Complete Works of Emile Zola (1646 page)

After dinner Delaveau seated himself at his desk for the purpose of writing the letters in regard to which he had been maturing plans for hours. Midnight struck, and he was still there, completing his dull and wearisome correspondence. His doubts had again returned, and fear was once more besetting him. Would salvation afterwards be really attainable, even admitting that the delay he asked for were granted him? The superhuman effort that he wars making to save the Pit had fatigued him to the point of exhaustion, and letting his forehead fall into his hands he remained sunk in the depths of anguish. At this moment was heard the sound of a carriage and of voices. It was Fernande, who was returning from her dinner at Guerdache, and who was sending the maids to bed.

When she entered the office she did so with the abruptness of movement and nervousness of speech which belong to a woman entirely beside herself, who has been restraining and nursing her anger for hours.

“Phew! how hot it is here! How is it possible for you to stand such a fire?”

She threw herself into an arm-chair, and, as she did so, unfastened and cast aside the magnificent fur mantle that covered her shoulders. She then appeared adorable, and of a marvellous beauty, clad as she was in white silk and lace, and with her neck and arms bare. It was a piece of extravagance at which her husband was not astonished, and which he did not even perceive, since he loved her but for herself, and regarded her as an exquisite being, in whose presence a passionate feeling had always rendered him obedient, without either sense or judgment. And never had she been more intoxicatingly beautiful than at this moment. But when, still seated at his desk, he had looked at her for a minute, with his head still buzzing, he became uneasy.

“What is the matter with you, love?”

She was visibly upset. Her large, deep blue eyes, habitually so caressing, shone with a sombre glow. Her small mouth, wreathed usually in tender, deceitful smiles, was half open, and displayed perfect teeth of unalterable brilliancy, with a gnawing expression. Her beautiful oval face, with its border of black hair, was expressive of a necessity for violence.

“What is the matter with me?” said she, at last, in tremulous tones. “Nothing.”

A silence ensued; and in the dead quiet of winter there was heard the rumbling of the Pit at work, the vibration of which shook the house continuously. They themselves were not conscious of this, so used to it had they become. But on this particular night, although orders had greatly diminished, the twenty-five-ton steam-hammer had just been set in operation, in order to forge the barrel of a large gun in haste. So the ground was trembling, and the vibrations caused by each blow seemed to resound even in the office, echoing through the light wooden passageway that connected it with neighboring buildings of the works.

“There is something the matter with you,” resumed Delaveau. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

She made a motion of furious impatience, and answered:

“Let us go up-stairs to bed; that will be the best thing to do.”

But she did not move. Her hands were feverishly twisting her fan, while a short breath heaved her bare throat. At last she told him what was choking her.

“You went to Guerdache, then, this morning?”

“Yes, I went there.”

“Then what Boisgelin has just told me is true? The works are in danger of bankruptcy, we are on the brink of ruin, and affairs have reached a pass at which it will be necessary for us to live on bread, and to wear nothing but woollen clothes!”

“
Yes, I was obliged to tell him the truth.”

She was trembling, but put a restraint upon herself, so as not to break out at once into reproaches and insults. It was all over, then, and her happiness was menaced and destroyed. Guerdache would no longer give
fêtes,
dinners, balls, or hunts. Its doors would be closed, for had not Boisgelin owned to her that he might perhaps be obliged to sell it? And it was all over, too, with her return to Paris, in possession of millions. All that she had believed to be within her grasp — fortune, luxury, and a continued round of pleasure, was giving way. She was conscious of nothing around her but ruin, and that Boisgelin had just exasperated her further by his weakness and the cowardice with which he bowed his head under disaster.

“You never tell me anything about our affairs,” replied she, harshly. “This has fallen upon my head as if the ceiling had given way. It makes me appear like a fool. Now what are we going to do? Please tell me.”

“We are going to work,” answered he, simply;
“
there is no other possible salvation.”

But she was scarcely listening any longer. “Has it been possible for you to believe for a moment that I would ever consent to have nothing fit to put on my back, to wear shoes run down at the heel, and to begin over again all that poverty, the remembrance of which is a nightmare to me? Ah, no, indeed! I am not like you people, and, shall not do it! You and Boisgelin must arrange matters between you. I shall not return to poverty.”

