Carmen Ariza Part 81

"Well, _chiquita_, unless--"

"Unless you marry, too, Padre," she said, dropping her eyes.

"Unless I marry! I--a priest! But--what has that to do with it, girl?"

"Well--oh, Padre dear--can't you see? For then I would marry--" She buried her face in his shoulder.

"Yes, _chiquita_," he said, dully wondering.

Her arms tightened about his neck. "You," she murmured.

It was the first expression of the kind that had ever come from her lips. Jose's heart thumped violently. The G.o.ddess of Fortune had suddenly thrown her most precious jewel into his lap. Joy welled up in flood tides from unknown depths within. His eyes swam. Then--he remembered. And thick night fell upon his soul.

Minutes pa.s.sed, and the two sat very quiet. Then Carmen raised her head. "Padre," she whispered, "you don't say anything. I know you love me. And you will not always be a priest--not always," shaking her beautiful curls with suggestive emphasis.

Why did she say that? He wondered vaguely. The people called her an _hada_. He sometimes thought they had reason to. And then he knew that she never moved except in response to a beckoning hand that still, after all these years, remained invisible to him.

"_Chiquita_," he said in low response, "I fear--I fear that can never be. And even if--ah, _chiquita_, I am so much older than you, little girl--almost seventeen years!"

"You do not want to marry me, even if you could, Padre?" she queried, looking wistfully into his eyes, while her own grew moist.

He clutched her to him again. "Carmen!" he cried wildly, "you little know--you little know! But--child, we must not talk of these things!

Wait--wait!"

"But, Padre dear," she pleaded, "just say that you _do_ love me that way--just say it--your little girl wants to hear it."

G.o.d above! She, pleading that he would say he loved her! His head sank upon his breast. He silently prayed that his tortured soul might burst and let his wasted life ebb into oblivion while his pent-up misery poured out.

"Carmen!" he cried with the despair of the lost. "I love you--love you--love you! Nay, child, I adore you! G.o.d! That I might hold you thus forever!"

She reached up quickly and kissed him. "Some day, Padre dear," she murmured softly, "you will stop thinking that two and two are seven.

Then everything good will come to you."

She sank back in his arms and nestled close to him, as if she longed to enter his empty heart and fill the great void with her measureless love.

"And, Padre dear," she whispered, "your little girl will wait for you--yes, she will wait."

It was some days later that Rosendo, after returning almost empty handed from the hills, came to Jose and said, "Padre, I have sold my _hacienda_ to Don Luis. I need the money to purchase supplies and to get the papers through for some denouncements which I have made in Guamoco. I knew that Don Mario would put through no papers for me, and so I have asked Lazaro to make the transaction and to deliver the t.i.tles to me when the final papers arrive. I have a blank here to be filled out with the name and description of a mineral property.

I--what would be a good name for a mine, Padre?"

"Why do you ask that, Rosendo?" queried Jose in surprise.

"Because, Padre, I want a foreign name--one not known, here. Give me an American one. Think hard."

Jose reflected. "There is a city, a great city, that I have often heard about, up in the States," he said finally.

He took up the little atlas which he had received long since with other books from abroad. "Look," he said, "it is called Chicago. Call your property the Chicago mine, Rosendo. It is a name unknown down here, and there can no confusion arise because of it."

"_Caramba!_" Rosendo muttered, trying to twist his tongue around the word, "it is certain that no one else will use that name in Guamoco!

But that makes my t.i.tle still more secure, no?"

"But, Rosendo," said Jose, when the full significance of the old man's announcement had finally penetrated, "you have sold your _finca_! And to acquire t.i.tle to property that you can never sell or work! Why, man! do you realize what you have done? You are impoverished! What will you do now? And what about Carmen? for we have nothing. And the sword that hangs above us may fall any day!"

"_Bien_, Padre, it is for her sake that I have done it. Say no more.

It will work out in some way. I go back to-morrow. But, if the t.i.tles should come from Cartagena during my absence--and, Padre, if anything should happen to me--for the love of the Virgin do not let them out of your hands! They are for her."

Yet Rosendo departed not on the morrow. He remained to mingle his tears with those of the sorrowing Ana. For the woman, whose heart had been lighter since the arrival of her babe, had come to the priest that day to have the child christened. And so, before the sun might fill the _plaza_ with its ardent midday heat, Rosendo and his family repaired to the church. There before the altar Jose baptised the little one and gave it his own name, thus triumphantly ushering the pagan babe into the Christian Catholic world. The child cried at the touch of the baptismal water.

