“No, my Ramuntcho.—Oh, I am not angry, no—”
Then he begins again, quite frantic, and in this languid and warm air, they exchange for the first time in their lives, the long kisses of lovers—
The next day, Sunday, they went together religiously to hear one of the masses of the clear morning, in order to return to Etchezar the same day, immediately after the grand ball-game. It was this return, much more than the game, that interested Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, for it was their hope that Pantchika and her mother would remain at Erribiague while they would go, pressed against each other, in the very small carriage of the Detcharry family, under the indulgent and slight watchfulness of Arrochkoa, five or six hours of travel, all three alone, on the spring roads, under the new foliage, with amusing halts in unknown villages—
At eleven o'clock in the morning, on that beautiful Sunday, the square was encumbered by mountaineers come from all the summits, from all the savage, surrounding hamlets. It was an international match, three players of France against three of Spain, and, in the crowd of lookers-on, the Spanish Basques were more numerous; there were large sombreros, waistcoats and gaiters of the olden time.
The judges of the two nations, designated by chance, saluted each other with a superannuated politeness, and the match began, in profound silence, under an oppressive sun which annoyed the players, in spite of their caps, pulled down over their eyes.
Ramuntcho soon, and after him Arrochkoa, were acclaimed as victors. And people looked at the two little strangers, so attentive, in the first row, so pretty also with their elegant pink waists, and people said: “They are the sweethearts of the two good players.” Then Gracieuse, who heard everything, felt proud of Ramuntcho.
Noon. They had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat, under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the sun fell straight on the heavy caps of the men, on the bare heads of the women, heating the brains, increasing enthusiasm. The passionate crowd yelled, and the pelotas were flying, when, softly, the angelus began to ring. Then an old man, all wrinkled, all burned, who was waiting for this signal, put his mouth to the clarion—his old clarion of a Zouave in Africa—and rang the call to rest. And all, the women who were seated rose; all the caps fell, uncovering hair black, blonde or white, and the entire people made the sign of the cross, while the players, with chests and foreheads streaming with perspiration, stopped in the heat of the game and stood in meditation with heads bent—
At two o'clock, the game having come to an end gloriously for the French, Arrochkoa and Ramuntcho went in their little wagon, accompanied and acclaimed by all the young men of Erribiague; then Gracieuse sat between the two, and they started for their long, charming trip, their pockets full of the gold which they had earned, intoxicated by their joy, by the noise and by the sunlight.
And Ramuntcho, who retained the taste of yesterday's kiss, felt like shouting to them: “This little girl who is so pretty, as you see, is mine! Her lips are mine, I had them yesterday and will take them again to-night!”
They started and at once found silence again, in the shaded valleys bordered by foxglove and ferns—
To roll for hours on the small Pyrenean roads, to change places almost every day, to traverse the Basque country, to go from one village to another, called here by a festival, there by an adventure on the frontier—this was now Ramuntcho's life, the errant life which the ball-game made for him in the day-time and smuggling in the night-time.
Ascents, descents, in the midst of a monotonous display of verdure. Woods of oaks and of beeches, almost inviolate, and remaining as they were in the quiet centuries.—When he passed by some antique house, hidden in these solitudes of trees, he stopped to enjoy reading, above the door, the traditional legend inscribed in the granite: “Ave Maria! in the year 1600, or in the year 1500, such a one, from such a village, has built this house, to live in it with such a one, his wife.”
Very far from all human habitation, in a corner of a ravine, where it was warmer than elsewhere, sheltered from all breezes, they met a peddler of holy images, who was wiping his forehead. He had set down his basket, full of those colored prints with gilt frames that represent saints with Euskarian legends, and with which the Basques like to adorn their old rooms with white walls. And he was there, exhausted from fatigue and heat, as if wrecked in the ferns, at a turn of those little, mountain routes which run solitary under oaks.
Gracieuse came down and bought a Holy Virgin.
“Later,” she said to Ramuntcho, “we shall put it in our house as a souvenir—”
And the image, dazzling in its gold frame, went with them under the long, green vaults—
They went out of their path, for they wished to pass by a certain valley of the Cherry-trees, not in the hope of finding cherries in it, in April, but to show to Gracieuse the place, which is renowned in the entire Basque country.
