Ramuntcho | Page 3

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 as his friend Arrochkoa was beginning, in the same band as he; then, little by little, he had made a necessity of this continual adventure in dark nights; he deserted more and more, for this rude trade, the open air workshop of the carpenter where she had placed him as an apprentice to carve beams out of