. And I fear Rosendo will not last that long."

Dona Maria sat by the bedside, dumb with grief. Jose wrung his hands in despair. The day drew slowly to a close. The Alcalde had dispatched Juan down to the river to signal any steamer that he should meet, if perchance he might purchase a few grains of the only drug that could save the sick man. Carmen had absented herself during the day; but she returned in time to a.s.sist Dona Maria with the evening meal, after which she went at once to her bed.

Late at night, when the sympathizing townsmen had sorrowfully departed and Jose had induced Dona Maria to seek a few moments rest on her _petate_ in the living room, Carmen climbed quietly out of her bed and came to where the priest sat alone with the unconscious Rosendo.

Jose was bending over the delirious man. "Oh, if Jesus were only here now!" he murmured.

"Padre dear."

Jose looked down into the little face beside him.

"People don't die, you know. They don't really die." The little head shook as if to emphasize the words.

Jose was startled. But he put his arm about the child and drew her to him. "_Chiquita_, why do you say that?" he asked sorrowfully.

"Because G.o.d doesn't die, you know," she quickly replied. "And we are like Him, Padre, aren't we?"

"But He calls us to Him, _chiquita_. And--I guess--He is--is calling your padre Rosendo now."

Does G.o.d kill mankind in order to give them life? Is that His way?

Death denies G.o.d, eternal Life. And--

"Why, no, Padre," returned the innocent child. "He is always here; and we are always with Him, you know. He can not call people away from where He is, can He?"

_Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world._ The Christ-principle, the saving truth about G.o.d and man, is ever present in an uncomprehending world.

Jose knew that there was no material dependence now. Something told him that Rosendo lay dying. There was no physician, no drug, in the isolated little town. There was none but G.o.d to save. And He--

But only sinners are taught by priests and preachers to look to G.o.d for help. The sick are not so taught. How much more deplorable, then, is their condition than that of the wicked!

"I told G.o.d out on the shales this afternoon that I just knew padre Rosendo wouldn't die!" The soft, sweet voice hovered on the silence like celestial melody.

_If ye ask anything in my name_--in my character--_it shall be given you_. Carmen asked in the character of the sinless Christ, for her asking was an a.s.sertion of what she instinctively knew to be truth, despite the evidence of the physical senses. Her pet.i.tions were affirmations of Immanuel--G.o.d with us.

"Carmen," whispered the priest hoa.r.s.ely, "go back to your bed, and know, just _know_ that G.o.d is here! Know that He did not make padre Rosendo sick, and that He will not let him die! Know it for him--and for me!"

"Why, Padre, I know that now!" The child looked up into the priest's face with her luminous eyes radiating unshaken trust--a trust that seemed born of understanding. Yea, she knew that all good was there, for G.o.d is omnipotent. They had but to stretch forth their hands to touch the robe of His Christ. The healing principle which cleansed the lepers and raised the dead was even with them there in that quiet room. Jose had only to realize it, nothing doubting. Carmen had done her work, and her mind now was stayed on Him. Infinite Intelligence did not know Rosendo as Jose was trying to know him, sick and dying.

G.o.d is Life--and there is no death!

Carmen was again asleep. Jose sat alone, his open Bible before him and his thought with his G.o.d.

Oh, for even a slight conception of Him who is Life! Moses worked "as seeing Him who is invisible." Carmen lived with her eyes on Him, despite her dreary mundane encompa.s.sment. And Jose, as he sat there throughout the watches of the night, facing the black terror, was striving to pierce the mist which had gone up from the face of the ground and was separating him from his G.o.d. Through the long, dark hours, with the quiet of death upon the desolate chamber, he sat mute before the veil that was "still untaken away."

What was it that kept telling him that Rosendo lay dying before him?

Does matter talk? Did the serpent talk to Eve? Do fleshly nerves and frail bodily organs converse with men? Can the externalization of thought report back to the thought itself? Nay, the report came to him from the physical senses--naught else. And they reported--nothing! He was seeing but his own thoughts of mixed good and evil. And they were false, because they testified against G.o.d.

Surely G.o.d knew Rosendo. But not as the physical senses were trying to make Jose know him, sick and dying. Surely the subjective determines the objective; for as we think, so are we--the Christ said that. From his human standpoint Jose was seeing his thoughts of a dying mortal.

And now he was trying to know that those thoughts did not come from G.o.d--that they had no authority back of them--that they were children of the "one lie" about G.o.d--that they were false, false as h.e.l.l, and therefore impotent and unreal.

What, then, had he to fear? Nothing, for truth is beyond the reach of personal sense. So G.o.d and His ideas, reflected by the real Rosendo, were beyond the reach of evil.

If this were true, then he must clear his own mentality--even as he now knew Carmen had done out on the shales that afternoon. He was no longer dealing with a material Rosendo, but with false beliefs about a son of G.o.d. He was handling mental concepts. And to the serpent, error, he was trying to say: "What is your authority?"

If man lives, he never dies. If man is, then he always has been. And he was never born--and never pa.s.ses into oblivion. A fact never changes. If two and two make four to-day, they always have done so, and always will.

Can good produce evil? Then evil can have no creator. Rosendo, when moved by good, had gone into the wilds of Guamoco on a mission of love. Did evil have power to smite him for his n.o.ble sacrifice?

What is this human life of ours? Real existence? No, but a sense of existence--and a false sense, for it postulates a G.o.d of evil opposed to the one supreme Creator of all that really is. Then the testimony that said Rosendo must die was cruelly false. And, more, it was powerless--unless Jose himself gave it power.

Did Carmen know that? Had she so reasoned? a.s.suredly no! But she knew G.o.d as Jose had never known Him. And, despite the testimony of the fleshly eyes, she had turned from physical sense to Him.

"It is not practicable!" the world cries in startled protest.

But, behold her life!