-Xix- · I

Taming

They walked on for a short while without saying anything. Teodoro Golfín, wise, prudent, and eloquent though he was, felt as clumsy as Nela, who was untaught by nature and very silent by habit. She followed him without resistance, and he accommodated his pace to that of the child-woman, like a man taking a little boy to school. At a certain point in the road where there were three huge, whitish, weather-worn stones resembling the bones of gigantic animals, the doctor sat down, and placing Nela standing before him, like one about to demand an account of grave misdeeds, took both her hands and said seriously:

“What were you going to do there?”

“I... where?”

“There. You know very well what I mean. Answer me plainly, as you would answer a father or a confessor.”

“I have no father,” replied Nela with a slight touch of rebellion in her voice.

“That is true; but fancy that I am your father, and answer me. What were you going to do there?”

“My mother is there,” she answered sullenly.

“Your mother is dead. Do you not know that those who have died are in the other world, or are nowhere at all?”

“She is there,” asserted Nela with conviction, turning her eyes sorrowfully to the spot.

“And you thought of going to her, is it not so? That is to say, you thought of taking your own life.”

“Yes, sir; just that.”

“And do you not know that your mother committed a great crime in killing herself, and that you would commit an equal crime by imitating her? Did no one ever teach you that?”

“I do not remember if they ever taught me such a thing. If I wish to kill myself, who can stop me?”

“Can you not understand of yourself, without anyone’s help, that God cannot be pleased when we take our own life?... Poor abandoned creature, left to your natural instincts without instruction, without religion, without any loving and disinterested influence to guide you!... What ideas have you of God, of the other life, of dying?... Where did you get the idea that your mother is there?... Do you call a few lifeless bones your mother?... Do you believe that she still lives, thinks, and loves you inside that cavern? Did nobody ever tell you that souls, once they leave the body, never return to it? Do you not know that graves, in whatever shape they be, contain nothing but dust, decay, and wretchedness?... How do you picture God? Like a very grave gentleman who sits up yonder with folded arms, ready to allow us to play with our lives, and in His place set up spirits, goblins, and phantoms of our own making?... Did your master, who is so wise, never tell you these things?”

“Yes, he told me; but since he will never tell me them again....”

“Yet since he will speak them no more, you attempt your life? Tell me, silly girl: by plunging into that pit, what good did you hope to find? Did you think you would fare better?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How so?”

“By feeling none of the things I feel now, but other and better things, and by joining my mother.”

“I see you are a greater simpleton than if you had been made to order,” said Golfín with a smile. “Now you must be frank with me. Do you bear me ill will?”

“No, sir, I bear ill will to no one, and least of all to you, who have been so good to me and have given sight to my master.”

“Good; but that is not enough: I not only wish you to love me, but to have confidence in me and tell me your little secrets. Very curious things happen to you, little rogue, and you must tell them all to me, all of them. You will see that you will not regret it; you will see what a good confessor I make.”

Nela smiled sadly. Then she bowed her head, and her knees giving way, fell upon her knees.

“No, silly child, that is not comfortable. Sit down beside me; come here,” said Golfín affectionately, making her sit beside him. “I fancy you were dying to find someone to whom you could tell your secrets. Is it not true? And you could find no one! Truly you are too much alone in the world.... Come, Nela, tell me first of all, why—pay close attention—why did you take it into your head to kill yourself?”

Nela answered nothing.

“I knew you joyful and apparently satisfied with life a few days ago. Why have you gone mad from one day to the next?...”

“I wanted to go to my mother,” replied Nela after a moment’s hesitation. “I did not want to live any longer. I am good for nothing. What am I good for? Is it not better that I should die? If God will not let me die, I will die of my own free will.”

“That notion that you are good for nothing is the cause of great misfortunes to you, wretched creature! A curse upon whoever put it into your head, or whoever they were that put it there, for they are many!... All are equally responsible for the neglect, the solitude, and the ignorance in which you have lived. That you are good for nothing! God knows what you would have been in other hands! You are a delicate, very delicate little creature, perhaps of immense worth; but confound it, put a harp into clumsy hands, and what will they do? Break it.... Because your frail constitution does not allow you to break stones and haul earth like those beasts in human shape called Mariuca and Pepina, must it be said that you are good for nothing? Were we born, by chance, to work like the beasts?... Have you no intelligence, have you no sensibility, have you not a thousand precious gifts that no one has known how to cultivate? No, you are good for something; you may yet be good for much, if you find a skillful hand that knows how to guide you.”

Nela, deeply moved by these words, which she understood by intuition, fixed her eyes on Teodoro Golfín’s rugged, expressive, and intelligent countenance. Wonder and gratitude filled her soul.

“Yet there is not a single mystery in you,” added the black lion. “Now the most golden opportunity has presented itself to you to escape from your wretched abandonment, and you have rejected it. Florentina, who is an angel of God, wished to make a friend and a sister of you; I know not another example of virtue and goodness like hers... and what have you done?... fled from her like a savage.... Is this ingratitude, or some other feeling we do not understand?”

“No, no, no,” replied Nela in distress, “I am not ungrateful. I adore Señorita Florentina.... I think she is not of flesh and bone like ourselves, and that I am not worthy even to look upon her....”

“Well, child, that may be true, but your conduct means nothing else than that you are ungrateful, very ungrateful.”

“No, I am not ungrateful,” exclaimed Nela, choked by sobs. “Well did I fear it... yes, I feared it... I suspected they would think me ungrateful, and that was the only thing that made me sad when I was going to kill myself.... As I am so stupid, I did not know how to ask the young lady’s pardon for running away, nor how to explain anything to her....”

