OLALLA
'Now,' said the doctor, 'my part is done, and, I may say, with somevanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold andpoisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easyconscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I can helpyou. It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padrecame in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although ofcontrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among someof his parishioners. This was a family--but you are ignorant of Spain,and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it,then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen to the brinkof destitution. Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, andcertain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not evena goat could support life. But the house is a fine old place, and standsat a great height among the hills, and most salubriously; and I had nosooner heard my friend's tale, than I remembered you. I told him I had awounded officer, wounded in the good cause, who was now able to make achange; and I proposed that his friends should take you for a lodger.Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had maliciously foreseen itwould. It was out of the question, he said. Then let them starve, saidI, for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride. There-upon weseparated, not very content with one another; but yesterday, to mywonder, the Padre returned and made a submission: the difficulty, hesaid, he had found upon enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, inother words, these proud people had put their pride in their pocket. Iclosed with the offer; and, subject to your approval, I have taken roomsfor you in the residencia. The air of these mountains will renew yourblood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all themedicines in the world.'
'Doctor,' said I, 'you have been throughout my good angel, and youradvice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the familywith which I am to reside.'
'I am coming to that,' replied my friend; 'and, indeed, there is adifficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very highdescent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived forsome generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand,from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor,whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty forcesthem to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so without a mostungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a stranger; theywill give you attendance, but they refuse from the first the idea of thesmallest intimacy.'
I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthenedmy desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that barrierif I desired. 'There is nothing offensive in such a stipulation,' saidI; 'and I even sympathise with the feeling that inspired it.'
'It is true they have never seen you,' returned the doctor politely; 'andif they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man that evercame from England (where I am told that handsome men are common, butpleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make you welcome witha better grace. But since you take the thing so well, it matters not. Tome, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself thegainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and adaughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and acountry girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is,therefore,' chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not muchin that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'
'And yet you say they are high-born,' I objected.
'Well, as to that, I should distinguish,' returned the doctor. 'Themother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representativeof a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her fatherwas not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the residenciatill his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with him, and thefamily being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever, until at lastshe married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a smuggler;while there are some who uphold there was no marriage at all, and thatFelipe and Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it was, wastragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such seclusion, andthe country at that time was in so much disorder, that the precise mannerof the man's end is known only to the priest--if even to him.'
'I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,' said I.
'I would not romance, if I were you,' replied the doctor; 'you will find,I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance,I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very cunning,very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably tomatch. No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial society amongthe great sights of our mountains; and in these at least, if you are atall a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not bedisappointed.'
The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a mule;and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell to thedoctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had befriended meduring my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the Eastern gate, andbegan to ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a prisoner, since Iwas left behind for dying after the loss of the convoy, that the meresmell of the earth set me smiling. The country through which we went waswild and rocky, partially covered with rough woods, now of the cork-tree,and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and frequently intersected by thebeds of mountain torrents. The sun shone, the wind rustled joyously; andwe had advanced some miles, and the city had already shrunk into aninconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us, before my attention beganto be diverted to the companion of my drive. To the eye, he seemed but adiminutive, loutish, well-made country lad, such as the doctor haddescribed, mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture; and thisfirst impression was with most observers final. What began to strike mewas his familiar, chattering talk; so strangely inconsistent with theterms on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfectenunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter, so verydifficult to follow clearly without an effort of the mind. It is true Ihad before talked with persons of a similar mental constitution; personswho seemed to live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by thevisual object of the moment and unable to discharge their minds of thatimpression. His seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind ofconversation proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a greatvacancy of the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country.But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-keeper; 'I wish I was there now,' he said; and then, spying a tree by thewayside, he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a crow among itsbranches.
'A crow?' I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, andthinking I had heard imperfectly.
But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with arapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he struckme rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook his head.
'What did you hear?' I asked.
'O, it is all right,' he said; and began encouraging his mule with criesthat echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.
I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light,and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were verylarge, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he wasa pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond thathe was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairyness; two characteristicsthat I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet attracted me. Thedoctor's phrase--an innocent--came back to me; and I was wondering ifthat were, after all, the true description, when the road began to godown into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters thunderedtumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the sound,the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied their descent.The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part verysecurely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonishedto perceive the pa
leness of terror in the face of my companion. Thevoice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if inweariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed toswell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against thebarrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to theclamour, that my driver more particularly winced and blanched. Somethoughts of Scottish superstition and the river Kelpie, passed across mymind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in that part ofSpain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.
'What is the matter?' I asked.
'O, I am afraid,' he replied.
'Of what are you afraid?' I returned. 'This seems one of the safestplaces on this very dangerous road.'
'It makes a noise,' he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my doubtsat rest.
The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body, activeand swift, but stunted in development; and I began from that time forthto regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first withindulgence, and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed babble.