"Now," commented Rosendo, "the devil has gone out of him, driven out by the holy water."

But, as Jose leaned over the babe and looked into its dark eyes, his hand stopped, and his heart stood still. He raised his head and bent a look of inquiry upon the mother. She returned the look with one that mutely voiced a stifled fear and confirmed his own. "Padre!" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "What is it? Quick!"

He took a candle from the altar and pa.s.sed it before the child's eyes.

"Padre! He sees! _Santa Virgen!_ Do not tell me--_Dios mio_!" The mother's voice rose to a wail, as she s.n.a.t.c.hed her babe away.

A loud exclamation escaped Rosendo. Dona Maria stood mute; but Jose as he looked at her divined her thought and read therein a full knowledge of the awful fact that she had never voiced to the heart-broken mother.

"Padre!" cried the perplexed Rosendo. "Maria!" turning in appeal to his wife. "Speak, some one! _Santa Virgen_, speak! Ana, what ails the child?"

Jose turned his head aside. Carmen crowded close to the weeping Ana.

Dona Maria took Rosendo's arm.

"The babe, Rosendo," she said quietly, "was born--blind."

CHAPTER 30

The "revolutionist" of Latin America is generally only the disgruntled politician. His revolution is seldom more than a violent squabble among greedy spoilsmen for control of the loose-jointed administration.

But the great Mosquera Revolution which burst into flame in New Granada in 1861 was fed with fuel of a different nature. It demonstrated, if demonstration were necessary, that the Treaty of Westphalia did not write _finis_ to the history of bloodshed in the name of Christ; that it had but banked the fires of religious animosity, until the furnace should be transferred from the Old World to the New, where the breath of liberty would again fan them into vigorous activity.

The Mosquera War tore asunder Church and State; but left unhappy Colombia p.r.o.ne and bleeding. It externalized a mighty protest of enlightenment against Rome's dictates in temporal affairs. And, as has before happened when that irresistible potentiality, the people, has been stirred into action, the Church was disestablished, its property confiscated, and its meddling, parasitical clergy disenfranchised.

But then, too, as almost invariably occurs when the ma.s.ses find that they have parted with cherished prejudices and effete customs, and have adopted ideas so radical as to lift them a degree higher in the scale of progress, they wavered. The Church was being humiliated.

Their religion was under contempt. The holy sacrament of marriage was debased to a civil ceremony. Education was endangered by taking it out of the hands of the pious clergy. Texts unauthorized by Holy Church were being adopted. Where would this radical modernism end? The alarm spread, fanned by the watchful agents of Rome. Revolt after revolt occurred. And twenty years of incessant internecine warfare followed.

Fear and prejudice triumphed. A new Const.i.tution was framed. And when it was seen that Roman Catholicism was therein again declared to be the national religion of the Republic of Colombia; when it was noted that the clergy, obedient to a foreign master, were to be readmitted to partic.i.p.ation in government affairs; when it was understood that a national press-censors.h.i.+p was to be established, dominated by Holy Church; and when, in view of this, the great religio-political opponent was seen laying down her weapons and extending her arms in dubious benediction over the exhausted people, the ma.s.ses yielded--and there was great rejoicing on the banks of the Tiber over the prodigal's return.

When Wenceslas Ortiz was placed in temporary control of the See of Cartagena he shrewdly urged the Church party to make at least a pretense of disbanding as a political organization. The provinces of Cundinamarca and Panama were again in a state of ferment.

Congress, sitting in Bogota, had before it for consideration a measure vesting in the President the power to interfere in certain states or provinces whenever, in his opinion, the conservation of public order necessitated such action. That this measure would be pa.s.sed, Wenceslas could not be sure. But that, once adopted, it would precipitate the unhappy country again into a sanguinary war, he thought he knew to a certainty. He had faced this same question six years before, when a similar measure was before Congress. But then, with a strong Church party, and believing the pa.s.sage of the law to be certain, he had yielded to the counsel of hot-headed leaders in Cartagena, and approved the inauguration of hostilities.

The result had been a _fiasco_. Congress dropped the measure like a hot plate. The demands of the "revolutionists" were quickly met by the federal government. The _causae belli_ evaporated. And Wenceslas retired in chagrin to the solitude of his study, to bite his nails and wonder dubiously if his party were strong enough to insure his appointment to the See of Cartagena in the event of the then aged occupant's demise.