Ramuntcho Part 7

Different familiar, musical sounds rocked Ramuntcho in his bed. First, the constant roar of a near-by torrent; then, at times, songs of nightingales, salutes to the dawn of divers birds. And, in this spring especially, the cows, his neighbors, excited doubtless by the smell of new-mown hay, moved all night, were agitated in dreams, making their bells tintillate continually.

Often, after the long expeditions at night, he regained his sleep in the afternoon, extended in the shade in some corner of moss and gra.s.s. Like the other smugglers, he was not an early riser for a village boy, and he woke up sometimes long after daybreak, when already, between the disjointed planks of his flooring, rays of a vivid and gay light came from the stable below, the door of which remained open always to the rising sun after the departure of the cattle to their pastures. Then, he went to his window, pushed open the little, old blinds made of ma.s.sive chestnut wood painted in olive, and leaned on his elbows, placed on the sill of the thick wall, to look at the clouds or at the sun of the new morning.

What he saw, around his house, was green, green, magnificently green, as are in the spring all the corners of that land of shade and of rain.

The ferns which, in the autumn, have so warm a rusty color, were now, in this April, in the glory of their greenest freshness and covered the slopes of the mountains as with an immense carpet of curly wool, where foxglove flowers made pink spots. In a ravine, the torrent roared under branches. Above, groups of oaks and of beeches clung to the slopes, alternating with prairies; then, above this tranquil Eden, toward the sky, ascended the grand, denuded peak of the Gizune, sovereign hill of the region of the clouds. And one perceived also, in the background, the church and the houses--that village of Etchezar, solitary and perched high on one of the Pyrenean cliffs, far from everything, far from the lines of communication which have revolutionized and spoiled the lowlands of the sh.o.r.es; sheltered from curiosity, from the profanation of strangers, and living still its Basque life of other days.

Ramuntcho's awakenings were impregnated, at this window, with peace and humble serenity. They were full of joy, his awakenings of a man engaged, since he had the a.s.surance of meeting Gracieuse at night at the promised place. The vague anxieties, the undefined sadness, which accompanied in him formerly the daily return of his thoughts, had fled for a time, dispelled by the reminiscence and the expectation of these meetings; his life was all changed; as soon as his eyes were opened he had the impression of a mystery and of an immense enchantment, enveloping him in the midst of this verdure and of these April flowers. And this peace of spring, thus seen every morning, seemed to him every time a new thing, very different from what it had been in the previous years, infinitely sweet to his heart and voluptuous to his flesh, having unfathomable and ravishing depths.

CHAPTER XIII.

It is Easter night, after the village bells have ceased to mingle in the air so many holy vibrations that came from Spain and from France.

Seated on the bank of the Bida.s.soa, Ramuntcho and Florentino watch the arrival of a bark. A great silence now, and the bells sleep. The tepid twilight has been prolonged and, in breathing, one feels the approach of summer.

As soon as the night falls, it must appear from the coast of Spain, the smuggling bark, bringing the very prohibited phosphorus. And, without its touching the sh.o.r.e, they must go to get that merchandise, by advancing on foot in the bed of the river, with long, pointed sticks in their hands, in order to a.s.sume, if perchance they were caught, airs of people fishing innocently for "platuches."

The water of the Bida.s.soa is to-night an immovable and clear mirror, a little more luminous than the sky, and in this mirror, are reproduced, upside down, all the constellations, the entire Spanish mountain, carved in so sombre a silhouette in the tranquil atmosphere. Summer, summer, one has more and more the consciousness of its approach, so limpid and soft are the first signs of night, so much lukewarm langour is scattered over this corner of the world, where the smugglers silently manoeuvre.

But this estuary, which separates the two countries, seems in this moment to Ramuntcho more melancholy than usual, more closed and more walled-in in front of him by these black mountains, at the feet of which hardly shine, here and there, two or three uncertain lights. Then, he is seized again by his desire to know what there is beyond, and further still.--Oh! to go elsewhere!--To escape, at least for a time, from the oppressiveness of that land--so loved, however!--Before death, to escape the oppressiveness of this existence, ever similar and without egress.

