The febrile and somewhat artificial improvement of the morning had continued. Nursed by the old Doyanburu, Franchita said that she felt better, and, in the fear that Ramuntcho might become dreamy, she made him return to the square to attend the Sunday ball-game.
The breath of the wind became warm again, blew from the south; none of the shivers of a moment ago remained; on the contrary, a summer sun and atmosphere, on the reddened woods, on the rusty ferns, on the roads where continued to fall the sad leaves. But the sky was gathering thick clouds, which suddenly came out from the rear of the mountains as if they had stayed there in ambush to appear all at the same signal.
The ball-game had not yet been arranged and groups were disputing violently when he reached the square. Quickly, he was surrounded, he was welcomed, designated by acclamation to go into the game and sustain the honor of his county. He did not dare, not having played for three years and distrusting his unaccustomed arm. At last, he yielded and began to undress—but to whom would he trust his waistcoat now?—The image reappeared to him, suddenly, of Gracieuse, seated on the nearest steps and extending her hands to receive it. To whom would he throw his waistcoat to-day? It is intrusted ordinarily to some friend, as the toreadors do with their gilt silk mantles.—He threw it at random, this time, anywhere, on the granite of the old benches flowered with belated scabwort—
The match began. Out of practice at first, uncertain, he missed several times the little bounding thing which is to be caught in the air.
Then, he went to his work with a rage, regained his former ease and became himself again superbly. His muscles had gained in strength what they had perhaps lost in skill; again he was applauded, he knew the physical intoxication of moving, of leaping, of feeling his muscles play like supple and violent springs, of hearing around him the ardent murmur of the crowd.
But then came the instant of rest which interrupts ordinarily the long disputed games; the moment when one sits halting, the blood in ebulition, the hands reddened, trembling,—and when one regains the course of ideas which the game suppresses.
Then, he realized the distress of being alone.
Above the assembled heads, above the woolen caps and the hair ornamented with kerchiefs, was accentuated that stormy sky which the southern winds, when they are about to finish, bring always. The air had assumed an absolute limpidity, as if it had become rarified, rarified unto emptiness. The mountains seemed to have advanced extraordinarily; the Pyrenees were crushing the village; the Spanish summits or the French summits were there, all equally near, as if pasted on one another, exaggerating their burned, brown colors, their intense and sombre, violet tints. Large clouds, which seemed as solid as terrestrial things, were displayed in the form of bows, veiling the sun, casting an obscurity which was like an eclipse. And here and there, through some rent, bordered with dazzling silver, one could see the profound blue green of a sky almost African. All this country, the unstable climate of which changes between a morning and an evening, became for several hours strangely southern in aspect, in temperature and in light.
Ramuntcho breathed that dry and suave air, come from the South in order to vivify the lungs. It was the true weather of his native land. It was even the characteristic weather of that land of the Bay of Biscay, the weather which he liked best formerly, and which to-day filled him with physical comfort—as much as with disturbance of mind, for all that was preparing, all that was amassing above, with airs of ferocious menace, impressed him with the sentiment of a heaven deaf to prayers, without thoughts as without master, a simple focus of storms, of blind forces creating, recreating and destroying. And, during these minutes of halting meditation, where men in Basque caps of a temperament other than his, surrounded him to congratulate him, he made no reply, he did not listen, he felt only the ephemeral plenitude of his own vigor, of his youth, of his will, and he said to himself that he wished to use harshly and desperately all things, to try anything, without the obstacle of vain fears, of vain church scruples, in order to take back the young girl whom his soul and his flesh desired, who was the unique one and the betrothed—
When the game had ended gloriously for him, he returned alone, sad and resolute,—proud of having won, of having known how to preserve his agile skilfulness, and realizing that it was a means in life, a source of money and of strength, to have remained one of the chief ball-players of the Basque country.
Under the black sky, there were still the same tints exaggerated by everything, the same sombre horizon. And still the same breaths from the south, dry and warm, agitors of muscles and of thought.
However, the clouds had descended, descended, and soon this weather, these appearances would change and finish. He knew it, as do all the countrymen accustomed to look at the sky: it was only the announcement of an autumn squall to close the series of lukewarm winds,—of a decisive shake-up to finish despoiling the woods of their leaves. Immediately after would come the long showers, chilling everything, the mists making the mountains confused and distant. And it would be the dull rain of winter, stopping the saps, making temporary projects languid, extinguishing ardor and revolt—
Now the first drops of water were beginning to fall on the road, separate and heavy on the strewn leaves.
As the day before, when he returned home, at twilight, his mother was alone.
He found her asleep, in a bad sleep, agitated, burning.
Rambling in his house he tried, in order to make it less sinister, to light in the large, lower chimney a fire of branches, but it went out smoking. Outside, torrents of rain fell. Through the windows, as through gray shrouds, the village hardly appeared, effaced under a winter squall. The wind and the rain whipped the walls of the isolated house, around which, once more, would thicken the grand blackness of the country in rainy nights—that grand blackness, that grand silence, to which he had long been unaccustomed. And in his childish heart, came little by little, a cold of solitude and of abandonment; he lost even his energy, the consciousness of his love, of his strength and of his youth; he felt vanishing, before the misty evening, all his projects of struggle and of resistance. The future which he had formed a moment ago became miserable or chimerical in his eyes, that future of a pelota player, of a poor amuser of the crowds, at the mercy of a malady or of a moment of weakness—His hopes of the day-time were going out, based, doubtless, on unstable things, fleeing now in the night—
Then he felt transported, as in his childhood, toward that soft refuge which was his mother; he went up, on tiptoe, to see her, even asleep, and to remain there, near her bed, while she slept.
And, when he had lighted in the room, far from her, a discreet lamp, she appeared to him more changed than she had been by the fever of yesterday; the possibility presented itself, more frightful to his mind, of losing her, of being alone, of never feeling again on his cheek the caress of her head.—Moreover, for the first time, she seemed old to him, and, in the memory of all the deceptions which she had suffered because of him, he felt a pity for her, a tender and infinite pity, at sight of her wrinkles which he had not before observed, of her hair recently whitened at the temples. Oh, a desolate pity and hopeless, with the conviction that it was too late now to arrange life better.—And something painful, against which there was no possible resistance, shook his chest, contracted his young face; objects became confused to his view, and, in the need of imploring, of asking for mercy, he let himself fall on his knees, his forehead on his mother's bed, weeping at last, weeping hot tears—
“And whom did you see in the village, my son?” she asked, the next morning during the improvement which returned every time, in the first hours of the day, after the fever had subsided.
“And whom did you see in the village, my son?—” In talking, she tried to retain an air of gaiety, of saying indifferent things, in the fear of attacking grave subjects and of provoking disquieting replies.
“I saw Arrochkoa, mother,” he replied, in a tone which brought back suddenly the burning questions.
“Arrochkoa!—And how did he behave with you?”
“Oh, he talked to me as if I had been his brother.”
“Yes, I know, I know.—Oh, it was not he who made her do it—”
“He said even—”
He did not dare to continue now, and he lowered his head.
“He said what, my son?”
“Well, that—that it was hard to put her in prison there—that perhaps—that, even now, if she saw me, he was not far from thinking—”
She straightened under the shock of what she had just suspected; with her thin hands she parted her hair, newly whitened, and her eyes became again young and sharp, in an expression almost wicked from joy, from avenged pride:
“He said that, he!—”
“Would you forgive me, mother—if I tried?”
She took his two hands and they remained silent, not daring, with their scruples as Catholics, to utter the sacrilegious thing which was fomenting in their heads. In the depth of her eyes, the evil spark went out.
“Forgive you?” she said in a low voice, “Oh, I—you know very well that I would.—But do not do this, my son, I pray you, do not do it; it would bring misfortune to both of you!—Do not think of it, my Ramuntcho, never think of it—”
Then, they hushed, hearing the steps of the physician who was coming up for his daily visit. And it was the only time, the supreme time when they were to talk of it in life.
But Ramuntcho knew now that, even after death, she would not condemn him for having attempted, or for having committed it: and this pardon was sufficient for him, and, now that he felt sure of obtaining it, the greatest barrier, between his sweetheart and him, had now suddenly fallen.
In the evening, when the fever returned, she seemed already much more dangerously affected.
On her robust body, the malady had violently taken hold,—the malady recognized too late, and insufficiently nursed because of her stubbornness as a peasant, because of her incredulous disdain for physicians and medicine.
