-Xiii-

Between Two Baskets

Nela closed her shells to be more alone. Let us follow her; let us penetrate into her thoughts. But first it will be well to give a little history.

Having been utterly destitute of instruction in her childhood, and having lacked also those affectionate promptings that guide the spirit surely to the knowledge of certain truths, Marianela had formed in her powerful imagination a very peculiar order of ideas, an extravagant theogony, and a most singular method of interpreting the causes and effects of things. Teodoro Golfín’s idea was just when he compared Nela’s mind to that of primitive peoples. As in them, feeling and the fascination of the marvelous predominated in her; she believed in supernatural powers distinct from the one supreme God, and saw in the objects of Nature vague personalities that were not without means of communicating with men.

Notwithstanding this, Nela was not entirely ignorant of the Gospel. It had never been properly taught to her, but she had heard it spoken of. She saw that people attended a ceremony they called mass, and had some notion of a sublime sacrifice; but her knowledge went no further. She had grown accustomed, through a contagious sentimentality, to reverence the crucified God; she knew that the crucifix was to be kissed; she knew besides a few prayers learned by rote; she knew that whatever one did not possess should be asked of God; but nothing more. The dreadful neglect in which her intellect had been left until the time of her friendship with young Penáguilas was the cause of this. And friendship with that extraordinary being, who from his darkness explored with the keen eye of his unwearied mind the problems of life, had come late. In Nela’s spirit what we may call her philosophy was already petrified—her own creation, a strange compound of paganism and sentimentality mingled and confused. We must add that María, despite living so far outside the common sphere in which we all dwell, showed almost always good sense, and knew how to judge wisely the affairs of life, as has been seen in the advice she gave to Celipín. The great worth of her soul explains this.

The most remarkable tendency of her mind was that which impelled her with secret passion to love physical beauty wherever it was to be found. Nothing is more natural in the case of a creature reared in deep solitude as regards society and science, and in open and constant communication, in familiar intercourse, so to speak, with Nature, so rich in imposing or graceful beauties, so full of light and color, of eloquent murmurs, and of diverse forms. But Marianela had mingled worship with her admiration, and following a law common also to the primitive state, had personified all the beauties she adored into a single ideal of human shape. This beauty was the Virgin Mary, an acquisition made by her in the domain of the Gospel, which she possessed so imperfectly. The Virgin Mary would not have been her dearest ideal if to her moral perfections she had not united all the charms, loveliness, and graces of the physical order—if she had not possessed a countenance nobly enchanting and alluring, a visage human and divine at once, which seemed to her the summary and figure of all the light in the world, of all the melancholy and sweet peace of night, of the music of brooks, of the grace and elegance of every flower, of the freshness of dew, of the gentle sighs of the breeze, of the spotless snow of the mountains, of the loving glance of the stars, and of the stately majesty of the clouds as they move solemnly through the vastness of the sky.

The person of God was represented to her as terrible and stern, more fitted to inspire dread than love. Everything good came from the Virgin Mary, and from the Virgin must be asked all that creatures stand in need of. God chided, and she smiled. God punished, and she forgave. This last idea is not so rare as to excite surprise: it reigns well-nigh supreme among the poorer and rural classes of our land.

Common also among them, when great neglect is joined to a fertile fancy, is the confusion Nela made between the beauties of Nature and that enchanting figure which sums up in itself almost all the aesthetic elements of the Christian idea. If into the solitude in which Nela lived fewer Christian notions had penetrated than actually did, if her separation from the focus of ideas had been absolute, her paganism would then have been complete: she would have worshiped the moon, the woods, fire, the streams, and the sun.

Such was the Nela who was reared at Socartes, and thus she reached the age of fifteen. From that time forth her friendship with Pablo and her frequent conversations with one who possessed so many and such sound ideas somewhat modified her way of thinking; but the foundation of her thoughts underwent no change. She continued to give physical beauty a certain august supremacy; she remained full of superstitions, worshiping the Most Holy Virgin as an epitome of all natural beauty, making of that person her moral law, and crowning her system with the strangest notions regarding death and the future life.

Shutting herself within her shells, Marianela spoke thus:

“Mother of God and my Mother, why didst thou not make me beautiful? Why, when my mother bore me, didst thou not look down upon me from above?... The more I look at myself, the uglier I find myself. What am I in the world for? What use am I? Whom can I interest? One alone, Lady and Mother mine, one alone who loves me because he cannot see me. What will become of me when he sees me and ceases to love me?... For how is it possible that he should love me, seeing this stunted body, this little bird-like figure, this freckled skin, this graceless mouth, this sharp nose, this faded hair, this person of mine which serves only for everyone to kick aside? Who is Nela? Nobody. Nela is something only to the blind lad. If his eyes are born now, and he turns them upon me and sees me, I shall fall dead.... He is the only one to whom Nela is not lower than the cats and dogs. He loves me as lovers love their sweethearts, as God commands that people should love one another.... Lady and Mother mine, since thou art about to work the miracle of giving him sight, make me beautiful or slay me, for I have no place in the world. I am nothing and nobody except to one alone.... Do I grieve that he should regain his sight? No, not that, not that! I wish him to see. I would give my eyes that he might see with his; I would give my whole life. I wish Don Teodoro to perform the miracle they speak of. Blessed be wise men! What I will not have is that my master should see me, no! Rather than consent that he should see me, Mother mine, I will bury myself alive; I will throw myself into the river.... Yes, yes; let the earth swallow up my ugliness. I ought never to have been born....”

And then, turning over in her basket, she continued:

“My heart is wholly his. This poor blind lad, who has taken the whim to love me dearly, is to me the first thing in the world after the Virgin Mary. Oh, if I were tall and beautiful; if I had the figure, the face, and the stature... above all the stature of other women; if I could become a lady and dress myself well!... Ah, then my greatest delight would be that his eyes should feast upon me.... If I were like other girls, even like Mariuca... how quickly I would seek the means to learn, to improve myself, to be a lady!... Oh, Mother and Queen mine, the only thing I have thou art going to take from me!... Why didst thou suffer that I should love him and that he should love me? It ought not to have been so.”

And shedding tears and folding her arms, she added, half overcome with sleep:

“Ah, how dearly I love thee, child of my soul! Love me dearly, love Nela, poor Nela who is nothing.... Love me dearly.... Let me kiss thy darling head... but do not open thine eyes, do not look at me... close them, so, so.”