Carmen Ariza Part 1

Carmen Ariza.

by Charles Francis Stocking.

BOOK 1

Doth this offend you?--the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

--_Jesus._

CARMEN ARIZA

CHAPTER 1

The tropical sun mounted the rim of the golden Caribbean, quivered for a moment like a fledgeling preening its wings for flight, then launched forth boldly into the vault of heaven, shattering the lowering vapors of night into a myriad fleecy clouds of every form and color, and driving them before it into the abysmal blue above.

Leaping the sullen walls of old Cartagena, the morning beams began to glow in roseate hues on the red-tiled roofs of this ancient metropolis of New Granada, and glance in shafts of fire from her glittering domes and towers. Swiftly they climbed the moss-grown sides of church and convent, and glided over the dull white walls of prison and monastery alike. Pouring through half-turned shutters, they plashed upon floors in floods of gold. Tapping noiselessly on closed portals, they seemed to bid tardy sleepers arise, lest the hurrying midday _siesta_ overtake them with tasks unfinished. The dormitory of the ecclesiastical college, just within the east wall of the city, glowed brilliantly in the clear light which it was reflecting to the mirror of waters without. Its huge bulk had caught the first rays of the rising sun, most of which had rebounded from its drab, incrusted walls and sped out again over the dancing sea. A few, however, escaped reflection by stealing through the slanting shutters of a window close under the roof of the building. Within, they fell upon a man kneeling on the tiled floor beside a rude cot bed.

In appearance the man was not more than twenty-five years of age. His black, close-curling hair, oval face, and skin of deep olive tint indicated a Latin origin. His clerical garb proclaimed him a son of the Church. The room was a small, whitewashed cell of stone, musty with the dampness which had swept in from the sea during the night. It was furnished with Spartan simplicity. Neither image, crucifix, nor painting adorned its walls--the occupant's dress alone suggested his calling. A hanging shelf held a few books, all evidently used as texts in the adjoining college. A table, much littered; a wooden dressing stand, with a small mirror; and an old-fashioned, haircloth trunk, bearing numerous foreign labels, eked out the paucity of furnishings.

If the man prayed, there was only his reverent att.i.tude to indicate it, for no words escaped his lips. But the frequent straining of his tense body, and the fierce clenching of his thin hands, as he threw his arms out over the unopened bed, were abundant evidence of a soul tugging violently at its moorings. His was the att.i.tude of one who has ceased to inveigh against fate, who kneels dumbly before the cup of Destiny, knowing that it must be drained.

With the break of day the bells awoke in the church towers throughout the old city, and began to peal forth their noisy reminder of the virility of the Holy Catholic faith. Then the man raised his head, seemingly startled into awareness of his material environment. For a few moments he listened confusedly to the insistent clatter--but he made no sign of the cross, nor did his head bend with the weight of a hollow _Ave_ on his bloodless lips while the clamoring muezzins filled the warm, tropical air with their jangling appeal. Rising with an air of weary indifference, he slowly crossed the room and threw wide the shutters of the solitary window, admitting a torrent of sunlight. As he did this, the door of the cell softly opened, and a young novitiate entered.

"With your permission, Padre," said the boy, bowing low. "His Grace summons you to the Cathedral."

The man made a languid gesture of dismissal, and turned from the lad to the rare view which greeted him through the open window. The dusty road below was beginning to manifest the city's awakening. Barefooted, brown-skinned women, scantily clad in cheap calico gowns, were swinging along with shallow baskets under their arms to the _plaza_ for the day's marketing. Some carried naked babes astride their hips; some smoked long, slender cigars of their own rolling. Half-clad children of all ages, mixtures of _mestizo_, Spaniard, and Jamaican negro, trotted along beside them; and at intervals a bl.u.s.tering _cochero_ rattled around the corner in a rickety, obsolete type of trap behind a brace of emaciated horses.

The lively gossip of the pa.s.sing groups preluded the noisy chaffering to follow their arrival at the market place.

"_Caramba_, little pig!" shrilled a buxom matron, s.n.a.t.c.hing her naked offspring away from a pa.s.sing vehicle. "Think you I have money to waste on Ma.s.ses for your naughty soul?"

"_Na, senora_," bantered another, "it will cost less now than later to get him out of purgatory."

