Maria (GB English)

Isaacs Jorge

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 Angel 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 Jose 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 Jose'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.

One morning my mother came into my room, and sitting at the head of the bed, from which I had not yet emerged, she said to me:

–This cannot be: you must not go on living like this; I am not satisfied.

As I kept silent, he continued:

–What you do is not what your father has required; it is much more; and your conduct is cruel to us, and more cruel to Maria. I was persuaded that your frequent walks were for the purpose of going to Luisa's, on account of the affection they have for you there; but Braulio, who came yesterday evening, let us know that he had not seen you for five days. What is it that causes you this deep sadness, which you cannot control even in the few moments you spend in society with the family, and which makes you constantly seek solitude, as if it were already troublesome for you to be with us?

Her eyes were filled with tears.

–Mary, madam," I replied, "he must be entirely free to accept or not to accept the lot which Charles offers him; and I, as his friend, must not delude him in the hopes which he must rightly entertain of being accepted.

Thus I revealed, without being able to help it, the most unbearable pain that had tormented me since the night I heard of the proposal of the gentlemen of M***. The doctor's fatal prognoses of Maria's illness had become nothing to me before that proposal; nothing the necessity of being separated from her for many years to come.

–How could you have imagined such a thing?
– She has only seen your friend twice, once when he was here for a few hours, and once when we went to visit his family.

–But, dear me, there is little time left for what I have thought to be justified or to vanish. It seems to me to be well worth waiting for.

–You are very unjust, and you will regret having been so. Mary, out of dignity and duty, knowing herself better than you do, conceals how much your conduct is making her suffer. I can hardly believe my eyes; I am astonished to hear what you have just said; I, who thought to give you a great joy, and to remedy all by letting you know what Mayn told us yesterday at parting!

–Say it, say it," I begged, sitting up.

–What's the point?

–Won't she always be… won't she always be my sister?

–Or can a man be a gentleman and do what you do? No, no; that is not for a son of mine to do! Your sister! And you forget that you are saying it to one who knows you better than you know yourself! Your sister! And I know that she has loved you ever since she slept you both on my knee! And it is now that you believe it? now that I came to speak to you about it, frightened by the suffering that the poor thing tries uselessly to conceal from me.

–I would not, for one instant, give you cause for such a displeasure as you let me know. Tell me what I am to do to remedy what you have found reprehensible in my conduct.

–Don't you want me to love her as much as I love you?

–Yes, ma'am; and it is, isn't it?

–It will be so, though I had forgotten that she has no mother but me, and Solomon's recommendations, and the confidence he thought me worthy; for she deserves it, and loves you so much. The doctor assures us that Mary's malady is not the one that Sara suffered.

–Did he say so?

–Yes; your father, reassured on that score, wanted me to let you know.

–So can I go back to being with her as I was before?
– I asked in a maddened way.

–Almost…

–Oh, she will excuse me; don't you think so? The doctor said there was no danger of any kind?
– I added; "it is necessary that Charles should know it.

My mother looked at me strangely before answering me:

–And why should it be concealed from him? It is my duty to tell you what I think you must do, since the gentlemen of M*** are to come to-morrow, as they announce. Tell Maria this afternoon. But what can you tell her that would be sufficient to justify your detachment, without disregarding your father's orders? And even if you could speak to her of what he demanded of you, you could not excuse yourself, for there is a cause for doing what you have done these days, which for pride and delicacy's sake you must not discover. That is the result. I must tell Mary the real cause of your sorrow.