XIV

When I went out into the corridor leading to my room a strong north wind was swaying the willows in the courtyard; and I could hear it sweeping through the orange groves in the garden, blowing the frightened birds from the trees. Fitful flashes of lightning, like the momentary reflection on a shield of a flame leaping up in the fireplace, seemed to be trying to light up the gloomy depths of the valley.

Leaning against one of the pillars of the corridor, heeding not the rain which beat into my face, I stood thinking of María’s sickness, and of the dreadful words of my father. How I longed to see her again, as in those silent and calm nights which perhaps would never return!

I do not know how long I had been there, when something like a flapping wing brushed my forehead. I looked towards the neighboring trees, to follow its flight; the bird was black.

My room was cold. The roses at the window trembled as before a winter wind. In the vase, the irises which María had put there in the morning were already dry and shriveled. A gust of wind put out my lamp. Thunder began to roll in louder and louder rumbles through the rocky ridges of the mountains. Yet my soul maintained a sad composure.

It had just struck twelve on the parlor clock. I heard steps near my door, and then my father’s voice calling me.

“Get up,” he said, as soon as I answered; “María is worse again.”

The attack had returned.

In fifteen minutes I was ready to go. My father told me the latest symptoms of the disease, while Juan Ángel was quieting my black horse, which was restless and a little frightened. I mounted. The iron hoofs rang out upon the paving, and a moment later I was descending towards the valley, following the path by the light of the incessant lightning. I was going for Dr. Mayn, who used to spend the season in his country-house, three leagues away.

The image of María as she was when she said “Goodbye till tomorrow,” went with me⁠—alas! that tomorrow might never come⁠—and the speed of my horse was not at all equal to my impatience.

The plains began to disappear, fleeing away behind me like great sheets whirled off by the hurricane. The forests which seemed so near retreated as I advanced towards them. Only the roar of the wind through the higuerones and the chiminangos, only the tired panting of the horse, and the sound of his hoofs on the rocky path, broke the silence of the night.

I saw the cabins of Santa Elena on my right; soon I was out of hearing of the barking of their dogs. I sometimes had to draw up on account of cows asleep in the road. The fine house of the M⁠⸺⁠s, with its white chapel and grove of cottonwoods, appeared at a distance in the first rays of the rising moon, like a castle whose towers and roof had crumbled in.

The Amaime was sweeping down, swollen by the rains of the night, and I could hear its roar long before I reached its bank. By the moon’s light, which was struggling through the trees on the shore, I could see how high the waters were; but I could not wait. I had come two leagues in an hour, and it was not much farther. I put spurs to my horse; he thrust forward his ears towards the river, snorting loudly, and seemed to be estimating the swiftness of the current; he stepped in, but then, overcome by unconquerable fright, reared backward. I patted his neck and dripping mane, and then pricked him again. He pawed impatiently, and shook his head violently so as to loosen the reins. I let him have his way, fearing that I had missed the ford. He went up the stream about twenty yards, grazing a rock; then he put his nose to the ground, and plunged in. The water came at once up to my knees; in a moment the waves were dashing about my waist. I patted the horse’s neck with one hand, and with the other endeavored to keep him a little up the stream, for, if we should fall below the landing, it would be impossible to ascend the high bank, where uprooted trees were beating in the surges. But the peril was over; the noble animal floundered out, and a moment afterwards resumed his gallop.

A quarter of a league farther on I crossed the waters of the Nima, quiet and crystalline, stretching away into the shadows of the silent forests. On the left I passed the meadow of Santa ⸻; and the house, in the midst of a cottonwood grove, and under a group of palms which lifted up their leaves above the roof, seemed in the moonlight like the bower of an Oriental king, beneath the trees of an oasis. It was two o’clock in the morning when, after passing through the village of P⁠⸺, I got down at the door of the doctor’s house.