It was almost five o'clock, the sun was already low, when they reached there. It was a shaded and calm region, where the spring twilight descended like a caress on the magnificence of the April foliage. The air was cool and suave, fragrant with hay, with acacia. Mountains—very high, especially toward the north, to make the climate there softer, surrounded it on all sides, investing it with a melancholy mystery of closed Edens.
And, when the cherry-trees appeared, they were a gay surprise, they were already red.
There was nobody on these paths, above which the grand cherry-trees extended like a roof, their branches dripping with coral.
Here and there were some summer houses, still uninhabited, some deserted gardens, invaded by the tall grass and the rose bushes.
Then, they made their horse walk; then, each one in his turn, transferring the reins and standing in the wagon, amused himself by eating these cherries from the trees while passing by them and without stopping. Afterward, they placed bouquets of them in their buttonholes, they culled branches of them to deck the horse's head, the harness and the lantern. The equipage seemed ornamented for some festival of youth and of joy—
“Now let us hurry,” said Gracieuse. “If only it be light enough, at least, when we reach Etchezar, for people to see us pass, ornamented as we are!”
As for Ramuntcho, he thought of the meeting place in the evening, of the kiss which he would dare to repeat, similar to that of yesterday, taking Gracieuse's lip between his lips like a cherry—
May! The grass ascends, ascends from everywhere like a sumptuous carpet, like silky velvet, emanating spontaneously from the earth.
In order to sprinkle this region of the Basques, which remains humid and green all summer like a sort of warmer Brittany, the errant vapors on the Bay of Biscay assemble all in this depth of gulf, stop at the Pyrenean summits and melt into rain. Long showers fall, which are somewhat deceptive, but after which the soil smells of new flowers and hay.
In the fields, along the roads, the grasses quickly thicken; all the ledges of the paths are as if padded by the magnificent thickness of the bent grass; everywhere is a profusion of gigantic Easter daisies, of buttercups with tall stems, and of very large, pink mallows like those of Algeria.
And, in the long, tepid twilights, pale iris or blue ashes in color, every night the bells of the month of Mary resound for a long time in the air, under the mass of the clouds hooked to the flanks of the mountains.
During the month of May, with the little group of black nuns, with discreet babble, with puerile and lifeless laughter, Gracieuse, at all hours, went to church. Hastening their steps under the frequent showers, they went together through the graveyard, full of roses; together, always together, the little clandestine betrothed, in light colored gowns, and the nuns, with long, mourning veils; during the day they brought bouquets of white flowers, daisies and sheafs of tall lilies; at night they came to sing, in the nave still more sonorous than in the day-time, the softly joyful canticles of the Virgin Mary:
“Ave, Queen of the Angels! Star of the Sea, ave!—”
Oh, the whiteness of the lilies lighted by the tapers, their white petals and their yellow pollen in gold dust! Oh, their fragrance in the gardens or in the church, during the twilights of spring!
And as soon as Gracieuse entered there, at night, in the dying ring of the bells—leaving the pale half-light of the graveyard full of roses for the starry night of the wax tapers which reigned already in the church, quitting the odor of hay and of roses for that of incense and of the tall, cut lilies, passing from the lukewarm and living air outside to that heavy and sepulchral cold that centuries amass in old sanctuaries—a particular calm came at once to her mind, a pacifying of all her desires, a renunciation of all her terrestrial joys. Then, when she had knelt, when the first canticles had taken their flight under the vault, infinitely sonorous, little by little she fell into an ecstasy, a state of dreaming, a visionary state which confused, white apparitions traversed: whiteness, whiteness everywhere; lilies, thousands of sheafs of lilies, and white wings, shivers of white wings of angels—
Oh! to remain for a long time in that state, to forget all things, and to feel herself pure, sanctified and immaculate, under that glance, ineffably fascinating and soft, under that glance, irresistibly appealing, which the Holy Virgin, in long white vestments, let fall from the height of the tabernacle—!
But, when she went outside, when the night of spring re-enveloped her with tepid breezes of life, the memory of the meeting which she had promised the day before, the day before as well as every day, chased like the wind of a storm the visions of the church. In the expectation of Ramuntcho, in the expectation of the odor of his hair, of the touch of his mustache, of the taste of his lips, she felt near faltering, like one wounded, among the strange companions who accompanied her, among the peaceful and spectral black nuns.
And when the hour had come, in spite of all her resolutions she was there, anxious and ardent, listening to the least noise, her heart beating if a branch of the garden moved in the night—tortured by the least tardiness of the beloved one.
