About halfway between the unimportant little town of Hasparren and the yet smaller and less important hamlet of Isturitz you may, even to-day, see the ruined walls of the Château de Gravamont. To tell the truth, these ruins are neither very imposing, very suggestive, nor very picturesque, and, were it not for the fact that they unquestionably are ruins and that for some mysterious reason ruins of any quality appeal to the traveler’s imagination, I much doubt whether you would care to stop even long enough to jot down the name in your note-book.
Your driver, who is certain to be either a Lartigue, a Labadie, or an Etechegoyen, will probably inform you that the last Count of Gravamont was killed in 1870 at the battle of Orleans; that the place was subsequently sold, and that the proceeds, together with what was realized on the Count’s personal effects in Paris, enabled his executors to pay a small percentage of his debts. That, like a true French nobleman, he looked upon the privilege of making debts as a birthright and divided them into two classes: debts of honor, that unfortunately required to be paid at once; and other debts, that fortunately did not require to be paid at all, at least during his lifetime. And as these, I grieve to say, are very commonplace facts and do not in any way atone for the simple homeliness of the ruin, you will probably continue your journey without further delay; whereas, had I been with you, I could have told you that the “She-wolf” was born and brought up in the eastern town which you saw there on the very top of the hill. You don’t remember the “She-wolf” — that superb large-eyed creature whom you met early yesterday morning between Bidart and Biarritz? But perhaps you were not out betimes.
Well, when you return to Marceline to wake you any morning at a quarter before five, and take up your stand on the Falaise road a hundred yards or so behind the little octroi lodge. If you are early and have to wait, sit down under the tamarind hedge that skirts the cliff, and endeavor to find among your recollections something more beautiful than the vast panorama spread out before you; something more ideal than the deep, varied, transparent coloring of that corner of Biscay; something more delicate than the long picturesque line of mountains that begins at distant Yvauntelli on your left, and finally loses itself in the blue-green sea at Cape Lequeits, seventy miles away on your right.
Just as the sun begins to flash on the glass dome of Lady Bruce’s “Alhambra” you will see the “She-wolf” appear at the foot of the hill, running lightly and swiftly toward you.
Her brown legs are bare to the knee, and, with her right hand on her hip, she holds the folds of her short skirt away from them. Her shirt—a fisherman’s flannel—is open in front and her white fichu is hanging loosely half way down her back. Most probably a braid of her heavy black hair has slipped from her blue handkerchief and looks alive with bright salt drops shaken from the basket of silver-scaled sardines which she steadies on her head with her raised left hand. When she reaches the ostral she will stop, put down her basket for the long-coated, mustachioed little official to examine; quickly readjust her hair, pull the neckcloth forward, and shake out a few inches of skirt. For a moment she will stand there, panting, her black eyes and white teeth flashing in the sun, and the beautiful swelling curves of her breast rising and falling regularly. Then after a rapid survey of her dress she will bend down, raise her basket to her head with a graceful sweeping gesture, and stride away towards the halle with the step of a goddess. I am not sure that you will not follow and make her an offer for her whole basketful of fish,— as others have done before you,—and possibly ask her where she got her name. But that is what I had begun to tell you.
Some years ago, yet not so very many after all, Maitre Hennebutte, notary at Bayonne, received from the Vicomte de Gravamont a short letter informing him of the sudden death of the Count his father, to whose titles and estates he thus succeeded. In this letter he requested Maitre Hennebutte, in not over-polite but unmistakably precise language, to dismiss the acting administrator, sell the common furniture now remaining in the Château, and forward to Paris such pictures, etc., as might be worth keeping. He was moreover to appoint some keeper at a low salary to look after the place and live in the servants’ commons; and, as soon as was convenient (the sooner the better) to send in the accounts to a certain business agent whom the Count had intrusted with the management of his affairs.
