Tears rolled from her veiled eyes to her pale cheeks, which she hastened to wipe away.
–Don't say that, Maria, don't think it," I said; "no, I beg you.
–But I heard about it, and then I didn't know about myself.... Why, then?
–Look, I beg you, I… I… Will you allow me to command you to speak no more of it?
She had dropped her forehead on the arm on which she was leaning, and whose hand I was clasping in mine, when I heard in the next room the rustle of Emma's clothes approaching.
That evening at dinner time my sisters and I were in the dining room waiting for my parents, who took longer than usual. At last they were heard talking in the drawing-room, as if ending an important conversation. My father's noble physiognomy showed, in the slight contraction of the extremities of his lips, and in the little wrinkle between his brows, that he had just had a moral struggle which had upset him. My mother was pale, but without making the least effort to appear calm, she said to me as she sat down at the table:
–I hadn't remembered to tell you that José came to see us this morning and to invite you to a hunt; but when he heard the news, he promised to come back very early tomorrow morning. Do you know if it's true that one of his daughters is getting married?
–He will try to consult you about his project," my father remarked absently.
–It's probably a bear hunt," I replied.
–Of bears? What! Do you hunt bears?
–Yes, sir; it's a funny hunt I've done with him a few times.
–In my country," said my father, "they would think you a barbarian or a hero.
–And yet such a game is less dangerous than that of deer, which is made every day and everywhere; for the former, instead of requiring the hunters to tumble unwittingly through heather and waterfalls, requires only a little agility and accurate marksmanship.
My father, his countenance no longer showing its former frown, spoke of the way deer were hunted in Jamaica, and of how fond his relatives had been of this kind of pastime, Solomon being distinguished among them for his tenacity, skill, and enthusiasm, of whom he told us, with a laugh, some anecdotes.
As we got up from the table, he came up to me and said:
–Your mother and I have something to talk over with you; come to my room later.
As I entered the room, my father was writing with his back to my mother, who was in the less well-lit part of the room, sitting in the armchair she always sat in whenever she stopped there.
–Sit down," he said, stopping his writing for a moment and looking at me over the white glass and gold-rimmed mirrors.
After a few minutes, having carefully put back the account book in which he was writing, he moved a seat nearer to the one I was sitting on, and in a low voice spoke thus:
–I wanted your mother to be present at this conversation, because it is a serious matter on which she has the same opinion as I have.
He went to the door to open it and throw away the cigar he was smoking, and continued in this manner:
–You have been with us three months now, and it is only after two more that Mr. A*** will be able to start on his journey to Europe, and it is with him that you must go. This delay, in a certain degree, means nothing, both because it is very agreeable to us to have you with us after six years' absence, to be followed by others, and because I note with pleasure that even here, study is one of your favourite pleasures. I cannot conceal from you, nor must I, that I have conceived great hopes, from your character and aptitudes, that you will crown the career you are about to pursue with brilliancy. You are not unaware that the family will soon need your support, and all the more so after the death of your brother.
Then, pausing, he continued:
–There is something in your conduct which I must tell you is not right; you are but twenty years old, and at that age a love inconsiderately fostered might render illusory all the hopes of which I have just spoken to you. You love Maria, and I have known it for many days, as is natural. Maria is almost my daughter, and I should have nothing to observe, if your age and position allowed us to think of a marriage; but they do not, and Maria is very young. These are not only the obstacles which present themselves; there is one perhaps insuperable, and it is my duty to speak to you of it. Mary may drag you and us with you into a lamentable misfortune of which she is threatened. Dr. Mayn dares almost to assure that she will die young of the same malady to which her mother succumbed: what she suffered yesterday is an epileptic syncope, which, taking increase at every access, will terminate in an epilepsy of the worst character known: so says the doctor. You answer now, with much thought, a single question; answer it like the rational man and gentleman that you are; and let not your answer be dictated by an exaltation foreign to your character, when it is a question of your future and that of your own. You know the doctor's opinion, an opinion that deserves respect because it is Mayn who gives it; the fate of Solomon's wife is known to you: if we consented to it, would you marry Mary to-day?
–Yes, sir," I replied.
