Complete Works of Emile Zola (137 page)

When she was alone with William, in their bedroom, she thought of her secret shudders of the evening, and spoke in spite of herself of the terror which the protestant caused her.

“I am a child,” she said to her husband, with a forced smile, “Geneviève has frightened me to-day. She was muttering horrible things by the side of us. Could you not tell her to go and read her Bible somewhere else?”

“Nonsense!” William answered, laughing frankly, “that would vex her perhaps. She thinks she is assuring our salvation in giving us a share in her readings. However, I will ask her to-morrow to read not quite so loud.”

Madeleine, seated on the edge of the bed, with a far-off look, seemed to see again the visions evoked by the fanatic. Her lips quivered with a slight movement.

“She spoke of blood and anger,” she went on in a slow voice. “She does not possess the indulgent good nature of old age, she would be inexorable. How can she be so hard-hearted, when she lives with us, in our happiness, in our peace? Really, William, there are moments when this woman makes me afraid.”

The young man continued to laugh.

“My poor Madeleine,” he would say taking his wife to his arms, “you are nervous to-night. Come, get into bed, and don’t have bad dreams. Geneviève is an old fool, and it is wrong of you to mind her gloomy prayers. It is all habit; formerly, I could not see her open her Bible without being terrified; now, I should feel something was wanting if she did not lull me with her monotonous murmur. Don’t you feel greatly soothed, at night, as we sit lovingly in this silence, tremulous with complaints?”

“Yes, sometimes,” replied the young wife, “when I don’t catch the words, and her voice moves along like a breath of wind. But what stories of horror! what crimes and punishments!”

“Geneviève,” William went on to say, “is a devoted creature; she saves us a great deal of trouble and annoyance by looking after everything in the château; she was with us when I was born and when my father was horn too. Do you know that she must be more than ninety years old, and that she is still strong and straight? She will work till she is more than a hundred... You must try to like her, Madeleine; she is an old servant of the family.” Madeleine was not listening. She was rapt in an uneasy reverie. Then, with sudden anxiety, she asked:

“Do you think that Heaven never pardons?”

Her husband, surprised and saddened, then kissed her, as he asked her, in a voice touched with emotion, why she had doubts about pardon. She did not give a direct reply but murmured:

“Geneviève says that Heaven will have its reckoning of tears — There is no pardon.”

This scene occurred several times. It was, however, the only trouble which disturbed the serenity of the young couple. In this way they passed the first four years of their marriage, in a seclusion scarcely disturbed by the visits of the De Rieus, and in a state of happiness, the smooth course of which even Geneviève’s lamentations were powerless to trouble seriously. It would have taken a greater calamity than this to rack their hearts again.

It was at the beginning of the fifth year, in the early part of November, that Tiburce accompanied Hélène to Paris. William and Madeleine, certain of not being disturbed again, settled down to spend their winter in the large quiet room where they bad already lived so peacefully for four seasons. At one time, they spoke of going to live in Paris in their little house in the Rue de Boulogne; but they put off this project to the following winter, as they did every year; they could not see any necessity for leaving Véteuil. For two months, from November to January, they lived their secluded life, enlivened by the prattle of little Lucy, who was now growing up. A peaceful tranquillity shed on them its balm, and they thought that they would never be disturbed in their bliss.

CHAPTER VII.

ABOUT the middle of January, William had to go to Mautes. A matter of importance which could not very well be attended to by anybody but himself called him to this place, and was likely to keep him there the whole evening. He set off in a fly, telling Madeleine that he would be back, about eleven o’clock, so she waited up for him along with Geneviève.

After dinner, when the table was cleared, the protestant brought out her big Bible, as usual, and began to read a few pages here and there at random. Towards the end of the evening, the book opened at that touching narrative of the sinning woman pouring ointment on the feet of Jesus, who forgives her and tells her to go in peace. It was very seldom that the fanatic chose a passage from the New Testament, these stories of redemption, these parables full of tender and exquisite poetry could not satisfy the gloomy fervour of her mind. But this night, whether it was that she yielded to the fate that had opened the Bible at a passage full of compassion, or because she was touched by a vague and unconscious feeling of tenderness, she droned aloud the story of Mary Magdalen in a meditative, almost tender voice.

