What had kept JosÈ de RincÓn chained all these years to an institution to which in thought, feeling, and sympathy he was so utterly alien, we have repeatedly pointed out––a warped sense of filial devotion, a devotion that would not willingly bring sorrow upon his proud, sensitive 349 mother, and yet the kind that so often accomplishes just that which it strives to avoid. But yet he had somehow failed to note the nice distinction which he was always making between the promises he had given to her and the oath which he had taken at his ordination. He had permitted himself to be held to the Church by his mother’s fond desires, despite the fact that his nominal observance of these had wrecked his own life and all but brought her in sorrow to the grave. The abundance of his misery might be traced to forgetfulness of the sapient words of Jesus: “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

Then had come Carmen. And he had sacrificed his new-found life to the child. He had exhausted every expedient to keep himself in SimitÍ, that he might transfer his own great learning to this girl, and at the same time yield himself to her beneficent influence. Yet, despite his vague hopes, he had always dimly seen the day when she would leave him; but he had likewise tried to feel that when it arrived his own status would be such that the ecclesiastical ties which bound him would be loosened, and he would be free to follow her. Alas! the lapse of years had brought little change in that respect.

But now he saw the girl entering upon that very hour of departure which all his life in SimitÍ had hung like a menacing cloud above him. And the shock had been such that he had thrown every other consideration to the winds, and, regardless of consequences, was madly preparing to accompany her. Then, like a voice from the tomb, had come his mother’s letter.

He slept not that night. Indeed, for the past two nights sleep had avoided his haggard eyes. In the feeble glow of his candle he sat in his little bedroom by his rough, bare table, far into the hours of morning, struggling, resolving, hoping, despairing––and, at last, yielding. If he had been born anew that fateful day, seven years before, when Rosendo first told him the girl’s story, he had this night again died. When the gray hours of dawn stole silently across the distant hills he rose. His eyes were bleared and dull. His cheeks sunken. He staggered as he passed out through the living room where lay the sleeping Americans. Rosendo met him in front of the house.

“Padre!” exclaimed the old man as he noted the priest’s appearance.

JosÈ held up a warning hand. “Do not speak of it, Rosendo. I am not well. But not a word to Carmen!”

Rosendo nodded understandingly. “It has been hard on 350 you, Padre. But you will soon be off now. And in the States with her––”

“For God’s sake, friend, never speak of that again!” cried JosÈ sharply. “Listen! How long will it take to complete your preparations?”

“Bien,” returned the amazed Rosendo when he recovered his breath, “we can get away to-morrow.”

“Can you not go this evening?”

“No, Padre. There is much to do. But you––”

“Hear me, friend. Everything must be conducted in the greatest secrecy. It must be given out that the Americans go to explore the Boque; that you accompany them as guide; that Carmen goes as––as cook, why not?”

“Cierto, she cooks as well as Maria.”

“Very well. Juan must be kept in complete ignorance of the real nature of your trip. He must not go with you. He is the courier––I will see that Fernando sends him again to Bodega Central to-morrow, and keeps him there for several days. You say it is some two hundred miles to Llano. How long will it take to go that distance?”

“Why––Quien sabe, Padre?” returned Rosendo thoughtfully. “With a fair trail, and allowing the Americanos some time to prospect on the Boque––where they will find nothing––and several days to look over La Libertad, we ought to reach Llano in six weeks.”

“And Cartagena?”

“A week later, if you do not have to wait a month on the river bank for the boat.”

“Then, all going well, within two months Carmen should be out of the country.”

“Surely. You and she––”

“Enough, friend. I do not go with her.”

“What? Caramba!”

“Go now and bid Carmen come to me immediately after the desayuno. Tell DoÑa Maria that I will eat nothing this morning. I am going up to the old church on the hill.”

Rosendo stared stupidly at the priest. But JosÈ turned abruptly and started away, leaving the old man in a maze of bewilderment.

In the gloom of the old church JosÈ threw himself upon a bench near the door, and waited torpidly. A few moments later came a voice, and then the soft patter of bare feet in the thick dust without. Carmen was talking as she approached. JosÈ rose in curiosity; but the girl was alone. In her hand she held a scrubby flower that had drawn a desperate nourishment from the barren soil at the roadside. She glanced up at JosÈ and smiled.