A month later the Château was stripped, and Victor Visplay, a young Basque farmer, was duly installed as keeper. Visplay brought his newly-married wife with him, and not long after their arrival she bore him a daughter whom they named Cathchaline, and who afterwards became the woman they call the “She-wolf.” Her early education—which a term can be applied to the teaching which nature gives the poor—was that which children of her class in life receive, or fail to receive, according to your idea of what education means. In one of those little shirts which composed her entire wardrobe the child learned to crawl, walk, and finally run about in the silent, deserted court-yard where the grass had begun to grow between the square paving-blocks. She frightened the restless, cackling hens and was in turn frightened by the slower but equally noisy geese. From behind the fence-bars she gazed in silent wonderment at the silent grazing cow, and with instinctive fellow-sympathy for their woe wallowed in the mud among the perpetually-rejuvenated litters of young pigs. Like other children, she received her allotted share of caresses and her allotted share of reproofs; laughed, cooed, cried, and with a comically solemn expression of face pondered the mysteries of life while squeezing one or more fat little fingers between her hardening gums. In time she learned first to stammer and then to talk her pretty patois, and eventually mastered a little bad French and some worse Spanish.
As she grew older she gave unmistakable signs of possessing a proud disposition and a quick temper, which might be accounted for partly by the solitary life she led, with no one to restrain her but her over-fond, indulgent, careless parents, and partly by the seeming tyranny which such a small thing was obliged to affect in order to secure obedience from the animals intrusted to her care. Still, in spite of her pride and independence, she was a kind, affectionate, good-natured child; wild, as was to be expected from such training as she received, yet reasonably obedient to kind words.
Perhaps the most positive proof of the real goodness of her heart was to be found in her love for all animals, domestic or wild, a love which they seemed to understand and as far as lay within their possibilities, to return. She scampered over the hills with her merry mischievous goats, merry and mischievous as they; and climbed trees after the bushy-tailed squirrels, which sat and looked at her with their intelligent little heads cocked on one side, apparently as well amused to gaze at her as she was to watch them. The hens and owls that had moved with their families into the deserted rooms of the Château, confided to her the results of their silent moralizing; and even the loose-tailed lizards lost their perpetually-frightened expression when she came near, and winked at her rather pointlessly with their long ever-narrowing eyes. In a word, she delighted in nature and loved her dumb companions better perhaps than she could have loved other children.
When she was ten years old, Visplay’s sister died and her orphan boy, Pascal, came to live at the Château. For a long time Cathchaline could look upon him merely as one more in the circle of her playmates. It is true that the power of expression by articulate speech had not been denied him as, for some wise reason, no doubt, nature had denied it to her other children, but to the girl he did not seem to be able to say more than could these others, and it was only by insensible degrees that she came to recognize him as superior to them, and indeed to herself. She held together the same life that hitherto she had led alone, yet little by little she unconsciously acknowledged his leadership and allowed him, nay even expected, him to propose and direct the day’s work or the day’s play. She sang to the tune he whistled, talked with him when he talked, and was content to remain silent if that pleased him better than talking. Together they rambled over the country, clambered over the rocky hills, or, lying on their backs in the tall fragrant grass, gazed up at the passing clouds, and for four years nature pursued her silent work of equally developing these two children physically and mentally. Their physical progress was evident, undeniable, and its results beautiful; but the more complex process of mental development was less easy to follow or describe. Whatever the steps might be, the results must be healthy, pure, and good, and there was no one to question them or interfere with their achievement by asking perplexing and unanswerable hows and whys.
So things went on happily until Cathchaline was fourteen and Pascal perhaps eighteen, children still if you will, but ready at any moment to develop into man and woman should the proper agency be brought to bear upon them. About this time Visplay took a severe cold which developed into pneumonia, and, in the natural order of things, he died. To the great world outside, his death, like the death of any man of his class, was an accident of no greater moment than the fall of a tree or the drying up of a well; but in the little world at Gravamont it was a great event. Pascal was no longer willing to accept from a woman the simple, kind hospitality which his uncle had offered him; he felt that it was time for him to work and help the two lonely women instead of receiving help from them. So, less than a month after Visplay’s recall from this world, he came in one day with the news that he had joined the confraternity of the contrabandistas, had taken the oath of fellowship, and would henceforward spend but little of his time at home. His aunt, who had a great respect for the boy’s judgment, received the news calmly, and bowed her head, as broken-spirited people meekly do before the decrees of Fate. For her the period of possibilities was past, and that of the inevitable had begun. Cathchaline was left to her, and she felt that what Providence gave was no doubt all that she had any right to expect.
