One clear April morning, they were walking to the church, Gracieuse and Ramuntcho. She, with an air half grave, half mocking, with a particular and very odd air, leading him there to make him do a penance which she had ordered.
In the holy enclosure, the flowerbeds of the tombs were coming into bloom again, as also the rose bushes on the walls. Once more the new saps were awakening above the long sleep of the dead. They went in together, through the lower door, into the empty church, where the old “benoite” in a black mantilla was alone, dusting the altars.
When Gracieuse had given to Ramuntcho the holy water and they had made their signs of the cross, she led him through the sonorous nave, paved with funereal stones, to a strange image on the wall, in a shady corner, under the men's tribunes.
It was a painting, impregnated with ancient mysticism, representing the figure of Jesus with eyes closed, forehead bloody, expression lamentable and dead; the head seemed to be cut off, separated from the body, and placed there on a gray linen cloth. Above, were written the long Litanies of the Holy Face, which have been composed, as everybody knows, to be recited in penance by repentant blasphemers. The day before, Ramuntcho, in anger, had sworn in an ugly manner: a quite unimaginable string of words, wherein the sacraments and the most saintly things were mingled with the horns of the devil and other villainous things still more frightful. That is why the necessity for a penance had impressed itself on the mind of Gracieuse.
“Come, my Ramuntcho,” she recommended, as she walked away, “omit nothing of what you must say.”
She left him then in front of the Holy Face, beginning to murmur his litanies in a low voice, and went to the good woman and helped her to change the water of the white Easter daisies in front of the altar of the Virgin.
But when the languorous evening returned, and Gracieuse was seated in the darkness meditating on her stone bench, a young human form started up suddenly near her; someone who had come in sandals, without making more noise than the silk owls make in the air, from the rear of the garden doubtless, after some scaling, and who stood there, straight, his waistcoat thrown over one shoulder: the one to whom were addressed all her tender emotions on earth, the one who incarnated the ardent dream of her heart and of her senses—
“Ramuntcho!” she said. “Oh! how you frightened me. Where did you come from at such an hour? What do you want? Why did you come?”
“Why did I come? In my turn, to order you to do penance,” he replied, laughing.
“No, tell the truth, what is the matter, what are you coming to do?”
“To see you, only! That is what I come to do—What will you have! We
never see each other!—Your mother keeps me at a distance more and more
every day. I cannot live in that way.—We are not doing any harm, after
all, since we are to be married! And you know, I could come every night,
if you like, without anybody suspecting it—”
“Oh! no!—Oh! do not do that ever, I beg of you—”
They talked for an instant, and so low, so low, with more silence than words, as if they were afraid to wake up the birds in their nests. They recognized no longer the sound of their voices, so changed and so trembling they were, as if they had committed some delicious and damnable crime, by doing nothing but staying near each other, in the grand, caressing mystery of that night of April, which was hatching around them so many ascents of saps, so many germinations and so many loves—
He had not even dared to sit at her side; he remained standing, ready to run under the branches at the least alarm, like a nocturnal prowler.
However, when he prepared to go, it was she who asked, hesitating, and in a manner to be hardly heard:
“And—you will come back to-morrow?”
Then, under his growing mustache, he smiled at this sudden change of mind and he replied:
“Yes, surely.—To-morrow and every night.—Every night when we shall not have to work in Spain.—I will come—”
Ramuntcho's lodging place was, in the house of his mother and above the stable, a room neatly whitewashed; he had there his bed, always clean and white, but where smuggling gave him few hours for sleep. Books of travel or cosmography, which the cure of the parish lent to him, posed on his table—unexpected in this house. The portraits, framed, of different saints, ornamented the walls, and several pelota-players' gloves were hanging from the beams of the ceiling, long gloves of wicker and of leather which seemed rather implements of hunting or fishing.
Franchita, at her return to her country, had bought back this house, which was that of her deceased parents, with a part of the sum given to her by the stranger at the birth of her son. She had invested the rest; then she worked at making gowns or at ironing linen for the people of Etchezar, and rented, to farmers of land near by, two lower rooms, with the stable where they placed their cows and their sheep.
Different familiar, musical sounds rocked Ramuntcho in his bed. First, the constant roar of a near-by torrent; then, at times, songs of nightingales, salutes to the dawn of divers birds. And, in this spring especially, the cows, his neighbors, excited doubtless by the smell of new-mown hay, moved all night, were agitated in dreams, making their bells tintillate continually.
Often, after the long expeditions at night, he regained his sleep in the afternoon, extended in the shade in some corner of moss and grass. Like the other smugglers, he was not an early riser for a village boy, and he woke up sometimes long after daybreak, when already, between the disjointed planks of his flooring, rays of a vivid and gay light came from the stable below, the door of which remained open always to the rising sun after the departure of the cattle to their pastures. Then, he went to his window, pushed open the little, old blinds made of massive chestnut wood painted in olive, and leaned on his elbows, placed on the sill of the thick wall, to look at the clouds or at the sun of the new morning.
What he saw, around his house, was green, green, magnificently green, as are in the spring all the corners of that land of shade and of rain. The ferns which, in the autumn, have so warm a rusty color, were now, in this April, in the glory of their greenest freshness and covered the slopes of the mountains as with an immense carpet of curly wool, where foxglove flowers made pink spots. In a ravine, the torrent roared under branches. Above, groups of oaks and of beeches clung to the slopes, alternating with prairies; then, above this tranquil Eden, toward the sky, ascended the grand, denuded peak of the Gizune, sovereign hill of the region of the clouds. And one perceived also, in the background, the church and the houses—that village of Etchezar, solitary and perched high on one of the Pyrenean cliffs, far from everything, far from the lines of communication which have revolutionized and spoiled the lowlands of the shores; sheltered from curiosity, from the profanation of strangers, and living still its Basque life of other days.
