GUIDED RIGHT.
“And were you born blind?” asked Golfin, with eager interest, arising
not only from compassion.
“Yes, Señor, born blind,” replied the lad, with perfect simplicity.
“I only know the world by fancy, feeling and hearing. I have learned
to understand that the most wonderful portion of the universe is that
which is unknown to me. I know that the eyes of other people are not
like mine, since they are able to distinguish things by them--but the
power seems to me so extraordinary, that I cannot even imagine the
possibility of its existence.”
“Who knows ...” Golfin began. “But what strange scene is this, my
friend? What a wonderful place we are in!”
The traveller, who had been walking by the side of his companion,
stood still in astonishment at the weird view which lay before him.
They were in a deep basin resembling the crater of a volcano; the
ground at the bottom was broken and rough, and the sloping sides still
more so. Round the margin and in the middle of the vast caldron,
which looked even larger than it was in the deceptive chiaroscuro of
the moonlit night, stood colossal figures, deformed caricatures of
humanity, monsters lying prone with their feet in the air, with arms
spread in despair, stunted growths, distorted faces such as we see in
the whimsical wreathing of floating clouds--but all still, silent, and
turned to stone. In color they were mummy-like, a reddish bistre; their
action suggested the delirium of fever arrested by sudden death. It was
as though giant forms had petrified in the midst of some demoniacal
orgy, and their gestures and the burlesque grimaces of the monstrous
heads had been stricken into fixity, like the motionless attitudes of
sculpture. The silence which prevailed in this volcanic-looking hollow
was itself terrifying. One might fancy that the cries and shrieks of a
thousand voices had been petrified too, and had been held there locked
in stone for ages.
“Where are we, my young friend?” asked Golfin. “This place is like a
nightmare.”
“This part of the mine is called La Terrible,” replied the blind boy,
not appreciating his companion’s frame of mind. “It was worked till
about two years ago when the ore was exhausted, and now the mining
is carried on in other parts which are more profitable. The strange
objects that surprise you so much are the blocks of stone which we call
_cretácea_, and which consist of hardened ferruginous clay, after the
ore has been extracted. I have been told that the effect is sublime,
particularly in the moonlight; but I do not understand such things.”
“A wonderful effect,--yes--” said the stranger, who still stood gazing
at the scene, “but which to me is more terrible than pleasing, for it
reminds me of the horrors of neuralgia.--Shall I tell you what it is
like? It is as if I were standing inside a monstrous brain suffering
from a fearful headache. Those figures are like the images which
present themselves to the tortured brain, and become confounded with
the hideous fancies and visions created by a fevered mind.”
“Choto, Choto, here!” called the blind lad. “Take care now, Señor, how
you walk; we are going into a gallery.” And, in fact, Golfin saw that
his guide, feeling with his stick, was making his way towards a narrow
entrance distinguished by three stout posts.
The dog went in first, snuffing at the black cavern; the blind boy
followed him with the calm indifference of a man who dwells in
perpetual darkness. Golfin followed, not without some instinctive
trepidation and repugnance at an underground expedition.
“It is really wonderful,” he said, “that you should go in and out of
such a place without stumbling.”
“I have lived all my life in these places, and know them as well as my
own home. Here it is very cold; wrap yourself up if have you a cloak
with you. We shall soon be out at the other end.” He walked on, feeling
his way with his hand along the wall, which was formed of upright
beams, and saying:
“Mind you do not stumble over the ruts in the path; they bring the
mineral along here from the diggings above. Are you cold?”
“Tell me,” said the doctor, gaily. “Are you quite certain that the
earth has not swallowed us up? This passage is the gullet of some
monstrous insectivorous brute into whose stomach we miserable worms
have inadvertently crept.--Do you often take a walk in this delectable
spot?”
“Yes, often, and at all hours, and I think the place delightful. Now we
are in the most arid part--the ground here is pure sand--now we are on
the stones again. Here there is a constant drip of sulphurous water,
and down there we have a block of rock in which there are petrified
shells. There are layers of slate over there. Do you hear that toad
croaking? we are near the opening now; the rascal sits there every
night; I know him quite well. He has a hoarse, slow voice.”
“Who--the toad?”
“Yes, Señor; we are near the end now.”
“So I see; it looks like an eye staring at us--that is the mouth of the
corridor.”
No sooner were they out in the air again, than the first thing that
struck the doctor’s ear was the same melancholy song as he had heard
before. The blind boy heard it too; he turned round to his companion
and said, smiling with pride and pleasure:
“Do you hear her?”
“I heard that voice before and it charmed me wonderfully. Who is the
singer?”
