María avoided looking at me; perhaps she was offended with me. She was more beautiful than ever, although somewhat pale. Her dress was of black gauze figured with small blue grapes, and its skirt, falling from the belt in many folds, rustled as she walked, like the night-breeze in the rosebushes at my window. A transparent scarf, of the same color as her dress, covered her bosom, seemingly not daring to touch her throat, white as a lily. From her neck a cross set with diamonds hung glittering on its black cord. Her hair, arranged in two braids of many strands, half hid her temples, and fell down over her shoulders like waves.
When the cloth was removed, the customary prayer was said. My mother invited us into the parlor, but Don Jerónimo remained with my father to talk over their farming.
My sister brought the guitar to Carlos, as she knew that he played it very well. After some urging he consented to play. While he was tuning the instrument he asked Emma and María if they were fond of dancing; and as he looked particularly at the latter, she replied that she never had danced. He turned to me, saying, “Why, is it possible?”
“What?” said I; I had just come back from my room.
“That you have never taught your sister and cousin how to dance. I didn’t think you so selfish. Or did Matilde teach you on condition that you should not spread abroad her secrets?”
“She relied upon you to make Cauca a paradise of dancers,” I answered.
“Upon me? You force me to confess to the young ladies that I should have become more skillful if you had not always taken your lesson at the same time that I did.”
The guitar was now tuned, and Carlos played a contradance which he and I had reasons for remembering.
“What does that remind you of?” he asked, standing the guitar upright on his knees.
“Of many things, though nothing in particular.”
“Nothing? Not that funny time we had in the house of Señora ⸻?”
“Ah yes, now I remember.”
“We were trying,” he explained, “to prevent our scrupulous instructress from being disappointed; you were going to dance with her, and I …”
“The question was which couple of us was to perform the contradance.”
“And you must admit that I was victorious,” said Carlos, laughing, “for I gave up the place to you.”
“You simply did not oblige me to insist upon it. Now do us the favor to sing.”
While this dialogue was going on, María, who was seated with my sister upon the sofa opposite to Carlos and me, fixed her gaze upon him for a moment, to observe closely what was evident to her alone—that I was vexed; then she pretended to occupy herself in knotting together the loose ends of her braids.
My mother urged Carlos to sing. He struck up, in a full, clear voice, a song much in vogue in those days, of which the first lines were these:
“The trumpet gave its hoarse and warlike cry,
Calling to dubious and bloody strife;
And, ’mid the roar of marching soldiery,
The hero changed for camps his happy life.”
As soon as Carlos finished, he besought my sister and María to sing also. The latter appeared not to comprehend what was going on. Emma was willing to sing; she drew near to María, saying, “Shall we sing?”
“But what can I sing?”
I went up to María, and said to her, in a low voice, “Isn’t there anything you like to sing, anything?”
She looked at me then in the way she always did when I spoke to her in that tone; and a smile played on her lips for an instant, like that of a pretty child wakened by her mother’s kiss.
“Yes,” she replied, “ ‘The Fairies.’ ”
I had written the verses of that song. Emma had found them in my desk, and had adapted to them the music of a popular selection.
On one of those summer nights when the winds seem to invite to silence so as to listen to the vague hum and distant echoes; when the moon delays or does not appear at all, fearing that her light may be intrusive; when the soul is like an adored mistress who leaves us for a few moments, goes away from us little by little, smiling, only to return more loving than ever—on such a night María, Emma, and I were in the corridor towards the valley, and after Emma had struck a few melancholy chords on the guitar, they began to sing together with voices uncultivated but virginal, like the nature which was the subject of their song. I was surprised, and my bad verses seemed to me fine and expressive. Ah, they still seem to preserve, as it were, an aroma of María; as if they were moist with her tears. Here they are:
“I dreamed of wandering through groves of palms,
Whose polished leafage, pendent, drooping low,
Struck by the sun, now sinking o’er far hills,
In splendor shone, and flamed with ruby glow.
The blue and limpid surface of the lake,
Upon its tranquil front took tints of rose,
And on the shores, where willows spread their shoots,
I saw the herons fixed in shadowy pose.
The eve was hushed, and waited for the night,
Silent, to put her vaporous mantle on;
And from the frothy sea where she had slept
The moon looked forth to see if day were gone.
Now come and walk with me beneath the trees,
Where gracious fairies will attune my lute:
I learn from them that your dream is like mine—
That deathless life shall be our dear love’s fruit.”
My father and Señor M⸺ entered the parlor just as the song came to an end. The former, who could only, in his most cheerful moments, hum some national air, was yet very fond of music. Don Jerónimo bestowed himself as comfortably as possible on a yielding sofa, and yawned twice in succession.
“I had never heard that music with those words,” Carlos remarked to my
