Books: Ramuntcho

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The silence between them was prolonged, she standing before him, barring
the way:

"And what have you done together?" she decided to ask. "Tell me the
truth, Ramuntcho, what wrong have you done?--"

"What wrong?--Oh! nothing, mother, nothing wrong, I swear to you--"

He replied this without irritation at being questioned, and bearing the
look of his mother with eyes of frankness. It was true, and she believed
him.

But, as she stayed in front of him, her hand on the door-latch, he said,
with dumb violence:

"You are not going to prevent me from going to her, since I shall leave
in three days!"

Then, in presence of this young will in revolt, the mother, enclosing in
herself the tumult of her contradictory thoughts, lowered her head and,
without a word, stood aside to let him pass.

CHAPTER XXV.

It was their last evening, for, the day before yesterday, at the Mayor's
office of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had, with a hand trembling a little,
signed his engagement for three years in the Second naval infantry, whose
garrison was a military port of the North.

It was their last evening,--and they had said that they would make it
longer than usual,--it would last till midnight, Gracieuse had decided:
midnight, which in the villages is an unseasonable and black hour, an
hour after which, she did not know why, all seemed to the little
betrothed graver and guiltier.

In spite of the ardent desire of their senses, the idea had not come to
one nor to the other that, during this last meeting, under the oppression
of parting, something more might be attempted.

On the contrary, at the instant so full of concentration of their
farewell, they felt more chaste still, so eternal was their love.

Less prudent, however, since they had not to care for the morrow, they
dared to talk there, on their lovers' bench, as they had never done
before. They talked of the future, of a future which was for them very
distant, because, at their age, three years seem infinite.

In three years, at his return, she would be twenty; then, if her mother
persisted to refuse in an absolute manner, at the end of a year she would
use her right of majority, it was between them an agreed and a sworn
thing.

The means of correspondence, during the long absence of Ramuntcho,
preoccupied them a great deal: between them, everything was so
complicated by obstacles and secrets!--Arrochkoa, their only possible
intermediary, had promised his help; but he was so changeable, so
uncertain!--Oh, if he were to fail!--And then, would he consent to send
sealed letters?--If he did not consent there would be no pleasure in
writing.--In our time, when communications are easy and constant, there
are no more of these complete separations similar to the one which theirs
would be; they were to say to each other a very solemn farewell, like the
one which the lovers of other days said, the lovers of the days when
there were lands without post-offices, and distances that frightened one.
The fortunate time when they should see each other again appeared to them
situated far off, far off, in the depths of duration; yet, because of the
faith which they had in each other, they expected this with a tranquil
assurance, as the faithful expect celestial life.

But the least things of their last evening acquired in their minds a
singular importance; as this farewell came near, all grew and was
exaggerated for them, as happens in the expectation of death. The slight
sounds and the aspects of the night seemed to them particular and, in
spite of them, were engraving themselves forever in their memory. The
song of the crickets had a characteristic which it seemed to them they
had never heard before. In the nocturnal sonority, the barking of a
watch-dog, coming from some distant farm, made them shiver with a
melancholy fright. And Ramuntcho was to carry with him in his exile, to
preserve later with a desolate attachment, a certain stem of grass
plucked from the garden negligently and with which he had played
unconsciously the whole evening.

A phase of their life finished with that day: a lapse of time had
occurred, their childhood had passed--

Of recommendations, they had none very long to exchange, so intensely was
each one sure of what the other might do during the separation. They had
less to say to each other than other engaged people have, because they
knew mutually their most intimate thoughts. After the first hour of
conversation, they remained hand in hand in grave silence, while were
consumed the inexorable minutes of the end.

