at the Southern Cross. The tourists who saw
her heterogeneous attire laughed. But when they looked into her
beautiful, sad face their mirth died, and a tender pity stirred their
hearts.

CARMEN ARIZA

BOOK 3

And while within myself I trace
The greatness of some future race,
Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
The present works of present man,--
A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

--_Coleridge._

CARMEN ARIZA

CHAPTER 1

The blanket of wet fog which had hung over the harbor with such
exasperating tenacity lifted suddenly, late in the raw fall afternoon,
and revealed to the wondering eyes of the girl who stood alone at the
rail of the _Joachim_ a confusion of mountainous shadows, studded with
myriad points of light which glittered and shimmered beneath the gray
pall. Across the heaving waters came the dull, ominous breathing of
the metropolis. Clouds of heavy, black smoke wreathed about the bay.
Through it shrieking water craft darted and wriggled in endless
confusion. For two days the port of New York had been a bedlam of raw
sound, as the great sirens of the motionless vessels roared their
raucous warnings through the impenetrable veil which enveloped them.
Their noise had become acute torture to the impatient tourists, and
added bewilderment to the girl.

The transition from the primitive simplicity of her tropical home had
not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The
convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering
about little Simiti had hurled her through the forest, down the
scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness
that, as she now stood at the portal of a new world, she seemed to be
wandering through the mazes of an intricate dream. During the ocean
voyage she had kept aloof from the other passengers, partly because of
embarrassment, partly because of the dull pain at her heart as she
gazed, day after day, at the two visions which floated always before
her: one, the haggard face of the priest, when she tore herself from
his arms in far-off Simiti; the other, that of the dark-faced,
white-haired old man who stood on the clayey river bank at wretched
Llano and watched her, with eager, straining eyes, until the winding
stream hid her from his eart