Complete Works of Emile Zola (676 page)

“What is the matter?”
asked he in a low voice.

“I don’t know, I was frightened,’’ stammered she. “It is so dark on the stairs, I thought that somebody was following me. Dear me! how stupid all this is! Some harm is sure to happen to us.”

This chilled them both. They did not even kiss each other. Yet she was charming in her white dressing-gown, and with her golden hair rolled up on the back of her head. He looked at her, and thought her much prettier than Marie; but he no longer desired her; it was a nuisance. She had dropped on to a chair to take breath; and she suddenly affected to be angry on beholding a box on the table, which she at once guessed contained the lace shawl she had been talking about for a week past.

“I am going back,” said she without leaving her chair.

“What, you are going?”

“Do you think I sell myself? You are always hurting my feelings; you have again spoilt all my pleasure to-night. Why did you buy it, when I forbade you to do so?”

She got up, and at length consented to look at it. But, when she opened the box, she experienced such a disappointment, that she could not restrain this indignant exclamation:

“What! it is not Chantilly at all, it is llama!”

Octave, who was reducing his presents, had yielded to a miserly idea. He tried to explain to her that there was some superb llama, quite equal to Chantilly; and he praised up the article, just as though he had been behind his counter, making her feel the lace, and swearing that it would last her for ever. But she shook her head, and silenced him by observing contemptuously.

“The long and short of it is, this costs one hundred francs, whereas the other would have cost three hundred.”

And, seeing him turn pale, she added, so as to soften her words,

“You are very kind all the same, and I am much obliged to you. It is not the value which makes the present, when one’s intention is good.”

She sat down again, and a pause ensued. She was still quite upset by her silly fright on the stairs! And she returned to her misgivings with respect to Rachel, relating how she had found Auguste whispering with the maid behind a door. Yet, it would have been so easy to have bought the girl over by it giving her a five franc piece from time to time. But to do this was necessary to have some five franc pieces; she never had one, she had nothing. Her voice became harsh, the llama shawl which she no longer alluded to was working her up to such a pitch of rancour and despair, that she ended by picking the quarrel with her lover which had already existed so long between her and her husband.

“Come, now, is it a life worth living? never a sou, always at any one’s mercy for the least thing! Oh! I’ve had enough of it, I’ve had enough of it!”

Octave, who was pacing the room, stopped short to ask her:

“But why do you tell me all this?”

“Eh?
sir, why?
But there are things which delicacy alone ought to tell you, without my being made to blush by having to discuss such matters with you. Ought you not, long ere now, and without having to be told, to have made me easy by bringing this girl to our feet?”

She paused, then she added in a tone of disdainful irony,

“It would not have ruined you.”

There was another silence. The young man, who was again pacing the room, at length replied,

“I am not rich, and I regret it for your sake.”

Then matters went from bad to worse, the quarrel assumed quite conjugal violence.

“Say that I love you for your money!” cried she, with all the bluntness of her mother, whose very words seemed to come to her lips. “I am a money-loving woman, am I not?
Well! yes, I am a money-loving woman, because I am a sensible woman. It is no use your pretending the contrary; money will ever be money in spite of everything. As for me, whenever I have had twenty sous, I have always pretended that I had forty, for it is better to create envy than pity.”

He interrupted her to say in a weary voice, like a man who only desires peace:

“Listen, if it annoys you so much that it’s a llama shawl, I will give you one in Chantilly.”

“Your shawl!” continued she in a regular fury, “why, I’ve already forgotten all about your shawl! The other things are what exasperate me, understand! Oh! moreover, you’re just like my husband. You wouldn’t care a bit if I hadn’t a pair of boots to go out in. Yet when one loves a woman, good-nature alone should prompt one to feed and dress her. But no man will ever understand that. Why, between the two of you, you would soon let me go out with nothing on but my chemise, if I was agreeable!”

Octave, tired out by this domestic squabble, decided not to answer, having noticed that Auguste sometimes got rid of her in that way. He let pass the flow of words, and thought of the ill-luck of his amours. Yet he had ardently desired this one, even to the point of upsetting all his calculations; and, now that she was in his room, it was to quarrel with him, to make him pass a sleepless night, as though they had already left six months of married life behind them.