At midnight, she wished him to go, as she had decided in advance, in her
little thoughtful and obstinate head. Therefore, after having embraced
each other for a long time, they quitted each other, as if the separation
were, at this precise minute, an ineluctable thing which it was
impossible to retard. And while she returned to her room with sobs that
he heard, he scaled over the wall and, in coming out of the darkness of
the foliage, found himself on the deserted road, white with lunar rays.
At this first separation, he suffered less than she, because he was
going, because it was he that the morrow, full of uncertainty, awaited.
While he walked on the road, powdered and clear, the powerful charm of
change, of travel, dulled his sensitiveness; almost without any precise
thought, he looked at his shadow, which the moon made clear and harsh,
marching in front of him. And the great Gizune dominated impassibly
everything, with its cold and spectral air, in all this white radiance of
midnight.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The parting day, good-byes to friends here and there; joyful wishes of
former soldiers returned from the regiment. Since the morning, a sort of
intoxication or of fever, and, in front of him, everything unthought-of
in life.

Arrochkoa, very amiable on that last day, had offered to drive him in a
wagon to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and had arranged to go at sunset, in order to
arrive there just in time for the night train.

The night having come, inexorably, Franchita wished to accompany her son
to the square, where the Detcharry wagon was waiting for him, and here
her face, despite her will, was drawn by sorrow, while he straightened
himself, in order to preserve the swagger which becomes recruits going to
their regiment:

"Make a little place for me, Arrochkoa," she said abruptly. "I will sit
between you to the chapel of Saint-Bitchentcho; I will return on foot--"

And they started at the setting sun, which, on them as on all things,
scattered the magnificence of its gold and of its red copper.

After a wood of oaks, the chapel of Saint-Bitchentcho passed, and the
mother wished to remain. From one turn to another, postponing every time
the great separation, she asked to be driven still farther.

"Mother, when we reach the top of the Issaritz slope you must go down!"
he said tenderly. "You hear, Arrochkoa, you will stop where I say; I do
not want mother to go further--"

At this Issaritz slope the horse had himself slackened his pace. The
mother and the son, their eyes burned with suppressed tears, held each
other's hands, and they were going slowly, slowly, in absolute silence,
as if it were a solemn ascent toward some Calvary.

At last, at the top of the slope, Arrochkoa, who seemed mute also, pulled
the reins slightly, with a simple little: "Ho!--" discreet as a
lugubrious signal which one hesitates to give--and the carriage was
stopped.

Then, without a word, Ramuntcho jumped to the road, helped his mother to
descend, gave a long kiss to her, then remounted briskly to his seat:

"Go, Arrochkoa, quickly, race, let us go!"

And in two seconds, in the rapid descent, he lost sight of the one whose
face at last was covered with tears.

Now they were going away from one another, Franchita and her son. In
different directions, they were walking on that Etchezar road,--in the
splendor of the setting sun, in a region of pink heather and of yellow
fern. She was going up slowly toward her home, meeting isolated groups of
farmers, flocks led through the golden evening by little shepherds in
Basque caps. And he was going down quickly, through valleys soon
darkened, toward the lowland where the railway train passes--

CHAPTER XXVII.

At twilight, Franchita was returning from escorting her son and was
trying to regain her habitual face, her air of haughty indifference, to
pass through the village.

But, when she arrived in front of the Detcharry house, she saw Dolores
who, instead of going in, as she intended, turned round and stood at the
door to see her pass. Something new, some sudden revelation must have
impelled her to take this attitude of aggressive defiance, this
expression of provoking irony,--and Franchita then stopped, she also,
while this phrase, almost involuntary, came through her set teeth:

"What is the matter with that woman? Why does she look at me so--"

"He will not come to-night, the lover, will he?" responded the enemy.

"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"

In truth, Dolores knew this since the morning: Gracieuse had told her,
since no care needed to be taken of the morrow; Gracieuse had told it
wearily, after talking uselessly of Uncle Ignacio, of Ramuntcho's future,
of all that would serve their cause--

"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"

By a reminiscence of other times, they regained instinctively their
theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for
nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they
detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus,
with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at
length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each
other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it
becomes implacable hatred.--Here they were, facing each other, and their
two voices trembled with rancor, with evil emotion:

"Well," replied the other, "you knew it before I did, I suppose, you who
are without shame and sent him to our house!--Anyway, one can understand
your easiness about means, after what you have done in the past--"

And, while Franchita, naturally much more dignified, remained mute,
terrified now by this unexpected dispute on the street, Dolores
continued:

"No. My daughter marrying that penniless bastard, think of it!--"

"Well, I have the idea that she will marry him, in spite of
everything!--Try to propose to her a man of your choice and see--"

Then, as if she disdained to continue, she went on her way, hearing
behind her the voice and the insults of the other pursuing her. All her
limbs trembled and she faltered at every step on her weakened legs.

