A DIALOGUE WHICH EXPLAINS MUCH.
“Wait a moment my child, do not go so fast,” said Golfin, himself
standing still. “I want to light a cigar.”
The night was so still, that no precautions were needed in striking the
light to guard it from the wind, and when the doctor had lighted his
cigar he held the wax match in front of Nela, saying kindly:
“Show me your face, little one.”
He looked in the child’s face with astonishment; her black eyes
shone with a red spot, like a spark, for the instant while the
match lasted. She looked a child, for she was but a tiny creature,
extremely thin and undeveloped; but she seemed like a little woman,
for her eyes had not a childlike expression, and her face had the
mature look of a nature which has gone through experience and acquired
judgment--or will have acquired it soon. In spite of this anomaly,
she was well-proportioned and her small head sat gracefully on her
lean little body. You might have said she was a woman seen through a
diminishing-glass; or, again, that she was a child with the eyes and
expression of a grown-up person. In your uncertainty, it was hard to
say whether she was astonishingly forward or lamentably backward.
“How old are you?” asked Golfin, shaking his fingers free of the match
which was beginning to burn them.
“They say I am sixteen,” said Nela, gazing in her turn at the doctor.
“Sixteen!” exclaimed Golfin. “Much less than that, child! You are
twelve at most to judge by appearances.”
“Holy Virgin! They say I am quite a phenomenon,” said the girl in a
tone of weariness of the subject.
“A phenomenon!” repeated Golfin laying his hand on her hair. “Well,
perhaps so. Now, come along--show me the way.”
Nela set out resolutely, keeping but a little way in front of the
traveller but rather on one side of him, to show her just appreciation
of such illustrious company. Her nimble little feet, which were bare,
were evidently familiar with the ground they trod, with the stones, the
puddles and the thistles. She wore a plain frock of scanty breadth,
and the rudimentary simplicity of her garb, as well as the loose flow
of her thick, short hair, which fell in natural waves, had a stamp of
savage independence rather than of abject poverty. Her speech, on the
other hand, struck Golfin by its modest propriety, indicating a formed
and thoughtful mind. Her voice had a gentle inflection of kindliness,
which could not be the result of education, and her glance was restless
and shy, whenever she was not looking at the sky or the earth.
“Tell me,” said Golfin. “Do you live in the mines? Are you the child of
any of the workmen employed here?”
“They say I have neither father nor mother.”
“Poor little girl! and you work in the mines?”
“No, Señor. I am of no use at all,” she replied without raising her
eyes.
“Well, you are modest, at any rate.”
The doctor bent down to look closely at her face; it was small
and freckled all over with little mole-like spots. Her forehead
was narrow, her nose sharp but not ill-shaped, her eyes black and
brilliant, but their light shone but sadly. Her hair, naturally of
a golden brown, was dull for want of care, and from exposure to the
sun, wind and dust. Her lips were so thin as to be hardly visible, and
always wore a smile, but it was like the faint smile of the dead who
have died dreaming of Heaven. Nela’s mouth was, strictly speaking,
ugly, still it deserved a word of praise from the point of view
expressed in the line from Polo de Medina: “A mouth is sweet that asks
for nothing.”[1] In fact, neither in word, look, or smile, did the poor
child betray any of the degrading habits of the beggar. Golfin stroked
the sad little face, holding it under the chin and almost encircling it
with his big fingers.
“Poor little body!” he said. “Providence has not been over-generous to
you. Who do you live with?”
“With Señor Centeno, the overseer of the beasts belonging to the mines?”
“You do not seem to have been born in luxury.--Who were your parents?”
“They say my mother sold peppers in the market at Villamojada. She was
not married. She had me one All-Saints’ day, and then she went to be
wet-nurse at Madrid.”
“A highly estimable woman!” muttered Golfin ironically.
“And no one knows who your father was?”
“Yes, Señor,” said Nela with some pride. “My father was the first who
ever lighted the lamps of Villamojada.”
“Wonderful!”
“I ought to tell you,” said the little girl with the gravity
befitting the dignity of history, “that when the town council first
had lamps hung up in the streets, my father was entrusted with the
care of lighting and cleaning them. I was nursed by a sister of my
mother’s--not that she was married either, as they tell me. My father
had quarrelled with her--they all lived together as I have heard--and
when he went out to light the lamps he used to put me in his basket,
with his lamp-chimneys and cottons and oil. One day when he went up to
light the lamp on the bridge, he put the basket on the parapet, and I
rolled out and fell into the river.”
“And you were not drowned!”
“No, Señor; for I fell on the stones. Holy Mother of God! I was a dear
little thing before that, they tell me.”
“Yes, I am sure you were,” said the stranger with an impulse of
loving-kindness. “And so you are still.--But tell me what next. Have
you lived long in the mines?”
“Thirteen years, they say. My mother took me back after my tumble.
My father fell ill, and as my mother would not do anything for him,
because he was wicked to her, he was taken to the hospital where they
say he died. Meanwhile my mother came to work in the mines. They say
the overseer discharged her one day because she drank so much.”
“And your mother went.... Go on, I take a real interest in the good
woman; she went....”
“She went to a very big hole over there,” said the child, standing
still and speaking with intense pathos, “and she threw herself in.”
“The devil she did! That was coming to a bad end. I suppose she did not
come out again?”
“No, Señor,” said Nela with perfect simplicity. “She is there still.”
