JosÈ de RincÓn opened his eyes and turned painfully on his hard bed. The early sun streamed through the wooden grating before the unglazed window. A slight, tepid breeze stirred the mosquito netting over him. He was in the single sleeping room of the house. It contained another bed like his own, of rough macana palm strips, over which lay a straw mat and a thin red blanket. Bed springs were unknown in SimitÍ. On the rude door, cobwebbed and dusty, a scorpion clung torpidly. From the room beyond he heard subdued voices. His head and limbs ached dully; and frightful memories of the river trip and the awful journey from Badillo sickened him. With painful exertion he stood upon the moist dirt floor and drew on his damp clothes. He had only a vague recollection of the preceding night, but he knew that Rosendo had half led, half dragged him past rows of dimly lighted, ghostly white houses to his own abode, and there had put him to bed.

“Muy buenos dias, SeÑor Padre,” Rosendo greeted him, as the priest dragged himself out into the living room. “You have slept long. But the seÑora will soon have your breakfast. Sit here––not in the sun!”

Rosendo placed one of the rough wooden chairs, with straight cowhide back and seat, near the table.

“Carmencita has gone to the boat for fresh water. But––here she comes. Pour the SeÑor Padre a cup, carita,” addressing a little girl who at that moment entered the doorway, carrying a large earthen bottle on her shoulder. It was the child who had met the boat when the priest arrived the night, before.

“Fill the basin, too, chiquita, that the Padre may wash his hands,” added Rosendo.

The child approached JosÈ, and with a dignified little courtesy and a frank smile offered him a cup of the lukewarm water. The priest accepted it languidly. But, glancing into her face, his eyes suddenly widened, and the hand that was carrying the tin cup to his lips stopped.

The barefoot girl, clad only in a short, sleeveless calico gown, stood before him like a portrait from an old master. Her skin was almost white, with but a tinge of olive. Her dark brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders and framed a face of rarest beauty. Innocence, purity, and love radiated from her fair features, from her beautifully rounded limbs, from her soft, dark eyes that looked so fearlessly into his own.

JosÈ felt himself strangely moved. Somewhere deep within his soul a chord had been suddenly struck by the little presence; and the sound was unfamiliar to him. Yet it awakened memories of distant scenes, of old dreams, and forgotten longings. It seemed to echo from realms of his soul that had never been penetrated. The tumult within died away. The raging thought sank into calm. The man forgot himself, forgot that he had come to SimitÍ to die. His sorrow vanished. His sufferings faded. He remained conscious only of something that he could not outline, something in the soul of the child, a thing that perhaps he once possessed, and that he knew he yet prized above all else on earth.

He heard Rosendo’s voice through an immeasurable distance––

“Leave us now, chiquita; the Padre wishes to have his breakfast.”

The child without speaking turned obediently; and the priest’s eyes followed her until she disappeared into the kitchen.

“We call her ‘the smile of God,’” said Rosendo, noting the priest’s absorption, “because she is always happy.”

JosÈ remained sunk in thought. Then––

“A beautiful child!” he murmured. “A wonderfully beautiful child! I had no idea––!”

“Yes, Padre, she is heaven’s gift to us poor folk. I sometimes think the angels themselves left her on the river bank.”

“On the river bank!” JosÈ was awake now. “Why––she was not born here?”

“Oh, no, Padre, but in Badillo.”

“Ah, then you once lived in Badillo?”

“Na, SeÑor Padre, she is not my child––except that the good God has given her to me to protect.”

“Not your child! Then whose is she?” The priest’s voice was unwontedly eager and his manner animated.

But Rosendo fell suddenly quiet and embarrassed, as if he realized that already he had said too much to a stranger. A shade of suspicion seemed to cross his face, and he rose hurriedly and went out into the kitchen. A moment later he returned with the priest’s breakfast––two fried eggs, a hot corn arepa, fried platanos, dried fish, and coffee sweetened with panela.

“When you have finished, Padre, we will visit the Alcalde,” he said quietly. “I must go down to the lake now to speak with Juan before he goes out to fish.”

JosÈ finished his meal alone. The interest which had been aroused by the child continued to increase without reaction. His torpid soul had been profoundly stirred. For the moment, though he knew not why, life seemed to hold a vague, unshaped interest for him. He began to notice his environment; he even thought he relished the coarse food set before him.

The house he was in was a typical native three-room dwelling, built of strips of macana palm, set upright and tied together with pieces of slender, tough bejuco vine. The interstices between the strips were filled with mud, and the whole whitewashed. The floors were dirt, trodden hard; the steep-pitched roof was thatched with palm. A few chairs like the one he occupied, the rude, uncovered table, some cheap prints and a battered crucifix on the wall, were the only furnishings of the living room.

