Complete Works of Emile Zola (773 page)

‘Well, Véronique?’ he said.

But it was not Véronique; it was his mother. She had that day intended to take Louise to see some of her friends in the neighbourhood of Verchemont.

‘Little Cuche has just gone,” she said. ‘He can run fast.’

Then, after a short interval of silence, she asked:

‘Is she no better?’

Lazare made no answer, but with a hopeless gesture pointed to Pauline, who was lying motionless, as though she were quite dead, with her pale face bathed in cold perspira­tion.

‘Ah! we won’t go to Verchemont, then,’ his mother con­tinued. ‘It seems very tenacious, this mysterious illness which no one seems to understand. The poor girl has been sorely tried.’

She sat down and went on chattering in the same subdued monotonous voice.

‘We had meant to start at seven o’clock, but it happened that Louise overslept herself. Everything seems to be fall­ing on one this morning; it almost looks as though it were done on purpose. The grocer from Arromanches has just called with his bill, and I have been obliged to pay him, and now the baker is downstairs. We spent forty francs on bread again last month. I can’t imagine where it all goes to!’

Lazare was not paying the least attention to what she said; he was too much absorbed in his fears of a return of the shivering-fits. But that monotonous flood of talk irritated him, and he tried to get his mother to leave the room.

‘Will you give Véronique a couple of towels and tell her to bring them up to me?’ he said.

‘Of course I shall have to pay the baker,’ his mother resumed, as though she had not heard him. ‘He has spoken to me, and so Véronique can’t tell him that I have gone out. Upon my word, I’ve had quite enough of this house. It is becoming quite a burden. If Pauline were not unfortu­nately so ill, she would advance me the ninety francs for her board. It is the 20th to-day, so that there are only ten days to wait before it will be due. The poor child seems so very weak—’

Lazare suddenly turned towards her.

‘Well, what is it you want?’ he asked.

‘You don’t happen to know where she keeps her money, do you?’

‘No!’

‘I dare say it’s in her chest of drawers. You might just look.’

He refused with an angry gesture, and his hands quivered.

‘I beseech you, mother, for pity’s sake, do go away.’

These last remarks had been hurriedly exchanged at the far end of the room. There was a moment’s painful silence, which was broken by a clear voice speaking from the bed:

‘Lazare, just come and take the key from under my pillow, and give my aunt what she wants.”

They were both quite startled. Lazare began to protest, for he was very unwilling to open the drawer; but he was obliged to give way in order that he might not distress Pauline. When he had given his mother a hundred-franc note, and had slipped the key under Pauline’s pillow again, he saw that the girl was taken with another trembling-fit, which shook her like a young aspen, and seemed likely to rend her in twain. Two big tears trickled from her closed eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

Doctor Cazenove did not arrive before his usual time. He had seen nothing of little Cuche, who was probably larking about amongst the hedges. As soon as he heard what Lazare had to say and cast a hasty glance at Pauline, he cried out: ‘She is saved!’

That sickness and those alarming fits of trembling were simply indications that the abscess had at last broken. There was no more occasion to fear suffocation; the complaint would now gradually go off of itself. Their joy was great; Lazare accompanied the Doctor out of the room; and as Martin, the old sailor who had taken service with the Doctor, drank a bumper of wine in the kitchen, everyone wanted to clink glasses with him. Madame Chanteau and Louise drank some walnut liqueur.

‘I never felt really alarmed,’ said the former. ‘I was sure there could be nothing serious the matter with her.’

‘That didn’t prevent the poor dear from having an awful time of it!’ exclaimed Véronique. ‘I’m more pleased than if some one had given me a hundred sous.’

Just at that moment Abbé Horteur came in. He had called to make inquiries, and he drank a glass of wine by way of doing like the rest. Every day he had come in this way like a kindly neighbour; for, on his first visit, Lazare had told him that he could not see the patient for fear of alarming her, whereupon the priest had quietly replied that he under­stood it, and had contented himself with mentioning the poor girl’s name when saying his masses. Chanteau, as he clinked glasses with him, complimented him upon his spirit of tolerance.

