CHAPTER XV.
The next day, Friday, was organized the departure for this village where
the festival was to take place on the following Sunday. It is situated
very far, in a shady region, at the turn of a deep gorge, at the foot of
very high summits. Arrochkoa was born there and he had spent there the
first months of his life, in the time when his father lived there as a
brigadier of the French customs; but he had left too early to have
retained the least memory of it.
In the little Detcharry carriage, Gracieuse, Pantchita and, with a long
whip in her hand, Madame Dargaignaratz, her mother, who is to drive,
leave together at the noon angelus to go over there directly by the
mountain route.
Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino, who have to settle smuggling affairs
at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, go by a roundabout way which will bring them to
Erribiague at night, on the train which goes from Bayonne to Burguetta.
To-day, all three are heedless and happy; Basque caps never appeared
above more joyful faces.
The night is falling when they penetrate, by this little train of
Burguetta, into the quiet, interior country. The carriages are full of a
gay crowd, a spring evening crowd, returning from some festival, young
girls with silk kerchiefs around their necks, young men wearing woolen
caps; all are singing, laughing and kissing. In spite of the invading
obscurity one may still distinguish the hedges, white with hawthorn, the
woods white with acacia flowers; into the open carriages penetrates a
fragrance at once violent and suave, which the country exhales. And on
all this white bloom of April, which the night little by little effaces,
the train throws in passing a furrow of joy, the refrain of some old song
of Navarre, sung and resung infinitely by these girls and these boys, in
the noise of the wheels and of the steam--
Erribiague! At the doors, this name, which makes all three start, is
cried. The singing band had already stepped out, leaving them almost
alone in the train, which had become silent. High mountains had made the
night very thick--and the three were almost sleeping.
Astounded, they jump down, in the midst of an obscurity which even their
smugglers' eyes cannot pierce. Stars above hardly shine, so encumbered is
the sky by the overhanging summits.
"Where is the village?" they ask of a man who is there alone to receive
them.
"Three miles from here on the right."
They begin to distinguish the gray trail of a road, suddenly lost in the
heart of the shade. And in the grand silence, in the humid coolness of
these valleys full of darkness, they walk without talking, their gaiety
somewhat darkened by the black majesty of the peaks that guard the
frontier here.
They come, at last, to an old, curved bridge over a torrent; then, to the
sleeping village which no light indicates. And the inn, where shines a
lamp, is near by, leaning on the mountain, its base in the roaring water.
The young men are led into their little rooms which have an air of
cleanliness in spite of their extreme oldness: very low, crushed by their
enormous beams, and bearing on their whitewashed walls images of the
Christ, the Virgin and the saints.
Then, they go down to the supper tables, where are seated two or three
old men in old time costume: white belt, black blouse, very short, with a
thousand pleats. And Arrochkoa, vain of his parentage, hastens to ask
them if they have not known Detcharry, who was here a brigadier of the
customs eighteen years ago.
One of the old men scans his face:
"Ah! you are his son, I would bet! You look like him! Detcharry, do I
remember Detcharry!--He took from me two hundred lots of
merchandise!--That does not matter, here is my hand, even if you are his
son!"
And the old defrauder, who was the chief of a great band, without rancor,
with effusion, presses Arrochkoa's two hands.
Detcharry has remained famous at Erribiague for his stratagems, his
ambuscades, his captures of contraband goods, out of which came, later,
his income that Dolores and her children enjoy.
And Arrochkoa assumes a proud air, while Ramuntcho lowers his head,
feeling that he is of a lower condition, having no father.
"Are you not in the customhouse, as your deceased father was?" continued
the old man in a bantering tone.
"Oh, no, not exactly.--Quite the reverse, even--"
"Oh, well! I understand!--Then, shake once more--and it's a sort of
revenge on Detcharry for me, to know that his son has gone into smuggling
like us!--"
They send for cider and they drink together, while the old men tell again
the exploits and the tricks of former times, all the ancient tales of
nights in the mountains; they speak a variety of Basque different from
that of Etchezar, the village where the language is preserved more
clearly articulated, more incisive, more pure, perhaps. Ramuntcho and
Arrochkoa are surprised by this accent of the high land, which softens
the words and which chants them; those white-haired story tellers seem to
them almost strangers, whose talk is a series of monotonous stanzas,
repeated infinitely as in the antique songs expressive of sorrow. And, as
soon as they cease talking, the slight sounds in the sleep of the country
come from peaceful and fresh darkness. The crickets chirp; one hears the
torrent bubbling at the base of the inn; one hears the dripping of
springs from the terrible, overhanging summits, carpeted with thick
foliage.--It sleeps, the very small village, crouched and hidden in the
hollow of a ravine, and one has the impression that the night here is a
night blacker than elsewhere and more mysterious.
"In truth," concludes the old chief, "the customhouse and smuggling, at
bottom, resemble each other; it is a game where the smartest wins, is it
not? I will even say that, in my own opinion, an officer of customs,
clever and bold, a customs officer like your father, for example, is as
worthy as any of us!"
After this, the hostess having come to say that it was time to put out
the lamp--the last lamp still lit in the village--they go away, the old
defrauders. Ramuntcho and Arrochkoa go up to their rooms, lie down and
sleep, always in the chirp of the crickets, always in the sound of fresh
waters that run or that fall. And Ramuntcho, as in his house at Etchezar,
hears vaguely during his sleep the tinkling of bells, attached to the
necks of cows moving in a dream, under him, in the stable.