And little by little, in Ramuntcho, the frightful thought of losing her installed itself in a dominant place; during the hours of watchfulness spent near her bed, silent and alone, he was beginning to face the reality of that separation, the horror of that death and of that burial,—even all the lugubrious morrows, all the aspects of his future life: the house which he would have to sell before quitting the country; then, perhaps, the desperate attempt at the convent of Amezqueta; then the departure, probably solitary and without desire to return, for unknown America—
The idea also of the great secret which she would carry with her forever,—of the secret of his birth,—tormented him more from hour to hour.
Then, bending over her, and, trembling, as if he were about to commit an impious thing in a church, he dared to say:
“Mother!—Mother, tell me now who my father is!”
She shuddered at first under the supreme question, realizing well, that if he dared to question her thus, it was because she was lost. Then, she hesitated for a moment: in her head, boiling from fever, there was a battle; her duty, she discerned well no longer; her obstinacy which had lasted for so many years faltered almost at this hour, in presence of the sudden apparition of death—
But, resolved at last forever, she replied at once, in the brusque tone of her bad days:
“Your father!—And what is the use, my son?—What do you want of your father who for twenty years has never thought of you?—”
No, it was decided, ended, she would not tell. Anyway, it was too late now; at the moment when she would disappear, enter into the inert powerlessness of the dead, how could she risk changing so completely the life of that son over whom she would no longer watch, how could she surrender him to his father, who perhaps would make of him a disbeliever and a disenchanted man like himself! What a responsibility and what an immense terror—!
Her decision having been taken irrevocably, she thought of herself, feeling for the first time that life was closing behind her, and joined her hands for a sombre prayer.
As for Ramuntcho, after this attempt to learn, after this great effort which had almost seemed a profanation to him, he bent his head before his mother's will and questioned no longer.
It went very quickly now, with the drying fevers that made her cheeks red, her nostrils pinched, or with the exhaustion of baths of perspiration, her pulse hardly beating.
And Ramuntcho had no other thought than his mother; the image of Gracieuse ceased to visit him during these funereal days.
She was going, Franchita; she was going, mute and as if indifferent, asking for nothing, never complaining—
Once, however, as he was watching, she called him suddenly with a poor voice of anguish, to throw her arms around him, to draw him to her, lean her head on his cheek. And, in that minute, Ramuntcho saw pass in her eyes the great Terror—that of the flesh which feels that it is finishing, that of the men and that of the beasts, the horrible and the same for all.—A believer, she was that a little; practising rather, like so many other women around her; timid in the face of dogmas, of observances, of services, but without a clear conception of the world beyond, without a luminous hope.—Heaven, all the beautiful things promised after life.—Yes, perhaps.—But still, the black hole was there, near and certain, where she would have to turn into dust.—What was sure, what was inexorable, was the fact that never, never more would her destroyed visage lean in a real manner on that of Ramuntcho; then, in the doubt of having a mind which would fly, in the horror and the misery of annihilation, of becoming powder and nothing, she wanted again kisses from that son, and she clutched at him as clutch the wrecked who fall into the black and deep waters—
He understood all this, which the poor, fading eyes said so well. And the pity so tender, which he had already felt at seeing the wrinkles and the white hairs of his mother, overflowed like a flood from his very young heart; he responded to this appeal with all that one may give of desolate clasps and embraces.
But it did not last long. She had never been one of those who are enervated for long, or at least, let it appear. Her arms unclasped, her head fallen back, she closed her eyes again, unconscious now,—or stoical—
And Ramuntcho, standing, not daring to touch her, wept heavy tears, without noise, turning his head,—while, in the distance, the parish bell began to ring the curfew, sang the tranquil peace of the village, filled the air with vibrations soft, protective, advising sound sleep to those who have morrows—
The following morning, after having confessed, she passed out of life, silent and haughty, having felt a sort of shame for her suffering,—while the same bell rang slowly her agony.
And at night, Ramuntcho found himself alone, beside that thing in bed and cold, which is preserved and looked at for several hours, but which one must make haste to bury in the earth—
At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted house where the gray of death seemed scattered everywhere. A little of winter had passed over the Basque land, a little frost, burning the annual flowers, ending the illusory summer of December. In front of Franchita's door, the geraniums, the dahlias had just died, and the path which led to the house, which no one cared for, disappeared under the mass of yellow leaves.
For Ramuntcho, this first week of mourning had been occupied by the thousand details that rock sorrow. Proud also, he had desired that all should be done in a luxurious manner, according to the old usages of the parish. His mother had been buried in a coffin of black velvet ornamented with silver nails. Then, there had been mortuary masses, attended by the neighbors in long capes, the women enveloped and hooded with black. And all this represented a great deal of expense for him, who was poor.
Of the sum given formerly, at the time of his birth, by his unknown father, little remained, the greater part having been lost through unfaithful bankers. And now, he would have to quit the house, sell the dear familiar furniture, realize the most money possible for the flight to America—
This time, he returned home peculiarly disturbed, because he was to do a thing, postponed from day to day, about which his conscience was not at rest. He had already examined, picked out, all that belonged to his mother; but the box containing her papers and her letters was still intact—and to-night he would open it, perhaps.
He was not sure that death, as many persons think, gives the right to those who remain to read letters, to penetrate the secrets of those who have just gone. To burn without looking seemed to him more respectful, more honest. But it was also to destroy forever the means of discovering the one whose abandoned son he was.—Then what should he do?—And from whom could he take advice, since he had no one in the world?
In the large chimney he lit the evening fire: then he got from an upper room the disquieting box, placed it on a table near the fire, beside his lamp, and sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness, in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in the silence—
At last he opened the box—
His arteries beat heavily. Under the surrounding trees, in the obscure solitude, he felt that forms were moving, to look at him through the window-panes. He felt breaths strange to his own chest, as if some one was breathing behind him. Shades assembled, interested in what he was about to do.—The house was crowded with phantoms—
They were letters, preserved there for more than twenty years, all in the same handwriting,—one of those handwritings, at once negligent and easy, which men of the world have and which, in the eyes of the simple minded, are an indication of great social difference. And at first, a vague dream of protection, of elevation and of wealth diverted the course of his thoughts.—He had no doubt about the hand which had written them, those letters, and he held them tremblingly, not daring to read them, nor even to look at the name with which they were signed.
One only had retained its envelope; then he read the address: “To Madame Franchita Duval.”—Oh! yes, he remembered having heard that his mother, at the time of her disappearance from the Basque country, had taken that name for a while.—Following this, was an indication of street and number, which it pained him to read without his being able to understand why, which made the blood come to his cheeks; then the name of that large city, wherein he was born.—With fixed eyes, he stayed there, looking no longer.—And suddenly, he had the horrible vision of that clandestine establishment: in a suburban apartment, his mother, young, elegant, mistress of some rich idler, or of some officer perhaps!—In the regiment he had known some of these establishments, which doubtless are all alike, and he had found in them for himself unexpected adventures.—A dizziness seized him, to catch a glimpse thus under a new aspect of the one whom he had venerated so much; the dear past faltered behind him, as if to fall into a desolating abyss. And his despair turned into a sudden execration for the one who had given life to him through a caprice—
Oh! to burn them, to burn them as quickly as possible, these letters of misfortune!—And he began to throw them one by one into the fire, where they were consumed by sudden flames.
A photograph, however, came out of them, fell on the floor; then he could not refrain from taking it to the lamp to see it.
And his impression was heart-rending, during the few seconds when his eyes met the half effaced ones of the yellowed image!—It resembled him!—He found, with profound fear, something of himself in the unknown. And instinctively he turned round, asking himself if the spectres in the obscure corners had not come near behind him to look also.
It had hardly an appreciable duration, that silent interview, unique and supreme, with his father. To the fire also, the image! He threw it, with a gesture of anger and of terror, among the ashes of the last letters, and all left soon only a little mass of black dust, extinguishing the clear flames of the branches.
Finished! The box was empty. He threw on the floor his cap which gave him a headache, and straightened himself, with perspiration on his forehead and a buzzing at the temples.
Finished! Annihilated, all these memories of sin and of shame. And now the things of life appeared to him to regain their former balance; he regained his soft veneration for his mother, whose memory it seemed to him he had purified, avenged also a little, by this disdainful execution.
