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The sky was clear and bright; the sun rose unclouded on the scene, and the wide settlement of Socartes flashed from dark neutrality into redness. The sculptured rocks, the heaps of ore, the hillocks of waste soil that rose on every side like Babylonian mounds, were red; the ground, the trucks and carts, the machinery, the water and the laborers that gave life to Socartes. The brick-colored tone was universal, with faint shades of difference in the earth and the houses, the metal and the people's garments. The women at work at the washing looked like a crowd of nymphs, come down in the world, and cast in red ironstone. A rivulet of crimson fluid ran through the bottom conduit to join a crimson river—you might fancy it the sweat of these toiling men and machines, of muscles and of iron.
Nela stepped out of the house. Even she, though she did not work in the mines, was faintly tinged with the universal ruddle, for the finely-powdered metal spared no one. In her hand she held a hunch of bread which Señana had given her for breakfast, and as she ate it she walked on quickly, lost in thought and not lingering to amuse herself. She had soon passed the workshops and, going up the inclined plane and the steps before mentioned, she reached the houses of Aldeacorba. The first of these was a handsome and stately mansion, large, well-built, and cheerful looking, but lately restored and painted; with stone boundary walls, decorated eaves and a broad escutcheon surrounded by granite foliage. And the escutcheon itself would be less missed than the climbing vine, whose long and leafy branches looked like whiskers—growing, as whiskers do, on each side of a face, of which the two windows served as eyes, while the escutcheon was the nose and the long balcony the mouth, always widely grinning. And to complete this whimsical air of personality, a beam stuck out from the balcony intended to attach a rope to support an awning, and with this addition the face was seen as smoking a cigar. The roof was in the shape of a cap and in it there was a window that might represent the tassel. The chimneys could only be the ears. It was one of those faces in which a physiognomist reads plainly, peace of mind, ease of circumstance and a quiet conscience.
In front of it was a little court-yard enclosed by a wall of adobe, and on one side was a pretty orchard. As Nela went in she met the cows coming out to pasture, and after exchanging a few words with their driver—a formidable youth, about four feet high and ten years old—she went straight up to a stout gentleman, whiskered, grey-haired and florid, with a kind face and pleasant smile, and a half-military and half-rustic air; he was in his shirt sleeves and braces, and his hairy arms were bared to the elbow. Before the little girl addressed him, he looked up at the house and called out: "Here is Nela, my boy!"
A lad at once made his appearance, remarkably tall, grave and erect, his head held somewhat stiffly and his eyes fixed and vacant like lenses. His face was like marble, carved with exquisite sharpness, and his skin was as fine and soft as a girl's; there was not a feature or a line which was not of that supremely beautiful type of manliness which was the outcome of a thousand years of Hellenic thought. Those eyes even, so purely sculpturesque in their lack of sight, were large, grand and brilliant. Their fixity lost its strangeness when you remembered that behind them all was night. In the absence of the faculty which is the cause and origin of facial expression, this blind Antinous had the cold serenity of marble, endowed with form by the genius of sculpture and with life by a vital spark. A breath, a ray of warmth, a mere sensation would suffice to animate the beautiful stone which, while it possessed every charm of form, was devoid of that consciousness of its own beauty, which is born of the faculty of seeing it.
He looked about twenty, and his strong and graceful frame was in every respect worthy of the incomparable head that crowned it. Never was a more lamentable injustice done by Nature, than to this perfect example of humanity as to beauty, blest, on one hand, with every gift, and bereft, on the other, of the sense by which man has most in common with his fellow-man and gains familiarity with all the marvels of creation at large. The injustice was such, that these splendid gifts were useless—it was as though after creating all things the Creator had left them in darkness, so that he could not himself take pleasure in his works. And to make the privation more conspicuous, the young man had mental lights of the highest order and a very superior intelligence. To have this and to lack the faculty of conceiving the idea of visibility, of form as distinct from mere matter, and at the same time to be as beautiful as an angel; to have all the faculties of a man and be as blind as a vegetable! It was strange and hard. We, alas! know not the secret of these terrible injustices; if we did, then indeed the gates would be open to us which hide the primordial secrets of moral and physical duty; we should understand the fathomless mysteries of inherited woe, of evil and of death, and might take measure of the dark shadow which always haunts life and all that is good in it.
Don Francisco Penáguilas, the young man's father, was more than good, he was admirable; judicious, kind, genial, honorable and magnanimous, and well educated too. No one disliked him; he was the most respected of all the rich land-owners in the country side, and more than one delicate question had been settled by the mediation—always equitable and intelligent—of the Señor de Aldeacorba de Suso. The house in which we now find him had been the home of his infancy. In his youth he had been to America, and on returning to Spain without having made his fortune, he had joined the National Guard. He then returned to his native town where, having inherited a good fortune, he devoted himself to husbandry and to breeding cattle, and at the period of our story he had just come into another and even larger sum.
His wife, who was an Andalusian, had died very young, leaving him the one son who, from his birth, was found to be deprived of the most precious of the five senses. This was the one drop which embittered the tender father's cup. What was the use of reminding him that he was wealthy, that fortune favored all his undertakings and smiled on his house? For whose sake did he care about it all? For one who could see neither the thriving beasts, the flowery meadows, the overflowing granaries, nor the orchard with its abundant crop. Don Francisco would gladly have given his own eyes to his son, and have remained blind for the rest of his days, if such an act of generosity were possible in this work-a-day world; but, as it was not, Don Francisco could only carry his devotion into practice by giving the hapless youth every pleasure which could alleviate the gloom of the darkness in which he lived. For him he was indefatigable in the cares and the endless trifling details of forethought and affection of which mothers have the secret—and fathers sometimes, when the mother is no more. He never contradicted his son in anything which might console or entertain him within the limits of propriety and morality. He amused him with narratives and reading, watched him with studious anxiety, considering his health, his legitimate amusements, his instruction and his Christian education; for, said Señor de Penáguilas, whose principles were strictly orthodox: "I would not have my son doubly blind."
Now, as he came out of the house, he said affectionately:
"Do not go too far to-day, and do not run—good-bye."
He watched them from the gate till they had turned the corner of the garden wall, and then he went indoors, for he had many things to do; to write to his brother Manuel, to buy a cow, to prune a tree, and to see whether the guinea-hen had laid.
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