VII

At the time of my father’s last voyage to the Antilles his cousin Salomón, his dear friend from childhood, had just lost his wife. They had come to South America together when still young; and, in one of his voyages, my father had fallen in love with the daughter of the ship’s captain, a brave Spaniard who, after having given up the service for several years, felt obliged, in 1819, take up arms on behalf of the Spanish throne, and was executed in Majagual on the 20th of May, 1820. Salomón married in Jamaica.

When the two friends met, after several years, Salomón, as has been said, was a widower. His wife had left him a little girl, who was then three years old. My father found Salomón in great grief and prostration. He offered to take the daughter and educate her with his own children. Salomón finally consented, saying, “She has been my only comfort since Sara’s death, but her being here prevents me from going to India, as I much wish to, both for the sake of my health and on account of a fine business opportunity; since you want her, take her; she shall be your daughter.”

Tears choked the poor man’s voice as he spoke.

In a few days the schooner which was to bear my father to the coasts of Colombia set sail from the Bay of Montego. The light barque spread her sails, like a heron of our forests beginning a long flight. Salomón came to my father’s lodging, carrying María on one arm, and on the other the valise which contained the child’s clothing. She held out her little arms to my father, and Salomón, giving her to his friend, fell into a chair and sobbed aloud. That precious little creature was a sacred trust; my father knew it well, and never forgot it.

I was seven years old when my father came home, and I paid no attention to the presents which he brought me, having no eyes except for that little child, so lovely, pleasant, and smiling. My mother covered her with caresses, and my sisters treated her with the greatest kindness from the moment when my father put her in his wife’s lap and said, “This is Salomón’s daughter, and he has sent her to you.”

In our childish plays María soon learned to speak Spanish, that language so euphonious and captivating in the lovely mouth of a woman, or on the smiling lips of a child.

Six years passed by. Entering my father’s room one afternoon, I heard him weeping; his arms were crossed upon the table, and he was leaning his head upon them. My mother was near him, also in tears, and on her knees María was leaning her head, without understanding this grief, and almost unobservant of her uncle’s moans. A letter had come that day from Kingston, telling of Salomón’s death. I recall but one expression of my father’s that afternoon: “If I am to be bereft of all, without being able to receive their last farewell, why should I ever go back to my native land?”

Alas! his ashes were destined to rest in a foreign land, where the wind of the ocean, on whose beach he had played as a boy, whose expanse he had crossed as an eager young man, could not come to sweep from his grave the dried blossoms of the myrrh-tree and the accumulated dust of years.

But few of those who knew our family then could suspect that María was not the child of my parents. She spoke our language perfectly, was loving, spirited, and intelligent. When my mother used to caress her at the same time with the rest of us, no one could have guessed which one was the orphan.

She was nine years old. Her abundant hair, still a clear chestnut, loosened and rippling down to her delicate waist; her expressive eyes; her voice with a certain melancholy in its tones that ours did not have⁠—such was the image which I carried with me when I went from home; such she was that morning behind the creeper at my mother’s window.