Instead of answering, the blind boy stopped and shouted with all
the force of his lungs: “Nela! Nela!” and the name was repeated by
a hundred echoes, some quite close, others faint and distant. Then,
putting his hands to his mouth for a speaking-trumpet, he called out:
“Do not come to me, I am going that way. Wait for me at the forge--at
the forge!”
He turned to the doctor again and explained:
“Nela is a girl who goes about with me; she is my guide--my
_Lazarillo_. When it was dusk we were coming home together from the
great meadow--it was rather cool, so, as my father forbids my walking
out at night without a cloak, I waited in Romolinos’ cabin, and Nela
ran home to fetch it for me. After staying some little time in the hut,
I remembered that I had a friend coming to see me at home and I had not
patience to wait for Nela, so I set out with Choto. I was just going
down La Terrible when I met you. We shall soon be at the forge now and
there we must part, for my father is not pleased when I go home late,
and Nela will show you the way to the works.”
“Many thanks, my little friend.”
The tunnel had brought them out at a spot even more wonderful than that
they had left. It was an enormous gulf or chasm in the earth, looking
like the result of an earthquake; but it had not been rent by the
fierce throbs of planetary fires, but slowly wrought by the laborious
pick of the miner. It looked like the interior of a huge shipwrecked
vessel, stranded on the shore, and broken across the waist by the
breakers, so as to bend it at an obtuse angle. You could fancy you saw
its ribs laid bare, and their ends standing up in an irregular file on
one side. Within the hollow hull lay huge stones, like the relics of a
cargo tossed about by the waves, and the deceptive light of the moon
lent so much aid to the fancy that Golfin could have believed that he
saw among the relics of a ship’s fittings, corpses half devoured by
fishes, mummies, skeletons--all dead, silent, half-destroyed and still,
as if they had long been lying in the infinite sepulchre of the ocean.
And the illusion was perfect when he presently heard a sound of waters,
and a regular splash like the dash of ripples in the hollow of a rock,
or through the skeleton timbers of a wrecked vessel.
“There is water hereabouts,” he said to his guide.
“The noise you hear,”--replied the other, stopping,--“and which sounds
like--what shall I say--like the gurgle you make when you gargle your
throat?...”
“Exactly--and where is that gurgle? Is it some rivulet that runs near
here?”
“No, Señor; over there to the left there is a slope, and beyond it a
wide mouth opens in the ground, a cavern, an abyss without any known
bottom. La Trascava they call it. Some say that it runs down to the sea
at Ficóbriga, and others think that a river flows at the bottom of it
which goes round and round, like a wheel, and never comes out anywhere.
I fancy it must be like a whirlpool. Some again say that down there is
a constant gust of air coming out of the interior of the earth--as we
blow when we whistle--and that this blast meets a current of water;
then they quarrel, and struggle, and fight, and produce that noise that
we hear up here.”
“And has no one ever been down into this cavern?”
“It can only be got into in one way.”
“How?”
“By jumping into it. Those who have gone in have never come out again;
and it is a great pity, for they might have told us what goes on in
there. The other end of the cavern is a long way off from this, for
two years ago, when some miners were working they came upon a rift in
the rock where they heard the very same sound of water as you hear now.
This rift must, no doubt, communicate with the inside galleries, out
of which the blast blows and into which the water rushes. By daylight
you can see it plainly, for you need only go a few steps to the left
to reach the spot and there is a comfortable seat there. Some people
are frightened to go there, but Nela and I sit there to listen to
the voice down inside the cavern--for really, Señor, we can fancy we
hear it talking. Nela declares and swears that she hears words, and
can distinguish them quite plainly. I must confess I never heard any
words; but it goes on murmuring like a soliloquy or a meditation, and
sometimes it is sad and sometimes gay--sometimes angry, and sometimes
good-humored and jolly.”
“And yet I can make nothing of it but a gurgle,” said the doctor
laughing.
“It sounds so from this spot.--But we must not stop now, it is getting
late. You must be prepared to go through another gallery.”
“Another?”
“Yes--and this one branches off into two in the middle. Beyond that
there is a labyrinth of turns and zigzags, because the miners have to
make galleries which, when they are worked out, are deserted and left
to their fate. Go on Choto.”
Choto slipped into a little opening that looked scarcely bigger than
a rabbit-hole, followed by the doctor and his guide, who felt his way
along the dark, narrow, crooked passage with his stick. There could be
no better evidence of the delicacy and subtlety of the sense of touch,
extending beyond the skin of a human hand through a piece of senseless
wood. They went forwards, at first in a curve, and then round corner
after corner, and all the way between walls of damp, and half-rotten
planking.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” said the doctor, perceiving that
his guide took pleasure in similes and comparisons. “Of nothing so
much as the thoughts of perverse man. We represent the consciousness
of evil, when he looks into his conscience and sees himself in all his
vileness.”