Ramuntcho's awakenings were impregnated, at this window, with peace and humble serenity. They were full of joy, his awakenings of a man engaged, since he had the assurance of meeting Gracieuse at night at the promised place. The vague anxieties, the undefined sadness, which accompanied in him formerly the daily return of his thoughts, had fled for a time, dispelled by the reminiscence and the expectation of these meetings; his life was all changed; as soon as his eyes were opened he had the impression of a mystery and of an immense enchantment, enveloping him in the midst of this verdure and of these April flowers. And this peace of spring, thus seen every morning, seemed to him every time a new thing, very different from what it had been in the previous years, infinitely sweet to his heart and voluptuous to his flesh, having unfathomable and ravishing depths.
It is Easter night, after the village bells have ceased to mingle in the air so many holy vibrations that came from Spain and from France.
Seated on the bank of the Bidassoa, Ramuntcho and Florentino watch the arrival of a bark. A great silence now, and the bells sleep. The tepid twilight has been prolonged and, in breathing, one feels the approach of summer.
As soon as the night falls, it must appear from the coast of Spain, the smuggling bark, bringing the very prohibited phosphorus. And, without its touching the shore, they must go to get that merchandise, by advancing on foot in the bed of the river, with long, pointed sticks in their hands, in order to assume, if perchance they were caught, airs of people fishing innocently for “platuches.”
The water of the Bidassoa is to-night an immovable and clear mirror, a little more luminous than the sky, and in this mirror, are reproduced, upside down, all the constellations, the entire Spanish mountain, carved in so sombre a silhouette in the tranquil atmosphere. Summer, summer, one has more and more the consciousness of its approach, so limpid and soft are the first signs of night, so much lukewarm langour is scattered over this corner of the world, where the smugglers silently manoeuvre.
But this estuary, which separates the two countries, seems in this moment to Ramuntcho more melancholy than usual, more closed and more walled-in in front of him by these black mountains, at the feet of which hardly shine, here and there, two or three uncertain lights. Then, he is seized again by his desire to know what there is beyond, and further still.—Oh! to go elsewhere!—To escape, at least for a time, from the oppressiveness of that land—so loved, however!—Before death, to escape the oppressiveness of this existence, ever similar and without egress. To try something else, to get out of here, to travel, to know things—!
Then, while watching the far-off, terrestrial distances where the bark will appear, he raises his eyes from time to time toward what happens above, in the infinite, looks at the new moon, the crescent of which, as thin as a line, lowers and will disappear soon; looks at the stars, the slow and regulated march of which he has observed, as have all the people of his trade, during so many nocturnal hours; is troubled in the depth of his mind by the proportions and the inconceivable distances of these things.—
In his village of Etchezar, the old priest who had taught him the catechism, interested by his young, lively intelligence, has lent books to him, has continued with him conversations on a thousand subjects, and, on the subject of the planets, has given to him the notion of movements and of immensities, has half opened before his eyes the grand abyss of space and duration. Then, in his mind, innate doubts, frights and despairs that slumbered, all that his father had bequeathed to him as a sombre inheritance, all these things have taken a black form which stands before him. Under the great sky of night, his Basque faith has commenced to weaken. His mind is no longer simple enough to accept blindly dogmas and observances, and, as all becomes incoherence and disorder in his young head, so strangely prepared, the course of which nobody is leading, he does not know that it is wise to submit, with confidence in spite of everything, to the venerable and consecrated formulas, behind which is hidden perhaps all that we may ever see of the unknowable truths.
Therefore, these bells of Easter which the year before had filled him with a religious and soft sentiment, this time had seemed to him to be a music sad and almost vain. And now that they have just hushed, he listens with undefined sadness to the powerful noise, almost incessant since the creation, that the breakers of the Bay of Biscay make and which, in the peaceful nights, may be heard in the distance behind the mountains.
But his floating dream changes again.—Now the estuary, which has become quite dark and where one may no longer see the mass of human habitations, seems to him, little by little, to become different; then, strange suddenly, as if some mystery were to be accomplished in it; he perceives only the great, abrupt lines of it, which are almost eternal, and he is surprised to think confusedly of times more ancient, of an unprecise and obscure antiquity.—The Spirit of the old ages, which comes out of the soil at times in the calm nights, in the hours when sleep the beings that trouble us in the day-time, the Spirit of the old ages is beginning, doubtless, to soar in the air around him; Ramuntcho does not define this well, for his sense of an artist and of a seer, that no education has refined, has remained rudimentary; but he has the notion and the worry of it.—In his head, there is still and always a chaos, which seeks perpetually to disentangle itself and never succeeds.—However, when the two enlarged and reddened horns of the moon fall slowly behind the mountain, always black, the aspect of things takes, for an inappreciable instant, one knows not what ferocious and primitive airs; then, a dying impression of original epochs which had remained, one knows not where in space, takes for Ramuntcho a precise form in a sudden manner, and troubles him until he shivers. He dreams, even without wishing it, of those men of the forests who lived here in the ages, in the uncalculated and dark ages, because, suddenly, from a point distant from the shore, a long Basque cry rises from the darkness in a lugubrious falsetto, an “irrintzina,” the only thing in this country with which he never could become entirely familiar. But a great mocking noise occurs in the distance, the crash of iron, whistles: a train from Paris to Madrid, which is passing over there, behind them, in the black of the French shore. And the Spirit of the old ages folds its wings made of shade and vanishes. Silence returns: but after the passage of this stupid and rapid thing, the Spirit which has fled reappears no more—
At last, the bark which Ramuntcho awaited with Florentino appears, hardly perceptible for other eyes than theirs, a little, gray form which leaves behind it slight ripples on this mirror which is of the color of the sky at night and wherein stars are reflected upside down. It is the well-selected hour, the hour when the customs officers watch badly; the hour also when the view is dimmer, when the last reflections of the sun and those of the crescent of the moon have gone out, and the eyes of men are not yet accustomed to darkness.