Therefore, his destiny had been fixed to-night forever. He would remain the Ramuntcho of other times, the “son of Franchita,” player of pelota and smuggler, free, freed from everything, owing nothing to and asking nothing from anybody. And he felt serene, without remorse, without fright, either, in this mortuary house, from which the shades had just disappeared, peaceful now and friendly—
At the frontier, in a mountain hamlet. A black night, about one o'clock in the morning; a winter night inundated by cold and heavy rain. At the front of a sinister house which casts no light outside, Ramuntcho loads his shoulders with a heavy smuggled box, under the rippling rain, in the midst of a tomb-like obscurity. Itchoua's voice commands secretly,—as if one hardly touched with a bow the last strings of a bass viol,—and around him, in the absolute darkness, one divines the presence of other smugglers similarly loaded, ready to start on an adventure.
It is now more than ever Ramuntcho's life, to run almost every night, especially on the cloudless and moonless nights when one sees nothing, when the Pyrenees are an immense chaos of shade. Amassing as much money as he can for his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim.
They have become inseparable, Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho,—and they talk freely of their projects about Gracieuse, Arrochkoa seduced especially by the attraction of some fine prowess, by the joy of taking a nun away from the church, of undoing the plans of his old, hardened mother,—and Ramuntcho, in spite of his Christian scruples which affect him still, making of this dangerous project his only hope, his only reason for being and for acting. For a month, almost, the attempt has been decided upon in theory and, in their long talks in the December nights, on the roads where they walk, or in the corners of the village cider mills where they sit apart, the means of execution are discussed by them, as if the question was a simple frontier undertaking. They must act very quickly, concludes Arrochkoa always, they must act in the surprise of a first interview which shall be for Gracieuse a very disturbing thing; they must act without giving her time to think or to recant, they must try something like kidnapping—
“If you knew,” he says, “what is that little convent of Amezqueta where they have placed her: four old, good sisters with her, in an isolated house!—I have my horse, you know, who gallops so quickly; once the nun is in a carriage with you, who can catch her?—”
And to-night they have resolved to take into their confidence Itchoua himself, a man accustomed to suspicious adventures, valuable in assaults at night, and who, for money, is capable of everything.
The place from which they start this time for the habitual smuggling expedition is named Landachkoa, and it is situated in France at ten minutes' distance from Spain. The inn, solitary and old, assumes as soon as the night falls, the air of a den of thieves; at this moment while the smugglers come out of one door, it is full of Spanish carbineers who have familiarly crossed the frontier to divert themselves here and who drink while singing. And the hostess, accustomed to these nocturnal affairs, has said joyfully, a moment ago, in Basque tongue to Itchoua's folks:
“It is all right! They are all drunk, you can go out!”
Go out! It is easier to advise than to do! You are drenched at the first steps and your feet slip on the mud, despite the aid of your sticks, on the stiff slopes of the paths. They do not see one another; they see nothing, neither the walls of the hamlet along which they pass nor the trees afterward, nor the rocks; they are like blind men, groping and slipping under a deluge, with the music of rain in their ears which makes them deaf.
And Ramuntcho, who makes this trip for the first time, has no idea of the passages which they are to go through, strikes here and there his load against black things which are branches of beeches, or slips with his two feet, falters, straightens up, catches himself by planting at random his iron-pointed stick in the soil. They are the last on the march, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, following the band by ear;—and those who precede them make no more noise with their sandals than wolves in a forest.
In all, fifteen smugglers on a distance of fifty metres, in the thick black of the mountain, under the incessant sprinkling of the shower; they carry boxes full of jewels, of watches, of chains, of rosaries, or bundles of Lyons silk, wrapped in oilcloth; in front, loaded with merchandise less valuable, walk two men who are the skirmishers, those who will attract, if necessary, the guns of the Spaniards and will then take flight, throwing away everything. All talk in a low voice, despite the drumming of the rain which already stifles sounds—
The one who precedes Ramuntcho turns round to warn him:
“Here is a torrent in front of us—” (Its presence would have been guessed by its noise louder than that of the rain—) “We must cross it!”
“Ah!—Cross it how? Wade in the water?—”
“No, the water is too deep. Follow us. There is a tree trunk over it.”
Groping, Ramuntcho finds that tree trunk, wet, slippery and round. He stands, advancing on this monkey's bridge in a forest, carrying his heavy load, while under him the invisible torrent roars. And he crosses, none knows how, in the midst of this intensity of black and of this noise of water.
On the other shore they have to increase precaution and silence. There are no more mountain paths, frightful descents, under the night, more oppressing, of the woods. They have reached a sort of plain wherein the feet penetrate; the sandals attached to nervous legs cause a noise of beaten water. The eyes of the smugglers, their cat-like eyes, more and more dilated by the obscurity, perceive confusedly that there is free space around, that there is no longer the closing in of branches. They breathe better also and walk with a more regular pace that rests them—
But the bark of dogs immobilizes them all in a sudden manner, as if petrified under the shower. For a quarter of an hour they wait, without talking or moving; on their chests, the perspiration runs, mingled with the rain that enters by their shirt collars and falls to their belts.
By dint of listening, they hear the buzz of their ears, the beat of their own arteries.
And this tension of their senses is, in their trade, what they all like; it gives to them a sort of joy almost animal, it doubles the life of the muscles in them, who are beings of the past; it is a recall of the most primitive human impressions in the forests or the jungles of original epochs.—Centuries of civilization will be necessary to abolish this taste for dangerous surprises which impels certain children to play hide and seek, certain men to lie in ambush, to skirmish in wars, or to smuggle—
They have hushed, the watch-dogs, quieted or distracted, their attentive scent preoccupied by something else. The vast silence has returned, less reassuring, ready to break, perhaps, because beasts are watching. And, at a low command from Itchoua, the men begin again their march, slower and more hesitating, in the night of the plain, a little bent, a little lowered on their legs, like wild animals on the alert.
Before them is the Nivelle; they do not see it, since they see nothing, but they hear it run, and now long, flexible things are in the way of their steps, are crushed by their bodies: the reeds on the shores. The Nivelle is the frontier; they will have to cross it on a series of slippery rocks, leaping from stone to stone, despite the loads that make the legs heavy.
But before doing this they halt on the shore to collect themselves and rest a little. And first, they call the roll in a low voice: all are there. The boxes have been placed in the grass; they seem clearer spots, almost perceptible to trained eyes, while, on the darkness in the background, the men, standing, make long, straight marks, blacker than the emptiness of the plain. Passing by Ramuntcho, Itchoua has whispered in his ear:
“When will you tell me about your plan?”
“In a moment, at our return!—Oh, do not fear, Itchoua, I will tell you!”
At this moment when his chest is heaving and his muscles are in action, all his faculties doubled and exasperated by his trade, he does not hesitate, Ramuntcho; in the present exaltation of his strength and of his combativeness he knows no moral obstacles nor scruples. The idea which came to his accomplice to associate himself with Itchoua frightens him no longer. So much the worse! He will surrender to the advice of that man of stratagem and of violence, even if he must go to the extreme of kidnapping and housebreaking. He is, to-night, the rebel from whom has been taken the companion of his life, the adored one, the one who may not be replaced; he wants her, at the risk of everything.—And while he thinks of her, in the progressive languor of that halt, he desires her suddenly with his senses, in a young, savage outbreak, in a manner unexpected and sovereign—
The immobility is prolonged, the respirations are calmer. And, while the men shake their dripping caps, pass their hands on their foreheads to wipe out drops of rain and perspiration that veil the eyes, the first sensation of cold comes to them, of a damp and profound cold; their wet clothes chill them, their thoughts weaken; little by little a sort of torpor benumbs them in the thick darkness, under the incessant winter rain.
They are accustomed to this, trained to cold and to dampness, they are hardened prowlers who go to places where, and at hours when, other men never appear, they are inaccessible to vague frights of the darkness, they are capable of sleeping without shelter anywhere in the blackest of rainy nights, in dangerous marshes or hidden ravines—
Now the rest has lasted long enough. This is the decisive instant when the frontier is to be crossed. All muscles stiffen, ears stretch, eyes dilate.
First, the skirmishers; then, one after another, the bundle carriers, the box carriers, each one loaded with a weight of forty kilos, on the shoulders or on the head. Slipping here and there among the round rocks, stumbling in the water, everybody crosses, lands on the other shore. Here they are on the soil of Spain! They have to cross, without gunshots or bad meetings, a distance of two hundred metres to reach an isolated farm which is the receiving shop of the chief of the Spanish smugglers, and once more the game will have been played!
