-Xiv- · II

When the chocolate had been drunk, Don Francisco said:

“Out with all the young folk! My son, today is the last day Don Teodoro allows you out of doors. You three can go for a walk, while my brother and I take a look at the cattle.... Away with you, birds, take flight!”

They needed no second bidding. Invited by the beauty of the day, the young people flew to the fields.

-XV-

The Three

The young lady from the country was overjoyed in the smiling meadows, freed from the troublesome restraint of her father’s social rules; and so, as soon as she found herself at a safe distance from the house, she began to run merrily about and swing lightly from the tree boughs within her reach. She touched the wild blackberries with the tips of her fingers, and when she found them ripe gathered three—one for each mouth.

“This one is for you, cousin,” she said, putting it into his mouth, “and this for you, Nela. I will keep the smallest for myself.”

When she saw the birds fly past her, she could not resist making a charming pretense of flying, saying: “Where are those rogues going now?” From every oak tree she plucked a branch, and splitting open the acorn to see what was inside, tasted its bitterness and flung it far away. A botanist seized with the madness of classification could not have collected with greater eagerness than she all the pretty flowers that crossed her path, greeting her from the ground with their festive little faces. With the harvest of half an hour she adorned all the buttonholes of her cousin’s coat, Nela’s hair, and lastly her own locks.

“My little cousin,” said Pablo, “will like to see the mines. Nela, do you not think we might go down?”

“Yes, let us go down.... This way, señorita.”

“Only do not take me through tunnels, for I am terribly afraid of them. That I really cannot allow,” said Florentina, following them. “Cousin, do you and Nela walk much hereabouts?... This is lovely! I could live here all my life.... Blessed be the man who is going to give you the power to enjoy all these lovely things!”

“God grant it! They will seem far more beautiful to me, who have never seen them, than to you who are sated with looking upon them.... Do not imagine, Florentina, that I do not understand beauties; I feel them within me in such a way that I well-nigh supply the lack of sight with my thought.”

“That is wonderful indeed.... Say what you will, though,” replied Florentina, “you will meet with some fine surprises when you open your eyes.”

“That may be,” said the blind youth, who on that day was very laconic.

Nela was not laconic, but mute.

When they approached the hollow of La Terrible, Florentina admired the surprising spectacle offered by the chalky rocks left standing in the midst of the ground after the ore had been extracted. She compared them to great clusters of sweetmeats stuck together with sugar; then, after looking at them long a second time, she compared them to a colossal sculpture of dogs and cats turned to stone at the most critical moment of a furious brawl.

“Let us sit down on this slope,” she said, “and watch the mineral trains pass by, and see this too, which is very curious. That great rock in the middle has a huge mouth—do you see it, Nela?—and in the mouth a toothpick; it is a plant that has grown there of itself. It seems to be laughing as it looks at us, for it has eyes too; and farther off there is one with a hump, and another smoking a pipe, and two pulling each other’s hair, and one yawning, and another sleeping off a debauch, and another upside down holding up a cathedral with its feet, and another that begins like a guitar and ends in a dog’s head with a coffeepot for a cap.”

“All that you say, cousin,” observed the blind youth, “proves to me that with the eyes people see many absurdities, which indicates that that precious organ serves at times to present things disfigured, changing objects from their natural form into an artificial and fictitious one; for in what you have before you there are neither sweetmeats, nor cats, nor men, nor toothpicks, nor cathedrals, nor drunkards, nor coffeepots, but simply chalky rocks and masses of limestone earth smeared with iron oxide. Your eyes make a regular tangle of the simplest thing.”

“You are right, cousin. That is why I say it is our imagination that sees, and not our eyes. Nevertheless, they serve to let us know of some little things that the poor lack and that we can give them.”

As she said this, she touched Nela’s dress.

“Why has this dear Nela not a better dress?” added the young lady of Penáguilas. “I have several, and I am going to give her one, and another besides that shall be new.”

Abashed and confused, Marianela did not raise her eyes.

“It is a thing I cannot understand... that some should have so much and others so little!... I get angry with papa when I hear him use harsh words against those who want everything in the world divided equally. What are those people called, Pablo?”

“Those must be socialists, communists,” replied the youth with a smile.