The girl, however, took the departure of her playmate more to heart. It would perhaps not be true to say that she was herself fully conscious of the depth of her feelings in this matter; for whatever the influence of this separation might be upon her life, it took some time to manifest itself, and there was no one near to hasten this manifestation by remarking upon it and thus forcing it upon her conscience. Nevertheless, it was not long before she realized that her world was no longer the same. Her activity, her natural, exuberant gladness in all that lived about her, her sympathies with her dumb playmates of but a few months before, had undergone a great change. She grew restless and at the same time silent and moody. She was constantly expectant of something that did not come, and vague longings began to fill her heart. She lived a very real, healthy life, and yet she lived it mechanically, as if her body had grown accustomed to its routine of daily duty, and performed it without the concurrence of her inner self, which was absorbed in dreams. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that she lived in a state of constant dreaminess; for her dreams never took any distinct form, never came to any definite conclusion, and, in a word, never shaped themselves so distinctly that her mind could grasp them. Sometimes, after playing with a rabbit or a squirrel, she would, without apparent reason, burst into tears and, lying in the grass, sob as if her heart would break. These cries always had a soothing effect upon her and for some days following she was more like her former self. But this happy state would not last. She would soon again grow restless and passionately long for something—she knew not what.
Meanwhile Pascal was succeeding well in the hazardous life he had undertaken. At intervals he came to Gravamont to pass a day and a night, and while he was there it seemed as though the old state of things had come back and he had never been away. He rarely came without bringing some present from “behind the mountains” for Cathchaline; and a present of money, sometimes more, sometimes less, for his aunt, who received it with a simple word of thanks, and smiled to herself as she put it away in an old stocking under her mattress. He was dressed in the picturesque contrabandista’s costume, and when at night he sang to the women in the large dark kitchen of the Château, accompanying himself on his guitar, Cathchaline thought him the handsomest boy in the world. And indeed when he stood in the bright fire-light with his left foot on the projecting andiron, his eyes flashing with enthusiasm and singing the spirited smuggler’s song: “Voyage sur contrabandista,” it would have been difficult not to acknowledge his manly beauty or to find fault with the symmetrical grace of his figure.
On the other hand, he was astonished to find among the women whom he saw in the town and villages not one to compare with his little Cathchaline at home. When it first occurred to him to make this observation he had naively said to himself that he was accustomed to her features and liked them, and that moreover he had not seen many other women. But as time went on he recognized that his preference was justified. He had seen the great beauties of Spain publicly at the bull-fights in San Sebastian, and more privately when they joined hands in ribbons to offer his smuggled goods and ribbons. In Biarritz he had seen many beautiful women, French and Russian, American and English; yet of all Cathchaline was undoubtedly the fairest, and even the women he had told so, bluntly and simply. Mother Visplay again smiled to herself as she bent her eyes more attentively upon her knitting, and Cathchaline blushed so deeply that she rose from her chair and went away. Her pleasure was so intense that it gave her positive physical pain; she gasped for breath and closed her eyes, which had suddenly filled with tears; for a little while she sat silent, with her hands tightly pressed together in her lap; then she could bear it no longer and ran out of the room up to the loft where she threw herself down on the sweet-smelling hay and cried herself to sleep. He had not told her that he loved her, but she had suddenly understood that she loved him, and for to-day that was sufficient.
The next morning as she was standing by the wall of the cow-yard, Pascal came out of the house and, in a careless way, threw his arm around her as he had often done before. But many things had changed since yesterday’s sunset, and this simple action now had the power to awaken emotions of which Cathchaline had hitherto been ignorant; so she quietly took his hand and removed it from its position on her waist so naturally that he scarcely noticed it, or that she at the same time moved a step away from him. When the time came for him to say good-bye she was not to be found, but even this unusual event did not awaken any suspicion in Pascal’s simple mind. He kissed his aunt, shouldered his bundle, and crying out the customary “Adieusse la campagne!” strode away down the hill without seeing Cathchaline, who stood watching him from one of the upper windows of the Château. When he had disappeared she ran quickly down the crumbling staircase and took the road to Hasparren, where she bought a looking-glass from Mouren, the barber. “I wish my wife could see as pretty a face every time she looked in the glass,” the man said to himself as she left the shop; “but in this country the likes of them is only for bull-fighters and smugglers. Similia similibus.”