Then to get the prohibited phosphorus, they take their long fishing sticks, and go into the water silently.
There was a grand ball-game arranged for the following Sunday at Erribiague, a far-distant village, near the tall mountains. Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino were to play against three celebrated ones of Spain; they were to practice that evening, limber their arms on the square of Etchezar, and Gracieuse, with other little girls of her age, had taken seats on the granite benches to look at them. The girls, all pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance with the most recent vagary of the season. And they were laughing, these little girls, they were laughing! They were laughing because they had begun laughing, without knowing why. Nothing, a word of their old Basque tongue, without any appropriateness, by one of them, and there they were all in spasms of laughter.—This country is truly one of the corners of the world where the laughter of girls breaks out most easily, ringing like clear crystal, ringing youthfulness and fresh throats.
Arrochkoa had been there for a long time, with the wicker glove at his arm, throwing alone the pelota which, from time to time, children picked up for him. But Ramuntcho, Florentino, what were they thinking of? How late they were! They came at last, their foreheads wet with perspiration, their walk heavy and embarrassed. And, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic sound.—Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing a little, they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than ordinarily, their overload being disposed of.
Except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on the lowest one of these deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April. Calico gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this solemnly sad place. Beside Gracieuse was Pantchika Dargaignaratz, another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to Arrochkoa and would soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in the army. And, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their chanted accent, with ends of syllables in “rra” or in “rrik,” making the “r's” roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows were beating their wings in their mouths.
They also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under the pretext of resting, to sit among the girls. These troubled and intimidated them three times more than the public, because they mocked so!
Ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed something which he would not have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to go to that festival of Erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that country, which she did not know. It was agreed that she should go in a carriage, with Pantchika and Madame Dargaignaratz; and they would meet over there; perhaps it would be possible to return all together.
During the two weeks since their evening meetings had begun, this was the first time when he had had the opportunity to talk to her thus in the day-time and before the others—and their manner was different, more ceremonious apparently, with, beneath it, a very suave mystery. It was a long time, also, since he had seen her so well and so near in the daylight: she was growing more beautiful that spring; she was pretty, pretty!—Her bust had become rounder and her waist thinner; her manner gained, day by day, an elegant suppleness. She resembled her brother still, she had the same regular features, the same perfect oval of the face; but the difference in their eyes went on increasing: while those of Arrochkoa, of a blue green shade which seemed fleeting, avoided the glances of others, hers, on the contrary, black pupils and lashes, dilated themselves to look at you fixedly. Ramuntcho had seen eyes like these in no other person; he adored the frank tenderness of them and also their anxious and profound questioning. Long before he had become a man and accessible to the trickery of the senses, those eyes had caught, of his little, childish mind, all that was best and purest in it.—And now around such eyes, the grand Transformer, enigmatic and sovereign, had placed a beauty of flesh which irresistibly called his flesh to a supreme communion.—
They were made very inattentive to their game, the players, by the group of little girls, of white and pink waists, and they laughed themselves at not playing so well as usual. Above them, occupying only a small corner of the old, granite amphitheatre, ascended rows of empty benches in ruins; then, the houses of Etchezar, so peacefully isolated from the rest of the world; then, in fine, the obscure, encumbering mass of the Gizune, filling up the sky and mingling with thick clouds asleep on its sides. Clouds immovable, inoffensive and without a threat of rain; clouds of spring, which were of a turtle-dove color and which seemed tepid, like the air of that evening. And, in a rent, much less elevated than the summit predominating over this entire site, a round moon began to silver as the day declined.
They played, in the beautiful twilight, until the hour when the first bats appeared, until the hour when the flying pelota could hardly be seen in the air. Perhaps they felt, unconsciously, that the moment was rare and might not be regained: then, as much as possible, they should prolong it—
And at last, they went together to take to Itchoua his Spanish coins. In two lots, they had been placed in two thick, reddish towels which a boy and a girl held at each end, and they walked in cadence, singing the tune of “The Linen Weaver.”
How long, clear and soft was that twilight of April!—There were roses and all sorts of flowers in front of the walls of the venerable, white houses with brown or green blinds. Jessamine, honeysuckle and linden filled the air with fragrance. For Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, it was one of those exquisite hours which later, in the anguishing sadness of awakenings, one recalls with a regret at once heart-breaking and charming.
Oh! who shall say why there are on earth evenings of spring, and eyes so pretty to look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes which gardens exhale when the nights of April fall, and all this delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in separation, in decrepitude and in death—
The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where the festival was to take place on the following Sunday. It is situated very far, in a shady region, at the turn of a deep gorge, at the foot of very high summits. Arrochkoa was born there and he had spent there the first months of his life, in the time when his father lived there as a brigadier of the French customs; but he had left too early to have retained the least memory of it.
In the little Detcharry carriage, Gracieuse, Pantchita and, with a long whip in her hand, Madame Dargaignaratz, her mother, who is to drive, leave together at the noon angelus to go over there directly by the mountain route.
Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino, who have to settle smuggling affairs at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, go by a roundabout way which will bring them to Erribiague at night, on the train which goes from Bayonne to Burguetta. To-day, all three are heedless and happy; Basque caps never appeared above more joyful faces.
The night is falling when they penetrate, by this little train of Burguetta, into the quiet, interior country. The carriages are full of a gay crowd, a spring evening crowd, returning from some festival, young girls with silk kerchiefs around their necks, young men wearing woolen caps; all are singing, laughing and kissing. In spite of the invading obscurity one may still distinguish the hedges, white with hawthorn, the woods white with acacia flowers; into the open carriages penetrates a fragrance at once violent and suave, which the country exhales. And on all this white bloom of April, which the night little by little effaces, the train throws in passing a furrow of joy, the refrain of some old song of Navarre, sung and resung infinitely by these girls and these boys, in the noise of the wheels and of the steam—
Erribiague! At the doors, this name, which makes all three start, is cried. The singing band had already stepped out, leaving them almost alone in the train, which had become silent. High mountains had made the night very thick—and the three were almost sleeping.
