Ramuntcho | Page 3

the night and the rain, began again
in the depth of his double being to feel the anxiety of inexplicable
reminiscences.
At last he arrived in front of his house,--which was very elevated, in the
Basque fashion, with old wooden balconies under narrow windows, the
glass of which threw into the night the light of a lamp. As he came near
the entrance, the light noise of his walk became feebler in the thickness
of the dead leaves: the leaves of those plane-trees shaped like vaults
which, according to the usage of the land, form a sort of atrium before
each dwelling.
She recognized from afar the steps of her son, the serious Franchita,
pale and straight in her black clothes,--the one who formerly had loved
and followed the stranger; then, who, feeling her desertion approaching,

had returned courageously to the village in order to inhabit alone the
dilapidated house of her deceased parents. Rather than to live in the
vast city, and to be troublesome and a solicitor there, she had quickly
resolved to depart, to renounce everything, to make a simple Basque
peasant of that little Ramuntcho, who, at his entrance in life, had worn
gowns embroidered in white silk.
It was fifteen years ago, fifteen years, when she returned, clandestinely,
at a fall of night similar to this one. In the first days of this return, dumb
and haughty to her former companions from fear of their disdain, she
would go out only to go to church, her black cloth mantilla lowered on
her eyes. Then, at length, when curiosity was appeased, she had
returned to her habits, so valiantly and so irreproachably that all had
forgiven her.
To greet and embrace her son she smiled with joy and tenderness, but,
silent by nature and reserved as both were, they said to each other only
what it was useful to say.
He sat at his accustomed place to eat the soup and the smoking dish
which she served to him without speaking. The room, carefully
kalsomined, was made gay by the sudden light of a flame of branches
in the tall and wide chimney ornamented with a festoon of white calico.
In frames, hooked in good order, there were images of Ramuntcho's
first communion and different figures of saints with Basque legends;
then the Virgin of Pilar, the Virgin of Anguish, and rosaries, and
blessed palms. The kitchen utensils shone, in a line on shelves sealed to
the walls; every shelf ornamented with one of those pink paper frills,
cut in designs, which are manufactured in Spain and on which are
printed, invariably, series of personages dancing with castanets, or
scenes in the lives of the toreadors. In this white interior, before this
joyful and clear chimney, one felt an impression of home, a tranquil
welfare, which was augmented by the notion of the vast, wet,
surrounding night, of the grand darkness of the valleys, of the
mountains and of the woods.
Franchita, as every evening, looked long at her son, looked at him
embellishing and growing, taking more and more an air of decision and

of force, as his brown mustache was more and more marked above his
fresh lips.
When he had supped, eaten with his young mountaineer's appetite
several slices of bread and drunk two glasses of cider, he rose, saying:
"I am going to sleep, for we have to work tonight."
"Ah!" exclaimed the mother, "and when are you to get up?"
"At one o'clock, as soon as the moon sets. They will whistle under the
window."
"What is it?"
"Bundles of silk and bundles of velvet."
"With whom are you going?"
"The same as usual: Arrochkoa, Florentino and the Iragola brothers. It
is, as it was the other night, for Itchoua, with whom I have just made an
engagement. Good-night, mother--Oh, we shall not be out late and, sure,
I will be back before mass."
Then, Franchita leaned her head on the solid shoulder of her son, in a
coaxing humor almost infantile, different suddenly from her habitual
manner, and, her cheek against his, she remained tenderly leaning, as if
to say in a confident abandonment of her will: "I am still troubled a
little by those night undertakings; but, when I reflect, what you wish is
always well; I am dependent on you, and you are everything--"
On the shoulder of the stranger, formerly, it was her custom to lean and
to abandon herself thus, in the time when she loved him.
When Ramuntcho had gone to his little room, she stayed thinking for a
longer time than usual before resuming her needlework. So, it became
decidedly his trade, this night work in which one risks receiving the
bullets of Spain's carbineers!--He had begun for amusement, in bravado,
like most of them, and