“The señora is preparing you a bowl of chicken broth and rice, Padre,” he said. “The little Carmen saved a hen for you when you should awake. She has fed it all the week on rice and goat’s milk. She said she knew you would wake up hungry.”
Josè’s eyes had closely followed Rosendo’s movements, although he seemed not to hear his words. Suddenly he broke forth in protest.
“Rosendo,” he cried, “have I your bed? And do you sleep there on the floor? I cannot permit this!”
“Say nothing, Padre,” replied Rosendo, gently forcing Josè back again upon his bed. “My house is yours.”
“But––the señora, your wife––where does she sleep?”
“She has her petate in the kitchen,” was the quiet answer.
Only the two poor beds, which were occupied by the priest and the child! And Rosendo and his good wife had slept on the hard dirt floor for a week! Josè’s eyes dimmed when he realized the extent of their unselfish hospitality. And would they continue to sleep thus on the ground, with nothing beneath them but a thin straw mat, as long as he might choose to remain with them? Aye, he knew that they would, uncomplainingly. For these are the children of the “valley of the pleasant ‘yes.’”
Josè awoke the next morning with a song echoing in his ears. He had dreamed of singing; and as consciousness slowly returned, the dream-song became real. It floated in from the living room on a clear, sweet soprano. When a child he had heard such voices in the choir loft of the great Seville cathedral, and he had thought that angels were singing. As he lay now listening to it, memories of his childish dreams swept over him in great waves. The soft, sweet cadences rose and fell. His own heart swelled and pulsated with them, and his barren soul once more surged under the impulse of a deep, potential desire to manifest itself, its true self, unhampered at last by limitation and convention, unfettered by superstition, human creeds and false ambition. Then the inevitable reaction set in; a sickening sense of the futility of his longing settled over him, and he turned his face to the wall, while hot tears streamed over his sunken cheeks.
Again through his wearied brain echoed the familiar admonition, “Occupy till I come.” Always the same invariable response to his strained yearnings. The sweet voice in the adjoining room floated in through the dusty palm door. It spread over his perturbed thought like oil on troubled waters. Perhaps it was the child singing. At this thought the sense of awe seemed to settle upon him again. A child––a babe––had said that he should live! If a doctor had said it he would have believed. But a child––absurd! It was a dream! But no; Rosendo had said it; and there was no reason to doubt him. But what had this child to do with it? Nothing! And yet––was that wholly true? Then whence his sensations when first he saw her? Whence that feeling of standing in the presence of a great mystery? “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings––” Foolishness! To be sure, the child may have said he should not die; but if he were to live––which God forbid!––his own recuperative powers would restore him. Rosendo’s lively imagination certainly had exaggerated the incident.