XXXIX
Despite what had happened the evening before my departure for the valley, María was just the same in her treatment of me as she had been before. The same chaste mystery still enveloped our love. We thought it almost taking a liberty to walk together alone in the garden. Forgetting at such times my journey, she would trip about, picking flowers, and bringing them in her apron to show to me, letting me choose the most beautiful ones for my room. I helped her sprinkle her favorite beds—an operation which involved her putting back her sleeves and showing her arms, though she did not perceive how I was admiring them. At other times she would eagerly try to make me see in the golden clouds of sunset, sleeping lions, gigantic horses, ruined castles of jasper and lapis lazuli, or whatever else she would delight to fancy in her childish enthusiasm.
One afternoon—beautiful afternoon which will always live in my memory!—the light of the fading glow of sunset, under a lilac-colored sky, was mingling with the rays of the rising moon—rays which were whitened like lamplight falling on an alabaster globe. The winds came frolicking down the mountains to the plains. The birds hurriedly sought their nests in the grove. María was walking about the garden with me, clasping my arm with both hands; her curls, tossed by the breeze, more than once brushed my forehead. Her cheek was on my shoulder. We were silent. Suddenly she stopped at the end of a border of rosebushes. She looked towards the window of my room. Then she turned her eyes to me and said: “It was here. I wore this very dress. Do you remember?”
“Always, María, always!” I replied, covering her hands with kisses.
“Just think! That night I awoke trembling, because I dreamed that you were doing—what you are doing now. Do you see this rosebush just planted? If you forget me it will not blossom; but if you continue as you are, it will bear the most beautiful roses. I have promised them to the Virgin, and she will make me know if you are always good.”
I smiled, touched by such simplicity.
“Don’t you think it will be so?” she asked, gravely.
“I think that the Virgin will not need so many roses.”
She led me up to my window. Once there, she disengaged her arm, went to the brook, a few steps away, knotting her scarf in her belt. Then she brought some water in the hollow of her two hands, and kneeled down to let it trickle over a sprouting bulb.
“It is a mountain lily,” she said.
“And did you plant it here?”
“Because it was here …”
“I know it, but I hoped you had forgotten.”
“Forgotten? What! is it so easy to forget?”
Her loosened hair swept down to the ground, and the wind threw some of her curls against the white musk-roses of a bush near her.
“But do you not know why it was you found the cluster of lilies here?”
“Of course I know. That was the day someone suspected I would put no more flowers on his table.”
“Look at me, María.”
“What for?” she replied, without raising her eyes from the bulb, which she seemed to be examining with the greatest interest.
“Every lily that blossoms here will be a cruel punishment for a single moment of distrust. Was I to suppose myself worthy? Come, let us plant your lilies far from this spot.”
I was on one knee before her.
“No, Señor,” she answered, disturbed, and covering the bulb with both hands.
I stood up again, and crossed my arms, waiting for her to finish what she was doing, or pretending to do. She tried to look at me so that I should not know it, and at last burst into a laugh. Her face was full of recompense for an instant of imagined harshness.
“So you are very angry?” she said. “Aren’t you? I am going to tell you, Señor, for what all the lilies that bloom here are destined.”
As she endeavored to rise, taking the hand I offered her, she fell back again to her knees. Her hair was caught in the rosebush. We loosened it, and as she threw back her head to arrange it, her glance had a fascination almost unknown to me before. Leaning on my arm, she said, “We must go; it is getting dark.”
“What are the lilies destined for?” I asked, as we walked slowly towards the corridor.
“You already know what the new roses are for, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the lilies are to be for something similar.”
“Tell me what.”
“Won’t you be glad to find in every letter from me a bit of one of those lilies?”
“Ah, I see. Yes, indeed.”
“That will be like saying many things to you which sometimes should not be written, and which it would be very hard for me to express. Besides, it is certain …”
“What is certain?”
“That we were both at fault.”
“I do not want to go to the mountain tomorrow,” she added, after a pause.
“But won’t Tránsito be offended with you? It is a month since she was married, and we have not made her a single visit. Why don’t you want to go?”
“Because … because nothing. You must tell her that we are very busy over your journey … or anything. Have her come with Lucía on Sunday.”
“Very well. I shall come back very early.”
“Yes; and there will be no hunting.”
“Why, that is a new condition. Carlos will laugh when he learns that you have imposed it on me.”
“And who is going to tell him?”
“Perhaps I myself.”
“And what would you do that for?”
“To console him for that fearful miss of his when he shot at the young deer.”
“That’s a fact. It is lucky it wasn’t a jaguar.”
“You don’t know that Carlos’s rifle had no ball in it when he shot; Braulio had taken it out.”
“And what did Braulio do that for?”
“For revenge.
