Carmen Ariza Part 77

A half hour pa.s.sed. Then Jose, wondering, went quietly to the door of his house and looked in. Rosendo sat at the table, with Carmen on his knees.

"And, padre," the child was saying, "the good Jesus told the woman not to sin any more; and she went away happy. Padre, G.o.d has told Anita not to sin any more--and she has come to us to be happy. We are going to make her so, aren't we? Padre Diego couldn't hurt me, you know, for G.o.d wouldn't let him. And he hasn't hurt Anita--G.o.d wouldn't let him keep her--wouldn't let her stay with him. Don't you see, padre? And we have got to be like Him--we _are_ like Him, really. But now we have got to show it, to prove it, you know."

Rosendo's head was bent over the girl. Neither of them saw Jose. The child went on with increased animation:

"And, padre dear, G.o.d sends us Anita's little baby for us to love and protect. Oh, padre, if the little one is a boy, can't we call it Jose?"

"Yes, _chiquita_," Jose heard the old man murmur brokenly.

"And--padre, if it is a girl--what shall we call it?"

The man's arm tightened about her. "We--we will call it--Carmencita,"

he whispered.

The girl clapped her hands. "Can't you see, padre, that G.o.d sends us Anita's baby so that Padre Diego shall not have it? And now let's go and tell her so, right away!" she cried, jumping down.

Jose slipped quickly back and stood beside the woman when Carmen and Rosendo entered the room. The old man went directly to his daughter, and, taking her in his brawny arms, raised her from the floor and strained her to his breast. Tears streamed down his swart cheeks, and the words he would utter choked and hung in his throat.

"Padre," whispered the delighted child, "shall I tell her our names for the baby?"

Jose turned and stole softly from the room. Divine Love was there, and its dazzling effulgence blinded him. In the quiet of his own chamber he sought to understand the marvelous goodness of G.o.d to them that serve Him.

CHAPTER 27

The reversal of a life-current is not always effected suddenly, nor amid the din of stirring events, nor yet in an environment that we ourselves might choose as an appropriate setting. It comes in the fullness of time, and amid such scenes as the human mind which undergoes the transformation may see externalized within its own consciousness by the working of the as yet dimly perceived laws of thought.

Perhaps some one, skilled in the discernment of mental laws and their subtle, irresistible working, might have predicted the fate which overtook the man Jose, the fulsome details of which are herein being recounted. Perhaps such a one might say in retrospect that the culmination of years of wrong thinking, of false beliefs closely cherished, of attachment to fear, to doubt, and to wrong concepts of G.o.d, had been externalized at length in eddying the man upon this far verge of civilization, still clinging feebly to the tattered fragments of a blasted life. But it would have been a skilled prognostician, indeed, who could have foreseen the renewal of this wasted life in that of the young girl, to whom during the past four years Jose de Rincon had been transferring his own unrealized hopes and his vast learning, but without the dross of inherited or attached beliefs, and without taint of his native vacillation and indecision of mind.

For what he had been striving to fit her, he knew not. But in a vaguely outlined way he knew that he was being used as a tool to shape in some degree the mental development of this strange girl. Nor, indeed, as the years pa.s.sed, did she continue to seem so strange to him. On the contrary, he now thought it more marvelous by far that the world, after nineteen centuries of Christianity, did not think and act more as did this girl, whose religious instruction he knew to have been garnered at the invisible hand of G.o.d. That she must some day leave him, despite her present earnest protestations, he felt to be inevitable. And the thought pierced his soul like a lance. But he could not be certain that with maturity she would wish to remain always in the primitive environment in which she had been nurtured.

Nor could he, even if she were willing, immolate her upon the barb of his own selfishness.