–Would you take it all in?
–Everything, everything!
–I think I speak not only to a son but to the gentleman I have tried to form in you.
At that moment my mother hid her face in her handkerchief. My father, moved perhaps by those tears, and perhaps also by the resolution he found in me, knowing that his voice would fail him, stopped speaking for a few moments.
–Well," he continued, "since that noble resolution animates you, you will agree with me that you cannot be Maria's husband before five years. It is not for me to tell you that she, having loved you since she was a child, loves you to-day so much, that it is intense emotions, new to her, which, according to Mayn, have caused the symptoms of the disease to appear: that is to say, that your love and hers need precautions, and that I require you henceforth to promise me, for your sake, since you love her so much, and for her sake, that you will follow the doctor's advice, given in case this case should come to pass. You must promise nothing to Mary, for the promise to be her husband after the time I have appointed would make your intercourse more intimate, which is precisely what is to be avoided. Further explanations are useless to you: by following this course, you can save Mary; you can spare us the misfortune of losing her.
–In return for all that we grant you," said he, turning to my mother, "you must promise me the following: not to speak to Maria of the danger which threatens her, nor to reveal to her anything of what has passed between us to-night. You must also know my opinion of your marriage with her, if her illness should persist after your return to this country – for we are soon to be separated for some years: as your and Maria's father, I would not approve of such a liaison. In expressing this irrevocable resolution, it is not superfluous to let you know that Solomon, in the last three years of his life, succeeded in forming a capital of some consideration, which is in my possession destined to serve as a dowry for his daughter. But if she dies before her marriage, it must pass to her maternal grandmother, who is at Kingston.
My father paced a few moments in the room. Thinking our conference concluded, I rose to retire; but he resumed his seat, and pointing to mine, resumed his discourse thus.
–Four days ago I received a letter from Mr. de M*** asking me for Maria's hand for his son Carlos.
I could not hide my surprise at these words. My father smiled imperceptibly before adding:
–Mr. de M*** gives you fifteen days to accept or not his proposal, during which time you will come to pay us a visit that you promised me before. Everything will be easy for you after what has been agreed between us.
–Good night, then," he said, laying his hand warmly on my shoulder, "may you be very happy in your hunt; I need the skin of the bear you kill to put at the foot of my cot.
–All right," I replied.
My mother held out her hand to me, and holding mine, she said:
–We're expecting you early; watch out for those animals!
So many emotions had been swirling around me in the last few hours that I could hardly notice each one of them, and it was impossible for me to cope with my strange and difficult situation.
Mary threatened with death; promised thus as a reward for my love, by a terrible absence; promised on condition of loving her less; me obliged to moderate so powerful a love, a love forever possessed of my whole being, on pain of seeing her disappear from the earth like one of the fugitive beauties of my reveries, and having henceforth to appear ungrateful and insensible perhaps in her eyes, only by a conduct which necessity and reason compelled me to adopt! I could no longer hear her confidences in a moved voice; my lips could not touch even the end of one of her plaits. Mine or death's, between death and me, one step nearer to her would be to lose her; and to let her weep in abandonment was an ordeal beyond my strength.
Cowardly heart! you were not capable of letting yourself be consumed by that fire which, poorly hidden, could consume her? Where is she now, now that you no longer palpitate; now that the days and years pass over me without my knowing that I possess you?
Carrying out my orders, Juan Ángel knocked on the door of my room at dawn.
–How is the morning? -I asked.
–Mala, my master; it wants to rain.
–Well. Go to the mountain and tell José not to wait for me today.
When I opened the window I regretted having sent the little black man, who, whistling and humming bambucos, was about to enter the first patch of forest.
A cold, unseasonable wind was blowing from the mountains, shaking the rose bushes and swaying the willows, and diverting the odd pair of travelling parrots in their flight. All the birds, the luxury of the orchard on cheerful mornings, were silent, and only the pellars fluttered in the neighbouring meadows, greeting the sad winter's day with their song.
In a short time the mountains disappeared under the ashen veil of a heavy rain, which was already making its growing rumble heard as it came lashing through the woods. Within half an hour, murky, thundering brooks were running down, combing the haystacks on the slopes on the other side of the river, which, swollen, thundered angrily, and could be seen in the distant rifts, yellowish, overflowing, and muddy.