Naturally, it is without light, obscure and sinister, that farm. Noiselessly and groping they enter in a file; then, on the last who enter, enormous locks of the door are drawn. At last! Barricaded and rescued, all! And the treasury of the Queen Regent has been frustrated, again tonight, of a thousand francs—!
Then, fagots are lighted in the chimney, a candle on the table; they see one another, they recognize one another, smiling at the success. The security, the truce of rain over their heads, the flame that dances and warms, the cider and the whiskey that fill the glasses, bring back to these men noisy joy after compelled silence. They talk gaily, and the tall, white-haired, old chief who receives them all at this undue hour, announces that he will give to his village a beautiful square for the pelota game, the plans of which have been drawn and the cost of which will be ten thousand francs.
“Now, tell me your affair,” insists Itchoua, in Ramuntcho's ear. “Oh, I suspect what it is! Gracieuse, eh?—That is it, is it not?—It is hard you know.—I do not like to do things against my religion, you know.—Then, I have my place as a chorister, which I might lose in such a game.—Let us see, how much money will you give me if I succeed?—”
He had foreseen, Ramuntcho, that this sombre aid would cost him a great deal, Itchoua being, in truth, a churchman, whose conscience would have to be bought; and, much disturbed, with a flush on his cheeks, Ramuntcho grants, after a discussion, a thousand francs. Anyway, if he is piling up money, it is only to get Gracieuse, and if enough remains for him to go to America with her, what matters it?—
And now that his secret is known to Itchoua, now that his cherished project is being elaborated in that obstinate and sharp brain, it seems to Ramuntcho that he has made a decisive step toward the execution of his plan, that all has suddenly become real and approaching. Then, in the midst of the lugubrious decay of the place, among these men who are less than ever similar to him, he isolates himself in an immense hope of love.
They drink for a last time together, all around, clinking their glasses loudly; then they start again, in the thick night and under the incessant rain, but this time on the highway, in a band and singing. Nothing in the hands, nothing in the pockets: they are now ordinary people, returning from a natural promenade.
In the rear guard, at a distance from the singers, Itchoua on his long legs walks with his hands resting on Ramuntcho's shoulder. Interested and ardent for success, since the sum has been agreed upon, Itchoua whispers in Ramuntcho's ear imperious advices. Like Arrochkoa, he wishes to act with stunning abruptness, in the surprise of a first interview which will occur in the evening, as late as the rule of a convent will permit, at an uncertain and twilight hour, when the village shall have begun to sleep.
“Above all,” he says, “do not show yourself beforehand. She must not have seen you, she must not even know that you have returned home! You must not lose the advantage of surprise—”
While Ramuntcho listens and meditates in silence, the others, who lead the march, sing always the same old song that times their steps. And thus they re-enter Landachkoa, village of France, crossing the bridge of the Nivelle, under the beards of the Spanish carbineers.
They have no sort of illusion, the watching carbineers, about what these men, so wet, have been doing at an hour so black.
The winter, the real winter, extended itself by degrees over the Basque land, after the few days of frost that had come to annihilate the annual plants, to change the deceptive aspect of the fields, to prepare the following spring.
And Ramuntcho acquired slowly his habits of one left alone; in his house, wherein he lived still, without anybody to serve him, he took care of himself, as in the colonies or in the barracks, knowing the thousand little details of housekeeping which careful soldiers practice. He preserved the pride of dress, dressed himself well, wore the ribbon of the brave at his buttonhole and a wide crape around his sleeve.
At first he was not assiduous at the village cider mill, where the men assembled in the cold evenings. In his three years of travel, of reading, of talking with different people, too many new ideas had penetrated his already open mind; among his former companions he felt more outcast than before, more detached from the thousand little things which composed their life.
Little by little, however, by dint of being alone, by dint of passing by the halls where the men drank,—on the window-panes of which a lamp always sketches the shadows of Basque caps,—he had made it a custom to go in and to sit at a table.
It was the season when the Pyrenean villages, freed from the visitors which the summers bring, imprisoned by the clouds, the mist, or the snow, are more intensely as they were in ancient times. In these cider mills—sole, little, illuminated points, living, in the midst of the immense, empty darkness of the fields—something of the spirit of former times is reanimated in winter evenings. In front of the large casks of cider arranged in lines in the background where it is dark, the lamp, hanging from the beams, throws its light on the images of saints that decorate the walls, on the groups of mountaineers who talk and who smoke. At times someone sings a plaintive song which came from the night of centuries; the beating of a tambourine recalls to life old, forgotten rhythms; a guitar reawakens a sadness of the epoch of the Moors.—Or, in the face of each other, two men, with castanets in their hands, suddenly dance the fandango, swinging themselves with an antique grace.
And, from these innocent, little inns, they retire early—especially in these bad, rainy nights—the darkness of which is so peculiarly propitious to smuggling, every one here having to do some clandestine thing on the Spanish side.
In such places, in the company of Arrochkoa, Ramuntcho talked over and commented upon his cherished, sacrilegious project; or,—during the beautiful moon-light nights which do not permit of undertakings on the frontier—they talked on the roads for a long time.
Persistent religions scruples made him hesitate a great deal, although he hardly realized it. They were inexplicable scruples, since he had ceased to be a believer. But all his will, all his audacity, all his life, were concentrated and directed, more and more, toward this unique end.
And the prohibition, ordered by Itchoua, from seeing Gracieuse before the great attempt, exasperated his impatient dream.
The winter, capricious as it is always in this country, pursued its unequal march, with, from time to time, surprises of sunlight and of heat. There were rains of a deluge, grand, healthy squalls which went up from the Bay of Biscay, plunged into the valleys, bending the trees furiously. And then, repetitions of the wind of the south, breaths as warm as in summer, breezes smelling of Africa, under a sky at once high and sombre, among mountains of an intense brown color. And also, glacial mornings, wherein one saw, at awakening, summits become snowy and white.
The desire often seized him to finish everything.—But he had the frightful idea that he might not succeed and might fall again, alone forever, without a hope in life.
Anyway, reasonable pretexts to wait were not lacking. He had to settle with men of affairs, he had to sell the house and realize, for his flight, all the money that he could obtain. He had also to wait for the answer of Uncle Ignacio, to whom he had announced his emigration and at whose house he expected to find an asylum.
Thus the days went by, and soon the hasty spring was to ferment. Already the yellow primrose and the blue gentian, in advance here by several weeks, were in bloom in the woods and along the paths, in the last suns of January—
They are this time in the cider mill of the hamlet of Gastelugain, near the frontier, waiting for the moment to go out with boxes of jewelry and weapons.
And it is Itchoua who is talking:
“If she hesitates—and she will not hesitate, be sure of it—but if she hesitates, well! we will kidnap her.—Let me arrange this, my plan is all made. It will be in the evening, you understand?—We will bring her anywhere and imprison her in a room with you.—If it turns out badly—if I am forced to quit the country after having done this thing to please you; then, you will have to give me more money than the amount agreed upon, you understand?—Enough, at least, to let me seek for my bread in Spain—”
“In Spain!—What? What are you going to do, Itchoua? I hope you have not in your head the idea to do things that are too grave.”
“Oh, do not be afraid, my friend. I have no desire to assassinate anybody.”
“Well! You talk of running away—”
“I said this as I would have said anything else, you know. For some time, business has been bad. And then, suppose the thing turns out badly and the police make an inquiry. Well, I would prefer to go, that is sure.—For whenever these men of justice put their noses into anything, they seek for things that happened long ago, and the inquiry never ends—”
In his eyes, suddenly expressive, appeared crime and fear. And Ramuntcho looked with an increase of anxiety at this man, who was believed to be solidly established in the country with lands in the sunlight, and who accepted so easily the idea of running away. What sort of a bandit is he then, to be so much afraid of justice?—And what could be these things that happened long ago?—After a silence between them, Ramuntcho said in a lower voice, with extreme distrust:
“Imprison her—you say this seriously, Itchoua?—And where imprison her, if you please? I have no castle to hide her in—”
Then Itchoua, with the smile of a faun which no one had seen before, tapped his shoulder:
“Oh, imprison her—for one night only, my son!—It will be enough, you may believe me.—They are all alike, you see: the first step costs; but the second one, they make it all alone, and quicker than you may think. Do you imagine that she would wish to return to the good sisters, afterward?—”
The desire to slap that dull face passed like an electric shock through the arm and the hand of Ramuntcho. He constrained himself, however, through a long habit of respectfulness for the old singer of the liturgies, and remained silent, with a flush on his cheeks, and his look turned aside. It revolted him to hear one talk thus of her—and surprised him that the one who spoke thus was that Itchoua whom he had always known as the quiet husband of an ugly and old woman. But the blow struck by the impertinent phrase followed nevertheless, in his imagination, a dangerous and unforeseen path.—Gracieuse, “imprisoned a room with him!” The immediate possibility of such a thing, so clearly presented with a rough and coarse word, made his head swim like a very violent liquor.