He came always with his same silent step of a rover at night, his waistcoat on his shoulder, with as much precaution and artifice as for the most dangerous act of smuggling.
In the rainy nights, so frequent in the Basque spring-time, she remained in her room on the first floor, and he sat on the sill of the open window, not trying to go in, not having the permission to do so. And they stayed there, she inside, he outside, their arms laced, their heads touching each other, the cheek of one resting on the cheek of the other.
When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words, occurred on the garden bench. Between them there were not even those continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather silences. At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard. And then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk? What could they have said which would have been better than the long contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each other?
The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot themselves more, their confidence having returned.—Nobody frightened them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho—In spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them?—
Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!—Theirs was a real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone of a crystal bell and of a child's throat. Something similar might be produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them, the scales of an organ with a celestial voice. There were tree-toads everywhere, responding to one another in different tones; even those which were under their bench, close by them, reassured by their immobility, sang also from time to time; then that little sound, brusque and soft, so near, made them start and smile. All the exquisite, surrounding obscurity was animated by that music, which continued in the distance, in the mystery of the leaves and of the stones, in the depths of all the small, black holes of rocks or walls; it seemed like chivies in miniature, or rather, a sort of frail concert somewhat mocking—oh! not very mocking, and without any maliciousness—led timidly by inoffensive gnomes. And this made the night more living and more loving—
After the intoxicated audacities of the first nights, fright took a stronger hold of them, and, when one of them had something special to say, one led the other by the hand without talking; this meant that they had to walk softly, softly, like marauding cats, to an alley behind the house where they could talk without fear.
“Where shall we live, Gracieuse?” asked Ramuntcho one night.
“At your house, I had thought.”
“Ah! yes, so thought I—only I thought it would make you sad to be so far from the parish, from the church and the square—”
“Oh—with you, I could find anything sad?—”
“Then, we would send away those who live on the first floor and take the large room which opens on the road to Hasparitz—”
It was an increased joy for him to know that Gracieuse would accept his house, to be sure that she would bring the radiance of her presence into that old, beloved home, and that they would make their nest there for life—
Here come the long, pale twilights of June, somewhat veiled like those of May, less uncertain, however, and more tepid still. In the gardens, the rose-laurel which is beginning to bloom in profusion is becoming already magnificently pink. At the end of each work day, the good folks sit outside, in front of their doors, to look at the night falling—the night which soon confuses, under the vaults of the plane-trees, their groups assembled for benevolent rest. And a tranquil melancholy descends over villages, in those interminable evenings—
For Ramuntcho, this is the epoch when smuggling becomes a trade almost without trouble, with charming hours, marching toward summits through spring clouds; crossing ravines, wandering in lands of springs and of wild fig-trees; sleeping, waiting for the agreed hour, with carbineers who are accomplices, on carpets of mint and pinks.—The good odor of plants impregnated his clothes, his waistcoat which he never wore, but used as a pillow or a blanket—and Gracieuse would say to him at night: “I know where you went last night, for you smell of mint of the mountain above Mendizpi”—or: “You smell of absinthe of the Subernoa morass.”
Gracieuse regretted the month of Mary, the offices of the Virgin in the nave, decked with white flowers. In the twilights without rain, with the sisters and some older pupils of their class, she sat under the porch of the church, against the low wall of the graveyard from which the view plunges into the valleys beneath. There they talked, or played the childish games in which nuns indulge.
There were also long and strange meditations, meditations to which the fall of day, the proximity of the church, of the tombs and of their flowers, gave soon a serenity detached from material things and as if free from all alliance with the senses. In her first mystic dreams as a little girl,—inspired especially by the pompous rites of the cult, by the voice of the organ, the white bouquets, the thousand flames of the wax tapers—only images appeared to her—very radiant images, it is true: altars resting on mists, golden tabernacles where music vibrated and where fell grand flights of angels. But those visions gave place now to ideas: she caught a glimpse of that peace and that supreme renunciation which the certainty of an endless celestial life gives; she conceived, in a manner more elevated than formerly, the melancholy joy of abandoning everything in order to become an impersonal part of that entirety of nuns, white, or blue, or black, who, from the innumerable convents of earth, make ascend toward heaven an immense and perpetual intercession for the sins of the world—
However, as soon as night had fallen quite, the course of her thoughts came down every evening fatally toward intoxicating and mortal things. Her wait, her feverish wait, began, more impatient from moment to moment. She felt anxious that her cold companions with black veils should return into the sepulchre of their convent and that she should be alone in her room, free at last, in the house fallen asleep, ready to open her window and listen to the slight noise of Ramuntcho's footsteps.