Chapter XVII
Ten days had passed since that distressing conference took place. Not feeling able to comply with my father's wishes as to the new sort of intercourse which he said I was to use with Maria, and painfully concerned at the proposal of marriage made by Charles, I had sought all sorts of pretexts for getting away from home. I spent those days, either shut up in my room, or in José's possession, often wandering about on foot. My companion on my walks was some book I couldn't manage to read, my shotgun, which never fired, and Mayo, who kept tiring me out. While I, overcome by a deep melancholy, let the hours pass hidden in the wildest places, he tried in vain to doze off curled up in the leaf litter, from which ants dislodged him or ants and mosquitoes made him jump impatiently. When the old fellow tired of the inaction and silence, which he disliked in spite of his infirmities, he would come up to me and, laying his head on one of my knees, would look at me affectionately, and then go away and wait for me a few rods away on the path that led to the house; And in his eagerness to get us on our way, when he had got me to follow him, he would even make a few jumps of joyous, youthful enthusiasms, in which, besides forgetting his composure and senile gravity, he came off with little success.
One morning my mother came into my room, and sitting at the head of the bed, from which I had not yet emerged, she said to me:
–This cannot be: you must not go on living like this; I am not satisfied.
As I kept silent, he continued:
–What you do is not what your father has required; it is much more; and your conduct is cruel to us, and more cruel to Maria. I was persuaded that your frequent walks were for the purpose of going to Luisa's, on account of the affection they have for you there; but Braulio, who came yesterday evening, let us know that he had not seen you for five days. What is it that causes you this deep sadness, which you cannot control even in the few moments you spend in society with the family, and which makes you constantly seek solitude, as if it were already troublesome for you to be with us?
Her eyes were filled with tears.
–Mary, madam," I replied, "he must be entirely free to accept or not to accept the lot which Charles offers him; and I, as his friend, must not delude him in the hopes which he must rightly entertain of being accepted.
Thus I revealed, without being able to help it, the most unbearable pain that had tormented me since the night I heard of the proposal of the gentlemen of M***. The doctor's fatal prognoses of Maria's illness had become nothing to me before that proposal; nothing the necessity of being separated from her for many years to come.
–How could you have imagined such a thing? -She has only seen your friend twice, once when he was here for a few hours, and once when we went to visit his family.
–But, dear me, there is little time left for what I have thought to be justified or to vanish. It seems to me to be well worth waiting for.
–You are very unjust, and you will regret having been so. Mary, out of dignity and duty, knowing herself better than you do, conceals how much your conduct is making her suffer. I can hardly believe my eyes; I am astonished to hear what you have just said; I, who thought to give you a great joy, and to remedy all by letting you know what Mayn told us yesterday at parting!
–Say it, say it," I begged, sitting up.
–What's the point?
–Won't she always be… won't she always be my sister?
–Or can a man be a gentleman and do what you do? No, no; that is not for a son of mine to do! Your sister! And you forget that you are saying it to one who knows you better than you know yourself! Your sister! And I know that she has loved you ever since she slept you both on my knee! And it is now that you believe it? now that I came to speak to you about it, frightened by the suffering that the poor thing tries uselessly to conceal from me.
–I would not, for one instant, give you cause for such a displeasure as you let me know. Tell me what I am to do to remedy what you have found reprehensible in my conduct.
–Don't you want me to love her as much as I love you?
–Yes, ma'am; and it is, isn't it?
–It will be so, though I had forgotten that she has no mother but me, and Solomon's recommendations, and the confidence he thought me worthy; for she deserves it, and loves you so much. The doctor assures us that Mary's malady is not the one that Sara suffered.
–Did he say so?
–Yes; your father, reassured on that score, wanted me to let you know.
–So can I go back to being with her as I was before? -I asked in a maddened way.
–Almost…
–Oh, she will excuse me; don't you think so? The doctor said there was no danger of any kind? -I added; "it is necessary that Charles should know it.
