Nacha's disappearance caused her sister profound disgust. There were
not hours enough in the day for the stories she told the boarders about
her sister, in an attempt to discredit Nacha forever. The rancher was
thoroughly indignant, believing that he had been made a fool of. He had
always had his suspicions of city folk! And he stamped out of the house
booted and spurred as on the day of his arrival, confident that his
prompt withdrawal from this society was a means of getting even with
Cata, her sister, the students, who now openly tittered at him, and all
the rest of the capital's inhabitants.
A few days after taking a room in the house where Monsalvat was lodging
Nacha wrote to her sister. She assured Cata she need no longer fear
being compromised by her presence, since her desire to free herself of
Nacha's society had been accomplished, even though not quite as she had
planned. Her way lay open now to marriage with the doctor. Nacha would
never annoy her nor see her again, if that suited Cata's desires. As to
the rancher, Cata could throw all the blame on her in order to appease
him, say what she would of her, even attribute to her the whole plan of
the engagement. In this fashion Cata could wash her hands of the whole
affair, and the rancher need not leave the _pensión_. Nacha wanted to
ask him to forgive her for the trouble she had caused him; but she
reflected that he probably would not understand her nor would anyone
else for that matter. She had better let him think whatever had been
put into his head by her sister.
Nacha borrowed a little money from the lawyer who had so
disinterestedly come to her help before. This sum she hoped to return
when her mother's house had been sold and she received her share of
the inheritance. She paid Monsalvat's debts and used the rest of her
money to provide him with clothing, Monsalvat protesting all the while,
and even growing angry. But whenever Nacha threatened to leave him, he
meekly allowed her to do as she pleased.
Little by little he grew better. Nacha's presence was a powerful tonic.
Every afternoon they went out together for a walk to Palermo, to the
Zoological Gardens, to Lezama Park. In a few months Monsalvat had
recovered from his seriously weakened condition.
But while his general health improved, his eyesight grew steadily
poorer. Newspapers were now quite beyond him. He could read nothing but
books in large type, and then only with the help of a magnifying glass.
One morning he had to admit that even that had become impossible. The
objects in his room had receded, and came forward only to meet his
outstretched hands. He was living in a mysterious, all-enveloping, and
constantly deepening dusk. Up to that moment he had paid small heed to
this trouble, believing it would pass with the rest of his ill-health.
But on that morning the cruel thought came to him in all its
horror--night was falling on his life! He was alone in a vast solitude,
cut off from the world, from his friends, from Nacha. The realization
of what was happening to him taxed all his resources of courage. As
he searched the depths of his soul for the needed help, the world
seemed to grow small, as ephemeral as a glittering bubble. After all,
this last and greatest catastrophe was but a trifling detail in the
universal tragedy! The ideas he had lived by lost their significance
too in the slow, throbbing ache of this new pain. Death had already
claimed a part of him!
He had mentioned to Nacha on several occasions that his sight was dim,
and she, from her own observations had been well aware of it. Quite
recently he had taken to leaning on her arm when they went out walking.
But he could speak of this trouble only so long as he thought it
unimportant. Now he was afraid to speak of it. Doing so might make it
worse! He would say nothing; and when it had passed, he would remember
his fears and confess them to Nacha. But would it pass? Monsalvat tried
to use the power of suggestion on himself, fill his mind with hope, not
so much for the sake of the hope itself as to be able to live, to go on
living. How face the prospect of endless night? How endure the touch of
Death's hand on living eyes?
But when Nacha came to his room one morning she understood what had
happened. She did not utter a word; but Monsalvat felt that she had
sensed his fear, his certainty! As she stood beside him, emotion
mastered him for the moment. Holding out his arms to her, he drew her
to him.
"Nacha!" His voice broke and he made a quick gesture, hinting at the
cause of his distress.
"Don't feel so badly about it. We'll go to the doctor's this afternoon.
Surely they will get well...!"
But her eyes filled with tears and, though he could no longer see her,
she hid her face.
Nacha had already spoken of her fears to Torres, who called on his
friend and watched him intently. He gave Nacha little encouragement.
This had prepared her somewhat for an unfavorable report from the
specialist. But she had spent the interval between Torres' visit and
this call at the clinic in a state of increasing anxiety. Whenever she
was with Monsalvat she could not keep her eyes away from his, as though
her own clear sight must somehow summon his vision from the depths into
which it had retreated.
The specialist made a long and thorough examination, and shook his
head. There was no hope----
"Your case is not so serious, brother!" he said to Monsalvat. "I'll
give you some drops which will improve your general eye condition a
little."
"You think I will get better then?"
"A little--yes. It's quite possible. Science can do a great deal--and
nature too has her surprises. In short, there's no reason to despair.
I've seen worse cases!"
