Hearts of Three 25
Blindfold for a number of miles at the last, the prisoners, still
blindfolded, were led into the cave where the Cruel Justice reigned.
When the bandages were removed, they found themselves in a vast and
lofty cavern, lighted by many torches, and, confronting them, a blind
and white-haired man in sackcloth seated on a rock-hewn throne, with,
beneath him, her shoulder at his knees, a pretty mestiza woman.
The blind man spoke, and in his voice was the thin and bell-like silver
of age and weary wisdom.
“The Cruel Justice has been invoked. Speak! Who demands decision and
equity?”
All held back, and not even the Jefe could summon heart of courage to
protest against Cordilleras law.
“There is a woman present,” continued the Blind Brigand. “Let her speak
first. All mortal men and women are guilty of something or else are
charged by their fellows with some guilt.”
Henry and Francis were for with-straining her, but with an equal smile
to them she addressed the Cruel Just One in clear and ringing tones:
“I only have aided the man I am engaged to marry to escape from death
for a murder he did not commit.”
“You have spoken,” said the Blind Brigand. “Come forward to me.”
Piloted by sackcloth men, while the two Morgans who loved her were
restless and perturbed, she was made to kneel at the blind man’s knees.
The mestiza girl placed his hand on Leoncia’s head. For a full and
solemn minute silence obtained, while the steady fingers of the Blind
One rested about her forehead and registered the pulse-beats of her
temples. Then he removed his hand and leaned back to decision.
“Arise, Senorita,” he pronounced. “Your heart is clean of evil. You go
free.—Who else appeals to the Cruel Justice?”
Francis immediately stepped forward.
“I likewise helped the man to escape from an undeserved death. The man
and I are of the same name, and, distantly, of the same blood.”
He, too, knelt, and felt the soft finger-lobes play delicately over his
brows and temples and come to rest finally on the pulse of his wrist.
“It is not all clear to me,” said the Blind One. “You are not at rest
nor at peace with your soul. There is trouble within you that vexes
you.”
Suddenly the peon stepped forth and spoke unbidden, his voice evoking a
thrill as of the shock of blasphemy from the sackcloth men.
“Oh, Just One, let this man go,” said the peon passionately. “Twice was
I weak and betrayed him to his enemy this day, and twice this day has he
protected me from my enemy and saved me.”
And the peon, once again on his knees, but this time at the knees of
justice, thrilled and shivered with superstitious awe, as he felt wander
over him the light but firm finger-touches of the strangest judge man
ever knelt before. Bruises and lacerations were swiftly explored even to
the shoulders and down the back.
“The other man goes free,” the Cruel Just One announced. “Yet is there
trouble and unrest within him. Is one here who knows and will speak up?”
And Francis knew on the instant the trouble the blind man had divined
within him—the full love that burned in him for Leoncia and that
threatened to shatter the full loyalty he must ever bear to Henry. No
less quick was Leoncia in knowing, and could the blind man have beheld
the involuntary glance of knowledge the man and woman threw at each
other and the immediate embarrassment of averted eyes, he could have
unerringly diagnosed Francis’ trouble. The mestiza girl saw, and with a
leap at her heart scented a love affair. Likewise had Henry seen and
unconsciously scowled.
The Just One spoke:
“An affair of heart undoubtedly,” he dismissed the matter. “The eternal
vexation of woman in the heart of man. Nevertheless, this man stands
free. Twice, in the one day, has he succored the man who twice betrayed
him. Nor has the trouble within him aught to do with the aid he rendered
the man said to be sentenced to death undeserved. Remains to question
this last man; also to settle for this beaten creature before me who
twice this day has proved weak out of selfishness, and who has just now
proved bravely strong out of unselfishness for another.”
He leaned forward and played his fingers searchingly over the face and
brows of the peon.
“Are you afraid to die?” he asked suddenly.
“Great and Holy One, I am sore afraid to die,” was the peon’s reply.
“Then say that you have lied about this man, say that his twice
succoring of you was a lie, and you shall live.”
Under the Blind One’s fingers the peon cringed and wilted.
“Think well,” came the solemn warning. “Death is not good. To be forever
unmoving, as the clod and rock, is not good. Say that you have lied and
life is yours. Speak!”
But, although his voice shook from the exquisiteness of his fear, the
peon rose to the full spiritual stature of a man.
“Twice this day did I betray him, Holy One. But my name is not Peter.
Not thrice in this day will I betray him. I am sore afraid, but I cannot
betray him thrice.”