My mother looked at me strangely before answering me:
–And why should it be concealed from him? It is my duty to tell you what I think you must do, since the gentlemen of M*** are to come to-morrow, as they announce. Tell Maria this afternoon. But what can you tell her that would be sufficient to justify your detachment, without disregarding your father's orders? And even if you could speak to her of what he demanded of you, you could not excuse yourself, for there is a cause for doing what you have done these days, which for pride and delicacy's sake you must not discover. That is the result. I must tell Mary the real cause of your sorrow.
–But if you do, if I have been light in believing what I have believed, what will she think of me?
–He will think you less ill, than to consider yourself capable of a fickleness and inconsistency more odious than anything else.
–You are right up to a certain point; but I beg you will not tell Maria anything of what we have just spoken of. I have made a mistake, which has perhaps made me suffer more than her, and I must remedy it; I promise you I will remedy it; I demand only two days to do it properly.
–Well," he said, getting up to leave, "are you going out today?
–Yes, ma'am.
–Where are you going?
I am going to pay Emigdio his welcome visit; and it is indispensable, for I sent word to him yesterday with his father's butler to expect me to lunch to-day.
–But you'll be back early.
–At four or five o'clock.
–Come and eat here.
–Are you satisfied with me again?
–Of course not," he replied, smiling. Till the evening, then: you will give the ladies my best regards, from me and the girls.
Chapter XVIII
I was ready to go, when Emma came into my room. She was surprised to see me with a laughing countenance.
–Where are you going so happy," he asked me.
–I wish I didn't have to go anywhere. To see Emigdio, who complains of my inconstancy in every tone, whenever I meet him.
–How unfair! -he exclaimed with a laugh. Unfair you?
–What are you laughing at?
–Poor thing!
–No, no: you're laughing at something else.
–That's just it," said he, taking a comb from my bath-table, and coming up to me. Let me comb your hair for you, for you know, Mr. Constant, that one of your friend's sisters is a pretty girl. Pity," she continued, combing the hair with the help of her graceful hands, "that Master Ephraim has grown a little pale these days, for the bugueñas can't imagine manly beauty without fresh colours on their cheeks. But if Emigdio's sister were aware of....
–You are very talkative today.
–Yes? and you're very cheerful. Look in the mirror and tell me if you don't look good.
–What a visit! -I exclaimed, hearing Maria's voice calling my sister.
–Really. How much better it would be to go for a stroll along the peaks of the boquerón de Amaime and enjoy the… great and solitary landscape, or to walk through the mountains like wounded cattle, shooing away mosquitoes, without prejudice to the fact that May is full of nuches…, poor thing, it is impossible.
–Maria is calling you," I interrupted.
–I know what it's for.
–What for?
–To help him do something he shouldn't do.
–Can you tell which one?
–She is waiting for me to go and fetch flowers to replace these," said she, pointing to those in the vase on my table; "and if I were her, I should not put another one in there.
–If you only knew…
–And if you knew…
My father, who was calling me from his room, interrupted the conversation, which, if continued, could have frustrated what I had been trying to do since my last interview with my mother.
As I entered my father's room, he was looking at the window of a beautiful pocket watch, and he said:
–It is an admirable thing; it is undoubtedly worth the thirty pounds. Turning at once to me, he added:
–This is the watch I ordered from London; look at it.
–It's much better than the one you use," I observed, examining it.
–But the one I use is very accurate, and yours is very small: you must give it to one of the girls and take this one for yourself.
Without leaving me time to thank him, he added:
–Are you going to Emigdio's house? Tell his father that I can prepare the guinea-pasture for us to fatten together; but that his cattle must be ready on the fifteenth of the next.
I immediately returned to my room to take my pistols. Mary, from the garden, at the foot of my window, was handing Emma a bunch of montenegros, marjoram, and carnations; but the most beautiful of these, for their size and luxuriance, was on her lips.
–Good morning, Maria," I said, hurrying to receive the flowers.
She, paling instantly, returned the greeting curtly, and the carnation fell from her mouth. She handed me the flowers, dropping some at my feet, which she picked up and placed within my reach when her cheeks were again flushed.
–Do you want to exchange all these for the carnation you had on your lips," I said as I received the last ones?