While he was eating, the people of the town congregated quietly about the open door. Friendly curiosity to see the new Padre, and sincere desire to welcome him animated their simple minds. Naked babes crawled to the threshold and peeped timidly in. Coarsely clad women and young girls, many of the latter bedizened with bits of bright ribbon or cheap trinkets, smiled their gentle greetings. Black, dignified men, bare of feet, and wearing white cotton trousers and black ruanas––the cape affected by the poor males of the inlands––respectfully doffed their straw hats and bowed to him. Rosendo’s wife appeared from the kitchen and extended her hand to him in unfeigned hospitality. Attired in a fresh calico gown, her black hair plastered back over her head and tied with a clean black ribbon, her bare feet encased in hemp sandals, she bore herself with that grace and matronly dignity so indicative of her Spanish forbears, and so particularly characteristic of the inhabitants of this “valley of the pleasant ‘yes.’”

Breakfast finished, the priest stepped to the doorway and raised his hand in the invocation that was evidently expected from him.

“Dominus vobiscum,” he repeated, not mechanically, not insincerely, but in a spirit of benevolence, of genuine well-wishing, which his contact with the child a few minutes before seemed to have aroused.

The people bent their heads piously and murmured, “Et cum spiritu tuo.”

The open door looked out upon the central plaza, where stood a large church of typical colonial design and construction, 6 and with a single lateral bell tower. The building was set well up on a platform of shale, with broad shale steps, much broken and worn, leading up to it on all sides. JosÈ stepped out and mingled with the crowd, first regarding the old church curiously, and then looking vainly for the little girl, and sighing his disappointment when he did not see her.

In the plaza he was joined by Rosendo; and together they went to the house of the Alcalde. On the way the priest gazed about him with growing curiosity. To the north of the town stretched the lake, known to the residents only by the name of La Cienaga. It was a body of water of fair size, in a setting of exquisite tropical beauty. In a temperate climate, and a region more densely populated, this lake would have been priceless. Here in forgotten GuamocÓ it lay like an undiscovered gem, known only to those few inert and passive folk, who enjoyed it with an inadequate sense of its rare beauty and immeasurable worth. Several small and densely wooded isles rose from its unrippled bosom; and tropical birds of brilliant color hovered over it in the morning sun. Near one of its margins JosÈ distinguished countless white garzas, the graceful herons whose plumes yield the coveted aigrette of northern climes. They fed undisturbed, for this region sleeps unmolested, far from the beaten paths of tourist or vandal huntsman. To the west and south lay the hills of GuamocÓ, and the lofty Cordilleras, purpling in the light mist. Over the entire scene spread a damp warmth, like the atmosphere of a hot-house. By midday JosÈ knew that the heat would be insufferable.

The Alcalde, Don Mario Arvila, conducted his visitors through his shabby little store and into the patio in the rear, exclaiming repeatedly, “Ah, SeÑor Padre, we welcome you! All SimitÍ welcomes you and kisses your hand!” In the shade of his arbor he sat down to examine JosÈ’s letters from Cartagena.

Don Mario was a large, florid man, huge of girth, with brown skin, heavy jowls, puffed eyes, and bald head. As he read, his eyes snapped, and at times he paused and looked up curiously at the priest. Then, without comment, he folded the letters and put them into a pocket of his crash coat.

“Bien,” he said politely, “we must have the Padre meet Don Felipe Alcozer as soon as he returns. Some repairs are needed on the church; a few of the roof tiles have slipped, and the rain enters. Perhaps, SeÑor Padre, you may say the Mass there next Sunday. We will see. A––a––you had illustrious ancestors, Padre,” he added with hesitation.

“Do the letters mention my ancestry?” asked JosÈ with something of mingled surprise and pride.

“They speak of your family, which was, as we all know, quite renowned,” replied the Alcalde courteously.

“Very,” agreed JosÈ, wondering how much the Alcalde knew of his family.

“Don Ignacio was not unknown in this pueblo,” affably continued the Alcalde.

At these words Rosendo started visibly and looked fixedly at the priest.

“The family name of RincÓn,” the Alcalde went on, “appears on the old records of SimitÍ in many places, and it is said that Don Ignacio himself came here more than once. Perhaps you know, SeÑor Padre, that the RincÓn family erected the church which stands in the plaza? And so it is quite appropriate that their son should officiate in it after all these centuries, is it not?”

No, JosÈ had not known it. He could not have imagined such a thing. He knew little of his family’s history. Of their former vast wealth he had a vague notion. But here in this land of romance and tragedy he seemed to be running upon their reliques everywhere.

The conversation drifted to parish matters; and soon Rosendo urged their departure, as the sun was mounting high.