Astounded, they jump down, in the midst of an obscurity which even their smugglers' eyes cannot pierce. Stars above hardly shine, so encumbered is the sky by the overhanging summits.
“Where is the village?” they ask of a man who is there alone to receive them.
“Three miles from here on the right.”
They begin to distinguish the gray trail of a road, suddenly lost in the heart of the shade. And in the grand silence, in the humid coolness of these valleys full of darkness, they walk without talking, their gaiety somewhat darkened by the black majesty of the peaks that guard the frontier here.
They come, at last, to an old, curved bridge over a torrent; then, to the sleeping village which no light indicates. And the inn, where shines a lamp, is near by, leaning on the mountain, its base in the roaring water.
The young men are led into their little rooms which have an air of cleanliness in spite of their extreme oldness: very low, crushed by their enormous beams, and bearing on their whitewashed walls images of the Christ, the Virgin and the saints.
Then, they go down to the supper tables, where are seated two or three old men in old time costume: white belt, black blouse, very short, with a thousand pleats. And Arrochkoa, vain of his parentage, hastens to ask them if they have not known Detcharry, who was here a brigadier of the customs eighteen years ago.
One of the old men scans his face:
“Ah! you are his son, I would bet! You look like him! Detcharry, do I remember Detcharry!—He took from me two hundred lots of merchandise!—That does not matter, here is my hand, even if you are his son!”
And the old defrauder, who was the chief of a great band, without rancor, with effusion, presses Arrochkoa's two hands.
Detcharry has remained famous at Erribiague for his stratagems, his ambuscades, his captures of contraband goods, out of which came, later, his income that Dolores and her children enjoy.
And Arrochkoa assumes a proud air, while Ramuntcho lowers his head, feeling that he is of a lower condition, having no father.
“Are you not in the customhouse, as your deceased father was?” continued the old man in a bantering tone.
“Oh, no, not exactly.—Quite the reverse, even—”
“Oh, well! I understand!—Then, shake once more—and it's a sort of revenge on Detcharry for me, to know that his son has gone into smuggling like us!—”
They send for cider and they drink together, while the old men tell again the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales of nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different from that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem to them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas, repeated infinitely as in the antique songs expressive of sorrow. And, as soon as they cease talking, the slight sounds in the sleep of the country come from peaceful and fresh darkness. The crickets chirp; one hears the torrent bubbling at the base of the inn; one hears the dripping of springs from the terrible, overhanging summits, carpeted with thick foliage.—It sleeps, the very small village, crouched and hidden in the hollow of a ravine, and one has the impression that the night here is a night blacker than elsewhere and more mysterious.
“In truth,” concludes the old chief, “the customhouse and smuggling, at bottom, resemble each other; it is a game where the smartest wins, is it not? I will even say that, in my own opinion, an officer of customs, clever and bold, a customs officer like your father, for example, is as worthy as any of us!”
After this, the hostess having come to say that it was time to put out the lamp—the last lamp still lit in the village—they go away, the old defrauders. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa go up to their rooms, lie down and sleep, always in the chirp of the crickets, always in the sound of fresh waters that run or that fall. And Ramuntcho, as in his house at Etchezar, hears vaguely during his sleep the tinkling of bells, attached to the necks of cows moving in a dream, under him, in the stable.
Now they open, to the beautiful April morning, the shutters of their narrow windows, pierced like portholes in the thickness of the very old wall.
And suddenly, it is a flood of light that dazzles their eyes. Outside, the spring is resplendent. Never had they seen, before this, summits so high and so near. But along the slopes full of leaves, along the mountains decked with trees, the sun descends to radiate in this valley on the whiteness of the village, on the kalsomine of the ancient houses with green shutters.
Both awakened with veins full of youth and hearts full of joy. They have formed the project this morning to go into the country, to the house of Madame Dargaignaratz's cousins, and see the two little girls, who must have arrived the night before in the carriage, Gracieuse and Pantchika.—After a glance at the ball-game square, where they shall return to practice in the afternoon, they go on their way through small paths, magnificently green, hidden in the depths of the valleys, skirting the cool torrents. The foxglove flowers start everywhere like long, pink rockets above the light and infinite mass of ferns.
It is at a long distance, it seems, that house of the Olhagarray cousins, and they stop from time to time to ask the way from shepherds, or they knock at the doors of solitary houses, here and there, under the cover of branches. They had never seen Basque houses so old nor so primitive, under the shade of chestnut trees so tall.
The ravines through which they advance are strangely enclosed. Higher than all these woods of oaks and of beeches, which seem as if suspended above, appear ferocious, denuded summits, a zone abrupt and bald, sombre brown, making points in the violent blue of the sky. But here, underneath, is the sheltered and mossy region, green and deep, which the sun never burns and where April has hidden its luxury, freshly superb.
And they also, the two who are passing through these paths of foxglove and of fern, participate in this splendor of spring.
