When the blow fell the portals of her mind closed at once against every accusing thought, against every insidious suggestion of defeat, of loss, of dishonor. The arrows of malice, as well as those of self-pity and condemnation, snapped and fell, one by one, as they hurtled vainly against the whole armor of God wherewith the girl stood clad. Self sank into service; and she gathered the bewildered, suffering Beaubien into her arms as if she had been a child. She would have gone to Ames, too, had she been permitted––not to plead for mercy, but to offer the tender consolation and support which, despite the havoc he was committing, she knew he needed even more than the Beaubien herself.
“Paul had been a murderer,” she often said, as she sat in the darkness alone with the suffering woman and held her trembling hand. “But he became the chief of apostles. Think of it! When the light came, he shut the door against the past. If he hadn’t, dearest, he never could have done what he did. And you, and Mr. Ames, will have to do the same.” And this the Beaubien could do, and did, after months of soul-racking struggle. But Ames sat in spiritual darkness, whipped by the foul brood of lust and revenge, knowing not that the mountainous wrath which he hourly heaped higher would some day fall, and bury him fathoms deep.
Throughout the crisis Father Waite had stood by them stanchly. And likewise had Elizabeth Wall. “I’ve just longed for some reasonable excuse to become a social outcast,” the latter had said, as she was helping Carmen one day to pack her effects prior to removing from the Hawley-Crowles mansion. “I long for a hearthstone to which I can attach myself––”
“Then attach yourself to ours!” eagerly interrupted Carmen.
“I’ll do it!” declared Miss Wall. “For I know that now you are really going to live––and I want to live as you will. Moreover––” She paused and smiled queerly at the girl––“I am quite in love with your hero, Father Waite, you know.”
Harris, too, made a brief call before departing again for Denver. “I’ve got to hustle for a living now,” he explained, “and it’s me for the mountains once more! New York is no place for such a tender lamb as I. Oh, I’ve been well trimmed––but I know enough now to keep away from this burg!”
While he was yet speaking there came a loud ring at the front door of the little bungalow, followed immediately by the entrance of the manager of a down-town vaudeville house. He plunged at once into his errand. He would offer Carmen one hundred dollars a week, and a contract for six months, to appear twice daily in his theater. “She’ll make a roar!” he asserted. “Heavens, Madam! but she did put it over the society 10 ginks.” And the Beaubien, shivering at the awful proposal, was glad Harris was there to lead the zealous theatrical man firmly to the door.
Lastly, came one Amos A. Hitt, gratuitously, to introduce himself as one who knew Cartagena and was likely to return there in the not distant future, where he would be glad to do what he might to remove the stain which had been laid upon the name of the fair girl. The genuineness of the man stood out so prominently that the Beaubien took him at once into her house, where he was made acquainted with Carmen.
“Oh,” cried the girl, “Cartagena! Why, I wonder––do you know Padre Josè de Rincón?”
“A priest who once taught there in the University, many years ago? And who was sent up the river, to Simití? Yes, well.”