At the house, now empty, what sadness she found!

The reality of this separation, which would last for three years,
appeared to her under an aspect frightfully new, as if she had hardly
been prepared for it--even as, on one's return from a graveyard, one
feels for the first time, in its frightful integrity, the absence of the
cherished dead--

And then, those words of insult in the street, those words the more
crushing because she was cruelly conscious of her sin with the stranger!
Instead of passing by, as she should have done, how had she found the
courage to stop before her enemy and, by a phrase murmured between her
teeth, provoke this odious dispute? How could she have descended to such
a thing, forgotten herself thus, she who, for fifteen years, had imposed
herself, little by little, on the respect of all by her demeanor, so
perfectly dignified. Oh, to have attracted and to have suffered the
insult of that Dolores,--whose past was irreproachable and who had, in
effect, the right to treat her with contempt! When she reflected, she
became frightened more and more by that sort of defiance of the future
which she had had the imprudence to hurl; it seemed to her that she had
compromised the cherished hope of her son in exasperating thus the hatred
of that woman.

Her son!--her Ramuntcho, whom a wagon was carrying away from her at this
hour in the summer night, was carrying away from her to a long distance,
to danger, to war!--She had assumed very heavy responsibilities in
directing his life with ideas of her own, with stubbornness, with pride,
with selfishness.--And now, this evening, she had, perhaps, attracted
misfortune to him, while he was going away so confident in the joy of his
return!--This would be doubtless for her the supreme chastisement; she
seemed to hear, in the air of the empty house, something like a threat of
this expiation, she felt its slow and sure approach.

Then, she said for him her prayers, from a heart harshly revolted,
because religion, as she understood it, remained without sweetness,
without consolation, without anything confidential and tender. Her
distress and her remorse were, at this moment, of so sombre a nature that
tears, benevolent tears, came no longer to her--

And he, at this same instant of the night, continued to descend, through
darker valleys, toward the lowland where the trains pass--carrying away
men to a long distance, changing and upsetting all things. For about an
hour he would continue to be on Basque soil; then, it would end. Along
his route, he met some oxcarts, of indolent demeanor, recalling the
tranquillities of the olden time; or vague human silhouettes, hailing him
with the traditional goodnight, the antique "Gaou-one," which to-morrow
he would cease to hear. And beyond, at his left, in the depth of a sort
of black abyss, was the profile of Spain, Spain which, for a very long
time doubtless, would trouble his nights no longer--

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

Three years have passed, rapidly.

Franchita is alone at home, ill and in bed, at the end of a November
day.--And it is the third autumn since her son's departure.

In her hands, burning with fever, she holds a letter from him, a letter
which should have brought only joy without a cloud, since it announces
his return, but which causes in her, on the contrary, tormented
sentiments, for the happiness of seeing him again is poisoned now by
sadness, by worry especially, by frightful worry--

Oh, she had an exact presentiment of the sombre future, that night when,
returning from escorting him on the road to departure, she returned to
her house with so much anguish, after that sort of defiance hurled at
Dolores on the street: it was cruelly true that she had broken then
forever her son's life!--

Months of waiting and of apparent calm had followed that scene, while
Ramuntcho, far from his native land, was beginning his military service.
Then, one day, a wealthy suitor had presented himself for Gracieuse and
she, to the entire village's knowledge, had rejected him obstinately in
spite of Dolores's will. Then, they had suddenly gone away, the mother
and the daughter, pretexting a visit to relatives in the highland; but
the voyage had been prolonged; a mystery more and more singular had
enveloped this absence,--and suddenly the rumor had come that Gracieuse
was a novice among the sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary, in a convent
of Gascony where the former Mother Superior of Etchezar was the abbess!--

Dolores had reappeared alone in her home, mute, with a desolate and evil
air. None knew what influence had been exercised over the little girl
with the golden hair, nor how the luminous doors of life had been closed
before her, how she had permitted herself to be walled in that tomb; but,
as soon as the period of novitiate had been accomplished, without seeing
even her brother, she had taken her vows there, while Ramuntcho, in a
far-off colonial war, ever distant from the post-offices of France, among
the forests of a Southern island, won the stripes of a sergeant and a
military medal.