Cathchaline was not yet out of town before she had torn the wrapping-paper and tried to steal a fugitive glance at herself in the glass. Behind the first stone wall she opened the package, and, laying the mirror down on the ground before her, she looked for a long time at the picture which it showed; but what advice the mirror gave, I suppose only a woman could tell. Whatever it was, this advice was often repeated, and when Pascal returned a month later he could not but notice that the girl’s appearance was greatly improved.
The exciting novelty of the contrabandista’s life, which at first had caused Pascal to forget his home or at least to think but little of the two women composing it, had worn off, and of late his pretty cousin had been much in his thoughts. The greater part of the weighing and considering, which among primitive people is after all but a simple addition or subtraction, had been concluded long ago; and when at last his feelings asserted themselves, the question of marriage was, as far as he was concerned, practically settled: it remained for Cathchaline to say whether it was so for both of them.
In this matter of propounding and answering the momentary question, country people undoubtedly enjoy a great advantage over the more cautious form-ridden inhabitants of towns: the scene is usually a simple one and its action rapid and decisive. He asks, “Will you marry me?” and she answers, “I will” or “I won’t,” which statement is followed, as the case may be, either by kissing and blushing, or by a rapid exit and some fugitive pricks of conscience. In this particular case the answer produced not only the kissing and pretty blushes, which mother Visplay, whose knitting had suddenly become very troublesome, did not see, but a great deal of joy in which she heartily shared.
Not many weeks after this memorable evening, Pascal came to spend the night, as of late he had more frequently found excuse for doing. He was in high spirits, and told the two fond women that, should this last expedition prove successful, he would clear enough to enable them to be married at once. Up to this time he had been more than usually fortunate, and, of course, his luck would not forsake him now. So they sat together in the kitchen, as was their habit, and made happy plans until late in the night; for Pascal was to leave them at sunrise, and they had much to arrange for the great day.
The junta of the contrabandistas was to take place two days later in the hall of Montalivet’s inn, at Isturitz, and Pascal still had to cross over into Spain to complete his pack. With the exception of what he had given to mother Visplay, he had risked his whole fortune on this one venture, and his bundle was full of good lace and fine silk embroideries. If, as he confidently expected to, he passed the line safely, the disposal of the articles was merely a matter of a few days, and the proceeds would allow him to rest for nearly a year, during which time he could do a little business in partnership with some of the active smugglers and perhaps only have to leave Cathchaline once in a long time. Isturitz, their famous rendezvous, was well over the border in France; but the douaniers had not yet been able to organize their line in the wild mountainous country in which it lay, and where the inhabitants were even more hostile to the Government than those of the villages which they already held. At this time, not long before the last Carlist war, the smugglers were very active and daring; a rumor had spread among them that the same taxes which existed in France were to be imposed over the border, and that the sale of tobacco was to become a Government monopoly. If put into practice, these measures would prove a more effectual obstacle than any increase of the Customs police; moreover, some of the contrabandistas had received from men connected with that department private offers of Government posts; these had of course been made known to the confraternity, and it was felt that the same unforeseen danger threatened it at the first serious break in the ranks. Besides, war was imminent on the other side of the Pyrenees, and none could foretell what policy would be adopted at its close. The present was certainly the golden time, and, as they remembered that the morrow might prove to be only a bold opportunity, they endeavored to live up to the maxim of not postponing until then what could be attended to at once.
When Pascal entered the inn, the hall was still empty; he tied his long-haired white dog to one of the rings fixed for that purpose in the wall of the court-yard, and feeling tired he lay down on one of the long benches that followed the tables around the room, and went to sleep. One by one the contrabandistas came in and deposited their bales along the walls; nearly all called for bread and cheese, and a jug of wine, and ate rapidly, mostly in silence; then lighted a cigarette or a small-bowled clay pipe filled with very rank home-grown tobacco. Altogether there were about seventy men in the room, some mere boys, while a few had white hair and mustaches; but all wore the blue berret, short black jacket and bright red sash; each had the thong of a maquila passed round his wrist, and a knife in his belt. As a rule they were fine muscular-looking men, with bright black eyes, a laughing mouth, and a bold, reckless, good-natured expression that seemed out of place in the gloomy hall, lighted only in the center by some tallow dips stuck in empty bottles. Those who talked at all spoke in a subdued voice; and even these whispered conversations ceased suddenly as old Montalivet came forward and placed an earthen dish between the lights in the middle of the table. Some of the older men gathered around him, while the rest placed themselves on his left. When he saw that they were all ready, he shook the dice-box which he held in his hand and threw—seven. That was the fighting number.
