CHAPTER 31
In the weeks that followed there were days when the very air seemed pregnant with potential destruction, awaiting only the daring hand that would render it kinetic. Josè dwelt in a state of incessant, heart-shaking agitation. The sudden precipitation of the revolt six years before had caught him wholly unprepared, unaware even of the events which had led to it. In the intervening years, however, he had had some opportunity, even in his isolation, to study political conditions in that unhappy country, and to form some estimate of the mental forces at work in both Church and State which, he knew, must ultimately bring them again into conflict for supremacy. His knowledge of the workings of the human mind convinced him that Diego’s dire prophecy had not been empty; that the Church, though ostensibly assuming only spiritual leadership, would nevertheless rest not until the question “Who shall be greatest?” even in the petty, sordid affairs of mortals, should be answered, and answered––though by force of arms––in her favor. And his estimate of the strength of the opposing parties had led him to believe that the impending struggle would drench the land in blood.
As to the rôle which Wenceslas would play, he could form no satisfactory estimate. He knew him to be astute, wary, and the shrewdest of politicians. He knew, likewise, that he was acting in conjunction with powerful financial interests in both North America and Europe. He knew him to be a man who would stop at no scruple, hesitate at no dictate of conscience, yield to no moral or ethical code; one who would play Rome against Wall Street, with his own unfortunate country as the stake; one who would hurl the fairest sons of Colombia at one another’s throats to bulge his own coffers; and then wring from the wailing widows their poor substance for Masses to move their beloved dead through an imagined purgatory.
But he could not know that, in casting about impatiently for an immediate causus belli, Wenceslas had hit upon poor, isolated, little Simití as the point of ignition, and the pitting of its struggling priest against Don Mario as the method of exciting the necessary spark. He could not know that Wenceslas had represented to the Departmental Governor in Cartagena that an obscure Cura in far-off Simití, an exile from the Vatican, and the author of a violent diatribe against papal authority, was the nucleus about which anticlerical sentiment was crystallizing in the Department of Bolívar. He did not know 298 that the Governor had been induced by the acting-Bishop’s specious representations to send arms to Simití, to be followed by federal troops only when the crafty Wenceslas saw that the time was ripe. He did not even suspect that Don Mario was to be the puppet whom Wenceslas would sacrifice on the altar of rapacity when he had finished with him, and that the simple-minded Alcalde in his blind zeal to protect the Church would thereby proclaim himself an enemy of both Church and State, and afford the smiling Wenceslas the most fortuitous of opportunities to reveal the Church’s unexampled magnanimity by throwing her influence in with that of the Government against their common enemy.
His own intercourse with Wenceslas during the years of his exile in Simití had been wholly formal, and not altogether disagreeable as long as the contributions of gold to the Bishop’s leaking coffers continued. He had received almost monthly communications from Cartagena, relating to the Church at large, and, at infrequent intervals, to the parish of Simití. But he knew that Cartagena’s interest in Simití was merely casual––nay, rather, financial––and he strove to maintain it so, lest the stimulation of a deeper interest thwart his own plans. His conflict with Diego in regard to Carmen had seemed for the moment to evoke the Bishop’s interference; and the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of that priest had threatened to expose both Josè and Carmen to the full scrutiny of Wenceslas. But, fortunately, the insistence of those matters which were rapidly culminating in a political outbreak left Wenceslas little time for interference in affairs which did not pertain exclusively to the momentous questions with which he was now concerned, and Josè and Carmen were still left unmolested. It was only when, desperate lest Congress adjourn without passing the measure which he knew would precipitate the conflict, and when, well nigh panic-stricken lest his collusion with Ames and his powerful clique of Wall Street become known through the exasperation of the latter over the long delay, he had resolved to pit Don Mario against Josè in distant Simití, and, in that unknown, isolated spot, where close investigation would never be made, apply the torch to the waiting combustibles, that Josè saw the danger which had always hung over him and the girl suddenly descending upon them and threatening anew the separation which he had ever regarded as inevitable, and yet which he had hoped against hope to avoid.
With the deposition of arms in Simití, and the establishment of federal authority in Don Mario, that always pompous official rose in his own esteem and in the eyes of a few parasitical 299 attachés to an eminence never before dreamed of by the humble denizens of this moss-encrusted town. From egotistical, Don Mario became insolent. From sluggishness and torpidity of thought and action, he rose suddenly into tremendous activity. He was more than once observed by Josè or Rosendo emerging hastily from his door and button-holing some one of the more influential citizens of the town and excitedly reading to him excerpts from letters which he had just received from Cartagena. He might be seen at any hour of the day in the little patio back of his store, busily engaged with certain of the men of the place in examining papers and documents, talking volubly and with much excited gesticulation and wild rolling of the eyes. A party seemed to be crystallizing about him. His hitherto uncertain prestige appeared to be soaring greatly. Men who before made slighting remarks about him, or opposed his administrative acts, were now often seen in earnest converse with him. His manner toward Josè and Rosendo became that of utter contempt. He often refused to notice the priest as they passed in the streets.
Josè’s apprehension waxed great. It attained its climax when Rosendo came to him one day to discuss the Alcalde’s conduct and the change of sentiment which seemed to be stealing rapidly over the hearts of the people of Simití.
“Padre,” said the old man in perplexity, “I cannot say what it is, but Don Mario has some scheme in hand, and––and I do not think it is for our good. I cannot get anything out of those with whom he talks so continually, but Lázaro tells me that––Bien, that he learns that Don Mario suspects you of––of not belonging to the Church party.”
Josè smiled. Don Mario’s suspicions about him had been many and varied, especially as La Libertad mine had not been discovered. He said as much to Rosendo in reply; and as he did so, he thought the old man’s face took on a queer and unwonted expression.