Marianela 26

 Marianela 26

"Yes, oh yes, Señor. He told me I should be his companion as long as he

lived--and--and I believed him."

 

"And why should you not?"

 

"He said he could not live without me, and that even if he ever could

see he would still love me. I was quite happy; I was ugly, and little,

and ill-made, but I did not care, for he could not see me; and in his

darkness he thought I was pretty.--And then...."

 

"Then," said Golfin gently, for he was filled with pity. "I see the

fault is all mine."

 

"Fault, no; for you did a good deed. You are very, very good. It

is good to have given him his sight. I know, I tell myself, that

it is good; but after that I must go away, quite away--for he will

see Señorita Florentina and will compare me with her--and Señorita

Florentina is as pretty as the angels, and I--it is like comparing a

piece of broken glass with the sun! Of what good can I be? I dreamed

that I ought never to have been born! Oh why was I ever born? God made

a mistake; he gave me an ugly face, and a miserable little body, and

such a large heart! But of what use to me is a large heart?--It is a

torment and nothing else. Woe is me! If I did not keep it under, it

would hate and detest a great many people. And yet I do not want to

hate people--I do not know how to hate them, and I would rather bury my

miserable heart than live to learn to hate; bury it, so that it should

not torment me any more."

 

"You are tormented by jealousy, and by your sense of humiliation. Poor

little one, you are indeed alone! Neither the knowledge you lack, nor

the home you have never had, nor the work you cannot do would avail to

save you from this. But tell me, what do you feel about the protection

and kindness that Florentina offers you?"

 

"Terror! Shame!" exclaimed Nela, opening her eyes wide in horror. "To

live with them--to see them constantly! For they will marry--my heart

tells me they will marry; I dreamed it, I know it."

 

"But Florentina is very kind; she will love you dearly."

 

"Yes, and I love her--but not at Aldeacorba!" cried the girl in wild

accents. "She came to rob me of what was mine--for he was mine--yes,

Señor, he was indeed. Florentina is like the Blessed Virgin--I will

pray to her, yes, Señor, and worship her; but I do not want her to take

away what is my own--and she will take it away--she has taken it away

already! And where am I to go to; what am I, what good am I in the

world at all? I have lost everything and I want to go to my mother."

 

She walked away; but Golfin seized her as a wild beast clutches its

prey, and held her tightly by the wrist. As he did so he felt her quick

and fluttering pulse.

 

"Come here," he said. "From this moment, whether you like it or no,

you are my slave. You are mine, and you are to do nothing but what I

tell you. Poor little soul, full of eager feeling, of fervent fancy,

frankness and superstition--you have a nature framed for all that is

good; but it has been ruined by the wild life you have led, by neglect

and want of training, and even the most elementary teaching! What

a hideous state of society we live in, which forgets its duties so

utterly, and leaves a precious creature like this perish!--Come here;

I am not going to let you quit my side. I have hunted you down and

caught you--caught you in a trap in the midst of the woods, in some

sylvan wilderness, and now I shall try to teach you and train you. We

will see if this rough diamond cannot be cut and polished. Ah! you do

not even know how ignorant you are; and I shall open a new world to

your mind, show you a thousand wonderful things that you have never

understood, though you have a vague and dim idea of some of them. Tell

me, cannot you feel in your soul a germ--how shall I explain myself?

a bud, of that rarest and most beautiful grace: Humility? The mother

of all the virtues; which, strange to say, makes us actually happy

when we see ourselves subordinate to others? Have you never felt the

impulse of self-denial, which makes us rejoice in sacrificing ourselves

for others, in making ourselves small that some one else may become

great?--But you will learn this, child; you will learn to lay your

ugliness at the feet of beauty, to look on with calm satisfaction and

joy at the triumphs of others, to fetter that great wild heart of yours

and bring it into subjection, so that you shall never feel envy nor

rage, but will love your neighbor as yourself, and rise superior to all

who may have injured or hurt you. You shall be made all that Nature

meant you to be when she endowed you at your birth. Hapless child! Born

in a Christian country, and not even a Christian! Your soul dwells in

a sort of poetic worship of nature.--You cannot understand me, little

one, but so it is. You are in the state of those primitive peoples

of whom the memory even hardly survives--governed by your instincts

and passions, while beauty is your dearest idol. Eighteen centuries

have been devoted in vain to spiritualizing humanity, so far as you

are concerned. And as to the selfish world which has left you to such

a fate!--What name does it deserve? You have lived in these mines, a

solitary soul, not taught a single letter, not even sent to an infant

school, though you would have learnt little enough there; not even

given the most imperfect teaching in that religion of which your nation

boasts. Why, you have never been inside a church except to stare at

some ceremony which to you had no meaning; you cannot even mutter a

prayer that you understand; you know nothing of the world, or of God,

or your own soul....