By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the mountainline, said farewell to the western sunshine, and began to go down uponthe other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving through theshadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice of fallingwater, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the river, butscattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to glen. Here, too,the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a falsettovoice, and with a singular bluntness of musical perception, never trueeither to melody or key, but wandering at will, and yet somehow with aneffect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the of birds. As thedusk increased, I fell more and more under the spell of this artlesswarbling, listening and waiting for some articulate air, and stilldisappointed; and when at last I asked him what it was he sang--'O,'cried he, 'I am just singing!' Above all, I was taken with a trick hehad of unweariedly repeating the same note at little intervals; it wasnot so monotonous as you would think, or, at least, not disagreeable; andit seemed to breathe a wonderful contentment with what is, such as welove to fancy in the attitude of trees, or the quiescence of a pool.
Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up alittle after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I couldonly conjecture to be the residencia. Here, my guide, getting down fromthe cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last anold peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able toperceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed byiron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a wicket.The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my guide and Ipassed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us; and by theglimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a stone stair, along asection of an open gallery, and up more stairs again, until we came atlast to the door of a great and somewhat bare apartment. This room,which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by three windows, linedwith some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and carpeted with the skinsof many savage animals. A bright fire burned in the chimney, and shedabroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze there was drawn atable, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood ready. I waspleased by these preparations, and said so to Felipe; and he, with thesame simplicity of disposition that I held already remarked in him,warmly re-echoed my praises. 'A fine room,' he said; 'a very fine room.And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the pleasure in your bones. Andthe bed,' he continued, carrying over the candle in that direction--'seewhat fine sheets--how soft, how smooth, smooth;' and he passed his handagain and again over their texture, and then laid down his head andrubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content that somehowoffended me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared he would setthe bed on fire) and walked back to the supper-table, where, perceiving ameasure of wine, I poured out a cup and called to him to come and drinkof it. He started to his feet at once and ran to me with a strongexpression of hope; but when he saw the wine, he visibly shuddered.
'Oh, no,' he said, 'not that; that is for you. I hate it.'
'Very well, Senor,' said I; 'then I will drink to your good health, andto the prosperity of your house and family. Speaking of which,' I added,after I had drunk, 'shall I not have the pleasure of laying mysalutations in person at the feet of the Senora, your mother?'
But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and wassucceeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy. He backed awayfrom me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap orsome dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the door,glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils. 'No,' he said at last,and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I heard hisfooting die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence closed overthe house.
After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began toprepare for rest; but in the new position of the light, I was struck by apicture on the wall. It represented a woman, still young. To judge byher costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she hadlong been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the eyes andthe features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of life.Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion; redtresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden brown,held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped, was yetmarred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in bothface and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo of anecho, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood awhile,unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the resemblance.The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been originally designedfor such high dames as the one now looking on me from the canvas, hadfallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes, sitting on the shaft andholding the reins of a mule cart, to bring home a lodger. Perhaps anactual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple of the delicate flesh thatwas once clothed upon with the satin and brocade of the dead lady, nowwinced at the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.
The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as Ilay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples oneafter another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to signand seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if shewere alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of herwickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroineof many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and sufficientlyrewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on my fancy; and when I was outin the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and healthilyrenewing the current of my blood, it was often a glad thought to me thatmy enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken, her lipsclosed in silence, her philtre spilt. And yet I had a half-lingeringterror that she might not be dead after all, but re-arisen in the body ofsome descendant.
Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to theportrait haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change ofattitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost.It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. Hecertainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engageby many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before myfire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordlesssongs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with anaffectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me anembarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capableof flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a wordof reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat,and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a hintof inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in
a strange placeand surrounded by staring people; but at the shadow of a question, heshrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was that, for a fraction ofa second, this rough lad might have been the brother of the lady in theframe. But these humours were swift to pass; and the resemblance diedalong with them.
In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless theportrait is to be counted; and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his dangerousneighbourhood with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was for some timeirksome; but it happened before long that I obtained over him so completea mastery as set my disquietude at rest.
It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond,and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, butlaboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of theresidencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen onthe night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me that,of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimessee him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very plants he hadbeen digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves, andstill more so since I was well assured they were foreign to hisdisposition and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But while I admired,I wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttle-witted this enduringsense of duty. How was it sustained? I asked myself, and to what lengthdid it prevail over his instincts? The priest was possibly his inspirer;but the priest came one day to the residencia. I saw him both come andgo after an interval of close upon an hour, from a knoll where I wassketching, and all that time Felipe continued to labour undisturbed inthe garden.
