They were seated facing each other, and between them was a low table bearing a basket full of miniature bonnets. My mother still held between her fingers one of these caps in which glittered a needle. Slumber had overtaken her during the activity of her work. She was sleeping, her chin on her bosom; perhaps she was dreaming. The needle was only half-full of white cotton; but, in her dream, perhaps she was sewing with a more precious thread.
Juliana was sleeping also; but her head had fallen back on the chair, and her arms were stretched out on the supports. In the gentleness of her slumber her features were relaxed; but her mouth retained a line of distress, a shadow of affliction; half closed, it permitted a glimpse of her bloodless gums; but at the beginning of the nose, between the eyebrows, there was a small furrow, deepened by great sorrow. And her forehead was moist; a drop of perspiration slowly rolled down her temple. And her hands, whiter than the muslin from under which they extended, seemed, by their position alone, to indicate an immense lassitude. What struck me most was less her moral expression than the appearance of her person. I meditated without considering this expression, and even Juliana herself had no part in my thoughts; and, anew, I felt only the little creature living beside me, as if, at that moment, no other creature existed around me. And, again, this was not an illusory sensation, but a real and profound one. Fear ran through every fibre of my being.
I averted my eyes; and I again saw between her fingers the bonnet in which glittered the needle, I again saw all those light laces in the basket, all those rose-colored and blue ribbons that trembled at the breath of the breeze. My heart was so strongly oppressed that I thought I should faint. What tendernesses the hands of my mother, lost in her dream, revealed, those hands placed on the pretty, white thing destined to cover the head of the child who was not my own!
I remained there several minutes. This place was the true sanctuary of the house, the Holy of Holies. On one wall hung my father's portrait, whom Federico greatly resembled; on another that of Constance, who resembled Maria a little. The two faces, living in that superior existence in which the recollections of those who have loved them have placed them, had magnetic eyes, eyes that seemed to see everywhere. Other relics of the two dead loved ones sanctified this retreat. In one corner, on a pedestal, closed in between plates of glass and covered with black crape, there was the death mask moulded on the corpse of the man whom my mother had loved with a passion stronger than death. And yet this room had nothing lugubrious about it. There reigned in it a sovereign peace, that, from thence, seemed to propagate through the entire house, as life propagates from the heart, by a rhythmic expansion.
XXIX.
I recall the walk I made to the Lilacs, with Maria, Natalia, and Miss Edith, on a rather misty morning. And the recollection of it is also rather misty, veiled, indistinct like that of a long dream, torturing yet sweet.
The garden no longer had its myriad of bluish grapes nor its exquisite forest of flowers, nor its triple perfume, harmonious as music, nor its gayety, nor the continuous cries of its swallows. It was enlivened only by the voices and gambols of the two innocent girls. Already many of the swallows had departed, and the rest were about to go. We had arrived in time to see the last flock.
All the nests were abandoned, deserted, lifeless. Many were broken, and on the clayey debris trembled poor little feathers. The last flock, gathered on the roof, in the gutters, were still waiting for a few dispersed companions. The emigrants stood on a row on the edge of the eaves-board, some presenting the beak and others the back, so that the little forked tails and the white breasts alternated. And while waiting, they filled the silent air with their calls. And, from minute to minute, by twos, by threes, the laggards arrived. The hour of departure was at hand. The calls ceased. The fading sunlight fell on the closed house, on the empty nests. Nothing could be sadder than those poor little dead feathers which, here and there, fluttered, held prisoners in the clay.
As if raised up by a sudden gust of wind, by a storm the flock rose up with a great fluttering of wings, ascended into the air like a water-spout, remained for a moment directly above the house; then, without hesitation, as if they had before them a clearly traced path, they took their way in a compact mass, flew off, melted away in the sky, and finally disappeared.
Maria and Natalia, mounted on a bench, stood up on tiptoe to watch the fugitives as long as possible, and, stretching out their arms, they cried: