Carmen Ariza
Chapter 34 : Alas! for the baneful belief that years bring wisdom. How pitiable, and how cruelly det

Alas! for the baneful belief that years bring wisdom. How pitiable, and how cruelly detrimental to the child are an ignorant parent's a.s.sumptions of superiority! How tremendous the responsibility that now lay at his own door! Yet no greater than that which lies at the door of every parent throughout the world.

It is sadly true, he reflected, that children are educated almost entirely along material lines. Even in the imparting of religious instruction, the spiritual is so tainted with materialism, and its concomitants of fear and limitation, that the preponderance of faith is always on the material side. Jose had believed that as he had grown older in years he had lost faith. Far from it! The quant.i.ty of his faith remained fixed; but the quality had changed, through education, from faith in good to faith in evil. And though trained as a priest of G.o.d, in reality he had been taught wholly to distrust spiritual power.

But how could a parent rely on spiritual power to save a child about to fall into the fire? Must not children be warned, and taught to protect themselves from accident and disaster, as far as may be?

True--yet, what causes accident and disaster? Has the parent's thought aught to do with it? Has the world's thought? Can it be traced to the universal acceptance of evil as a power, real and operative? Does mankind's woeful lack of faith in good manifest itself in accident, sickness, and death?

A cry roused Jose from his revery. It came from back of the house.

Hastening to the rear door he saw Dona Maria standing petrified, looking in wide-eyed horror toward the lake. Jose followed her gaze, and his blood froze. Carmen had been sent to meet the canoe that daily supplied fresh water to the village from the Juncal river, which flowed into the lake at the far north end. It had not yet arrived, and she had sat down beside her jar at the water's edge, and was lost in dreams as she looked out over the s.h.i.+mmering expanse. A huge crocodile which had been lying in the shadow of a shale ledge had marked the child, and was steadily creeping up behind her. The reptile was but a few feet from her when Dona Maria, wondering at her delay, had gone to the rear door and witnessed her peril.

In a flash Jose recalled the tale related to him but a few days before by Fidel Avila, who was working in the church.

"Padre," Fidel had said, "as soon as the church is ready I shall offer a candle to good _Santa Catalina_ for protecting my sister."

"How was that, my son?" inquired Jose.

"She protected her from a crocodile a year ago, Padre. The girl had gone to the lake to get water to wash our clothes, and as she sat in the stern of the boat dipping the water, a great crocodile rose and seized her arm. I heard her scream, and I was saying the rosary at the time. And so I prayed to _Santa Catalina_ not to let the crocodile eat her, and she didn't."

"Then your sister was saved?"

"The crocodile pulled her under the water, Padre, and she was drowned.

But he did not eat her; and we got her body and buried her here in the cemetery. We were very grateful."

_Sancta simplicitas!_ That such childish credulity might be turned into proper channels!

But there were times when fish were scarce in the lake. Then the crocodiles became bold; and many babes had been seized and dragged off by them, never to return. The fis.h.i.+ng this season had been very poor.

And more than one fisherman had asked Jose to invoke the Virgin in his behalf.

Nearer crept the monster toward the unsuspecting girl. Suddenly she turned and looked squarely at it. She might almost have touched it with her hand. For Jose it was one of those crises that "crowd eternity into an hour." The child and the reptile might have been painted against that wondrous tropic background. The great brute stood bolt upright on its squat legs, its hideous jaws partly open. The girl made no motion, but seemed to hold it with her steady gaze. Then--the creature dropped; its jaws snapped shut; and it scampered into the water.

"G.o.d above!" cried Jose, as he rushed to the girl and clasped her in his arms. "Forgive me if I ever doubted the miracles of Jesus!"

Dona Maria turned and quietly resumed her work; but the man was completely unstrung.

"What is it, Padre?" Carmen asked in unfeigned surprise. "I am not afraid of crocodiles--are you? You couldn't be, if you knew that G.o.d is everywhere."

"But don't you know, child, that crocodiles have carried off--"

He checked himself. No--he would not say it. He had had his lesson.

"What, Padre?"

"Nothing--nothing--I forgot--that's all. A--a--come, let us begin our lessons now."

But his mind refused to be held to the work. Finally he had to ask--he could not help it.

"Carmen, what did you do? Did you talk to the crocodile?"

"Why, no, Padre--crocodiles don't talk!" And throwing her little head back she laughed heartily at the absurd idea.

"But--you did something! What was it? Tell me."

"No, Padre, I did nothing," the child persisted.

He saw he must reach her thought in another way. "Why did the crocodile come up to you, Carmen?" he asked.

"Why--I guess because it loved me--I don't know."

"And did you love it as you sat looking at it?"

"Of course, Padre. We have just got to love _everything_. Don't you know that?"

"Y--yes--that is so, _chiquita_. I--I just thought I would ask you.

Now let us begin the arithmetic lesson."

The child loved the hideous saurian! And "perfect love casteth out fear." What turned the monster from the girl and drove it into the lake? Love, again, before which evil falls in sheer impotence? Had she worked a miracle? Certainly not! Had G.o.d interposed in her behalf?

Again, no. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." And would divine Love always protect her? There could be no question about it, _as long as she knew no evil_.

The morning hours sped past. From arithmetic, they turned to the English lesson. Next to perfection in her own Castilian, Jose felt that this language was most important for her. And she delighted in it, although her odd little p.r.o.nunciations, and her vain attempts to manipulate words to conform to her own ideas of enunciation brought many a hearty laugh, in which she joined with enthusiasm. The afternoon, as was his plan for future work, was devoted to narratives of men and events, and to descriptions of places. It was a ceaseless wonder to Jose how her mind absorbed his instruction.

"How readily you see these things, Carmen," he said, as he concluded the work for the day.

"See them, Padre? But not with my outside eyes."

The remark seemed to start a train of thought within her mentality.

"Padre," she at length asked, "how do we see with our eyes?"

"It is very simple, _chiquita_," Jose replied. "Here, let me draw a picture of an eye."

He quickly sketched a rough outline of the human organ of sight.

"Now," he began, "you know you cannot see in the dark, don't you?"

"Yes, Padre?"

"In order to see, we must have light."

"What is light, Padre dear?"

"Well--light is--is vibrations. That is, rapid movement."

"What moves?"

"A--a--a--well, nothing--that is, light is just vibrations. The pendulum of the old clock in Don Mario's store vibrates, you know--moves back and forth."

"And light does that?"

"Yes; light _is_ that. Now that chair there, for example, reflects light, just as a mirror does. It reflects vibrations. And these are all of just a certain length, for vibrations of just that length and moving up and down just so fast make light. The light enters the eye, like this," tracing the rays on his sketch. "It makes a little picture of the chair on the back of the eye, where the optic nerve is fastened. Now the light makes the little ends of this nerve vibrate, too--move very rapidly. And that movement is carried along the nerve to some place in the brain--to what we call the center of sight. And there we see the chair."

The child studied the sketch long and seriously.