The kiss of lovers, the kiss on the lips, was now a thing possessed and of which they had not the strength to deprive themselves. And they prolonged it a great deal, not wishing, through charming scruples, to accord more to each other.
Anyway, if the intoxication which they gave to each other thus was a little too carnal, there was between them that absolute tenderness, infinite, unique, by which all things are elevated and purified.
Ramuntcho, that evening, had come to the meeting place earlier than usual—with more hesitation also in his walk, for one risks, on these June evenings, to find girls belated along the paths, or boys behind the hedges on love expeditions.
And by chance she was already alone, looking outside, without waiting for him, however.
At once she noticed his agitated demeanor and guessed that something new had happened. Not daring to come too near, he made a sign to her to come quickly, jump over the window-sill, and meet him in the obscure alley where they talked without fear. Then, as soon as she was near him, in the nocturnal shade of the trees, he put his arm around her waist and announced to her, brusquely, the great piece of news which, since the morning, troubled his young head and that of Franchita, his mother.
“Uncle Ignacio has written.”
“True? Uncle Ignacio!”
She knew that that adventurous uncle, that American uncle, who had disappeared for so many years, had never thought until now of sending more than a strange good-day by a passing sailor.
“Yes! And he says that he has property there, which requires attention, large prairies, herds of horses; that he has no children, that if I wish to go and live near him with a gentle Basque girl married to me here, he would be glad to adopt both of us.—Oh! I think mother will come also.—So, if you wish.—We could marry now.—You know they marry people as young as we, it is allowed.—Now that I am to be adopted by my uncle and I shall have a real situation in life, your mother will consent, I think.—And as for military service, we shall not care for that, shall we?—”
They sat on the mossy rocks, their heads somewhat dizzy, troubled by the approach and the unforeseen temptation of happiness. So, it would not be in an uncertain future, after his term as a soldier, it would be almost at once; in two months, in one month, perhaps, that communion of their minds and of their flesh, so ardently desired and now so forbidden, might be accomplished without sin, honestly in the eyes of all, permitted and blessed.—Oh! they had never looked at this so closely.—And they pressed against each other their foreheads, made heavy by too many thoughts, fatigued suddenly by a sort of too delicious delirium.—Around them, the odor of the flowers of June ascended from the earth, filling the night with an immense suavity. And, as if there were not enough scattered fragrance, the jessamine, the honeysuckle on the walls exhaled from moment to moment, in intermittent puffs, the excess of their perfume; one would have thought that hands swung in silence censers in the darkness, for some hidden festival, for some enchantment magnificent and secret.
There are often and everywhere very mysterious enchantments like this, emanating from nature itself, commanded by one knows not what sovereign will with unfathomable designs, to deceive us all, on the road to death—
“You do not reply, Gracieuse, you say nothing to me—”
He could see that she was intoxicated also, like him, and yet he divined by her manner of remaining mute so long, that shadows were amassing over his charming and beautiful dream.
“But,” she asked at last, “your naturalization papers. You have received them, have you not?”
“Yes, they arrived last week, you know very well, and it was you who said that I should apply for them—”
“Then you are a Frenchman to-day.—Then, if you do not do your military service you are a deserter.”
“Yes.—A deserter, no; but refractory, I think it is called.—It isn't better, since one cannot come back.—I was not thinking of that—”
How she was tortured now to have caused this thought, to have impelled him herself to this act which made soar over his hardly seen joy a threat so black! Oh, a deserter, he, her Ramuntcho! That is, banished forever from the dear, Basque country!—And this departure for America becomes suddenly frightfully grave, solemn, similar to a death, since he could not possibly return!—Then, what was there to be done?—
Now they were anxious and mute, each one preferring to submit to the will of the other, and waiting, with equal fright, for the decision which should be taken, to go or to remain. From the depths of their two young hearts ascended, little by little, a similar distress, poisoning the happiness offered over there, in that America from which they would never return.—And the little, nocturnal censers of jessamine, of honeysuckle, of linden, continued to throw into the air exquisite puffs to intoxicate them; the darkness that enveloped them seemed more and more caressing and soft; in the silence of the village and of the country, the tree-toads gave, from moment to moment, their little flute-note, which seemed a very discreet love call, under the velvet of the moss; and, through the black lace of the foliage, in the serenity of a June sky which one thought forever unalterable, they saw scintillate, like a simple and gentle dust of phosphorus, the terrifying multitude of the worlds.
