“Is it time for the draught?” I asked her.
“I think it is.”
“Ask my mother.”
The latter took the dose and the light, and we went up to the bed. At the sound of our voices, my father opened his eyes. They were very much congested; and he made an effort to shade them with his hand from the light. We tried to get him to take the medicine. He complained of pain, and looking around with a vacant gaze, said, “I am thirsty.”
“This will make you feel better,” said my mother, offering him the glass.
He fell back on the pillows, putting both hands to his head, and saying, “Here is where it is.”
We endeavored again to get him to sit up, but in vain. My mother’s face showed how much she was frightened by that extreme prostration. María sat down on the edge of the bed, and said, in her most affectionate voice: “Papa, try to sit up and take this. I will help you.”
“Let us see, daughter,” he replied, feebly.
María succeeded in supporting him against her breast, keeping her arm about his shoulders. Her black braids shaded the gray and venerable head, tenderly pillowed upon her bosom. He took the medicine, and María gently placed him again upon the pillows.
“Heavens, how weak he is!” she said, as we went back to the table where the light stood.
“That medicine is a narcotic,” I said, to calm her.
“But the delirium is not so incessant now. What did the doctor say?”
“That he must wait a little before using more vigorous remedies.”
“Go and lie down. We are enough here. Hark, it is half-past three. I will wake up Emma to stay with me, and you can get mamma to go and rest a little.”
“You are growing very pale. This is going to do you a great deal of harm.”
“Oh no; you will see that it will not affect me at all.”
“Perhaps not, if you will go to rest now. I will have you called in the morning.”
I got them all three to go, and I sat down alone at the head of the bed. The sick man’s sleep was troubled, and at times delirious words escaped him. For an hour my imagination was filled with dreadful pictures of all that might come from a calamity, about which I could not stop to think without an anguished heart.
It was beginning to dawn. Lines of light began to enter by the cracks of doors and windows. The light of the lamp became paler and paler. I could hear the cries of the coclíes and the fowls.
The doctor came in.
“Did they call you?” I asked.
“No; I ought to be here now. How has he been?”
I told him all that I had noticed. He felt the sick man’s pulse, glancing at his watch.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said, as if to himself. “The draught,” he added.
“He took it once more.”
“Let us give it to him again; and so as not to disturb him more than once, we will put on the caustics now.”
Emma helped us to do it all. The doctor was plainly very anxious.
XXXVI
Ten days passed. Joy returned to our home; for my father, after a critical illness, was convalescent. The doctor advised us to keep him as free as possible from all care. So we studiously avoided speaking to him about business matters. As soon as he could sit up, we asked him to choose a book to have read to him a few moments at a time; and he chose the Diary of Napoleon at St. Helena—a book which always interested him intensely.
Gathering in my mother’s sewing-room, Emma, María, and I used to take turns in reading to him; and if we saw him growing sad at any time, Emma would play on the guitar to amuse him. At other times, he would talk to us of the days of his youth, of his parents and brothers, or would speak enthusiastically of the journeys which he had made as a young man. Sometimes he would joke with my mother about the customs of Chocó, only to laugh at her coming to the defence of her native land.
“How old was I when we were married,” he once asked her, after having spoken of the first days of their wedded life, and of a fire which left them completely ruined two months after their marriage.
“Twenty-one,” she replied.
“No, child; I was twenty. I deceived your mother, as I was afraid she would think me a mere boy. And as wives never remember how old their husbands are, after once they begin to get old, it has been easy for me to correct the account.”
“Only twenty?” exclaimed Emma.
“That’s what he says,” replied my mother.
“And how old were you, mamma?” asked María.
“I was sixteen; just a year older than you are.”
“But make her tell you,” said my father, “how much I thought of her from the time she was fifteen, for it was then I resolved to marry her.”
“Do tell us, mamma,” said María.
“Ask him first,” replied she, “what he determined to do on account of thinking so much of me as he says.”
We all turned to my father, and he said, “Why, I resolved to marry her.”
The conversation was broken off by Juan Ángel’s coming in from the village with the mail. He had several papers and two letters, both of the latter in Señor A⸺’s handwriting, and one of them dated some time before. As soon as I saw the signature, I handed them to my father.
“Ah yes,” he said, returning them to me; “I was expecting letters from him.”
The first one simply announced that he would not be able to start on his journey to Europe under four months, and that, therefore, I need not hurry my preparations. I did not dare to look at María.
My one thought was, even if the journey is not given up, I shall have three months more of happiness. My father,