At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad fromhis good resolutions, and, way-laying him at the gate, easily pursuadedhim to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods to which Iled him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling and alive with the humof insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh character, mounting upto heights of gaiety that abashed me, and displaying an energy and graceof movement that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran round me in mereglee; he would stop, and look and listen, and seem to drink in the worldlike a cordial; and then he would suddenly spring into a tree with onebound, and hang and gambol there like one at home. Little as he said tome, and that of not much import, I have rarely enjoyed more stirringcompany; the sight of his delight was a continual feast; the speed andaccuracy of his movements pleased me to the heart; and I might have beenso thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of these wants, had not chanceprepared a very rude conclusion to my pleasure. By some swiftness ordexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top. He was then someway ahead of me, but I saw him drop to the ground and crouch there,crying aloud for pleasure like a child. The sound stirred my sympathies,it was so fresh and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, thecry of the squirrel knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen much ofthe cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but what I now beheldstruck me into a passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, pluckedthe poor brute out of his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then Iturned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of myindignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and atlength, pointing toward the residencia, bade him begone and leave me, forI chose to walk with men, not with vermin. He fell upon his knees, and,the words coming to him with more cleanness than usual, poured out astream of the most touching supplications, begging me in mercy to forgivehim, to forget what he had done, to look to the future. 'O, I try sohard,' he said. 'O, commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he willnever be a brute again!' Thereupon, much more affected than I cared toshow, I suffered myself to be persuaded, and at last shook hands with himand made it up. But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him bury;speaking of the poor thing's beauty, telling him what pains it hadsuffered, and how base a thing was the abuse of strength. 'See, Felipe,'said I, 'you are strong indeed; but in my hands you are as helpless asthat poor thing of the trees. Give me your hand in mine. You cannotremove it. Now suppose that I were cruel like you, and took a pleasurein pain. I only tighten my hold, and see how you suffer.' He screamedaloud, his face stricken ashy and dotted with needle points of sweat; andwhen I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his hand and moanedover it like a baby. But he took the lesson in good part; and whetherfrom that, or from what I had said to him, or the higher notion he nowhad of my bodily strength, his original affection was changed into a dog-like, adoring fidelity.
Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crownof a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; onlyfrom the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen between twopeaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air inthese altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated there,and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the hilltops; ahoarse, and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round; and onecould there study all the ruder and more ancient characters of nature insomething of their pristine force. I delighted from the first in thevigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less in the antique anddilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This was a large oblong, flanked attwo opposite corners by bastion-like projections, one of which commandedthe door, while both were loopholed for musketry. The lower storey was,besides, naked of windows, so that the building, if garrisoned, could notbe carried without artillery. It enclosed an open court planted withpomegranate trees. From this a broad flight of marble stairs ascended toan open gallery, running all round and resting, towards the court, onslender pillars. Thence again, several enclosed stairs led to the upperstoreys of the house, which were thus broken up into distinct divisions.The windows, both within and without, were closely shuttered; some of thestone-work in the upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, hadbeen wrecked in one of the flurries of wind which were common in thesemountains; and the whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, andstanding out above a grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden anddiscoloured with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the legend. Thecourt, in particular, seemed the very home of slumber. A hoarse cooingof doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when theyblew outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiledthe red bloom of the pomegranates; shuttered windows and the closed doorsof numerous cellars, and the vacant, arches of the gallery, enclosed it;and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides, andparaded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor. At the groundlevel there was, however, a certain pillared recess, which bore the marksof human habitation. Though it was open in front upon the court, it wasyet provided with a chimney, where a wood fire would he always prettilyblazing; and the tile floor was littered with the skins of animals.
It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one ofthe skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar. It washer dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightlycoloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of thesame relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it washer beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back--watching me,I thought, though with invisible eyes--and wearing at the same time anexpression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed aperfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyonda statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckeredwith suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze;but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk atrifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when Ireturned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was halfsurprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, followingthe sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivialsalutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the samedeep-chested, and yet indistinct and lispi
ng tones, that had alreadybaffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answeredrather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning withprecision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They wereunusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at thatmoment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what affected mewas not so much their size as (what was perhaps its consequence) thesingular insignificance of their regard. A look more blankly stupid Ihave never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I spoke, and I went onmy way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and embarrassed. Yet,when I came there and saw the face of the portrait, I was again remindedof the miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed, both older andfuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides,was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attractedme in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a moral blankexpressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness, not so muchspeaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature as upon thewhole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set hissignature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of onesmiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of arace.
From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find theSenora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug beforethe fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round ofthe stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right acrossmy path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least sparkof energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing hercopious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and brokenhoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself. These,I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere quiescence.She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had beenwitticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like theconversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrowrange of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, theyhad a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entirecontentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, andnow of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air ofthe court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in theirswift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she wouldsometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze ofsatisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded onherself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at firstannoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, untilat last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in theday, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knewof what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; herbeauty and her stupidity soothed and amused me. I began to find a kindof transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable goodnature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned; sheenjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation mayenjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when Icame, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on somefoolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some moreintimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I set withinreach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her handsand patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her accustomedattitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the caress; andwhen I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no answerablesentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act, and I blamedmyself for my own more uneasy consciousness.
The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the motherconfirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood hadbeen impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be acommon error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, wasto be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired inshapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharplyfrom the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me fromthe portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom) wasdegenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had requiredthe potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista toraise, what approached hebetude in the mother, into the active oddity ofthe son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I preferred. Of Felipe,vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings, inconstant as a hare,I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious. Of the mother Ihad no thoughts but those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are aptignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a partisan in the enmitywhich I perceived to smoulder between them. True, it seemed mostly onthe mother's part. She would sometimes draw in her breath as he camenear, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if with horroror fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were much upon the surface andreadily shared; and this latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept mewondering on what grounds it rested, and whether the son was certainly infault.
