NELA IS TAMED.
They walked on a short distance without speaking. Teodoro Golfin,
for all his learning, wisdom, and eloquence, felt as ignorant and
as helpless as Nela, and less disposed for speech than usual. She
followed him unresistingly, and he accommodated his steps to those of
the child-woman, like a man taking a boy to school. At a turn in the
road where three enormous white stones stood up, weather-worn till
they looked like bleached skeletons, the doctor sat down, and placing
Nela in front of him, as if she were on her trial for some grave
delinquency, he held her by both hands and said solemnly:
“What were you going to do there?”
“I--where?”
“Down there. You know very well what I mean. Answer me plainly, as you
would answer your confessor or your father.”
“I have no father,” replied Nela with a faintly mutinous accent.
“That is true--but suppose me to be your father, and answer me. What
were you going to do?”
“My mother is down there,” she answered dully.
“Your mother is dead. Do you not know that dead people are gone to
another world, or altogether away?”
“She is there,” said Nela positively, and looking back towards the spot
she had left.
“And you thought you would go to her. Is that it? That is to say, you
meant to kill yourself.”
“Yes, Señor, that is it.”
“And do you not know that your mother committed a great sin in killing
herself, and you would do the same if you followed her example? Were
you never taught that?”
“I do not think anyone ever told me anything of the kind. And if I want
to kill myself, who is to prevent me?”
“But you yourself--without being told--cannot you feel that God cannot
be pleased with us for getting rid of our lives? Poor child--left to
your own instincts without any teaching, or religion, or loving and
disinterested guidance!--What ideas can you have of God, of a future
life, of death? What makes you fancy your mother is there? Do you call
a few lifeless bones your mother! Can you believe that she is still
alive, thinking of you and loving you down in that pit? Did no one
ever tell you that when once our souls have left our bodies they never
return to them again? Do you not know that a tomb, a grave, whatever it
may be, never contains anything but dust and foul corruption? What do
you think God is like? Like some grand and solemn man who sits above
us with his arms folded, and who allows us to play with our lives,
while, in His place, we see some sprite, hobgoblin or fetich of our
fancy?--Your master, Nela, who is so wise and good, did he never talk
to you about such things?”
“Oh! yes he did.--But it is of no use to tell me them now....”
“Of no use now--when you want to kill yourself? Tell me, silly child,
did you think that by throwing yourself into that hole you would be any
better off?”
“Yes, Señor.”
“In what way?”
“I should feel none of the things I feel now, but something else, much
better--and I should be with my mother.”
“I see you are more silly than wicked,” said Golfin laughing. “Now, be
quite honest with me. Do you owe me any grudge?”
“No indeed. I owe no one any grudge--least of all you, Señor, who have
been so kind to me, and have made my master see.”
“Very good--but that is not all; I not only want you to like me, but
you must trust me and tell me all your little secrets. Strange little
secrets are hidden in your mind, little woman, and you must tell them
all to me--every one. You will see, I shall not be hard upon you; I
shall make a very kind father confessor.”
Nela smiled a forlorn smile; then bending her head, she fell on her
knees.
“No, silly child, that is not the way; sit down by me--come here,” said
Golfin, gently drawing her to a seat by his side. “I fancy you were
going crazy for want of some one to whom you could tell everything;
is it not so? And you are to conceal nothing. You are indeed alone in
the world, poor child.--Come, Nela, let us see; tell me first of all
why--now be very attentive--why you took it into your head that you
wanted to kill yourself?”
Nela did not answer.
“I saw you happy enough, and content with life to all appearance, only
a few days since. Why have you suddenly gone mad in a single night?”
“I want to go to my mother--” replied Nela, after hesitating a moment.
“I do not want to live any longer. Of what good am I in the world? Is
it not much better that I should die? And if God will not make me die,
I will kill myself, my own way.”
“This notion that you are of no use is at the bottom of all your
miseries, poor little creature! Curses on him--or on them, for they are
many--who ever put it into your head. They are all equally responsible
for the neglect, the isolation, and the ignorance in which you lived.
You are of no use! God knows what you might have been if you had fallen
into other hands! A refined nature is yours, perhaps an exquisitely
superior one.--But good Heavens! If you put a harp into clumsy hands
what can they do with it but break it.--Because your fragile frame is
not strong enough to break stones and carry earth like those brutes in
human form Mariuca and Pepina, who shall say that you are of no use?
Were we all born to toil like mere animals? Are you to be forbidden to
have any intelligence, any feeling, any of the gifts of nature which
no one has ever cultivated in you? Nonsense! You are of some use; you
might be of great good if you only fell into hands that could mould you
and train you.”