"But, _comadre_, do you stop at the Cathedral to say a _Pater-noster_?"

"To be sure, _amiga_, and an _Ave_, too. And let us return by way of the Hotel Espana, for, _quien sabe_? we may catch a glimpse of the famous _matador_."

"Senor Varilla?"

"Yes. He arrived from Barranquilla last night--so my Pedro tells me--and will fight in the arena this Sunday. I have saved fifty _pesos_ to see him. _Madre de Dios!_ but I would sell my soul to see him slay but a single bull. And do you go?"

"G.o.d willing!"

The soft air, tempered by the languid ocean breeze, bore aloft the laughter and friendly bantering of the marketers, mingled with the awakening street sounds and the morning greetings which issued from opening doors and windows. The scent of roses and the heavier sweetness of orchids and tropical blooms drifted over the ancient city from its innumerable _patios_ and public gardens. The age-incrusted buildings fused in the mounting sun into squares of dazzling white, over which the tiled roofs flowed in cinctures of crimson. Far off at sea the smoke of an approaching vessel wove fantastic designs against the tinted sky. Behind the city the convent of Santa Candelaria, crowning the hill of La Popa, glowed like a diamond; and stretching far to the south, and merging at the foot of the _Cordilleras_ into the gloom-shrouded, menacing jungle, the steaming llanos offered fleeting glimpses of their rich emerald color as the morning breeze stirred the heavy clouds of vapor which hung sullenly above them.

To all this the man, looking vacantly out across the city walls to where the sea birds dipped on the rippling waves, was apparently oblivious. Nor did he manifest the slightest interest in the animated scene before him until a tall, heavy-set young priest emerged from the entrance of the dormitory below and stopped for a moment in the middle of the road to bask in the brilliant sunlight and fill his lungs with the invigorating ocean breeze. Turning his eyes suddenly upward, the latter caught sight of the man at the window.

"Ah, _amigo_ Jose!" he called in friendly greeting, his handsome face aglow with a cordial smile. "Our good Saint Claver has not lobbied for us in vain! We shall yet have a good day for the bulls, no?"

"An excellent one, I think, Wenceslas," quickly replied the man addressed, who then turned abruptly away as if he wished to avoid further conversation. The priest below regarded the empty window for a moment. Then, with a short, dry laugh and a cynical shrug of his broad shoulders, he pa.s.sed on.

As the man above turned back into the room his face, wearing the look of one far gone in despair, was contorted with pa.s.sion. Fear, confusion, and undefined soul-longing seemed to move rapidly across it, each leaving its momentary impression, and all mingling at times in a surging flood that swelled the veins of his temples to the point of rupture. Mechanically he paced his narrow cell, throwing frequent furtive glances at the closed door, as if he suspected himself watched. Often he stopped abruptly, and with head bowed and brows furrowed, seemed to surrender his soul to the forces with which it was wrestling. Often he clasped his head wildly in his hands and turned his beseeching eyes upward, as if he would call upon an invisible power above to aid him, yet restrained by the deadening conviction of experience that such appeal would meet with no response, and that he must stand in his own strength, however feeble.

Hours pa.s.sed thus. The sun gained the zenith and the streets were ablaze. Belated marketers, with laden baskets atop their heads, were hurrying homeward, hugging the scanty shade of the glaring buildings.

Shopkeepers were drawing their shutters and closing their heavy doors, leaving the hot noon hour asleep on the scorching portals. The midday _Angelus_ called from the Cathedral tower. Then, as if shaken into remembrance of the message which the boy had brought him at daybreak, the man hurriedly took his black felt hat from the table, and without further preparation left the room.

The stone pavements and narrow brick walks, above which the intense heat hung in tremulous waves, were almost deserted as he hastened toward the Cathedral. The business of the morning was finished; trade was suspended until the sun, now dropping its fiery shafts straight as plummets, should have sunk behind La Popa. As he turned into the Calle Lozano an elderly woman, descending the winding brick stairway visible through the open door of one of the numerous old colonial houses in the lower end of this thoroughfare, called timidly to him.

"Marcelena," the priest returned, stopping. "The girl--is she--?"

"She is dying," interrupted the woman in a voice broken with sobs.

"Dying! Then the child--?"

