The Beginning:My orderly reported that Mr. Abel Guevez de Argensola was there tosee me. I glanced around the office, ashamed of the disarray butpowerless to do aught about it. With a sigh I leaned back in theusually comfortable chair furnished me. The door opened and Abelstepped in. Shock at my circumstances made his facial muscles goslack for a long moment as he noted each evidence of my discomfort.I didn't even feel good enough to mutter an excuse. His face grewgrim and his eyes narrowed. This change angered me. I had gotteninto this bad state of health that was most deplorable, and here wasAbel looking much annoyed, as if I had not treated him well by beingthis ill. When he spoke the words were clipped short. “Your indolenceand the use of stimulants is the cause of your bad health.”
This opinion was not new. In the past 8 years he had repeatedly toldme that my bad habits would produce bad fruit. “You could get well if you wanted to do so. But no, here you are reveling in your illness.” I was stunned that Abel had attacked me in this way, right there inmy office. I was downright angry with him, but my head was roaringwith fever so that I could not say aught of the words boiling up in mythroat. Abel then spoke in a mocking way, with a presence of notquite meaning it, but his feelings could not be wholly disguised.Stung by his reproaches, I blurted out that he had no right to talk tome in such a way, even in fun. “Yes,” he said, “I have the best right -- that of our friendship. I wouldbe no true friend if I kept my peace when you do this to yourself.” It was then that I struck in anger a blow that slashed my own heart. “Our friendship does not seem so perfect and complete to me as itmust to you. One condition of friendship is that the partners in itshould be known to each other. “You have my whole life and mind laid open to you, to read it as in abook. YOUR life has always been a closed and clasped volume to me.” His face darkened, and after a few moments' silent reflection he gotup and left me with only an icy-cold good-bye. Nor was there thatfirm hand-grasp which had become customary between us upon timesof parting.After his departure I sank back into my chair with the feeling that myheart had sustained a great hit. A great calamity had befallen me forI felt that I had lost the friendship of a most unusual man -- but I wasalso still smarting at his too candid criticism, all the more because inmy heart I acknowledged its truth. And thus that night, lying awake, Irepented of the cruel retort I had made, and resolved to beg hisforgiveness and leave it to him to determine the question of ourfuture relations. But he was beforehand with me, and with themorning came a letter begging my forgiveness and asking me tocome along that evening to dine with him.We dined alone. During dinner and afterwards when we sat smokingand sipping black coffee in the veranda, we were so unusually quieteven to the point of solemn gravity that the two white-clad servantsthat waited on us began to direct many furtive glances at their
master's face. They were all too accustomed to see him in a moregenial mood when we dined alone. To me the change in his mannerwas not surprising. From the moment of seeing him I had divinedthat he had determined to open that book that had been a shut andclasped volume, of which I had spoken -- that he felt the time hadnow come for him to open his heart and his past for me to share. AsI realized this, I began to question if I were really prepared to dealwith these revelations that might well separate us forever. In myfancy I noted that the limbs of the trees sighed sadly as I waited forhim to speak.
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CHAPTER XXII for Green Mansions
Green Mansions Novel.
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