She continued to give vent to what was passing in her distracted mind. It was her wretched youth and the odious experience, buried up to the present in the depths of her memory that she now recalled, when she had allowed herself, at the age of twenty, while still dependent upon her mother, first to be led astray and then abandoned. It was her deliberately calculated marriage with this Delaveau, whom she accepted in spite of his ugliness and his inferior condition, because of her need of support and of a husband whom she could utilize. The prosperity of the Pit had been her stroke of good-fortune; her calculation had been right, her husband had been the means of giving her victory. She had conquered Boisgelin, and looked on Guerdache as her own, with every luxury and every pleasure. For twelve years this enjoyer and perverter, with her fund of innate cruelty, had tasted of what was rare and exquisite, satisfying her immoderate appetites, appeasing the deep rancor accumulated since childhood, happy in her lies, perjuries, and betrayals, and in the disorder and ruin that she caused, happy especially by reason of the tears that she had brought to the eyes of Suzanne. But now that was all over; she would return, defeated, into her former poverty!

“Come! Settle the matter between you! Settle it!” cried she. “I am not going to go without clothes, and I shall retrench absolutely nothing of my expenses!”

Delaveau, whom she was beginning to render impatient, shrugged his powerful shoulders. He had rested his massive, bull-dog head, with its projecting jaws, upon his clinched fists, and looked at her with his big brown eyes, his face flushed by the hot fire, and half hidden in the fringe of his black beard.

“My wife,” said he, at last, “you are quite right; do not let us speak of these things now, for you do not seem to be quite reasonable this evening. You well know that I love you very much, and that I am prepared to make any sacrifice to spare you from suffering. But I hope that you will be willing to resign yourself to doing as I do, for I am going to fight to the bitter end. If it is necessary, I will get up at five o’clock, will live on a crust of bread, will give my entire day to the hardest labor for our support, and will go to bed at night contented. Heavens! to think that you should be obliged to wear plainer dresses and to go on foot! Yet you told me only the other evening of your weariness and disgust for these pleasures, which are always the same.”

This was true. Her blue eyes, generally so caressing, darkened again until they became almost black. For some time she had been nursing a deep rancor against Delaveau and Boisgelin, who no longer amused her, and she felt a growing annoyance at the thought that no one ever would amuse her and gratify her desire for new sensations.

This was why she had received with insulting disdain Boisgelin’s lamentations when he explained to her his annoyance and his despair at being obliged to reduce his style of living. And this was why she had returned in so violent and so spiteful a mood, swelling with the desire to carp at and destroy some one.

“Yes, yes,” stammered she, “these pleasures are always the same. Ah, it is not you who will give me any new ones!”

In the works the steam-hammer was continuing to strike its heavy blows, with which the earth trembled. Long had it forged her pleasures, causing the steel to sweat the riches of which she was greedy, while the dark herd of workmen were giving their lives in order that she might live hers in free and unrestricted enjoyment! For a moment she heard the doleful sound of labor in the midst of the deep silence; and then her cruel hatred of her husband returned.

“What has happened is your fault!” cried she. “I said so to Boisgelin. Had you begun by strangling that miserable Luc Froment, we should not have been upon the brink of ruin. But you have never known how to carry on your business.”

Delaveau suddenly rose, but resisted the outburst that he felt coming.

“Let us go up-stairs to bed,” said he. “You will end by driving me to say things that I shall afterwards regret.” Still she never moved, but continued her abuse, and became so bitter and so aggressive in accusing him of having caused the unhappiness of her life that he ended by exclaiming, brutal in his turn:

“But, after all, my dear, when I married you, yon had not a single sou, and I was obliged to buy even your underclothes. You were going to be turned out upon the street, and where would you be now?”

Outraged by this, with her breast heaving, and with a murderous expression in her eyes, she answered:

“Do you think that, as beautiful as I was, and the daughter of a prince, I would have accepted a man like you, ugly, common, and without position, if I had had even bread to eat. Look at yourself, dear sir! I have wished you well, because you agreed to secure for me a fortune and a royal position. And if I tell you all this, it is precisely because you have not kept any of your engagements.”

