Dawn had scarcely reddened in the east when a number of men assembled at Josè’s door.
“You have turned the trick, amigo,” said Don Jorge, rousing up from his petate on the floor beside the priest’s bed. “You have won over a few of them, at least.”
Josè went out to meet the early callers.
“We come to say, Padre,” announced Andres Arellano, the dignified spokesman, “that we have confidence in your words of last night. We suspect Don Mario, even though he has letters from the Bishop. We are your men, and we would keep the war away from Simití.”
There were five of them, strong of heart and brawny of arm. “And there will be more, Padre,” added Andres, reading the priest’s question in his appraising glance.
Thus was the town divided; and while many clung to the Alcalde, partly through fear of offending the higher ecclesiastical authority, and partly because of imagined benefits to be gained, others, and a goodly number, assembled at Josè’s side, and looked to him to lead them in the crisis which all felt to be at hand. As the days passed, the priest’s following grew more numerous, until, after the lapse of a week, the town stood fairly divided. Don Jorge announced his intention of remaining in Simití for the present.
From the night of the meeting in the church excitement ran continuously higher. Business was at length suspended; the fishermen forgot their nets; and the limber tongues of the town gossips steadily increased their clatter. Don Mario’s store and patio assumed the functions of a departmental office. Daily he might be seen laboriously drafting letters of incredible length and wearisome prolixity to acting-Bishop Wenceslas; and nightly he was engaged in long colloquies and whispered conferences with Don Luis and others of his followers and hangers-on. The government arms had been brought up from Bodega Central and stored in an empty warehouse belonging to Don Felipe Alcozer to await further disposition.
But with the arrival of the arms, and of certain letters which Don Mario received from Cartagena, the old town lost its calm of centuries, not to recover it again for many a dreary day. By the time its peace was finally restored, it had received a blow from which it never recovered. And many a familiar face, too, had disappeared forever from its narrow streets.
Meanwhile, Josè and his followers anxiously awaited the turn of events. It came at length, and in a manner not wholly unexpected. The Alcalde in his voluminous correspondence with Wenceslas had not failed to bring against Josè every charge which his unduly stimulated brain could imagine. But in particular did he dwell upon the priest’s malign influence upon Carmen, whose physical beauty and powers of mind were the marvel of Simití. He hammered upon this with an insistence that could not but at length again attract the thought of the acting-Bishop, who wrote finally to Don Mario, expressing the mildly couched opinion that, now that his attention had been called again to the matter, Carmen should have the benefits of the education and liberal training which a convent would afford.