CHAPTER XXVII.
At twilight, Franchita was returning from escorting her son and was
trying to regain her habitual face, her air of haughty indifference, to
pass through the village.
But, when she arrived in front of the Detcharry house, she saw Dolores
who, instead of going in, as she intended, turned round and stood at the
door to see her pass. Something new, some sudden revelation must have
impelled her to take this attitude of aggressive defiance, this
expression of provoking irony,--and Franchita then stopped, she also,
while this phrase, almost involuntary, came through her set teeth:
"What is the matter with that woman? Why does she look at me so--"
"He will not come to-night, the lover, will he?" responded the enemy.
"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"
In truth, Dolores knew this since the morning: Gracieuse had told her,
since no care needed to be taken of the morrow; Gracieuse had told it
wearily, after talking uselessly of Uncle Ignacio, of Ramuntcho's future,
of all that would serve their cause--
"Then you knew that he came here to see your daughter?"
By a reminiscence of other times, they regained instinctively their
theeing and thouing of the sisters' school, those two women who for
nearly twenty years had not addressed a word to each other. Why they
detested each other, they hardly knew; so many times, it begins thus,
with nothings, with jealousies, with childish rivalries, and then, at
length, by dint of seeing each other every day without talking to each
other, by dint of casting at each other evil looks, it ferments till it
becomes implacable hatred.--Here they were, facing each other, and their
two voices trembled with rancor, with evil emotion:
"Well," replied the other, "you knew it before I did, I suppose, you who
are without shame and sent him to our house!--Anyway, one can understand
your easiness about means, after what you have done in the past--"
And, while Franchita, naturally much more dignified, remained mute,
terrified now by this unexpected dispute on the street, Dolores
continued:
"No. My daughter marrying that penniless bastard, think of it!--"
"Well, I have the idea that she will marry him, in spite of
everything!--Try to propose to her a man of your choice and see--"
Then, as if she disdained to continue, she went on her way, hearing
behind her the voice and the insults of the other pursuing her. All her
limbs trembled and she faltered at every step on her weakened legs.
At the house, now empty, what sadness she found!
The reality of this separation, which would last for three years,
appeared to her under an aspect frightfully new, as if she had hardly
been prepared for it--even as, on one's return from a graveyard, one
feels for the first time, in its frightful integrity, the absence of the
cherished dead--
And then, those words of insult in the street, those words the more
crushing because she was cruelly conscious of her sin with the stranger!
Instead of passing by, as she should have done, how had she found the
courage to stop before her enemy and, by a phrase murmured between her
teeth, provoke this odious dispute? How could she have descended to such
a thing, forgotten herself thus, she who, for fifteen years, had imposed
herself, little by little, on the respect of all by her demeanor, so
perfectly dignified. Oh, to have attracted and to have suffered the
insult of that Dolores,--whose past was irreproachable and who had, in
effect, the right to treat her with contempt! When she reflected, she
became frightened more and more by that sort of defiance of the future
which she had had the imprudence to hurl; it seemed to her that she had
compromised the cherished hope of her son in exasperating thus the hatred
of that woman.
Her son!--her Ramuntcho, whom a wagon was carrying away from her at this
hour in the summer night, was carrying away from her to a long distance,
to danger, to war!--She had assumed very heavy responsibilities in
directing his life with ideas of her own, with stubbornness, with pride,
with selfishness.--And now, this evening, she had, perhaps, attracted
misfortune to him, while he was going away so confident in the joy of his
return!--This would be doubtless for her the supreme chastisement; she
seemed to hear, in the air of the empty house, something like a threat of
this expiation, she felt its slow and sure approach.
Then, she said for him her prayers, from a heart harshly revolted,
because religion, as she understood it, remained without sweetness,
without consolation, without anything confidential and tender. Her
distress and her remorse were, at this moment, of so sombre a nature that
tears, benevolent tears, came no longer to her--
And he, at this same instant of the night, continued to descend, through
darker valleys, toward the lowland where the trains pass--carrying away
men to a long distance, changing and upsetting all things. For about an
hour he would continue to be on Basque soil; then, it would end. Along
his route, he met some oxcarts, of indolent demeanor, recalling the
tranquillities of the olden time; or vague human silhouettes, hailing him
with the traditional goodnight, the antique "Gaou-one," which to-morrow
he would cease to hear. And beyond, at his left, in the depth of a sort
of black abyss, was the profile of Spain, Spain which, for a very long
time doubtless, would trouble his nights no longer--
