XV

In the afternoon of the same day, the doctor took his leave of us, after having left María almost completely recovered, and prescribed a treatment to prevent a repetition of the attack. I felt an unspeakable relief on hearing that there was no danger. As soon as the doctor and my father had gone, the latter to ride with the other for a league, I went to María’s room. She was just finishing braiding her hair, looking into a hand-glass which my sister held for her. She blushed and put it away, saying to me: “This is not work for a sick person, is it? But I’m well again. I am not going to give you another ride so dangerous as the one you had last night.”

“There wasn’t a particle of danger,” I replied.

“Yes, the river, the river! I thought about that, and many other things that might happen to you on my account.”

“A three leagues’ ride! Do you call that⁠ ⁠…”

“It was a ride in which you might have drowned yourself. The doctor said so; he was so astonished at it that he spoke about it almost before he felt my pulse. When he came back with you he made you wait two hours for the river to fall.”

“The doctor is good for nothing on horseback; and besides, his long-suffering mule is a very different thing from a good horse.”

“The man who lives in the hut by the ford,” said María, “when he recognized your black horse, this morning, was astounded; for he thought the horseman had been drowned, the night before, who dashed into the river despite his warning shouts that it was impassable. Ah, no, no, I do not want to get sick again. Didn’t the doctor tell you that I shall be well now?”

“Yes,” I answered, “and he promised me to come to see you every second day for the next fortnight.”

“Then you surely will not have to take another night ride. What should I have done if⁠ ⁠…”

“You would have cried for me a great deal, wouldn’t you?” said I, laughing.

She looked at me for a few moments, and then I added, “I could, in any case, die certain that⁠ ⁠…”

“That what?”

But she guessed the rest from my face.

“Always, always!” she said, almost as if to herself.

“And I have sad things to say to you,” she went on, after a prolonged silence; “things so sad that they were the cause of my sickness. You were on the mountain.⁠ ⁠… Mamma knows all about it.⁠ ⁠… I heard papa say to her that my mother had died of a disease whose name I could not catch⁠ ⁠… that you were destined to a fine career; and that I⁠—oh, I am not certain that it is what I heard, but I think it was that⁠ ⁠… that I do not deserve that you should⁠ ⁠… should treat me as you do.”

Tears were upon her pale cheeks; but she hastened to dry them.

“Don’t say that, María, don’t imagine it; no, I beg you not to.”

“But I heard it, and it was after that that I fainted. Why then⁠ ⁠…”

“Listen, I beseech you.⁠ ⁠… I.⁠ ⁠… Won’t you let me forbid you ever to speak of that again?”

She had let her head fall upon her arm, and I was pressing her hand between mine, when I heard the rustling of a dress in the next room; it was Emma coming in.

That night, at suppertime, my sisters and I were in the dining-room waiting for our parents, who were much later than usual. At last we heard them talking in the parlor, as if bringing an important conversation to an end. My father’s noble face proclaimed, by the slight contraction of his lips, and the little perpendicular line in the middle of his forehead, that he had been engaged in a moral struggle which had affected him. My mother was pale, but made no effort to appear tranquil. As she seated herself at the table she said to me, “I forgot to tell you that José was here this morning to invite you to go hunting; but when he learned of the accident to María he said he would come back tomorrow very early.”

“He must want to consult with you about his plan,” remarked my father, abstractedly.

“He probably means to go bear-hunting,” said I.

“Bears? What! do you hunt bears?”

“Yes, sir; it’s fine sport. I’ve enjoyed it with him several times.”

“In my country,” said my father, “they would take you for a savage⁠—or for a hero.”

“But it’s really less dangerous than deer-hunting, and that’s done everywhere all the while; for, instead of having to shoot at something bursting out on you unexpectedly between crags and waterfalls, all you need is to be quick and a sure shot.”

My father did not lose the slight frown from his face, but went on to talk of the way of hunting stags in Jamaica, and of the great fondness for the sport which some of his relatives had, Salomón in particular, who displayed the greatest skill in the chase; and of whom he laughingly told us several stories.

As we rose from the table he came up to me and said, “Your mother and I wish to talk with you. Come into my room.”

After I had gone with them to his study, he said to me, in a quiet voice, “I desired to have your mother present at our conversation, because it has to do with a very serious matter about which she has the same opinion as my own.”

He rose to close the door and throw away his cigarette, and then went on as follows: “You have been home three months now, and Señor A⁠⸺ is to go to Europe at the end of two more. You are to go with him. This delay will not make much difference, not only because it is very pleasant for us to have you at home, after six years of absence, but also because it is easy to see that even here you take delight in study. I cannot conceal from you, and I ought not to, that I have great hopes, from your character and capacity, that you will be brilliantly successful in your chosen profession. You know that the family will soon need your aid, all the more since your brother’s death.”

