Complete Works of Emile Zola (758 page)

‘It is like the end of the world,’ Madame Chanteau murmured. ‘What will the Cuches do? Where are they going to take refuge?’

‘They will have to be sheltered,’ said Prouane. ‘Mean­time they are at the Gonins’. What a sight it was! There was a little lad, who is only three years old, perfectly drenched, and his mother with nothing on but a petticoat — begging your pardon for mentioning it — and the father, too, with his hand split open by a falling beam, while madly trying to save their few rags.’

Pauline had risen from the table and returned to the window. She listened to what was being said with all the serious demeanour of a grown-up person. Her expression indicated distressful sympathy and pity, and her full lips trembled with emotion.

‘Oh, aunt!’ she said, ‘how very sad for the poor things!’ Then her gaze wandered through the window into that inky darkness where nothing was visible. They could hear that the sea had reached the road, and was sweeping wildly and fiercely over it, but they could see nothing. The little village and the rocks and the whole neighbourhood seemed submerged beneath a flood of ink. For the young girl it was a painful experience and surprise. That sea which she had thought so beautiful hurled itself upon poor folks and ruined them!

‘I will go down with you, Prouane,’ cried Lazare. ‘Perhaps something can be done.’

‘Oh yes! do go, cousin!’ said Pauline, with flashing eyes. But the man shook his head.

‘It is no use troubling yourself, Monsieur Lazare; you couldn’t do anything more than the others. We can only stand about and watch the sea work its will, and destroy what it likes; and when it gets tired of that we shall have to be grateful that it has done no worse. I merely came up to inform Monsieur Chanteau.’

Then Chanteau began to grow angry, bothered by this business, which would give him an uneasy night and demand all his attention in the morning.

‘I don’t believe there ever was a village built in such an idiotic position!’ he cried. ‘You have buried yourselves right under the waves, and it’s no wonder if the sea swallows up your houses one by one. And why ever in the world do you stop in such a place? You should leave it and go elsewhere.’

‘Where can we go?’ asked Prouane, who listened with an expression of stupefaction. ‘We are here, sir, and we have got to stop here. We must be somewhere.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Madame Chanteau, bringing the discussion to an end. ‘And wherever you are, here or else­where, there will always be trouble — We are just going to bed. Good-night. To-morrow it will be light.’

The man went off bowing, and they heard Véronique bolt the door behind him. They took their candles and gave a parting caress to Matthew and Minouche, who both slept in the kitchen. Lazare collected his music together, and Madame Chanteau put the scrip in its greasy covers beneath her arm, and also took from the table Davoine’s balance-sheet, which her husband had forgotten. It was a heart­breaking paper, and the sooner it was put out of sight the better.

‘We are going to bed, Véronique,’ she cried. ‘You need not wander up and down at this time of night.’ But, hearing nothing save a grunt in the kitchen, she added in lower tones:

‘What is the matter with her? I haven’t brought a baby home for her to wean!’

‘Leave her alone,’ said Chanteau. ‘She has her whims, you know. Well! we are all four here: so good-night!’

He himself slept on the ground floor, in a room on the other side of the passage. This arrangement had been made so that, when he was suffering from an attack of gout, he might be readily wheeled in his arm-chair either to table or to the terrace. He opened the door, and then stood still for a moment. His legs were very heavy, as at the approach of a fresh attack, of which, indeed, the stiffness of his joints had been giving him warning since the previous day. Plainly enough, he had acted very foolishly in eating that
foie gras.
The
consciousness of his error made him feel anything but happy.

‘Good-night,’ he repeated in a mournful voice. ‘You others can always sleep. Good-night, my little dear. Have a good long rest; you want it at your age.’

‘Good-night, uncle,’ said Pauline in reply, as she kissed him. Then the door closed. Madame Chanteau went upstairs fast with the little girl. Lazare followed behind. ‘Well, for my part, I shan’t want anyone to rock me to sleep to-night,’ said the old lady, ‘that’s quite certain. And I don’t at all object to that uproar. I find it lulling. When I was in Paris I quite missed the shaking of my bed.’

They all went up to the first floor. Pauline, who care­fully held her candlestick straight, was somewhat amused by this procession in Indian file, each carrying a lighted candle, which set all their shadows dancing. When she reached the landing she paused, hesitating where to go, till her aunt gently pushed her forward.

‘Straight on,’ she said. ‘That room there is kept for visitors, and this one opposite is mine. Come in for a minute; I want to show you something.’

