Complete Works of Emile Zola (943 page)

This frankness threw the old woman into despair. Though she was not habitually a tale-bearer, she could not restrain her bitterness.

“Oh, that’s it, is it? They’ve already set you against me. Ah, if you only knew how spiteful they are, if you had any idea of what they say about you!”

Then she let loose the gossip of Rognes about the young man. To begin with, they had execrated him because he was an artisan, and sawed and planed wood, instead of tilling the ground. Then, when he had taken to the plough, they had taxed him with taking the bread out of other people’s mouths, by coming into a district that wasn’t his own. Did any one know where he came from? Hadn’t he done some evil deed at home, that he didn’t even dare to go back there? Then they spied upon his intercourse with La Cognette, and asserted that some fine night the two of them would administer a bowl of devil’s broth to Hourdequin, and rob him.

“Oh, the blackguards!” muttered Jean, who became pale with indignation.

Lise, who was drawing a jugful of boiling lye from the cauldron, started laughing at the mention of La Cognette, a name she sometimes twitted him with in jest.

“And since I’ve begun, I’d better make an end of it,” pursued La Frimat. “Well, there’s no kind of abomination they don’t talk about, since you began visiting here. Last week — wasn’t it? — you presented them both with silk necker­chiefs, which they were seen wearing on Sunday at mass. The filthy beasts say that you go to bed with the two of them!”

This settled matters. Trembling, but resolute, Jean got up and said:

“Listen, my good woman. I will make reply in your presence, which shall not stand in my way. I will ask Lise if she will consent to my marrying her. You hear me ask, Lise? and if you say yes, you will make me very happy.”

She was just then emptying her jug into the bucking-tub. She did not hurry, but finished carefully watering the linen. Then, with her arms bare and moist with steam, becoming quite grave, she looked him in the face.

“So you’re in earnest?”

“Thoroughly in earnest.”

She did not seem surprised. It was natural. Only she did not answer yes or no; there was evidently something on her mind which annoyed her.

“You needn’t say no on account of La Cognette,” resumed he, “because La Cognette—”

She cut him short with a gesture. She was well aware that all the larking at the farm was of no consequence.

“There is also the fact that I’ve absolutely nothing but my skin to bring you; whereas, you own this house and some land.”

Again she waved her arm, as if to say that in her position, with a child, she agreed with him in thinking that things were evenly balanced.

“No, no! it’s not that,” she declared at length. “Only there’s Buteau.”

“But since he refuses?”

“That’s certain. And now there’s no sentiment in the matter, for he’s behaved too badly. But, all the same, Buteau must be consulted.”

Jean reflected for a good minute. Then, very sensibly, he replied:

“As you please. It’s due to the child.”

La Frimat, who was gravely emptying the pail of drainings into the cauldron, thought herself called upon to approve the step — albeit favourable to Jean, the honest fellow; he surely was neither pig-headed nor brutal — and she was delivering herself to this effect, when Françoise was heard outside, returning with the two cows.

“I say, Lise,” she cried, “come and look. La Coliche has hurt her foot.”

They all went out, and Lise, at the sight of the limping animal, with her left fore-foot bruised and bleeding, flew into a sharp passion — one of those surly bursts with which she used to sweep down upon her sister when the latter was little, and happened to be in fault.

“Another of your pieces of neglect, eh? You, no doubt, dropped off to sleep on the grass, the same as you did the other day?”

“I assure you I didn’t. I don’t know what she can have done. I tied her to the stake, and she must have caught her foot in the cord.”

“Hold your tongue, liar and good-for-nothing! You’ll get killing my cow some day.”

Françoise’s black eyes flashed fire. She was very pale, and indignantly stammered out:

“Your cow, your cow! You might, at least, say our cow.”

“Our cow, indeed? A chit like you with a cow!”

“Yes, half of all that’s here is mine. I’ve a right to take half and destroy it if it amuses me to do so!”

The two sisters stood facing each other, hostile and threatening. It was the first painful quarrel in the course of their long fondness. This question of meum and tuum left them both smarting: the one exasperated by the rebellion of her younger sister, the other obstinate and violent under a sense of injustice. The elder gave way, and went back into the kitchen, so as to restrain herself from boxing her sister’s ears. When Françoise, having housed her cows, re-appeared, and went to the pan to cut herself a slice of bread, there was an awkward silence.

