A NEW WORLD.
We must now go back a few days.
When Teodoro Golfin first removed the bandage for a few moments from
Pablo Penáguilas’ eyes, the boy uttered a cry of terror. Every impulse
made him shrink from all he saw; he put out his hands as though by
pushing away one object he could get away farther from the rest.
Luminous space was to him like a vast void into which he felt as if he
must fall; and the instinct of self-preservation made him close his
eyes to feel himself safe. However, his father, the surgeon, and the
rest of them, persuaded him to try once more, for all were equally
anxious; he looked again, but his terror was no less. The images
of all he saw, rushed into his brain with such sudden violence and
confusion--with a sort of storm and assault, as it were--that he felt
as if they were falling upon him bodily. The distant mountains seemed
to lie within reach, and the persons and objects that were near him
seemed, literally, to strike his eyes.
Golfin noted these phenomena with the most eager interest; this was
the second case of cure of congenital blindness which he had had the
opportunity of studying. The others hardly dared to be glad; they
were so bewildered and alarmed by the agitating effects produced on
the patient by the first exercise of the function of sight. To Pablo
himself it was a series of delightful experiments. His nerves and his
imagination were so seriously excited the surgeon thought it prudent to
compel him to rest.
“Now,” he said, smiling, “you have seen enough for to-day. You cannot
step out of darkness into light, into the wide domain of the sun, as
you would walk into a theatre. This is a new birth, with pain as well
as joy in it.”
Presently the young fellow was so eager to try his newly-found power
once more, that Golfin consented to open a crack, as it were, upon the
outer world.
“My whole mind,” said Pablo, trying to explain his first impressions,
“seems bathed in beauty--a beauty I had never dreamed of before. What
were the things which rushed in upon me and filled me with terror? It
was the sense of size, of space, which I had never before conceived
of but in a very imperfect manner, and which dawned upon me clear and
terrible; as if I were being dragged up to the highest mountains and
down to the deepest abyss. It is all grand and beautiful, but it makes
me tremble. But I want to feel it all once more. All the glory and
loveliness that I gazed at has made me feel bewildered and humbled; it
was like some serene and majestic presence bending down to meet me.
The whole universe seemed to be rushing towards me and I was startled
and terror stricken--the sky looked like a vast space, watching,
listening--I cannot put it into words.--It was vacancy, but strangely
full of expression. All that landscape of sky and mountains looked at
me, came down upon me--but it was all so cold, and grand, and stern.
Let me see something delicate, something gentle and lovable--Nela!
Where is Nela?”
Golfin once more relieved him of the bandage, and giving him a pair of
suitable spectacles, he left him free to look about him.
“Oh! is that Nela! Merciful Heaven!” exclaimed Pablo enchanted.
“This is your cousin Florentina.”
“Ah!” said the lad, coloring with confusion.
“That is my cousin. I had no idea any person could be so
beautiful.--Oh! thank God for giving me the faculty which enables me to
see anything so lovely. Cousin Florentina, you are like the most lovely
music--like the most perfect embodiment of some delicious harmony.--And
Nela, where is she?”
“You will have time enough to see her,” said Don Francisco delighted.
“Try now to be calm.”
“Florentina, Florentina!” repeated Pablo excitedly. “What is it in your
face that makes me feel as if the spirit of God himself was shining
through it? You stand in the midst of a glory which must, to be sure,
be the sun. Beams, rays seem to shine from your face.--Ah! at last I
know what the angels are like--and your dress, your hands, your hair,
seem to fill me with some new and strange sensation. What is it?”
“He is beginning to see color,” muttered Golfin to himself. “He perhaps
perceives every object surrounded by the colors of the spectrum. But he
cannot estimate degrees of distance.”
“I seem to have you inside my eyes,” Pablo went on. “You seem to have
become part of my thoughts, and the sight of you comes upon me like a
memory; but a memory of what? I never saw any thing or any body before.
Can I have lived before I came into this world? I know not--but I knew
your eyes. And you, father--where are you? I have seen you--yes I have
pictured you too--you are just what I have loved. And now my uncle? You
are very much alike.--And where, where is that dear good Golfin?--bless
him!”
“Here, minding my patient,” said the surgeon coming forward. “Here I am
as ugly as sin.--As you have never seen a lion or a Newfoundland dog,
you can have no idea of my style of beauty. They say I am exactly like
those two noble beasts.”
“All good kind souls!...” said Pablo.
“But my cousin is the prettiest--oh! infinitely the prettiest. But
Nela, for pity’s sake, where is Nela?”