The curfew began to ring, however, at the church. The sound of that bell, at night especially, was for them something unique on earth. At this moment, it was something like a voice bringing, in their indecision, its advice, its counsel, decisive and tender. Mute still, they listened to it with an increasing emotion, of an intensity till then unknown, the brown head of the one leaning on the brown head of the other. It said, the advising voice, the dear, protecting voice: “No, do not go forever; the far-off lands are made for the time of youth; but you must be able to return to Etchezar: it is here that you must grow old and die; nowhere in the world could you sleep as in this graveyard around the church, where one may, even when lying under the earth, hear me ring again—” They yielded more and more to the voice of the bell, the two children whose minds were religious and primitive. And Ramuntcho felt on his cheek a tear of Gracieuse:
“No,” he said at last, “I will not desert; I think that I would not have the courage to do it—”
“I thought the same thing as you, my Ramuntcho,” she said. “No, let us not do that. I was waiting for you to say it—”
Then he realized that he also was crying, like her—
The die was cast, they would permit to pass by happiness which was within their reach, almost under their hands; they would postpone everything to a future uncertain and so far off—!
And now, in the sadness, in the meditation of the great decision which they had taken, they communicated to each other what seemed best for them to do:
“We might,” she said, “write a pretty letter to your uncle Ignacio; write to him that you accept, that you will come with a great deal of pleasure immediately after your military service; you might even add, if you wish, that the one who is engaged to you thanks him and will be ready to follow you; but that decidedly you cannot desert.”
“And why should you not talk to your mother now, Gatchutcha, only to know what she would think?—Because now, you understand, I am not as I was, an abandoned child—” Slight steps behind them, in the path—and above the wall, the silhouette of a young man who had come on the tips of his sandals, as if to spy upon them!
“Go, escape, my Ramuntcho, we will meet to-morrow evening!—”
In half a second, there was nobody: he was hidden in a bush, she had fled into her room.
Ended was their grave interview! Ended until when? Until to-morrow or until always?—On their farewells, abrupt or prolonged, frightened or peaceful, every time, every night, weighed the same uncertainty of their meeting again—
The bell of Etchezar, the same dear, old bell, that of the tranquil curfew, that of the festivals and that of the agonies, rang joyously in the beautiful sun of June. The village was decorated with white cloths, white embroideries, and the procession of the Fete-Dieu passed slowly, on a green strewing of fennel seed and of reeds cut from the marshes.
The mountains seemed near and sombre, somewhat ferocious in their brown tones, above this white parade of little girls marching on a carpet of cut leaves and grass.
All the old banners of the church were there, illuminated by that sun which they had known for centuries but which they see only once or twice a year, on the consecrated days.
The large one, that of the Virgin, in white silk embroidered with pale gold, was borne by Gracieuse, who walked in white dress, her eyes lost in a mystic dream. Behind the young girls, came the women, all the women of the village, wearing black veils, including Dolores and Franchita, the two enemies. Men, numerous enough, closed this cortege, tapers in their hands, heads uncovered—but there were especially gray hairs, faces with expressions vanquished and resigned, heads of old men.
Gracieuse, holding high the banner of the Virgin, became at this hour one of the Illuminati; she felt as if she were marching, as after death, toward the celestial tabernacles. And when, at instants, the reminiscence of Ramuntcho's lips traversed her dream, she had the impression, in the midst of all this white, of a sharp stain, delicious still. Truly, as her thoughts became more elevated from day to day, what brought her back to him was less her senses, capable in her of being tamed, than true, profound tenderness, the one which resists time and deceptions of the flesh. And this tenderness was augmented by the fact that Ramuntcho was less fortunate than she and more abandoned in life, having had no father—
“Well, Gatchutcha, you have at last spoken to your mother of Uncle Ignacio?” asked Ramuntcho, very late, the same night, in the alley of the garden, under rays of the moon.
“Not yet, I have not dared.—How could I explain that I know all these things, since I am supposed not to talk with you ever, and she has forbidden me to do so?—Think, if I were to make her suspicious!—There would be an end to everything, we could not see each other again! I would like better to wait until you left the country, then all would be indifferent to me—”
“It is true!—let us wait, since I am to go.”
