“Pshaw! girls are fools, and not worth breaking one’s head for,” said a second, whose only son kept her rich, when well-laden travellers were plenty. “Where go they now? They are turning toward Las Parras. They will miss the soldiers, or I am no prophet.”
“As a prophet one may give thee a thousand lashes, for thou art ever at fault,” laughed a third. “But what matters it to us where they go? The road is open to them as to another. They should not go far wrong with a holy little priest to guide them.”
XLIV.
Upon the very morning that Doña Isabel and her companion left Guanapila, news which might perhaps have changed their movements had they heard of it flew like wildfire over the city. The convents throughout Mexico had been simultaneously opened under a decree of the Liberal government, and thousands of women dedicated to a cloistered life were thus set free to choose anew their destiny.
Women who for half a century, perhaps, had lived apart from life and love were returned to die amid the turmoils of a home where love for them had ceased, or to pass over seas to seclusion in strange lands. Others, in whom voices as of demons were but just then ceasing to tempt the memory with whispers of the world and its alluring joys, saw those joys actually within their reach, and with dismay sought to turn their eyes away, and prayed for strength to brave the perils of the deep, and bear the homesickness that in a strange country would torment the soul of the cloistered nun as surely as if she had been free to gaze upon the valleys and mountains of the native land she was about to leave forever. Younger women, those to whom the early years of seclusion had brought but disenchantment, were cruelly roused from the stupor of habit which was succeeding pain and presaging content, and with secret regret now clung to the vows they fain would have cast aside forever, or in a few—a very few—cases became that shunned and despised creature, a recreant nun. That night was the signal for horror and tears throughout the land. A wail arose from thousands of families, about to catch a glimpse of their consecrated dear ones, and then to know them banished forever. Such uprooting of ties, such griefs, such domestic woes, are inevitable in all great national or social revolutions.
A certain secrecy had been observed in the preparations for and execution of this stroke of policy, which had indeed been threatened and openly urged as a political necessity, but which in spite of the exile of the archbishops and the suppression of monasteries had been thought—even by those who acknowledged its probable benefits to the nation—too daring a measure ever to be carried into effect. It had been thought a dream of the arch-iconoclast Juarez. But he was a man whose dreams were apt to come true; and so it happened upon this summer night, striking admiration and consternation to the hearts of Liberals and Conservatives alike, for there was scarce a family of either party throughout Mexico that was not represented in the vast religious houses which abounded in every town. Into these, overcoming their superstitious scruples, the populace for the first time now penetrated, and learned something of the surroundings and consequent life of those whom for centuries they had supported as saints, dedicated to prayer and fasting for the sins of the people. To their disenchantment and surprise, the people found many of these gloomy piles filled with wide and beautiful chambers, where flowers and musical instruments stood side by side with the altar and prie Dieu, and parlors and refectories which opened upon gardens planted with the choicest and most luxuriant shrubs and flowers. There were kitchens too where the choice conserves were made which sometimes found a way to the outer world, and where doubtless other savory dishes were prepared for the saintly sisterhoods. In many of these retreats each nun had her servant, who came and went at her command, and life—if one may judge from the inanimate things and the low whispers that sometimes reached the outer air—was made a soft and sensuous prelude to the celestial harmony of eternity.
But there were others—and they were many—where the utmost austerity pictured by the devout secular mind was practised; where entered the poor daughter, or she whom the priests perceived had a true vocation, or a deep and agonizing grief, which would keep her faithful to the vows of poverty, of devotion, and obedience. There were none of those amiable daughters of rich families too bountifully supplied with girls, and for whom a dowry to the Church provided a safe and pleasant home, whence they might easily glide through this life into another,—where female angels would never be esteemed too plentiful,—but where were only the poor, the sorrowful, the despairing; and the well-filled vaults beneath the gloomy chapels attested how rich a harvest death had gleaned in those dreary abodes of penance.
For many days the officers in command at various points had been in possession of orders,—which it is to be conjectured were in many cases transmitted to the abbesses of the principal nunneries, that they might take advantage of this notice by quietly disbanding their sisterhoods and sending each member to her own family, or in communities to the United States or some transatlantic land. But the opportunity for moral martyrdom was not to be destroyed by a mere concession to convenience, and not in a single case was the knowledge acted upon,—except perhaps that in a few convents upon the designated night the nuns refrained from repairing to their dormitories, but prepared for exit, awaited the mandate praying in the lighted chapels; and where this occurred, the mothers superior afterward acquired reputations of special sanctity[sanctity] for the supposed spirit of prophecy which had moved them. But in the majority of these establishments, so absolute was the belief that the threatened invasion would never be attempted, or if attempted would bring upon the intruders the instant vengeance of the Almighty, that no change was made in usual habits, and an outward composure was maintained, which we may believe among the initiated at least disguised many a beating heart filled with genuine horror, or with a wild guilty anticipation from which it shrank in remorse. The world! the world! With a turn of the lock, with scarce more than a step, they would be in it; and then—then!
Guanapila was not, strictly speaking, a convent city. The few small retreats within it were vacated with so little commotion that, except in the houses to which the sisters were removed, nothing was known of the measure until the following morning. But in the much smaller town of El Toro there were whole streets lined on either side with high, massive, and windowless walls which were the façades of vast cloisters. It was with feelings of intense though repressed excitement that Vicente Gonzales placed himself at the head of a small force which was to demand entrance to those formidable but peaceful structures, while the mass of the troops remained at the citadel, ready upon a signal to enforce his authority, whether questioned by Church or people. It was true the populace had declared itself Liberal in sentiment ever since the defeat of Ramirez had left them under the guns of the Juaristas; but bred as they had been under the very shadow of these colossal monuments of the Church it was not unlikely that when their sanctity was threatened, the momentary conversion of the citizens to patriotism might yield to zeal in the defence of institutions that had appeared to them as unassailable as the very heavens.
Vicente Gonzales might readily have sent another to fulfil the dubious task before him,—in fact in most cases men of dignity unconnected with the army were chosen as peaceful ambassadors of the power that held the sword; but the hour had arrived for which this man had prayed and fought,—for which he would have prayed and fought had no individual suffering added sharpness to the sting of the thorn that for so long had tormented his nation. He himself, he resolved, would execute the decree that should sweep this great incubus from the land. Perchance among the released he might find one whom he had never consciously for one moment forgotten; he might see her, if but for a moment, as she passed in the throng. He had never ceased to see the yearning, despairing, yet resolute expression upon the young face of Herlinda Garcia, as amid clouds of incense it faded from his sight behind the iron bars that separated her and her sister nuns from the body of the church whence he had witnessed her living entombment. That was in a city far away; most likely she was there now. Yet there was a chance,—a mere chance!