I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a highand harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malariouslowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom itblew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust; theirlegs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one handupon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the gulliesof the hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow buzzing andwhistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally depressing to themind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the steady sweep of awaterfall, so that there was no remission of discomfort while it blew.But higher upon the mountain, it was probably of a more variablestrength, with accesses of fury; for there came down at times a far-offwailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times, on one of the highshelves or terraces, there would start up, and then disperse, a tower ofdust, like the smoke of in explosion.
I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension anddepression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the dayproceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth uponmy customary morning's walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of the stormhad soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I returned tothe residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty with dust. Thecourt had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer of sun fled overit; now and then the wind swooped down upon the pomegranates, andscattered the blossoms, and set the window shutters clapping on the wall.In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro with a flushed countenanceand bright eyes; I thought, too, she was speaking to herself, like one inanger. But when I addressed her with my customary salutation, she onlyreplied by a sharp gesture and continued her walk. The weather haddistempered even this impassive creature; and as I went on upstairs I wasthe less ashamed of my own discomposure.
All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint ofreading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Nightfell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for somesociety, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue ofthe first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. Thewood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which thedraught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and shakenbrightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall withdisconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms,throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disorderedmovements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; butthere was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when Ihad looked on awhile in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned tailas I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber.
By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterlygone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I shouldhave kept hi
m (even by force had that been necessary) to take off theedge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind hadexercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that thenight had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that reactedon my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors andsudden harkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a dish, Ifairly leaped out of my seat.
'I think we are all mad to-day,' said I, affecting to laugh.
'It is the black wind,' he replied dolefully. 'You feel as if you mustdo something, and you don't know what it is.'
I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had sometimesa strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of the body.'And your mother, too,' said I; 'she seems to feel this weather much. Doyou not fear she may be unwell?'
He stared at me a little, and then said, 'No,' almost defiantly; and thenext moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on thewind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. 'Whocan be well?' he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, forI was disturbed enough myself.
I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness, but thepoisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar,would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves andsenses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wakeagain; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But itmust have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by anoutbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposingI had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries ofpain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and discordantthat they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living thing, somelunatic or some wild animal, was being foully tortured. The thought ofFelipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind, and I ran to the door, butit had been locked from the outside; and I might shake it as I pleased, Iwas a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued. Now they would dwindledown into a moaning that seemed to be articulate, and at these times Imade sure they must be human; and again they would break forth and fillthe house with ravings worthy of hell. I stood at the door and gave earto them, till at, last they died away. Long after that, I still lingeredand still continued to hear them mingle in fancy with the storming of thewind; and when at last I crept to my bed, it was with a deadly sicknessand a blackness of horror on my heart.
It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? Whathad passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shockingcries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries werescarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, couldthus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thusturning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind that I hadnot yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was more probablethan that the daughter of the Senora, and the sister of Felipe, should beherself insane? Or, what more likely than that these ignorant and half-witted people should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by violence?Here was a solution; and yet when I called to mind the cries (which Inever did without a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether insufficient:not even cruelty could wring such cries from madness. But of one thing Iwas sure: I could not live in a house where such a thing was halfconceivable, and not probe the matter home and, if necessary, interfere.
The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothingto remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedsidewith obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court, the Senora wassunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued fromthe gateway, I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling, theheavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and themountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A shortwalk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumbthis mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipepass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to theresidencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged inslumber; I stood awhile and marked her, but she did not stir; even if mydesign were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian; andturning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of thehouse.
All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious andfaded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full chargeof daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Timehad breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spiderswung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants hadtheir crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big andfoul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, hadset up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about therooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carvedchair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify ofman's bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set with theportraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in thehouse of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering. Manyof the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of nobleoffices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases most of them byfamous hands. But it was not so much these evidences of greatness thattook hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the presentdepopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the parable offamily life that I read in this succession of fair faces and shapelybodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continuedrace, the creation and recreation, the weaving and changing and handingdown of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother,that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity,and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of oneascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are wondersdulled for us by repetition. But in the singular unity of look, in thecommon features and common bearing, of all these painted generations onthe walls of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked me in theface. And an ancient mirror falling opportunely in my way, I stood andread my own features a long while, tracing out on either hand thefilaments of descent and the bonds that knit me with my family.
At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of achamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportionsand faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured. Theembers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a chairhad been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was ascetic tothe degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor and wallswere naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in someconfusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The sightof books in the house of such a family exceedingly amazed me; and I beganwith a great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption, to go from oneto another and hastily inspect their character. They were of all sorts,devotional, historical, and scientific, but mostly of a great age and inthe Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the marks of constant study;others had been torn across and tossed aside as if in petulance ordisapproval. Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber, I espiedsome papers written upon with pencil on a table near the window. Anunthinking curiosity led me to take one up. It bore a copy of verses,very roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I may rendersomewhat thus--
Pleasure approached with pain and shame, Grief with a wreath of lilies came. Pleasure showed the lovely sun; Jesu dear, how sweet it shone! Grief with her worn hand pointed on, Jesu dear, to thee!
Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, Ibeat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor hismother could have read the books nor written these rough but feelingverses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the roomof the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharplypunished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretlypushed my way in
to the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, andthe fear that she might somehow come to hear of it, oppressed me likeguilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to oneof whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien, wasted withmaceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, anddwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives; andas I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into thebright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolentwoman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips asin the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene withthe cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the daughterdwelt.
That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter thegates of the residencia. The revelation of the daughter's character hadstruck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the nightbefore; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I descended,then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among the woods, posted myselfby the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he appeared I steppedforth and introduced myself as the lodger of the residencia. He had avery strong, honest countenance, on which it was easy to read the mingledemotions with which he regarded me, as a foreigner, a heretic, and yetone who had been wounded for the good cause. Of the family at theresidencia he spoke with reserve, and yet with respect. I mentioned thatI had not yet seen the daughter, whereupon he remarked that that was asit should be, and looked at me a little askance. Lastly, I plucked upcourage to refer to the cries that had disturbed me in the night. Heheard me out in silence, and then stopped and partly turned about, asthough to mark beyond doubt that he was dismissing me.
'Do you take tobacco powder?' said he, offering his snuff-box; and then,when I had refused, 'I am an old man,' he added, 'and I may be allowed toremind you that you are a guest.'
'I have, then, your authority,' I returned, firmly enough, although Iflushed at the implied reproof, 'to let things take their course, and notto interfere?'
He said 'yes,' and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me whereI was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at rest, andhe had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more dismissedthe recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding on mysaintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite forget that I hadbeen locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper Iattacked him warily on both points of interest.
'I never see your sister,' said I casually.
'Oh, no,' said he; 'she is a good, good girl,' and his mind instantlyveered to something else.
'Your sister is pious, I suppose?' I asked in the next pause.
'Oh!' he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, 'a saint; it isshe that keeps me up.'
'You are very fortunate,' said I, 'for the most of us, I am afraid, andmyself among the number, are better at going down.'
'Senor,' said Felipe earnestly, 'I would not say that. You should nottempt your angel. If one goes down, where is he to stop?'
'Why, Felipe,' said I, 'I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may saya good one; but I suppose that is your sister's doing?'
He nodded at me with round eyes.
'Well, then,' I continued, 'she has doubtless reproved you for your sinof cruelty?'
'Twelve times!' he cried; for this was the phrase by which the oddcreature expressed the sense of frequency. 'And I told her you had doneso--I remembered that,' he added proudly--'and she was pleased.'
'Then, Felipe,' said I, 'what were those cries that I heard last night?for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering.'
'The wind,' returned Felipe, looking in the fire.
I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he smiledwith a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my resolve. But Itrod the weakness down. 'The wind,' I repeated; 'and yet I think it wasthis hand,' holding it up, 'that had first locked me in.' The lad shookvisibly, but answered never a word. 'Well,' said I, 'I am a stranger anda guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to judge in your affairs;in these you shall take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to beexcellent. But in so far as concerns my own I will be no man's prisoner,and I demand that key.' Half an hour later my door was suddenly thrownopen, and the key tossed ringing on the floor.
A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point ofnoon. The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of therecess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house wasunder a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentlewind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among thepomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in thestillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the courtand up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round, when adoor opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla. Surprisetransfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the deepshadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon mine andclung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands; and themoments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, weresacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how long it was beforeI awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into theupper stair. She did not move, but followed me with her great, thirstingeyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she paled andfaded.
In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not thinkwhat change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it shouldthus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen her--Olalla! Andthe stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azureanswered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; andin her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richestcolours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom he had made activeas a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes he had lighted thetorches of the soul. The thrill of her young life, strung like a wildanimal's, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out fromher eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart and sprang to my lipsin singing. She passed through my veins: she was one with me.
I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out inits ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold andsorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her atfirst sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to myexperience. What then was to follow? She was the child of an afflictedhouse, the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even inher beauty. She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as anarrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background ofthe world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the nameof brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that immovableand lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper nowrecurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could not marry,what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single andlong glance which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weaknessequal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the coldnorthern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was aknowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than I could find couragefor; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.
As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It hadfallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes ofpaint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type inthat declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. Iremembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, acreature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, andI marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty Ihad seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often drawn towomen, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that Idesired and had not dared to imagin
e was united.
I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed forher, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned, aboutmy usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks once moremet and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn near to her;but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a magnet,something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow and passby; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me with hernoble eyes.
I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory itseemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something ofher mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which Iknow she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with acunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodicestood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of thepoverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brownbosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight inlife and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes that hungupon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness, lightsof poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that were abovethe earth. It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul, was more thanworthy of that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable flower towither unseen on these rough mountains? Should I despise the great giftoffered me in the eloquent silence of her eyes? Here was a soul immured;should I not burst its prison? All side considerations fell off from me;were she the child of Herod I swore I should make her mine; and that veryevening I set myself, with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace, tocaptivate the brother. Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes,perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned up the better qualitiesof that imperfect soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and hisvery likeness to Olalla, while it annoyed, yet softened me.
