L'Arrabiata and Other Tales Part 11

They paced up and down--he with the perceptions of locality peculiar to the blind, guiding her carefully past the chairs and cupboards that stood against the walls. "How do you feel now?" he asked her. "Well;"

she answered again--and always.

"Come," he said; "lean heavier on me; you are so weak. It would do you good to breathe the air, and the scent of the flowery meadows; it is so close and heavy here. Only the doctor says it might be dangerous; our eyes might get sore again, and even blind, if we were to see the light too soon. Ah! now I know the difference between light and darkness! No sound in music is so sweet as that feeling of s.p.a.ce about the eyes. It did hurt me rather, I must confess; yet I could have gazed for ever at those bright colors--the pain was so beautiful (you will soon feel it also). But it will be many a long day before we are allowed to enjoy that pleasure. At first, I know I shall do nothing but look all day long. One thing I should like to know, Marlene; they tell us each thing has its color--now what is the color of your face and mine? I should so like to know--bright or dark? Would not it be disagreeable if they should not be bright and fair? I wonder whether I shall know you with my eyes? Now when I only feel with the tip of this little finger, I could distinguish you from every other human being in the world.

"But then!--ah! then we shall have to begin again. We must learn to know each other by sight. Now, I know that your cheeks and hair are soft to touch--will they be soft to look at? I do so long to know, and have so long to wait!" In this way he would run on, talking unceasingly. How silently she walked by his side, he never noticed.

Many of his words sank deep into her heart. It had never yet occurred to her that she should see herself as others saw her--she could hardly fancy that could be. She had heard of mirrors, but she never had been able to understand them. She now imagined that when a seeing person's eyes are opened, his own image must stand before him.

Now as she lay in bed, her mother believing her to be asleep, the words recurred to her again: "It would be disagreeable if we should find our faces dark!" She had heard of ugliness and beauty; she knew that ugly people were generally much pitied, and often less loved. "If I should be ugly," she said to herself, "and he were to care less for me! He used to play with my hair and call it silk--he will never do that now, if he finds me ugly. And he?--if _he_ should happen to be ugly, I never would let him feel it--never! I should love him just the same. Yet, no; _he_ cannot be ugly--not he. I know he is not." Thus she brooded long, lost in care and curiosity. The weather was hot and close. From the garden the nightingale was heard complaining, while fitful gusts of west wind came rattling at the windowpanes. She was all alone in her room. Her mother, who till now had slept beside her, had had her bed removed, to lessen the heat within that narrow s.p.a.ce. It was unnecessary to watch her now, they thought, as all feverish symptoms were supposed to have disappeared. This night, however, they did return again, and kept her tossing restlessly until long after midnight. Then sleep, though steep dull and broken, had taken pity on her, and come to close her weary eyelids.

Meanwhile the storm that had been encircling the horizon half the day, threatening and growling, had arisen with might, gathered itself just above the wood, and paused--even the wind had ceased. Now a heavy crash of thunder breaks over the young girl's slumbers. She starts up, half dreaming still--what it is she feels or wants, she hardly knows; impelled by some vague terror, she rises to her feet. Her pillows seem to burn her. Standing by her bed, she listens to the pattering rain without; but it does not cool her fevered brow. She tries to collect her thoughts--to remember what had pa.s.sed. She can recall nothing but those melancholy fancies with which she had fallen asleep. A hasty resolution forms and ripens in her mind. She will go to Clement; he too is alone--what is to prevent her resolving all her doubts at once, by one look at him and at herself? Possessed by this idea, the doctor's injunctions are all forgotten. Just as she had left her couch, with groping trembling hands, she finds the door which stands half open; feeling for the bed, she steals on tiptoe to the sleeper's side; holding her breath, bending forward where he lies, she tears the bandage from her eyes.

But how is she terrified to find that all is as dark as ever. She had forgotten that it was night, and that she had been told night makes all men blind. She had believed it was the light streaming from a seeing eye that lighted up itself and other objects round it. She can distinguish nothing, although she feels the boy's soft breath upon her eyelids. In distress, almost in despair, she is about to leave the room, when a sudden flash of lightning flames through the now less carefully darkened panes; a second, and then a third--the whole atmosphere seems to surge with lurid light. Thunder and rain increase their roar. But she stands motionless, her rapt gaze fastened on the curly head before her, resting so peacefully upon its pillows. Then the picture begins to fade--the water gushes from her eyes; seized with unutterable terror, she takes refuge in her room, and hastily replacing the bandage, she throws herself upon her bed. She knows--she feels irrevocably--her eyes have looked and seen for the first time--and for the last!

