Ramuntcho Part 16

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 pa.s.sed 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--

CHAPTER VIII.

Eight days after.

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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.ses, 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 a.s.sembled, 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 ma.s.s of black dust, extinguis.h.i.+ng 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--

CHAPTER IX.

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 ba.s.s 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. Ama.s.sing 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 a.s.saults 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, a.s.sumes 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sages 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 rea.s.suring, 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 sh.o.r.es.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s; 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. Pa.s.sing 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!"