Maria (GB English) - страница 17

My father paced a few moments in the room. Thinking our conference concluded, I rose to retire; but he resumed his seat, and pointing to mine, resumed his discourse thus.

–Four days ago I received a letter from Mr. de M*** asking me for Maria's hand for his son Carlos.

I could not hide my surprise at these words. My father smiled imperceptibly before adding:

–Mr. de M*** gives you fifteen days to accept or not his proposal, during which time you will come to pay us a visit that you promised me before. Everything will be easy for you after what has been agreed between us.

–Good night, then," he said, laying his hand warmly on my shoulder, "may you be very happy in your hunt; I need the skin of the bear you kill to put at the foot of my cot.

–All right," I replied.

My mother held out her hand to me, and holding mine, she said:

–We're expecting you early; watch out for those animals!

So many emotions had been swirling around me in the last few hours that I could hardly notice each one of them, and it was impossible for me to cope with my strange and difficult situation.

Mary threatened with death; promised thus as a reward for my love, by a terrible absence; promised on condition of loving her less; me obliged to moderate so powerful a love, a love forever possessed of my whole being, on pain of seeing her disappear from the earth like one of the fugitive beauties of my reveries, and having henceforth to appear ungrateful and insensible perhaps in her eyes, only by a conduct which necessity and reason compelled me to adopt! I could no longer hear her confidences in a moved voice; my lips could not touch even the end of one of her plaits. Mine or death's, between death and me, one step nearer to her would be to lose her; and to let her weep in abandonment was an ordeal beyond my strength.

Cowardly heart! you were not capable of letting yourself be consumed by that fire which, poorly hidden, could consume her? Where is she now, now that you no longer palpitate; now that the days and years pass over me without my knowing that I possess you?

Carrying out my orders, Juan Ángel knocked on the door of my room at dawn.

–How is the morning? -I asked.

–Mala, my master; it wants to rain.

–Well. Go to the mountain and tell José not to wait for me today.

When I opened the window I regretted having sent the little black man, who, whistling and humming bambucos, was about to enter the first patch of forest.

A cold, unseasonable wind was blowing from the mountains, shaking the rose bushes and swaying the willows, and diverting the odd pair of travelling parrots in their flight. All the birds, the luxury of the orchard on cheerful mornings, were silent, and only the pellars fluttered in the neighbouring meadows, greeting the sad winter's day with their song.

In a short time the mountains disappeared under the ashen veil of a heavy rain, which was already making its growing rumble heard as it came lashing through the woods. Within half an hour, murky, thundering brooks were running down, combing the haystacks on the slopes on the other side of the river, which, swollen, thundered angrily, and could be seen in the distant rifts, yellowish, overflowing, and muddy.

Chapter XVII

Ten days had passed since that distressing conference took place. Not feeling able to comply with my father's wishes as to the new sort of intercourse which he said I was to use with Maria, and painfully concerned at the proposal of marriage made by Charles, I had sought all sorts of pretexts for getting away from home. I spent those days, either shut up in my room, or in José's possession, often wandering about on foot. My companion on my walks was some book I couldn't manage to read, my shotgun, which never fired, and Mayo, who kept tiring me out. While I, overcome by a deep melancholy, let the hours pass hidden in the wildest places, he tried in vain to doze off curled up in the leaf litter, from which ants dislodged him or ants and mosquitoes made him jump impatiently. When the old fellow tired of the inaction and silence, which he disliked in spite of his infirmities, he would come up to me and, laying his head on one of my knees, would look at me affectionately, and then go away and wait for me a few rods away on the path that led to the house; And in his eagerness to get us on our way, when he had got me to follow him, he would even make a few jumps of joyous, youthful enthusiasms, in which, besides forgetting his composure and senile gravity, he came off with little success.