CHAPTER III.

Weeks have pa.s.sed--the young powers of these eyes are to be tried by the light of day. The doctor, who, from the adjacent town where he lived, had hitherto directed the children's simple treatment, had come over on a bright unclouded day, to be present, and with his patients to enjoy, the first fruits of his skill.

Green wreaths in lieu of curtains had been hung about the windows, and both rooms festively adorned with flowers and foliage. The baron himself, and from the village the nearer friends of both the families, had a.s.sembled to wish parents and children joy, and to rejoice in the happy wonder of the cure.

When Clement, scarlet with delight, was placed before Marlene, and took her hand, in shy terror she had half hidden herself in a corner behind some foliage. He had begged to be allowed to see her first--both bandages had been loosened at the same moment. A cry of speechless rapture had sounded from the boy's lips; he remained rigid on the same spot, a beatified smile upon his lips, turning his flashing eyes on every side. He has forgotten that Marlene was to be placed before him; (he had yet to learn what the human form is like,) and she did nothing to recall it to him. She stood motionless. Only her long lashes quivered over her large clear brown pa.s.sive eyes. No suspicions were awakened yet. "Those unknown wonders of sight are strange to her," they said. But when the boy broke out into this sadden rapture, and they said to him, "This is Marlene," and in his old way he had felt for her cheek with his hand, and stroked it, saying, "Your face is bright;"

then her tears gushed out. She hastily shook her head, and said, almost inaudibly--"It is all dark; it is just as it always was!"

The horror of that first moment who shall describe? The agitated doctor drew her towards the window, and proceeded to examine her eyes; the pupils were not to be distinguished from seeing ones, save by their lifeless melancholy fixedness. "The nerve is dead!" he said; "some sadden shock, or vivid light must have destroyed it." The s.e.xton's wife tamed white, and fell fainting in her husband's arms. Clement could hardly gather what was pa.s.sing--his mind was filled with the new life given him. But Marlene lay bathed in tears, and returned no answer to the doctor's questions. Nothing was ever learned from her; she could not tell how it had happened, she said; she begged to be forgiven for her childish weeping. She could bear all that was appointed for her--she had never known a happier lot.

Clement was beside himself when the extent of her misfortune was made known to him. "You shall see too!" he cried, running to her; "I do not care to see if you do not! It cannot be so hopeless yet. Ah, now I know what it is you lose! Seeing would be nothing; it is that everybody else has eyes, that look so kindly on us--and so shall you see them look on you! Only have patience, and do not cry!" And then he turned to the doctor, and with tears, implored him to cure Marlene. Large tears stood in the good doctor's eyes; he could scarcely so far compose himself as to bid the boy first be careful of himself; meanwhile he would see what could be done; he was forced to leave him a ray of hope to spare him dangerous agitation.

From the disconsolate parents, however, he did not withhold the truth.

The boy's grief had been some comfort to Marlene. As she was sitting by the window she called him to her: "You must not be so grieved," she said; "it is the will of G.o.d. Rejoice, as I rejoice, that you are cured. You know I never cared so much; I could have been contented as it was. If only father and mother would not mind!--but they will get used to it again, and so will you. If you will only love me just as well now that I am to remain as I was, we may still be very happy."

But he was not so easily to be comforted, and the doctor had to insist on their being parted. Clement was taken into the larger room, where the villagers came pressing round him, shaking hands with him by turns, with cordial words and wishes. The crowd half stunned him, and he only kept repeating: "Marlene is still blind; she will never see! have you heard?" he would say, and burst into tears afresh.

It was high time to tie the bandage on again, and lead him to his own cool quiet room--there he lay exhausted with joy and grief and weeping.

His father came to him, and spoke tenderly and piously; which did not much avail him. He cried even in his sleep, and appeared to be disturbed by distressing dreams.

On the following day, however, wonder, joy, and curiosity a.s.serted their rights again; sorrow for Marlene only appeared to touch him nearly when he had her before his eyes. The first thing in the morning he had been to see her, and with affectionate anxiety to enquire whether she felt no change--no more hopeful symptom? Then he became absorbed in the variegated world that was expanding before his eyes.

