The Green Eyes · II

One day after another I went in search of her to that spot.

Finally, one afternoon... I believed myself the plaything of a dream... but no, it is true; I have spoken to her many times now, just as I speak to you now... one afternoon I found seated in my place, and dressed in robes that reached down to the waters and floated upon their surface, a woman beautiful beyond all praise. Her hair was like gold; her eyelashes shone like threads of light, and between her eyelashes restless pupils stirred which I had seen... yes; for the eyes of that woman were the eyes that I had nailed in my mind; eyes of an impossible color; eyes...

“Green!” exclaimed Íñigo with an accent of profound terror, bounding to his feet in his seat.

Fernando looked at him in turn as if astonished that he should conclude what he was about to say, and asked him with a mixture of anxiety and joy:

“Do you know her?”

“Oh, no!” said the huntsman. “God forbid that I should know her! But my parents, in forbidding me to go as far as those places, told me a thousand times that the spirit, goblin, demon, or woman who dwells in its waters has eyes of that color. I conjure you, by whatever you love most on earth, never to return to the fountain of los Álamos. One day or another her vengeance will reach you, and you will expiate by dying the crime of having sullied her waves.”

“By what I love most!...” murmured the young man with a sad smile.

“Yes,” continued the old man; “by your parents, by your kinsmen, by the tears of her whom heaven destines for your bride, by those of a servant who has seen you be born...”

“Do you know what I love most in this world? Do you know why I would give my father’s love, the kisses of her who gave me life, and all the affection that all the women of the earth can hoard? For a glance, for a single glance from those eyes... How can I ever stop seeking them?”

Fernando spoke these words with such an accent that the tear trembling on Íñigo’s eyelids slipped silently down his cheek, while he exclaimed in a gloomy tone:—May the will of heaven be fulfilled!

“Who are you? What is your homeland? Where do you dwell? I come day after day in search of you, and I see neither the steed that brings you to these places, nor the servants who carry your litter. Break once and for all the mysterious veil in which you wrap yourself as in a profound night. I love you, and, noble or peasant, I shall be yours, yours always...”

The sun had crossed the mountain peak; the shadows were stepping down its slope; the breeze was moaning among the poplars of the fountain, and the mist, rising little by little from the surface of the lake, began to envelop the rocks of its shore.

Upon one of these rocks, upon one that seemed on the point of plunging into the depths of the waters, upon whose surface it was reflected trembling, the first-born of Almenar, kneeling at the feet of his mysterious mistress, tried in vain to wrench from her the secret of her existence.

She was beautiful, beautiful and pale, like an alabaster statue. One of her curls fell over her shoulders, sliding among the folds of the veil, like a sunbeam piercing the clouds, and within the ring of her blond eyelashes her pupils shone like two emeralds set in a jewel of gold.

When the youth finished speaking to her, her lips moved as if to utter some words; but they only exhaled a sigh, a faint, sorrowful sigh, like that of the light wave pushed by a breeze as it dies among the reeds.

“You do not answer me!” exclaimed Fernando, seeing his hope mocked; “would you have me give credence to what has been told me of you? Oh! No... Speak to me: I want to know if you love me, I want to know if I can love you, if you are a woman...”

“Or a demon... And if I were one?”

The youth hesitated an instant; a cold sweat ran over his limbs; his pupils dilated as they fixed themselves with greater intensity upon those of that woman, and fascinated by her phosphoric brightness, almost demented, he exclaimed in a burst of love:

“If you were... I would love you... I would love you, as I love you now, as it is my destiny to love you, until beyond this life, if there is anything beyond it.”

“Fernando,” said the beauty then with a voice resembling music: “I love you even more than you love me; I, who descend to a mortal, being a pure spirit. I am not a woman like those who exist on earth; I am a woman worthy of you, who are superior to other men. I live at the bottom of these waters; incorporeal like them, fugitive and transparent, I speak with their murmurs and undulate with their folds. I do not punish him who dares to disturb the fountain where I dwell; rather I reward him with my love, as a mortal superior to the superstitions of the vulgar, as a lover capable of understanding my strange and mysterious affection.”

While she thus spoke, the youth, absorbed in the contemplation of her fantastic beauty, drawn as by an unknown force, approached closer and closer to the edge of the rock. The woman of the green eyes continued thus:

“Do you see, do you see the limpid bottom of that lake, do you see those plants with long, green leaves that stir at its bottom?... They will give us a bed of emeralds and corals... and I... I will give you a happiness without a name, that happiness you have dreamed of in your hours of delirium, and which no one else can offer you... Come, the mist of the lake floats over our brows like a linen pavilion... the waves call to us with their incomprehensible voices, the wind begins its hymns of love among the poplars; come... come...”

Night was beginning to spread its shadows, the moon gleamed upon the surface of the lake, the mist swirled at the breath of the air, and the green eyes shone in the darkness like the will-o’-the-wisps that run over the surface of foul waters... Come... come... these words buzzed in Fernando’s ears like a conjuring spell. Come... and the mysterious woman called him to the edge of the abyss, where she was suspended, and seemed to offer him a kiss... a kiss...

Fernando took a step toward her... another... and felt slender, flexible arms winding about his neck, and a cold sensation on his burning lips, a kiss of snow... and he hesitated... and lost his footing, and fell into the water with a dull and mournful sound.

The waters leaped in sparks of light, and closed over his body, and their silver circles widened, widened until they expired on the shores.