He was going away, and already they could count the evenings which would be left to them.
Now that they had permitted their immediate happiness to escape, the happiness offered to them in the prairies of America, it seemed preferable to them to hasten the departure of Ramuntcho for the army, in order that he might return sooner. So they had decided that he would enlist in the naval infantry, the only part of the service where one may elect to serve for a period as short as three years. And as they needed, in order to be certain not to be lacking in courage, a precise epoch, considered for a long time in advance, they had fixed the end of September, after the grand series of ball-games.
They contemplated this separation of three years duration with an absolute confidence in the future, so sure they thought they were of each other, and of themselves, and of their imperishable love. But it was, however, an expectation which already filled their hearts strangely; it threw an unforeseen melancholy over things which were ordinarily the most indifferent, on the flight of days, on the least indications of the next season, on the coming into life of certain plants, on the coming into bloom of certain species of flowers, on all that presaged the arrival and the rapid march of their last summer.
Already the fires of St. John have flamed, joyful and red in a clear, blue night, and the Spanish mountain seemed to burn, that night, like a sheaf of straw, so many were the bonfires lighted on its sides. It has begun, the season of light, of heat and of storms, at the end of which Ramuntcho must depart.
And the saps, which in the spring went up so quickly, become languid already in the complete development of the verdure, in the wide bloom of the flowers. And the sun, more and more burning, overheats all the heads covered with Basque caps, excites ardor and passion, causes to rise everywhere, in those Basque villages, ferments of noisy agitation and of pleasure. While, in Spain, begin the grand bull-fights, this is here the epoch of so many ball-games, of so many fandangoes danced in the evening, of so much pining of lovers in the tepid voluptuousness of nights—!
Soon will come the warm splendor of the southern July. The Bay of Biscay has become very blue and the Cantabric coast has for a time put on its fallow colors of Morocco or of Algeria.
With the heavy rains alternates the marvellously beautiful weather which gives to the air absolute limpidities. And there are days also when somewhat distant things are as if eaten by light, powdered with sun dust; then, above the woods and the village of Etchezar, the Gizune, very pointed, becomes more vaporous and more high, and, on the sky, float, to make it appear bluer, very small clouds of a gilded white with a little mother-of-pearl gray in their shades.
And the springs run thinner and rarer under the thickness of the ferns, and, along the routes, go more slowly, driven by half nude men, the ox-carts which a swarm of flies surrounds.
At this season, Ramuntcho, in the day-time, lived his agitated life of a pelotari, running with Arrochkoa from village to village, to organize ball-games and play them.
But, in his eyes, evenings alone existed.
Evenings!—In the odorous and warm darkness of the garden, to be seated very near Gracieuse; to put his arm around her, little by little to draw her to him and hold her against his breast, and remain thus for a long time without saying anything, his chin resting on her hair, breathing the young and healthy scent of her body.
He enervated himself dangerously, Ramuntcho, in these prolonged contacts which she did not prohibit. Anyway, he divined her surrendered enough to him now, and confident enough, to permit everything; but he did not wish to attempt supreme communion, through childish reserve, through respect for his betrothed, through excess and profoundness of love. And it happened to him at times to rise abruptly, to stretch himself—in the manner of a cat, she said, as formerly at Erribiague—when he felt a dangerous thrill and a more imperious temptation to leave life with her in a moment of ineffable death—
Franchita, however, was astonished by the unexplained attitude of her son, who, apparently, never saw Gracieuse and yet never talked of her. Then, while was amassing in her the sadness of his coming departure for military service, she observed him, with her peasant's patience and muteness.
One evening, one of the last evenings, as he was going away, mysterious and in haste, long before the hour of the nocturnal contraband, she straightened before him, her eyes fixed on his:
“Where are you going, my son?”
And seeing him turn his head, blushing and embarrassed, she acquired a sudden certainty:
“It is well, now I know.—Oh! I know!—”
She was moved even more than he, at her discovery of this great secret.—The idea had not even come to her that it was not Gracieuse, that it might be another girl. She was too far-seeing. And her scruples as a Christian were awakened, her conscience was frightened at the evil that they might have done, as rose from the depth of her heart a sentiment of which she was ashamed as if it were a crime, a sort of savage joy.—For, in fine—if their carnal union was accomplished, the future of her son was assured.—She knew her Ramuntcho well enough to know that he would not change his mind and that Gracieuse would never be abandoned by him.