A third day passed in vain--an empty desert of hours. I would not lose achance, and loitered all afternoon in the court where (to give myself acountenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows it waswith a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and evenas for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing warmthof toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her, shewould doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again withoutembarrassment; and this composure staggered me. And again, as I markedher make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and lingering onthe bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder at this depthof passive sensuality. She lived in her body; and her consciousness wasall sunk into and disseminated through her members, where it luxuriouslydwelt. Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her eyes. Each time sheturned on me these great beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to theday, but closed against human inquiry--each time I had occasion toobserve the lively changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted ina breath--I know not what it was came over me, I can find no name for themingled feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and distaste that jarredalong my nerves. I tried her on a variety of subjects, equally in vain;and at last led the talk to her daughter. But even there she provedindifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was herhighest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higherthought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned inmy face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothingto say. 'People speak much, very much,' she added, looking at me withexpanded pupils; and then again yawned and again showed me a mouth thatwas as dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and, leaving her toher repose, went up into my own chamber to sit by the open window,looking on the hills and not beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deepdreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a voice that I had neverheard.
I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation thatseemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and foot,and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. Itshould lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living bythe eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit,and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of itwith wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown andlovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure. Yet whenI did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me andat once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like achildish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near tothe margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but hereyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last, whenI was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me; if Iadvanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that wassane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thoughtof such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life in our eyes,exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then, with agreat effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a suddenbitterness of disappointment, I turned and went away in the same silence.
What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she alsosilent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless andinevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken,we were wholly strangers: and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of agiant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me withimpatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her books,read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my mistress.But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew nothing butmy bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth; thelaws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my arms; and Idrew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be jealous formyself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began tofall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp must beher mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintlymonitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a manwith whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of pity, allother thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and consoleand reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love was returned on myside, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was not unworthy.
The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blueover-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in thetrees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air withdelicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. Myheart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother. Isat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound theplateau to the north. Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of astream, where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even touchingto behold the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of thedelight and glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air,and among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with awhimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemedto grow in strength and stature, like a Samson.
And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared outof a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood upand waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fireand lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energywas in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would haverun, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept hereyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it waswithout one glance that she addressed me. At the first note of her voiceI started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test ofmy love. And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping andincomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though deeper thanusual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in arich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the redthreads were mingled with the brown
among her tresses. It was not only avoice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her. Andyet her words immediately plunged me back upon despair.
'You will go away,' she said, 'to-day.'
Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of aweight, or as if a spell had been dissolved. I know not in what words Ianswered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the wholeardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her,slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear mycountry, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side. Andthen, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, Icomforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic spirit,with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to share andlighten. 'Nature,' I told her, 'was the voice of God, which men disobeyat peril; and if we were thus humbly drawn together, ay, even as by amiracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our souls; we must bemade,' I said--'made for one another. We should be mad rebels,' I criedout--'mad rebels against God, not to obey this instinct.'
She shook her head. 'You will go to-day,' she repeated, and then with agesture, and in a sudden, sharp note--'no, not to-day,' she cried, 'to-morrow!'
But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. Istretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me andclung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as ofa blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next momentshe had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled with thespeed of a deer among the cork-trees.
I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards theresidencia, waltzing upon air. She sent me away, and yet I had but tocall upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses ofgirls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not exempted.Go? Not I, Olalla--O, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang near by;and in that season, birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. Andonce more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stablemountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in theshadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on thelineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struckupon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; theearth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woodssmouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight runthrough the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, andsavage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature'ssecrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared aliveand friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strungme up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling ofthe soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Loveburned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, Ipitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me inwith dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God uponthe other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocenceand to the unbridled forces of the earth.
My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, andthe sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, allsloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with apassive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour fellaway like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding suchshaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me withher unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of therealm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for thefirst time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and happy,and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should be so muchdisquieted.
On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in thenorth room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla'shand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, 'Ifyou have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a creaturesorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for the sake ofHim who died, I supplicate that you shall go.' I looked at this awhilein mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and horror oflife; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and I began toshake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my lifeunmanned me like a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not myhappiness, it was life itself that was involved. I could not lose her. Isaid so, and stood repeating it. And then, like one in a dream, I movedto the window, put forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust itthrough the pane. The blood spurted from my wrist; and with aninstantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on thelittle leaping fountain, and reflected what to do. In that empty roomthere was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I requiredassistance. There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might bemy helper, and I turned and went down stairs, still keeping my thumb uponthe wound.
There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself tothe recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozingclose before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.
'Pardon me,' said I, 'if I disturb you, but I must apply to you forhelp.'
She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very wordsI thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils andseemed to come suddenly and fully alive.
'I have cut myself,' I said, 'and rather badly. See!' And I held out mytwo hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping.
Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemedto fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yetinscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at herdisturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by thehand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten meto the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and themonstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beather back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries, criesthat I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of the highwind. Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbingwith the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the abhorrentstrangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against the wall,when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound, pinned downhis mother on the floor.
A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I wasincapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon thefloor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she strove toreach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on myface, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry meupstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then Isaw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening tothe savage cries that shook the residencia. And then, swift and light asa thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in herbosom, moaning and mourning over it with dove-like sounds. They were notwords that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than speech,infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there, a thoughtstung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a thought, like aworm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love. Yes, they werebeautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness; but wastheir beauty human?
All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless femalething, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp, resounded through thehouse, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were thedeath-cry of my love; my love was murdered; was not only dead, but anoffence to me; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it stillswelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at herlooks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt uponOlalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through thewhole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very foundationsand story of our love--though it a
ppalled, though it shocked and sickenedme, was yet not of power to break the knot of my infatuation.
When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which Iknew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him--I know notwhat. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling bymy bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. Sothen, for these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently perused thestory in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I saw hereyes darken and brighter, and still speak no language but that of anunfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the robe,the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the growingdarkness of the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted; but even thenthe touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked with me. To liethus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, is toreawake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I reasoned withmyself; and I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold toaccept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious sentimentsurvived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now, even asbefore, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned to her? Late onin the night some strength revived in me, and I spoke:--
'Olalla,' I said, 'nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I loveyou.'
She knelt down awhile and prayed, and I devoutly respected her devotions.The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the threewindows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw herindistinctly. When she rearose she made the sign of the cross.
'It is for me to speak,' she said, 'and for you to listen. I know; youcan but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this place. Ibegged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or ifnot, O let me think so!'
'I love you,' I said.
'And yet you have lived in the world,' she said; after a pause, 'you area man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach,who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who learn muchdo but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they conceive thedignity of the design--the horror of the living fact fades from theirmemory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I think, andare warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So Ishall have a life in the cherished places of your memory: a life as muchmy own, as that which I lead in this body.'
'I love you,' I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took hers,and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but winceda little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was notunkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call uponher resolution; plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same timeleaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart.'There,' she cried, 'you feel the very footfall of my life. It onlymoves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed tooffer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a livebranch from a tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or Ithink I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent prisoner,and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This capsule,such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a touch for itsmaster; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I think not; Iknow not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me your words were ofthe soul; it is of the soul that you ask--it is only from the soul thatyou would take me.'
'Olalla,' I said, 'the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in love.What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the soulcleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God's signal;and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the footstool andfoundation of the highest.'
'Have you,' she said, 'seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your eyes never restedon that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died agesago; and she did evil in her life. But, look-again: there is my hand tothe least line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine, then, andwhat am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love, andfor the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me) not a gesturethat I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my eyes, no,not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others?Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men haveheard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears. Thehands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me, theyguide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform features andattributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the quiet of thegrave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me? The girlwho does not know and cannot answer for the least portion of herself? orthe stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree of which she isthe passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is ever young, itcarries its eternal destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon thesea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a semblance of self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul, but the soul is inthe race.'
'You fret against the common law,' I said. 'You rebel against the voiceof God, which he has made so winning to convince, so imperious tocommand. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings tomine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we arecompounded awake and run together at a look; the clay of the earthremembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawntogether as the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb andflow, by things older and greater than we ourselves.'
'Alas!' she said, 'what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundredyears ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great, cunning, andcruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war;the king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung forthem or when they returned and found their hovels smoking, blasphemedtheir name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he has sprungfrom the brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The breath ofweariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed; they began to godown; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady andsenseless like the wind in the gutters of the mountains; beauty was stillhanded down, but no longer the guiding wit nor the human heart; the seedpassed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the bones, but theywere the bones and the flesh of brutes, and their mind was as the mind offlies. I speak to you as I dare; but you have seen for yourself how thewheel has gone backward with my doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon alittle rising ground in this desperate descent, and see both before andbehind, both what we have lost and to what we are condemned to go fartherdownward. And shall I--I that dwell apart in the house of the dead, mybody, loathing its ways--shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind anotherspirit, reluctant as my own, into this bewitched and tempest-brokentenement that I now suffer in? Shall I hand down this cursed vessel ofhumanity, charge it with fresh life as with fresh poison, and dash it,like a fire, in the faces of posterity? But my vow has been given; therace shall cease from off the earth. At this hour my brother is makingready; his foot will soon be on the stair; and you will go with him andpass out of my sight for ever. Think of me sometimes as one to whom thelesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with courage; asone who loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her lovewas hateful to her; as one who sent you away and yet would have longed tokeep you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and nogreater fear than to be forgotten.'
She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice soundingsofter and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I layalone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lainbound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was there fell uponme a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in atthe door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe coming, charged mewithout a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate,where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hil
ls stood outsharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of theplateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkledin the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern frontabove the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and as the cart joltedonwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into avalley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe walked in silencebeside the shafts, but from time to time he would cheek the mule and seemto look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his handupon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such asimplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the burstingof an artery.
'Felipe,' I said, 'take me where they will ask no questions.'
