CHAPTER VIII.
Eight days after.
At the fall of night, while a bad mountain squall twisted the branches of
the trees, Ramuntcho entered his deserted house where the gray of death
seemed scattered everywhere. A little of winter had passed over the
Basque land, a little frost, burning the annual flowers, ending the
illusory summer of December. In front of Franchita's door, the geraniums,
the dahlias had just died, and the path which led to the house, which no
one cared for, disappeared under the mass of yellow leaves.
For Ramuntcho, this first week of mourning had been occupied by the
thousand details that rock sorrow. Proud also, he had desired that all
should be done in a luxurious manner, according to the old usages of the
parish. His mother had been buried in a coffin of black velvet ornamented
with silver nails. Then, there had been mortuary masses, attended by the
neighbors in long capes, the women enveloped and hooded with black. And
all this represented a great deal of expense for him, who was poor.
Of the sum given formerly, at the time of his birth, by his unknown
father, little remained, the greater part having been lost through
unfaithful bankers. And now, he would have to quit the house, sell the
dear familiar furniture, realize the most money possible for the flight
to America--
This time, he returned home peculiarly disturbed, because he was to do a
thing, postponed from day to day, about which his conscience was not at
rest. He had already examined, picked out, all that belonged to his
mother; but the box containing her papers and her letters was still
intact--and to-night he would open it, perhaps.
He was not sure that death, as many persons think, gives the right to
those who remain to read letters, to penetrate the secrets of those who
have just gone. To burn without looking seemed to him more respectful,
more honest. But it was also to destroy forever the means of discovering
the one whose abandoned son he was.--Then what should he do?--And from
whom could he take advice, since he had no one in the world?
In the large chimney he lit the evening fire: then he got from an upper
room the disquieting box, placed it on a table near the fire, beside his
lamp, and sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost
sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone
could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness,
in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his
mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in the silence--
At last he opened the box--
His arteries beat heavily. Under the surrounding trees, in the obscure
solitude, he felt that forms were moving, to look at him through the
window-panes. He felt breaths strange to his own chest, as if some one
was breathing behind him. Shades assembled, interested in what he was
about to do.--The house was crowded with phantoms--
They were letters, preserved there for more than twenty years, all in the
same handwriting,--one of those handwritings, at once negligent and easy,
which men of the world have and which, in the eyes of the simple minded,
are an indication of great social difference. And at first, a vague dream
of protection, of elevation and of wealth diverted the course of his
thoughts.--He had no doubt about the hand which had written them, those
letters, and he held them tremblingly, not daring to read them, nor even
to look at the name with which they were signed.
One only had retained its envelope; then he read the address: "To Madame
Franchita Duval."--Oh! yes, he remembered having heard that his mother,
at the time of her disappearance from the Basque country, had taken that
name for a while.--Following this, was an indication of street and
number, which it pained him to read without his being able to understand
why, which made the blood come to his cheeks; then the name of that large
city, wherein he was born.--With fixed eyes, he stayed there, looking no
longer.--And suddenly, he had the horrible vision of that clandestine
establishment: in a suburban apartment, his mother, young, elegant,
mistress of some rich idler, or of some officer perhaps!--In the regiment
he had known some of these establishments, which doubtless are all alike,
and he had found in them for himself unexpected adventures.--A dizziness
seized him, to catch a glimpse thus under a new aspect of the one whom he
had venerated so much; the dear past faltered behind him, as if to fall
into a desolating abyss. And his despair turned into a sudden execration
for the one who had given life to him through a caprice--
Oh! to burn them, to burn them as quickly as possible, these letters of
misfortune!--And he began to throw them one by one into the fire, where
they were consumed by sudden flames.
A photograph, however, came out of them, fell on the floor; then he could
not refrain from taking it to the lamp to see it.
And his impression was heart-rending, during the few seconds when his
eyes met the half effaced ones of the yellowed image!--It resembled
him!--He found, with profound fear, something of himself in the unknown.
And instinctively he turned round, asking himself if the spectres in the
obscure corners had not come near behind him to look also.
It had hardly an appreciable duration, that silent interview, unique and
supreme, with his father. To the fire also, the image! He threw it, with
a gesture of anger and of terror, among the ashes of the last letters,
and all left soon only a little mass of black dust, extinguishing the
clear flames of the branches.
Finished! The box was empty. He threw on the floor his cap which gave him
a headache, and straightened himself, with perspiration on his forehead
and a buzzing at the temples.
Finished! Annihilated, all these memories of sin and of shame. And now
the things of life appeared to him to regain their former balance; he
regained his soft veneration for his mother, whose memory it seemed to
him he had purified, avenged also a little, by this disdainful execution.
Therefore, his destiny had been fixed to-night forever. He would remain
the Ramuntcho of other times, the "son of Franchita," player of pelota
and smuggler, free, freed from everything, owing nothing to and asking
nothing from anybody. And he felt serene, without remorse, without
fright, either, in this mortuary house, from which the shades had just
disappeared, peaceful now and friendly--
