And then, he has felt to-night once more how uncertain
and changing is his only support in the world, the
support of that Arrochkoa on whom he should be able
to count as on a brother; audacity and success at the
ball-game will return that support to him, doubtless,
but a moment of weakness, nothing, may at any moment
make him lose it. Then it seems to him that the
hope of his life has no longer a basis, that all vanishes
like an unstable chimera.
It was New Year’s eve.
All the day had endured that sombre sky which is so
often the sky of the Basque country—and
which harmonizes well with the harsh mountains, with
the roar of the sea, wicked, in the depths of the Bay
of Biscay.
In the twilight of this last day of the year, at the
hour when the fires retain the men around the hearths
scattered in the country, at the hour when home is
desirable and delicious, Ramuntcho and his mother were
preparing to sit at the supper table, when there was
a discreet knock at the door.
The man who was coming to them from the night of the
exterior, at the first aspect seemed unknown to them;
only when he told his name (Jose Bidegarray, of Hasparitz)
they recalled the sailor who had gone several years
ago to America.
“Here,” he said, after accepting a chair,
“here is the message which I have been asked
to bring to you. Once, at Rosario in Uruguay,
as I was talking on the docks with several other Basque
immigrants there, a man, who might have been fifty
years old, having heard me speak of Etchezar, came
to me.
“‘Do you come from Etchezar?’ he
asked.
“‘No,’ I replied, ’but I come
from Hasparitz, which is not far from Etchezar.’
“Then he put questions to me about all your
family. I said:
“’The old people are dead, the elder brother
was killed in smuggling, the second has disappeared
in America; there remain only Franchita and her son,
Ramuntcho, a handsome young fellow who must be about
eighteen years old today.’
“He was thinking deeply while he was listening
to me.
“‘Well,’ he said at last, ’since
you are going back there, you will say good-day to
them for Ignacio.’
“And after offering a drink to me he went away—”
Franchita had risen, trembling and paler than ever.
Ignacio, the most adventurous in the family, her brother
who had disappeared for ten years without sending
any news!—
How was he? What face? Dressed how?—Did
he seem happy, at least, or was he poorly dressed?
“Oh!” replied the sailor, “he looked
well, in spite of his gray hair; as for his costume,
he appeared to be a man of means, with a beautiful
gold chain on his belt.”
And that was all he could say, with this naive and
rude good-day of which he was the bearer; on the subject
of the exile he knew no more and perhaps, until she
died, Franchita would learn nothing more of that brother,
almost non-existing, like a phantom.