Little by little, in their enjoyment at being there, and under the influence of this ageless place, the old instincts to hunt and to destroy are lighted in the depths of their minds. Arrochkoa, excited, leaps from right to left, from left to right, breaks, uproots grasses and flowers; troubles about everything that moves in the green foliage, about the lizards that might be caught, about the birds that might be taken out of their nests, and about the beautiful trout swimming in the water; he jumps, he leaps; he wishes he had fishing lines, sticks, guns; truly he reveals his savagery in the bloom of his robust eighteen years.—Ramuntcho calms himself quickly; after breaking a few branches, plucking a few flowers, he begins to meditate; and he thinks—
Here they are stopped now at a cross-road where no human habitation is visible. Around them are gorges full of shade wherein grand oaks grow thickly, and above, everywhere, a piling up of mountains, of a reddish color burned by the sun. There is nowhere an indication of the new times; there is an absolute silence, something like the peace of the primitive epochs. Lifting their heads toward the brown peaks, they perceive at a long distance persons walking on invisible paths, pushing before them donkeys of smugglers: as small as insects at such a distance, are these silent passers-by on the flank of the gigantic mountain; Basques of other times, almost confused, as one looks at them from this place, with this reddish earth from which they came—and where they are to return, after having lived like their ancestors without a suspicion of the things of our times, of the events of other places—
They take off their caps, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, to wipe their foreheads; it is so warm in these gorges and they have run so much, jumped so much, that their entire bodies are in a perspiration. They are enjoying themselves, but they would like to come, nevertheless, near the two little, blonde girls who are waiting for them. But of whom shall they ask their way now, since there is no one?
“Ave Maria,” cries at them from the thickness of the branches an old, rough voice.
And the salutation is prolonged by a string of words spoken in a rapid decrescendo, quick; quick; a Basque prayer rattled breathlessly, begun very loudly, then dying at the finish. And an old beggar comes out of the fern, all earthy, all hairy, all gray, bent on his stick like a man of the woods.
“Yes,” says Arrochkoa, putting his hand in his pocket, “but you must take us to the Olhagarray house.”
“The Olhagarray house,” replies the old man. “I have come from it, my children, and you are near it.”
In truth, how had they failed to see, at a hundred steps further, that black gable among branches of chestnut trees?
At a point where sluices rustle, it is bathed by a torrent, that Olhagarray house, antique and large, among antique chestnut trees. Around, the red soil is denuded and furrowed by the waters of the mountain; enormous roots are interlaced in it like monstrous gray serpents; and the entire place, overhung on all sides by the Pyrenean masses, is rude and tragic.
But two young girls are there, seated in the shade; with blonde hair and elegant little pink waists; astonishing little fairies, very modern in the midst of the ferocious and old scenes.—They rise, with cries of joy, to meet the visitors.
It would have been better, evidently, to enter the house and salute the old people. But the boys say to themselves that they have not been seen coming, and they prefer to sit near their sweethearts, by the side of the brook, on the gigantic roots. And, as if by chance, the two couples manage not to bother one another, to remain hidden from one another by rocks, by branches.
There then, they talk at length in a low voice, Arrochkoa with Pantchika, Ramuntcho with Gracieuse. What can they be saying, talking so much and so quickly?
Although their accent is less chanted than that of the highland, which astonished them yesterday, one would think they were speaking scanned stanzas, in a sort of music, infinitely soft, where the voices of the boys seem voices of children.
What are they saying to one another, talking so much and so quickly, beside this torrent, in this harsh ravine, under the heavy sun of noon? What they are saying has not much sense; it is a sort of murmur special to lovers, something like the special song of the swallows at nesting time. It is childish, a tissue of incoherences and repetitions. No, what they are saying has not much sense—unless it be what is most sublime in the world, the most profound and truest things which may be expressed by terrestrial words.—It means nothing, unless it be the eternal and marvellous hymn for which alone has been created the language of men and beasts, and in comparison with which all is empty, miserable and vain.
The heat is stifling in the depth of that gorge, so shut in from all sides; in spite of the shade of the chestnut trees, the rays, that the leaves sift, burn still. And this bare earth, of a reddish color, the extreme oldness of this nearby house, the antiquity of these trees, give to the surroundings, while the lovers talk, aspects somewhat harsh and hostile.
Ramuntcho has never seen his little friend made so pink by the sun: on her cheeks, there is the beautiful, red blood which flushes the skin, the fine and transparent skin; she is pink as the foxglove flowers.
Flies, mosquitoes buzz in their ears. Now Gracieuse has been bitten on the chin, almost on the mouth, and she tries to touch it with the end of her tongue, to bite the place with the upper teeth. And Ramuntcho, who looks at this too closely, feels suddenly a langour, to divert himself from which he stretches himself like one trying to awake.
She begins again, the little girl, her lip still itching—and he again stretches his arms, throwing his chest backward.
“What is the matter, Ramuntcho, and why do you stretch yourself like a cat?—”
But when, for the third time, Gracieuse bites the same place, and shows again the little tip of her tongue, he bends over, vanquished by the irresistible giddiness, and bites also, takes in his mouth, like a beautiful red fruit which one fears to crush, the fresh lip which the mosquito has bitten—
A silence of fright and of delight, during which both shiver, she as much as he; she trembling also, in all her limbs, for having felt the contact of the growing black mustache.
“You are not angry, tell me?”
“No, my Ramuntcho.—Oh, I am not angry, no—”
Then he begins again, quite frantic, and in this languid and warm air, they exchange for the first time in their lives, the long kisses of lovers—
The next day, Sunday, they went together religiously to hear one of the masses of the clear morning, in order to return to Etchezar the same day, immediately after the grand ball-game. It was this return, much more than the game, that interested Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, for it was their hope that Pantchika and her mother would remain at Erribiague while they would go, pressed against each other, in the very small carriage of the Detcharry family, under the indulgent and slight watchfulness of Arrochkoa, five or six hours of travel, all three alone, on the spring roads, under the new foliage, with amusing halts in unknown villages—
At eleven o'clock in the morning, on that beautiful Sunday, the square was encumbered by mountaineers come from all the summits, from all the savage, surrounding hamlets. It was an international match, three players of France against three of Spain, and, in the crowd of lookers-on, the Spanish Basques were more numerous; there were large sombreros, waistcoats and gaiters of the olden time.
The judges of the two nations, designated by chance, saluted each other with a superannuated politeness, and the match began, in profound silence, under an oppressive sun which annoyed the players, in spite of their caps, pulled down over their eyes.