He had placed himself in front of her, and let her go on, clinching his fists and forcing himself to keep cool.

“You understand,” repeated she, with a furious persistence. “None of your engagements — none! And no more with Boisgelin than with me, for it is really you who have ruined him, poor man! You influenced him to give you his money, and you promised him a fabulous rate of interest, and now he is not going to have enough wherewith to buy shoes. My dear sir, when a man is not capable of managing a large business, he remains a petty employe, and lives in his hole along with a wife, ugly enough and fool enough to wash the children and darn stockings. This is bankruptcy, and it is your fault, you understand — yours, and yours alone!”

He could contain himself no longer. What she was saying to him so fiercely was turning the knife in his heart and in his conscience. To hear her, whom he had loved so passionately, speak of their marriage as a vulgar bargain, in which he, upon his side, had furnished nothing but necessity and calculation! He who for nearly fifteen years had been working so loyally and so heroically to keep the promise made to his cousin, to be accused by her of bad management and incapacity! He grasped her two bare arms with both hands, shook her, and said, in a low voice, as if he feared that the sound of his own words might madden him:

“Unhappy woman! Be silent! Do not drive me mad!”

But she in her turn had risen and disengaged herself, stammering with anger upon feeling the pain caused by the vise-like grip with which he had held her, and upon seeing her two white and delicate arms circled with red.

“You beat me now, you blackguard, you brute! Oh! you beat me, you beat me, do you?”

She thrust forward her beautiful face, convulsed with rage, and poured forth her disdain right into the face of the man whom she would have liked to tear in pieces. Never had she execrated him more, and never had she been irritated to such an extent by his massive, bulldoglike breadth of shoulder. Her pent-up rancor rose still higher, impelling her to wind up with some irreparable insult. And her cruelty sought for the poisoned wound, for that which would make him suffer most severely and most audibly.

“You are nothing but a brute!” said she. “You are not fit to manage a workshop of as many as ten men!”

At this remarkable insult, Delaveau was seized with a burst of convulsive laughter, to such a degree that it seemed to her stupid and childish. This raised Fernande’s exasperation to such a point that she became beside herself. What could she say to him, then, in order that the blow might prove mortal and stop his laughter?

“Yes!” cried she. “It is I who made you what you are, and without me you would not have remained manager of the Pit for a single year.”

He laughed even more loudly.

“You are mad, my dear,” replied he. “You say such absurdly foolish things that I do not pay any attention to them.”

“Oh! I say foolish things, do I? It is no thanks to me, then, that you have kept your place?”

The revelation leaped quickly to her lips. She would scream into his dog’s face that she had never loved him, and that she was the mistress of another man! This was the stab that would silence his laughter. She enjoyed a horrible, ferocious pleasure in the idea, and it afforded her some consolation in the total destruction of her life, whose foundations were giving way under her.

“The things I say, my dear sir, are so little foolish that your Boisgelin has been my lover for twelve years!” Delaveau did not comprehend all at once. He was stunned by so atrocious an insult flung straight into his face.

“What is that you say?” cried he.

“I say that your Boisgelin has been my lover for twelve years, and since he is ruined, and since everything is going to pieces, well! you see for yourself everything is at an end!”

Delaveau rushed upon her, stammering, with his teeth clinched, and, beside himself in his turn, he seized her in his arms, shook her violently, and threw her into the arm-chair. He would have liked to bruise her bare neck and arms with his fists, to hinder her from insulting and torturing him further. The veil arising from his prolonged confidence, his prolonged credulity, was at last torn aside, and he saw clearly, and understood. She had never loved him, and her existence beside him had never been anything but hypocrisy, dissimulation, deceit, and treason. The natural savageness, the gloomy anger, and the brutality of his instincts were suddenly aroused against this woman, who was so beautiful, so refined, so exquisite, this woman whom he adored, whom he idolized. He saw in her all that of which he had for so long been ignorant; she was a corrupter, a poisoner, who had slowly corrupted all around her, and her treacherous, cruel nature had found its enjoyment in the tears and sufferings of others.