As for himself, the years had but seemed to increase the conviction that he could never leave the Church, despite his anomalous position and despite his renewed life--unless, indeed, she herself cast him forth. Each tenderly hopeful letter from his proud, doting mother only added to this conviction by emphasizing the obstacles opposing such a course. Her declining years were now spent among the mental pictures which she hourly drew upon the canvas of her imagination, pictures in which her beloved son, chastened and purified, had at length come into the preferment which had always awaited loyal scions of the house of Rincon. Hourly she saw the day draw nearer when he should be restored to her yearning arms. Each dawn threw its first rays upon his portrait, which hung where her waking eyes might open upon it. Each night the shadow cast by the candle which always burned beneath it seemed to her eager sight to crown that fair head with a bishop's mitre--a cardinal's hat--aye, at times she even saw the triple crown of the Vicar of Christ resting upon those raven locks. Jose knew this.

If her own pen did not always correctly delineate her towering hopes, his astute uncle did not fail to fill in whatever hiatus remained. And the pressure of filial devotion and pride of race at times completely smothered within him the voice of Truth which Carmen continually sounded, and made him resolve often that on the day when she should leave him he would bury his head in the lap of Mother Church and submit without further resistance to the sable veil of a.s.sumed authority which he knew she would draw across his mind. Convincing as were the proofs which had come to him of the existence of a great demonstrable principle which the Christ had sought to make a dull world recognize, nevertheless he had as yet failed to rise permanently above the mesmerism of human belief, which whispered into his straining ears that he must not strive to progress beyond his understanding, lest, in the attempt to gain too rapidly, he lose all.

To sink into the arms of Mother Church and await the orderly revelation of Truth were less dangerous now than a precipitate severance of all ties and a launching forth into strange seas with an untried compa.s.s.

The arguments to which he listened were insidious. True, they reasoned, he had seemed to see the working of mental law in his own restoration to health when he had first come to Simiti. He had seemed to see Rosendo likewise restored. But these instances, after all, might have been casual. That Carmen had had aught to do with them, no one could positively affirm. True, he had seen her protected in certain unmistakable ways. But--others were likewise protected, even where there had been no thought of an immanent, sheltering G.o.d. True, the incident of the epidemic in Simiti two years before had impressed upon him the serious consequences of fear, and the blighting results of false belief. He had profited by that lesson. But he could not hope suddenly to empty his mentality of its content of human thought; nor did wisdom advise the attempt. He had at first tried to rise too rapidly. His frequent backsliding frightened and warned him.

Thus, while the days sped by, did the priest's thought ebb and flow.

As morn broke, and the gallant sun drove the cowardly shadows of night across the hills, his own courage rose, and he saw in Carmen the pure reflection of the Mind which was in Christ Jesus. As night fell, and darkness slunk back again and held the field, so returned the legion of fears and doubts that battled for his soul. Back and forth in the arena of his consciousness strove the combatants, while he rushed irresolutely to and fro, now bearing the banner of the powers of light, now waving aloft, though with sinking heart, the black flag of the carnal host. For a while after his arrival in Simiti he had seemed to rise rapidly into the consciousness of good as all-in-all. But the strain which had been constantly upon him had prevented the full recognition of all that Carmen saw, and each rise was followed by a fall that left him for long periods immersed in despair.

Following the return of Carmen and the ripple of excitement which her abduction had spread over the wonted calm of Simiti, the old town settled back again into its accustomed lethargy, and Jose and the girl resumed their interrupted work. From Ana it was learned that Diego had not voiced the command of Wenceslas in demanding the girl; and when this became known the people rose in a body to her support. Don Mario, though he threatened loudly, knew in his heart he was beaten. He knew, likewise, that any further hostile move on his part would result in a demand by the people for his removal from office. He therefore retired sulking to the seclusion of his _patio_, where he sat down patiently to await the turn of events.

Rosendo, his great heart softened toward his erring daughter, again rejoiced in the reunion of his broken family circle. But his soul burned within him as, day after day, he saw Ana move silently about like a sorrow incarnate. At times, when perchance he would come upon her huddled in a corner and weeping quietly, he would turn away, cursing deeply and swearing fulsome vengeance upon the lecherous beast who had wrought her ruin.