He loved her with too elevated a tenderness, his betrothed, to find pleasure in brutal hopes. Ordinarily, he expelled from his mind those images; but now that man had just placed them under his eye, with a diabolical crudity, and he felt shivers in his flesh, he trembled as if the weather were cold—
Oh, whether the adventure fell or not under the blow of justice, well, so much the worse, after all! He had nothing to lose, all was indifferent to him! And from that evening, in the fever of a new desire, he felt more boldly decided to brave the rules, the laws, the obstacles of this world. Saps ascended everywhere around him, on the sides of the brown Pyrenees; there were longer and more tepid nights; the paths were bordered with violets and periwinkles.—But religious scruples held him still. They remained, inexplicably in the depth of his disordered mind: instinctive horror of profanation; belief, in spite of everything, in something supernatural enveloping, to defend them, churches and cloisters—
Ramuntcho,—who had slept for a few hours, in a bad, tired sleep, in a small room of the new house of his friend Florentino, at Ururbil,—awakened as the day dawned.
The night,—a night of tempest everywhere, a black and troubled night,—had been disastrous for the smugglers. Near Cape Figuier, in the rocks where they had just landed from the sea with silk bundles, they had been pursued with gunshots, compelled to throw away their loads, losing everything, some fleeing to the mountain, others escaping by swimming among the breakers, in order to reach the French shore, in terror of the prisons of San Sebastian.
At two o'clock in the morning, exhausted, drenched and half drowned, he had knocked at the door of that isolated house, to ask from the good Florentino his aid and an asylum.
And on awakening, after all the nocturnal noise of the equinoctial storm, of the rain, of the groaning branches, twisted and broken, he perceived that a grand silence had come. Straining his ear, he could hear no longer the immense breath of the western wind, no longer the motion of all those things tormented in the darkness. No, nothing except a far-off noise, regular, powerful, continued and formidable; the roll of the waters in the depth of that Bay of Biscay—which, since the beginning, is without truce and troubled; a rhythmic groan, as might be the monstrous respiration of the sea in its sleep; a series of profound blows which seemed the blows of a battering ram on a wall, continued every time by a music of surf on the beaches.—But the air, the trees and the surrounding things were immovable; the tempest had finished, without reasonable cause, as it had begun, and the sea alone prolonged the complaint of it.
To look at that land, that Spanish coast which he would perhaps never see again, since his departure was so near, he opened his window on the emptiness, still pale, on the virginity of the desolate dawn.
A gray light emanating from a gray sky; everywhere the same immobility, tired and frozen, with uncertainties of aspect derived from the night and from dreams. An opaque sky, which had a solid air and was made of accumulated, small, horizontal layers, as if one had painted it by superposing pastes of dead colors.
And underneath, mountains black brown; then Fontarabia in a morose silhouette, its old belfry appearing blacker and more worn by the years. At that hour, so early and so freshly mysterious, when the ears of most men are not yet open, it seemed as if one surprised things in their heartbreaking colloquy of lassitude and of death, relating to one another, at the first flush of dawn, all that they do not say when the day has risen.—What was the use of resisting the storm of last night? said the old belfry, sad and weary, standing in the background in the distance; what was the use, since other storms will come, eternally others, other storms and other tempests, and since I will pass away, I whom men have elevated as a signal of prayer to remain here for incalculable years?—I am already only a spectre, come from some other time; I continue to ring ceremonies and illusory festivals; but men will soon cease to be lured by them; I ring also knells, I have rung so many knells for thousands of dead persons whom nobody remembers! And I remain here, useless, under the effort, almost eternal, of all those western winds which blow from the sea—
At the foot of the belfry, the church, drawn in gray tints, with an air of age and abandonment, confessed also that it was empty, that it was vain, peopled only by poor images made of wood or of stone, by myths without comprehension, without power and without pity. And all the houses, piously grouped for centuries around it, avowed that its protection was not efficacious against death, that it was deceptive and untruthful—
And especially the clouds, the clouds and the mountains, covered with their immense, mute attestation what the old city murmured beneath them; they confirmed in silence the sombre truths: heaven empty as the churches are, serving for accidental phantasmagoria, and uninterrupted times rolling their flood, wherein thousands of lives, like insignificant nothings, are, one after another, dragged and drowned.—A knell began to ring in that distance which Ramuntcho saw whitening; very slowly, the old belfry gave its voice, once more, for the end of a life; someone was in the throes of death on the other side of the frontier, some Spanish soul over there was going out, in the pale morning, under the thickness of those imprisoning clouds—and he had almost the precise notion that this soul would very simply follow its body in the earth which decomposes—
And Ramuntcho contemplated and listened. At the little window of that Basque house, which before him had sheltered only generations of simple-minded and confident people, leaning on the wide sill which the rubbing of elbows had worn, pushing the old shutter painted green, he rested his eyes on the dull display of that corner of the world which had been his and which he was to quit forever. Those revelations which things made, his uncultured mind heard them for the first time and he lent to them a frightened attention. An entire new labor of unbelief was going on suddenly in his mind, prepared by heredity to doubts and to worry. An entire vision came to him, sudden and seemingly definitive, of the nothingness of religions, of the nonexistence of the divinities whom men supplicate.
And then—since there was nothing, how simple it was to tremble still before the white Virgin, chimerical protector of those convents where girls are imprisoned—!
The poor agony bell, which exhausted itself in ringing over there so puerilely to call for useless prayers, stopped at last, and, under the closed sky, the respiration of the grand waters alone was heard in the distance, in the universal silence. But the things continued, in the uncertain dawn, their dialogue without words: nothing anywhere; nothing in the old churches venerated for so long a time; nothing in the sky where clouds and mists amass; but always, in the flight of times, the eternal and exhausting renewal of beings; and always and at once, old age, death, ashes—
That is what they were saying, in the pale half light, the things so dull and so tired. And Ramuntcho, who had heard, pitied himself for having hesitated so long for imaginary reasons. To himself he swore, with a harsher despair, that this morning he was decided; that he would do it, at the risk of everything; that nothing would make him hesitate longer.
Weeks have elapsed, in preparations, in anxious uncertainties on the manner of acting, in abrupt changes of plans and ideas.
Between times, the reply of Uncle Ignacio has reached Etchezar. If his nephew had spoken sooner, Ignacio has written, he would have been glad to receive him at his house; but, seeing how he hesitated, Ignacio had decided to take a wife, although he is already an old man, and now he has a child two months old. Therefore, there is no protection to be expected from that side; the exile, when he arrives there, may not find even a home—
The family house has been sold, at the notary's money questions have been settled; all the goods of Ramuntcho have been transformed into gold pieces which are in his hand—
And now is the day of the supreme attempt, the great day,—and already the thick foliage has returned to the trees, the clothing of the tall grass covers anew the prairies; it is May.
In the little wagon, which the famous fast horse drags, they roll on the shady mountain paths, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, toward that village of Amezqueta. They roll quickly; they plunge into the heart of an infinite region of trees. And, as the hour goes by, all becomes more peaceful around them, and more savage; more primitive, the hamlets; more solitary, the Basque land.
In the shade of the branches, on the borders of the paths, there are pink foxgloves, silences, ferns, almost the same flora as in Brittany; these two countries, the Basque and the Breton, resemble each other by the granite which is everywhere and by the habitual rain; by the immobility also, and by the continuity of the same religious dream.
Above the two young men who have started for the adventure, thicken the big, customary clouds, the sombre and low sky. The route which they follow, in these mountains ever and ever higher, is deliciously green, dug in the shade, between walls of ferns.