–I stepped on it," he replied, lowering his head to look for it.
–Thus trodden, I will give you all these for him.
He remained in the same attitude without answering me.
–Do you allow me to pick it up?
He then bent down to take it and handed it to me without looking at me.
Meanwhile Emma pretended to be completely distracted by the new flowers.
I shook Mary's hand with which I was handing over the desired carnation, saying to her:
–Thank you, thank you! See you this afternoon.
She raised her eyes to look at me with the most rapturous expression that tenderness and modesty, reproach and tears, can produce in a woman's eyes.
Chapter XIX
I had walked a little more than a league, and was already struggling to open the door that gave access to the mangones of Emigdio's father's hacienda. Having overcome the resistance of the mouldy hinges and shaft, and the even more tenacious resistance of the pylon, made of a large stone, which, suspended from the roof with a bolt, gave torment to passers-by by keeping that singular device closed, I considered myself fortunate not to have got stuck in the stony mire, the respectable age of which was known by the colour of the stagnant water.
I crossed a short plain where the fox-tail, the scrub-plate and the bramble dominated over the marshy grasses; there some shaven-tailed milling-horse browsed, colts scampered and old donkeys meditated, so lacerated and mutilated by the carrying of firewood and the cruelty of their muleteers, that Buffon would have been perplexed to have to classify them.
The large, old house, surrounded by coconut and mango trees, had an ashen, sagging roof overlooking the tall, dense cocoa grove.
I had not exhausted the obstacles to get there, for I stumbled into the corrals surrounded by tetillal; and there I had to roll the sturdy guaduas over the rickety steps. Two blacks came to my aid, a man and a woman: he was dressed in nothing but breeches, showing his athletic back shining with the peculiar sweat of his race; she was wearing a blue fula and for a shirt a handkerchief knotted at the nape of her neck and tied with the waistband, which covered her chest. They both wore reed hats, the kind that soon turn straw-coloured with little use.
The laughing, smoking pair were going to do no less than have it out with another pair of colts whose turn had already come in the flail; and I knew why, for I was struck by the sight not only of the black, but also of his companion, armed with lassoed paddles. They were shouting and running when I alighted under the wing of the house, disregarding the threats of two inhospitable dogs that were lying under the seats of the corridor.
A few frayed reed harnesses and saddles mounted on the railings were enough to convince me that all the plans made in Bogotá by Emigdio, impressed by my criticisms, had been dashed against what he called his father's shanties. On the other hand, the breeding of small livestock had improved considerably, as was shown by the goats of various colours that stank up the courtyard; and I saw the same improvement in the poultry, for many peacocks greeted my arrival with alarming cries, and among the Creole or marsh ducks, which swam in the neighbouring ditch, some of the so-called Chileans were distinguished by their circumspect demeanour.
Emigdio was an excellent boy. A year before my return to Cauca, his father sent him to Bogota in order to set him, as the good gentleman said, on his way to become a merchant and a good trader. Carlos, who lived with me at the time and was always in the know even about what he wasn't supposed to know, came across Emigdio, I don't know where, and planted him in front of me one Sunday morning, preceding him as he entered our room to say: "Man, I'm going to kill you with pleasure: I've brought you the most beautiful thing.
I ran to embrace Emigdio, who, standing at the door, had the strangest figure imaginable. It is foolish to pretend to describe him.
My countryman had come laden with the hat with the coffee-with-milk-coloured hair that his father, Don Ignacio, had worn in the holy weeks of his youth. Whether it was too tight, or whether he thought it was good to wear it like that, the thing formed a ninety-degree angle with the back of our friend's long, rangy neck. That skinny frame; those thinning, lank sideburns, matching the most disconsolate hair in its neglect ever seen; that yellowish complexion peeling the sunny roadside; the collar of the shirt tucked hopelessly under the lapels of a white waistcoat whose tips hated each other; the arms imprisoned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms pinned in the collars of the shirt; the arms caught in the sleeves of a blue coat; the chambray breeches with wide cordovan loops, and the boots of polished deer-hide, were more than enough to excite Charles's enthusiasm.
