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Olalla

A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of noon.  The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of the recess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house was under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and gentle wind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among the pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows.  Something in the stillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the court and up the marble staircase.  My foot was on the topmost round, when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla.  Surprise transfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands; and the moments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other in, were sacramental and the wedding of souls.  I know not how long it was before I awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into the upper stair.  She did not move, but followed me with her great, thirsting eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she paled and faded. In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not think what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven.  I had seen her—Olalla!  And the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb, unfathomable azure answered, Olalla!  The pale saint of my dreams had vanished for ever; and in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God had lavished the richest colours and the most exuberant energies of life, whom he had made active as a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose great eyes he had lighted the torches of the soul.  The thrill of her young life, strung like a wild animal’s, had entered into me; the force of soul that had looked out from her eyes and conquered mine, mantled about my heart and sprang to my lips in singing.  She passed through my veins: she was one with me. I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out in its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold and sorrowful considerations.  I could not doubt but that I loved her at first sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my experience.  What then was to follow?  She was the child of an afflicted house, the Senora’s daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even in her beauty.  She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background of the world with the brilliancy of flowers.  I could not call by the name of brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful.  And if I could not marry, what then?  She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that single and long glance which had been all our intercourse, had confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for the student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute.  To flee was more than I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection. As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait.  It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of paint.  I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference.  I remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a creature rather of the painter’s craft than of the modesty of nature, and I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla.  Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often drawn to women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all that I desired and had not dared to imagine was united. I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed for her, as men long for morning.  But the day after, when I returned, about my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks once more met 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 pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed me with her noble eyes. I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart.  She was dressed with something of her mother’s coquetry, and love of positive colour.  Her robe, which I know she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace.  After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the poverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her brown bosom.  These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn delight in life and her own loveliness.  On the other hand, in her eyes that hung upon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and sadness, lights of poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts that were above the earth.  It was a lovely body, but the inmate, the soul, was more than worthy of that lodging.  Should I leave this incomparable flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains?  Should I despise the great gift offered 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 very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother.  Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and his very likeness to Olalla, while it annoyed, yet softened me. A third day passed in vain—an empty desert of hours.  I would not lose a chance, and loitered all afternoon in the court where (to give myself a countenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora.  God knows it was with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and even as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing warmth of toleration.  And yet I wondered.  Even while I spoke with her, she would doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again without embarrassment; and this composure staggered me.  And again, as I marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to wonder at this depth of passive sensuality.  She lived in her body; and her consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her members, where it luxuriously dwelt.  Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her eyes.  Each time she turned on me these great beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to the day, but closed against human inquiry—each time I had occasion to observe the lively changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted in a breath—I know not what it was came over me, I can find no name for the mingled feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and distaste that jarred along 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 proved indifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was her highest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothing to say.  ‘People speak much, very much,’ she added, looking at me with expanded pupils; and then again yawned and again showed me a mouth that was as dainty as a toy.  This time I took the hint, and, leaving her to her 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 deep dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a voice that I had never heard. I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that seemed 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.  It should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by the 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 it with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown and lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure.  Yet when I did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near to the margin of a gulf.  She drew back from me a little as I came; but her eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward.  At last, when I was already within reach of her, I stopped.  Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the thought of 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 a great effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a sudden bitterness 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 also silent?  Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?  Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and inevitable, 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 a giant, swept us silently together.  On my side, it filled me with impatience; 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 but my bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be jealous for myself.  It was not thus that I desired to be loved.  And then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself.  I thought how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe’s saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word.  And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and console and reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love was returned on my side, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was not unworthy. The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blue over-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in the trees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air with delicate and haunting music.  Yet I was prostrated with sadness.  My heart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother.  I sat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the plateau to the north.  Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a stream, where no foot came.  In the mood I was in, it was even touching to behold the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of the delight and glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air, and among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I seemed to grow in strength and stature, like a Samson. And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near.  She appeared out of a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood up and waited.  She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly.  Her energy was in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would have run, she would have flown to me.  Still, as she approached, she kept her eyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was without one glance that she addressed me.  At the first note of her voice I started.  It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last test of my love.  And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not lisping and incomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though deeper than usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly.  She spoke in a rich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with hoarseness, as the red threads were mingled with the brown among her tresses.  It was not only a voice that spoke to my heart directly; but it spoke to me of her.  And yet 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 a weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved.  I know not in what words I answered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the whole ardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of her, slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear my country, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side.  And then, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured, I comforted 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 and lighten.  ‘Nature,’ I told her, ‘was the voice of God, which men disobey at peril; and if we were thus humbly drawn together, ay, even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our souls; we must be made,’ I said—‘made for one another.  We should be mad rebels,’ I cried out—‘mad rebels against God, not to obey this instinct.’ She shook her head.  ‘You will go to-day,’ she repeated, and then with a gesture, 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.  I stretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me and clung to me.  The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock as of a blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy.  And the next moment she had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled with the speed of a deer among the cork-trees. I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards the residencia, waltzing upon air.  She sent me away, and yet I had but to call upon her name and she came to me.  These were but the weaknesses of girls, 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.  And once more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy.  The sunshine struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; the earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woods smouldered in the blaze.  I felt the thrill of travail and delight run through the earth.  Something elemental, something rude, violent, and savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature’s secrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive and friendly.  Olalla!  Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling of the soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies.  Love burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I pitied, I revered her with ecstasy.  She seemed the link that bound me in with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God upon the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence and to the unbridled forces of the earth. My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation.  She sat there, all sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with a passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour fell away like a thing ashamed.  I stopped a moment, and, commanding such shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two.  She looked at me with her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the realm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for the first 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 much disquieted. On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla’s hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, ‘If you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a creature sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go.’  I looked at this awhile in mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness and horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and I began to shake like a man in terror.  The vacancy thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me like a physical void.  It was not my heart, it was not my happiness, it was life itself that was involved.  I could not lose her.  I said so, and stood repeating it.  And then, like one in a dream, I moved to the window, put forth my hand to open the casement, and thrust it through the pane.  The blood spurted from my wrist; and with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain, and reflected what to do.  In that empty room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt, besides, that I required assistance.  There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself might be my helper, and I turned and went down stairs, still keeping my thumb upon the wound. There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing close 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 for help.’ She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very words I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils and seemed to come suddenly and fully alive. ‘I have cut myself,’ I said, ‘and rather badly.  See!’  And I held out my two hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping. Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil seemed to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet inscrutable.  And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by the hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had bitten me to the bone.  The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood, and the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in one, and I beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with bestial cries, cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the night of the high wind.  Her strength was like that of madness; mine was rapidly ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was whirling with the abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was already forced against the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound, pinned down his mother on the floor. A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was incapable of movement.  I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon the floor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she strove to reach me.  I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed.  Then I saw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant listening to the savage cries that shook the residencia.  And then, swift and light as a thought, she was again beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in her bosom, moaning and mourning over it with dove-like sounds.  They were not words that came to her, they were sounds more beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely tender; and yet as I lay there, a thought stung to my heart, a thought wounded me like a sword, a thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned the holiness of my love.  Yes, they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired by human tenderness; but was their beauty human? <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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