Immobility of several centuries, immobility in beings and in things,—one has more and more the consciousness of it as one penetrates farther into this country of forests and of silence. Under this obscure veil of the sky, where are lost the summits of the grand Pyrenees, appear and run by, isolated houses, centenary farms, hamlets more and more rare,—and they go always under the same vault of oaks, of ageless chestnut trees, which twist even at the side of the path their roots like mossy serpents. They resemble one another, those hamlets separated from one another by so much forest, by so many branches, and inhabited by an antique race, disdainful of all that disturbs, of all that changes: the humble church, most often without a belfry, with a simple campanila on its gray facade, and the square, with its wall painted for that traditional ball-game wherein, from father to son, the men exercise their hard muscles. Everywhere reigned the healthy peace of rustic life, the traditions of which in the Basque land are more immutable than elsewhere.
The few woolen caps which the two bold young men meet on their rapid passage, incline all in a bow, from general politeness first, and from acquaintance above all, for they are, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho, the two celebrated pelota players of the country;—Ramuntcho, it is true, had been forgotten by many people, but Arrochkoa, everybody, from Bayonne to San Sebastian, knows his face with healthy colors and the turned up ends of his catlike mustache.
Dividing the journey into two stages, they have slept last night at Mendichoco. And at present they are rolling quickly, the two young men, so preoccupied doubtless that they hardly care to regulate the pace of their vigorous beast.
Itchoua, however, is not with them. At the last moment, a fear has
come to Ramuntcho of this accomplice, whom he felt to be capable of
everything, even of murder; in a sudden terror, he has refused the aid
of that man, who clutched the bridle of the horse to prevent it from
starting; and feverishly, Ramuntcho has thrown gold into his hands, to
pay for his advice, to buy the liberty to act alone, the assurance,
at least, of not committing a crime: piece by piece, to break his
engagement, he has given to Itchoua a half of the agreed price. Then,
when the horse is driven at a gallop, when the implacable figure has
vanished behind a group of trees, Ramuntcho has felt his conscience
lighter—
“You will leave my carriage at Aranotz, at Burugoity, the inn-keeper's,
who understands,” said Arrochkoa, “for, you understand, as soon as you
have accomplished your end I will leave you.—We have business with the
people of Buruzabal, horses to lead into Spain to-night, not far from
Amezqueta, and I promised to be there before ten o'clock—”
What will they do? They do not know, the two allied friends; this will depend on the turn that things take; they have different projects, all bold and skilful, according to the cases which might present themselves. Two places have been reserved, one for Ramuntcho and the other for her, on board a big emigrant vessel on which the baggage is embarked and which will start tomorrow night from Bordeaux carrying hundreds of Basques to America. At this small station of Aranotz, where the carriage will leave both of them, Ramuntcho and Gracieuse, they will take the train for Bayonne, at three o'clock in the morning, and, at Bayonne afterward, the Irun express to Bordeaux. It will be a hasty flight, which will not give to the little fugitive the time to think, to regain her senses in her terror,—doubtless also in her intoxication deliciously mortal—
A gown, a mantilla of Gracieuse are all ready, at the bottom of the carriage, to replace the veil and the black uniform: things which she wore formerly, before her vows, and which Arrochkoa found in his mother's closets. And Ramuntcho thinks that it will be perhaps real, in a moment, that she will be perhaps there, at his side, very near, on that narrow seat, enveloped with him in the same travelling blanket, flying in the midst of night, to belong to him, at once and forever;—and in thinking of this too much, he feels again a shudder and a dizziness—
“I tell you that she will follow you,” repeats his friend, striking him rudely on the leg in protective encouragement, as soon as he sees Ramuntcho sombre and lost in a dream. “I tell you that she will follow you, I am sure! If she hesitates, well, leave the rest to me!”
If she hesitates, then they will be violent, they are resolved, oh, not very violent, only enough to unlace the hands of the old nuns retaining her.—And then, they will carry her into the small wagon, where infallibly the enlacing contact and the tenderness of her former friend will soon turn her young head.
How will it all happen? They do not yet know, relying a great deal on their spirit of decision which has already dragged them out of dangerous passes. But what they know is that they will not weaken. And they go ahead, exciting each other; one would say that they are united now unto death, firm and decided like two bandits at the hour when the capital game is to be played.
The land of thick branches which they traverse, under the oppression of very high mountains which they do not see, is all in ravines, profound and torn up, in precipices, where torrents roar under the green night of the foliage. The oaks, the beeches, the chestnut trees become more and more enormous, living through centuries off a sap ever fresh and magnificent. A powerful verdure is strewn over that disturbed geology; for ages it covers and classifies it under the freshness of its immovable mantle. And this nebulous sky, almost obscure, which is familiar to the Basque country, adds to the impression which they have of a sort of universal meditation wherein the things are plunged; a strange penumbra descends from everywhere, descends from the trees at first, descends from the thick, gray veils above the branches, descends from the great Pyrenees hidden behind the clouds.
And, in the midst of this immense peace and of this green night, they pass, Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa, like two young disturbers going to break charms in the depths of forests. At all cross roads old, granite crosses rise, like alarm signals to warn them; old crosses with this inscription, sublimely simple, which is here something like the device of an entire race: “O crux, ave, spes unica!”
Soon the night will come. Now they are silent, because the hour is going, because the moment approaches, because all these crosses on the road are beginning to intimidate them—
And the day falls, under that sad veil which covers the sky. The valleys become more savage, the country more deserted. And, at the corners of roads, the old crosses appear, ever with their similar inscriptions: “O crux, ave, spes unica!”
Amezqueta, at the last twilight. They stop their carriage at an outskirt of the village, before the cider mill. Arrochkoa is impatient to go into the house of the sisters, vexed at arriving so late; he fears that the door may not be opened to them. Ramuntcho, silent, lets him act.
It is above, on the hill; it is that isolated house which a cross surmounts and which one sees in relief in white on the darker mass of the mountain. They recommend that as soon as the horse is rested the wagon be brought to them, at a turn, to wait for them. Then, both go into the avenue of trees which leads to that convent and where the thickness of the May foliage makes the obscurity almost nocturnal. Without saying anything to each other, without making a noise with their sandals, they ascend in a supple and easy manner; around them the profound fields are impregnated by the immense melancholy of the night.
Arrochkoa knocks with his finger on the door of the peaceful house:
“I would like to see my sister, if you please,” he says to an old nun who opens the door, astonished—
Before he has finished talking, a cry of joy comes from the dark corridor, and a nun, whom one divines is young in spite of the envelopment of her dissembling costume, comes and takes his hand. She has recognized him by his voice,—but has she divined the other who stays behind and does not talk?—
The Mother Superior has come also, and, in the darkness of the stairway, she makes them go up to the parlor of the little country convent; then she brings the cane-seat chairs and everyone sits down, Arrochkoa near his sister, Ramuntcho opposite,—and they face each other at last, the two lovers, and a silence, full of the beating of arteries, full of leaps of hearts, full of fever, descends upon them—
Truly, in this place, one knows not what peace almost sweet, and a little sepulchral also, envelopes the terrible interview; in the depth of the chests, the hearts beat with great blows, but the words of love or of violence, the words die before passing the lips.—And this peace, more and more establishes itself; it seems as if a white shroud little by little is covering everything, in order to calm and to extinguish.
There is nothing very peculiar, however, in this humble parlor: four walls absolutely bare under a coat of whitewash; a wooden ceiling; a floor where one slips, so carefully waxed it is; on a table, a plaster Virgin, already indistinct, among all the similar white things of the background where the twilight of May is dying. And a window without curtains, open on the grand Pyrenean horizons invaded by night.—But, from this voluntary poverty, from this white simplicity, is exhaled a notion of definitive impersonality, of renunciation forever; and the irremediability of accomplished things begins to manifest itself to the mind of Ramuntcho, while bringing to him a sort of peace, of sudden and involuntary resignation.
The two smugglers, immovable on their chairs, appear as silhouettes, of wide shoulders on all this white of the walls, and of their lost features one hardly sees the black more intense of the mustache and the eyes. The two nuns, whose outlines are unified by the veil, seem already to be two spectres all black—
“Wait, Sister Mary Angelique,” says the Mother Superior to the transformed young girl who was formerly named Gracieuse, “wait sister till I light the lamp in order that you may at least see your brother's face!”
She goes out, leaving them together, and, again, silence falls on this rare instant, perhaps unique, impossible to regain, when they are alone—
She comes back with a little lamp which makes the eyes of the smugglers shine,—and with a gay voice, a kind air, asks, looking at Ramuntcho:
“And this one? A second brother, I suppose?—”
“Oh, no,” says Arrochkoa in a singular tone. “He is only my friend.”
In truth, he is not their brother, that Ramuntcho who stays there, ferocious and mute.—And how he would frighten the quiet nuns if they knew what storm brings him here—!