Emigdio was carrying a pair of big-eared spurs in one hand and a bulky parcel for me in the other. I hastened to unburden him of everything, taking an instant to look sternly at Carlos, who, lying on one of the beds in our bedchamber, was biting a pillow, crying his eyes out, which almost caused me the most unwelcome embarrassment.
I offered Emigdio a seat in the little sitting-room; and as he chose a spring sofa, the poor fellow, feeling that he was sinking, tried his best to find something to hold on to in the air; but, having lost all hope, he pulled himself together as best he could, and when he was on his feet, he said:
–What the hell! This Carlos can't even come to his senses, and now! No wonder he was laughing in the street about the sticking he was going to do to me. And you too? Well, if these people here are the same devils. What do you think of the one they did to me today?
Carlos came out of the room, taking advantage of this happy occasion, and we were both able to laugh at our ease.
–What Emigdio! -said he to our visitor, "sit down in this chair, which has no trap. It is necessary that you should keep a leash.
–Yes," replied Emigdio, sitting down suspiciously, as if he feared another failure.
–What have they done to you? -he laughed more than Carlos asked.
–Have you seen? I was about not to tell them.
–But why? -insisted the implacable Carlos, throwing an arm round his shoulders, "tell us.
Emigdio was angry at last, and we could hardly content him. A few glasses of wine and some cigars ratified our armistice. As for the wine, our countryman remarked that the orange wine made in Buga was better, and the green anisete from the Paporrina sale. The cigars from Ambalema seemed to him inferior to the ones he carried in his pockets, stuffed in dried banana leaves and perfumed with chopped fig and orange leaves.
After two days, our Telemachus was now suitably dressed and groomed by Master Hilary; and though his fashionable clothes made him uncomfortable, and his new boots made him look like a candlestick, he had to submit, stimulated by vanity and by Charles, to what he called a martyrdom.
Once settled in the house where we lived, he amused us in the after-dinner hours by telling our landladies about the adventures of his journey and giving his opinion about everything that had attracted your attention in the city. In the street it was different, for we were obliged to leave him to his own devices, that is, to the jovial impertinence of the saddlers and hawkers, who ran to besiege him as soon as they saw him, to offer him Chocontana chairs, arretrancas, zamarros, braces and a thousand trinkets.
Fortunately, Emigdio had already finished all his shopping when he came to find out that the daughter of the lady of the house, an easy-going, carefree, laughing girl, was dying for him.
Charles, without stopping at bars, succeeded in convincing him that Micaelina had hitherto disdained the courtships of all the diners; but the devil, who does not sleep, made Emigdio surprise his kid and his beloved one night in the dining-room, when they thought the wretch asleep, for it was ten o'clock, the hour at which he was usually in his third sleep; a habit which he justified by always getting up early, even if he was shivering with cold.
When Emigdio saw what he had seen and heard what he had heard, which, if only he had seen and heard nothing for his and our peace of mind, he thought only of speeding up his march.
As he had no complaint against me, he confided in me the night before the journey, telling me, among many other unburdenings:
In Bogotá there are no ladies: these are all… seven-soled flirts. When this one has done it, what do you expect? I'm even afraid I won't say goodbye to her. There's nothing like the girls of our land; here there's nothing but danger. You see Carlos: he's a corpus altar, he goes to bed at eleven o'clock at night, and he's more full of himself than ever. Let him be; I'll let Don Chomo know so that he can put the ashes on him. I admire to see you thinking only of your studies.
So Emigdio departed, and with him the amusement of Carlos and Micaelina.
Such, in short, was the honourable and friendly friend whom I was going to visit.
Expecting to see him coming from inside the house, I gave way to the rear, hearing him shouting at me as he jumped over a fence into the courtyard:
–At last, you fool! I thought you'd left me waiting for you. Sit down, I'm coming. And he began to wash his hands, which were bloody, in the ditch in the courtyard.
–What were you doing? -I asked him after our greetings.
–As today is slaughter day, and my father got up early to go to the paddocks, I was rationing the blacks, which is a chore; but I'm not busy now. My mother is very anxious to see you; I'm going to let her know you're here. Who knows if we'll get the girls to come out, because they've become more closed-minded every day.