Franchita had been almost afraid that he would never return, her
son.--But at last, he was coming back. Between her fingers, thin and
warm, she held the letter which said: "I start day after to-morrow and I
will be with you Saturday night." But what would he do, at his return,
what would he make of his life, so sadly changed? In his letters, he had
obstinately refrained from writing of this.

Anyway, everything had turned against her. The farmers, her tenants, had
left Etchezar, leaving the barn empty, the house more lonely, and
naturally her modest income was much diminished. Moreover, in an
imprudent investment, she had lost a part of the money which the stranger
had given for her son. Truly, she was too unskilful a mother,
compromising in every way the happiness of her beloved Ramuntcho,--or
rather, she was a mother upon whom justice from above fell heavily
to-day, because of her past error.--And all this had vanquished her, all
this had hastened and aggravated the malady which the physician, called
too late, did not succeed in checking.

Now, therefore, waiting for the return of her son, she was stretched on
her bed, burning with fever.

CHAPTER II.

He was returning, Ramuntcho, after his three years of absence, discharged
from the army in that city of the North where his regiment was in
garrison. He was returning with his heart in disarray, with his heart in
a tumult and in distress.

His twenty-two year old face had darkened under the ardent sun; his
mustache, now very long, gave him an air of proud nobility. And, on the
lapel of the civilian coat which he had just bought, appeared the
glorious ribbon of his medal.

At Bordeaux, where he had arrived after a night of travel, he had taken a
place, with some emotion, in that train of Irun which descends in a
direct line toward the South, through the monotony of the interminable
moors. Near the right door he had installed himself in order to see
sooner the Bay of Biscay open and the highlands of Spain sketch
themselves.

Then, near Bayonne, he had been startled at the sight of the first Basque
caps, at the tall gates, the first Basque houses among the pines and the
oaks.

And at Saint-Jean-de-Luz at last, when he set foot on the soil, he had
felt like one drunk--After the mist and the cold already begun in
Northern France, he felt the sudden and voluptuous impression of a warmer
climate, the sensation of going into a hothouse. There was a festival of
sunlight that day; the southern wind, the exquisite southern wind, blew,
and the Pyrenees had magnificent tints on the grand, free sky. Moreover,
girls passed, whose laughter rang of the South and of Spain, who had the
elegance and the grace of the Basques--and who, after the heavy blondes
of the North, troubled him more than all these illusions of summer.--But
promptly he returned to himself: what was he thinking of, since that
regained land was to him an empty land forever? How could his infinite
despair be changed by that tempting gracefulness of the girls, by that
ironical gaiety of the sky, the human beings and the things?--No! He
would go home, embrace his mother!--

As he had expected, the stage-coach to Etchezar had left two hours ago.
But, without trouble, he would traverse on foot this long road so
familiar to him and arrive in the evening, before night.

So he went to buy sandals, the foot-gear of his former runs. And, with
the mountaineer's quick step, in long, nervous strides, he plunged at
once into the heart of the silent country, through paths which were for
him full of memories.

November was coming to an end in the tepid radiance of that sun which
lingers always here for a long time, on the Pyrenean slopes. For days, in
the Basque land, had lasted this same luminous and pure sky, above woods
half despoiled of their leaves, above mountains reddened by the ardent
tint of the ferns. From the borders of the paths ascended tall grasses,
as in the month of May, and large, umbellated flowers, mistaken about the
season; in the hedges, privets and briars had come into bloom again, in
the buzz of the last bees; and one could see flying persistent
butterflies, to whom death had given several weeks of grace.