Golfin fancied that he had used a metaphor rather above his companion’s
comprehension; but the blind boy proved that he was mistaken, for he
said at once:
“For those to whom that inner world looks dark and gloomy, these
galleries must be dismal indeed; but I, who live in perpetual darkness,
find here something which has an affinity with my own nature. I can
walk here as you would in the broadest road. If it were not for the
want of air in some parts and the excessive damp in others, I should
prefer these subterranean passages to any place I know.”
“That is an idea of brooding fancy.”
“I feel as if there were in my brain a narrow passage--a
rabbit-hole--like this that we are walking in, and there my ideas run
riot grandly.”
“Ah! what a pity that you should never have seen the azure vault of
the sky at mid-day!” the doctor exclaimed involuntarily. “Tell me,
does this dark hole--in which your ideas run riot so grandly--lead out
anywhere?”
“Oh yes! we shall be outside quite soon now. The vault of the sky you
said--I fancy it must be a perfect, equal curve, which looks as if we
could touch it with our hands, but we cannot really.”
As he spoke they got out of the tunnel; Golfin drawing a deep breath of
relief, like a man who has cast off a burthen, exclaimed as he looked
up at the heavens:
“Thank God that I see you once more stars of the firmament. Never have
you seemed to me more beautiful than at this moment.”
“As I was going along,” said the blind boy, holding out his hand
which held a stone, “I picked up this piece of crystal--now do you
mean to say that these crystals, which to my touch are so sharply cut,
so smooth and so neatly packed side by side, are not a very beautiful
thing? They seem so to me at any rate.” And as he spoke he broke off
some of the crystals.
“My dear fellow,” said the doctor with great feeling and compassion,
“it is sad indeed that you should not be able to know that this stone
is hardly worth looking at, while over our heads there hang the myriads
of marvellous lamps that sparkle in the heavens.” The boy threw back
his head and said in a voice of deep regret:
“Is it true that you are there, you little stars?”
“God is infinitely great and merciful,” said Golfin, laying his hand on
his young companion’s shoulder. “Who knows--who can say--much stranger
things have happened--are happening every day.” As he spoke, he looked
close into his face, trying to see the lad’s eyes by the dim light;
fixed and sightless, he turned them in the direction in which he heard
the speaker’s voice.
“There is no hope,” Golfin muttered.
They had come out on an open space. The moon, rising higher and
higher, illuminated undulating meadows and high slopes, which looked
like the ramparts of some immense fortification.--To the left, on a
level plateau, the doctor saw a group of white houses crowning the
slope.
“There, to the left,” said the boy, “is my home--up at the top. Do
you know that those three houses are what remain of the village of
Aldeacorba de Suso. All the rest has been pulled down at different
times in order to dig mines; all the soil underneath is iron ore, and
our fore-fathers lived over millions of wealth without knowing it.”
He was still speaking when a girl came running to meet them, a tiny
scrap of a child, swift of foot and slightly built.
“Nela, Nela!” cried the blind boy. “Have you brought me a cloak?”
“Here it is,” said the girl, putting it over his shoulders.
“Is this the songstress? Do you know you have a lovely voice?”
“Oh!” exclaimed the boy, in a tone of innocent admiration, “she sings
beautifully! Now, Mariquilla, you must show this gentleman the way to
the works, and I must go home. I can hear my father’s voice already;
he is coming to look for me, and he will be sure to scold me.... I am
here, I am coming!”
“Make haste in, my boy!” said Golfin, shaking hands with him. “The air
is fresh, and you might take cold. Many thanks for your company. I hope
we may be good friends, for I shall be here some little time. I am the
brother of Cárlos Golfin, the engineer of the mines.”
“Oh! indeed.... Don Cárlos is a great friend of my father’s. He has
been expecting you these two days.”
“I arrived this evening at the station at Villamojada, and they told
me that Socartes was not far, and that I could come up on foot. So, as
I like to see the country and get exercise, and as they told me it was
‘on, straight on,’ I set out, and sent my luggage in a cart. You saw
how I had lost my way--but there is no evil out of which good does not
come.... I have made your acquaintance, and we shall be friends, very
good friends perhaps. Go in, good-bye; get home quickly, for the autumn
evenings are not good for you. The little Señora here will be so good
as to guide me.”
“It is not more than a quarter of an hour’s walk to the works, quite a
short way. But take care not to stumble over the rails, and look out
as you cross the inclined plane. There often are trucks on the road,
and in this damp weather the ground is like soap.--Good-bye, Caballero,
and my very good friend.--Good-night.” He went up the slope by a
narrow flight of steps cut in the soil and squared by beams of wood;
Golfin went straight on, guided by Nela. Does what they said deserve a
separate chapter? In case it should, I will give it one.