To try something else, to get out of here, to travel, to know things--!

Then, while watching the far-off, terrestrial distances where the bark will appear, he raises his eyes from time to time toward what happens above, in the infinite, looks at the new moon, the crescent of which, as thin as a line, lowers and will disappear soon; looks at the stars, the slow and regulated march of which he has observed, as have all the people of his trade, during so many nocturnal hours; is troubled in the depth of his mind by the proportions and the inconceivable distances of these things.--

In his village of Etchezar, the old priest who had taught him the catechism, interested by his young, lively intelligence, has lent books to him, has continued with him conversations on a thousand subjects, and, on the subject of the planets, has given to him the notion of movements and of immensities, has half opened before his eyes the grand abyss of s.p.a.ce and duration. Then, in his mind, innate doubts, frights and despairs that slumbered, all that his father had bequeathed to him as a sombre inheritance, all these things have taken a black form which stands before him. Under the great sky of night, his Basque faith has commenced to weaken. His mind is no longer simple enough to accept blindly dogmas and observances, and, as all becomes incoherence and disorder in his young head, so strangely prepared, the course of which n.o.body is leading, he does not know that it is wise to submit, with confidence in spite of everything, to the venerable and consecrated formulas, behind which is hidden perhaps all that we may ever see of the unknowable truths.

Therefore, these bells of Easter which the year before had filled him with a religious and soft sentiment, this time had seemed to him to be a music sad and almost vain. And now that they have just hushed, he listens with undefined sadness to the powerful noise, almost incessant since the creation, that the breakers of the Bay of Biscay make and which, in the peaceful nights, may be heard in the distance behind the mountains.

But his floating dream changes again.--Now the estuary, which has become quite dark and where one may no longer see the ma.s.s of human habitations, seems to him, little by little, to become different; then, strange suddenly, as if some mystery were to be accomplished in it; he perceives only the great, abrupt lines of it, which are almost eternal, and he is surprised to think confusedly of times more ancient, of an unprecise and obscure antiquity.--The Spirit of the old ages, which comes out of the soil at times in the calm nights, in the hours when sleep the beings that trouble us in the day-time, the Spirit of the old ages is beginning, doubtless, to soar in the air around him; Ramuntcho does not define this well, for his sense of an artist and of a seer, that no education has refined, has remained rudimentary; but he has the notion and the worry of it.--In his head, there is still and always a chaos, which seeks perpetually to disentangle itself and never succeeds.--However, when the two enlarged and reddened horns of the moon fall slowly behind the mountain, always black, the aspect of things takes, for an inappreciable instant, one knows not what ferocious and primitive airs; then, a dying impression of original epochs which had remained, one knows not where in s.p.a.ce, takes for Ramuntcho a precise form in a sudden manner, and troubles him until he shivers. He dreams, even without wishing it, of those men of the forests who lived here in the ages, in the uncalculated and dark ages, because, suddenly, from a point distant from the sh.o.r.e, a long Basque cry rises from the darkness in a lugubrious falsetto, an "irrintzina," the only thing in this country with which he never could become entirely familiar. But a great mocking noise occurs in the distance, the crash of iron, whistles: a train from Paris to Madrid, which is pa.s.sing over there, behind them, in the black of the French sh.o.r.e. And the Spirit of the old ages folds its wings made of shade and vanishes. Silence returns: but after the pa.s.sage of this stupid and rapid thing, the Spirit which has fled reappears no more--

At last, the bark which Ramuntcho awaited with Florentino appears, hardly perceptible for other eyes than theirs, a little, gray form which leaves behind it slight ripples on this mirror which is of the color of the sky at night and wherein stars are reflected upside down. It is the well-selected hour, the hour when the customs officers watch badly; the hour also when the view is dimmer, when the last reflections of the sun and those of the crescent of the moon have gone out, and the eyes of men are not yet accustomed to darkness.

