At the uncertain and somewhat icy dawn, he awoke in his little room
in the inn, with a persistent impression of his joy on the day before,
instead of the confused anguish which accompanied so often in him the
progressive return of his thoughts. Outside, were sounds of bells of
cattle starting for the pastures, of cows lowing to the rising sun, of
church bells,--and already, against the wall of the large square, the
sharp snap of the Basque pelota: all the noises of a Pyrenean village
beginning again its customary life for another day. And all this seemed
to Ramuntcho the early music of a day's festival.
At an early hour, they returned, Arrochkoa and he, to their little
wagon, and, crushing their caps against the wind, started their horse at
a gallop on the roads, powdered with white frost.
At Etchezar, where they arrived at noon, one would have thought it was
summer,--so beautiful was the sun.
In the little garden in front of her house, Gracieuse sat on a stone
bench:
“I have spoken to Arrochkoa!” said Ramuntcho to her, with a happy smile,
as soon as they were alone--“And he is entirely with us, you know!”
“Oh! that,” replied the little girl, without losing the sadly pensive
air which she had that morning, “oh, that!--my brother Arrochkoa, I
suspected it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know,
was made to please him, in his mind there is nothing superior to that--”
“But your mother, Gatchutcha, for several days has acted much better
to me, I think--For example, Sunday, you remember, when I asked you to
dance--”
“Oh! don't trust to that, my Ramuntcho! you mean day before yesterday,
after the high mass?--It was because she had just talked with the Mother
Superior, have you not noticed?--And the Mother Superior had insisted
that I should not dance with you on the square; then, only to be
contrary, you understand--But, don't rely on that, no--”
“Oh!” replied Ramuntcho, whose joy had already gone, “it is true that
they are not very friendly--”
“Friendly, mama and the Mother Superior?--Like a dog and a cat,
yes!--Since there was talk of my going into the convent, do you not
remember that story?”
He remembered very well, on the contrary, and it frightened him still.
The smiling and mysterious black nuns had tried once to attract to the
peace of their houses that little blonde head, exalted and willful,
possessed by an immense necessity to love and to be loved--
“Gatchutcha! you are always at the sisters', or with them; why so often?
explain this to me: they are very agreeable to you?”
“The sisters? no, my Ramuntcho, especially those of the present time,
who are new in the country and whom I hardly know--for they change them
often, you know--The sisters, no--I will even tell you that I am like
mama about the Mother Superior. I cannot endure her--”
“Well, then, what?--”
“No, but what will you? I like their songs, their chapels, their houses,
everything--I cannot explain that to you--Anyway, boys do not understand
anything--”
The little smile with which she said this was at once extinguished,
changed into a contemplative expression or an absent expression, which
Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her,
although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown mass
of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured
in melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which
the eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish--And during their silence
the angelus of noon began to ring, throwing more peace on the tranquil
village which was warming itself in the winter sun; then, bending their
heads, they made naively together their sign of the cross--
Then, when ceased to vibrate the holy bell, which in the Basque villages
interrupts life as in the Orient the song of the muezzins, Ramuntcho
decided to say:
“It frightens me, Gatchutcha, to see you in their company always--I
cannot but ask myself what ideas are in your head--”
Fixing on him the profound blackness of her eyes, she replied, in a tone
of soft reproach:
“It is you talking to me in that way, after what we have said to each
other Sunday night!--If I were to lose you, yes then, perhaps--surely,
even!--But until then, oh! no--oh! you may rest in peace, my
Ramuntcho--”
He bore for a long time her look, which little by little brought back to
him entire delicious confidence, and at last he smiled with a childish
smile:
“Forgive me,” he asked--“I say silly things often, you know!--”
“That, at least, is the truth!”
Then, one heard the sound of their laughter, which in two different
intonations had the same freshness and the same youthfulness. Ramuntcho,
with an habitual brusque and graceful gesture, changed his waistcoat
from one shoulder to the other, pulled his cap on the side, and, with no
other farewell than a sign of the head, they separated, for Dolores was
coming from the end of the road.