Lise, however, had calmed down. The sight of her sister’s sullen resistance was now an annoyance to her, and she was the first to speak, thinking to make an end of it by an unexpected piece of news.

“Do you know,” she asked, “Jean wants to marry me, and has proposed?”

Françoise, who was standing by the window eating her bread, remained indifferent, and did not even turn round.

“What odds does that make to me?”

“The odds it makes to you,” replied Lise, “are that you’d have him for a brother-in-law, and I want to know if you’d like him?”

Françoise shrugged her shoulders.

“Like or dislike, him or Buteau, what’s the good? So long as I don’t have to sleep with him. Only, if you want to know, the whole thing is hardly decent.”

And she went outside to finish her bread in the yard.

Jean, feeling rather uncomfortable, affected to laugh, as at the whims of a spoilt child; while La Frimat declared that in her young days a wench like that would have been whipped till the blood came. As for Lise, she remained a moment silent and serious, absorbed once more in her washing. Then she wound up by saying:

“Well, Corporal, we’ll leave it like that. I don’t say no, and I don’t say yes. The hay-making is come: I shall see our people; I’ll make inquiries, and find out how things stand. And then we’ll settle something. Will that do?”

“That’ll do!”

He held out his hand, and shook the one she gave him. From her whole person, steeped in warm steam, there exuded a true housewifely scent: a scent of wood-ash perfumed with orris.

CHAPTER IV

For the last two days Jean had been driving the mowing machine over the few acres of meadow belonging to La Borderie, on the banks of the Aigre. From daybreak till night the regular click of the blades had been heard, and that morning he was getting to the end. The last swaths were falling into line behind the wheels, forming a layer of fine, soft, pale-green herbage. The farm having no haymaking machine, he had been commissioned to engage two haymakers: Palmyre, who worked to the utmost of her strength and harder than a man; and Françoise, who had got herself engaged out of caprice, finding amusement in the occupation. Both of them had come with him at five o’clock, and, with their long forks, had laid out the
mulons
: little heaps of half-dried grass which had been gathered together over night, by way of protecting it from the night-dews. The sun had risen in a clear glowing sky cooled by a breeze. It was the very weather to make good hay in.

After breakfast, when Jean returned with his haymakers; the hay of the first acre mowed was finished. He felt it and found it dry and crisp.

“I say,” cried he, “we’ll give it just another turn, and to-night we’ll begin the stacking.”

Françoise, in a grey linen dress, had knotted over her head a blue handkerchief, one edge of which flapped on her neck, while two corners fluttered loosely over her cheeks, and shaded her face from the sun’s brilliant rays. With a swing of her fork she took the grass and flung it up, while the wind blew out of it a kind of golden dust. As the blades fluttered, a strong subtle scent arose from them: the warm scent of cut grass and withered flowers. She had grown very hot, walking on amid the continuous fluttering, which put her in high spirits.

“Ah, my child,” said Palmyre, in her doleful voice, “it’s easy to see you’re young. When night comes, you’ll feel your arms stiff.”

They were not alone, for all Rognes was mowing and making hay in the meadows around them. Delhomme had got there before daybreak, for the grass, when wet with dew, is tender to cut, like spongy bread; whereas it toughens in proportion as the sun grows hotter. At that moment, one distinctly heard its resistant whirr under the scythe, which, held by Delhomme, swept restlessly to and fro. Nearer, in fact contiguous with the grass of the farm, there were two bits of land, belonging one to Macqueron and the other to Lengaigne. In the first, Berthe, in a genteel dress with little flounces, and a straw hat, had come in attendance on the haymakers, by way of recreation, but she was already tired, and remained leaning on her fork in the shade of a willow. In the other field, Victor, who was mowing for his father, had just sat down, and, with his anvil between his knees, was beating at his scythe. For ten minutes nothing had been distinguishable, amid the deep thrilling silence of the air, save the persistent hurried taps of the hammer on the steel.

Just then Françoise came near to Berthe.

“You’ve had enough of it, eh?” asked the former.

“More or less. I’m beginning to feel tired. You see, when one isn’t used to it.”