Then to get the prohibited phosphorus, they take their long fishing sticks, and go into the water silently.

CHAPTER XIV.

There was a grand ball-game arranged for the following Sunday at Erribiague, a far-distant village, near the tall mountains. Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino were to play against three celebrated ones of Spain; they were to practice that evening, limber their arms on the square of Etchezar, and Gracieuse, with other little girls of her age, had taken seats on the granite benches to look at them. The girls, all pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance with the most recent vagary of the season. And they were laughing, these little girls, they were laughing! They were laughing because they had begun laughing, without knowing why. Nothing, a word of their old Basque tongue, without any appropriateness, by one of them, and there they were all in spasms of laughter.--This country is truly one of the corners of the world where the laughter of girls breaks out most easily, ringing like clear crystal, ringing youthfulness and fresh throats.

Arrochkoa had been there for a long time, with the wicker glove at his arm, throwing alone the pelota which, from time to time, children picked up for him. But Ramuntcho, Florentino, what were they thinking of?

How late they were! They came at last, their foreheads wet with perspiration, their walk heavy and embarra.s.sed. And, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe, a.s.sume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic sound.--Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing a little, they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than ordinarily, their overload being disposed of.

Except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on the lowest one of these deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April. Calico gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this solemnly sad place. Beside Gracieuse was Pantchika Dargaignaratz, another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to Arrochkoa and would soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in the army. And, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their chanted accent, with ends of syllables in "rra" or in "rrik," making the "r's" roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows were beating their wings in their mouths.

They also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under the pretext of resting, to sit among the girls. These troubled and intimidated them three times more than the public, because they mocked so!

Ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed something which he would not have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to go to that festival of Erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that country, which she did not know. It was agreed that she should go in a carriage, with Pantchika and Madame Dargaignaratz; and they would meet over there; perhaps it would be possible to return all together.

During the two weeks since their evening meetings had begun, this was the first time when he had had the opportunity to talk to her thus in the day-time and before the others--and their manner was different, more ceremonious apparently, with, beneath it, a very suave mystery. It was a long time, also, since he had seen her so well and so near in the daylight: she was growing more beautiful that spring; she was pretty, pretty!--Her bust had become rounder and her waist thinner; her manner gained, day by day, an elegant suppleness. She resembled her brother still, she had the same regular features, the same perfect oval of the face; but the difference in their eyes went on increasing: while those of Arrochkoa, of a blue green shade which seemed fleeting, avoided the glances of others, hers, on the contrary, black pupils and lashes, dilated themselves to look at you fixedly. Ramuntcho had seen eyes like these in no other person; he adored the frank tenderness of them and also their anxious and profound questioning. Long before he had become a man and accessible to the trickery of the senses, those eyes had caught, of his little, childish mind, all that was best and purest in it.--And now around such eyes, the grand Transformer, enigmatic and sovereign, had placed a beauty of flesh which irresistibly called his flesh to a supreme communion.--

They were made very inattentive to their game, the players, by the group of little girls, of white and pink waists, and they laughed themselves at not playing so well as usual. Above them, occupying only a small corner of the old, granite amphitheatre, ascended rows of empty benches in ruins; then, the houses of Etchezar, so peacefully isolated from the rest of the world; then, in fine, the obscure, enc.u.mbering ma.s.s of the Gizune, filling up the sky and mingling with thick clouds asleep on its sides. Clouds immovable, inoffensive and without a threat of rain; clouds of spring, which were of a turtle-dove color and which seemed tepid, like the air of that evening. And, in a rent, much less elevated than the summit predominating over this entire site, a round moon began to silver as the day declined.

They played, in the beautiful twilight, until the hour when the first bats appeared, until the hour when the flying pelota could hardly be seen in the air. Perhaps they felt, unconsciously, that the moment was rare and might not be regained: then, as much as possible, they should prolong it--

And at last, they went together to take to Itchoua his Spanish coins. In two lots, they had been placed in two thick, reddish towels which a boy and a girl held at each end, and they walked in cadence, singing the tune of "The Linen Weaver."