The same silence returns, heavy and disquieting, on these beings who, it seems, should talk simply of simple things; and the old Mother Superior remarks it, is astonished by it.—But the quick eyes of Ramuntcho become immovable, veil themselves as if they are fascinated by some invisible tamer. Under the harsh envelope, still beating, of his chest, the calmness, the imposed calmness continues to penetrate and to extend. On him, doubtless, are acting the mysterious, white powers which are here in the air; religious heredities which were asleep in the depths of his being fill him now with unexpected respect and submissiveness; the antique symbols dominate him: the crosses met in the evening along the road and that plaster Virgin of the color of snow, immaculate on the spotless white of the wall—
“Well, my children, talk of the things of Etchezar,” says the Mother Superior to Gracieuse and to her brother. “We shall leave you alone, if you wish,” she adds with a sign to Ramuntcho to follow her.
“Oh, no,” protests Arrochkoa, “Let him stay.—No, he is not the one—who prevents us—”
And the little nun, veiled in the fashion of the Middle Age, lowers her head, to maintain her eyes hidden in the shade of her austere headdress.
The door remains open, the window remains open; the house, the things retain their air of absolute confidence, of absolute security, against violations and sacrilege. Now two other sisters, who are very old, set a small table, put two covers, bring to Arrochkoa and to his friend a little supper, a loaf of bread, cheese, cake, grapes from the arbor. In arranging these things they have a youthful gaiety, a babble almost childish—and all this is strangely opposed to the ardent violence which is here, hushed, thrown back into the depth of minds, as under the blows of some mace covered with white—
And, in spite of themselves, they are seated at the table, the two smugglers, opposite each other, yielding to insistence and eating absent-mindedly the frugal things, on a cloth as white as the walls. Their broad shoulders, accustomed to loads, lean on the backs of the little chairs and make their frail wood crack. Around them come and go the Sisters, ever with their discreet talk and their puerile laugh, which escape, somewhat softened, from under their veils. Alone, she remains mute and motionless, Sister Mary Angelique: standing near her brother who is seated, she places her hand on his powerful shoulder; so lithe beside him that she looks like a saint of a primitive church picture. Ramuntcho, sombre, observes them both; he had not been able to see yet the face of Gracieuse, so severely her headdress framed it. They resemble each other still, the brother and the sister; in their very long eyes, which have acquired expressions more than ever different remains something inexplicably similar, persists the same flame, that flame which impelled one toward adventures and the life of the muscles, the other toward mystic dreams, toward mortification and annihilation of flesh. But she has become as frail as he is robust; her breast doubtless is no more, nor her hips; the black vestment wherein her body remains hidden falls straight like a furrow enclosing nothing carnal.
And now, for the first time, they are face to face, Gracieuse and Ramuntcho; their eyes have met and gazed on one another. She does not lower her head before him; but it is as from an infinite distance that she looks at him, it is as from behind white mists that none may scale, as from the other side of an abyss, as from the other side of death; very soft, nevertheless, her glance indicates that she is as if she were absent, gone to tranquil and inaccessible other places.—And it is Ramuntcho at last who, still more tamed, lowers his ardent eyes before her virgin eyes.
They continue to babble, the Sisters; they would like to retain them both at Amezqueta for the night: the weather, they say, is so black, and a storm threatens.—M. the Cure, who went out to take communion to a patient in the mountain, will come back; he has known Arrochkoa at Etchezar when a vicar there; he would be glad to give him a room in the parish house—and one to his friend also, of course—
But no, Arrochkoa refuses, after a questioning glance at Ramuntcho. It is impossible to stay in the village; they will even go at once, or after a few moments of conversation, for they are expected on the Spanish frontier.—Gracieuse who, at first, in her mortal disturbance of mind, had not dared to talk, begins to question her brother. Now in Basque, then in French, she asks for news of those whom she has forever abandoned:
“And mother? All alone now in the house, even at night?”
“Oh, no,” says Arrochkoa, “Catherine watches over her and sleeps at the house.”
“And how is your child, Arrochkoa, has he been christened? What is his name? Lawrence, doubtless, like his grandfather.”
Etchezar, their village, is separated from Amezqueta by some sixty kilometres, in a land without more means of communication than in the past centuries:
“Oh, in spite of the distance,” says the little nun, “I get news of you sometimes. Last month, people here had met on the market place of Hasparren, women of our village; that is how I learned—many things.—At Easter I had hoped to see you; I was told that there would be a ball-game at Erricalde and that you would come to play there; then I said to myself that perhaps you would come here—and, while the festival lasted, I looked often at the road through this window, to see if you were coming—”
And she shows the window, open on the blackness of the savage country—from which ascends an immense silence, with, from time to time, the noise of spring, intermittent musical notes of crickets and tree-toads.
Hearing her talk so quietly, Ramuntcho feels confounded by this renunciation of all things; she appears to him still more irrevocably changed, far-off—poor little nun!—Her name was Gracieuse; now her name is Sister Mary Angelique, and she has no relatives; impersonal here, in this little house with white walls, without terrestrial hope and without desire, perhaps—one might as well say that she has departed for the regions of the grand oblivion of death. And yet, she smiles, quite serene now and apparently not even suffering.
Arrochkoa looks at Ramuntcho, questions him with a piercing eye accustomed to fathom the black depths—and, tamed himself by all this unexpected peace, he understands very well that his bold comrade dares no longer, that all the projects have fallen, that all is useless and inert in presence of the invisible wall with which his sister is surrounded. At moments, pressed to end all in one way or in another, in a haste to break this charm or to submit to it and to fly before it, he pulls his watch, says that it is time to go, because of the friends who are waiting for them.—The Sisters know well who these friends are and why they are waiting but they are not affected by this: Basques themselves, daughters and granddaughters of Basques, they have the blood of smugglers in their veins and consider such things indulgently—
At last, for the first time, Gracieuse titters the name of Ramuntcho; not daring, however, to address him directly, she asks her brother, with a calm smile:
“Then he is with you, Ramuntcho, now? You work together?”
A silence follows, and Arrochkoa looks at Ramuntcho.
“No,” says the latter, in a slow and sombre voice, “no—I, I go to-morrow to America—”
Every word of this reply, harshly scanned, is like a sound of trouble and of defiance in the midst of that strange serenity. She leans more heavily on her brother's shoulder, the little nun, and Ramuntcho, conscious of the profound blow which he has struck, looks at her and envelopes her with his tempting eyes, having regained his audacity, attractive and dangerous in the last effort of his heart full of love, of his entire being of youth and of flame made for tenderness.—Then, for an uncertain minute, it seems as if the little convent had trembled; it seems as if the white powers of the air recoiled, went out like sad, unreal mists before this young dominator, come here to hurl the triumphant appeal of life. And the silence which follows is the heaviest of all the silent moments which have interrupted already that species of drama played almost without words—
At last, Sister Mary Angelique talks, and talks to Ramuntcho himself. Really it does not seem as if her heart had just been torn supremely by the announcement of that departure, nor as if she had just shuddered under that lover's look.—With a voice which little by little becomes firmer in softness, she says very simple things, as to any friend.
“Oh, yes—Uncle Ignacio?—I had always thought that you would go to rejoin him there.—We shall all pray the Holy Virgin to accompany you in your voyage—”
And it is the smuggler who lowers the head, realizing that all is ended, that she is lost forever, the little companion of his childhood; that she has been buried in an inviolable shroud.—The words of love and of temptation which he had thought of saying, the projects which he had revolved in his mind for months, all these seemed insensate, sacrilegious, impossible things, childish bravadoes.—Arrochkoa, who looks at him attentively, is under the same irresistible and light charm; they understand each other and, to one another, without words, they confess that there is nothing to do, that they will never dare—
Nevertheless an anguish still human appears in the eyes of Sister Mary Angelique when Arrochkoa rises for the definite departure: she prays, in a changed voice, for them to stay a moment longer. And Ramuntcho suddenly feels like throwing himself on his knees in front of her; his head on the hem of her veil, sobbing all the tears that stifle him; like begging for mercy, like begging for mercy also of that Mother Superior who has so soft an air; like telling both of them that this sweetheart of his childhood was his hope, his courage, his life, and that people must have a little pity, people must give her back to him, because, without her, there is no longer anything.—All that his heart contains that is infinitely good is exalted at present into an immense necessity to implore, into an outbreak of supplicating prayer and also into a confidence in the kindness, in the pity of others—
And who knows, if he had dared formulate that great prayer of pure tenderness, who knows what he might have awakened of kindness also, and of tenderness and of humanity in the poor, black-veiled girl?—Perhaps this old Mother Superior herself, this old, dried-up girl with childish smile and grave, pure eyes, would have opened her arms to him, as to a son, understanding everything, forgiving everything, despite the rules and despite the vows? And perhaps Gracieuse might have been returned to him, without kidnapping, without deception, almost excused by her companions of the cloister. Or at last, if that was impossible, she would have bade him a long farewell, consoling, softened by a kiss of immaterial love—
But no, he stays there mute on his chair. Even that prayer he cannot make. And it is the hour to go, decidedly. Arrochkoa is up, agitated, calling him with an imperious sign of the head. Then he straightens up also his proud bust and takes his cap to follow Arrochkoa. They express their thanks for the little supper which was given to them and they say good-night, timidly. During their entire visit they were very respectful, almost timid, the two superb smugglers. And, as if hope had not just been undone, as if one of them was not leaving behind him his life, they descend quietly the neat stairway, between the white walls, while the good Sisters light the way with their little lamp.