“Well, they are my people! I am for having a division, and for the rich giving to the poor all they have to spare.... Why should this poor orphan girl be barefoot and not I?... It ought not to be suffered that even the wicked should be destitute, much less the good.... I know Nela is very good; you told me so last night, and your father told me so too.... She has no family, no one to look after her. How can people allow so much and such great misery to exist? The bread burns my mouth when I think that there are many who never taste it. Poor little Mariquita, so good and so forsaken!... Is it possible that until now nobody has loved her, nobody has kissed her, nobody has spoken to her as people speak to human creatures?... It breaks my heart to think of it.”

Marianela was thunderstruck and petrified with astonishment, just as at the first moment of the apparition. Before, she had seen the Most Holy Virgin; now she was listening to her.

“Look here, little orphan girl,” added the Immaculate One, “and you, Pablo, hear me well: I want to help Nela, not as one helps the poor one meets by the wayside, but as one would help a sister found unexpectedly.... Do you not say she has been your best companion, your guide, your leader in the dark? Do you not say that you have seen with her eyes and walked with her steps? Then Nela belongs to me; I will deal with her. I undertake to clothe her, to give her everything a person needs to live decently, and I will teach her a thousand things so that she may be useful in a household. My father says that perhaps, perhaps I may have to stay and live here for good. If so, Nela shall live with me; with me she shall learn to read, to pray, to sew, to cook; she shall learn so many things that she will be just like myself. What do you think? Yes, indeed; and then she will not be Nela, but a young lady. My father will not cross me in this. Besides, last night he said to me: ‘Little Florentina, perhaps before long I shall not be your master; you will obey another owner....’ Be it as God wills, I take Nela for my friend. Will you love me dearly?... As you have been so forsaken, living like the wildflowers of the field, perhaps you do not even know how to be grateful; but I will teach you... I will teach you so many things!...”

Marianela, who while listening to these noble words had been struggling with difficulty against the impulse to weep, could at last restrain herself no longer, and after sobbing for a moment, burst into tears. The blind youth, deep in thought, was silent.

“Florentina,” he said at last, “your speech does not resemble that of most people. Your goodness is immense and enthusiastic, like that which has filled the earth with martyrs and peopled heaven with saints.”

“What an exaggeration!” said Florentina with a laugh.

Soon after this the young lady rose to gather a flower that had caught her eye from afar.

“Is she gone?” asked Pablo.

“Yes,” replied Nela, drying her tears.

“Do you know something, Nela?... I fancy my cousin must be rather pretty. When she arrived last night at ten o’clock... I felt a great aversion toward her.... You cannot imagine how she repelled me. Now I fancy, yes, I fancy she must be somewhat pretty.”

Nela began to weep afresh.

“She is like the angels!” she exclaimed through a flood of tears. “She is as if she had just come down from heaven. In her, body and soul are like those of the Most Holy Virgin Mary.”

“Oh, do not exaggerate,” said Pablo with uneasiness. “She cannot be so beautiful as you say.... Do you think that I, without eyes, do not understand where beauty is and where it is not?”

“No, no; you cannot understand... how mistaken you are!”

“Yes, yes... she cannot be so beautiful,” declared the blind youth, growing pale and showing the greatest anguish. “Nela, friend of my heart, do you know what my father told me last night?... That if I regain my sight, I am to marry Florentina.”

Nela answered nothing. Her silent tears flowed ceaselessly, rolling down her sunburned face and dripping upon her hands. But not even by her bitter weeping could the measure of her sorrow be known. She alone knew that it was infinite.

“I know why you weep so,” said the blind youth, pressing his companion’s hands. “My father will not insist on forcing upon me what is contrary to my will. For me there is no other woman in the world but you. When my eyes see, if they ever see, there will be no other beauty for them than your heavenly loveliness; all else will be shadows and distant things that will not hold my gaze. What is the human countenance like, O God? In what manner is the soul mirrored in faces? If light does not serve to reveal to us the reality of our thought, what is it for? That which is and that which is felt, are they not one and the same thing? Form and idea, are they not like heat and fire? Can they be parted? Can you cease to be to me the loveliest, the most beloved of all beings on earth when I become master of the vast domains of form?”

Florentina returned. They spoke a little more; but after what we have written, nothing of what they said is worthy of being transmitted to the reader.