“Let’s go to bed,” said he at length. “We promised ourselves so much happiness! It is excessively stupid to waste time in saying disagreeable things to one another.”

And, full of conciliation, without desire, but polite, he tried to kiss her. She pushed him away, and burst into tears. Then, despairing of winning her round, he took off his boots in a rage, decided on going to bed without her.

“Go on, reproach me also with my outings,” stammered she in the midst of her sobs. “Accuse me of being too great an expense to you. Oh! I see clearly now; it’s all on account of that wretched present. If you could shut me up in a box, you would do so. I have lady friends; I go to call on them; that is no crime. And as for mamma — “

“For heaven’s sake leave your mamma alone,” interrupted Octave; “and allow me to tell you that she has given you a precious bad temper.”

She mechanically commenced to undress herself, and becoming more and more excited, she raised her voice.

“Mamma has always done her duty. It’s not for you to speak of her here. I forbid you to mention her name. It only remained for you to attack my family!”

Finding a difficulty in undoing the string of her petticoat, she broke it. Then, seating herself on the edge of the bed, her bosom heaving with anger in the midst of the surrounding lace of her chemise, she continued:

“Ah! how I regret my weakness, sir! how one would reflect, if one could only foresee everything!”

Octave, who had made a show of lying with his face to the wall, suddenly bounced round, exclaiming,

“What! you regret having loved me?”

“Most certainly, a man incapable of understanding a woman’s heart!”

And they looked at each other close together, with hardened faces, quite devoid of love.

“Ah! good heavens! if it were only to come over again!” added she.

“You would take another, wouldn’t you?
”
said he brutally and in a very loud voice.

She was about to answer in the same exasperated tone, when there came a sudden hammering at the door. Not understanding at first what it meant, they remained immovable and their blood seemed to freeze in their veins. A hollow voice said,

“Open the door, I can hear you at your dirty tricks. Open, or I will burst it in!”

It was the husband’s voice. Still the lovers did not move, their heads were filled with such a buzzing that they could think of nothing; and they felt very cold, just like corpses. Berthe at length jumped from the bed, with an instinctive desire to fly from her lover, whilst, on the other side of the door, Auguste repeated:

“Open! open I say!”

Then ensued a terrible confusion, an inexpressible anguish. Berthe turned about the room in a state of distraction, seeking for some outlet, with a fear of death which made her turn ghastly pale. Octave, whose heart jumped to his mouth at each blow, had gone and mechanically leant against the door, as though to strengthen it. The noise was becoming unbearable, the fool would wake the whole house up, he would have to open the door. But, when she understood his determination, she hung on to his arms, imploring him with terrified eyes: no, no, mercy! the other would rush upon them with a pistol or a knife. He, as pale as herself, and partly overcome by her fright, slipped on his trousers and beseeched her to dress herself. Still bewildered, she only managed to put on her stockings. All this time, the husband continued his uproar.

“You won’t, you don’t answer. Very well, you’ll see.”

Ever since he had last paid his rent, Octave had been asking his landlord for some slight repairs, two new screws in the staple of his lock, which scarcely held to the wood. Suddenly the door cracked, the staple yielded, and Auguste, unable to stop himself, rolled into the middle of the room.

“Damnation!” swore he.

He simply held a key in his hand, which was bleeding through becoming grazed in his fall. When he got up, livid, and filled with rage and shame at the thought of his ridiculous entry, he hit out into space, and wished to spring upon Octave. But the latter, in spite of the awkwardness of being barefooted and having his trousers all awry, seized him by the wrists, and, being the stronger of the two, mastered him, at the same time exclaiming:

“Sir, you are violating my domicile. It is disgraceful, you should act like a gentleman.”

And he almost beat him. During their short struggle, Berthe had made off in her chemise by the door which had remained wide open; she fancied she beheld a kitchen knife in her husband’s bleeding fist, and she seemed to feel the cold steel between her shoulders. As she rushed along the dark passage, she thought she heard the sound of blows, without being able to make out who had dealt them, or who received them. Voices which she no longer recognised were saying:

“I am at your service, whenever you please.”