The silence between them was prolonged, she standing before him, barring the way:
“And what have you done together?” she decided to ask. “Tell me the truth, Ramuntcho, what wrong have you done?—”
“What wrong?—Oh! nothing, mother, nothing wrong, I swear to you—”
He replied this without irritation at being questioned, and bearing the look of his mother with eyes of frankness. It was true, and she believed him.
But, as she stayed in front of him, her hand on the door-latch, he said, with dumb violence:
“You are not going to prevent me from going to her, since I shall leave in three days!”
Then, in presence of this young will in revolt, the mother, enclosing in herself the tumult of her contradictory thoughts, lowered her head and, without a word, stood aside to let him pass.
It was their last evening, for, the day before yesterday, at the Mayor's office of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, he had, with a hand trembling a little, signed his engagement for three years in the Second naval infantry, whose garrison was a military port of the North.
It was their last evening,—and they had said that they would make it longer than usual,—it would last till midnight, Gracieuse had decided: midnight, which in the villages is an unseasonable and black hour, an hour after which, she did not know why, all seemed to the little betrothed graver and guiltier.
In spite of the ardent desire of their senses, the idea had not come to one nor to the other that, during this last meeting, under the oppression of parting, something more might be attempted.
On the contrary, at the instant so full of concentration of their farewell, they felt more chaste still, so eternal was their love.
Less prudent, however, since they had not to care for the morrow, they dared to talk there, on their lovers' bench, as they had never done before. They talked of the future, of a future which was for them very distant, because, at their age, three years seem infinite.
In three years, at his return, she would be twenty; then, if her mother persisted to refuse in an absolute manner, at the end of a year she would use her right of majority, it was between them an agreed and a sworn thing.
The means of correspondence, during the long absence of Ramuntcho, preoccupied them a great deal: between them, everything was so complicated by obstacles and secrets!—Arrochkoa, their only possible intermediary, had promised his help; but he was so changeable, so uncertain!—Oh, if he were to fail!—And then, would he consent to send sealed letters?—If he did not consent there would be no pleasure in writing.—In our time, when communications are easy and constant, there are no more of these complete separations similar to the one which theirs would be; they were to say to each other a very solemn farewell, like the one which the lovers of other days said, the lovers of the days when there were lands without post-offices, and distances that frightened one. The fortunate time when they should see each other again appeared to them situated far off, far off, in the depths of duration; yet, because of the faith which they had in each other, they expected this with a tranquil assurance, as the faithful expect celestial life.
But the least things of their last evening acquired in their minds a singular importance; as this farewell came near, all grew and was exaggerated for them, as happens in the expectation of death. The slight sounds and the aspects of the night seemed to them particular and, in spite of them, were engraving themselves forever in their memory. The song of the crickets had a characteristic which it seemed to them they had never heard before. In the nocturnal sonority, the barking of a watch-dog, coming from some distant farm, made them shiver with a melancholy fright. And Ramuntcho was to carry with him in his exile, to preserve later with a desolate attachment, a certain stem of grass plucked from the garden negligently and with which he had played unconsciously the whole evening.
A phase of their life finished with that day: a lapse of time had occurred, their childhood had passed—
Of recommendations, they had none very long to exchange, so intensely was each one sure of what the other might do during the separation. They had less to say to each other than other engaged people have, because they knew mutually their most intimate thoughts. After the first hour of conversation, they remained hand in hand in grave silence, while were consumed the inexorable minutes of the end.
At midnight, she wished him to go, as she had decided in advance, in her little thoughtful and obstinate head. Therefore, after having embraced each other for a long time, they quitted each other, as if the separation were, at this precise minute, an ineluctable thing which it was impossible to retard. And while she returned to her room with sobs that he heard, he scaled over the wall and, in coming out of the darkness of the foliage, found himself on the deserted road, white with lunar rays. At this first separation, he suffered less than she, because he was going, because it was he that the morrow, full of uncertainty, awaited. While he walked on the road, powdered and clear, the powerful charm of change, of travel, dulled his sensitiveness; almost without any precise thought, he looked at his shadow, which the moon made clear and harsh, marching in front of him. And the great Gizune dominated impassibly everything, with its cold and spectral air, in all this white radiance of midnight.