CHAPTER I

MY BETROTHAL TO CORDÉLIA

Our parents as good as betrothed us from our earliest infancy. When I was twelve and she was eight, our friends used to remark that we made a charming couple, and our mothers were lost in admiration of us. We would gladly have been married at once we were so fond of one another. We were first cousins, and were often brought together at holiday time. At that period Cordélia had already given me her heart, the budding heart of a little maid of eight.

I was a tall, sturdy boy for my age with a fair, almost reddish-brown complexion, passionately devoted to every form of sport, but idle in the school-room. Life in the open air was the one thing that attracted me. Cordélia, who possessed an inclination for reading and the arts, acquired her taste for outdoor life from me. Her mother was Italian. My uncle had married her during a business trip to Turin. When Cordélia was eight years old she was a talented musician, but she surprised us still more by the facility with which she drew or painted anything which interested her or struck her fancy. As for myself, whatever came from her hands seemed to me in the nature of a marvel.

I loved her all the more for her gifts and I bestowed on her unstinted admiration. It was I who taught her how to ride. She knew no fear. Sometimes she gave me a fright, but I could not choose but follow her, and she did with me as she pleased. I was never a dreamer. Once she said, “Let us dream,” and I pretended as I stood beside her to dream, meaning thereby that I kept silent. Then she eyed me with a queer expression and burst into laughter.

“Kiss me,” she said.

I tried to kiss her and she fled.

We made merry in this way until I was nineteen. I had become a tall, strongly-built fellow with a freckled face. She considered me the handsomest of men. She always considered me the handsomest of men. She herself had become beautiful beyond words. The slenderness of the unruly young girl had given way to a form of ideal elegance and charm. She was neither fair nor dark. The color of her hair, which I called a fluffy radiance was all her own. Her eyes were green, flecked with gold, whose shades were ever changing. And then her graceful figure! She was as supple as a reed as the saying is, but by no means frail.

We continued to amuse ourselves like children.

Nevertheless one day we took each other by the hand and went thus together to our parents asking them to consent to our marriage without loss of time. We were filled with a wild desire to go for a wedding trip on horseback. Our parents, to our infinite sorrow, refused to listen to us. They postponed our trip on horseback for five years from then, and packed me off to America, which seemed to me a cruel and bitter mockery. And then I returned for my military service. And after that I was dispatched to America once more.