Marianela 4

Marianela 4

"Make haste in, my boy!" said Golfin, shaking hands with him. "The air

is fresh, and you might take cold. Many thanks for your company. I hope

we may be good friends, for I shall be here some little time. I am the

brother of Cárlos Golfin, the engineer of the mines."

 

"Oh! indeed.... Don Cárlos is a great friend of my father's. He has

been expecting you these two days."

 

"I arrived this evening at the station at Villamojada, and they told

me that Socartes was not far, and that I could come up on foot. So, as

I like to see the country and get exercise, and as they told me it was

'on, straight on,' I set out, and sent my luggage in a cart. You saw

how I had lost my way--but there is no evil out of which good does not

come.... I have made your acquaintance, and we shall be friends, very

good friends perhaps. Go in, good-bye; get home quickly, for the autumn

evenings are not good for you. The little Señora here will be so good

as to guide me."

 

"It is not more than a quarter of an hour's walk to the works, quite a

short way. But take care not to stumble over the rails, and look out

as you cross the inclined plane. There often are trucks on the road,

and in this damp weather the ground is like soap.--Good-bye, Caballero,

and my very good friend.--Good-night." He went up the slope by a

narrow flight of steps cut in the soil and squared by beams of wood;

Golfin went straight on, guided by Nela. Does what they said deserve a

separate chapter? In case it should, I will give it one.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III.

 

A DIALOGUE WHICH EXPLAINS MUCH.

 

 

"Wait a moment my child, do not go so fast," said Golfin, himself

standing still. "I want to light a cigar."

 

The night was so still, that no precautions were needed in striking the

light to guard it from the wind, and when the doctor had lighted his

cigar he held the wax match in front of Nela, saying kindly:

 

"Show me your face, little one."

 

He looked in the child's face with astonishment; her black eyes

shone with a red spot, like a spark, for the instant while the

match lasted. She looked a child, for she was but a tiny creature,

extremely thin and undeveloped; but she seemed like a little woman,

for her eyes had not a childlike __EXPRESSION__, and her face had the

mature look of a nature which has gone through experience and acquired

judgment--or will have acquired it soon. In spite of this anomaly,

she was well-proportioned and her small head sat gracefully on her

lean little body. You might have said she was a woman seen through a

diminishing-glass; or, again, that she was a child with the eyes and

__EXPRESSION__ of a grown-up person. In your uncertainty, it was hard to

say whether she was astonishingly forward or lamentably backward.

 

"How old are you?" asked Golfin, shaking his fingers free of the match

which was beginning to burn them.

 

"They say I am sixteen," said Nela, gazing in her turn at the doctor.

 

"Sixteen!" exclaimed Golfin. "Much less than that, child! You are

twelve at most to judge by appearances."

 

"Holy Virgin! They say I am quite a phenomenon," said the girl in a

tone of weariness of the subject.

 

"A phenomenon!" repeated Golfin laying his hand on her hair. "Well,

perhaps so. Now, come along--show me the way."

 

Nela set out resolutely, keeping but a little way in front of the

traveller but rather on one side of him, to show her just appreciation

of such illustrious company. Her nimble little feet, which were bare,

were evidently familiar with the ground they trod, with the stones, the

puddles and the thistles. She wore a plain frock of scanty breadth,

and the rudimentary simplicity of her garb, as well as the loose flow

of her thick, short hair, which fell in natural waves, had a stamp of

savage independence rather than of abject poverty. Her speech, on the

other hand, struck Golfin by its modest propriety, indicating a formed

and thoughtful mind. Her voice had a gentle inflection of kindliness,

which could not be the result of education, and her glance was restless

and shy, whenever she was not looking at the sky or the earth.

 

"Tell me," said Golfin. "Do you live in the mines? Are you the child of

any of the workmen employed here?"

 

"They say I have neither father nor mother."

 

"Poor little girl! and you work in the mines?"

 

"No, Señor. I am of no use at all," she replied without raising her

eyes.

 

"Well, you are modest, at any rate."

 

The doctor bent down to look closely at her face; it was small

and freckled all over with little mole-like spots. Her forehead

was narrow, her nose sharp but not ill-shaped, her eyes black and

brilliant, but their light shone but sadly. Her hair, naturally of

a golden brown, was dull for want of care, and from exposure to the

sun, wind and dust. Her lips were so thin as to be hardly visible, and

always wore a smile, but it was like the faint smile of the dead who

have died dreaming of Heaven. Nela's mouth was, strictly speaking,

ugly, still it deserved a word of praise from the point of view

expressed in the line from Polo de Medina: "A mouth is sweet that asks

for nothing."[1] In fact, neither in word, look, or smile, did the poor

child betray any of the degrading habits of the beggar. Golfin stroked

the sad little face, holding it under the chin and almost encircling it

with his big fingers.

 

"Poor little body!" he said. "Providence has not been over-generous to

you. Who do you live with?"

 

"With Señor Centeno, the overseer of the beasts belonging to the mines?"

 

"You do not seem to have been born in luxury.--Who were your parents?"

 

"They say my mother sold peppers in the market at Villamojada. She was

not married. She had me one All-Saints' day, and then she went to be

wet-nurse at Madrid."

 

"A highly estimable woman!" muttered Golfin ironically.

 

"And no one knows who your father was?"

 

"Yes, Señor," said Nela with some pride. "My father was the first who

ever lighted the lamps of Villamojada."

 

"Wonderful!"

 

"I ought to tell you," said the little girl with the gravity

befitting the dignity of history, "that when the town council first

had lamps hung up in the streets, my father was entrusted with the

care of lighting and cleaning them. I was nursed by a sister of my

mother's--not that she was married either, as they tell me. My father

had quarrelled with her--they all lived together as I have heard--and

when he went out to light the lamps he used to put me in his basket,

with his lamp-chimneys and cottons and oil. One day when he went up to

light the lamp on the bridge, he put the basket on the parapet, and I

rolled out and fell into the river."

 

"And you were not drowned!"

 

"No, Señor; for I fell on the stones. Holy Mother of God! I was a dear

little thing before that, they tell me."

 

"Yes, I am sure you were," said the stranger with an impulse of

loving-kindness. "And so you are still.--But tell me what next. Have

you lived long in the mines?"

 

"Thirteen years, they say. My mother took me back after my tumble.

My father fell ill, and as my mother would not do anything for him,

because he was wicked to her, he was taken to the hospital where they

say he died. Meanwhile my mother came to work in the mines. They say

the overseer discharged her one day because she drank so much."

 

"And your mother went.... Go on, I take a real interest in the good

woman; she went...."

 

"She went to a very big hole over there," said the child, standing

still and speaking with intense pathos, "and she threw herself in."

 

"The devil she did! That was coming to a bad end. I suppose she did not

come out again?"

 

"No, Señor," said Nela with perfect simplicity. "She is there still."

 

"And since that catastrophe, poor child," said Golfin kindly, "you

have stayed at work here. Mining work is very hard labor and you have

taken the hue of the soil; you are thin and ill-nourished. This life is

enough to ruin the strongest constitution."

 

"No, Señor; I do not labor. They say I am not good for anything and

never shall be."

 

"God forbid, silly child! why you are a treasure."

 

"No indeed," insisted the girl, "I cannot work at all. If I take up

ever so small a load, I fall down, and if I am set to any hard work I

faint away before long."

 

"You are as God made you--and if you fell into the hands of any one who

knew how to treat you, you would work very well."

 

"No, Señor, no indeed," she repeated as energetically as though it were

in her own praise that she spoke, "I am no good to any one--only in the

way.""Then you are a mere vagabond?"

 "No, Señor, for I attend on Pablo."