“Good morning, María,” said I, hastening out to get the flowers. She paled a little, but responded to my greeting, and as she did so the pink dropped from her mouth. She gave me the flowers, letting some fall at her feet, but picking them up again to hand to me; by that time she was all smiles.
“Will you exchange all these,” I asked, “for the pink you had in your mouth?”
“I have stepped on it,” she replied, stooping to look for it.
“Stepped on or not, I will give all these for it.”
She remained in the same position without replying.
“May I pick it up?”
Then she took it and gave it to me without looking at me.
All this while Emma was completely absorbed, or appeared to be, in arranging some new flowers.
I pressed the hand with which María gave me the pink, saying to her: “Thanks, thanks! Goodbye till afternoon.”
She lifted her eyes then, and her face had that most ravishing expression which a woman’s countenance can wear—when upon it are mirrored together tenderness and shame, reproachfulness and loving sorrow.
XVIII
Emigdio was a good boy. A year before my return to Cauca his father had sent him to Bogotá, with the purpose of putting him, as the excellent man said, in the way of becoming a merchant and man of affairs. Carlos, who was rooming with me at that time, and who always managed to be fully acquainted even with things that he ought not to know anything about, ran across Emigdio somewhere, and planted him down in front of me one Sunday morning, first coming himself into our room to say to me: “I say, I’m going to kill you with pleasure. I’ve brought you the sweetest thing!”
I ran out and fell into the arms of Emigdio; he had stopped at the door, and cut the most comical figure that could be imagined. It is folly to try to describe it.
My fellow-countryman had come loaded down with a hat made of chocolate-colored skin, a thing that had been the pride of Don Ignacio, his father, in the long-past days of his youth. Whether it was too tight, or whether he thought it the style to wear it so, the hat was at an angle of ninety degrees with the long, sunburnt neck of our friend. His lank figure, his limp and straggling whiskers, mingling with the most inconsolably abandoned hair that ever was seen; his flaming complexion putting the very bricks in the street to shame; his shirt-collar hopelessly hidden behind the lapels of a white vest most fearfully constructed; his arms imprisoned in the sleeves of a blue frock-coat; his trousers made of woollen cloth and stitched with broad bands of Spanish leather, and his shoes of dressed deerskin, were more than enough to arouse Carlos’s enthusiasm.
Emigdio carried a pair of enormous spurs in one hand, and in the other an elaborate letter of introduction to me. I hastened to relieve him of everything, throwing a severe glance at Carlos, who was stretched out on a bed, and stuffing a pillow into his mouth, tears in his eyes—a sight which for a moment upset me disastrously. I offered Emigdio a seat in our little reception-room. He chose an upholstered sofa, and when the poor fellow sat down he thought he was falling through, and thrust out violently to seize something to hold on by. Finally he got up as best he could, and said: “What the deuce! Carlos, here, has no sense. No wonder he was laughing at the trick he was going to play me. And you, too! Why, you people are very rogues. You ought to be ashamed of what you have done.” Carlos came out of the bedroom, taking advantage of such a lucky opportunity to laugh at his ease.
“Why, Emigdio! Sit down in that armchair; there’s no trap in that. You must.”
Emigdio sat down with hesitation, as if he feared some new mishap.
“What did he do to you?” laughed rather than asked Carlos.
“Didn’t you see? I shan’t tell you.”
“But why not?” insisted the implacable Carlos, throwing an arm across his shoulders. “Come, tell us.”
Emigdio took offence at last, and we could scarcely mollify him. A glass of wine and a cigar ratified our truce.
In two days’ time our Telemachus was decently dressed; and although his stylish clothes pinched him, and his new boots made him see stars, he had to submit, stimulated by pride and by Carlos to endure what the latter called his martyrdom.
It was not long before he became firmly persuaded that our landlady’s daughter, a lively and prankish girl, though not very prepossessing, was dying of love for him.
Such was, in fine, the downright country friend whom I was going to visit.
As I rode up to his house I heard him shouting out to me from within the courtyard: “At last, good-for-nothing! I began to think you were never coming. I’ll be there directly.”
He set himself to washing his bloodstained hands in the fountain within the court.
“What have you been doing?” I asked him, after we had exchanged greetings.
“We are butchering today, and as my father went off early, I have been directing the darkies—and it’s a job. But I am free now. My mother has the greatest wish to see you; I’ll go tell her you are here. It is doubtful if we can get the girls to come out; they are growing more untamed every day. Choto!” he called.
In a moment a half-naked negro boy appeared; one of his arms was shriveled and covered with scars.
“Take this horse to the stable, and saddle the sorrel colt for me.” Then, turning to me, after examining my horse, he said “That’s a fine black!”
“How did that boy hurt his arm that way?” I asked.
“Putting cane in the mill. Such stupids, they are! All he can do now is to mind horses.”
Breakfast was served shortly, and I made myself entirely agreeable to Donna Andrea, Emigdio’s mother, in the