Then they chatted, whispering about Suzanne, Victor’s sister, whom the Lengaignes had sent to a dressmaking establishment at Châteaudun, and who, after six months, had fled to Chartres to live “gay.” It was said she had run off with a notary’s clerk; and all the girls in Rognes whispered the scandal and speculated on the details. Living gay to them meant orgies of gooseberry syrup and Seltzer water, in the midst of a seething crowd of men, dozens of whom waited to court you, in Indian file, in the back shops of wine-sellers.

“Yes, my dear, that’s how it is. Isn’t she going it?”

Françoise, being younger, stared in stupefaction.

“Nice kind of amusement!” she said at last. “But unless she comes back the Lengaignes will be all alone, as Victor has been drawn for the conscription.”

Berthe, who espoused her father’s quarrel, shrugged her shoulders. A lot Lengaigne cared. His only regret was that the child hadn’t stopped at home to be turned up, and so bring some custom to his shop. Hadn’t an uncle of hers, an old man of forty, had her already, before she went to Châteaudun, one day when they were peeling carrots together. And, in a lower whisper, Berthe gave the exact words and circumstances. Françoise, bending double, was suffocated with laughter, it seemed so funny to her.

“Gracious goodness! How stupid to do things like that!”

Then resuming her work she withdrew, raising forkfuls of grass and shaking them in the sun. The persistent hammering on the steel was still heard. Some minutes later, as she came near to where the young man was sitting, she spoke to him.

“So you’re going to be a soldier?”

“Oh, in October. Plenty of time yet; there’s no hurry.”

She struggled against her desire to question him about his sister, but she spoke of her despite herself.

“Is it true what they say, that Suzanne is now at Chartres?”

He, completely indifferent, made answer:

“I suppose so! She seems to enjoy it.”

Then, in the distance, seeing Lequeu, the schoolmaster, who was seemingly strolling down by chance, he resumed:

“Hullo! There’s somebody after the Macqueron girl. What did I tell you? He’s stopping and poking his face into her hair. Get along with you, you old nincompoop! You may sniff round her, but you’ll never get anything but the smell!”

Françoise began laughing again, and Victor pursued the family vendetta by falling foul of Berthe. No doubt the school­master wasn’t worth much: a bully who cuffed children, a sly­boots whose opinions nobody knew, capable of toadying the girl to get her father’s money. But, then, Berthe was no better than she should be, with all her fine town-bred airs. It was no use her wearing flounced skirts and velvet bodices, and stuffing out her behind with table-napkins; the underneath was none the better. Quite the reverse, indeed, for she was up to snuff; she’d learnt more by being brought up at the Châteaudun school than by stopping at home to mind the cows. No fear of her getting herself let in for a child; she preferred to ruin her constitution in solitude.

“How do you mean?” asked Françoise, who did not understand.

He made a gesture, whereupon she became serious, and said, unreservedly:

“That’s how it is, then, that she’s always saying dirty things, and rubbing herself up against you.”

Victor had begun beating his blade again; and, tapping between each phrase, he went on saying some very improper things about Berthe.

These set Françoise off into another fit of mirth; and she only calmed down, and went on haymaking, on seeing her sister Lise on the road coming towards the meadow. Lise went up to Jean, and explained that she had settled to go and see her uncle about Buteau. For the last three days that step had been agreed upon between them, and she promised to come back and tell him the answer. When she went off, Victor was still tapping, and Françoise, Palmyre, and the other women were still flinging the grass in the dazzling light of the vast bright sky. Lequeu was very obligingly giving a lesson to Berthe, thrusting, raising, and lowering her fork as stiffly as a soldier at drill. Afar off, the mowers advanced unceasingly, with a constant, steady motion, swinging on their loins, and with their scythes perpetually sweeping to and fro.

For an instant Delhomme stopped and stood upright, tower­ing above the others. From the cow-horn, full of water, that hung at his belt, he had taken his hone, and was sharpening his scythe with a bold, rapid gesture. Then he bent his back again, and the sharpened steel was heard whizzing still more keenly and bitingly over the meadow.

Lise had arrived at the Fouans’ house. At first she was afraid there was no one at home, the place seemed so dead. Rose had parted with her two cows; the old man had just sold his horse; there were no signs of animals, no work, nothing stirring in the empty buildings and yard. Nevertheless the door yielded to her touch; and on entering the common room, which was gloomy and silent amid all the mirth out-of-doors, Lise found old Fouan standing up and finishing a bit of bread and cheese, while his wife was idly seated and looking at him.