“Ah, Pepe—cousin! I believe that you are right,” exclaimed Rosario, drowned in tears. “Your words resound within my heart, arousing in it new energy, new life. Here in this darkness, where we cannot see each other’s faces, an ineffable light emanates from you and inundates my soul. What power have you to transform me in this way? The moment I saw you I became another being. In the days when I did not see you I returned to my former insignificance, my natural cowardice. Without you, my Pepe, I live in Limbo. I will do as you tell me, I will arise and follow you. We will go together wherever you wish. Do you know that I feel well? Do you know that I have no fever: that I have recovered my strength; that I want to run about and cry out; that my whole being is renewed and enlarged, and multiplied a hundred-fold in order to adore you? Pepe, you are right. I am not sick, I am only afraid; or rather, bewitched.”
“That is it, bewitched.”
“Bewitched! Terrible eyes look at me, and I remain mute and trembling. I am afraid, but of what? You alone have the strange power of calling me back to life. Hearing you, I live again. I believe if I were to die and you were to pass by my grave, that deep under the ground I should feel your footsteps. Oh, if I could see you now! But you are here beside me, and I cannot doubt that it is you. So many days without seeing you! I was mad. Each day of solitude appeared to me a century. They said to me, to-morrow and to-morrow, and always to-morrow. I looked out of the window at night, and the light of the lamp in your room served to console me. At times your shadow on the window was for me a divine apparition. I stretched out my arms to you, I shed tears and cried out inwardly, without daring to do so with my voice. When I received the message you sent me with the maid, when I received your letter telling me that you were going away, I grew very sad, I thought my soul was leaving my body and that I was dying slowly. I fell, like the bird wounded as it flies, that falls and, falling, dies. To-night, when I saw that you were awake so late, I could not resist the longing I had to speak to you; and I came down stairs. I believe that all the courage of my life has been used up in this single act, and that now I can never be any thing again but a coward. But you will give me courage; you will give me strength; you will help me, will you not? Pepe, my dear cousin, tell me that you will; tell me that I am strong, and I will be strong; tell me that I am not ill, and I will not be ill. I am not ill now. I feel so well that I could laugh at my ridiculous maladies.”
As she said this she felt herself clasped rapturously in her cousin’s arms. An “Oh!” was heard, but it came, not from her lips, but from his, for in bending his head, he had struck it violently against the feet of the crucifix. In the darkness it is that the stars are seen.
In the exalted state of his mind, by a species of hallucination natural in the darkness, it seemed to Pepe Rey not that his head had struck against the sacred foot, but that this had moved, warning him in the briefest and most eloquent manner. Raising his head he said, half seriously, half gayly:
“Lord, do not strike me; I will do nothing wrong.”
At the same moment Rosario took the young man’s hand and pressed it against her heart. A voice was heard, a pure, grave, angelic voice, full of feeling, saying:
“Lord whom I adore, Lord God of the world, and guardian of my house and of my family; Lord whom Pepe also adores; holy and blessed Christ who died on the cross for our sins; before thee, before thy wounded body, before thy forehead crowned with thorns, I say that this man is my husband, and that, after thee, he is the being whom my heart loves most; I say that I declare him to be my husband, and that I will die before I belong to another. My heart and my soul are his. Let not the world oppose our happiness, and grant me the favor of this union, which I swear to be true and good before the world, as it is in my conscience.”
“Rosario, you are mine!” exclaimed Pepe Rey, with exaltation. “Neither your mother nor any one else shall prevent it.”
Rosario sank powerless into her cousin’s arms. She trembled in his manly embrace, as the dove trembles in the talons of the eagle.
Through the engineer’s mind the thought flashed that the devil existed; but the devil then was he. Rosario made a slight movement of fear; she felt the thrill of surprise, so to say, that gives warning that danger is near.
“Swear to me that you will not yield to them,” said Pepe Rey, with confusion, observing the movement.
“I swear it to you by my father’s ashes that are—”
“Where?”
“Under our feet.”
The mathematician felt the stone rise under his feet—but no, it was not rising; he only fancied, mathematician though he was, that he felt it rise.
“I swear it to you,” repeated Rosario, “by my father’s ashes, and by the God who is looking at us–May our bodies, united as they are, repose under those stones when God wills to take us out of this world.”
“Yes,” repeated the Pepe Rey, with profound emotion, feeling his soul filled with an inexplicable trouble.
Both remained silent for a short time. Rosario had risen.
“Already?” he said.
She sat down again.
“You are trembling again,” said Pepe. “Rosario, you are ill; your forehead is burning.”
“I think I am dying,” murmured the young girl faintly. “I don’t know what is the matter with me.”
She fell senseless into her cousin’s arms. Caressing her, he noticed that her face was covered with a cold perspiration.
“She is really ill,” he said to himself. “It was a piece of great imprudence to have come down stairs.”
He lifted her up in his arms, endeavoring to restore her to consciousness, but neither the trembling that had seized her nor her insensibility passed away; and he resolved to carry her out of the chapel, in the hope that the fresh air would revive her. And so it was. When she recovered consciousness Rosario manifested great disquietude at finding herself at such an hour out of her own room. The clock of the cathedral struck four.
“How late it is!” exclaimed the young girl. “Release me, cousin. I think I can walk. I am really very ill.”
“I will go upstairs with you.”
“Oh, no; on no account! I would rather drag myself to my room on my hands and feet. Don’t you hear a noise?”
Both were silent. The anxiety with which they listened made the silence intense.
“Don’t you hear any thing, Pepe?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Pay attention. There, there it is again. It is a noise that sounds as if it might be either very, very distant, or very near. It might either be my mother’s breathing or the creaking of the vane on the tower of the cathedral. Ah! I have a very fine ear.”
“Too fine! Well, dear cousin, I will carry you upstairs in my arms.”
“Very well; carry me to the head of the stairs. Afterward I can go alone. As soon as I rest a little I shall be as well as ever. But don’t you hear?”
They stopped on the first step.
“It is a metallic sound.”
“Your mother’s breathing?”
“No, it is not that. The noise comes from a great distance. Perhaps it is the crowing of a cock?”
“Perhaps so.”
“It sounds like the words, ‘I am going there, I am going there!’”
“Now, now I hear,” murmured Pepe Rey.
“It is a cry.”
“It is a cornet.”
“A cornet!”
“Yes. Let us hurry. Orbajosa is going to wake up. Now I hear it clearly. It is not a trumpet but a clarionet. The soldiers are coming.”
“Soldiers!”
“I don’t know why I imagine that this military invasion is going to be advantageous to me. I feel glad. Up, quickly, Rosario!”
“I feel glad, too. Up, up!”
In an instant he had carried her upstairs, and the lovers took a whispered leave of each other.