“Well, Gatchutcha, you have at last spoken to your mother of Uncle
Ignacio?” asked Ramuntcho, very late, the same night, in the alley of
the garden, under rays of the moon.
“Not yet, I have not dared.--How could I explain that I know all these
things, since I am supposed not to talk with you ever, and she has
forbidden me to do so?--Think, if I were to make her suspicious!--There
would be an end to everything, we could not see each other again! I
would like better to wait until you left the country, then all would be
indifferent to me--”
“It is true!--let us wait, since I am to go.”
He was going away, and already they could count the evenings which would
be left to them.
Now that they had permitted their immediate happiness to escape,
the happiness offered to them in the prairies of America, it seemed
preferable to them to hasten the departure of Ramuntcho for the army,
in order that he might return sooner. So they had decided that he would
enlist in the naval infantry, the only part of the service where one may
elect to serve for a period as short as three years. And as they needed,
in order to be certain not to be lacking in courage, a precise epoch,
considered for a long time in advance, they had fixed the end of
September, after the grand series of ball-games.
They contemplated this separation of three years duration with an
absolute confidence in the future, so sure they thought they were of
each other, and of themselves, and of their imperishable love. But
it was, however, an expectation which already filled their hearts
strangely; it threw an unforeseen melancholy over things which were
ordinarily the most indifferent, on the flight of days, on the least
indications of the next season, on the coming into life of certain
plants, on the coming into bloom of certain species of flowers, on all
that presaged the arrival and the rapid march of their last summer.