-Xvii-

Fugitive and Pensive

The astounding and glorious news spread throughout Socartes. People spoke of nothing else at the furnaces, in the workshops, at the washing machines, on the inclined plane, in the depths of the excavations, and upon the highest peaks, in the open air, and in the bowels of the earth. Interesting commentaries were added: that at Aldeacorba it was believed for a moment that Don Francisco Penáguilas had lost his reason; that Don Manuel Penáguilas thought of celebrating the joyful event by giving a banquet to everyone who worked in the mines; and finally, that Don Teodoro deserved that all blind folk past, present, and to come should hold him as the apple of their eyes.

Nela dared not go to the house of Aldeacorba. A secret and powerful force kept her away from it. She spent the whole day wandering in the neighborhood of the mine, gazing from afar at the house of Penáguilas, which seemed transformed. In her soul an extraordinary joy was joined to a kind of shame of herself; the elevation of a noble affection was mingled with the intolerable prickings of a most sensitive self-love.

She found a truce to the distressing conflicts of her soul in Mother Solitude, which had contributed so much to the shaping of her character, and in the contemplation of the beauties of Nature, which always facilitated in an extraordinary manner the communion of her thought with the Deity. The clouds in the sky and the flowers of the earth produced in her mind an effect like that which the pomp of altars, the eloquence of Christian preachers, and the reading of subtle mystical treatises produce in others. In the loneliness of the country she thought and mentally expressed a thousand things, without suspecting that they were prayers.

Gazing toward Aldeacorba, she would say:

“I will never go back there... Everything is over for me now... What am I good for now?”

In her untutored simplicity she could perceive that the conflict in her soul arose from her inability to hate anyone. On the contrary, she was compelled to love everyone, friend and foe alike; and just as briars turned into flowers beneath the miraculous touch of a Christian martyr, Nela saw her jealousy and grief turn charmingly into admiration and gratitude. What underwent no change was that little passion we have called shame of herself, which prompted her to withdraw her person from all that might happen henceforth at Aldeacorba. It was a peculiar aspect of the very feeling which in educated and civilized beings is called self-esteem, however much in her it took the shape of self-contempt; but the relationship of that feeling to the one which plays so great a part in the actions of civilized men was apparent from its being grounded, like the latter, upon the most sensitive dignity. Had Marianela known how to use certain terms, she would have said:

“My dignity does not permit me to accept the cruel slight I am about to receive. Since God wills that I should suffer this humiliation, so be it; but I will not be present at my own dethronement. God bless her who by natural right is to take my place; but I have not the courage to seat her there with my own hands.”

Unable to express herself thus, her simple mind expressed the same thought in this other way:

“I will not go back to Aldeacorba.... I will not let him see me.... I will run away with Celipín, or go to join my mother. Now I am good for nothing.”

Yet while she said this, it seemed very sorrowful to renounce the divine protection of that heavenly Virgin who had appeared to her in the darkest hour of her life, spreading her mantle to shelter her. To see realized what she had so often seen in dreams, trembling with joy, and to be forced to renounce it!... To hear herself called by an affectionate voice offering her sisterly love, a beautiful home, consideration, a name, and comfort, and not to be able to answer that summons overflowing with joy, hope, and gratitude!... To reject the heavenly hand that drew her from that sink of degradation and misery to make a person of the vagrant girl, raising her from the level of domestic animals to that of the most respected and beloved beings!...

“Oh!” she cried, digging her fingers like claws into her breast. “I cannot, I cannot.... For nothing in the world will I appear at Aldeacorba. Virgin of my soul, protect me!... Mother mine, come for me!...”

At nightfall she went home. On the road she met Celipín with a little stick in his hand and his cap stuck upon the tip.

“Little Nela,” said the boy, “is it not true that Señor Don Teodoro carries himself like this? Just now I was passing by the pool of Hinojales, and I looked at myself in the water. By jove, I was struck dumb, for I saw myself with the very same figure as Don Teodoro Golfín.... Any day this week we are off to become doctors and men of mark.... I have already saved up what I needed. You will see whether anyone laughs at Señor Celipín.”

For three days more Nela remained a fugitive, wandering through the neighborhood of the mines, following the course of the river along its rugged banks, or burying herself in the quiet seclusion of the Saldeoro woods. The nights she spent in her baskets without sleeping. One night she said timidly to her companion in the kitchen:

“When, Celipín?”

And Celipín replied with the solemnity of a serious traveler:

“Tomorrow.”

The two adventurers rose at daybreak, and each went their own way: Celipín to his work, Nela to take an errand Señana had given her for the engineer’s maid. On returning, she found young Señorita Florentina waiting for her in the house. María was seized with fear on seeing her, for with her instinctive sharpness, or rather with what common folk call a presentiment, she guessed the purpose of that visit.

“Nela, dear sister,” said the young lady with eloquent tenderness, “what way of behaving is this?... Why have you not shown yourself up yonder all these days?... Come, Pablo wants to see you.... Do you not know that he can already say ‘I want to see such and such a thing’? Do you not know that my cousin is no longer blind?”

“I know it,” said Nela, taking the hand the young lady offered her and covering it with kisses.

“Let us go at once. He does nothing but ask for Señora Nela. Today you must be there when Don Teodoro takes off the bandage.... It is the fourth time.... On the day of the first trial—what a day!—when we realized that my cousin was born to the light, we nearly died of joy. The first face he saw was mine.... Come along.”

María dropped the hand of the Most Holy Virgin.

“Have you forgotten my sacred promise,” added the latter, “or did you think it was a jest? Ah, everything seems too little to me to show the Mother of God the great favor she has done us!... I would wish that during these days no one might be sad in all the universe; I would wish to distribute my joy, scattering it on every side as the sower scatters the seed; I would wish to enter every wretched dwelling and say: ‘Your sorrows are at an end; here I bring relief for all.’ This cannot be; God alone can do this. Since my strength cannot equal my will, let us do well the little we can do... and an end of words, Nela. Bid farewell now to this hovel; say good-bye to all the things that have shared your misery and your solitude. One grows fond of misery too, my child.”

Marianela said good-bye to nothing; and as none of its worthy inmates was in the house at the time, there was no need to linger on their account. Florentina walked out, leading by the hand her whom her noble feelings and Christian fervor had placed beside her in the family circle; and Nela let herself be led, feeling incapable of offering resistance. She fancied that a supernatural power was drawing her by the hand, and that she was being borne along inevitably, like souls carried to heaven in the arms of an angel.

That day they took the Hinojales road, the very one where the wanderer had seen Florentina for the first time. On entering the lane, the young lady said to her friend:

“Why did you not come to the house? My uncle said you had modesty and a natural delicacy which it was a pity had never been cultivated. Did your delicacy keep you from coming to claim what by the mercy of God you had won? It only means that my uncle is right.... How the poor gentleman carried on that day!... He said he did not care now if he died.... You see? My eyes are still red from so much crying. The truth is that last night my uncle, my father, and I never slept; we were forming family plans and building castles in the air all night long.... Why are you silent? Why do you say nothing?... Are you not glad, like me?”

Nela looked at the young lady, making a feeble resistance against the gentle hand that led her.

“Come on... what is the matter? You look at me in a strange way, Nela.”

So it was indeed; the eyes of the forsaken girl, wandering wildly from one object to another, had when fixed upon the Most Holy Virgin the glitter of terror.

“Why does your hand tremble?” asked the young lady. “Are you ill? You have turned paler than a corpse, and your teeth are chattering. If you are ill, I will nurse you myself. From today you have someone to care for you, to pet you, and to be fond of you.... It will not be I alone, for Pablo loves you... he told me so. We shall both love you dearly, for he and I will be as one.... He longs to see you. Just fancy the curiosity of one who has never seen anything!... But do not imagine... with his great intellect and an imagination that, as it seems, has anticipated for him certain ideas blind people do not commonly possess, from the very first moment he knew how to distinguish ugly things from beautiful ones. A stick of red sealing-wax pleased him greatly, and a piece of coal seemed horrible to him. He admired the beauty of the sky, and shuddered with disgust on seeing a frog. Everything that is beautiful produces in him an enthusiasm that resembles frenzy; everything ugly causes him horror, and he begins to tremble as when we are terribly frightened. I could not have seemed ill-favored to him, for he exclaimed on seeing me: ‘Ah, cousin, how beautiful you are! Blessed be God who has given me this light wherewith I now behold you!’”

