“It’s a good one,” I said; “you could kill animals like that with this.”
“Certainly you could; at sixty yards it doesn’t shoot under by a hair.”
“Would you make shots of this kind at sixty yards?”
“It would be dangerous to depend on the full range of the gun in such cases; at forty yards it would be a long shot. How far off were you when you shot the jaguar?”
“Thirty feet.”
“The deuce you were! I shall have to do something fine in this hunt we’re going to have, or else I will not unstrap my gun, and will swear that I have not hunted so much as a hummingbird in all my life.”
“Oh, you will see. I will give you a chance to shine, for I will run the deer right down to the garden.”
Carlos asked me a thousand things about our fellow-students, friends, and neighbors at Bogotá; he talked to me of Emigdio, and his new relations with him, and he laughed good-humoredly as he recalled the love of our friend for Micaelina.
Carlos had returned to Cauca eight months before me; during that time his whiskers had grown, and their black contrasted finely with his smiling cheeks. His mouth was as frank as ever, and his abundant and slightly curling hair shaded a smooth brow. Decidedly he was a good-looking fellow.
“But, old man,” he said, standing before my table, “here are a great many books. You have brought the whole bookstore. I, also, study—that is, I read; it is all I have time for. I have a fair cousin-graduate who insists that I engulf myself in a flood of words. You know that serious studies are not my forte; for that reason I did not care to graduate, though I might have done so. I cannot conceal the disgust which politics causes me, and how wearisome to me is all this going to law—although my father laments night and day that I do not put myself at the front in his suits. He has a perfect passion for litigation, and the most serious questions arise about twenty square yards of marsh or the change in the course of a ditch which has had the good taste to throw a fringe of our land upon the side of a neighbor’s. Come,” said he, reading the titles of the books—“Frayssinous, Christ in the Presence of the Age, the Bible—much religious matter here. Don Quixote—of course; I have never been able to read two chapters.”
“Haven’t you? Is that so?”
“Blair,” he went on, “Chateaubriand. My cousin Hortensia has a perfect passion for him. English Grammar—what a hard language! I never could get on with it.”
“But you spoke it a little.”
“Only the ‘how do you do’ like the ‘comment ça va‑t‑il’ of French.”
“But you have a fine pronunciation.”
“So they told me for encouragement.”
He went on with his examination: “Shakespeare, Calderón—poetry? No? Spanish Drama—more poetry! Confess to me, do you write poetry still? I remember that you wrote some once that saddened me by reminding me of Cauca. Well, do you?”
“No.”
“I’m glad of that, for you would end by dying of hunger. Cortez,” he went on, “The Conquest of Mexico?”
“No, it is something else.”
“De Tocqueville, Democracy in America—botheration! Segur—what a lot!”
At this point the bell sounded for supper. Carlos left off the inventory of my books, hurried to the mirror, combed his whiskers and hair with a pocket-comb, tied his blue cravat with the skill of a modiste; and we went out.
XXII
Carlos and I passed into the dining-room. The seats were arranged as follows: my father was at the head of the table; at his left my mother had just sat down; on his right was Don Jerónimo, who unfolded his napkin without breaking off the wearisome history of his lawsuit with Don Ignacio over their boundary line; next to my mother was one vacant chair, and another was alongside Señor M⸺; next to these Emma and María were seated, on opposite sides of the table, and beyond them were the children.
It rested with me to tell Carlos which one of the empty seats he was to take. As I was about to do it, María, without looking at me, rested her hand on the chair next her—a customary signal of hers to make me understand, without letting the rest perceive it, that I could be near her. Perhaps she doubted if she was understood, for she let her eyes rest upon me for an instant—and with their language, at such times, I was well acquainted. Nevertheless, I offered Carlos the seat she was indicating for me, and sat down myself next Emma.
For a wonder, Don Jerónimo got to the end of the last affidavit presented to the Court the day before, and turning to me, said: “Well, it must have been hard for you two to break off your talk. I suppose it was about everything—pleasant memories of the past, your acquaintances in Bogotá, plans for the future—I understand it all. There’s nothing like seeing a favorite schoolfellow again. I really forgot how much you wanted to see each other. But do not blame Carlos for the delay; he even wanted to come alone.”
I told Don Jerónimo that I could scarcely forgive him for having kept me waiting so long for the pleasure of seeing Carlos; but that I could do so more easily if they would make a long visit now. To this he replied, with his mouth not quite so unoccupied as would have been desirable, and looking at me obliquely as he sipped his chocolate, “That will be difficult to arrange, because we begin salting the cattle tomorrow.”
After a short pause, during which my father smiled slightly, he went on, “It cannot be helped, for if I am not there, he will have to be.”
“We have a great