Seated at the table for the midday lunch, JosÈ again became lost in contemplation of the child before him. Her fair face flushed under his searching gaze; but she returned a smile of confidence and sweet innocence that held him spellbound. Her great brown eyes were of infinite depth. They expressed a something that he had never seen before in human eyes. What manner of soul lay behind them? What was it that through them looked out into this world of evil? Childish innocence and purity, yes; but vastly more. Was it––God Himself? JosÈ started at his own thought. Through his meditations he heard Rosendo’s voice.

“SimitÍ is very old, Padre. In the days of the Spaniards it was a large town, with many rich people. The Indians were all slaves then, and they worked in the mines up there,” indicating the distant mountains. “Much gold was brought down here and shipped down the Magdalena, for the caÑo was wider in those days, and it was not so hard to reach the river. This is the end of the GuamocÓ trail, which was called in those days the Camino Real.”

“You say the mines were very rich?” interrogated JosÈ; not that the question expressed a more than casual interest, but rather to keep Rosendo talking while he studied the child.

But at this question Rosendo suddenly became less loquacious. JosÈ then felt that he was suspected of prying into matters which Rosendo did not wish to discuss with him, and so he pressed the topic no further.

“How many people did Don Mario say the parish contained?” he asked by way of diverting the conversation.

“About two hundred, Padre.”

“And it has been vacant long?”

“Four years.”

“Four years since Padre Diego was here,” commented JosÈ casually.

It was an unfortunate remark. At the mention of the former priest’s name DoÑa Maria hurriedly left the table. Rosendo’s black face grew even darker, and took on a look of ineffable contempt. He did not reply. And the meal ended in silence.

It was now plain to JosÈ that Rosendo distrusted him. But it mattered little to the priest, beyond the fact that he had no wish to offend any one. What interest had he in boorish SimitÍ, or GuamocÓ? The place was become his tomb––he had entered it to die. The child––the girl! Ah, yes, she had touched a strange chord within him; and for a time he had seemed to live again. But as the day waned, and pitiless heat and deadly silence brooded over the decayed town, his starving soul sank again into its former depression, and revived hope and interest died within him.

The implacable heat burned through the noon hour; the dusty streets were like the floor of a stone oven; the shale beds upon which the old town rested sent up fiery, quivering waves; the houses seethed; earth and sky were ablaze. How long could he endure it?

And the terrible ennui, the isolation, the utter lack of every trace of culture, of the varied interests that feed the educated, trained mind and minister to its comfort and growth––could he support it patiently while awaiting the end? Would he go mad before the final release came? He did not fear death; but he was horror-stricken at the thought of madness! Of losing that rational sense of the Ego which constituted his normal individuality!

Rosendo advised him to retire for the midday siesta. Through the seemingly interminable afternoon he lay upon his hard bed with his brain afire, while the events of his warped life moved before him in spectral review. The week which had passed since he left Cartagena seemed an age. When he might hope to receive word from the outside world, he could not imagine. His isolation was now complete. Even should letters succeed in reaching SimitÍ for him, they must first pass through the hands of the Alcalde.

And what did the Alcalde know of him? And then, again, what did it matter? He must not lose sight of the fact that his 9 interest in the outside world––nay, his interest in all things had ceased. This was the end. He had yielded, after years of struggle, to pride, fear, doubt. He had bowed before his morbid sense of honor––a perverted sense, he now admitted, but still one which bound him in fetters of steel. His life had been one of grossest inconsistency. He was utterly out of tune with the universe. His incessant clash with the world of people and events had sounded nothing but agonizing discord. And his confusion of thought had become such that, were he asked why he was in SimitÍ, he could scarcely have told. At length he dropped into a feverish sleep.

The day drew to a close, and the flaming sun rested for a brief moment on the lofty tip of Tolima. JosÈ awoke, dripping with perspiration, his steaming blood rushing wildly through its throbbing channels. Blindly he rose from his rough bed and stumbled out of the stifling chamber. The living room was deserted. Who might be in the kitchen, he did not stop to see. Dazed by the garish light and fierce heat, he rushed from the house and over the burning shales toward the lake.

What he intended to do, he knew not. His weltering thought held but a single concept––water! The lake would cool his burning skin––he would wade out into it until it rose to his cracking lips––he would lie down in it, till it quenched the fire in his head––he would sleep in it––he would never leave it––it was cool––perhaps cold! What did the word mean? Was there aught in the world but fire––flames––fierce, withering, smothering, consuming heat? He thought the shales crackled as they melted beneath him! He thought his feet sank to the ankles in molten lava, and were so heavy he scarce could drag them! He thought the blazing sun shot out great tongues of flame, like the arms of a monster devilfish, which twined about him, transforming his blood to vapor and sucking it out through his gaping pores!

A blinding light flashed before him as he reached the margin of the lake. The universe burst into a ball of fire. He clasped his head in his hands––stumbled––and fell, face down, in the tepid waters.