There was a grand ball-game arranged for the following Sunday at
Erribiague, a far-distant village, near the tall mountains. Ramuntcho,
Arrochkoa and Florentino were to play against three celebrated ones
of Spain; they were to practice that evening, limber their arms on the
square of Etchezar, and Gracieuse, with other little girls of her age,
had taken seats on the granite benches to look at them. The girls, all
pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance
with the most recent vagary of the season. And they were laughing, these
little girls, they were laughing! They were laughing because they had
begun laughing, without knowing why. Nothing, a word of their old Basque
tongue, without any appropriateness, by one of them, and there they were
all in spasms of laughter.--This country is truly one of the corners of
the world where the laughter of girls breaks out most easily, ringing
like clear crystal, ringing youthfulness and fresh throats.
Arrochkoa had been there for a long time, with the wicker glove at his
arm, throwing alone the pelota which, from time to time, children picked
up for him. But Ramuntcho, Florentino, what were they thinking of?
How late they were! They came at last, their foreheads wet with
perspiration, their walk heavy and embarrassed. And, while the little,
laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when
they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys,
these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic
sound.--Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from
Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little
King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account,
they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this
debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in
different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They
were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of
copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the
benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count
it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing a little,
they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than
ordinarily, their overload being disposed of.
Except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats
after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on
the lowest one of these deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of
which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April. Calico
gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this
solemnly sad place. Beside Gracieuse was Pantchika Dargaignaratz,
another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to Arrochkoa and would
soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in
the army. And, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite
rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their
chanted accent, with ends of syllables in “rra” or in “rrik,” making the
“r's” roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows
were beating their wings in their mouths.
They also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under
the pretext of resting, to sit among the girls. These troubled and
intimidated them three times more than the public, because they mocked
so!
Ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed something which he would not
have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to
go to that festival of Erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that
country, which she did not know. It was agreed that she should go in a
carriage, with Pantchika and Madame Dargaignaratz; and they would meet
over there; perhaps it would be possible to return all together.
During the two weeks since their evening meetings had begun, this was
the first time when he had had the opportunity to talk to her thus in
the day-time and before the others--and their manner was different, more
ceremonious apparently, with, beneath it, a very suave mystery. It was
a long time, also, since he had seen her so well and so near in the
daylight: she was growing more beautiful that spring; she was pretty,
pretty!--Her bust had become rounder and her waist thinner; her manner
gained, day by day, an elegant suppleness. She resembled her brother
still, she had the same regular features, the same perfect oval of the
face; but the difference in their eyes went on increasing: while those
of Arrochkoa, of a blue green shade which seemed fleeting, avoided
the glances of others, hers, on the contrary, black pupils and lashes,
dilated themselves to look at you fixedly. Ramuntcho had seen eyes like
these in no other person; he adored the frank tenderness of them and
also their anxious and profound questioning. Long before he had become a
man and accessible to the trickery of the senses, those eyes had caught,
of his little, childish mind, all that was best and purest in it.--And
now around such eyes, the grand Transformer, enigmatic and sovereign,
had placed a beauty of flesh which irresistibly called his flesh to a
supreme communion.--
They were made very inattentive to their game, the players, by the group
of little girls, of white and pink waists, and they laughed themselves
at not playing so well as usual. Above them, occupying only a small
corner of the old, granite amphitheatre, ascended rows of empty benches
in ruins; then, the houses of Etchezar, so peacefully isolated from the
rest of the world; then, in fine, the obscure, encumbering mass of the
Gizune, filling up the sky and mingling with thick clouds asleep on
its sides. Clouds immovable, inoffensive and without a threat of rain;
clouds of spring, which were of a turtle-dove color and which seemed
tepid, like the air of that evening. And, in a rent, much less elevated
than the summit predominating over this entire site, a round moon began
to silver as the day declined.
They played, in the beautiful twilight, until the hour when the first
bats appeared, until the hour when the flying pelota could hardly be
seen in the air. Perhaps they felt, unconsciously, that the moment was
rare and might not be regained: then, as much as possible, they should
prolong it--
And at last, they went together to take to Itchoua his Spanish coins. In
two lots, they had been placed in two thick, reddish towels which a boy
and a girl held at each end, and they walked in cadence, singing the
tune of “The Linen Weaver.”
How long, clear and soft was that twilight of April!--There were roses
and all sorts of flowers in front of the walls of the venerable, white
houses with brown or green blinds. Jessamine, honeysuckle and linden
filled the air with fragrance. For Gracieuse and Ramuntcho, it was
one of those exquisite hours which later, in the anguishing sadness
of awakenings, one recalls with a regret at once heart-breaking and
charming.
Oh! who shall say why there are on earth evenings of spring, and eyes
so pretty to look at, and smiles of young girls, and breaths of perfumes
which gardens exhale when the nights of April fall, and all this
delicious cajoling of life, since it is all to end ironically in
separation, in decrepitude and in death--