When he returned to Marlene, it was only to describe some new wonder to her, although sometimes, in his fullest flow of narrative, he would stop suddenly, reminded by a look at the poor little friend beside him, how painful to her his joy must be. But in reality, she did not find it painful. For herself she wanted nothing--listening to the enthusiasm of his delight was joy enough for her. Only when by-and-by he came more rarely, or remained silent, for the reason that all he could have said, appeared as nothing to what he did not dare to say--only then she began to feel uneasy. Hitherto, by day, she had hardly ever been without him, but now she often sat alone. Her mother would come to keep her company; but her mother, once so lively, in losing her dearest hope, had also lost her cheerfulness.

She could find nothing to say to her child save words of comfort, which her own sighs belied, and which therefore could not reach her heart.

How much of what the young girl now was suffering had she not foreseen with terror! And yet the feeling of what she had lost, came upon her with pangs of unknown bitterness.

She would still sit spinning in her father's garden, and when Clement came, these poor blind eyes of hers would light up strangely. He was always kind, and would sit beside her, stroking her hair and cheek as he had done of old. Once she entreated him not to be so silent--she felt no touch of envy when he told her what the world was like, and what it daily taught him; but when he left her to herself, she felt so lonely! Never, by word or look, did she remind him of that evening when he had promised he would never leave her--such hopes as these she had long resigned. And since he had nothing to conceal from her, he appeared to love her twice as well.

In the fullness of his heart, he would sit for hours telling her of the sun and moon and stars; of all the trees and flowers; and especially how their parents looked, and they themselves. To her very heart's core, she felt a thrill of joy, when he innocently told her that she was fairer far than all the village maidens; he described her as tall and slender; with delicately-chiselled features, and dark eyebrows. He had also seen himself, he said, in the gla.s.s; but he was not nearly so good-looking--men in general were not, by a great deal, so handsome as women. All this was more than she could quite comprehend; only so much she did: her own looks pleased him, and more than this her heart did not desire.

They did not again return to this topic; but on the beauties of nature he was perfectly inexhaustible. When he was gone, she would recall his words, and feel a kind of jealousy of a world that robbed her of him.

In secret this childish feeling grew and strengthened--growing stronger even than the pleasure she had felt in his delight. Above all, she began to hate the sun; for the sun, he told her, was brighter than all created things besides. In her dim conceptions, brightness and beauty were the same; and never did she feel so disheartened as when, towards evening, he sat beside her, intoxicated with delight, watching the sun go down. Of herself he had never spoken in such words--and did this sight so cause him to forget her that he did not even see the tears that started to her eyes--tears of vexation, and of a curious kind of jealous grievance?

Her heart grew heavier still, when, with the doctor's sanction, the vicar began the education of his son. Before his eyes had been couched, the greater part of his day had been spent in practising his music.

Bible teaching, something of history and mathematics, and a trifle of Latin, was all that formerly had been considered needful. In all those lessons, not extending beyond the most conventional acquirements, Marlene had taken a part.

Now that the boy manifested a very decided taste for natural history, his time was filled up in earnest; preparing him for one of the higher cla.s.ses of a school in the neighbouring town. With a firm unwearying will, and his natural dispositions aiding, he laboured through all that had been omitted in his education, and soon attained the level of his years. For many an hour together, he would sit in the s.e.xton's garden with his book; but there was now no question of their former chat.

Marlene felt her twofold loss--her lessons and her friend.

CHAPTER IV.

The autumn came, and with it a few days' pause in the lad's studies.

The vicar had resolved to take his son, before the winter, on an excursion among the mountains; to shew him the hills and dales, and give him a deeper insight into a world that already had seemed so fair, even upon the meagre plains around their village.

When the boy first heard of it; "Marlene must go with us," he said.

They attempted to dissuade him, but he refused to go without her. "What if she cannot see?" he said; "The mountain-air is strengthening, and she has been so pale and weak, and she falls into anxious fancies when I am away."

They did his bidding therefore; the young girl was lifted into the carriage beside Clement and his parents, and one short day's journey brought them to the foot of the mountain-chain. Here commenced their wanderings on foot. Patiently the boy conducted his little friend, now more reserved than ever. He often felt a wish to climb some solitary peak that promised a fresh expanse of view, but he led her wherever she wished to go, and would not give up the charge, often as his parents would have relieved him of it.

Only when they had reached a height, or were resting in some shady spot, would he leave the young girl's side; seeking his own path among the most perilous rocks, he would go collecting stones or plants not to be found below. Then when he returned to the resting party, he had always something to bring Marlene--some berries, a sweet-scented flower, or some soft bird's-nest blown from the trees by the wind.