They told him that his _lazarillo_ never came to the house, and that
they had been too busy to go to look for her, and he was extremely
distressed at this intelligence. They succeeded in soothing him, and as
they feared he might become feverish, they persuaded him to go to bed
and try to sleep.
The next day he was in a state of great prostration, but his vigorous
nature triumphed over everything. He begged to have a glass of water
and when he saw it, he exclaimed: “I feel as I were drinking at the
mere sight of water.”
His expressions were equally vivid and picturesque about everything he
saw which struck his fancy strongly. After correcting the defective
sphericity of the eye by means of glasses, which he tried one after
another, Golfin began to direct his attention to the differences and
combinations of colors, and the young man’s sound mind and taste never
failed in distinguishing the ugly from the beautiful. Indeed, he felt
these two attributes as two absolute and distinct ideas, without
connecting them in any way with any notion of utility or, on the other
hand, of goodness. A butterfly which flew by accident into his room
enchanted him, but an ink-bottle he thought simply horrible, though
his father explained to him that it could not be otherwise, since its
use was to hold ink to write with. When he was shown two prints, one
of the Crucifixion, and one of Galatea riding in a shell and escorted
by Tritons and Nymphs, he preferred the second--which was a great
scandal to Florentina, who promised herself that she would teach him
to hold sacred things far above everything profane. He watched their
faces with the keenest attention, and the wonderful coincidence of
facial expression with language astonished him excessively. When he
saw the maids and other women about the place, he was greatly annoyed
if they were ugly or commonplace; indeed, his cousin’s beauty made
him indifferent to any other woman. In spite of this he wanted to see
them all; his curiosity was like a raging thirst which nothing could
satisfy. Every day he was disappointed at never seeing Nela; but he was
so fond of Florentina that he could not bear her to leave him for a
moment.
On the third day Golfin said to him: “You have now made acquaintance
with a great many things--the marvels of this visible world. Now--you
must see yourself.”
He brought a mirror, and Pablo looked in it.
“That is I!” he exclaimed with simple admiration. “It is difficult to
believe it. How have I come inside that hard still sheet of water?
What a wonderful thing glass is! It seems as if it could not be true
that men made that stony atmosphere.--My word! but I am not an ugly
fellow!--What do you say cousin? And you, when you look in this, do you
see yourself as pretty as you are? No, impossible. Look up into the sky
and you will find your image there. You may believe you see an angel
when you only look at yourself!”
That evening, when he was alone with her and she was giving him some
little help he needed as an invalid, Pablo said to her:
“Cousin, my father read me, I remember, a passage in history about
Christopher Columbus who discovered a New World, which no European had
ever seen before. That navigator opened the eyes of the Old World, so
that they saw another and more beautiful one. I cannot help thinking
of him as a man like Teodoro Golfin, and of Europe as a blind man to
whom America and its wonders were like a revelation of light. Well,
and I have seen a New World.--You are my America, you are that first
and lovely island where Columbus set foot on land. He never saw the
continent, with its vast forests and immense rivers, and I too perhaps
have not yet seen what is loveliest of all....” He broke off and sat
sunk in thought; then presently he asked:
“Where is Nela?”
“I cannot think what has come over the poor child,” said Florentina. “I
suppose she does not wish to see you.”
“She is bashful and very shy,” replied Pablo: “She is afraid of
troubling us in the house. Florentina, I must tell you--in confidence,
that I love her dearly; you will love her too. I have a most eager
wish to see my good little comrade and friend.”
“I will go and look for her to-morrow morning myself.”
“Yes, do--but do not be gone long. When I do not see you I feel very
lonely; I have become accustomed to see you, and these three days have
been centuries of happiness.--Do not rob me of a minute. Last night my
father told me that after having seen you I ought never to want to see
another woman.”
“What nonsense!” exclaimed the girl blushing. “There are plenty much
prettier than I am....”
“No, no; they all say no.” Pablo vehemently declared, turning his
blindfold eyes towards his cousin, as if he could see her even through
his bandages. “They used to tell me so before, and I could not believe
it; but now that I have seen the world and know what beauty is, I
believe it--yes indeed I do. You are perfectly lovely; there is no
one--there can be no one more lovely.--Give me your hand.” And he
grasped it eagerly in both of his.
“I laugh now,” he went on, “to think of my absurd blind man’s vanity,
of my foolish attempts to realize the true aspect of things without
seeing them. I believe that as long as I live I shall never forget the
surprise that the reality was to me. Reality! Oh, the man who knows it
not is blind indeed, a perfect idiot!--Florentina I was an idiot.”