They left the clinic and went home. They must be alone for awhile!
In spite of the doctor's words, Monsalvat thought that despair would
choke him; and Nacha could not bear to watch his suffering without
trying to console him. Besides, an idea had occurred to her after her
recent interview with Torres, an idea, which even in the midst of the
dejection she shared with Monsalvat, had the power to bring her great
happiness.
On reaching the house they went to Monsalvat's room, and Nacha turned
the key in the lock to keep out the Moreno children.
"I want to tell you something," she began, helping Monsalvat to find a
chair, and sitting down beside him.
"How ghastly this thing is, Nacha!" he murmured.
"We'll find a way out. Every problem in life has an answer--if we can
only find it!"
She drew his head towards her and kissed him on the forehead, while her
hand caressed his neck and eyes. At any other time Monsalvat would have
been startled by such tenderness on her part. Only three or four times,
on the occasion of some surpassing emotion, had they ever kissed;
and then as brother and sister might. But now he did not know how to
interpret her caresses. Was it possible that Nacha loved him? Loved
him as a lover, and not as she had so persistently believed? His old
passion for her stirred within him anew, and an immeasurable sweetness
poured through his being. Yet he exclaimed:
"It isn't worth while living like this!"
The words were decisive for Nacha. She did not look at him but she knew
that he was waiting; and slowly, with tears in her eyes, she brought
her head close to his and kissed him on the lips.
"You must not say that," she whispered. "You must not say anything
against Life--the life God made!"
And strangely, in the midst of this new and overwhelming trouble,
Monsalvat tasted happiness. Nacha loved him! And Nacha for her part
wondered how it was that she had never before known how great was her
love for this man, who sat there blind and silent before her. It was
better that it should have come about in such a fashion, better that
her love had so delayed in revealing itself. Now it could soften the
blow Fate was dealing him!
"I want you to listen," she said. "I have found the answer...."
Monsalvat turned towards her as if to look at her. No words came from
his lips but his expression showed that he felt he was in the presence
of something surpassingly beautiful, something which was to consecrate
his life. His heart-beats quickened. In that silence he lived with
an intensity that crowded years into those few moments. His soul was
waiting, with an anxiety mixed with pain and faith and love; and there
was in this pause something of that breathless suspense which comes
before a storm, or descends upon an artist as he listens to the voices
crying out to him to create them in beauty.
In the darkness around him he heard Nacha's voice, warm with emotion,
but confident, resolute.
"Once, more than a year ago, you asked me something. I refused then,
though I loved you in my heart!... It was because I did not want to
hurt you, to spoil your chance in life. You had given everything you
had for me, and lost everything through me. Now I can ask the same
thing of you...."
She stopped. In a flash the future swept before her: she saw Monsalvat
as he was, sick, blind, forever incapable of earning enough to live on;
alone in the world, with nothing before him but suffering and endless
night. She grew pale and looked away.
"Now I want you ... to marry me ..." she said slowly.
He dropped his head and was silent. For some time neither of them
stirred. Neither cared to break that pause in which the tragedy of each
of their lives was to find its solution.
"No!" he said at last.
He heard Nacha sob.
"I love you too much, Nacha," he went on, "to accept such a sacrifice.
Stay with me, take care of me for a little while--yes--that I can
allow--but to let you unite your life that is still so young with that
of a broken invalid--no! I cannot."
His words, falling like so many blows on her heart, only strengthened
her resolution.
"I am not doing this out of affection nor out of gratitude. It is for
my own sake!"
"Nacha, you are young! You must not sadden your whole life--look at the
situation I am in. It is more than probable that I shall have hunger,
poverty at least, to look forward to."
"I can resign myself to all that. You told me once that it was
necessary to suffer--I have never forgotten what you said!"
"But a whole lifetime of it, Nacha!"
"A whole lifetime then! I accept it--I desire it. I want to redeem the
past--I want to deserve forgiveness...."
"Who is there to forgive you, Nacha?" he exclaimed, drawing her toward
him.
"I don't know--God, perhaps, if he exists. Life, against which I have
sinned--Love, that I have wronged--myself--myself especially: I need to
earn forgiveness from myself!"
And slowly, wonderingly, but inevitably, Monsalvat found her lips. She
was answered!
"Your life is mine, Fernando," she said gently, and Monsalvat knew from
her voice that she was smiling. "Your suffering is my suffering, your
joy my joy! Only death can part us."
And on those blind eyes a great light descended, infinite, filling the
world; and he knew that some of this radiance sprang from the depths of
his own soul, glorifying the years that lay before him, and before all
his suffering, hungering, striving human brothers....
EPILOGUE
Two years had passed since their marriage. Nacha had taken up the
management of her mother's house, and was proving skillful at a task
which her sister's flight to a distant province with her new husband
greatly simplified for her.