Nela, whose intuition gathered the purport of this speech, though the
words were beyond her, was deeply impressed. She kept her eyes fixed on
Teodoro Golfin’s rugged, shrewd, and expressive countenance. Her heart
was full of astonishment and gratitude.
“Still there is a mystery about you,” the dusky, leonine doctor went
on: “The most perfect opportunity was offered you to escape from your
miserable lot, and you refused it. Florentina, who is an angel if ever
there was one, was ready to adopt you as a friend and a sister; I never
knew an instance of greater kindness and generosity.--And what have you
done? Fled from her like a wild thing.--This is sheer ingratitude--or
some other feeling which I cannot at all comprehend.”
“No, no, no,” cried Nela, much distressed, “I am not ungrateful. I
adore Señorita Florentina; she seems to me not to be made of flesh and
blood like the rest of us; I do not deserve even to look upon her....”
“Well, my child, you may mean what you say; but from your behavior we
can only conclude that you are ungrateful--most ungrateful....”
“No, no,” sobbed Nela. “I am not, indeed I am not ungrateful. I was
afraid--I knew--that you would all think me ungrateful, and that was
the only thing that troubled me when I was going to kill myself.--But I
am so stupid; I did not know how to ask pardon of the Señorita before I
ran away, nor how to explain it all.”
“I will make your peace with Florentina; and even if you wish never to
see her again, I will undertake to tell her and convince her that you
were not ungrateful. Now, open your heart to me and tell me everything;
what makes you so miserable and desperate? However wretched a human
being may be--however great his misery and loneliness, he does not take
his own life unless he has some overpowering reason for hating it.”
“No, Señor--so it seems to me.”
“Then you hate your life?”
Nela was silent for a minute. Then, crossing her arms, she exclaimed
vehemently.
“No--no. I do not hate it; on the contrary, I want to find it!”
“A pretty way you were going to work to look for it!”
“I thought that when you were dead you would have everything you could
not get here. If not, why is death always, always calling us to come?
I have dreams, and when I dream I see all who are dead happy and at
peace.”
“You believe in dreams?”
“Yes, Señor.--I look at the trees and the rocks that I have seen here
ever since I was born, and in their face....”
“Come, come--the trees and rocks have faces?”
“Yes--everything that is lovely can see and speak.--And they say to me:
‘Come to us--die, and you will live quite happy.’”
“What a lamentable fancy!” Golfin muttered to himself. “A perfectly
pagan spirit!”
And he added aloud:
“But if you want to live, why did you not accept Florentina’s offer? I
come back to the same question.”
“Because--because--what the Señorita offered me was worse than death!”
cried Nela vehemently.
“How unjustly you think of her kind charity. There are, of course,
beings so wretched that they prefer a low and vagabond existence to
the dignity of a superior position. You are accustomed to a free life
in direct contact with nature, and you prefer this debased freedom to
the sweet affections of home life. Have you been so happy then in this
mode of life?”
“I was beginning to be happy....”
“And when did you cease to be happy?” After a long pause, Nela replied:
“When you came here.”
“I--what harm have I done you?”
“None, none--nothing but the greatest good.”
“I have given your master his sight,” said Golfin, looking at Nela’s
face with the narrow attention of a physiologist. “Do you not thank me
for that?”
“Much, Señor, very much,” and she gazed up at him with eyes full of
tears.
Golfin watched her closely, so as not to miss the slightest change
of expression which might guide him to a comprehension of the girl’s
feelings, as he went on:
“Your master told me that he loved you dearly, when he was blind; and
now that he can see, he constantly asks for Nela. He knows very well
that for him the whole outer world was filled by one person--Nela; and
the sight which has been mercifully bestowed on him is of no value to
him, unless he can use it to see Nela.”
“To see Nela--but he never shall see Nela--Nela will never let him see
her!” she exclaimed excitedly.
“Why not?”
“Because she is so ugly.--He may have cared for María Canela when his
eyes were shut; but now that they are open and he can see the Señorita,
he can never, never care for a poor little dwarf.”
“Who knows but....”
“It is impossible,” she said positively.
“It is your fancy--you cannot tell whether your master will be pleased
with you or not till you try. I will take you to the house.”
“I will not go--I cannot go!” she cried, starting to her feet and
standing in front of Teodoro, who was utterly astounded at the
determination of her gesture and the flash of her black eyes, which
both revealed her resolute nature.
“Be calm, be easy--come here,” he said persuasively. “It is true that
you are not very pretty--but a sensible man does not think so much as
you fancy of mere outside beauty. You are too self-conscious, little
woman.”
But Nela, paying no sort of heed to the doctor’s moralities, and as
resolute in her attitude as she was in her opinion, gravely went on as
if pronouncing sentence:
“There ought to be nothing ugly in the world.--Nothing that is ugly
ought to be allowed to live.”