She would accept them with gentle thanks; she appeared to be more contented than at home, and she really was so, for all day long she breathed the same air with him. But, her foolish jealousies went with her. She felt angry at the mountains, whose autumn glory, as she believed, endeared the world still more to him, and estranged him more from her.

At last the vicar's wife was struck by her strange ways. She would occasionally consult her husband about the child, who was as dear to both as if she had been their own. Her obstinate dejection was attributed by both to the disappointment of her hopes of sight; and yet the young girl felt no pain in losing that which had only been promised to her, or depicted to her fancy--it was all in the loss of what she had already known; of what had been her own.

On the second evening of their journey they halted at a solitary inn, celebrated from its situation close to a waterfall. Their wanderings had been long, and the women were very weary. As soon as they reached the house, the vicar took in his wife before going on farther to the cleft, from whence they already heard the roaring of the water. Marlene was quite exhausted, yet she would persist in following Clement, who felt no want of rest. They climbed the remaining steps, and louder and nearer sounded the tumult of the waters. Midway up the narrow path Marlene's remaining strength gave way. "Let me sit down here," she said, "while you go on, and fetch me when you have looked long enough."

He offered to lead her home before going farther, but she was already seated, so he left her and went on, following the sound; touched at once, and charmed with the solitude and majesty of the spot.

Seated upon a stone, the young girl began to long for his return. "He will never come!" she thought. A chill crept over her, and the dull distant thunder of the falls gave her a shudder.

"Why does he not come?" she said; "he will have forgotten me in his delight, as he always does. If I could only find the way back to the house that I might get warm again!" And so she sat and listened to every distant sound. Now she thought she heard him calling to her; trembling, she rose--what was she to do? Involuntarily she tried a step, but her foot slipped, and she staggered and fell. Fortunately the stones on the path were all overgrown with moss. Still the fall terrified her, and losing all self-command, she screamed for help; but her voice was unable to reach across the chasm to Clement, who was standing on the edge, in the very midst of the uproar, and the house was too far off. A sharp pain cut to her heart, as she lay among the stones, helpless and deserted. Tears of desperation started to her eyes, as she rose with difficulty. What she most dearly loved seemed hateful to her now--her heart was too fall of bitterness even to feel that an all-seeing G.o.d was nigh. Thus Clement found her; when for her sake he had torn himself with an effort from the spell of so magnificent a scene.

"I am coming!" he called to her from a distance. "It is lucky that you did not come with us--the place was so narrow, one false step would have been enough to kill you. The water falls so far, deep down, and roars and rushes, and rises again in clouds of spray, it makes one giddy. Only feel how it has powdered me. But how is this? You are cold as ice, and your lips are trembling. Come, it was very wrong of me to leave you sitting out so late in the cold! G.o.d forbid that it should make you ill!"

She suffered herself to be led back in perverse silence. The vicar's wife was much alarmed at seeing the child's sweet countenance so distorted and disturbed. They prepared some warm drink for her in haste, and made her go to bed without being able to learn more than that she felt unwell.

And in truth she did feel ill--so ill that she wished to die. Life that had already proved itself so adverse, had also become odious to her. She lay there, giving full vent to her impious rancorous thoughts, wilfully destroying the last links that bound her to her fellow-creatures. "I will go up there to-morrow;" she said to herself, in her dark brooding. "He himself shall take me to the spot where one false step may kill me. My death will not kill him. Why should he have to bear my burden longer?--he has only borne it out of pity."

This guilty thought wound close and closer round her heart. What had become of her natural disposition, so tender and transparent, during those last few months of inward struggle? She even dwelt without remorse on the consequences of her crime. "They will get used to it, as they have got used to my being blind; he will not always have the picture of my misery before his eyes, to spoil his pleasure in this beautiful world of his!" This last reflexion invariably came to strengthen her resolves, when a doubt would arise to combat them.

The vicar and his wife were in the adjoining room, separated from hers by a thin part.i.tion. Clement still lingered out of doors, under the trees; he could not part from the stars and mountains, or shut out the distant music of the waters.

"It distresses me to see how Marlene pines and falls away," said his mother. "If the slightest causes agitate her so, she will be soon worn out. If you would only talk to her, and tell her not to make herself so miserable about a misfortune that cannot be repaired."

"I am afraid it would be useless;" returned the vicar. "If her education, her father's and mother's tenderness, and her daily intercourse with ourselves, have not spoken to her heart, no human words can do so. If she had learned to submit herself to the will of G.o.d, she would bear a dispensation that has left her so much to be thankful for, with grat.i.tude, and not with murmurings."