Maria (GB English) - страница 13

Chapter XV

As I went out into the corridor that led to my room, an impetuous breeze was swaying the willows in the courtyard; and as I approached the orchard, I heard it tearing through the orange groves, from which the frightened birds were darting. Faint flashes of lightning, like the instantaneous reflection of a buckler wounded by the glow of a fire, seemed to want to illuminate the gloomy bottom of the valley.

Leaning against one of the columns in the corridor, without feeling the rain lashing at my temples, I thought of Mary's illness, about which my father had spoken such terrible words; my eyes wanted to see her again, as in the silent and serene nights that might never come again!

I don't know how much time had passed, when something like the vibrating wing of a bird came to brush against my forehead. I looked towards the immediate woods to follow it: it was a black bird.

My room was cold; the roses at the window trembled as if they feared to be abandoned to the rigours of the tempestuous wind; the vase contained already withered and fainting the lilies that Mary had placed in it in the morning. At this a gust of wind suddenly blew out the lamp; and a clap of thunder let its rising rumble be heard for a long time, as if it were that of a gigantic chariot plunging from the rocky peaks of the mountain.

In the midst of that sobbing nature, my soul had a sad serenity.

The clock in the living room had just struck twelve. I heard footsteps near my door, and then my father's voice calling me. "Get up," he said as soon as I answered; "Maria is still unwell.

The access had been repeated. After a quarter of an hour I was ready to leave. My father was giving me the last indications about the symptoms of the illness, while the little black Juan Angel was quieting my impatient and frightened horse. I mounted; his shod hooves crunched on the cobbles, and a moment later I was riding down towards the plains of the valley, looking for the path in the light of some livid flashes of lightning. I was going in search of Dr. Mayn, who was then spending a season in the country three leagues from our farm.

The image of Mary as I had seen her in bed that afternoon, as she said to me, "See you tomorrow," that perhaps she would not come, was with me, and, quickening my impatience, made me measure incessantly the distance that separated me from the end of the journey; an impatience which the speed of the horse was not enough to moderate,

The plains began to disappear, fleeing in the opposite direction to my run, like immense blankets swept away by the hurricane. The forests that I thought were closest to me seemed to recede as I advanced towards them. Only the moaning of the wind among the shady fig-trees and chiminangos, only the weary wheezing of the horse and the clash of its hoofs on the sparking flints, interrupted the silence of the night.

Some huts of Santa Elena were on my right, and soon after I stopped hearing the barking of their dogs. Sleeping cows on the road began to make me slow down.

The beautiful house of the lords of M***, with its white chapel and its ceiba groves, could be seen in the distance in the first rays of the rising moon, like a castle whose towers and roofs had crumbled with the passing of time.

The Amaime was rising with the rains of the night, and its roar announced it to me long before I reached the shore. By the light of the moon, which, piercing the foliage of the banks, was going to silver the waves, I could see how much its flow had increased. But I could not wait: I had done two leagues in an hour, and it was still too little. I put my spurs to the horse's hindquarters, and with his ears laid back towards the bottom of the river, and snorting deafly, he seemed to calculate the impetuosity of the waters that were lashing at his feet: he plunged his hands into them, and, as if overcome by an invincible terror, he spun back on his legs. I stroked his neck and moistened his mane, and again prodded him into the river; then he threw up his hands impatiently, asking at the same time for all the rein, which I gave him, fearful that I had missed the flood-hole. He went up the bank about twenty rods, taking the side of a crag; he brought his nose close to the foam, and raising it at once, plunged into the stream. The water covered almost all of me, reaching up to my knees. The waves soon curled around my waist. With one hand I patted the animal's neck, the only visible part of its body, while with the other I tried to make it describe the cut line more curved upwards, because otherwise, having lost the lower part of the slope, it was inaccessible due to its height and the force of the water, which swung over the broken branches. The danger had passed. I alighted to examine the girths, one of which had burst. The noble brute shook himself, and a moment later I continued my march.