“But––the child’s nurse remained with her?”
“Marcelena? Yes. She was devoted to the little Maria. The woman was old and ugly––but she loved the child.”
“Did you not inquire for them when you were in Mompox a few months ago?” pursued Josè eagerly.
“I made slight inquiry through the clerk in the office of 192 the Alcalde. I did not intend to––but I could not help it. Caramba! He made further inquiry, but said only that he was told they had long since gone down to Cartagena, and nothing had been heard from them.”
The gates of memory’s great reservoir opened at the touch of this man’s story, and Josè again lived through that moonlit night in Cartagena, when the little victim of Wenceslas breathed out her life of sorrow and shame in his arms. He heard again the sobs of Marcelena and the simple-minded Catalina. He saw again the figure of the compassionate Christ in the smoke that drifted past the window. And now the father of that wronged girl sat before him, wrapped in the tatters of a shredded happiness! Should he tell him? Should he say that he had cared for this man’s little grandson since his advent into this sense of existence that mortals call life? For there could be no doubt now that the little Maria was his daughter.
“Don Jorge,” he said, “you have suffered much. My heart bleeds for you. And yet––”
“Na, Padre, there is nothing to do. Were I to find my family I could only slay them and the priests who came between us!”
“But, Don Jorge,” cried Josè in horror, “you surely meditate no such vengeance as that!”
The man smiled grimly. “Señor Padre,” he returned coldly, “I am Spanish. The blood of the old cavaliers flows in my veins. I have been betrayed, trapped, fooled, and my honored name has been foully soiled. What will remove the stain, think you? Blood––nothing else! Caramba! The priest of Maganguey who poured the first drop of poison into my wife’s too willing ears––Bien, I have said enough!”
“Hombre! You don’t mean––”