“Come, Sister Mary Angelique,” gaily proposes the Mother Superior, in her frail, infantile voice, “we shall escort them to the end of our avenue, you know, near the village.”
Is she an old fairy, sure of her power, or a simple and unconscious woman, playing without knowing it, with a great, devouring fire?—It was all finished; the parting had been accomplished; the farewell accepted; the struggle stifled under white wadding,—and now the two who adored each other are walking side by side, outside, in the tepid night of spring!—in the amorous, enveloping night, under the cover of the new leaves and on the tall grass, among all the saps that ascend in the midst of the sovereign growth of universal life.
They walk with short steps, through this exquisite obscurity, as in silent accord, to make the shaded path last longer, both mute, in the ardent desire and the intense fear of contact of their clothes, of a touch of their hands. Arrochkoa and the Mother Superior follow them closely, on their heels; without talking, nuns with their sandals, smugglers with their rope soles, they go through these soft, dark spots without making more noise than phantoms, and their little cortege, slow and strange, descends toward the wagon in a funereal silence. Silence also around them, everywhere in the grand, ambient black, in the depth of the mountains and the woods. And, in the sky without stars, sleep the big clouds, heavy with all the water that the soil awaits and which will fall to-morrow to make the woods still more leafy, the grass still higher; the big clouds above their heads cover all the splendor of the southern summer which so often, in their childhood, charmed them together, disturbed them together, but which Ramuntcho will doubtless never see again and which in the future Gracieuse will have to look at with eyes of one dead, without understanding nor recognizing it—
There is no one around them, in the little obscure alley, and the village seems asleep already. The night has fallen quite; its grand mystery is scattered everywhere, on the mountains and the savage valleys.—And, how easy it would be to execute what these two young men have resolved, in that solitude, with that wagon which is ready and that fast horse—!
However, without having talked, without having touched each other, they come, the lovers, to that turn of the path where they must bid each other an eternal farewell. The wagon is there, held by a boy; the lantern is lighted and the horse impatient. The Mother Superior stops: it is, apparently, the last point of the last walk which they will take together in this world,—and she feels the power, that old nun, to decide that it will be thus, without appeal. With the same little, thin voice, almost gay, she says:
“Come, Sister, say good-bye.”
And she says that with the assurance of a Fate whose decrees of death are not disputable.
In truth, nobody attempts to resist her order, impassibly given. He is vanquished, the rebellious Ramuntcho, oh, quite vanquished by the tranquil, white powers; trembling still from the battle which has just come to an end in him, he lowers his head, without will now, and almost without thought, as under the influence of some sleeping potion—
“Come, Sister, say good-bye,” the old, tranquil Fate has said. Then, seeing that Gracieuse has only taken Arrochkoa's hand, she adds:
“Well, you do not kiss your brother?—”
Doubtless, the little Sister Mary Angelique asks for nothing better, to kiss him with all her heart, with all her soul; to clasp him, her brother, to lean on his shoulder and to seek his protection, at that hour of superhuman sacrifice when she must let the cherished one leave her without even a word of love.—And still, her kiss has in it something frightened, at once drawn back; the kiss of a nun, somewhat similar to the kiss of one dead.—When will she ever see him again, that brother, who is not to leave the Basque country, however? When will she have news of her mother, of the house, of the village, from some passer-by who will stop here, coming from Etchezar?—
“We will pray,” she says again, “to the Holy Virgin to protect you in your long voyage—” And how they go; slowly they turn back, like silent shades, toward the humble convent which the cross protects, and the two tamed smugglers, immovable on the road, look at their veils, darker than the night of the trees, disappearing in the obscure avenue.
Oh! she is wrecked also, the one who will disappear in the darkness of the little, shady hill.—But she is nevertheless soothed by white, peaceful vapors, and all that she suffers will soon be quieted under a sort of sleep. To-morrow she will take again, until death, the course of her strangely simple existence; impersonal, devoted to a series of daily duties which never change, absorbed in a reunion of creatures almost neutral, who have abdicated everything, she will be able to walk with eyes lifted ever toward the soft, celestial mirage—
O crux, ave, spes unica—!
To live, without variety or truce to the end, between the white walls of a cell always the same, now here, then elsewhere, at the pleasure of a strange will, in one of those humble village convents to which one has not even the leisure to become attached. On this earth, to possess nothing and to desire nothing, to wait for nothing, to hope for nothing. To accept as empty and transitory the fugitive hours of this world, and to feel freed from everything, even from love, as much as by death.—The mystery of such lives remains forever unintelligible to those young men who are there, made for the daily battle, beautiful beings of instinct and of strength, a prey to all the desires; created to enjoy life and to suffer from it, to love it and to continue it—
O crux, ave, spes unica!—One sees them no longer, they have re-entered their little, solitary convent.
The two men have not exchanged even a word on their abandoned undertaking, on the ill-defined cause which for the first time has undone their courage; they feel, toward one another, almost a sense of shame of their sudden and insurmountable timidity.
For an instant their proud heads were turned toward the nuns slowly fleeing; now they look at each other through the night.
They are going to part, and probably forever: Arrochkoa puts into his friends hands the reins of the little wagon which, according to his promise, he lends to him:
“Well, my poor Ramuntcho!” he says, in a tone of commiseration hardly affectionate.
And the unexpressed end of the phrase signifies clearly:
“Go, since you have failed; and I have to go and meet my friends—”
Ramuntcho would have kissed him with all his heart for the last farewell,—and in this embrace of the brother of the beloved one, he would have shed doubtless good, hot tears which, for a moment at least, would have cured him a little.
But no, Arrochkoa has become again the Arrochkoa of the bad days, the gambler without soul, that only bold things interest. Absentmindedly, he touches Ramuntcho's hand:
“Well, good-bye!—Good luck—”
And, with silent steps, he goes toward the smugglers, toward the frontier, toward the propitious darkness.
Then Ramuntcho, alone in the world now, whips the little, mountain horse who gallops with his light tinkling of bells.—That train which will pass by Aranotz, that vessel which will start from Bordeaux—an instinct impels Ramuntcho not to miss them. Mechanically he hastens, no longer knowing why, like a body without a mind which continues to obey an ancient impulsion, and, very quickly, he who has no aim and no hope in the world, plunges into the savage country, into the thickness of the woods, in all that profound blackness of the night of May, which the nuns, from their elevated window, see around them—
For him the native land is closed, closed forever; finished are the delicious dreams of his first years. He is a plant uprooted from the dear, Basque soil and which a breath of adventure blows elsewhere.
At the horse's neck, gaily the bells tinkle, in the silence of the sleeping woods; the light of the lantern, which runs hastily, shows to the sad fugitive the under side of branches, fresh verdure of oaks; by the wayside, flowers of France; from distance to distance, the walls of a familiar hamlet, of an old church,—all the things which he will never see again, unless it be, perhaps, in a doubtful and very distant old age—
In front of his route, there is America, exile without probable return, an immense new world, full of surprises and approached now without courage: an entire life, very long, doubtless, during which his mind plucked from here will have to suffer and to harden over there; his vigor spend and exhaust itself none knows where, in unknown labors and struggles—
Above, in their little convent, in their sepulchre with walls so white, the tranquil nuns recite their evening prayers—
O crux, ave, spes unica—!