“It is easy to understand their language, isn’t it, Padre? They don’t speak as we do, but they reflect. And that is better than speaking. They reflect God. They stand for His ideas in the human mind. And so do you. And I. Aren’t they wonderful, these flowers! But you know, they are only the way we interpret certain of God’s wonderful ideas. Only, because we mortals believe in death, we see these beautiful things at last reflecting our thought of death––don’t we? We see only our thoughts, after all. Everything we see about us is reflected thought. First we see our thoughts of life and beauty and good. And then our thoughts of decay and death.

“But God––He never sees anything but the good,” she went on. “He sees the real, not the supposition. And when we learn to see only as He does, why, then we will never again see death. We will see ourselves as we really are, immortal. God sees Himself that way. Jesus learned to see that way, didn’t he? His thought was finally so pure that he saw nothing but good. And that gave him such power that he did those things that the poor, ignorant, wrong-thinking people called miracles. But they were only the things that you and I and everybody else ought to be doing to-day––and would be doing, if we thought as he did, instead of thinking of evil.

“But,” she panted, as she sat down beside him, “I’ve talked a lot, haven’t I? And you sent for me because you wanted to talk. But, remember,” holding up an admonitory finger, “I shall not listen if you talk anything but good. Oh, Padre dear,” looking up wistfully into his drawn face, “you are still thinking that two and two are seven! Will you never again think right? How can you ever expect to see good if you look only at evil? If I looked only at wilted flowers I would never know there were any others.”

“Carmen,” he said in a hollow voice, “I love you.”

“Why, of course you do,” returned the artless girl. “You can’t help it. You have just got to love me and everything and everybody. That’s reflecting God.”

He had not meant to say that. But it had been floating like foam on his tossing mind. He took her hand.

“You are going away from me,” he continued, almost in a whisper.

“Why, no, Padre,” she replied quickly; “you are going too! Padre Rosendo said we could start to-morrow at sunrise.”

“I do not go,” he said in a quavering voice. “I remain, in SimitÍ.”

She looked up at him wonderingly. What meant this change which had come over him so suddenly? She drew closer.

“Why, Padre?” she whispered.

His mother’s face hovered before him in the dim light. Behind her a mitered head, symbolizing the Church, nodded and beckoned significantly. Back of them, as they stood between him and the girl, he saw the glorified vision of Carmen. It was his problem. He turned wearily from it to the gentle presence at his side.

“Why, Padre dear?” came again the soft question.

“I stay––to work out––my problem,” was his scarcely audible reply.

The girl did not speak. But her breath came more quickly, and her hand closed more tightly about his.

“Dearest one,” he murmured, bending over the brown curls, “it is God’s way, I guess. Perhaps in the years which I have spent here with you I have had the time and the opportunity to work out my salvation. I am sure that I have. But, though I strove in my way, I could not quickly acquire your spirituality. I could not at once shake loose those poisonous thoughts of a lifetime, which have at last become externalized in separation from all that I hold dearest in this life, you, my beloved girl, you.” He buried his face in her luxuriant hair and strove to hold back the rush of scalding tears.

“It but shows how poisonous thoughts separate us from all that is good––even from God,” he continued in a choked voice. “Oh, my sweet girl, I love you as it seems to me no human being could love another! It has been so from that first day when, a mere babe, your wonderful eyes held me until I could read in them a depth of love for mankind that was divine.” It did not seem to him that a mature man was speaking to a mere girl. She seemed, as always, ages beyond him in wisdom and experience.

Carmen reached up and wound her arms about his neck. He bent low and kissed her brow. Then he drew himself up quickly and resumed his broken talk.

“I believed at first that my salvation lay in you. And so it did, for from your clear thought I gleaned my first satisfying knowledge of the great principle, God. But alas! I could not seem to realize that between recognizing righteousness as ‘right-thinking’ and daily practicing it so as to ‘prove’ God there was a great difference. And so I rested easy in my first gleams of truth, expecting that they would so warm my soul that it would expand of itself out of all error.”

She made as if to reply, but he checked her.