How long, clear and soft was that twilight of April!--There were roses and all sorts of flowers in front of the walls of the venerable, white houses with brown or green blinds. Jessamine, honeysuckle and linden filled the air with fragrance. For Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, it was one of those exquisite hours which later, in the anguishing sadness of awakenings, one recalls with a regret at once heart-breaking and charming.

Oh! who shall say why there are on earth evenings of spring, and eyes so pretty to look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes which gardens exhale when the nights of April fall, and all this delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in separation, in decrepitude and in death--

CHAPTER XV.

The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where the festival was to take place on the following Sunday. It is situated very far, in a shady region, at the turn of a deep gorge, at the foot of very high summits. Arrochkoa was born there and he had spent there the first months of his life, in the time when his father lived there as a brigadier of the French customs; but he had left too early to have retained the least memory of it.

In the little Detcharry carriage, Gracieuse, Pantchita and, with a long whip in her hand, Madame Dargaignaratz, her mother, who is to drive, leave together at the noon angelus to go over there directly by the mountain route.

Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino, who have to settle smuggling affairs at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, go by a roundabout way which will bring them to Erribiague at night, on the train which goes from Bayonne to Burguetta. To-day, all three are heedless and happy; Basque caps never appeared above more joyful faces.

The night is falling when they penetrate, by this little train of Burguetta, into the quiet, interior country. The carriages are full of a gay crowd, a spring evening crowd, returning from some festival, young girls with silk kerchiefs around their necks, young men wearing woolen caps; all are singing, laughing and kissing. In spite of the invading obscurity one may still distinguish the hedges, white with hawthorn, the woods white with acacia flowers; into the open carriages penetrates a fragrance at once violent and suave, which the country exhales. And on all this white bloom of April, which the night little by little effaces, the train throws in pa.s.sing a furrow of joy, the refrain of some old song of Navarre, sung and resung infinitely by these girls and these boys, in the noise of the wheels and of the steam--

Erribiague! At the doors, this name, which makes all three start, is cried. The singing band had already stepped out, leaving them almost alone in the train, which had become silent. High mountains had made the night very thick--and the three were almost sleeping.

Astounded, they jump down, in the midst of an obscurity which even their smugglers' eyes cannot pierce. Stars above hardly shine, so enc.u.mbered is the sky by the overhanging summits.

"Where is the village?" they ask of a man who is there alone to receive them.

"Three miles from here on the right."

They begin to distinguish the gray trail of a road, suddenly lost in the heart of the shade. And in the grand silence, in the humid coolness of these valleys full of darkness, they walk without talking, their gaiety somewhat darkened by the black majesty of the peaks that guard the frontier here.

They come, at last, to an old, curved bridge over a torrent; then, to the sleeping village which no light indicates. And the inn, where shines a lamp, is near by, leaning on the mountain, its base in the roaring water.

The young men are led into their little rooms which have an air of cleanliness in spite of their extreme oldness: very low, crushed by their enormous beams, and bearing on their whitewashed walls images of the Christ, the Virgin and the saints.

Then, they go down to the supper tables, where are seated two or three old men in old time costume: white belt, black blouse, very short, with a thousand pleats. And Arrochkoa, vain of his parentage, hastens to ask them if they have not known Detcharry, who was here a brigadier of the customs eighteen years ago.

One of the old men scans his face:

"Ah! you are his son, I would bet! You look like him! Detcharry, do I remember Detcharry!--He took from me two hundred lots of merchandise!--That does not matter, here is my hand, even if you are his son!"

And the old defrauder, who was the chief of a great band, without rancor, with effusion, presses Arrochkoa's two hands.

Detcharry has remained famous at Erribiague for his stratagems, his ambuscades, his captures of contraband goods, out of which came, later, his income that Dolores and her children enjoy.