Although he could not see the face, Ramon knew that this was the priest, Father Lugaria. He knew that Father Lugaria had come to arrange for the mass over the body of Don Delcasar. He disliked Father Lugaria, and knew that the Father disliked him. This mutual antipathy was due to the fact that Ramon seldom went to Church.
There were others of his generation who showed the same indifference toward religion, and this defection of youth was a thing which the Priests bitterly contested. Ramon was perfectly willing to make a polite compromise with them. If Father Lugaria had been satisfied with an occasional appearance at early mass, a perfunctory confession now and then, the two might have been friends. But the Priest made Ramon a special object of his attention. He continually went to the Dona Delcasar with complaints and that devout woman incessantly nagged her son, holding [pg 99] before him always pictures of the damnation he was courting. Once in a while she even produced in him a faint twinge of fear—a recrudescence of the deep religious feeling in which he was bred—but the feeling was evanescent. The chief result of these labours on behalf of his soul had been to turn him strongly against the priest who instigated them.
Father Lugaria seemed all kindness and sympathy now. He sat close beside Ramon and took his hand. Ramon could smell the good wine on the man’s breath, and could see faintly the brightness of his eyes. The grip of the priest’s hand was strong, moist and surprisingly cold. He began to talk in the low monotonous voice of one accustomed to much chanting, and this droning seemed to have some hypnotic quality. It seemed to lull Ramon’s mind so that he could not think what he was going to say or do.
The priest expressed his sympathy. He spoke of the great and good man the Don had been. Slowly, adroitly, he approached the real question at issue, which was how much Ramon would pay for a mass. The more he paid, the longer the mass would be, and the longer the mass the speedier would be the journey of the Don’s soul through purgatory and into Paradise.
“O, my little brother in Christ!” droned the priest in his vibrant sing-song, “I must not let you [pg 100] neglect this last, this greatest of things which you can do for the uncle you loved. It is unthinkable of course that his soul should go to hell—hell, where a thousand demons torture the soul for an eternity. Hell is for those who commit the worst of sins, sins they dare not lay before God for his forgiveness, secret and terrible sins—sins like murder. But few of us go through life untouched by sin. The soul must be purified before it can enter the presence of its maker.… Doubtless the soul of your uncle is in purgatory, and to you is given the sweet power to speed that soul on its upward way.…
“Don Delcasar, we all know, killed.… More than once, doubtless, he took the life of a fellow man. But he did it in combat as a soldier, as a servant of the State.… That is not murder. That would not doom him to hell, which is the special punishment of secret and unforgiven murder.… But the soul of the Don must be cleansed of these earthly stains.…”
The strong, cold grip of the priest held Ramon with increasing power. The monotonous, hypnotic voice went on and on, becoming ever more eloquent and confident. Father Lugaria was a man of imagination, and the special home of his imagination was hell. For thirty years he had held despotic sway over the poor Mexicans who made up most of his flock, and had gathered [pg 101] much money for the Church, by painting word-pictures of hell. He was a veritable artist of hell. He loved hell. Again and again he digressed from the strict line of his argument to speak of hell. With all the vividness of a thing seen, he described its flames, its fiends, the terrible stink of burning flesh and the vast chorus of agony that filled it.… And for some obscure reason or purpose he always spoke of hell as the special punishment of murderers. Again and again in his discourse he coupled murder and hell.
Ramon was wearied by strong emotions and a shortness of sleep. His nerves were overstrung. This ceaseless iteration of hell and murder, murder and hell would drive him crazy, he thought. He wished mightily that the priest would have done and name his price and go. What was the sense and purpose of this endless babble about hell and murder?… A sickening thought struck him like a blow, leaving him weak. What if old Archulera had confessed to the priest?
Well; what if he had? A priest could not testify about what he had heard in confessional. But a priest might tell some one else.… O, God! If the man would only go and leave him to think. Hell and murder, murder and hell. The two words beat upon his brain without mercy. He longed to interrupt the priest and beg him to [pg 102] leave off. But for some reason he could not. He could not even turn his head and look at the man. The priest was but a clammy grip that held him and a disembodied voice that spoke of hell and murder. Had he done murder? And was there a hell? He had long ceased to believe in hell, but hell had been real to him as a child. His mother and his nurse had filled him with the fear of hell. He had been bred in the fear of hell. It was in his flesh and bones if not in his mind, and the priest had hypnotized his mind. Hell was real to him again. Fear of hell came up from the past which vanishes but is never gone, and gripped him like a great ugly monster. It squeezed a cold sweat out of his body and made his skin prickle and his breath come short.…
The priest dropped the subject of hell, and spoke again of the mass. He mentioned a sum of money. Ramon nodded his head muttering his assent like a sick man. The grip on his hand relaxed.