The blind judge leaned back and his face beamed and glowed as if
transfigured.
“Well spoken,” he said. “You have the makings of a man. I now lay my
sentence upon you: From now on, through all your days under the sun, you
shall always think like a man, act like a man, be a man. Better to die a
man any time, than live a beast forever in time. The Ecclesiast was
wrong. A dead lion is always better than a live dog. Go free, regenerate
son, go free.”
But, as the peon, at a signal from the mestiza, started to rise, the
blind judge stopped him.
“In the beginning, O man who but this day has been born man, what was
the cause of all your troubles?”
“My heart was weak and hungry, O Holy One, for a mixed-breed woman of
the tierra caliente. I myself am mountain born. For her I put myself in
debt to the haciendado for the sum of two hundred pesos. She fled with
the money and another man. I remained the slave of the haciendado, who
is not a bad man, but who, first and always, is a haciendado. I have
toiled, been beaten, and have suffered for five long years, and my debt
is now become two hundred and fifty pesos, and yet I possess naught but
these rags and a body weak from insufficient food.”
“Was she wonderful?—this woman of the tierra caliente?” the blind judge
queried softly.
“I was mad for her, Holy One. I do not think now that she was wonderful.
But she was wonderful then. The fever of her burned my heart and brain
and made a task-slave of me, though she fled in the night and I knew her
never again.”
The peon waited, on his knees, with bowed head, while, to the amazement
of all, the Blind Brigand sighed deeply and seemed to forget time and
place. His hand strayed involuntarily and automatically to the head of
the mestiza, caressed the shining black hair and continued to caress it
while he spoke.
“The woman,” he said, with such gentleness that his voice, still clear
and bell-like, was barely above a whisper. “Ever the woman wonderful.
All women are wonderful ... to man. They love our fathers; they birth
us; we love them; they birth our sons to love their daughters and to
call their daughters wonderful; and this has always been and shall
continue always to be until the end of man’s time and man’s loving on
earth.”
A profound of silence fell within the cavern, while the Cruel Just One
meditated for a space. At the last, with a touch dared of familiarity,
the pretty mestiza touched him and roused him to remembrance of the peon
still crouching at his feet.
“I pronounce judgment,” he spoke. “You have received many blows. Each
blow on your body is quittance in full of the entire debt to the
haciendado. Go free. But remain in the mountains, and next time love a
mountain woman, since woman you must have, and since woman is inevitable
and eternal in the affairs of men. Go free. You are half Maya?”
“I am half Maya,” the peon murmured. “My father is a Maya.”
“Arise and go free. And remain in the mountains with your Maya father.
The tierra caliente is no place for the Cordilleras-born. The haciendado
is not present, and therefore cannot be judged. And after all he is but
a haciendado. His fellow haciendados, too, go free.”
The Cruel Just One waited, and, without waiting, Henry stepped forward.
“I am the man,” he stated boldly, “sentenced to the death undeserved for
the killing of a man I did not kill. He was the blood-uncle of the girl
I love, whom I shall marry if there be true justice here in this cave in
the Cordilleras.”
But the Jefe interrupted.
“Before a score of witnesses he threatened to his face to kill the man.
Within the hour we found him bending over the man’s dead body that was
yet warm and limber with departing life.”
“He speaks true,” Henry affirmed. “I did threaten the man, both of us
heady from strong drink and hot blood. I was so found, bending over his
dead warm body. Yet did I not kill him. Nor do I know, nor can I guess,
the coward hand in the dark that knifed out his life through the back
from behind.”
“Kneel both of you, that I may interrogate you,” the Blind Brigand
commanded.
Long he interrogated with his sensitive, questioning fingers. Long, and
still longer, unable to attain decision, his fingers played over the
faces and pulses of the two men.
“Is there a woman?” he asked Henry Morgan pointedly.
“A woman wonderful. I love her.”
“It is good to be so vexed, for a man unvexed by woman is only half a
man,” the blind judge vouchsafed. He addressed the Jefe. “No woman vexes
you, yet are you troubled. But this man”—indicating Henry—“I cannot tell
if all his vexation be due to woman. Perhaps, in part, it may be due to
you, or to what some prompting of evil may make him meditate against
you. Stand up, both men of you. I cannot judge between you. Yet is there
the test infallible, the test of the Snake and the Bird. Infallible it
is, as God is infallible, for by such ways does God still maintain truth
in the affairs of men. As well does Blackstone mention just such methods
of determining the truth by trial and ordeal.”
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