 

"But you shall know all this; you shall be a different creature. You

shall no longer be hapless little Nela, but a good, and honest, and

useful woman."

 

It would be rash to assert that Nela had understood all this speech,

which Golfin declaimed with such vehemence and fervor that he entirely

forgot the person to whom he was speaking. But the little outcast

felt a curious fascination, and the spirit of her friend's utterances

sank gently into her soul, and soothed it, and compelled her to

blind assent. His power over the untaught girl was that fateful and

irresistible control which a superior mind exercises over an inferior

one. Sad but unresisting, her head drooped against the surgeon's

shoulder.

 

"Come along," Golfin said resolutely.

 

Nela trembled from head to foot; a cold sweat stood on her face, and

Golfin felt that her hands were icy-cold, and her pulses beating

violently; but he failed to attribute this physical condition to her

mental anguish; he held her hand more firmly and repeated: "Come--it is

cold here."

 

His power over her was so great that she rose as he did, and they went

a little way together. But then Nela stopped, and fell on her knees.

 

"Oh, Señor!" she cried in an agony: "Do not take me away with you."

 

She was very pale, and looked wrecked by physical and mental misery.

Golfin tried to pull her up; but her helpless frame did not stir by

any strength of her own. It was clear she must be carried like a

senseless corpse.

 

"One day," said Golfin, "not very long since, almost in this very

place, I took you on my shoulders to carry you. Now I must do the same

it seems."

 

He lifted her in his arms; her hot breath seemed to burn his face. She

was drooping, fading, dying like a plant torn up from the soil, and

with its roots laid bare.

 

As they got nearer to Aldeacorba, Golfin felt some life returning to

the dead weight in his arms. Nela raised her head, and threw up her

hands in despair, but she said nothing.

 

They went in; all was silent. A maid servant came to meet them, and by

Teodoro's desire she conducted him noiselessly to Florentina's room.

 

Florentina was alone. By the light of a fast-dying lamp she was

kneeling on the floor, her elbows resting on the seat of a chair, and

praying with absorbed devotion. She was startled at seeing a man at her

door at so late an hour, but her alarm at once gave way to surprise,

when she saw the burden Golfin bore in his strong arms.

 

Her astonishment was too great for speech when the doctor, carefully

depositing his load on a sofa, said:

 

"I have caught her you see.--What do you say to that? Am I a good

butterfly hunter?"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XX.

 

A NEW WORLD.

 

 

We must now go back a few days.

 

When Teodoro Golfin first removed the bandage for a few moments from

Pablo Penáguilas' eyes, the boy uttered a cry of terror. Every impulse

made him shrink from all he saw; he put out his hands as though by

pushing away one object he could get away farther from the rest.

Luminous space was to him like a vast void into which he felt as if he

must fall; and the instinct of self-preservation made him close his

eyes to feel himself safe. However, his father, the surgeon, and the

rest of them, persuaded him to try once more, for all were equally

anxious; he looked again, but his terror was no less. The images

of all he saw, rushed into his brain with such sudden violence and

confusion--with a sort of storm and assault, as it were--that he felt

as if they were falling upon him bodily. The distant mountains seemed

to lie within reach, and the persons and objects that were near him

seemed, literally, to strike his eyes.

 

Golfin noted these phenomena with the most eager interest; this was

the second case of cure of congenital blindness which he had had the

opportunity of studying. The others hardly dared to be glad; they

were so bewildered and alarmed by the agitating effects produced on

the patient by the first exercise of the function of sight. To Pablo

himself it was a series of delightful experiments. His nerves and his

imagination were so seriously excited the surgeon thought it prudent to

compel him to rest.

 

"Now," he said, smiling, "you have seen enough for to-day. You cannot

step out of darkness into light, into the wide domain of the sun, as

you would walk into a theatre. This is a new birth, with pain as well

as joy in it."

 

Presently the young fellow was so eager to try his newly-found power

once more, that Golfin consented to open a crack, as it were, upon the

outer world.

 

"My whole mind," said Pablo, trying to explain his first impressions,

"seems bathed in beauty--a beauty I had never dreamed of before. What

were the things which rushed in upon me and filled me with terror? It

was the sense of size, of space, which I had never before conceived

of but in a very imperfect manner, and which dawned upon me clear and

terrible; as if I were being dragged up to the highest mountains and

down to the deepest abyss. It is all grand and beautiful, but it makes

me tremble. But I want to feel it all once more. All the glory and

loveliness that I gazed at has made me feel bewildered and humbled; it

was like some serene and majestic presence bending down to meet me.

The whole universe seemed to be rushing towards me and I was startled

and terror stricken--the sky looked like a vast space, watching,

listening--I cannot put it into words.--It was vacancy, but strangely

full of __EXPRESSION__. All that landscape of sky and mountains looked at

me, came down upon me--but it was all so cold, and grand, and stern.

Let me see something delicate, something gentle and lovable--Nela! Where is Nela?"