On the silence of the room fell the murmur of the words: “And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.”

Thus she went on, raising her voice, letting the verses fall one by one, slowly, like suppressed tears.

Up to this, Madeleine had done her utmost not to listen, for an evening spent in close company with the old woman frightened her. She was even glancing over a book, in the chimney corner, trying to busy herself in her reading, and waiting impatiently for William. The few words of Geneviève’s sing-song that she caught in spite of herself, filled her with discomfort. But when the protestant began the story of the repentant and pardoned sinner, she raised her head and listened with eager emotion.

The verses were drawled out one by one, and Madeleine fancied that the big Bible was speaking about her, about her shame, her tears, and the fragrance of her affection. As the story unfolded, interrupted, so to speak, by deep sighs, sighs of remorse and hope, she gradually felt pervaded by a feeling of unspeakable tenderness. Sentence by sentence she followed the narrative, waiting with fervency for the last words of the Saviour. At last came the gracious promise that, inasmuch as she had loved greatly and shed bitter tears, Heaven would permit her to taste the joys of the redemption. She thought of her past life, of her intimacy with James, and the memory of this man which still, at times, caused her cheeks to burn, filled her now with but a tenderness of repentance. All the ashes of this love were cold, and a breath of compassion had now carried them away. Like the Magdalen, whose name she bore, she could live in the desert, and become purified in her love. It was a supreme absolution that she was receiving. If at times, as Geneviève had read, she had fancied she could hear invisible mouths, hidden in the gloom of the spacious room, threatening her with a terrible punishment, she thought, at this moment, that she could catch, from endearing voices, assuring words of pardon and bliss.

When the protestant came to the verse: “Then said Jesus to the woman, thy sins are forgiven,” a smile of heavenly joy passed over Madeleine’s lips. She felt her eyes filling with tears of gratitude and could not help telling Geneviève of all the happy feeling which she had just experienced.

“What a charming story that is,” she said to her, “I am so pleased to have heard it — You shall read it to me again sometimes.”

The fanatic had raised her head, and was looking at the young wife with her stern expression, without replying. She seemed surprised and displeased at her taste for the touching poems of the New Testament.

“How I prefer that narrative,” Madeleine went on, “to the cruel pages that you nearly always read! Now you must confess that it is pleasant to grant pardon and pleasant to receive it Why! the sinning woman and Jesus himself tell you so.”

Geneviève had risen. Her nature protested against Madeleine’s tender accents, her eyes grew dark, and closing the Bible with a bang, she exclaimed in her voice of condemnation: “God the Father cannot have pardoned her.” These terrible words, full of savage fanaticism, this blasphemy which denied every spark of tenderness, froze Madeleine to the soul. It seemed to her as if a lead cloak had fallen on her shoulders. Geneviève was pushing her back, with her unfeeling cruelty, into the gulf from which she had just escaped: Heaven had no pardon, and she was a foolish creature for having dreamt of the tenderness of Jesus. She was seized at this moment with heart-felt despair. “What have I to fear?” she thought, “this woman is mad.” And yet, in spite of herself, the presentiment of a calamity that might have threatened her, make her cast an uneasy glance round. The huge room had an air of repose in the lamp’s yellow light, and the fire was shining on the hearth. Everything around her, this oppressive silence of a winter’s night, and this subdued light which pervaded the room, seemed to conceal an unfathomable calamity.

Geneviève had gone to the window.

A red flash of light had passed across the panes, and the sound of a carriage pulling up in front of the steps had caught her ear. Madeleine, who, only a few minutes before, had been impatiently expecting her husband, sat still in her chair, instead of rushing to meet him, watching the door with strange anxiety. Her heart was beating painfully, but why, she could not say.