“I will reconcile you with the young lady... I, if you do not wish to see her again, will undertake to tell her and prove to her that you are not ungrateful. Now open your heart to me, and tell me all you feel and the cause of your despair. However great the neglect in which a creature lives, however great her misery and loneliness, she does not tear away her own life unless there is a very powerful reason to hate it.”

“Yes, sir, that is just what I think.”

“And do you hate it?...”

Nela was silent for a moment. Then, folding her arms, she said with vehemence:

“No, sir, I do not hate it; on the contrary, I long for it.”

“A fine place you were going to seek it in!”

“I believe that after a person dies, she has all that she cannot get here.... If not, why is death calling us at all hours? I dream, and in my dreams I see all those who have died happy and contented.”

“Do you believe in what you dream?”

“Yes, sir. And I look at the trees and the rocks I have been used to seeing ever since I was born, and on their faces....”

“Oho!... Do the trees and rocks have faces too?...”

“Yes, sir.... To me all beautiful things see and speak.... That is why, when they all said to me: ‘Come with us; die, and you will live without sorrow’...”

“What a pity about such fancy!” murmured Golfín. “An entirely pagan soul.”

And then he added aloud:

“If you long for life, why did you not accept what Florentina offered you? I return to the same question.”

“Because... because... because Señorita Florentina offered me nothing but death,” said Nela with energy.

“How poorly you judge her charity! There are creatures so wretched that they prefer a vagrant, miserable existence to the dignity possessed by persons of a higher order. You have grown accustomed to a wild life in direct contact with Nature, and you prefer this coarse freedom to the sweetest affections of a family. Have you been happy in this life?”

“I was beginning to be so....”

“And when did you cease to be so?”

After a long pause, Nela answered:

“When you came.”

“I!... What evils have I brought?”

“None; you have brought nothing but great blessings.”

“I have restored sight to your master,” said Golfín, observing Nela’s countenance with the attention of a physiologist. “Do you not thank me for that?”

“Very much, yes, sir; very much,” she replied, fixing her tear-filled eyes upon the doctor.

Golfín, continuing to observe her without missing the slightest facial symptom that might serve to reveal the child-woman’s feelings, spoke thus:

“Your master told me that he loves you dearly. When he was blind, just as now that he has his sight, he has done nothing but ask for Nela. It is plain that for him the whole universe is filled by a single person: Nela; that the light he has been permitted to enjoy is of no use unless it serves to see Nela.”

“To see Nela! Well, he shall not see Nela!... Nela will never let herself be seen!” she cried with spirit.

“And why?”

“Because she is so ugly.... One can love the daughter of Canela when one’s eyes are shut; but when one opens one’s eyes and sees Señorita Florentina, one cannot love poor, dwarfish Marianela.”

“Who knows....”

“It cannot be.... It cannot be,” asserted the wanderer with the utmost energy.

“That is a whim of yours.... You cannot tell whether you will please your master or not until you put it to the proof. I will take you to the house....”

“I will not, I will not!” she cried, springing to her feet and standing before Teodoro, who was struck with wonder on seeing her spirited bearing and the fire in her black eyes, both tokens of a resolute nature.

“Calm yourself; come here,” he said gently. “We will talk.... It is true that you are not very pretty... but it is not becoming in a sensible girl to set so much store by outward beauty. You have an excessive self-esteem, woman.”

And paying no heed to the doctor’s remarks, Nela, as firm in her attitude as in her conviction, solemnly pronounced this judgment:

“There ought to be no ugly things.... No ugly thing ought to live.”

“Look here, my child, if all of us who are ugly were bound to make away with ourselves, how deserted the world would become! Poor, unfortunate simpleton! That thought of yours is not new. People who lived centuries ago held it—people of imagination like you, who lived close to Nature like you, and who like you lacked a certain light which is wanting in you through your ignorance and abandonment, and in them because that light had not yet come into the world.... You must cure yourself of that craze; you must realize that there are a host of gifts far more estimable than beauty—gifts of the soul that are neither withered by time nor subject to the caprice of the eyes. Seek them in your soul and you will find them. It will not happen to you as with your beauty, which, however much you search for it in the glass, you will never find. Seek those precious gifts, cultivate them, and when you see them grown great and flourishing, fear not: this anguish you feel will be stilled. Then you will easily rise above the humble position in which you find yourself, and by raising yourself will possess a beauty that the eyes will perhaps not admire, but which will serve you yourself for delight and pride.”

These sensible words were either not understood or not accepted by Nela, who, crouching down again beside Golfín, looked at him intently. Her little eyes, which surpassed the most beautiful in eloquence, seemed to say: “What is the use of all this learning, Sir Pedant?”

“Here,” continued Golfín, enjoying the subject exceedingly, and giving it in spite of himself the tone of a psychological thesis, “there is a main question, and that is....”

Nela had guessed his thought, and covered her face with her hands.

“There is nothing strange in it; on the contrary, what is happening to you is very natural. You have a sentimental, imaginative temperament; you have led with your master the free and poetic life of Nature, always together in innocent intimacy. He is prudent beyond measure, and handsome as a statue.... He seems like blind beauty created for the delight of those who have sight. Besides, his goodness and the greatness of his heart captivate and inspire love. It is not strange that he should have captivated you, who are a child almost a woman, or a woman who seems a child. Do you love him dearly? Do you love him more than all things in this world?...”

“Yes, yes, sir,” replied the girl, sobbing.

“Can you not bear the thought that he should cease to love you?”

“No, no, sir.”

“He has spoken loving words to you, and made you promises....”

“Oh, yes, yes, sir! He told me I should be his companion all his life, and I believed him...”

“Why should it not be true?...”

“He told me he could not live without me, and that even if he had his sight he would love me dearly always. I was happy, and my ugliness, my small stature, and my ridiculous appearance did not matter to me, because he could not see me, and yonder in his darkness he thought me pretty.... But afterwards....”