Maria (GB English) - страница 2

After lunch, my mother called me to her sewing room. Emma and Maria were embroidering near her. She blushed again when I introduced myself; remembering perhaps the surprise I had unwittingly given her in the morning.

My mother wanted to see and hear me all the time.

Emma, more insinuating now, asked me a thousand questions about Bogota; demanded me to describe splendid balls, beautiful ladies' dresses in use, the most beautiful women then in high society. They listened without leaving their work. Maria sometimes glanced at me carelessly, or made low remarks to her companion at her seat; and as she rose to approach my mother to consult about the embroidery, I could see her feet beautifully shod: her light and dignified step revealed all the pride, not dejected, of our race, and the seductive modesty of the Christian virgin. Her eyes lit up when my mother expressed a desire that I should give the girls some lessons in grammar and geography, subjects in which they had but little knowledge. It was agreed that we would begin the lessons after six or eight days, during which time I would be able to assess the state of each girl's knowledge.

A few hours later I was told that the bath was ready and I went to it. A leafy, corpulent orange tree, overflowing with ripe fruit, formed a pavilion over the wide pool of burnished quarries: many roses were floating in the water: it resembled an oriental bath, and was perfumed with the flowers that Mary had picked in the morning.

Chapter V

Three days had passed when my father invited me to visit his estates in the valley, and I was obliged to oblige him; for I had a real interest in his enterprises. My mother was very anxious for our early return. My sisters were saddened. Mary did not entreat me, as they did, to return in the same week; but she followed me incessantly with her eyes during the preparations for the journey.

In my absence, my father had greatly improved his property: a handsome and costly sugar factory, many bushels of cane to supply it, extensive pastures with cattle and horses, good feedlots, and a luxurious dwelling-house, constituted the most remarkable features of his hot-land estates. The slaves, well dressed and contented, as far as it is possible to be in servitude, were submissive and affectionate to their master. I found men whom, as children a short time before, I had been taught to set traps for the chilacoas and guatines in the thickets of the woods: their parents and they returned to see me with unmistakable signs of pleasure. Only Pedro, the good friend and faithful ayo, was not to be found: he had shed tears as he placed me on the horse on the day of my departure for Bogotá, saying: "my love, I will see you no more". His heart warned him that he would die before my return.

I noticed that my father, while remaining a master, treated his slaves with affection, was jealous of his wives' good behaviour and caressed the children.

One afternoon, as the sun was setting, my father, Higinio (the butler) and I were returning from the farm to the factory. They were talking about work done and to be done; I was occupied with less serious things: I was thinking about the days of my childhood. The peculiar smell of the freshly felled woods and the smell of the ripe piñuelas; the chirping of the parrots in the neighbouring guaduales and guayabales; the distant pealing of some shepherd's horn, echoing through the hills; the chastening of the slaves returning from their labours with their tools on their shoulders; the snatches seen through the shifting reed beds: It all reminded me of the afternoons when my sisters, Maria and I, abusing some of my mother's tenacious licence, would take pleasure in picking guavas from our favourite trees, digging nests out of piñuelas, often with serious injury to arms and hands, and spying on parakeet chicks on the fences of the corrals.