The smugglers passed before him in single file, and each threw the dice in turn, then walked over to the right side of the table, or, if he had thrown a seven, remained standing by the fireplace, behind the innkeeper. Meanwhile Pascal was still asleep on his bench. When his turn came they woke him, and he came forward with his eyes half open. The dice rolled up—three, four. “What was the number to-night?” he asked as he put them back in the box.
“Seven,” answered Montalivet; “you have it. Has everyone thrown?” he added, raising his voice; then, as he received no answer, he turned to the men standing behind him and said: “Boys, it is time to get ready.”
There were five besides Pascal: so six carbines and dummy balls were brought in from the blacksmith’s shop next door, while the appointed men placed their packs on the table to be divided up among the rest. Their duty was to go ahead first with their dogs, and, if possible, to concentrate the line of douaniers in one spot; while they were fighting, the rest could spread out rapidly and pass across into the safe country beyond. When they reached Bayonne, the things belonging to the men of the forlorn hope were deposited in some safe place, where, if they returned, they could claim them; if they did not return, and it was ascertained that they had been killed, their property was sold by their comrades, and the proceeds sent to the victim’s family. Sometimes not a shot was fired and all passed the line safely; but again at others, desperate encounters took place between the soldiers and the contrabandistas, and then never more than half, seldom more than a third, and sometimes none, contrived to escape. It was extremely rare that a smuggler was made a prisoner; he never surrendered, and when any was taken it was because he was too severely wounded to resist any longer. In this war the dogs played a prominent part, each one being considered equal to a man.
The smugglers trained their animals never to bark and always to keep close to their master; their opponents, on the contrary, taught their dogs to scour the country and give voice constantly.
When all was ready, the six men held a rapid consultation with Montalivet and shook hands among themselves. Then they passed down the line of their comrades, shook each silently by the hand, and after untying their dogs, struck out cautiously in the appointed direction.
On the day before the junta, Cathchaline for the first time felt anxious about Pascal. Heretofore she had listened to his stories as one listens to stories of adventure and danger, which do not concern either ourselves or anyone we know; she had never been convinced of the reality of Pascal’s life as a smuggler, and being frightened now for the first time, her anxiety was the deeper for its suddenness. She shuddered at the thought of what might happen, and shook her head as if she could thus throw off the doubts which beset her. But in spite of her efforts she could think only of the danger to which he was exposed, and finally she broke down and cried hysterically. Long before dark she had persuaded herself that something had already really happened, and the light of her life seemed to have gone out. The slightest noise made her start; and although she knew that the smugglers did not leave Isturitz before ten or eleven, the slamming of a door or of a loose shutter, which she magnified into the report of a gun-shot, made her clasp her hands in an agony of terror. At last she could bear it no longer, and after kissing her unsuspecting mother, she went out, called her dog, and ran toward the pass near which Pascal had told her that they would probably cross the line. When she had reached the place, she crouched down under a bush, holding her dog by the collar, and waited. In her anxiety it was a great consolation to feel the warm breathing thing near her, and when her distress became unbearable, to press its shaggy head against her breast and kiss it. At times even, forgetting where she was, she spoke to it as if it were Pascal, and it soothed her to bury her face in its soft coat, and fancy that she was in her lover’s arms; or she would raise her eyes to the dark sky overhead, and mutely pray for him, and, possibly unconsciously, for herself also;—for after all she was very human, felt her own weakness, and was in sore need of help.