“I learned enough, I repeat, those first few months here to have enabled me to work out my salvation, even though with fear and trembling. But I procrastinated; I vacillated; I 353 still clung to effete beliefs and forms of thought which I knew were bound to manifest in unhappiness later. I was afraid to boldly throw myself upon my thought. I was mesmerized. Yes, the great Paul was at times under the same mesmeric spell of human belief, even after he had seen the vision of the Christ. But he worked his way steadily out. And now I see that I must do likewise, for salvation is an individual experience. No vicarious effort, even of the Christ himself, can save a man. The principle is already given us. We must apply it to our problems ourselves. My unfinished task––scarcely even begun!––lies still before me. My environment is what I have made it by my own thought. I believe you, that I can enter another only as I externalize it through righteousness, right-thinking, and ‘proving’ God.”

He paused and bent over the silent little figure nestling so quietly at his side. His throat filled. But he caught his breath and went on.

“You, Carmen, though but a child in years, have risen beyond me, and beyond this lowly encompassment. Why, when you were a mere babe, you should have grasped your padre Rosendo’s casual statement that ‘God is everywhere,’ and shaped your life to accord with it, I do not know. Nor do you. That must remain one of the hidden mysteries of God. But the fact stands that you did grasp it, and that with it as a light unto your feet you groped your way out of this environment, avoiding all pitfalls and evil snares, until to-day you stand at the threshold of another and higher one. So progress must ever be, I now realize. Up we must rise from one plane of human mentality to another, sifting and sorting the thoughts that come to us, clinging to these, discarding those, until, even as you have said, we learn at last instantly to accept those that mirror forth God, infinite, divine mind, and to reject those that bear the stamp of supposition.”

“Padre,” the girl said, lifting her beautiful face to his, “I have told you so often––when a thought comes to me that I think is not from God, or does not reflect Him, I turn right on it and kill it. You could do the same, if you would.”

“Assuredly, child––if I would!” he replied in bitterness of heart. “So could all mankind. And then the millennium would be with us, and the kingdom of heaven revealed. The mesmeric belief in evil as an entity and a power opposed to good alone prevents that. Destroy this belief, and the curtain will instantly rise on eternity.”

His eyes struggled with hers, as he gazed long and wistfully into them. Lost in his impassioned speech, he had for the moment seemed to be translated. Then a surge of fear-thoughts 354 swept him, and left him dwelling on the hazardous journey that awaited her. He wildly clutched her again to his side.

“Carmen––child––how can I let you go! So young, so tender! And that awful journey––two hundred miles of unknown jungle, to the far-off NechÍ! And then the burning river, to Cartagena, where––where he is! And the States––God, what awaits you there!”

“Padre,” she answered softly, “I shall not go unless it is right. If it is right, then God will take care of me––and of you.”

Again she saw only the “right-best” thought, while he sat trembling before its opposite. And the opposite was as yet a supposition!

“Padre dear, there is no separation, you know. God is everywhere, and so there is no separation from good––is there?”

“Not in your thought, dearest child,” he murmured huskily.

“Well, Padre dear, I am still with you, am I not? Can’t you live one day at a time? That is what Jesus taught us. You are borrowing from to-morrow, and you have no right to do it. That’s stealing. God says, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ even from to-morrow.”

Yes, she was still at his side. Perhaps she would not go, after all. He was borrowing, and borrowing supposition. The thought seemed to lighten his load momentarily.

“Padre dear.”

“Yes, chiquita.”

“You have been thinking so many bad thoughts of late––I don’t suppose you have had any good thoughts at all about Anita’s little babe?”

“The babe?” in a tone of astonishment.

“Yes. You know, it is not blind. You promised me that every day you would just know that.”

The rebuke smote him sore. Aye, his crowning sin was revealed again in all its ugly nakedness. Egoism! His thought was always of his own troubles, his own longings, his own fears. Self-centeredness had left no room for thoughts of Ana’s blind babe. And why was he now straining this beautiful girl to himself? Was it fear for her, or for himself? Yet she gave but little heed to her own needs. Always her concern was for others, others who stumbled and drooped because of the human mind’s false, unreal, undemonstrable beliefs and ignorance of the allness of God.