"Padre," he one day said to Jose, "I shall kill him--I know it. The girl's suffering is breaking my heart. He is like an evil cloud hanging always over my family. I hate him! I hate him, as the devil hates the light! And I shall kill him. Be prepared." And Jose offered no remonstrance, for the case lay not in his hands.

Carmen again entered upon her interrupted studies with ardent enthusiasm. And her first demand was that she be allowed to plunge into a searching study of the Bible. "Padre," she exclaimed, "it is a wonderful book! Why--do the people in the world know what a book this is? For if they did, they would never be sick or unhappy again!"

He knew not how to answer her. And there was no need that he should.

"Padre!" Her eyes were aflame with holy light. "See! Here it is--the whole thing! 'Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his _thoughts_.' But--don't the people know what that means?"

"Well, _chiquita_, and what does it mean?" he asked indulgently.

"Why--the unrighteous man is the man who thinks wrong thoughts--thoughts of power opposed to G.o.d--thoughts of sin, of sickness, of accidents, and all sorts of evil things--beliefs that these things are real, and that G.o.d made or caused them!"

"_Bien_, and you think the Bible speaks truth?"

"Padre! how can you ask that? Why, it says right here that it is given by inspiration! That means that the men or women who wrote it thought G.o.d's thoughts!"

"That He wrote it, you mean?"

"No, but that those who wrote it were--well, were cleaner window-panes than other people--that they were so clean that the light shone through them better than it did through others."

"And what do you think now about Jesus?" he inquired.

"Why, as you once said, that he was the very cleanest window-pane of all!" she quickly replied.

From that hour the Bible was the girl's constant companion. Daily she pored over it, delighted, enraptured. Jose marveled at her immediate spiritual grasp. Instead of the world's manner of looking upon it as only a collection of beautiful promises and admonitions, she saw within it the statement of a principle that offered itself as a mighty tool with which to work out humanity's every-day problems here and now. From the first she began to make out little lists of collated scriptural verses, so arranging them that she could read in them a complete expression of an idea of G.o.d. These she would bring to Jose and, perching herself upon his lap, would expound them, to her own great delight and the wonder of the man who listened.

"See, Padre," she said, holding up one of these lists, "it says that 'in that day' whatever we ask of him will be given to us. Well, 'that day' means when we have washed our window-panes clean, and the light shines through so clear that we can ask in His name. It means when we have stopped saying that two and two are seven."

"Which means," Jose interpolated, "asking in his character."

"Yes," she replied, "for then we will be just like him. And then whatever we ask 'believing' will be given to us, for believing'

will then be 'understanding,' will it not? When we know--really _know_--that we have things, why--why, we have them, that's all!"

She did not wait for his reply, but went on enthusiastically:

"You know, Padre, in order to be like him we have got to 'seek first the kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness'--His right-thinking. Well, Jesus said the kingdom of G.o.d was within us. Of course it is, for it is all a question of right-thinking. When we think right, then our right thoughts will be--what you said--"

"Externalized," he supplied.

"Yes. We will see them all around us, instead of seeing, as we do now, a lot of jumbled-up thoughts of good and evil which we call people and things. They will all be good then. And then will be the time when 'G.o.d shall wipe away all tears.' It is, as you say in English, 'up to us' to bring this about. It is not for G.o.d to do it at all. Don't you see that He has already done His part? He has made everything, and 'behold it was very good.' Well, He doesn't have to do it all over again, does He? No. But we have got to wash our windows clean and let in the light that comes from Him. That light comes from Him all the time, just as the beams come from the sun, without ever stopping. We never have to ask the sun to shine, do we? And neither do we have to ask G.o.d to be good to us, nor tell Him what we think He ought to do for us. We only have to _know_ that He is good, to us and to everything, all the time."

"Yes, _chiquita_, we must be truly baptised."

"That is what it means to be baptised, Padre--just washing our window-panes so clean that the light will come in."

"And that light, little one, is truth. It certainly is a new way of looking at it, at least, _chiquita_."

"But, Padre, it is the _only_ way," she persisted.

"_Bien_, I would not say that you were mistaken, Carmen."