THE THREE CHILDREN.
The town-bred damsel thoroughly enjoyed the open and smiling meadows
without the trammels of her father’s social dogmas, and as soon as they
were at some little distance from the house she took to running and
leaping, swinging now and then from the branches of the trees as she
passed them. She pinched the blackberries with the tips of her fingers,
and when she thought them ripe she would pick three, one for each mouth.
“This is for you, cousin,” she said, putting it to his lips, “and this
is for you, Nela, and this little one is for me.”
Then as the birds flew across she could not resist the temptation to
wave her arms as if she too could fly. “Where are the little rascals
off to I wonder?” she said. She must need gather a branch from every
oak-tree and split open the acorns to see what was in them, then she
bit into one, and finding it bitter, tossed it away. No botanist, mad
on Latin names and classification, could have been so eager to collect
all the flowers that grew under her feet, as if to bid her welcome to
their native soil, and she gathered enough in half an hour to adorn
every button-hole in her cousin’s cloak, to make a garland for Nela’s
hair, and then one for her own.
“My cousin would like to see the mines,” said Pablo. “Do not you think
we might go down?”
“Yes, let us go down--this way, Señorita.”
“Oh! but I do not like to go through tunnels, they frighten me
dreadfully. I really cannot go through a tunnel ...” said Florentina,
following them. “Cousin, do you and Nela walk about here often? Oh! but
this is beautiful--I could live here all my life. Blessings on the man
who is going to give you the power of enjoying this lovely world!”
“God grant it! And it will all look much more lovely to me who have
never seen it, than to you who are tired of it all. But do not suppose,
Florentina, that I do not understand what beauty is; I can feel it in
my own fashion, and my fancy almost, almost makes up for my want of
sight.”
“That is strange.--But say what you will,” replied Florentina, “we will
have some good fun when you can see.”
“Maybe,” said the blind boy, “that I may not find much to say that day.”
Nela meanwhile was absolutely speechless.
When they had reached the crater of La Terrible, Florentina was greatly
struck by the grand spectacle of the limestone rocks, left on the
ground after the ore had been extracted. She compared them to huge
masses of sugar loaves piled one on another; then, after looking a
second time, she said they were like gigantic dogs and cats turned to
stone at the critical moment of a furious fight.
“Let us sit down on this slope,” she said, “and we shall see the trains
go by with the mineral, and besides we can see these stones which are
very curious. That large rock in the middle has a wide mouth--do you
see, Nela?--and out of the mouth sticks a toothpick; it is a tree
that has grown all alone there. It looks as if it were laughing at
us, for it has eyes too; and there, farther on, is one with a hump,
another smoking a pipe, and two pulling each other’s hair; there is
one yawning, another asleep and drunk, and another head downwards
supporting a cathedral on his feet; then there is one playing the
guitar, with a dog’s head and coffee-pot on it like a cap.”
“What you are saying,” observed the blind man, “proves to me how
differently things are seen by different eyes, and that the precious
gift of sight sometimes travesties them strangely, changing their
natural form into something whimsical and unreal; for, after all, what
you see before you are neither cats nor men, toothpicks, cathedrals,
nor coffee-pots, but merely limestone rocks and masses of calcareous
stone stained with oxide of iron. And it is your eye that burlesques so
simple a fact.”
“You are right, cousin; and for that very reason I say it is our
imagination that sees, and not our eyes. Nevertheless our sight is
useful--to inform us, for instance, of certain things which poor people
have not got and which we who are rich can give them.” And as she spoke
she touched Nela’s dress.
“Why does not this dear little Nela wear better clothes?” she went on.
“I have a number of frocks and I will give her one--and a new one too,
into the bargain.” Marianela, covered with blushes and confusion, did
not raise her eyes.
“That is a thing I can never understand: why some have so much and
others so little. I get quite angry with Papa when I hear him abusing
those who wish that everything should be divided so that all should
have an equal share. What do they call those people, Pablo?”
“Socialists--communists ...” said the lad smiling.
“Well, those are the people for me. I vote for a redistribution, so
that the rich should give the poor all they have too much of. Why
should this orphan go barefoot when I wear shoes? Even wicked people
ought not to be destitute, much less good ones. Now, I know that Nela
is very good, you told me so last evening, and your father said so too.