Ramuntcho soon, and after him Arrochkoa, were acclaimed as victors. And people looked at the two little strangers, so attentive, in the first row, so pretty also with their elegant pink waists, and people said: “They are the sweethearts of the two good players.” Then Gracieuse, who heard everything, felt proud of Ramuntcho.
Noon. They had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat, under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the sun fell straight on the heavy caps of the men, on the bare heads of the women, heating the brains, increasing enthusiasm. The passionate crowd yelled, and the pelotas were flying, when, softly, the angelus began to ring. Then an old man, all wrinkled, all burned, who was waiting for this signal, put his mouth to the clarion—his old clarion of a Zouave in Africa—and rang the call to rest. And all, the women who were seated rose; all the caps fell, uncovering hair black, blonde or white, and the entire people made the sign of the cross, while the players, with chests and foreheads streaming with perspiration, stopped in the heat of the game and stood in meditation with heads bent—
At two o'clock, the game having come to an end gloriously for the French, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho went in their little wagon, accompanied and acclaimed by all the young men of Erribiague; then Gracieuse sat between the two, and they started for their long, charming trip, their pockets full of the gold which they had earned, intoxicated by their joy, by the noise and by the sunlight.
And Ramuntcho, who retained the taste of yesterday's kiss, felt like shouting to them: “This little girl who is so pretty, as you see, is mine! Her lips are mine, I had them yesterday and will take them again to-night!”
They started and at once found silence again, in the shaded valleys bordered by foxglove and ferns—
To roll for hours on the small Pyrenean roads, to change places almost every day, to traverse the Basque country, to go from one village to another, called here by a festival, there by an adventure on the frontier—this was now Ramuntcho's life, the errant life which the ball-game made for him in the day-time and smuggling in the night-time.
Ascents, descents, in the midst of a monotonous display of verdure. Woods of oaks and of beeches, almost inviolate, and remaining as they were in the quiet centuries.—When he passed by some antique house, hidden in these solitudes of trees, he stopped to enjoy reading, above the door, the traditional legend inscribed in the granite: “Ave Maria! in the year 1600, or in the year 1500, such a one, from such a village, has built this house, to live in it with such a one, his wife.”
Very far from all human habitation, in a corner of a ravine, where it was warmer than elsewhere, sheltered from all breezes, they met a peddler of holy images, who was wiping his forehead. He had set down his basket, full of those colored prints with gilt frames that represent saints with Euskarian legends, and with which the Basques like to adorn their old rooms with white walls. And he was there, exhausted from fatigue and heat, as if wrecked in the ferns, at a turn of those little, mountain routes which run solitary under oaks.
Gracieuse came down and bought a Holy Virgin.
“Later,” she said to Ramuntcho, “we shall put it in our house as a souvenir—”
And the image, dazzling in its gold frame, went with them under the long, green vaults—
They went out of their path, for they wished to pass by a certain valley of the Cherry-trees, not in the hope of finding cherries in it, in April, but to show to Gracieuse the place, which is renowned in the entire Basque country.
It was almost five o'clock, the sun was already low, when they reached there. It was a shaded and calm region, where the spring twilight descended like a caress on the magnificence of the April foliage. The air was cool and suave, fragrant with hay, with acacia. Mountains—very high, especially toward the north, to make the climate there softer, surrounded it on all sides, investing it with a melancholy mystery of closed Edens.
And, when the cherry-trees appeared, they were a gay surprise, they were already red.
There was nobody on these paths, above which the grand cherry-trees extended like a roof, their branches dripping with coral.
Here and there were some summer houses, still uninhabited, some deserted gardens, invaded by the tall grass and the rose bushes.
Then, they made their horse walk; then, each one in his turn, transferring the reins and standing in the wagon, amused himself by eating these cherries from the trees while passing by them and without stopping. Afterward, they placed bouquets of them in their buttonholes, they culled branches of them to deck the horse's head, the harness and the lantern. The equipage seemed ornamented for some festival of youth and of joy—
“Now let us hurry,” said Gracieuse. “If only it be light enough, at least, when we reach Etchezar, for people to see us pass, ornamented as we are!”
As for Ramuntcho, he thought of the meeting place in the evening, of the kiss which he would dare to repeat, similar to that of yesterday, taking Gracieuse's lip between his lips like a cherry—
May! The grass ascends, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous carpet, like silky velvet, emanating spontaneously from the earth.
In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains humid and green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors on the Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.
In the fields, along the roads, the grasses quickly thicken; all the ledges of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the bent grass; everywhere is a profusion of gigantic Easter daisies, of buttercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of Algeria.
And, in the long, tepid twilights, pale iris or blue ashes in color, every night the bells of the month of Mary resound for a long time in the air, under the mass of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.
During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns, with discreet babble, with puerile and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers, they went together through the graveyard, full of roses; together, always together, the little clandestine betrothed, in light colored gowns, and the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came to sing, in the nave still more sonorous than in the day-time, the softly joyful canticles of the Virgin Mary:
“Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!—”
Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers, their white petals and their yellow pollen in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance in the gardens or in the church, during the twilights of spring!
And as soon as Gracieuse entered there, at night, in the dying ring of the bells—leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses for the starry night of the wax tapers which reigned already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense and of the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral cold that centuries amass in old sanctuaries—a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying of all her desires, a renunciation of all her terrestrial joys. Then, when she had knelt, when the first canticles had taken their flight under the vault, infinitely sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy, a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousands of sheafs of lilies, and white wings, shivers of white wings of angels—
Oh! to remain for a long time in that state, to forget all things, and to feel herself pure, sanctified and immaculate, under that glance, ineffably fascinating and soft, under that glance, irresistibly appealing, which the Holy Virgin, in long white vestments, let fall from the height of the tabernacle—!