“Ah, child,” he exclaimed penitently, “such love! How 355 could I dare to hope ever to claim it! How can you say that you love me?”

“Why, Padre, I love the real ‘you,’ the ‘you’ that is going to be brought out, and that will become more and more clear, until at last it stands as the perfect reflection of God. Haven’t I told you that, time and time again?”

“Yes, child. You love the ideal. But––to live with me––to be my––”

“Well, Padre, if we were not still human we would not be thinking that we were on earth. We have got to work out of this human way of thinking and living. And it has seemed to me that you and I could work out of it so much better together, you helping me, manifesting God’s protection and care, and I helping you, as you say I can and do. And how can we live together and work together unless we marry? Ages make no difference! And time is only a human concept.”

He would not try to explain her reasoning, her contempt for convention. It would be gratuitous. As for him, women had never constituted a temptation. He knew that he loved this simple, ingenuous girl with a tenderness of passion that was wholly free from the dross of mesmerism. With that he remained content.

“Padre, if you think you must stay here for a little while, to work out your problem, why, I shall just know that evil can not separate us. I don’t like to even seem to go away without you. But––it will be only seeming, after all, won’t it? God’s children can not really be separated––never!”

She was still paying faithful tribute to her vision of the spiritual universe. And how her words comforted him! How like a benison they flowed over his drooping spirits!

“And now, Padre dear,” she said, rising from the bench,––“we have done all we could––left everything with God––haven’t we? I must go now, for madre Maria told me to come back soon. She needs me.”

“Don’t––no, not yet! Wait––Carmen! Sing for me––just once more! Sing again the sweet melody that I heard when I awoke from the fever that day long ago!”

He drew her unresisting to his side. Nestling close against him, her head resting on his shoulder and her hand in his, she sang again the song that had seemed to lift him that distant day far, far above the pitiful longings and strivings of poor humanity, even unto the gates of the city of eternal harmony.

She finished, and the last clear, sweet note echoed through the musty room and died among the black rafters overhead. A holy silence fell upon them as they sat, hand in hand, facing the future. Hot tears were streaming down the man’s cheeks. 356 They fell sparkling like drops of dew upon her brown curls. But he made no complaint. The girl, obedient to the vision, was reaping her reward. He, timid, wavering, doubting, was left, still pecking at the shell of his dreary environment. It was but the working of the infinite law of cause and effect. But did he imagine that out in the world she would not still find tribulation, even as the Saviour had said? Aye, she would, in abundance! But she leaned on her sustaining God. Her Christ had overcome the world. And so should she. She had already passed through such fiery trials that he knew no contrary belief in evil now could weaken or counterbalance her supreme confidence in immanent good.

“Padre dear.”

“Chiquita.”

“If I have to go and leave you, will you promise me that you will act your knowledge of the Christ-principle and work out your problem, so that you may come to me soon?”

The tug at his heartstrings brought a moan to his lips. He smothered it. “Yes, chiquita.”

“And––you will keep your promise about Anita’s babe?”

“Yes.”

She rose and, still holding his hand, led him down the hill and to Rosendo’s house.

Throughout the remainder of that feverishly busy day the priest clung to the girl like a shadow. They talked together but little, for she was in constant demand to help her foster-mother in the preparations for the long journey. But JosÈ was ever at her side. Again and again he would seize her hand and press it to his burning lips. Again and again he would stroke her soft hair, or stretch out his hand to touch her dress as she passed him. Always when she glanced up at him the same sweet, compassionate smile glowed on her face. When she left the house, he followed. When she bent over the ash-strewn fireplace, or washed the few plain dishes, he sought to share her employment; and, when gently, lovingly repulsed, sat dully, with his yearning eyes riveted upon her. Rosendo saw him, and forgot his own sorrow in pity for the suffering priest.

The preparations carried the toilers far into the night. But at length the last bundle was strapped to its siete, the last plan discussed and agreed upon, and the two Americans had thrown themselves upon their cots for a brief rest before dawn. Rosendo took JosÈ aside, while DoÑa Maria and Carmen sought their beds.

