“Everything, master.”
“And you want nothing more?”
“Your honor will see to that.”
“Is it a good cabin Higinio has given you?”
“Yes, master.”
“Ah, now I know what it is. You want a ball!”
Bruno laughed at this, showing his gleaming white teeth, and looking around at his companions.
“That’s right; you conduct yourself well. Now you know what to do,” he added, addressing Higinio, “you attend to this and make them happy.”
“And will your honors go away before the wedding?”
“No,” I answered him, “and we understand we are invited.”
Bruno and Remigia were married the next Saturday morning. That night at seven, my father and I mounted our horses to go to the ball; we could hear the music from afar. When we arrived Julian, the slave captain of the gang, came out to help us dismount and to care for our horses. He was in his Sunday’s best, and there hung from his belt the long knife with silver-plated sheath which was the sign of his office. One large room of the old farmhouse had been cleared of its furniture for a ballroom. They had built a platform around it; in a wooden chandelier hanging from one of the beams a half-dozen candles were swinging; the musicians and singers, a mixture of slaves and freedmen, were stationed at one of the doors. There were only two reed flutes, an improvised drum, two rattles, and a timbrel; yet the fine voices of the negroes struck into the chants with such skill, there was in their songs such an affecting combination of melancholy and light and joyful chords, the verses they sang were so simple and tender, that the most cultivated ear would have listened with the highest pleasure to that half-savage music. We entered the room in leggings and hats. Remigia and Bruno were then dancing. She, with a blue flounced skirt, a girdle red-flowered, a white chemise embroidered with black, and necklace and earrings of ruby-colored glass, was dancing with all the ease and grace to be expected of her lithe figure. Bruno, with his woollen cloak folded about his shoulders, breeches of fine cotton cloth, a starched white shirt, and a new knife in his belt, was footing it with admirable dexterity.
That dance over, the musicians struck up their best tune, for Julian told them it was to be for the master. Remigia, urged on by her husband and by the captain, at last agreed to dance a few moments with my father; but she dared not lift her eyes while she was doing it, and her dancing was rather constrained. At the end of an hour we went away.
My father was pleased with my attentiveness during our visit to the farms; but when I told him that in the future I wished to share his labors, and stay by his side, he informed me, almost sorrowfully, that it was necessary for him to sacrifice his ease for my sake, and that he should keep the promise made to me before of sending me to Europe to study medicine; I should have to begin the journey, he said, at the end of four months at the latest. When he told me this his face wore an expression of unaffected gravity, which was always to be observed in him when he had taken an irrevocable resolution. This happened the afternoon when we were going back to the uplands. It was growing dark, and but for this he must have observed the emotion which his decision caused me. How gladly should I have returned to see María, had not this announcement thrust itself in between my hopes and her!
VI
What had María been thinking of in those four days?
She was just placing a lamp on one of the tables in the parlor when I went up to greet her; I had wondered at not finding her in the family group that had met us at the very door. Her hand trembled so that the lamp was in danger of falling; I sprang to her aid, less calm than I thought I should be. She seemed to me slightly pale, and there was a suspicion of a circle about her eyes, imperceptible to a casual glance. Her face was turned towards my mother, who was speaking just then, so that I could not see it in a good light, but I noticed in her hair an overblown pink; it was undoubtedly the one I had given her the evening before setting out for the valley. The little cross of enamelled coral which I had brought for her from Bogotá, precisely like the one I had given to each of my sisters also, she wore suspended from a black ribbon about her neck. She was very quiet, seated between my mother’s chair and mine. As my father’s decision about my departure was all the while in my mind, I must have appeared sad to her, for she said to me in a low voice, “Did the trip tire you very much?”
“No, María,” I answered, “but we have been so much in the sun, and have ridden so far—”
I was going to say more, but her confidential tone, and the light, so new to me, which I discovered in her eyes, prevented me from doing anything but gaze at her, until, observing that she was embarrassed at the involuntary fixity of my look, and perceiving that my father’s eye was upon me (always most to be dreaded when a certain fleeting smile was playing upon his lips), I abruptly left the parlor and went to my room.
I closed the door. There were the flowers gathered for me by her. I bruised them with kisses. I tried to draw in at a single breath all their odors, hoping to find among them the perfume that clung to María’s garments. My tears fell upon them. María! María! How much I loved you!
VII
At the time of my father’s last voyage