William burst into the room. He seemed very excited, but it was an excitement of joy. He threw his hat on to a chair in the corner, and wiped his brow, although it was bitterly cold outside. He walked up and down, and at last stopped in front of Madeleine. As soon as he recovered his breath, he asked her with an overpowering desire to tell her his secret straight off:

“Guess whom I have found again at Mantes.”

His young wife, still seated, did not answer. The boisterous glee of her husband surprised her, frightened her almost.

“Come now, guess — try — I give you a thousand chances,” he repeated.

“Really, I don’t know,” she said at last, “we have no friend that you could have met to make you so pleased.”

“You are mistaken, I have met a friend, the only, the best — “

“A friend,” she replied with a vague sensation of dismay.

William could not keep his good news any longer. He took his wife’s hands and suddenly exclaimed in a burst of triumph.

“I have found James again.”

Madeleine raised no cry, and sat without moving a limb. But she became terribly pale.

“It is not true,” she murmured, “James is dead.”

“Oh no! he is not dead. It is quite a little story, and I will tell it you — When I saw him at Mantes station, I was afraid of him. I took him for a ghost.”

And he began to laugh, a happy laugh like a pleased child’s. He had let go Madeleine’s hands and they had fallen lifeless on her knees. She was crushed, speechless, almost insensible under this terrible news. She would fain have got up and fled, but she could not stir a limb. In the stupor that pervaded her whole being, she could hear nothing but Geneviève’s cruel words, “God the Father cannot have pardoned her.” And, indeed, God the Father had not pardoned her. She felt certain that the calamity was hanging over her, ready to strangle her. In her stupefaction, she gazed on the walls, as if she did not know the huge room; its calm seemed terrible to her, now that fear caused her brain to throb with a deafening noise. At last she fixed her eyes on the protestant and said to herself: “It is that woman who rules the decrees of fate, it is she who has brought James to life again in order to put him between my husband and myself.”

William, who in his delight failed to notice Madeleine’s agitation, had gone up to Geneviève.

“We must have the blue room got ready,” he said.

“Is James coming tomorrow?” asked the old woman, who always spoke of the doctor as a young boy.

This question rang in Madeleine’s ears in spite of her stupor. She rose, with staggering step, and leaning on the back of her chair, said rapidly in a feverish voice:

“Why should he come tomorrow? He won’t come — He saw William at Mantes, and that is all he wanted —

He has gone to Paris, has he not? — He must have business there, and people to visit.”

She stammered out her words, not knowing what she was saying. William burst into a fit of joyous laughter.

“Why James is outside,” he said, “he will be here in a second. You may be certain that I did not let him go — He is helping to unyoke the horse that has hurt itself — The roads are frightful, and the night is pitch dark!”

Then he went and opened the window and shouted: “Hallo! James, make haste.”

A strong voice from the darkness of the yard answered:

“All right, all right!”

This voice went to Madeleine’s heart, as if she had been struck with a piece of iron. She dropped down again on to her chair, with a sigh like the rattling of the death-agony. Oh! how gladly she would have died! What was she going to say when James came in, what attitude would she take up between these two brothers, her husband of the present and her lover of the past? She was becoming mad at the thought of the scene that would take place. She would weep with madness and grief, she would bury her face in her hands, while William and James stood aloof in disgust; she
Would
crawl to their feet, like a woman crazed, not daring now to take refuge in her husband’s arms, and driven to despair at the thought of having cast her shame like a gulf between these friends of boyhood. And she kept on repeating the words: “James is outside, he will be here in a second.” Every second that passed was for her an age of anguish. She fixed her eyes on the door and closed them at the slightest noise, so as not to see. In this situation, this waiting which lasted at most a minute, were contained all the sufferings of her life.

William was continuing to walk joyously up and down the room. At last he noticed Madeleine’s paleness.

“Why, what is the matter with you?” he asked as he went up to her.

“I don’t know,” she stammered, “I have not been well all the evening.”