“Fernando sends Juan to Bodega Central at daybreak,” the old man said. “All has been kept secret. No one suspects our 357 plans. Maria remains here with you until I return. Then we may go to the hacienda of Don NicolÁs, on the Boque. I shall tell him to have it in readiness on my return. I shall probably not get back to SimitÍ for two months. If, as you say, you still think best not to go with the Americans and the girl, what will you do here? The people are much divided. Some say they intend to ask the Bishop to remove you. Bien, will you not decide to go?”

JosÈ could not make audible reply. He shook his head, and waved Rosendo away. Then, taking a chair, he went into the sleeping room and sat down at the bedside of the slumbering girl. Reaching over, he took her hand.

What was it that she had said to him that day, long gone, when Diego claimed her as his child? Ah, yes:

“Don’t feel badly, Padre dear. His thoughts have only the minus sign––and that means nothing, you know.”

And later, many weeks later:

“Padre, you can not think wrong and right thoughts together, you know. You can not be happy and unhappy at the same time. You can not be sick and well together.” In other words, the wise little maid was trying to show him that Paul spoke directly to such as he when he wrote: Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are––?

“You can not have both good and evil, Padre,” she had so often insisted. “You must want good––want it more than anything else. And then you must prepare for it by thinking right thoughts and unthinking wrong ones. And as you prepare for good, you must know that it is coming. But you must not say how it shall come, nor what it shall look like. You must not say that it shall be just as you may think you would like to have it. Leave the––the externalization to God. Then it will meet all your needs.

“You see, Padre dear”––oh, how the memory of her words smote him now!––“you see, the good Jesus told the people to clean their window-panes and let in the light––good thoughts––for then these would be externalized in health, happiness, and all good, instead of the old, bad thoughts being externalized longer in sickness and evil. Don’t you see?”

Aye, he saw. He saw that the Christ-idea found expression and reflection in the pure mentality of this girl. He saw that that mentality was unsullied, uneducated in the lore of human belief, and untrained to fear. He saw that the resurrection of the Christ, for which a yearning world waits, was but the rising of the Christ-idea in the human mentality. And he saw, too, that ere the radiant resurrection morn can arrive there must be 358 the crucifixion, a world-wide crucifixion of human, carnal thought. Follow Christ! Aye, follow him! But will ye not learn that following him means thinking as he did? And his thoughts were God’s.

But JosÈ had tried to think aright during those years in SimitÍ. True, but the efforts had been spasmodic. From childhood he had passed through doubt, fear, scepticism, and final agnosticism. Then he had started anew and aright. And then had come the “day of judgment,” the recurrent hours of sore trial––and he had not stood. Called upon to prove God, to prove the validity of his splendid deductions, he had vacillated between the opposing claims of good and evil, and had floundered helplessly. And now he stood confronting his still unsolved problem, realizing as never before that in the solving of it he must unlearn the intellectual habits of a lifetime.

There were other problems which lay still unsolved before him as he sat there that night. The sable veil of mystery which hung about Carmen’s birth had never been penetrated, even slightly. What woman’s face was that which looked out so sadly from the little locket? “Dolores”––sorrowful, indeed! What tragedy had those great, mournful eyes witnessed? No, Carmen did not greatly resemble her. He used to think so, but not of late. Did she, he wondered, resemble the man? And had the mother’s kisses and hot tears blurred the portrait beneath which he had so often read the single inscription, “Guillermo”? If so, could not the portrait be cleaned? But JosÈ himself had not dared attempt it. Perhaps some day that could be done by one skilled in such art.

And did Carmen inherit any of her unique traits from either of her parents? Her voice, her religious instinct, her keen mentality––whence came they? “From God,” the girl would always answer whenever he voiced the query in her presence. And he could not gainsay it.

Seven years had passed. And JosÈ found himself sitting beside the sleeping girl and dumbly yielding to the separation which now had come. Was his work finished? His course run? And, if he must live and solve his problem, could he stand after she had left? He bent closer to her, and listened to the gentle breathing. He seemed again to see her, as he was wont in the years past, flitting about her diminutive rose garden and calling to him to come and share her boundless joy. “Come!” he heard her call. “Come, Padre dear, and see my beautiful thoughts!” And then, so often, “Oh, Padre!” bounding into his arms, “here is a beautiful thought that came to me to-day, and I caught it and wouldn’t let it go!” Lonely, isolated child, having nothing in common with the children of 359 her native heath, yet dwelling ever in a world peopled with immaculate concepts!

