Marianela 19

Marianela 19

"Pablo and I," said she to herself, "have often talked of how we feel

when something sad or something pleasant is going to happen. Pablo told

me that just before an earthquake people have strange sensations; there

is something in the air, and the beasts feel it too. Is there going to

be an earthquake, I wonder?" And she knelt down and felt the ground

with her hand.

 

"I cannot tell. But something is going to happen, and I cannot doubt

that it will be something good.--The Virgin told me last night that

to-day she would comfort me. What has come over me? The Heavenly Queen

seems to be close to me. I cannot see her, but I feel her--before

me--behind me...."

 

She went close by the machines for washing the ore towards the inclined

plane, looking about her with eager eyes. There was nothing to be seen

but the arms and wheels of iron, toiling with fiendish shrieks amid the

hideous confusion of whirling cylinders, lashing the water to powder,

as it seemed, and breathing out dust and smoke. Presently, when she

had gone some little distance, she stopped; putting her hand to her

forehead, and fixing her eyes on the ground in all the bewilderment of

doubt: "The question is," said she to herself, "am I happy or am I sad?"

 

She looked up at the sky, half wondering to see it appear the same as

on other days--and it was a lovely day--and then she walked on faster,

to reach Aldeacorba as soon as possible. Instead of going through

the gallery in the mines and up the wooden steps, she kept above the

hollow way, along by the gutter that bordered the inclined tram-way,

intending to get out into the fields, and walk straight on by the level

road to the village. This way was much the prettiest, and she almost

always chose it, for that reason. It went by lanes full of sweet and

gay flowers, where crowds of bees and butterflies fluttered and sipped;

there were thickets of bramble loaded with the black fruit beloved

of children; clumps of cherry-trees overgrown with honeysuckles, and

enormous ilex, tall, spreading, densely shady, and proud, it would

seem, of their wide, black shadows.

 

Here Nela went more slowly, uneasy in herself, puzzled at her own

sensations, and at the anxious excitement that stirred in her. Her

rapid fancy presently hit upon a formula to express the state of her

feelings, and remembering having heard it said of such and such a one,

"the devil is in him," she said to herself: "The angels are in me,

the Virgin Mary is with me this day. What I feel are the wings of her

angels fluttering inside me. Thou art near me, Lady Mother, I see you

and yet I do not see you--as we see with our eyes shut."

 

She shut her eyes, and then she opened them again. She had just passed

a grove of trees and turned an angle of the road to go to a place where

she knew of a bramble copse, the greenest, prettiest, and most fruitful

in all the neighborhood. There were luxuriant ferns too, honeysuckle,

wild vine, and other climbing plants, all clinging and tangled together

in mutual dependence.

 

Nela heard a rustle in the brushwood close to her, and turning round

she saw--Merciful Heaven! There, in a frame of greenery, stood the

Immaculate Virgin herself--the face, the eyes, which in their gaze

seemed to have all the calm beauty of the sky. Nela stood silent,

petrified; with a feeling at once of devotion and terror. She could

not stir, nor cry out, nor hardly breathe, nor take her eyes off this

beatific vision.

 

It stood among the verdure, the face and figure to the waist perfectly

displayed. This was--yes, certainly--the very presence of the Maiden

of Nazareth, whose moral loveliness every painter has endeavored to

express by means of physical beauty, from St. Luke downwards through

eighteen centuries. Have not men indeed seen that sacred form with

the eyes of sense--with the eyes of Albert Dürer--of Rafael--of Van

Eyck--of Bartolomé Murillo? It was under the Rafaelesque aspect that

she now appeared to Nela, the most realistic of all, if realism can

mean the nearest approach of perfect human beauty to an artistic

representation of divine goodness. The oval of her face was less

narrow than the Seville painter's type, and had more of the tender

roundness of the Italian form. Her eyes, which were finely shaped, were

gentleness itself, with a softness and sweetness as far removed from

indifference, as from the lightning glow of the eyes of Andalucia; the

brows that overarched them were delicately curved, and as fine as if

they had been traced with a paint-brush. Her forehead was unshadowed

by any cloud of weariness or sadness, and her lips, which were rather

full, parted in a smile that revealed the pearliest teeth that ever bit

into the apples of Paradise. And so, without in the least intending

it, I have compared her to our Mother Eve--wide as the distance is

between her who yielded to the Serpent and her who set her heel on

his head; but the beauty of a lovely girl is enough to betray us into

such unlucky blunders. To put a finishing touch to this imperfect

description of the divine vision which had so utterly dismayed poor

Marianela, it must be said that her complexion was of that faded rose

color, or warm clear brown which gives an enchanting glow to the faces

of those glorious pictures which successive generations, of believers

and heretics alike, have worshipped in ecstasy.