He paused a moment, and then continued: “Yet there is something in your conduct that we do not approve. You are only twenty, and at that age an inconsiderate love for a woman may bring to nothing all those hopes of which I have just spoken. You are in love with María, as I have seen, of course, for many days. María is almost my daughter, and I should have nothing to say if your age and position would allow us to think of your marriage; but they do not; and María is very young. But these are not the only difficulties; there is another one which seems insuperable, and it is my duty to name it. María may overwhelm you, and overwhelm us, by a dreadful calamity with which she is threatened. Dr. Mayn is almost positive that she will die young, and of the same disease that was fatal to her mother. What she had yesterday was an epileptic seizure, which will grow worse with each attack, and finally become incurable; so the doctor says. Answer me one question now, reflecting carefully on what you say; answer me like the reasonable man and gentleman you are; and do not let your reply be dictated by a passion unworthy of you, when it is a question affecting your whole future, and that of those dear to you. You know now the doctor’s opinion, an opinion which merits respect, coming from Mayn; you know what befell Salomón’s wife: if we were to consent to it, would you marry María today?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“You would risk everything?”

“Everything, everything!”

“You have answered not only like a son, but also like the gentleman I have tried to make you.”

At this my mother buried her face in her handkerchief. Touched by her tears, perhaps, and also, it may be, by the firm resolve he had found in me, my father left off speaking for an instant, feeling his voice fail him.

“Well, then,” he went on, “since you have this honorable resolution, I am sure you will agree with me that you ought not to become María’s husband until after five years. It is not for me to tell you that she, who has loved you from childhood, now loves you in such a way that it is the very intensity of her affections, according to Dr. Mayn, that has brought on the symptoms of her disease. What I do say is that you and she need to be very prudent. For the future I must get you to promise me, for your own good, since you love her so much, and for hers, that you will follow the advice of the doctor which he has given in view of this very contingency. You must give no pledges to María, since a pledge to become her husband after the period I have named would only make your intercourse more affectionate, and that is precisely the thing to be avoided. I do not need to explain this to you any further. By doing as I say you may save María⁠—may avert the awful misfortune of losing her.”

He paused and turned to my mother; then he continued: “In return for all we grant you, you must promise me this: never to speak to María of the peril hanging over her, or of what has passed between us tonight. You ought also to know my judgment about this marriage, in case the disease continues after your return⁠—it will be some years; in that case, as your father and María’s, I should not approve the union. I ought also to tell you that Salomón in the last three years of his life accumulated a considerable fortune, which is in trust in my possession to become a dower for his daughter; but if she should die before marriage, it is to go to her grandmother in Kingston.”

My father walked back and forth in the room. I supposed the interview was over, and rose to go out; but he seated himself again, and, waving me to my chair, began: “Four days ago I received a letter from Señor M⁠⸺, asking María’s hand for his son, Carlos.”

I could not conceal my surprise. My father smiled slightly, and resumed, “Señor M⁠⸺ gives me two weeks in which to accept his proposal, or not, and in the course of that time is coming to pay us a promised visit. There will be no annoyance for you in that, after what we have agreed upon. So, good night,” added he, affectionately laying his hand upon my shoulder; “I hope you’ll have a fine time hunting. I need a bearskin for a rug at the foot of my bed.”

“You shall have it,” said I.

My mother took my hand, and holding it a moment, said, “We shall look for you back early. Be careful, won’t you?”

I had been agitated by so many emotions in the course of the last few hours that I could not remember them all, and found it impossible to grasp my strange and difficult situation. María threatened with death; promised to me, yet after a terrible absence; promised, on condition that I should love her less! I, forced to moderate my affection for her, under pain of seeing her beauty disappear from the earth, and having to appear thereafter, in her eyes, cold and thankless, all because reason and necessity compelled me to! Mine or death’s; between me and death; one step nearer to her, to lose her!

As I had ordered, Juan Ángel knocked at my door the next morning at daybreak.

“What sort of weather is it?” I asked.

“Bad, master; it’s going to rain.”

“Very well. Go up to the mountain, and tell José not to look for me today.”

When I opened the window I was sorry I had sent the boy; whistling and singing, he was just disappearing in the edge of the forest.

A cold and unseasonable wind was beating down from the mountains, stripping off the roses, and twisting the willows; in its course it was sweeping along, here and there, a pair of migratory parrots. All the birds that were the pride of the garden on pleasant mornings were silent, and only the pellares were whirling about in the neighboring fields, saluting the sad winter’s day with their cries.

In a short time the mountains were hidden behind the gray veil of a heavy rain, whose swelling rush could be heard as it came on whipping the forests. In a half-hour, muddy and noisy streams were combing the coarse grass on the farther side of the river; the latter, steadily rising, thundered angrily, and poured its turbid floods over the distant rapids in waves that broke over the banks.