But, when she went outside, when the night of spring re-enveloped her with tepid breezes of life, the memory of the meeting which she had promised the day before, the day before as well as every day, chased like the wind of a storm the visions of the church. In the expectation of Ramuntcho, in the expectation of the odor of his hair, of the touch of his mustache, of the taste of his lips, she felt near faltering, like one wounded, among the strange companions who accompanied her, among the peaceful and spectral black nuns.
And when the hour had come, in spite of all her resolutions she was there, anxious and ardent, listening to the least noise, her heart beating if a branch of the garden moved in the night—tortured by the least tardiness of the beloved one.
He came always with his same silent step of a rover at night, his waistcoat on his shoulder, with as much precaution and artifice as for the most dangerous act of smuggling.
In the rainy nights, so frequent in the Basque spring-time, she remained in her room on the first floor, and he sat on the sill of the open window, not trying to go in, not having the permission to do so. And they stayed there, she inside, he outside, their arms laced, their heads touching each other, the cheek of one resting on the cheek of the other.
When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words, occurred on the garden bench. Between them there were not even those continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather silences. At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard. And then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk? What could they have said which would have been better than the long contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each other?
The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot themselves more, their confidence having returned.—Nobody frightened them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho—In spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them?—
Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!—Theirs was a real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone of a crystal bell and of a child's throat. Something similar might be produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them, the scales of an organ with a celestial voice. There were tree-toads everywhere, responding to one another in different tones; even those which were under their bench, close by them, reassured by their immobility, sang also from time to time; then that little sound, brusque and soft, so near, made them start and smile. All the exquisite, surrounding obscurity was animated by that music, which continued in the distance, in the mystery of the leaves and of the stones, in the depths of all the small, black holes of rocks or walls; it seemed like chivies in miniature, or rather, a sort of frail concert somewhat mocking—oh! not very mocking, and without any maliciousness—led timidly by inoffensive gnomes. And this made the night more living and more loving—
After the intoxicated audacities of the first nights, fright took a stronger hold of them, and, when one of them had something special to say, one led the other by the hand without talking; this meant that they had to walk softly, softly, like marauding cats, to an alley behind the house where they could talk without fear.
“Where shall we live, Gracieuse?” asked Ramuntcho one night.
“At your house, I had thought.”
“Ah! yes, so thought I—only I thought it would make you sad to be so far from the parish, from the church and the square—”
“Oh—with you, I could find anything sad?—”
“Then, we would send away those who live on the first floor and take the large room which opens on the road to Hasparitz—”
It was an increased joy for him to know that Gracieuse would accept his house, to be sure that she would bring the radiance of her presence into that old, beloved home, and that they would make their nest there for life—
Here come the long, pale twilights of June, somewhat veiled like those of May, less uncertain, however, and more tepid still. In the gardens, the rose-laurel which is beginning to bloom in profusion is becoming already magnificently pink. At the end of each work day, the good folks sit outside, in front of their doors, to look at the night falling—the night which soon confuses, under the vaults of the plane-trees, their groups assembled for benevolent rest. And a tranquil melancholy descends over villages, in those interminable evenings—
For Ramuntcho, this is the epoch when smuggling becomes a trade almost without trouble, with charming hours, marching toward summits through spring clouds; crossing ravines, wandering in lands of springs and of wild fig-trees; sleeping, waiting for the agreed hour, with carbineers who are accomplices, on carpets of mint and pinks.—The good odor of plants impregnated his clothes, his waistcoat which he never wore, but used as a pillow or a blanket—and Gracieuse would say to him at night: “I know where you went last night, for you smell of mint of the mountain above Mendizpi”—or: “You smell of absinthe of the Subernoa morass.”
Gracieuse regretted the month of Mary, the offices of the Virgin in the nave, decked with white flowers. In the twilights without rain, with the sisters and some older pupils of their class, she sat under the porch of the church, against the low wall of the graveyard from which the view plunges into the valleys beneath. There they talked, or played the childish games in which nuns indulge.
There were also long and strange meditations, meditations to which the fall of day, the proximity of the church, of the tombs and of their flowers, gave soon a serenity detached from material things and as if free from all alliance with the senses. In her first mystic dreams as a little girl,—inspired especially by the pompous rites of the cult, by the voice of the organ, the white bouquets, the thousand flames of the wax tapers—only images appeared to her—very radiant images, it is true: altars resting on mists, golden tabernacles where music vibrated and where fell grand flights of angels. But those visions gave place now to ideas: she caught a glimpse of that peace and that supreme renunciation which the certainty of an endless celestial life gives; she conceived, in a manner more elevated than formerly, the melancholy joy of abandoning everything in order to become an impersonal part of that entirety of nuns, white, or blue, or black, who, from the innumerable convents of earth, make ascend toward heaven an immense and perpetual intercession for the sins of the world—
However, as soon as night had fallen quite, the course of her thoughts came down every evening fatally toward intoxicating and mortal things. Her wait, her feverish wait, began, more impatient from moment to moment. She felt anxious that her cold companions with black veils should return into the sepulchre of their convent and that she should be alone in her room, free at last, in the house fallen asleep, ready to open her window and listen to the slight noise of Ramuntcho's footsteps.
The kiss of lovers, the kiss on the lips, was now a thing possessed and of which they had not the strength to deprive themselves. And they prolonged it a great deal, not wishing, through charming scruples, to accord more to each other.
Anyway, if the intoxication which they gave to each other thus was a little too carnal, there was between them that absolute tenderness, infinite, unique, by which all things are elevated and purified.
Ramuntcho, that evening, had come to the meeting place earlier than usual—with more hesitation also in his walk, for one risks, on these June evenings, to find girls belated along the paths, or boys behind the hedges on love expeditions.
And by chance she was already alone, looking outside, without waiting for him, however.