“And since that catastrophe, poor child,” said Golfin kindly, “you
have stayed at work here. Mining work is very hard labor and you have
taken the hue of the soil; you are thin and ill-nourished. This life is
enough to ruin the strongest constitution.”
“No, Señor; I do not labor. They say I am not good for anything and
never shall be.”
“God forbid, silly child! why you are a treasure.”
“No indeed,” insisted the girl, “I cannot work at all. If I take up
ever so small a load, I fall down, and if I am set to any hard work I
faint away before long.”
“You are as God made you--and if you fell into the hands of any one who
knew how to treat you, you would work very well.”
“No, Señor, no indeed,” she repeated as energetically as though it were
in her own praise that she spoke, “I am no good to any one--only in the
way.”
“Then you are a mere vagabond?”
“No, Señor, for I attend on Pablo.”
“And who is Pablo?”
“That young blind gentleman, whom you met in La Terrible. I have been
his guide for the last year and a half. I take him everywhere; we go
for long walks in the fields.”
“He seems a good fellow, this Pablo.”
Nela again stood still and looked up at the doctor, and her face glowed
with enthusiasm as she exclaimed:
“Holy Virgin! He is the best and dearest creature in the whole world!
Poor fellow!--and he is cleverer without eyes than all those who can
see.”
“Yes, I liked your master. Does he belong to the place?”
“Yes, Señor; he is the only son of Don Francisco Penáguilas, a very
kind and very rich gentleman who lives in the houses at Aldeacorba.”
“Tell me, why are you called Nela? What does it mean?”
The child shrugged her shoulders, and after a pause, she said:
“My mother’s name was María Canela, and so she was called Nela; they
say it is a dog’s name. My name is María.”
“Mariquita.”
“María Nela they call me, or sometimes Canela’s girl, and some say
Marianela, and some merely Nela.”
“And your master, is he fond of you?”
“Yes, Señor; he is very good to me. He says he sees with my eyes, for I
take him everywhere, and tell him what everything is like.”
“Everything that he cannot see?” The stranger seemed much interested in
this conversation.
“Yes--I tell him everything. He asks me what a star is like, and I
tell him all about it in such a way that it is the same to him as
if he could see it. I explain it all--what the planets are like,
and the clouds, and the sky, and the water, and the lightning, the
weather-cocks, the butterflies, the mists, the snails, and the shapes
and faces of men and animals. I tell him what is ugly and what is
pretty, and so he gets to understand everything.”
“I see; your work is no trifle. What is ugly and what is pretty! There
is nothing.... You decide upon that question? Tell me, can you read?”
“No, Señor.--I tell you I am good for nothing.”
She said this in a tone of perfect conviction, and the gesture that
emphasized her protestation seemed to add: “You must be a great
blockhead to fancy that I am good for anything.”
“Would you not be glad if your friend, by the grace of God, should
recover his sight?”
The girl did not answer at once, but after a pause she said:
“It is impossible.”
“No, not impossible, only difficult and doubtful.”
“The engineer who manages the mines did give my master’s father some
hope of it.”
“Don Cárlos Golfin?”
“Yes, Señor. Don Cárlos has a brother who is an eye-doctor, and they
say he gives sight to the blind, and makes those who squint look
straight.”
“What a clever man!”
“Yes; and when the eye-doctor wrote to Don Cárlos that he was coming to
see him, his brother wrote to him to bring his instruments with him to
try if he could make Pablo see.”
“And has this good man been here yet?”
“No, sir; for he is always travelling about in England and America, and
it seems it will be some time yet before he comes. Pablo laughs at it
all, and says no man can give him what the Holy Virgin has denied him
from his birth.”
“Well--perhaps he is right. But are we not nearly there? For I see some
chimneys which pour forth smoke darker than the bottomless pit, and a
light too, which looks like a forge.”
“Yes--here we are. Those are the roasting furnaces, which burn day and
night. There, in front, are the machines for washing the ore; they only
work by day. To the right-hand is the chemical workshop, and down
there, last of all, the counting-house and offices.”
The place seemed to lie in fact as Marianela indicated. In the absence
of any wind a mist hung over the spot, shrouding the buildings in
heavy, gaseous fog, and giving them a confused and fantastic outline
against the moonlit sky.
“This is a pleasanter place to see for once than to live in,” said
Golfin, hastening onwards. “The cloud of vapor wraps round everything,
and the lights have dim circles round them, like the moon on a sultry
night. Which is the office?”
“Here, we are almost there.”
After passing in front of the furnaces, where the heat made them hurry
on, the doctor perceived a house which was no less dingy and smoky than
the others, and at the same instant he heard a piano being played with
a vigor bordering on frenzy.
“We have music here. I recognize my sister-in-law’s touch and
execution.”
“It is Señorita Sofía who is playing,” said María.
The lights of a busy household shone in the windows, and the balcony on
the ground-floor was wide open. A small spark was visible, the spark of
a cigar. Before the doctor could reach the spot, the spark flew off,
describing a parabola of fire, and breaking into a thousand twinkling
specks--the smoker had shaken the end off.
“There is that everlasting smoker!” cried the doctor, in a tone of
affectionate delight. “Cárlos, Cárlos!”
“Teodoro!” exclaimed a voice from the balcony. The piano ceased like a
singing-bird scared by a noise. Steps sounded through the house. The
doctor gave his guide a silver coin, and ran up to the door.