"Yes, Padre, born an hour ago--a boy. It lives. Ah, _Santa Virgen_, such suffering! Pray for us, Mother of G.o.d!" murmured the weeping woman, bending her head and repeatedly making the sign of the cross.

"Who is with her now?" the priest continued hurriedly.

"Only Catalina. The doctor said he would return. He is good to the blessed child. And Padre Lorenzo came--but he would not shrive her little white soul--"

"And the father--?"

"He does not know," the woman sobbed. "Who would dare to tell him!

Think you he would come? That he would own the babe? He would not give one blessed candle to set beside the little mother's poor sweet body!

Ah, _Santa Maria_! who will buy Ma.s.ses for her little soul? Who--?"

"But he _shall_ know!" cried the priest, his face livid. "And he shall acknowledge his child and care for it! _Dios--!_ But wait, Marcelena.

I can do nothing now. But I will return." Leaving the woman sobbing prayers to the Virgin Mother, the priest hurried on.

Within the Cathedral the cool atmosphere met him with a sweet calm, which flowed over his perturbed soul like a benediction. He drew a chair from a pile in a corner and sat down for a moment near one of the little side chapels, to recover from the stifling heat without and prepare his thought for the impending interview with the Bishop. A dim twilight enveloped the interior of the building, affording a grateful relief from the blinding glare of the streets. It brought him a transient sense of peace--the peace which his wearied soul had never fully known. Peace brooded over the great nave, and hovered in the soft air that drifted slowly through the deserted aisle up to the High Altar, where lay the Sacred Host. A few votive candles were struggling to send their feeble glow through the darkness. The great images of the suffering Christ, of the Saints and the Virgin Mother had merged their outlines into the heavy shadows which lay upon them.

The haunting memory of years of soul-struggle with doubt and fear, of pa.s.sionate longing for the light of truth in the gloom of superst.i.tion and man-made creeds, for guidance among the devious paths of human conjecture which lead nowhither--or to madness--seemed to fade into the darkness which wrapped him in that holy calm. After all, what had he won in his lifelong warfare with human beliefs? What had he gained by his mad opposition to Holy Church? There she stood, calm, majestic, undisturbed. Had not the Christ himself declared that the gates of h.e.l.l should not prevail against her? Was not the unfoldment of truth a matter, not of years, but of ages? And were the minds of men to-day prepared for higher verities than those she offered? Did not the Church plant the seed as rapidly as the barren soil of the human mind was tilled and made fallow? True, her sons, whom he had so obstinately opposed, were blindly zealous. But were they wholly without wisdom?

Had not his own zeal been as unreasoningly directed to the forcing of events? And still, through it all, she had held her indulgent arms extended to him, as to all erring mankind. Why not now, like a tired child, weary of futile resistance, yield to her motherly embrace and be at last at peace? Again the temptation which he had stubbornly resisted for a lifetime urged upon him with all its mesmeric insistence.

He looked up, and his glance fell upon a small, gla.s.s-covered case, dimly visible in the uncertain light at one side of the little altar.

The case was filled with tiny images of gold--_milagros_. Each had received priestly blessing, and each was believed to have worked a miraculous cure. The relaxed lines of the priest's care-worn face instantly drew into an expression of hard austerity. Like the ebb of the ocean, his recalcitrant thought surged back again in a towering flood.

"What a spectacle!" he murmured. "Holy Church, a.s.suming spiritual leadership of the world, sunken in idolatry, and publicly parading her fetishism in these lingering echoes of primitive demon-worship!"

Ah, the Master taught the omnipotence of G.o.d, whose ways he declared as high above the blind grovelings of man as the dome of heaven swings above earth. But how long, gentle Master, shall such as this be declared thy Father's ways? How long shall superst.i.tion and idolatry retain the power to fetter the souls of men? Is there no end to the black curse of ignorance of Truth, which, after untold centuries, still makes men sink with vain toil and consume with disease? And--are those who sit about Peter's gorgeous tomb and approve these things unerring guides to a right knowledge of G.o.d, to know whom, the Christ has said, is life eternal?

A step behind him broke the flow of his dark revery.

"Our good Jose dreams below, while His Grace bites his nails above,"

said a soft, mellifluous voice. "_Que chiste!_ It is--"