For Monsalvat her devotion knew no bounds. With Nacha beside him
he scarcely needed eyes; but he could not reconcile himself to his
uselessness. If he had only been able at least to go on working for
the poor and the oppressed! He had to content himself with gathering
together the children of the neighborhood and teaching them whatever
he could, without the use of his sight. It annoyed him not to be able
to teach them to read; for he believed that if ever the world was to
be made new it would be through love, and through books! Of these last
he gave as many as he could afford to the boys and girls who showed
promise of making good use of what he taught them.
The presence of this blind man was a strange note in the little middle
class boarding house. The students all felt a deep and affectionate
veneration for him. Many of them became his friends, and not a few his
true disciples. They read to him, and together they discussed articles
and books; but these young people liked best to hear him talk of that
vision which never ceased to shine in his darkness. At times his words
flamed with the passion for justice within him. At others they seemed
to pour out quietly and evenly like so many beams of that light in
which, to his listeners, beauty and truth was revealed.
Since he had come there to live, gross words and vulgar anecdotes had
vanished as if by magic. At the long dinner-table there seemed now
always to be something to talk about; for the students shared their
day's experiences and discoveries with Don Fernando, and the ideas they
had found interesting grew and became animate as they discussed them
with their blind host.
When they sat together in the evening, talking and dreaming of new
forms of beauty which might come into being on the earth, there would
come a hush as the blind man spoke of his gods: Life and Love, and
Mankind. His fervent words sowed faith in the young hearts of his
hearers.
So the days passed, and the night in which he lived was no longer
tragic as at first; but sweet, peaceful, and alive with familiar
voices. For him there gleamed little familiar stars in the depths of
that all-enveloping darkness.
Weeks and months passed; and the last days of July arrived in a tragic
year, feverish days when War stepped into the scene and claimed every
conversation wherever a group gathered. The sirens of the newspaper
buildings gave the news which set moving through the city crowds sick
with dread, bewildered, obsessed by images of war, delirious. Newspaper
headlines, infected by the general madness, grew to enormous size,
quivering before the eyes of their troubled readers; and the familiar
world was clad in the terrible strangeness of a bad dream.
Monsalvat could not escape learning the monstrous news. His face
drawn and pale, he listened to the reading of newspapers, countless
newspapers; and in the squares and public places he heard the distress
and horror of the throng. Yet even then his hard-won serenity did not
abandon him.
The Great War began, and one afternoon in August the students brought
in the news that the German cavalry was invading France. Most of the
students were already at the dinner-table. Those who came in cried out
from the doorway:
"It's begun. Germany has invaded French soil!"
The brutal news was a whip-lash to all those gathered there. They were
silent a moment, and then came a flood of words, words of amazement, of
imprecation, or of sympathy. One student jumped to his feet with a cry
of "_Vive la France!_"
But the blind man said nothing. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. At
last, at a chance word, he began to speak, and his voice betrayed his
distress, though serenity, optimism, illusion, still possessed him.
"This war is a monstrous crime," he said, "the greatest crime ever yet
committed on this earth. Not so much on account of the millions of
human beings it will destroy, as because it tears to shreds one of the
finest illusions ever dreamed by generous hearts."
A shadow passed over his face:
"But in spite of everything, let the infamy of this war be welcome!
_They_ have willed it, _they_ shall have it!"
His hearers looked at one another with questioning eyes. Then in a
flash they understood.
"Who are _They_?" "Those," he replied, "who, controlling forces, abuse
them; who, possessing plenty, let the hungry starve; who, enjoying
happiness, stir not a finger to make a better world, that all may have
their chance to live, and love, and give! The powerful, I mean, who
change life to death, and love to hatred!"
"But the Day _is_ coming," he cried. "This war is indeed the beginning
of _Der Tag_! I feel it coming--a part of it is here already within my
heart. I do not know how it is to come, whether little by little, or
suddenly, flamingly, like an avenger!"
"But I know that the Day is coming--the Day that will be sacred to
Justice!"
In the silence that followed, the young minds to whom he had spoken
thought of what such a day would mean, to each of them, to all whom
they knew; and the eyes of some of those who listened, dreaming and
desiring better things, grew wet....
At the far end of the table, Monsalvat, head erect, sat gazing at the
future, at what lay beyond the great Crime, at that Dawn whose splendor
would justify the hopes of the dead, and the efforts of the living.
And his night lifted and lightened with the radiance of innumerable
stars.
THE END
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
In the Spanish original version of this work the author quoted the
province of Córdoba, in Argentina. However, in the present English
translation the province is named Cordova. To avoid confusion with the
Spanish city of Córdova, in the present transcription the name has been
changed to Córdoba.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.