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--

CHAPTER V.

"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.

CHAPTER VI.

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.

CHAPTER VII.

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 pa.s.s 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--