At once she noticed his agitated demeanor and guessed that something new had happened. Not daring to come too near, he made a sign to her to come quickly, jump over the window-sill, and meet him in the obscure alley where they talked without fear. Then, as soon as she was near him, in the nocturnal shade of the trees, he put his arm around her waist and announced to her, brusquely, the great piece of news which, since the morning, troubled his young head and that of Franchita, his mother.
“Uncle Ignacio has written.”
“True? Uncle Ignacio!”
She knew that that adventurous uncle, that American uncle, who had disappeared for so many years, had never thought until now of sending more than a strange good-day by a passing sailor.
“Yes! And he says that he has property there, which requires attention, large prairies, herds of horses; that he has no children, that if I wish to go and live near him with a gentle Basque girl married to me here, he would be glad to adopt both of us.—Oh! I think mother will come also.—So, if you wish.—We could marry now.—You know they marry people as young as we, it is allowed.—Now that I am to be adopted by my uncle and I shall have a real situation in life, your mother will consent, I think.—And as for military service, we shall not care for that, shall we?—”
They sat on the mossy rocks, their heads somewhat dizzy, troubled by the approach and the unforeseen temptation of happiness. So, it would not be in an uncertain future, after his term as a soldier, it would be almost at once; in two months, in one month, perhaps, that communion of their minds and of their flesh, so ardently desired and now so forbidden, might be accomplished without sin, honestly in the eyes of all, permitted and blessed.—Oh! they had never looked at this so closely.—And they pressed against each other their foreheads, made heavy by too many thoughts, fatigued suddenly by a sort of too delicious delirium.—Around them, the odor of the flowers of June ascended from the earth, filling the night with an immense suavity. And, as if there were not enough scattered fragrance, the jessamine, the honeysuckle on the walls exhaled from moment to moment, in intermittent puffs, the excess of their perfume; one would have thought that hands swung in silence censers in the darkness, for some hidden festival, for some enchantment magnificent and secret.
There are often and everywhere very mysterious enchantments like this, emanating from nature itself, commanded by one knows not what sovereign will with unfathomable designs, to deceive us all, on the road to death—
“You do not reply, Gracieuse, you say nothing to me—”
He could see that she was intoxicated also, like him, and yet he divined by her manner of remaining mute so long, that shadows were amassing over his charming and beautiful dream.
“But,” she asked at last, “your naturalization papers. You have received them, have you not?”
“Yes, they arrived last week, you know very well, and it was you who said that I should apply for them—”
“Then you are a Frenchman to-day.—Then, if you do not do your military service you are a deserter.”
“Yes.—A deserter, no; but refractory, I think it is called.—It isn't better, since one cannot come back.—I was not thinking of that—”
How she was tortured now to have caused this thought, to have impelled him herself to this act which made soar over his hardly seen joy a threat so black! Oh, a deserter, he, her Ramuntcho! That is, banished forever from the dear, Basque country!—And this departure for America becomes suddenly frightfully grave, solemn, similar to a death, since he could not possibly return!—Then, what was there to be done?—
Now they were anxious and mute, each one preferring to submit to the will of the other, and waiting, with equal fright, for the decision which should be taken, to go or to remain. From the depths of their two young hearts ascended, little by little, a similar distress, poisoning the happiness offered over there, in that America from which they would never return.—And the little, nocturnal censers of jessamine, of honeysuckle, of linden, continued to throw into the air exquisite puffs to intoxicate them; the darkness that enveloped them seemed more and more caressing and soft; in the silence of the village and of the country, the tree-toads gave, from moment to moment, their little flute-note, which seemed a very discreet love call, under the velvet of the moss; and, through the black lace of the foliage, in the serenity of a June sky which one thought forever unalterable, they saw scintillate, like a simple and gentle dust of phosphorus, the terrifying multitude of the worlds.
The curfew began to ring, however, at the church. The sound of that bell, at night especially, was for them something unique on earth. At this moment, it was something like a voice bringing, in their indecision, its advice, its counsel, decisive and tender. Mute still, they listened to it with an increasing emotion, of an intensity till then unknown, the brown head of the one leaning on the brown head of the other. It said, the advising voice, the dear, protecting voice: “No, do not go forever; the far-off lands are made for the time of youth; but you must be able to return to Etchezar: it is here that you must grow old and die; nowhere in the world could you sleep as in this graveyard around the church, where one may, even when lying under the earth, hear me ring again—” They yielded more and more to the voice of the bell, the two children whose minds were religious and primitive. And Ramuntcho felt on his cheek a tear of Gracieuse:
“No,” he said at last, “I will not desert; I think that I would not have the courage to do it—”
“I thought the same thing as you, my Ramuntcho,” she said. “No, let us not do that. I was waiting for you to say it—”
Then he realized that he also was crying, like her—
The die was cast, they would permit to pass by happiness which was within their reach, almost under their hands; they would postpone everything to a future uncertain and so far off—!
And now, in the sadness, in the meditation of the great decision which they had taken, they communicated to each other what seemed best for them to do:
“We might,” she said, “write a pretty letter to your uncle Ignacio; write to him that you accept, that you will come with a great deal of pleasure immediately after your military service; you might even add, if you wish, that the one who is engaged to you thanks him and will be ready to follow you; but that decidedly you cannot desert.”
“And why should you not talk to your mother now, Gatchutcha, only to know what she would think?—Because now, you understand, I am not as I was, an abandoned child—” Slight steps behind them, in the path—and above the wall, the silhouette of a young man who had come on the tips of his sandals, as if to spy upon them!
“Go, escape, my Ramuntcho, we will meet to-morrow evening!—”
In half a second, there was nobody: he was hidden in a bush, she had fled into her room.
Ended was their grave interview! Ended until when? Until to-morrow or until always?—On their farewells, abrupt or prolonged, frightened or peaceful, every time, every night, weighed the same uncertainty of their meeting again—