XXXIII

Not all those expecting us were in the corridor. María was standing a few rods from the courtyard gate, upon one of the large rocks to our left which commanded the valley. Emma was urging her to come down. We drew near them. María’s hair, flowing in long and shining curls, showed black against her green muslin dress; she sat down to keep the wind from blowing out her skirts, saying to my sister, who was laughing at her anxiety, “Don’t you see that I can’t do it?”

“Child,” said my father, halfway between alarm and laughter; “how did you ever get up there?”

She was ashamed of her exploit, and answered, “We were all alone⁠ ⁠…”

“That is to say,” interrupted my father, “that we ought to ride on so that you can come down. How did Emma get down?”

“The idea!⁠—I helped her.”

“It was because I was not afraid,” said Emma.

“Come on, then,” concluded my father, addressing me; “but have a care.”

He knew perfectly well that I would stay. María had just said to me with her eyes, “Don’t go.” My father got on his horse again, and rode towards the house; I let my horse follow on alone.

“Here is where we got up,” said María, pointing to some scratches and hollows in the rock.

She reached out her rather tremulous hand, and helped me up. I seated myself at her feet, and she said: “Don’t you see how hard it is? What will papa say! He must think we are crazy.”

I looked at her without replying. The light in her eyes, timid as they were before mine, and the slight pallor on her cheeks told me, as they so often had, that she was happy.

“I shall go on alone,” said Emma, for the second time, and moved away a few steps to make us believe she would do it.

“No, no, wait a moment,” said María, rising up.

Seeing that I did not stir, she asked me, “What is the matter?”

“We are very comfortable here.”

“Yes, but Emma wants to go, and mamma will be expecting you. Help me get down; I am not afraid now. Let me have your handkerchief.”

She twisted it up, adding, “You hold it this way, and when you can’t reach me with your hand, I will take hold of that.”

Her plan worked admirably, and once on the ground, she said, “How will you get down?”

I leaped from the lowest part of the rock to the turf, and offered her my arm to walk to the house.

“If I had not come, how would you have got down, madcap?”

“I should have got down alone; I was just going to, when you came. But I was afraid of falling, there was so much wind. We climbed up there yesterday, and I got down easily. Why were you so long delayed?”

“We had to wind up some important matters. What have you been doing all these days?”

“Wishing they would pass.”

“Is that all?”

“Oh, sewing⁠—and thinking a great deal.”

“What about?”

“Many things⁠—which one thinks of but does not mention.”

“Not even to me?”

“To you least of all.”

“Have your own way.”

“Because you know them already.”

“Haven’t you read anything?”

“No, it makes me sad to read alone, and I don’t like any more those stories ‘Evenings at the Villa,’ and ‘Afternoons at the Grange.’ I was going to read some more of Atala, but as you told me there is a passage in it not exactly⁠—Emma!” she called, “why do you hurry on so fast?”

Emma looked around, smiled, and kept on.

“What were you doing night before last at ten?” I asked.

“Night before last? Ah, why do you ask me that?”

“I was then very unhappy, thinking of those things which one thinks of but does not mention.”

“No, no, you can mention them.”

“Tell me what you were doing, and then I’ll tell you.”

“I am afraid to.”

“Afraid?”

“Perhaps it is very silly. I was sitting with mamma in the corridor. We heard something that sounded like the shutters of your window, and I thought that they had been left unfastened. I took a light and went to see⁠—what nonsense! it makes me afraid to remember what happened.”

“Go on.”

“We opened the door, and we saw sitting upon one of the shutters which the wind was shaking, a black bird about the size of a very large dove. It uttered a cry such as I had never heard. It seemed to be dazzled by the light I held, and put it out as it flew over our heads just as we were running away in fright. That night I dreamed⁠—but what makes you look like that?”

“Like what?” I said, trying to conceal the impression made upon me by her story. What she told me, had taken place at the very hour when my father and I were reading that wretched letter; and that black bird was the same that had brushed my face during the storm, the night that María suffered a return of her attack⁠—the same that had startled me several times at sunset by sweeping above my head.

“Like what?” replied María. “I see I did wrong to tell you this.”

“Can you imagine that?”

“It is not imagination.”

“What did you dream?”

“I must not tell you.”

“Not even after a while?”

“Alas! never, perhaps.”

Emma was just opening the door into the courtyard.

“Wait for us,” called María; “do, we are truly coming this time.”

We joined her, and they two walked hand in hand the rest of the way. I felt myself mastered by a vague dread; I was afraid of something, though I could not divine what. But I remembered my father’s injunction, and endeavored to control myself.