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

CHAPTER XXVII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No. My daughter marrying that penniless b.a.s.t.a.r.d, think of it!--"

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

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

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

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

And then, those words of insult in the street, those words the more crushing because she was cruelly conscious of her sin with the stranger!

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

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

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

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

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

Three years have pa.s.sed, rapidly.

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

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

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

Months of waiting and of apparent calm had followed that scene, while Ramuntcho, far from his native land, was beginning his military service.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II.

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

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

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

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

And at Saint-Jean-de-Luz at last, when he set foot on the soil, he had felt like one drunk--After the mist and the cold already begun in Northern France, he felt the sudden and voluptuous impression of a warmer climate, the sensation of going into a hothouse. There was a festival of sunlight that day; the southern wind, the exquisite southern wind, blew, and the Pyrenees had magnificent tints on the grand, free sky. Moreover, girls pa.s.sed, whose laughter rang of the South and of Spain, who had the elegance and the grace of the Basques--and who, after the heavy blondes of the North, troubled him more than all these illusions of summer.--But promptly he returned to himself: what was he thinking of, since that regained land was to him an empty land forever?

How could his infinite despair be changed by that tempting gracefulness of the girls, by that ironical gaiety of the sky, the human beings and the things?--No! He would go home, embrace his mother--!

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

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

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

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

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

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