“But, my child, if all we ugly people were to be obliged to take
ourselves out of the world, it would be left almost depopulated.
Poor, unhappy, little simpleton! But this notion of yours is not a
new one. Other persons had it before you, centuries ago; persons with
an imagination like yours--living, as you have lived, in the midst of
Nature, and lacking the light which your ignorance and loneliness have
deprived you of, and which they had not, because it had not then dawned
on the world.--But you must be cured of this delusion; you must reflect
that you have your portion of gifts more precious than beauty--gifts of
the mind, which neither fade with time, nor change with the caprices of
taste. Seek for them in your soul and you will find them. They will not
perish as beauty would which, seek it as you may in your looking-glass,
you will never find. But seek out these really good and precious
gifts; cultivate them, and when you see them thriving and blooming,
all this misery you are suffering will vanish--take my word for it.
And meanwhile you will soon rise superior to the wretched situation in
which you now are, and acquire a beauty which may not perhaps charm
the eye, but which will be a source of pride and happiness to yourself.”
This wise advice was either not heard or not heeded by Nela; she sat
down again by Golfin and gazed fixedly in his face. Her small eyes,
more eloquent just then than the finest could have been, seemed to say:
“And what is the upshot of all these fine speeches, learned Sir?”
“Now you see,” Golfin went on, warming to his subject, and giving it,
in spite of himself, the character of a psychological lecture--“there
is one important question, and that is....”
But Nela had guessed it, and covered her face with her hands.
“There is nothing strange in it--on the contrary, it is the most
natural thing that could happen to you. You have a sensitive
temperament and an excitable imagination. You and your master had led
a life together of free and poetic communion with nature, and of most
perfect and innocent intimacy. He is as wise and clever as a man can
be, and as handsome as a statue. His beauty, when blind even, seemed
formed to delight the eyes of those who could see. His kindness of
heart too, and generous spirit are enough to charm and win the love of
any woman. It is not strange that they should have captivated you--a
child so womanly--or a woman looking so like a child.--Do you love him
so much? More than anything else in the world?”
“Yes, yes--Señor,” the girl sobbed out.
“And you cannot bear the idea of his ceasing to love you?”
“No--Señor.”
“And he used to say loving words to you and make you promises?...”
“Yes, oh yes, Señor. He told me I should be his companion as long as he
lived--and--and I believed him.”
“And why should you not?”
“He said he could not live without me, and that even if he ever could
see he would still love me. I was quite happy; I was ugly, and little,
and ill-made, but I did not care, for he could not see me; and in his
darkness he thought I was pretty.--And then....”
“Then,” said Golfin gently, for he was filled with pity. “I see the
fault is all mine.”
“Fault, no; for you did a good deed. You are very, very good. It
is good to have given him his sight. I know, I tell myself, that
it is good; but after that I must go away, quite away--for he will
see Señorita Florentina and will compare me with her--and Señorita
Florentina is as pretty as the angels, and I--it is like comparing a
piece of broken glass with the sun! Of what good can I be? I dreamed
that I ought never to have been born! Oh why was I ever born? God made
a mistake; he gave me an ugly face, and a miserable little body, and
such a large heart! But of what use to me is a large heart?--It is a
torment and nothing else. Woe is me! If I did not keep it under, it
would hate and detest a great many people. And yet I do not want to
hate people--I do not know how to hate them, and I would rather bury my
miserable heart than live to learn to hate; bury it, so that it should
not torment me any more.”
“You are tormented by jealousy, and by your sense of humiliation. Poor
little one, you are indeed alone! Neither the knowledge you lack, nor
the home you have never had, nor the work you cannot do would avail to
save you from this. But tell me, what do you feel about the protection
and kindness that Florentina offers you?”
“Terror! Shame!” exclaimed Nela, opening her eyes wide in horror. “To
live with them--to see them constantly! For they will marry--my heart
tells me they will marry; I dreamed it, I know it.”
“But Florentina is very kind; she will love you dearly.”
“Yes, and I love her--but not at Aldeacorba!” cried the girl in wild
accents. “She came to rob me of what was mine--for he was mine--yes,
Señor, he was indeed. Florentina is like the Blessed Virgin--I will
pray to her, yes, Señor, and worship her; but I do not want her to take
away what is my own--and she will take it away--she has taken it away
already! And where am I to go to; what am I, what good am I in the
world at all? I have lost everything and I want to go to my mother.”
She walked away; but Golfin seized her as a wild beast clutches its
prey, and held her tightly by the wrist. As he did so he felt her quick
and fluttering pulse.