JosÈ shook his head slowly. He thought of the day when he had approached Rosendo with his great question. “Rosendo,” he had said in deep earnestness, “where, oh, where did Carmen get these ideas? Did you teach them to her?”

“No, Padre,” Rosendo had replied gravely. “When she was a little thing, just learning to talk, she often asked about God. And one day I told her that God was everywhere––what else could I say? Bien, a strange light came into her eyes. And after that, Padre, she talked continually about Him, and to Him. And she seemed to know Him well––so well that she saw Him in every thing and every place. Padre, it is very strange––very strange!”

No, it was not strange, JosÈ had thought, but beautifully natural. And later, when he came to teach her, his constant endeavor had been to impart his secular knowledge to the girl without endangering her marvelous faith in her immanent God. In that he had succeeded, for in that there had been no obstructing thoughts of self to overcome.

And now––

“For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee––”

The night shadows fled. Day dawned. JosÈ still sat at the girl’s bedside, dumb and motionless. Carmen awoke, and threw her arms about him. But Rosendo appeared and hurried her out to the light morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o’clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from SimitÍ. Reed and Harris were bustling about, assembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men’s backs. DoÑa Maria’s eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. JosÈ wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced his determination not to accompany Rosendo and his party, but to go back and consult with Don Carlos NorosÍ in regard to the future. An hour later he left SimitÍ.

At last Rosendo’s voice rang out in a great shout:

“Ya estÁ! VÁmonos!”

“Bully-bueno!” responded Harris, waving his long arms.

The cargadores moved forward in the direction of the Boque trail. The Americans, with a final adios to DoÑa Maria and the priest, swung into line behind them. Rosendo again tenderly embraced his weeping spouse, and then, turned to JosÈ.

“The Virgin watch over you and Maria, Padre! I leave her in your care. If the war comes, flee with her to the Boque.”

He threw an arm about the priest and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, calling to Carmen, he turned and started after the others.

The girl rushed into JosÈ’s arms. Her tears flowed freely.

“Padre,” she murmured, clinging to him and showering him with kisses, “I love you, love you, love you! I will wait for you up there. You will come––or I will come back to you. And I will work for you every day. I will know that you are God’s child, and that you will solve your problem!”

Rosendo, half way down the road, turned and called sharply to her. The girl hurried after him. But again she stopped, turned around, and flew back to JosÈ, as he knelt in the dust and, with tongue cleaving to his mouth, held out his trembling arms.

“Padre, dearest, dearest Padre,” she sobbed, “I love you, I love you! And––I had forgotten––this––it is for you to read every day––every day!” She thrust a folded paper into his hand. Again she tore herself away and ran after the impatient Rosendo. In a moment they were out of sight.

A groan of anguish escaped the stricken priest. He rose from his knees and followed stumbling after the girl. As he reached the shales he saw her far in the distance at the mouth of the trail. She turned, and waved her hand to him. Then the dark trail swallowed her, and he saw her no more.

For a moment he stood like a statue, striving with futile gaze to penetrate that black opening in the dense bush that had engulfed his very soul. His bloodshot eyes were wild. His lips fluttered. His hand closed convulsively over the paper which the girl had left with him. Mechanically he opened it and read:

“Dearest, dearest Padre, these four little Bible verses I leave with you; and you will promise your little girl that you will always live by them. Then your problem will be solved.

“1. Thou shall have no other gods before me.

“2. Love thy neighbor as thyself.

“3. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

“4. Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

“And, Padre, my dearest, dearest Padre, God is everywhere.”

His hand fell. His brain reeled, and he swayed like a drunken man. He turned about, muttering incoherently. DoÑa Maria stood behind him. Tenderly taking his arm, she led him back to the forlorn little house. Its ghastly emptiness smote him until his reason tottered. He sank into a chair 361 and gazed with dull, stony eyes out over the placid lake, where the white beams of the rising sun were breaking into myriad colors against the brume.