‘Well, you see, she is coming round nicely, without the help of an
Oremus!
’

‘Everyone is saved after his own fashion,’ the priest declared sententiously, as he drained his glass.

When the Doctor had left, Louise wanted to go upstairs to kiss Pauline. The poor girl was still suffering much pain, but this was not now regarded as of much account. Lazare gaily bade her take courage, and, quite dropping all pretence, began even to exaggerate the danger through which she had passed, telling her that three times already he had believed that she was lying dead in his arms. Pauline, however, manifested no exuberant delight at being saved; but she was conscious of the joy of life, after having found the courage to look calmly upon death’s approach. An expression of loving emotion passed over her worn, sad face as she pressed her cousin’s hand and murmured to him, smiling:

‘Ah! my dear, you can’t escape after all, you see. I shall be your wife yet.’

Her convalescence was heralded in by long slumbers. She slept for whole days, quite calmly, breathing easily and regu­larly, steeped in a strength-restoring torpor. Minouche, who had been banished from the room during her period of pros­tration, took advantage of this quietness to slip in again. She jumped lightly upon the bed, and immediately lay down there, nestling beside her mistress. Indeed, she spent whole days on it, revelling in the warmth of the blankets, or making an interminable toilet, wearing away her fur by constant lick­ing, but performing each operation with such supple lightness that Pauline could not even tell she was moving. At the same time Matthew, who, equally with Minouche, was now granted free access to the room, snored like a human being on the carpet by the side of the bed.

One of Pauline’s first fancies was to have her young friends from the village brought up to her room on the following Saturday. They had just begun to allow her to eat boiled eggs after the very spare diet to which she had been subjected for three weeks. Though she was still very weak, she was able to sit up to receive the children. Lazare had to go to the drawer again to find her some five-franc pieces. After she had questioned her pensioners and had insisted on paying off what she called her arrears, she became so thoroughly exhausted that she lay back in a fainting condition. But she manifested great interest in the piles, groynes, and stockades, and every day inquired if they still remained firmly in position. Some of the timbers had already weakened, and her cousin told a falsehood when he asserted that only the nailing of a plank or two had ceased to hold. One morning, when she was alone, she slipped out of bed, wishing to see the high tide dash against the stockades in the distance; and this time again her budding strength failed her, and she would have fallen to the ground if Véronique had not come into the room in time to catch her in her arms.

‘Ah! you naughty girl! I shall have to fasten you down in bed if you don’t behave more sensibly!’ said Lazare with a smile.

He still persisted in watching over her, but he was com­pletely worn out with fatigue, and would drop asleep in his arm-chair. At first he had felt a lively joy in seeing her drink her broth. The young girl’s restored health became a source of exquisite pleasure to him; it was a renewal of life of which he himself partook. But afterwards, when he had grown accustomed to it, and all the girl’s suffering had passed away, he ceased to rejoice as over some unhoped-for blessing. All that was left to him was a sort of hebetation, a slackening of the nerves now that the struggle was over, a confused notion that the hollowness and mockery of every­thing was becoming manifest again.

One night when he had been sleeping soundly Pauline heard him awake with a sigh of agony. By the feeble glimmer of the night-light she caught a glimpse of his terror-stricken face, his eyes staring wildly with horror, and his hands clasped together in an attitude of entreaty. He stammered out some incoherent words: ‘O God! O God!’

She leant towards him with hasty anxiety, and called: ‘What is the matter with you, Lazare? Are you in pain?’

The sound of her voice made him start. He had been seen, then. He sat silent and vexed, and could only contrive to tell a clumsy fib.

‘There’s nothing the matter with me. It was you yourself who were crying out just now.’

But in reality the horror of death had just come back to him in his sleep — a horror without cause, born of blank nothingness — a horror whose icy breath had awakened him with a great shudder. O God! he thought, so he would have to die some day. And that thought took possession of him, and choked him; while Pauline, who had laid her head back again on her pillow, watched him with an air of motherly compassion.

