The low-hung moon, shrouded in heavy vapor, threw an eldritch shimmer upon the little group that silently bore the body of the martyred Lázaro from the old church late that night to the dreary cemetery on the hill. Josè took but a reluctant part in the proceedings. He would even have avoided this last service to his faithful friend if he could. It seemed to him as he stumbled along the stony road behind the body which Rosendo and Don Jorge carried that his human endurance had been strained so far beyond the elastic limit that there could now be no rebound. Every thought that touched his sore mind made it bleed anew, for every thought that he accepted was acrid, rasping, oppressive. The sheer weight of foreboding, of wild apprehension, of paralyzing fear, crushed him, until his shoulders bent low as he walked. How, lest he perform a miracle, could he hope to extricate himself and his loved ones from the meshes of the net, far-cast, but with unerring aim, which had fallen upon them?
As he passed the town hall he saw through the open door the captain’s cot, and a guard standing motionless beside it. The captain had elected to remain there for the night, while his men found a prickly hospitality among the cowering townsfolk. Josè knew now that the hand which Don Mario had dealt himself in the game inaugurated by Wenceslas had been from a stacked deck. He knew that the President of the Republic 325 had ordered Morales to this inoffensive little town to quell an alleged anticlerical uprising, and that the execution of the misguided Alcalde had been determined long before the Hercules had got under way. He could see that it was necessary for the Government to sacrifice its agent in the person of the Alcalde, in order to prove its own loyalty to the Church. And in return therefor he knew it would expect, not without reason, the coöperation of the Church in case the President’s interference in the province of Bolívar should precipitate a general revolt.
But what had been determined upon as his own fate? He had not the semblance of an idea. From the confession of the ruined Alcalde he now knew that Don Mario had been poisoned against him from the beginning; that even the letters of introduction which Wenceslas had given him to the Alcalde contained the charge of his having accomplished the ruin of the girl Maria in Cartagena, and of his previous incarceration in the monastery of Palazzola. And Don Mario had confessed in his last moments that Wenceslas had sought to work through him and Josè in the hope that the location of the famous mine, La Libertad, might be revealed. Don Mario had been instructed to get what he could out of this scion of Rincón; and only his own greed and cupidity had caused him to play fast and loose with both sides until, falling before the allurements which Wenceslas held out, he had rushed madly into his own destruction. Josè realized that so far he himself had proved extremely useful to Wenceslas––but had his usefulness ended? At these thoughts his soul momentarily suffused with the pride of the old and hectoring Rincón stock and rose, instinct with revolt––but only to sink again in helpless resignation, while the shadow of despair rolled in and quenched his feeble determination.
Rosendo and Don Jorge placed the body in one of the vacant vaults and filled the entrance with some loose bricks. Then they stood back expectantly. It was now the priest’s turn. He had a part to perform, out there on the bleak hilltop in the ghostly light. But Josè remained motionless and silent, his head sunk upon his breast.
Then Rosendo, waxing troubled, spoke in gentle admonition. “He would expect it, you know, Padre.”
Josè turned away from the lonely vault. Bitter tears coursed down his cheeks, and his voice broke. He laid his head on Rosendo’s stalwart shoulder and wept aloud.
The sickly, greenish cast of the moonlight silhouetted the figures of the three men in grotesque shapes against the cemetery wall and the crumbling tombs. The morose call of a toucan floated weirdly upon the heavy air. The faint wail of 326 the frogs in the shallow waters below rose like the despairing sighs of lost souls.
Rosendo wound his long arm about the sorrowing priest. Don Jorge’s muscles knotted, and a muttered imprecation rose from his tight lips. Strangely had the shift and coil of the human mind thrown together these three men, so different in character, yet standing now in united protest against the misery which men heap upon their fellow-men in the name of Christ. Josè, the apostate agent of Holy Church, his hands bound, and his heart bursting with yearning toward his fellow-men; Rosendo, simple-minded and faithful, chained to the Church by heredity and association, yet ashamed of its abuses and lusts; Don Jorge, fierce in his denunciation of the political and religious sham and hypocrisy which he saw masking behind the cloak of imperial religion.
“I have nothing to say, friends,” moaned Josè, raising his head; “nothing that would not still further reveal my own miserable weakness and the despicable falsity of the Church. If the Church had followed the Christ, it would have taught me to do likewise; and I should now call to Lázaro and bid him come forth, instead of shamefully confessing my impotency and utter lack of spirituality, even while I pose as an Alter Christus.”
“You––you will leave a blessing with him before we go, Padre?” queried the anxious Rosendo, clinging still to the frayed edge of his fathers’ faith.