And she has no parents, no one to care for her. How is it that there
are so many, many, miserable creatures in the world? My bread burns my
mouth when I remember how many there are who have none at all. Poor
little Nela! such a good child, and so forlorn! It seems impossible
that to this day you should have lived without being loved, without
any one to give you a kiss nor to cuddle and pet you as we pet little
children--my heart aches to think of it.”
Marianela was as completely petrified with astonishment as at the first
sight of the apparition. Then she had seen the Virgin Mary, now she
heard her very words.
“Listen, little one,” the Holy Maiden went on, “and you, Pablo, listen
too. I must help and comfort Nela--not as we help the beggars by the
road, but as we try to help a brother whom we find unexpectedly. Did
you not tell me that she has been your companion, your _lazarillo_,
your guide through the darkness? That you saw with her eyes and trod
in her steps? Nela is mine as much as yours then, and I shall take
charge of her. I will dress her and give her everything she can want
to live decently, and teach her a hundred things to make her useful in
the house. Papa told me that perhaps I might always have to live here;
and, if so, Nela will live with me; with me she will learn to read,
to say her prayers, to sew and to cook; she will learn so many things
that she will know as much as I do. What do you think of my plan? She
will soon be nothing short of a young lady. My father will not prevent
me I know. Indeed, last evening he said to me: ‘Florentinilla perhaps,
perhaps, before long I shall not rule you any longer; you may have to
obey another master....’ Well, be that as it may, Nela shall be my
friend. Will you love me? dearly? You have lived so neglected--as the
wild flowers grow in the fields--that you do not even know how to say
thank you--but never mind I will teach you; oh! I have to teach you so
many things.”
Marianela, who had been making stupendous efforts not to cry as she
listened to these splendid promises, could at last hold in no longer
and, after screwing up her face for a minute, burst into tears. The
blind boy sat silent, lost in thought.
“Florentina,” he said presently, “you speak and think differently from
most other people. Your goodness is as infinite and as enthusiastic as
that which has filled the world with martyrs and peopled heaven with
saints.”
“What an extravagant way of putting it!” said the girl laughing, and
she rose to gather a flower that had attracted her attention at some
little distance.
“Is she gone?” asked Pablo.
“Yes,” said Nela, gulping down her tears.
“Do you know?” said Pablo, “I fancy my cousin must be rather pretty.
When she arrived last evening I felt the greatest antipathy towards
her; I cannot tell you what a dislike I took to her. But to-day I fancy
I can see her, and that she must be rather pretty.”
Nela began to cry again.
“She is like an angel!” she said with a flood of tears. “She looks as
if she had just come straight from Heaven. Body and soul she is exactly
like the Holy Virgin Mary.”
“Oh! do not exaggerate,” said Pablo uneasily. “She cannot be so lovely
as you say. Do not imagine that because I have no eyes I cannot feel
who is beautiful and who is not.”
“No, no, you cannot feel it, you do not understand.--Oh! you are
mistaken, quite mistaken.”
“No, no. She cannot be so beautiful,” the blind lad insisted, turning
very pale as he spoke. “Nela, darling of my heart, do you know what my
father told me? That if I recover my sight I am to marry Florentina.”
Nela could not answer; her tears continued to flow in silence, pouring
down her burning cheeks and dropping on her hands. But not even the
bitterest tears could give expression or relief to her intense grief.
It was immeasurable, infinite, that was all she knew.
“I know why you are crying so much,” the blind youth said holding
her hands very tightly in his own. “But my father will not insist on
making me marry against my will. For me there is no wife in the world
but you. When my eyes can see, they will care for no beauty but your
heavenly face; all others will be but shades, too remote and dim to
attract my gaze. Oh God! what is a human face like? How does the soul
stand revealed in flesh? If light cannot avail to give another aspect
to thought and fancy, of what use is it at all? That which we conceive
of and that which is--are they not one and the same thing? Are not the
idea and the form the same to each other as fire and heat? Can they be
separated? And can you cease to be the fairest in the world to me, the
sweetest and best beloved, when I am lord of the vast domain of the
visible?”
Florentina now rejoined them, and they talked as they went home; but
nothing more was said of sufficient interest to be set down here.