 

After the first shock of surprise was over, the first thing that Nela

observed, and which confused her judgment greatly, was that the fair

Virgin wore a blue ribbon round her throat, a detail she had never

before seen in any picture or dream of the Virgin Mary; then she

perceived that her shoulders and bosom were covered by a dress in every

respect similar to that worn by other ladies; but the thing which

puzzled and disturbed her most was that the fair creature was picking

blackberries--and eating them.

 

She was beginning to draw accurate inferences from this remarkable

behavior, when she heard a loud man's voice calling:

 

"Florentina, Florentina!"

 

"I am here, Papa--here, eating blackberries."

 

"Naughty child--how can you like to eat blackberries? What next whim

will you take? Have I not told you that they are only fit for the poor

children that run about the country, and not for a young lady who has

been properly brought up.--Do you hear? And lived in good society."

 

Nela saw the speaker come towards them. He was a man of advanced middle

age and medium height, rotund, and with a ruddy countenance that seemed

to radiate satisfaction as the sun radiates light. His legs were thin,

his nose was large, and his person decorated with a variety of splendid

objects, among which a thick watch-chain was conspicuous, while he wore

a broad-brimmed hat of fine black felt.

 

"Come, come, child," said Don Manuel Penáguilas, for he it was,

"respectable people do not eat blackberries nor skip and jump about

like that. There, you have torn your dress--I do not care about the

dress, for I can buy you another as I bought you that--I only speak

because the people here who see you might think you had no dress but

the one you have on."

 

Nela, who by this time understood the case, looked at the young lady's

dress. It was good and handsome, but her face betrayed unmistakably

the transition--and a rapid one--from the position of a rich peasant's

daughter to that of a fine lady. Every detail of her attire, from her

shoes to her comb, stamped her as the daughter of the people in holiday

clothes. But the girl's natural grace and beauty were so transcendent,

that no deficiency, as measured by any conventional standard of

elegance, could dim them. It was not to be denied, however, that her

whole individuality cried out for a short peasant's skirt, hair dressed

in plaits with a bunch of poppies to adorn it with affected simplicity,

a sleeveless bodice, a coral necklace--in short, the costume which

good taste and the nature of things would have suggested, without any

admixture of the devices of the fine lady.

 

As the young girl came out from among the brambles, Don Manuel

perceived Nela, at the moment when she had just recovered from her

delusion, and he called out as he turned to her:

 

"Hallo! and who are you? Why, look Florentina, it is Nela, the little

body that waits upon your cousin. You remember--I spoke of her to you?

And how are you now-a-days?"

 

"Very well, Señor Don Manuel. And you.--How are you, Señor?" asked

Mariquilla without taking her eyes off Florentina.

 

"Perfectly well--as you see. This is my daughter.--Well, what do you

think of her?"

 

Florentina had just set out on a butterfly chase.

 

"My dear child, where are you going? What do you want now?" said the

father, visibly annoyed. "Now do you think it looks well that you

should be running after an insect like some poor child? You must not be

so wild, my child. Young ladies brought up in good society do not do

such things--never do such things...."

 

It was a trick with Don Manuel to repeat the last clause of his

sentences to give them emphasis.

 

"Ah! do not be cross, Papa," said the girl, returning from her

fruitless chase to shelter herself under the protecting brim of the

paternal hat. "You know how much I love the country and that I am half

crazy when I see trees and flowers and meadows. And in that dismal town

of Campó I never see anything of the kind...."

 

"Oh! but you must not say anything against Santa Irene de Campó; it is

a famous town where you find every comfort and convenience, and a great

deal of very distinguished society. It stands in the foremost ranks

of civilization--yes, of civilization. You can admire the beauties

of Nature while you walk properly by my side. I admire them too, but

without cutting capers or turning somersaults. You can tell when a

young person has moved in good society only by her way of walking and

looking at the scene around her. This way of calling out at every

minute: Ah! Oh! Look there, Papa!--How pretty!--and pointing to a fern,

perhaps, or an oak-tree, or a rock--a thorn-bush even, a brook--is not

at all in good taste--people will think you have lived in a desert. So

come and walk by me.--Nela will show us the way home, for, to tell you

the truth, I do not know where we are."

 

"If we turn to the left, past that old house," said Nela readily, "we

shall be there directly.--But here comes Don Francisco."

 

And, in fact, Don Francisco came on towards them, calling out: "The

chocolate is getting cold."

 

"What would you have my good fellow.--This child was so anxious

to scamper across the country that she would not wait, so we went

springing from bush to bush like goats--just like goats from bush to

bush."

 

"Well come in now, come home. Nela do you come too, and have some

chocolate," said Penáguilas, laying a hand on the child's head. "Well,

and what do you think of my niece? Is not she pretty?--Florentina, when

you have had your chocolate, Nela will take you and Pablo for a walk,

and you will see all the beauties of the neighborhood--the mines, the

wood, the river...."

 

Florentina sent a kind glance to the hapless little creature who, as

she ran by her side, seemed to have been formed by Nature expressly as

a foil and contrast to one of the loveliest and most perfect of her creations.