“Come here,” he said. “From this moment, whether you like it or no,
you are my slave. You are mine, and you are to do nothing but what I
tell you. Poor little soul, full of eager feeling, of fervent fancy,
frankness and superstition--you have a nature framed for all that is
good; but it has been ruined by the wild life you have led, by neglect
and want of training, and even the most elementary teaching! What
a hideous state of society we live in, which forgets its duties so
utterly, and leaves a precious creature like this perish!--Come here;
I am not going to let you quit my side. I have hunted you down and
caught you--caught you in a trap in the midst of the woods, in some
sylvan wilderness, and now I shall try to teach you and train you. We
will see if this rough diamond cannot be cut and polished. Ah! you do
not even know how ignorant you are; and I shall open a new world to
your mind, show you a thousand wonderful things that you have never
understood, though you have a vague and dim idea of some of them. Tell
me, cannot you feel in your soul a germ--how shall I explain myself?
a bud, of that rarest and most beautiful grace: Humility? The mother
of all the virtues; which, strange to say, makes us actually happy
when we see ourselves subordinate to others? Have you never felt the
impulse of self-denial, which makes us rejoice in sacrificing ourselves
for others, in making ourselves small that some one else may become
great?--But you will learn this, child; you will learn to lay your
ugliness at the feet of beauty, to look on with calm satisfaction and
joy at the triumphs of others, to fetter that great wild heart of yours
and bring it into subjection, so that you shall never feel envy nor
rage, but will love your neighbor as yourself, and rise superior to all
who may have injured or hurt you. You shall be made all that Nature
meant you to be when she endowed you at your birth. Hapless child! Born
in a Christian country, and not even a Christian! Your soul dwells in
a sort of poetic worship of nature.--You cannot understand me, little
one, but so it is. You are in the state of those primitive peoples
of whom the memory even hardly survives--governed by your instincts
and passions, while beauty is your dearest idol. Eighteen centuries
have been devoted in vain to spiritualizing humanity, so far as you
are concerned. And as to the selfish world which has left you to such
a fate!--What name does it deserve? You have lived in these mines, a
solitary soul, not taught a single letter, not even sent to an infant
school, though you would have learnt little enough there; not even
given the most imperfect teaching in that religion of which your nation
boasts. Why, you have never been inside a church except to stare at
some ceremony which to you had no meaning; you cannot even mutter a
prayer that you understand; you know nothing of the world, or of God,
or your own soul....
“But you shall know all this; you shall be a different creature. You
shall no longer be hapless little Nela, but a good, and honest, and
useful woman.”
It would be rash to assert that Nela had understood all this speech,
which Golfin declaimed with such vehemence and fervor that he entirely
forgot the person to whom he was speaking. But the little outcast
felt a curious fascination, and the spirit of her friend’s utterances
sank gently into her soul, and soothed it, and compelled her to
blind assent. His power over the untaught girl was that fateful and
irresistible control which a superior mind exercises over an inferior
one. Sad but unresisting, her head drooped against the surgeon’s
shoulder.
“Come along,” Golfin said resolutely.
Nela trembled from head to foot; a cold sweat stood on her face, and
Golfin felt that her hands were icy-cold, and her pulses beating
violently; but he failed to attribute this physical condition to her
mental anguish; he held her hand more firmly and repeated: “Come--it is
cold here.”
His power over her was so great that she rose as he did, and they went
a little way together. But then Nela stopped, and fell on her knees.
“Oh, Señor!” she cried in an agony: “Do not take me away with you.”
She was very pale, and looked wrecked by physical and mental misery.
Golfin tried to pull her up; but her helpless frame did not stir by
any strength of her own. It was clear she must be carried like a
senseless corpse.
“One day,” said Golfin, “not very long since, almost in this very
place, I took you on my shoulders to carry you. Now I must do the same
it seems.”
He lifted her in his arms; her hot breath seemed to burn his face. She
was drooping, fading, dying like a plant torn up from the soil, and
with its roots laid bare.
As they got nearer to Aldeacorba, Golfin felt some life returning to
the dead weight in his arms. Nela raised her head, and threw up her
hands in despair, but she said nothing.
They went in; all was silent. A maid servant came to meet them, and by
Teodoro’s desire she conducted him noiselessly to Florentina’s room.
Florentina was alone. By the light of a fast-dying lamp she was
kneeling on the floor, her elbows resting on the seat of a chair, and
praying with absorbed devotion. She was startled at seeing a man at her
door at so late an hour, but her alarm at once gave way to surprise,
when she saw the burden Golfin bore in his strong arms.
Her astonishment was too great for speech when the doctor, carefully
depositing his load on a sofa, said:
“I have caught her you see.--What do you say to that? Am I a good
butterfly hunter?”