Part 13 (2/2)

He runs up to his mother's room. She, from her bed having recognized her son's step, has straightened up, all stiff, all white in the twilight:

”Ramuntcho,” she says, in a veiled and aged voice.

She extends her arms to him and as soon as she holds him, enlaces and embraces him:

”Ramuntcho!--”

Then, having uttered this name without adding anything, she leans her head against his cheek, in the habitual movement of surrender, in the movement of the grand, tender feelings of other times.--He, then, perceives that his mother's face is burning against his. Through her s.h.i.+rt he feels the arms that surround him thin, feverish and hot. And for the first time, he is frightened; the notion that she is doubtless very ill comes to his mind, the possibility and the sudden terror that she might die--

”Oh, you are alone, mother! But who takes care of you? Who watches over you?”

”Who watches over me?--” she replies with her abrupt brusqueness, her ideas of a peasant suddenly returned. ”Spending money to nurse me, why should I do it?--The church woman or the old Doyamburu comes in the day-time to give me the things that I need, the things that the physician orders.--But--medicine!--Well! Light a lamp, my Ramuntcho!--I want to see you--and I cannot see you--”

And, when the clearness has come from a Spanish, smuggled match, she says in a tone of caress infinitely sweet, as one talks to a very little child whom one adores:

”Oh, your mustache! The long mustache which has come to you, my son!--I do not recognize my Ramuntcho!--Bring your lamp here, bring it here so that I can look at you!--”

He also sees her better now, under the new light of that lamp, while she admires him lovingly. And he is more frightened still, because the cheeks of his mother are so hollow, her hair is so whitened; even the expression of her eyes is changed and almost extinguished; on her face appears the sinister and irremediable labor of time, of suffering and of death--

And, now, two tears, rapid and heavy, fall from the eyes of Franchita, which widen, become living again, made young by desperate revolt and hatred.

”Oh, that woman,” she says suddenly. ”Oh, that Dolores!”

And her cry expresses and summarizes all her jealousy of thirty years'

standing, all her merciless rancor against that enemy of her childhood who has succeeded at last in breaking the life of her son.

A silence between them. He is seated, with head bent, near the bed, holding the poor, feverish hand which his mother has extended to him.

She, breathing more quickly, seems for a long while under the oppression of something which she hesitates to express:

”Tell me, my Ramuntcho!--I would like to ask you.--What do you intend to do, my son? What are your projects for the future?--”

”I do not know, mother.--I will think, I will see.--You ask--all at once.--We have time to talk of this, have we not?--To America, perhaps--”

”Oh, yes,” she says slowly, with the fear that was in her for days, ”to America--I suspected it. Oh, that is what you will do.--I knew it, I knew it--”

Her phrase ends in a groan and she joins her hands to try to pray--

CHAPTER III.

Ramuntcho, the next morning, was wandering in the village, under a sun which had pierced the clouds of the night, a sun as radiant as that of yesterday. Careful in his dress, the ends of his mustache turned up, proud in his demeanor, elegant, grave and handsome, he went at random, to see and to be seen, a little childishness mingling with his seriousness, a little pleasure with his distress. His mother had said to him:

”I am better, I a.s.sure you. To-day is Sunday; go, walk about I pray you--”

And pa.s.sers-by turned their heads to look at him, whispered the news: ”Franchita's son has returned home; he looks very well!”

A summer illusion persisted everywhere, with, however, the unfathomable melancholy of things tranquilly finis.h.i.+ng. Under that impa.s.sible radiance of sunlight, the Pyrenean fields seemed dull, all their plants, all their gra.s.ses were as if collected in one knows not what resignation weary of living, what expectation of death.

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