Marianela 30
And Pablo, who was now kneeling on both knees, clasped his arms across
his breast.
"Oh! I do not know what I feel!" he went on, stammering, and turning
pale with agitation. "Every day I discover some new world, Florentina.
First I discovered the world of light, to-day I have discovered
another. Is it possible that you, so lovely--so divine--are to be mine,
the wife of my heart?"
He seemed about to fall to the ground in a fainting-fit, and Florentina
leaned forward to support him. Pablo took her hand, then lifting her
wide loose sleeve, he kissed her wrist and arm with eager passion,
counting the kisses.
"One--two--three--four--ah! I am dying!"
"Be quiet, stop," cried Florentina, standing up, and making her cousin
rise too. "Doctor Golfin will you scold him."
"Your bandage on, at once!" cried Teodoro: "Go to your room and keep
quiet."
The young man, in the utmost confusion turned to that side of the room
and brought his eyes to bear on the surgeon, standing by the sofa that
was covered with blankets.
"Are you here, Don Teodoro?" he said going up to him.
"Yes, I am here," said Golfin very gravely. "You ought to go back to
your room and put the bandage on again. I will go with you."
"I am perfectly well--but, of course, I will obey--only, first let me
see what is here."
He was looking at the blankets and, between them, at a ghastly head,
anything but fair to look upon. In fact Nela's nose seemed to have
become sharper, her eyes smaller, her mouth less well-formed, her face
more freckled, her hair thinner, and her forehead lower. Her eyes were
closed, she breathed with difficulty, her livid lips were parted, and
the hapless child seemed to be at her last gasp, with the look of death
on her face already.
"Ah!" exclaimed Pablo: "My father told me that Florentina had given
shelter to some poor creature. How good of her! You--poor child, you
may be thankful, for you have fallen into the hands of an angel!--Are
you ill? In my house you shall want for nothing; my cousin is the very
image of God on earth.--This poor child is very ill; is she not doctor?"
"Yes ..." said Golfin, "she must be left alone and hear no more
talking."
"Then I am gone."
Pablo put out his hand and laid it on the head which seemed to his
unaccustomed eyes the most terrible symbol of all human misery and
wretchedness. Nela raised her eyes and fixed them on her master. Pablo
felt as if they gazed at him from the depths of a tomb, so profound was
their __EXPRESSION__ of sorrow and despair; then Nela freed one hand from
beneath the coverings--a feeble, burning, rough little hand--and took
that of the young man. At her touch Pablo shuddered from head to foot,
and uttered a cry that came from his very soul.
There was a terrible pause--one of those lulls which precede the
catastrophes of life as they do the convulsions of nature, as though to
add to their solemnity.
Then, in a quavering voice that thrilled the by-standers with its
tragical sadness, Nela spoke:
"Yes, _Señorito mio_," she said, "I am Nela."
Slowly, and as if she were lifting some too heavy weight, she raised
her master's hand to her dry lips and kissed it--kissed it again--and
then, with a third attempt, her lips remained motionless on the lad's
hand.
They were all silent--looking at her. The first to break the silence
was Pablo.
"Is this you ..." he said, "you...." And the thoughts that crowded on
his mind checked his utterance of any. He would have liked to discover
some new language in which to utter them, just as he had already
discovered the two new worlds--of light, and of the love of external
beauty. He could do nothing but look at her--look at Nela and remember
that darkened world in which he had lived, his passions and the dreams
and errors of his blindness all wandering and lost in its obscurity.
Florentina, wiping away her tears, leaned over Nela to look into her
face, and Golfin, watching her and knowing too well what he saw,
exclaimed in a voice like a knell:
"It has killed her. The sight of you has killed her!"--then turning to
Pablo he said sternly: "Go, at once, to your room."
"Dying! dying so, without any cause!" cried Florentina in despair, and
laying her hand lightly on Nela's brow.
"María!" she said, "Marianela!"
She called her by her name again and again, leaning over her and
looking at her, as we might look over the margin of a well at some one
who has fallen into it and who is drowning in the depth and blackness
of its waters.
"She does not answer!" said Pablo, horror-stricken.
Golfin, watching her ebbing vitality, perceived that her pulse still
throbbed under his touch. Pablo bent over her, and putting his lips
close to her ear, he called her once more:
"Nela, Nela my friend--my dear!"
She turned a little, opened her eyes, and moved her hands. She looked
as if her spirit had returned from some far away flight. Seeing Pablo's
gaze fixed upon her with anxious curiosity, she turned aside abashed
and alarmed, and tried to hide her face as if she were a guilty thing.
"What is the matter with her?" asked Florentina vehemently. "Don
Teodoro, save her if you are a man.--If you do not save her you are a
charlatan!..."
The young girl's charitable instincts were spurring her to positive
rage.
"Nela!" repeated the lad in the deepest distress, and not yet recovered
from the shock which the sight of his little comrade had given him:
"You seem to be afraid of me--what have I done to you?"
The dying girl put out her hand to clasp Florentina's, and pressed it
to her breast, and then she did the same with Pablo's; afterwards she
once more pressed them both with all the strength she could command.
Her sunken eyes looked from one to the other, but her gaze was vague
and remote; it seemed to come from some inner depth of darkness and
despair, as though she were indeed the drowning wretch in the well,
sinking lower every instant. Suddenly her breathing became difficult;
she sighed, and clutched the two hands she held with convulsive energy.
Teodoro had turned the house upside down; had sent for medicines and
powerful stimulants, and was doing all in his power to arrest the swift
extinction of this young life.
"It is hard," he said, "to stop a drop of water that is trickling,
falling away--down, down, and within an inch or two of the great
Sea.--But I will try."
He sent away every one but Florentina, whom he kept in the room. But
the stimulants and irritants with which he endeavored to bring back
ebbing life to the frail body, only served to restore some little
muscular action, and in spite of this she was sinking every minute.
"It is cruelty!" cried Golfin desperately, as he snatched away the
mustard and the irritants. "We are tormentors and torturers. It is like
setting dogs on a dying man that the pain may keep him alive to suffer.
Away with it all!"
"And is there nothing to be done?"
"Nothing--but what God will do."
"But what is the matter with her?"
"Death!" he shouted with a delirious rage of grief, ill-befitting a
medical man.
"But what illness is it that has brought her to death?"
"Death!" he repeated.
"You do not understand me; I want to know of what...?"
"Of death.--How can I tell you whether it is shame, or jealousy, or
wounded pride, or grief, or disappointed love, that has killed her? A
strange catalogue of symptoms! No, no--we know nothing--nothing but
useless details."
"What! Doctors!"
"I tell you we know nothing--a little on the surface that is all."
"And this, what is this?"
"A sudden attack of inflammation--meningitis perhaps."
"And what is that?"
"A name.... Death!"
"But is it possible that any one should die--like this--without any
known cause, without any sort of disease? Oh! Don Teodoro, what is the
matter with her?"
"How should I know?"
"But you are a doctor?"
"Of eyes--not of passions."
"Passions!" exclaimed Florentina, looking down at the senseless girl.
"You--poor child--what passions are you dying of?"
"Ask your future husband."
Florentina stood lost in utter amazement.
"Poor thing!" she cried with a choked sob. "Can mere grief kill in this way?"
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