“No, cousin, you were always very clever and so you are still. But do
not let your fancy work too vividly now. It will soon be time to go to
bed. Don Teodoro particularly said that I was not to let you talk so
late, because it keeps you from sleeping; if you do not keep quiet I
shall go away.”
“Is it night already?”
“Yes, quite night.”
“But day or night I love to talk to you,” Pablo persisted, tossing over
on his bed, on which he was lying dressed and very restless. “I will be
silent on one condition, and that is that you do not go away from my
side, and that, from time to time, you pat the bed with your hand that
I may know that you are there.”
“Very well, so I will, and this is the first sign of life,” said
Florentina, laughing and patting the mattress.
“When I hear you laugh, I feel as if a breath of sweet fresh air blew
round me, and all my senses help in some way to remind me of you. Your
image lives in my memory so vividly, that even with my eyes bandaged I
can see you still the same.”
“Will you have done chattering or must I fetch Don Teodoro?” said the
girl gaily.
“No, no--stay quiet. I cannot be silent--if I were to be silent all my
thoughts--all I can see in my brain--would only torment me twice as
much. And you want me to go to sleep! Sleep! But I have you in here,
Florentina, making a turmoil in my brain, and driving me crazy. I am so
full of joy and rapture that I have no words to express them. All last
night I fancied I was talking to you and to Nela.--Poor little Nela! I
am most curious to see her.--Desperately curious.”
“Well, I will find her to-morrow. Now, have done with your talking; if
you do not cease I shall go.”
“No, stop. I will only talk to myself. I will say all the things I say
to you at night when I fancy we are alone together--I will remember
what you say to me.”
“I?”
“Well, the things I can fancy I hear said in your voice--Now, do you be
silent, Señorita. I am alone now with my own imaginings.”
The next day when Florentina came up to her cousin’s room, she said:
“I brought Maraquilla up here and she ran away. Ungrateful little
thing!”
“And you did not look for her?”
“Where was I to look? She ran away from me. This evening I will go out
again and hunt her till I find her.”
“No, no; do not go out,” said Pablo eagerly. “She will come back, she
will come of her own accord.”
“She seems out of her mind.”
“Does she know that I can see now?”
“I myself told her. But really I am sure she has lost her wits. She
says that I am the Holy Virgin and kisses my dress.”
“That shows that you have produced the same impression on her as on
every one else. Nela is so sweet. Poor little girl! We must take care
of her, Florentina, and be kind to her--do not you think so?”
“She is ungrateful I am afraid,” said Florentina sadly.
“No, never think so. Nela could not be ungrateful. She is a good
child--I am very fond of her. She must be found and brought here to
me.”
“I will go.”
“No--not you,” said Pablo positively, taking his cousin’s hand. “Your
duty, most undutiful cousin, is to take care of me. If Golfin does not
come soon to take off my bandage and put on my glasses, I shall do it
myself. I have not seen you since yesterday, and I cannot bear it--I
cannot bear it. Is Don Teodoro come?”
“He is down stairs with your father and mine. He will come up quite
soon. Have patience; you are as bad as a school-boy.”
Pablo writhed with irritation.
“Light, light!” he cried. “It is a crime to keep me in the dark so
long. I cannot live like this--I shall die. I want what is the bread
of life to me; I want the use of my eyes. I have not seen you to-day,
cousin, and I am wild to see you. I am hungry, thirsty to see you.
Oh! thank God for real knowledge! Thank God for having created you,
sweetest of women, a combination of every beauty.--And yet, if after
having created beauty, God had not given us hearts to feel it, how
imperfect his work would have been! Light! light!...”
Teodoro came up and opened the gates of the outer world to him, filling
his soul with joy, and he passed a quiet day talking of a variety of
subjects. Not till the evening did his thoughts revert to that point
in his past life, which seemed to be diminishing and fading in the
distance, like vessels which on a clear day are lost on the horizon. It
was in the tone of a man who recalls some long past circumstance, that
Pablo asked: “Has not Nela made her appearance?”
Florentina replied that she had not, and they talked of other things.
In the course of the night, at a very late hour, Pablo heard the noise
of voices in the house. He fancied he heard those of Teodoro Golfin, of
Florentina, and of his father. But after that he slept quietly, though
haunted in his dreams by the images of all he had seen and the phantoms
of all he imagined. His dreams, which began tranquilly and smilingly,
afterwards became agitated and painful, for in some deep recess of
his soul, as though it were a vast cavern suddenly lighted up, rose
a medley array of the beautiful and the hideous forms of the outside
world--of passions awakened and memories buried--convulsing his whole
soul. The following day, as Golfin had promised, he left his room to
move about the house.