The parting day, good-byes to friends here and there; joyful wishes of
former soldiers returned from the regiment. Since the morning, a sort of
intoxication or of fever, and, in front of him, everything unthought-of
in life.
Arrochkoa, very amiable on that last day, had offered to drive him in a
wagon to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and had arranged to go at sunset, in order
to arrive there just in time for the night train.
The night having come, inexorably, Franchita wished to accompany her son
to the square, where the Detcharry wagon was waiting for him, and here
her face, despite her will, was drawn by sorrow, while he straightened
himself, in order to preserve the swagger which becomes recruits going
to their regiment:
“Make a little place for me, Arrochkoa,” she said abruptly. “I will sit
between you to the chapel of Saint-Bitchentcho; I will return on foot--”
And they started at the setting sun, which, on them as on all things,
scattered the magnificence of its gold and of its red copper.
After a wood of oaks, the chapel of Saint-Bitchentcho passed, and the
mother wished to remain. From one turn to another, postponing every time
the great separation, she asked to be driven still farther.
“Mother, when we reach the top of the Issaritz slope you must go down!”
he said tenderly. “You hear, Arrochkoa, you will stop where I say; I do
not want mother to go further--”
At this Issaritz slope the horse had himself slackened his pace. The
mother and the son, their eyes burned with suppressed tears, held each
other's hands, and they were going slowly, slowly, in absolute silence,
as if it were a solemn ascent toward some Calvary.
At last, at the top of the slope, Arrochkoa, who seemed mute also,
pulled the reins slightly, with a simple little: “Ho!--” discreet as
a lugubrious signal which one hesitates to give--and the carriage was
stopped.
Then, without a word, Ramuntcho jumped to the road, helped his mother to
descend, gave a long kiss to her, then remounted briskly to his seat:
“Go, Arrochkoa, quickly, race, let us go!”
And in two seconds, in the rapid descent, he lost sight of the one whose
face at last was covered with tears.
Now they were going away from one another, Franchita and her son. In
different directions, they were walking on that Etchezar road,--in the
splendor of the setting sun, in a region of pink heather and of yellow
fern. She was going up slowly toward her home, meeting isolated groups
of farmers, flocks led through the golden evening by little shepherds
in Basque caps. And he was going down quickly, through valleys soon
darkened, toward the lowland where the railway train passes--