Nela pulled gently at Florentina’s hand and then let it go, sinking to the earth like a body from which life has suddenly departed. The young lady bent over her, and said in an affectionate voice:

“What is the matter with you?... Why do you look at me like that?”

The orphan girl fixed her eyes with dreadful intentness upon the face of the Most Holy Virgin; but they shone not with an expression of resentment, but with a kind of suppliant anguish, like the last look of a dying creature who with her eyes implores mercy of the image of God, believing it to be God Himself.

“Lady,” murmured Nela, “I do not hate you, no... I do not hate you.... On the contrary, I love you dearly, I adore you.”

Saying this, she seized the hem of Florentina’s dress, and raising it to her parched lips, kissed it passionately.

“And who could believe that you hated me?” said the daughter of Penáguilas, full of bewilderment. “I know you love me. But you frighten me... get up.”

“I love you dearly, I adore you,” repeated Marianela, kissing the young lady’s feet; “but I cannot, I cannot....”

“What is it you cannot do?... Get up, for the love of God.”

Florentina held out her arms to lift her up; but without needing support, Nela sprang up at a bound, and retreating swiftly to a considerable distance, exclaimed, bathed in tears:

“I cannot, señorita, I cannot.”

“What?... In the name of God and the Virgin!... What is the matter with you?”

“I cannot go there.”

And she pointed to the house of Aldeacorba, whose roof was visible in the distance among the trees.

“Why not?”

“The Most Holy Virgin knows,” replied Nela with a certain resolute tone. “May the Most Holy Virgin bless you.”

Making a cross with her fingers, she kissed them. She was swearing an oath. Florentina took a step toward her. María, understanding that movement of affection, ran swiftly toward the young lady, and resting her head upon her bosom, murmured amid sobs:

“For heaven’s sake!... Embrace me!”

Florentina embraced her tenderly. Then, darting away with a light, supple, and sudden bound, the wild child sprang onto a neighboring bank. The tall grass seemed to part to make way for her.

“Nela, my sister!” cried Florentina in anguish.

“Good-bye, light of my eyes,” said Nela, looking at her for the last time.

And she vanished among the boughs. Florentina heard the rustling of the grass, listening to it as the hunter listens to the tread of escaping game; then all fell into silence, and nothing was heard but the dull monologue of country nature in the heat of midday—a murmur that seems like the whisper of our own thoughts radiating through all around us. Florentina stood absorbed, paralyzed, dumb, and deeply grieved, like one who sees the brightest illusion of her life vanish away. She knew not what to think of the occurrence, nor could her boundless goodness, which frequently disabled her judgment, explain it to her.

Long afterwards she was still in the same spot, with her head bent upon her breast, her cheeks burning, and her heavenly eyes wet with tears, when Teodoro Golfín chanced to pass by, walking with a calm step from the house of Aldeacorba. Great was the doctor’s surprise on seeing the young lady alone, in that interesting attitude of grief and desolation which, far from diminishing her beauty, heightened it.

“What ails the child?” he exclaimed with lively interest. “What is this, Florentina?”

“A terrible thing, Don Teodoro,” replied the young lady of Penáguilas, drying her tears. “I am thinking, I am considering what wicked things there are in the world.”

“And what are these wicked things, señorita?... Where you are, can there be any?”

“Perverse things; but among them all there is one that is the most perverse of all.”

“Which is that?”

“Ingratitude, Señor Golfín.”

And looking behind the hedge of brambles and ferns, she said:

“She escaped that way.”

She stepped onto the highest part of the ground to see further.

“I cannot make her out anywhere.”

“Nor I,” exclaimed the doctor with a laugh. “Señor Don Manuel told me you were given to chasing butterflies. Truly those rogues are very ungrateful not to let themselves be caught by you.”

“It is not that.... I will tell you, if you are going toward Aldeacorba.”

“I am not going, but coming from there, lovely lady; but that you may tell me something, whatever it may be, I will return with great pleasure. Let us go back to Aldeacorba: I am all ears.”