He pondered deeply on the various situations he'd surprised in carrying out the project of the woman he had met, that night; she had not told him of her plans in their entirety, and, so, it seemed, the very plans she doted on the most had very far miscarried and the work, so far as she had been concerned, had not only been as futile as any work could ever be, but, also, it had brought to her a new and horrible calamity besides the failure of her plans and loss of him she evidently deeply loved as tender women love but only once in all their human lives, perhaps, for Victorio Colenzo had been a man to claim the love of tender women ... he was very tall and very handsome, too; his deep, dark eyes were very full of loving expression and his strong arms, folded close about a tender woman's yielding form, would lift her spirit up and make her almost wild with joy and gladness.
And, as it looked now, those strong arms had been folded, not only round his own wife's tender form, but, also, about, at least, one other woman's, too. Good Father Felix reflected on the fraility of man and pondered deeply on the tenderness of women, but he did not, even then, reach the very root of the whole matter, for he, being what he was, would not be very likely ever to know the heights and depths, as well, of human love, for he had always been a religious devotee in spite of his great strength of limb ... he'd only used his bodily powers to forward the work to which his whole life was devoted utterly, and, so, good Father Felix could not fully understand a man such as Victorio Colenzo must have been to leave the record that he'd left behind him when he died, there, in the entrance to that dark and gloomy prison, just as he had been about to come again, a free man, into the glorious light of day.
CHAPTER IV
Father Felix had prepared the widow of Victorio Colenzo for the sight she would behold when she went to the rude dwelling where they had laid the form of the prisoner whose dead body had been found lying in the entrance to the prison on the day the people battered down the doors and set at liberty several political prisoners confined therein, but no one could, really, prepare a woman for the vision presented to her eyes when she entered the cottage that had been turned into a temporary morgue, for more than one of those engaged in the deadly strife with the soldiery in the prado after the deliverance of the prisoners had given up his earthly life, either at the time of the attack or afterwards from wounds inflicted either intentionally or inadvertently by those who had been sent to the prado to quell an uprising of the Cuban populace.
As the woman we have before described entered the rude shelter where the dead bodies of several of the residents of the little village lay, she was surprised and grieved by the number of the dead and, also, by the many mourners who crowded among the slabs on which the bodies lay, for there was little of orderly array there, everything being of the rudest and most primitive pattern as the reigning government did not wish to dignify those who had opposed it even after death had taken from their limbs the power to oppose anything in the world of men and women.
The woman, who was of a higher class than most of those assembled there, was treated with marked deference as became her superior position both as to wealth and education, for the widow of Victorio Colenzo occupied a proud place in her own right, having been, for a long time, the occupant of a large and beautiful residence that commanded a wide view of the harbor of Havana and was situated on an elevation above the little village of San Domingo; this home had been hers long before she had ever met the handsome peon whom she had acknowledged as her husband to Father Felix after having learned of his death.
It was through her own instigation that the man had taken the position which had, subsequently, placed him among the prisoners for offenses against the reigning government who had been liberated under her direct orders and with her pronounced sanction, although she had not actually taken part in the work which she had directed.
This woman was of another type entirely as compared with the others in that small dwelling and walked among them almost haughtily in spite of her eagerness in the search after evidence that would convince her that she had not been utterly mistaken in the man she had secretly married, believing him to represent the finest and highest example of patriotic courage and devotion that she had met during the whole of her long residence in the Island of Cuba.
She had come to the Island, in her first youth, as the daughter of the American Consul who represented the United States in the council chambers where were gathered those who discussed affairs of state with the ruling Spanish powers; her father had purchased the beautiful site on which he had built the home that was still hers, although both of her parents had died, there in Cuba, within the past few years; the girl had been left practically without living relatives, and, so, loving her Island home, she had remained there in spite of the solicitations of many American friends who had visited her in Cuba and urged her to return to the United States with them; she was of a reticent and retiring disposition, loving a good book more than almost anything else in the world, and being surrounded by a splendid library, her time was fully and pleasantly occupied, as she had trustworthy retainers who followed her mandates because they loved to fulfill them and pitied her loneliness while they almost worshiped her superior manners and style of speech as well as of living; Father Felix, alone, understood her mental attainments and was greatly bewildered when she told him that she had married Victorio Colenzo as he considered her far removed from the peons who were the regular inhabitants of the Island and among whom he labored as a missionary rather than as an equal, although his deep humility of manner always led them to believe that he was on their own level of intelligence, while the aloofness of this one woman set her apart from all of her neighbors and made her seem to them like a being from another and a higher world.