The Door in the Wall And Other Stories

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After that he talked to her whenever he could take an
opportunity. The valley became the world for him, and the world
beyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than a
fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very tentatively
and timidly he spoke to her of sight.

Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she
listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her
own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.
She did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was
mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely
understood.

His love lost its awe and took courage. Presently he was for
demanding her of Yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became
fearful and delayed. And it was one of her elder sisters who first
told Yacob that Medina-sarote and Nunez were in love.

There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage
of Nunez and Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as
because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing
below the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it
bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though
he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook
his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all
angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to
revile and strike Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first time
he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that
fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him.
But they still found his marriage impossible.

Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and
was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder.

"You see, my dear, he's an idiot. He has delusions; he can't
do anything right."

"I know," wept Medina-sarote. "But he's better than he was.
He's getting better. And he's strong, dear father, and
kind--stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And he
loves me--and, father, I love him."

Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable,
and, besides--what made it more distressing--he liked Nunez for
many things. So he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber
with the other elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said,
at the proper time, "He's better than he was. Very likely, some
day, we shall find him as sane as ourselves."

Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had
an idea. He was a great doctor among these people, their
medicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind,
and the idea of curing Nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him.
One day when Yacob was present he returned to the topic of Nunez.
"I have examined Nunez," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
I think very probably he might be cured."

"This is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.

"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.

The elders murmured assent.

"Now, _what_ affects it?"

"Ah!" said old Yacob.

"_This_," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those
queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make
an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case
of Nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly
distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently
his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction."

"Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?"

"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in
order to cure him complete, all that we need to do is a simple and
easy surgical operation--namely, to remove these irritant bodies."

"And then he will be sane?"

"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable
citizen."

"Thank Heaven for science!" said old Yacob, and went forth at
once to tell Nunez of his happy hopes.

But Nunez's manner of receiving the good news struck him as
being cold and disappointing.

"One might think," he said, "from the tone you take that you
did not care for my daughter."

It was Medina-sarote who persuaded Nunez to face the blind
surgeons.

"_You_ do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of sight?"

She shook her head.

"My world is sight."

Her head drooped lower.

"There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little
things--the flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light and
softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting dawn of
clouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is _you_. For
you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face,
your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together. . . . .
It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to
you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you,
and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and
stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your
imaginations stoop . . . _No_; _you_ would not have me do that?"

A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left
the thing a question.

"I wish," she said, "sometimes--" She paused.

"Yes?" he said, a little apprehensively.

"I wish sometimes--you would not talk like that."

"Like what?"

"I know it's pretty--it's your imagination. I love it, but _now_--"

He felt cold. "_Now?_" he said, faintly.

She sat quite still.

"You mean--you think--I should be better, better perhaps--"

He was realising things very swiftly. He felt anger perhaps,
anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of
understanding--a sympathy near akin to pity.

"_Dear_," he said, and he could see by her whiteness how
tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say.
He put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a
time in silence.

"If I were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voice
that was very gentle.

She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "Oh, if you
would," she sobbed, "if only you would!"

For a week before the operation that was to raise him from his
servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nunez
knew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm, sunlit hours,
while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wandered
aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. He had
given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was not
sure. And at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour
over the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him.
He had a few minutes with Medina-sarote before she went apart to
sleep.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall see no more."

"Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her
strength.

"They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going
through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for
_me_ . . . . Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, I
will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice,
I will repay."

He was drenched in pity for himself and her.

He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and
looked on her sweet face for the last time. "Good-bye!" he
whispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!"

And then in silence he turned away from her.

She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in
the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping.

He walked away.

He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows
were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the
hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up
his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden
armour, marching down the steeps . . . .

It seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blind
world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit
of sin.

He did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on and
passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the
rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow.

He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over
them to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever!

He thought of that great free world that he was parted from,
the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those further
slopes, distance beyond distance, with Bogota, a place of
multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery
by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white
houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought how
for a day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever
nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of the
river journey, day by day, from great Bogota to the still vaster
world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places,
the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded, and the big
steamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea--the
limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands,
and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings
round and about that greater world. And there, unpent by
mountains, one saw the sky--the sky, not such a disc as one saw it
here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which
the circling stars were floating . . . .

His eyes began to scrutinise the great curtain of the
mountains with a keener inquiry.

For example; if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney
there, then one might come out high among those stunted pines that
ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it
passed above the gorge. And then? That talus might be managed.
Thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the
precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed,
then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better.
And then? Then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and
half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations. And
suppose one had good fortune!

He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and
regarded it with folded arms.

He thought of Medina-sarote, and she had become small and
remote.

He turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day
had come to him.

Then very circumspectly he began his climb.

When sunset came he was not longer climbing, but he was far and high.
His clothes were torn, his limbs were bloodstained, he was bruised
in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there
was a smile on his face.

From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit
and nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow,
though the mountain summits around him were things of light and
fire. The mountain summits around him were things of light and
fire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenched
with light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing the
grey, a flash of small crystal here and there, a minute,
minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. There
were deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into
purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the
illimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things no
longer, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content
now merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind, in which
he had thought to be King. And the glow of the sunset passed, and
the night came, and still he lay there, under the cold, clear stars.