“Very well, you will hear from me.”

With a bound, she gained the servants’ staircase. But when she had rushed down the two flights, as though there had been the flames of a conflagration behind her, she found the kitchen door locked, and remembered she had left the key upstairs in the pocket of her dressing-gown. Moreover, there was no lamp, not the least glimmer of a light beneath the door: it was evidently the servant who had sold them. Without stopping to take breath, she tore upstairs again, passing once more before the passage leading to Octave’s room, where the two men’s voices still continued in violent altercation.

They were going on abusing each other, she would have time perhaps. And she rapidly descended, the grand staircase, with the hope that her husband had left their outer door open. She would bolt herself in her loom, and open to nobody. But there for the second time she encountered a locked door. Then, shut out from her home, with scarcely a covering to her body, she lost her head, and scampered from floor to floor, like some hunted animal which knows not where to take earth. She would never have the courage to knock at her parents’ door. At one moment, she thought of taking refuge with the doorkeepers; but shame drove her upstairs again. She listened, raised her head, bent over the handrail, her ears deafened by the beating of her heart in the profound silence, her eyes blinded by lights which seemed to shoot out from the dense obscurity. And it was always the knife, the knife in Auguste’s bleeding fist, the icy cold point of which was about to pierce her. Suddenly, there was a noise, she fancied he was coming, and she shivered to her very marrow; and, as she was opposite the Campardons’ door, she rang desperately, furiously, almost breaking the bell.

“Good heavens! is the house on fire?
”
asked an agitated voice inside.

The door opened at once. It was Lisa, who was only then leaving mademoiselle, walking softly, and with a candlestick in her hand. The mad ringing of the bell had made her start, just as she was crossing the anteroom. When she caught sight of Berthe in her chemise, she stood rooted to the spot.

“What’s the matter?” asked she.

The young woman had entered, violently slamming the door behind her;
and, panting and leaning against the wall, she stammered out:

“Hush! keep quiet! He wants to kill me.”

Lisa was trying to get a sensible explanation from her, when Campardon appeared, looking very anxious. This incomprehensible uproar had disturbed Gasparine and him in their narrow bed. He had simply slipped on his trousers, and his fat face was swollen and covered with perspiration, whilst his yellow beard was quite flaccid and full of the white down of the pillow. He was all out of breath, and endeavouring to assume the assurance of a husband who sleeps alone.

“Is that you, Lisa?” called he from the drawing-room. “It’s absurd! How is it you’re not upstairs?”

“I was afraid I had not fastened the door properly, sir; I could not sleep for thinking of it, so I came down to make sure. But it’s madame — “

The architect, seeing Berthe loaning against the wall of his anteroom with nothing but her chemise on, stood lost in amazement also. Berthe forgot how scantily she was clad.

“Oh! sir, keep me here,” repeated she. “He wants to kill me.”

“Who does?” asked he.

“My husband.”

The cousin now put in an appearance behind the architect. She had taken time to don a dress; and, her hair all untidy and also full of down, her breast flat and hanging, her bones almost protruding through her garment, she brought with her the rancour arising from her interrupted repose. The sight of the young woman, of her plump and delicate nudity, only increased her ill-humour.

“Whatever have you done then to your husband?” she asked.

At this simple question Berthe was overcome by a great shame. She remembered she was half-naked, and blushed from head to foot. In this long thrill of shame, she crossed her arms over her bosom, as though to escape the glances directed at her. And she stammered out:

“He found me — he caught me — “

The two others understood, and looked at each other with indignation in their eyes. Lisa, whose candle lighted up the scene, pretended to share her master’s reprehension. At this moment, however, the explanation was interrupted by Angèle also hastening to the spot; and she pretended to have just woke up, rubbing her eyes heavy with sleep. The sight of the lady with nothing on her but a chemise suddenly brought her to a standstill, with a jerk, a quivering of her precocious young girl’s slender body.