LVI

Two months had passed over her grave, and my lips had not murmured a prayer over her. I still felt myself too weak to visit the abandoned house where we had loved each other, or to gaze upon that tomb which hid her from my eyes and denied her to my arms. Yet she must be waiting for me there. There were the mournful farewell gifts she had left for me.

Only by degrees did Emma drop into my heart all the bitterness of María’s last messages to me.

The morning after María had written me her last letter, Emma found her seated on the stone bench in the garden. She had been weeping.

“Why did you come alone today?” asked Emma. “I wanted to come with you, as I did yesterday.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I knew it; but I wanted to come alone. I thought I should be strong enough. Help me walk.”

She leaned on Emma’s arm and went to the rosebush before my window. María looked at it with a smile, and said, as she picked the two freshest roses: “Perhaps they will be the last. See how many buds there are!”

Drawing the most heavily loaded branch to her cheek, she added: “Farewell, my rose! You will tell him that I took care of it as long as I could,” she said, turning to Emma, who was weeping with her.

My sister tried to lead her from the garden, saying: “Why do you sadden yourself so? Has not papa agreed to delay our going? We will come here every day. Isn’t it true that you feel better?”

“Let us stay here longer,” she replied, slowly going up to my window. Forgetting Emma, she leaned over, and picked all the lilies on her favorite plant, saying to my sister: “Tell him that it never stopped flowering. Now we will go.”

She stopped again by the brook, and leaned her face against Emma’s bosom, murmuring, “I do not want to die without seeing him here again.”

During the day she was more sad and quiet than usual. At twilight, Emma found her in my room, leaning out of the window.

“María,” she said, “won’t this night-wind do you harm?”

She was startled at first, but drew my sister to her side on the sofa, and said, “Nothing can do me harm any more.”

“Shan’t we go to the oratory?”

“Not now. I want to stay here longer. I have so many things to say to you.”

“Can’t you tell me somewhere else? You will frustrate all the doctor’s care. For two days you have not been as obedient to him as you were.”

“They do not know that I am going to die,” she replied, sobbing upon Emma’s breast.

“Going to die! Going to die when Efraín is almost home?”

“I shall never see him again⁠ ⁠… I do not dare to hope for it. This is terrible, but it is certain. I have never felt the symptoms of my attack as I feel them now. I want you to know everything before it is too late for me to tell you. Listen: I want to leave for him everything I have which he has been fond of. Put in the little box where I keep his letters this locket and this ring⁠—he gave it to me the night before he went away. In my blue apron wrap up my hair. Don’t feel so badly,” she said, laying her cold cheek against my sister’s, “I cannot now be his wife. God has been pleased to deliver him from the grief of seeing me as I am, from the trial of seeing me die. Alas! I could die happy if I could give him my last farewell. Take him in your arms, and tell him that I struggled in vain not to leave him⁠—that I dreaded his loneliness more than death, and⁠ ⁠…”

María stopped speaking, and sank into Emma’s arms. My sister kissed her, but found her limp. She called, but could get no answer. She screamed, and they came to her aid.

All the doctor’s efforts to bring her out of the seizure were in vain, and the next morning he declared himself unable to save her life.

Braulio, José, and four peasants bore the corpse to the village, crossing those plains and resting under those trees where María had gone by my side, so loving and loved, the day of Tránsito’s wedding. My father and the priest followed the humble convoy, step by step.

My father came back at midday, slowly and alone. While dismounting from his horse, he tried in vain to repress his sobs. Seated in the parlor, between Emma and my motherland surrounded by the children, who were vainly awaiting his caress, he gave way to his grief. “I,” he said⁠—“I, the author of that cursed journey, have killed her. If Salomón could come to me to ask for his daughter, what could I say to him? And Efraín! Efraín! Alas! to what have I summoned him? Is this the way I shall fulfill my promises?”

That afternoon they left the farm on the sierra, and passed the night in the valley, intending to go to the city the next day.

Braulio and Tránsito consented to occupy the house, and take care of it during the absence of the family.