In the meantime the sky had clouded over, and greenish flashes of lightning behind the Pyrenees announced a storm. A few heavy drops fell, and ceased again as the thunder began to roll with a muffled sound in the distance. At every rumble Cathchaline started forward and listened for a moment, half dreading and yet at the same time hoping that it might be a gun-shot. Her suspense was becoming intolerable, and it seemed to her that even the worst news would be preferable to this uncertainty. The cold drops that fell from the overhanging branches on to her neck and trickled down her back made her shiver, and for a moment the sensation distracted her. Without understanding why she did so, she picked up a sharp stone and pressed its ragged edge into her foot; and, when the silence became too deep, she imitated the cries of night-birds or the dismal howling of the mountain wolf, smiling in spite of her anxiety at the excellence of her imitation. Then she listened again more eagerly than before, fearful that during the momentary distraction some important noise had escaped her attention; and when she could perceive nothing but the myriads of infinitesimal sounds that make the silence of night, she took the dog’s head in her hands and cried in a passionate pathetic voice, “Pascal! Oh, Pascal!” while the fond animal licked her face as if he understood and pitied her.
Meanwhile the minutes were slowly passing away as they always do, and with every moment the lightning became more vivid, the flashes more frequent, and the roll of the thunder sharper. Suddenly the dog stiffened itself on its legs with a low growl, and, tearing itself from her grasp, bounded away into the darkness. Cathchaline rose and held her breath; a yellow light, followed by a sharp report, flared among the bushes before her, and she sprang forward. Then came more shots, and in the silence between them, she heard the angry gasping of the dogs. A man spoke a few quick words, and immediately a bright fire of twigs, saturated with rosin, sprang up in the clearing, where Pascal with two of the contrabandistas, taken by surprise, were brilliantly illuminated, while the douaniers kneeled together in comparative darkness. A few steps ahead of his men the officer stood by himself, holding his sword loosely in his left hand, and with a pistol in his other hand, taking a slow aim at the smuggler. With a wild unearthly cry that startled the men the girl bounded past them, seized the officer’s sword, and struck him with all her remaining strength—but too late; for Pascal had fallen.
When Cathchaline regained her senses, a number of smugglers had gathered around their fallen comrade; she pushed them rudely aside, and kneeling down she gently lifted him in her arms, and rested his drooping head against her breast. Without looking at his wound, she instinctively felt that it was fatal and that her lover was dead. She could neither speak nor weep, and it seemed to her as if some vital cord had suddenly given way in her brain; she hesitated a moment, then kissed his lips mechanically, as if obeying the last impulse of her departed will, then she let him fall back heavily, passed her hand over her eyes as if she had been asleep, and walked away in the direction of Gravamont.
For several years nothing was seen of her in the surrounding country. During this time the story was circulated that the young officer, who was of good family and the manner of whose death was consequently investigated into, had been killed by some wild animal. His men, seized with a sudden panic, had run away when they heard her cry, which they compared to the howl of a she-wolf, and as she had passed through the lighted space so quickly, they only remembered seeing her large dog bounding after her. Some years later, when the dreaded reforms had been put into practice, and smuggling as it was once understood had become a thing of the past, one of Pascal’s contrabandistas who had turned douanier recognized the girl, and called her the “She-wolf”—and the name had clung to her.
Now, every morning during the sardine season you will see her leave a little cottage in the fishermen’s quarter of Ciboure, which, you know, is opposite to Saint Jean de Luz, and go down to the jetty where the boats land and the women stand waiting for their basket load of fish. Here she will patiently bide her turn; then, without having spoken a word, will swing her basket on to her head and dash away for Biarritz.
They say that now she is but half-witted, and, poor thing! that may be true; but she is kind, patient, and meek; she hurts nobody, and her love for dumb animals has survived the loss of her mind, as you will see from the half-pitying, tender way in which she touches even her dead fish. When she has sold them all, she saunters listlessly back to Saint Jean de Luz, sometimes by the road and sometimes by the deserted beach. And if you follow, you may see her stop to liberate a struggling fly, or, leaning over some half-washed rock, scrape out a passage in the sand for the shrimps and little fish whose life has been imperiled by some careless mighty sweep of the tide. When the little work of compassion is done and the ungrateful prisoners have disappeared, you will see her rise and continue her road, singing, in a low voice to herself, the first words of Pascal’s favorite song: “Yo que soy contrabandista.” Perhaps in that poor brain the recollections of the happy days at Gravamont are as vivid to-day as they were years ago—and yet who knows? She speaks to no one and confesses her thoughts not even to the priest. To this day she remains the most beautiful creature on the coast, and of this she is as unconscious as the sun’s rays, that alone have the privilege of kissing her full red lips and bringing a smile into her large soft eyes.