CHAPTER V

Every evening, in the dining-room, when Véronique had cleared the table, Madame Chanteau and Louise chatted together; while Chanteau, buried in his newspaper, gave brief replies to his wife’s few questions. During the fortnight when he had thought Pauline in danger, Lazare had never joined the family at dinner; but he now dined downstairs again, though, directly the meal was over, he returned to his post at the invalid’s bedside. He scarcely closed the door behind him before Madame Chanteau began with her old complaints.

At first she affected loving anxiety.

‘Poor boy!’ she said, ‘he is quite wearing himself out. It is really foolish of him to go on endangering his health in this way. He has scarcely had any sleep for the last three weeks. He is paler than ever to-day.’

Then she would have a word or two of pity for Pauline. The poor dear seemed to suffer so much that it was impossible to stay in her room without a heartache. But she soon began to harp upon the manner in which that illness upset the house. Everything remained in a state of confusion; their meals were always cold, and there was no relying upon anything. Then she broke off suddenly, and, turning to her husband, asked him:

‘Has Véronique found time to give you your marshmallow water?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he replied from behind his newspaper.

Then she lowered her voice and addressed herself to Louise.

‘It is very peculiar, but that poor Pauline seems to have brought us nothing but misfortune. And yet some people persist in looking upon her as our good angel! I know the stories that are floating about. At Caen, they say — don’t they, Louise? — that we have grown quite rich through her. Rich, indeed! I should just think so! You may speak to me quite frankly, for I am above taking any notice of their slanderous gossip.’

‘Well, indeed, they do talk about you, just as they talk about everybody else,’ the girl murmured. ‘Only last month I was obliged to snub a notary’s wife, who dared to speak on the subject, without knowing anything at all about it. You can’t prevent people talking, you know.’

After that, Madame Chanteau made no attempt to veil her real feelings. There was no doubt, she said, that they were suffering from their own generosity. Had they wanted any­one’s assistance before Pauline came? And where would she have been now, in what Paris slum, if they had not consented to take her into their house? It was all very fine for people to talk about her money, but that money had never been anything but a source of trouble to them; indeed, it seemed to have brought ruin with it. The facts spoke clearly enough for themselves. Her son would never have launched out into those idiotic speculations in seaweed, nor have wasted his time in trying to prevent the sea from sweeping Bonneville away, if that unlucky Pauline had not turned his head. If she had lost her money, well, it was her own fault. The poor young fellow had wrecked both his health and his future. Madame Chanteau could hardly find words strong enough with which to inveigh against those hundred and fifty thousand francs of which her secrétaire still reeked. It was, indeed, all the large sums which had been swallowed up, and the small amounts which were still being daily abstracted and thus increasing the deficit, that embittered her, as though therein lay the ferment in which her honesty had rotted away. By this time putrefaction was complete, and she hated Pauline for all the money she owed her.

‘What is the good of talking to such an obstinate creature?’ she resumed bitterly. ‘She is horribly miserly at heart, and, at the same time, she is recklessness itself. She will toss twelve thousand francs to the bottom of the sea for the Bonneville fishermen, who only laugh at us, and feed all the filthy brats in the neighbourhood; while I perfectly tremble, upon my word of honour I do, if I have to ask her for only forty sous. What do you think of that? With all her pretence of charity to others, she has got a heart of stone.’

During all the talk of this kind Véronique was often in and out of the room, clearing away the dinner things or bringing in the tea, and she loitered to listen to what was being said, and sometimes even ventured on a remark.

‘Mademoiselle Pauline got a heart of stone! Oh, Madame! how can you say so?’

Madame Chanteau reduced her to silence by a stern look. Then, resting her elbows on the table, she entered into a series of complicated calculations, talking as to herself.

‘I’ve nothing more to do with her money now, thank goodness, but I should like to know how much of it there’s left. Not more than seventy thousand francs, I’ll be bound. Just let us reckon it up a little. Three thousand have gone already in that experimental stockade; then there are, at least, two hundred francs going every month in charity, and ninety francs for her board here. All that mounts up quickly. Will you take a bet, Louise, that she’ll ruin herself? You will see her reduced to a pallet one of these days. And when she has quite ruined herself, who will take her in? — how will she manage to live?’