He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end, retracedsome part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another path, led meto the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirkton ofthat thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell in my mind ofthe day breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of arms thathelped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and of a swoonthat fell upon me like sleep.
The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my sidewith his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I began topick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery,and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, withoutnaming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did notaffect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. 'Sir,' said I, 'youknow that I do not ask in wantonness. What of that family?'
He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, andthat they were very poor and had been much neglected.
'But she has not,' I said. 'Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she isinstructed and wise beyond the use of women.'
'Yes,' he said; 'the Senorita is well-informed. But the family has beenneglected.'
'The mother?' I queried.
'Yes, the mother too,' said the Padre, taking snuff. 'But Felipe is awell-intentioned lad.'
'The mother is odd?' I asked.
'Very odd,' replied the priest.
'I think, sir, we beat about the bush,' said I. 'You must know more ofmy affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to be justified onmany grounds. Will you not be frank with me?'
'My son,' said the old gentleman, 'I will be very frank with you onmatters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it doesnot require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, Itake your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all inGod's hands, and that His ways are not as our ways? I have even advisedwith my superiors in the church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a greatmystery.'
'Is she mad?' I asked.
'I will answer you according to my belief. She is not,' returned thePadre, 'or she was not. When she was young--God help me, I fear Ineglected that wild lamb--she was surely sane; and yet, although it didnot run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had beenso before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined me,perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on growing, notonly in the individual but in the race.'
'When she was young,' I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, andit was only with a great effort that I was able to add, 'was she likeOlalla?'
'Now God forbid!' exclaimed the Padre. 'God forbid that any man shouldthink so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the Senorita (butfor her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not ahair's resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I could notbear to have you think so; though, Heaven knows, it were, perhaps, betterthat you should.'
At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own horrors, myown passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and withsomething more than a purely formal submission, appealing to hisjudgment.
He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done, hesat for some time silent. Then he began: 'The church,' and instantlybroke off again to apologise. 'I had forgotten, my child, that you werenot a Christian,' said he. 'And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,even the church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you havemy opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; Iwould accept her judgment.'
On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduousin his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainlyfeared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a manmight be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx. The villagers, too,avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. Ithought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the moresuperstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set thisdown to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon methat if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at theresidencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; andyet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell uponmy love. It did not conquer, but I may not deify that it restrained myardour.
Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, fromwhich the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it becamemy daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where thepathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelfof rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the sizeof life and more than usually painful in design. This was my perch;thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great oldhouse, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro aboutthe garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be broken upagain by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me inunbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain. Thisdistant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my life hadbeen so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour. I passedwhole days there, debating with myself the various elements of ourposition; now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear toprudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two.
One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhatgaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly didnot know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, hedrew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Amongother things he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years hadmuch frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army withhis mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with hisfamily.
'Do you know that house?' I inquired, at last, pointing to theresidencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from thethought of Olalla.
He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.
'Too well,' he said, 'it was there that one of my comrades sold himselfto Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!'
A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the manresumed, as if to himself: 'Yes,' he said, 'O yes, I know it. I havepassed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it;sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but there wasworse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm, Senor, and dragged himto the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forthwith me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see hewas moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out on the gallery, andcalled him by his name; and he turned, and there was she standing with alamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I cried out aloud toGod, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and left me alone. Hehad made his choice; God help us. I would pray for him, but to what end?there are sins that not even the Pope can loose.'
'And your friend,' I asked, 'what became of him?'
'Nay, God
knows,' said the muleteer. 'If all be true that we hear, hisend was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair.'
'Do you mean that he was killed?' I asked.
'Sure enough, he was killed,' returned the man. 'But how? Ay, how? Butthese are things that it is sin to speak of.'
'The people of that house . . . ' I began.
But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. 'The people?' he cried.'What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?' And here he put hismouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain mighthave over-heard and been stricken with horror.
What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and superstition,of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was rather theapplication that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the church wouldhave burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the church was nowshortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men, andleft to the more awful judgment of an offended God. This was wrong; butit should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age; he was evenbewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to their owndanger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of that house shouldgo up to heaven.
He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news direct to thethreatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a womandrawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my penetration;by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hiddenbehind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then Icame forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each otherwith a passionate sadness.
'I thought you had gone,' she said at length. 'It is all that you can dofor me--to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. Butdo you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on yourhead, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is thoughtyou love me, and the people will not suffer it.'
I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.'Olalla,' I said, 'I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but notalone.'
She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I stoodby and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration, now atthe living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubedcountenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image. Thesilence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that circledsidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the hills.Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil, and,still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked upon mewith a pale and sorrowful countenance.
'I have laid my hand upon the cross,' she said. 'The Padre says you areno Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the faceof the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in allof us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must endurefor a little while, until morning returns bringing peace. Suffer me topass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely,counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it isthus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of earthlyhappiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion.'
I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend toimages, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was arude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to myintelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadlycontraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me thatthe sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as itstill stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, anemblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but anaccident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best tosuffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain insilence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closedabout my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.
The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables Page 11