The Basque houses appeared here and there among the trees,--very
elevated, the roof protruding, white in their extreme oldness, with their
shutters brown or green, of a green ancient and faded. And everywhere, on
their wooden balconies were drying the yellow gold pumpkins, the sheafs
of pink peas; everywhere, on their walls, like beautiful beads of coral,
were garlands of red peppers: all the things of the soil still fecund,
all the things of the old, nursing soil, amassed thus in accordance with
old time usage, in provision for the darkened months when the heat
departs.

And, after the mists of the Northern autumn, that limpidity of the air,
that southern sunlight, every detail of the land, awakened in the complex
mind of Ramuntcho infinite vibrations, painfully sweet.

It was the tardy season when are cut the ferns that form the fleece of
the reddish hills. And, large ox-carts filled with them rolled
tranquilly, in the beautiful, melancholy sun, toward the isolated farms,
leaving on their passage the trail of their fragrance. Very slowly,
through the mountain paths, went these enormous loads of ferns; very
slowly, with sounds of cow-bells. The harnessed oxen, indolent and
strong,--all wearing the traditional head-gear of sheepskin, fallow
colored, which gives to them the air of bisons or of aurochs, pulled
those heavy carts, the wheels of which are solid disks, like those of
antique chariots. The cowboys, holding the long stick in their hands,
marched in front, always noiselessly, in sandals, the pink cotton shirt
revealing the chest, the waistcoat thrown over the left shoulder--and the
woolen cap drawn over a face shaven, thin, grave, to which the width of
the jaws and of the muscles of the neck gives an expression of massive
solidity.

Then, there were intervals of solitude when one heard, in these paths,
only the buzz of flies, in the yellowed and finishing shade of the trees.

Ramuntcho looked at them, at these rare passers-by who crossed his road,
surprised at not meeting somebody he knew who would stop before him. But
there were no familiar faces. And the friends whom he met were not
effusive, there were only vague good-days exchanged with folks who turned
round a little, with an impression of having seen him sometime, but not
recalling when, and fell back into the humble dream of the fields.--And
he felt more emphasized than ever the primary differences between him and
those farm laborers.

Over there, however, comes one of those carts whose sheaf is so big that
branches of oaks in its passage catch it. In front, walks the driver,
with a look of soft resignation, a big, peaceful boy, red as the ferns,
red as the autumn, with a reddish fur in a bush on his bare chest; he
walks with a supple and nonchalant manner, his arms extended like those
of a cross on his goad, placed across his shoulders. Thus, doubtless, on
these same mountains, marched his ancestors, farm laborers and cowboys
like him since numberless centuries.

And this one, at Ramuntcho's aspect, touches the forehead of his oxen,
stops them with a gesture and a cry of command, then comes to the
traveller, extending to him his brave hands.--Florentino! A Florentino
much changed, having squarer shoulders, quite a man now, with an assured
and fixed demeanor.

The two friends embrace each other. Then, they scan each other's faces in
silence, troubled suddenly by the wave of reminiscences which come from
the depth of their minds and which neither the one nor the other knows
how to express; Ramuntcho, not better than Florentino, for, if his
language be infinitely better formed, the profoundness and the mystery of
his thoughts are also much more unfathomable.

And it oppresses them to conceive things which they are powerless to
tell; then their embarrassed looks return absent-mindedly to the two
beautiful, big oxen:

"They are mine, you know" says Florentino. "I was married two years
ago.--My wife works. And, by working--we are beginning to get
along.--Oh!" he adds, with naive pride, "I have another pair of oxen like
these at the house."

Then he ceases to talk, flushing suddenly under his sunburn, for he has
the tact which comes from the heart, which the humblest possess often by
nature, but which education never gives, even to the most refined people
in the world: considering the desolate return of Ramuntcho, his broken
destiny, his betrothed buried over there among the black nuns, his mother
dying, Florentino is afraid to have been already too cruel in displaying
too much his own happiness.

Then the silence returned; they looked at each other for an instant with
kind smiles, finding no words. Besides, between them, the abyss of
different conceptions has grown deeper in these three years. And
Florentino, touching anew the foreheads of his oxen, makes them march
again with a call of his tongue, and presses tighter the hand of his
friend:

"We shall see each other again, shall we not?"

And the noise of the cow-bells is soon lost in the calm of the road more
shady, where begins to diminish the heat of the day--

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