Chapter XIII
The pages of Chateaubriand were slowly giving a touch of colour to Mary's imagination. So Christian and full of faith, she rejoiced to find the beauties she had foreseen in Catholic worship. Her soul took from the palette that I offered her the most precious colours to beautify everything; and the poetic fire, a gift of Heaven that makes men admirable who possess it and divinises women who reveal it in spite of themselves, gave her countenance charms hitherto unknown to me in the human face. The poet's thoughts, welcomed in the soul of that woman so seductive in the midst of her innocence, came back to me like the echo of a distant and familiar harmony that stirs the heart.
One evening, an evening like those of my country, adorned with clouds of violet and pale gold, beautiful as Mary, beautiful and transitory as it was for me, she, my sister and I, seated on the broad stone of the slope, from where we could see to the right in the deep valley roll the noisy currents of the river, and with the majestic and silent valley at our feet, I read the episode of Atala, and the two of them, admirable in their immobility and abandonment, heard from my lips all that melancholy that the poet had gathered to "make the world weep". My sister, resting her right arm on one of my shoulders, her head almost joined to mine, followed with her eyes the lines I was reading. Maria, half-kneeling near me, did not take her wet eyes off my face.
The sun had gone down as I read the last pages of the poem in an altered voice. Emma's pale head rested on my shoulder. Maria hid her face with both hands. After I had read that heart-rending farewell of Chactas over the grave of his beloved, a farewell which has so often wrung a sob from my breast: "Sleep in peace in a foreign land, young wretch! In reward for thy love, thy banishment and thy death, thou art forsaken even of Chactas himself," Mary, ceasing to hear my voice, uncovered her face, and thick tears rolled down her face. She was as beautiful as the poet's creation, and I loved her with the love he imagined. We walked slowly and silently to the house, and my soul and Maria's were not only moved by the reading, they were overwhelmed with foreboding.
Chapter XIV
After three days, on coming down from the mountain one evening, I seemed to notice a start in the countenances of the servants whom I met in the inner corridors. My sister told me that Maria had had a nervous attack; and, adding that she was still senseless, endeavoured to soothe my painful anxiety as much as possible.
Forgetting all precaution, I entered the bedchamber where Maria was, and mastering the frenzy that would have made me clasp her to my heart to bring her back to life, I approached her bed in bewilderment. At the foot of it sat my father: he fixed on me one of his intense glances, and then turning it on Mary, seemed to want to remonstrate with me by showing her to me. My mother was there; but she did not raise her eyes to look for me, for, knowing my love, she pitied me as a good mother pities her child, as a good mother pities her own child in a woman loved by her child.
I stood motionless gazing at her, not daring to find out what was wrong with her. She was as if asleep: her face, covered with a deadly pallor, was half hidden by her dishevelled hair, in which the flowers I had given her in the morning had been crumpled; her contracted forehead revealed an unbearable suffering, and a light perspiration moistened her temples; tears had tried to flow from her closed eyes, which glistened on the lashes of her eyelashes.
My father, understanding all my suffering, rose to his feet to retire; but before leaving, he approached the bed, and taking Mary's pulse, said:
It's all over. Poor child! It is exactly the same evil that her mother suffered from.
Mary's bosom rose slowly as if to form a sob, and returning to its natural state, she exhaled only a sigh. My father being gone, I placed myself at the head of the bed, and forgetting my mother and Emma, who remained silent, I took one of Maria's hands from the cushion, and bathed it in the torrent of my tears hitherto restrained. It measured all my misfortune: it was the same malady as her mother's, who had died very young, attacked by an incurable epilepsy. This idea took possession of my whole being to break it.
I felt some movement in that inert hand, to which my breath could not return the warmth. Mary was already beginning to breathe more freely, and her lips seemed to struggle to utter a word. She moved her head from side to side, as if trying to throw off an overwhelming weight. After a moment's repose, she stammered unintelligible words, but at last my name was clearly perceived among them. As I stood, my gaze devouring her, perhaps I pressed my hands too tightly in hers, perhaps my lips called out to her. She slowly opened her eyes, as if wounded by an intense light, and fixed them on me, making an effort to recognise me. Half sitting up a moment later, "What is it?" she said, drawing me aside; "What has happened to me?" she continued, turning to my mother. We tried to reassure her, and with an accent in which there was something of remonstrance, which I could not at the time explain to myself, she added, "You see, I was afraid.
She was, after the access, in pain and deeply saddened. I returned in the evening to see her, when the etiquette established in such cases by my father permitted it. As I bade her farewell, holding my hand for a moment, she said, "See you to-morrow," and emphasised this last word as she used to do whenever our conversation was interrupted in some evening, looking forward to the next day for us to conclude it.
Chapter XV
As I went out into the corridor that led to my room, an impetuous breeze was swaying the willows in the courtyard; and as I approached the orchard, I heard it tearing through the orange groves, from which the frightened birds were darting. Faint flashes of lightning, like the instantaneous reflection of a buckler wounded by the glow of a fire, seemed to want to illuminate the gloomy bottom of the valley.
Leaning against one of the columns in the corridor, without feeling the rain lashing at my temples, I thought of Mary's illness, about which my father had spoken such terrible words; my eyes wanted to see her again, as in the silent and serene nights that might never come again!
I don't know how much time had passed, when something like the vibrating wing of a bird came to brush against my forehead. I looked towards the immediate woods to follow it: it was a black bird.
My room was cold; the roses at the window trembled as if they feared to be abandoned to the rigours of the tempestuous wind; the vase contained already withered and fainting the lilies that Mary had placed in it in the morning. At this a gust of wind suddenly blew out the lamp; and a clap of thunder let its rising rumble be heard for a long time, as if it were that of a gigantic chariot plunging from the rocky peaks of the mountain.
In the midst of that sobbing nature, my soul had a sad serenity.
The clock in the living room had just struck twelve. I heard footsteps near my door, and then my father's voice calling me. "Get up," he said as soon as I answered; "Maria is still unwell.
The access had been repeated. After a quarter of an hour I was ready to leave. My father was giving me the last indications about the symptoms of the illness, while the little black Juan Angel was quieting my impatient and frightened horse. I mounted; his shod hooves crunched on the cobbles, and a moment later I was riding down towards the plains of the valley, looking for the path in the light of some livid flashes of lightning. I was going in search of Dr. Mayn, who was then spending a season in the country three leagues from our farm.