The bedroom, hung with yellow cretonne with a pattern of green leaves, was very plainly furnished in mahogany. There was a bed, a wardrobe, and a secrétaire. In the middle stood a small table on a square of red carpet. When she had examined every corner carefully with her candle, Madame Chanteau went up to the secrétaire and opened it.

‘Come and look!’ she said.

She drew out one of the little drawers and placed Davoine’s disastrous balance-sheet in it, with a sigh. Then she emptied the drawer above it, pulled it right out and shook it, to clear it of a few old scraps, and, with Pauline looking at her as she prepared to stow the scrip away in it, she said:

‘I am going to put it in here, you see. There is nothing else in the drawer, and it will be all by itself. Would you like to put it there yourself?’

Pauline felt a slight sense of shame, which she could not have accounted for. She blushed as she answered, ‘Oh! aunt dear, what difference does it make?’

But she had already taken the old ledger-binding in her hand, and she put it in the drawer, while Lazare threw the light of the candle he was holding upon the secrétaire.

‘There!’ said Madame Chanteau, ‘you are quite sure about it now, and you may feel quite easy about it. The drawer is the top one on the left, remember. It will stop there till the day when you are old enough to come and take it out and do what you like with it. Minouche won’t be able to come and eat it here, will she?’

The idea of Minouche opening the secrétaire and eating the papers quite tickled the child’s fancy, and she broke into a merry laugh. Her momentary embarrassment altogether disappeared, and she began to joke with Lazare, who amused her by purring like a cat and pretending to make an attack upon the secrétaire. He, too, laughed gaily. His mother, however, very solemnly locked the flap, turning the key round twice.

‘It is quite safe now,’ she said. ‘Come, Lazare, don’t make yourself ridiculous. Now, Pauline, I will go up with you to your room to see if you have got everything you want.’

They all three filed out into the staircase. When they reached the second floor, Pauline with some hesitation opened the door of the room on her left, but her aunt immediately called out:

‘No! no! not that one! That’s your cousin’s room. Yours is the one opposite.’

Pauline, however, stood where she was, lost in amazement at the size of the room and the state of confusion it was in. It contained a piano, a couch, and a huge table, besides a lot of books and pictures. And when at last she opened the opposite door, she was quite delighted to find that her own room was a very small one in comparison with the other. The wall-paper was of a creamy yellow, flowered with blue roses. The furniture consisted of an iron bedstead hung with muslin curtains, a dressing-table, a chest of drawers, and three chairs.

‘Yes; you have everything here, I think,’ said Madame Chanteau—’water, sugar, towels, and soap. I hope you will sleep well. Véronique has a little room beside you. If you feel at all frightened, knock on the wall.’

‘And I am close to you as well,’ added Lazare. ‘If a ghost comes, I will fly at him with my sword.’

The doors of both rooms, which faced each other, were open; Pauline’s eyes strayed from one to the other.

‘There are no ghosts,’ she said merrily. ‘You must keep your sword for robbers. Good-night, aunt. Good-night, cousin.’

‘Good-night, my dear. You know how to undress your­self?’

‘Oh! yes. I am getting a big girl, you know, now. I always did everything for myself in Paris.’

They kissed her, and Madame Chanteau told her, as she went off, that she might lock her door. But the child had already sprung to the window, impatient to find out whether it overlooked the sea. The rain was streaming so violently down the panes that she dared not open it. All was pitchy dark outside, but she felt quite happy when she heard the waves beating beneath her. Then, in spite of her fatigue, which almost prevented her from keeping her eyes open, she walked round the room and examined the furniture. The thought that she was to have a room of her own, separate from anyone else, where she might shut herself up entirely alone, quite flattered and pleased her, and made her feel as though she were grown up already. Just as she was about to turn the key in the lock, however, she hesitated, and felt a little uneasy. How should she escape, if she should see anybody in the night? She trembled for a moment, and then, though she was in her petticoats, having taken off her dress, she opened the door. Opposite to her she saw Lazare, standing in the middle of his room and looking at her.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter? Do you want anything?’

She turned very red, and felt disposed to tell him a fib, but her natural frankness got the better of that inclination.

‘No, nothing,’ she replied. ‘But I feel afraid, do you know, when the door is locked; so I am not going to fasten it; and if you hear me knock, it will be for you to come. You, mind, and not the cook!’

He had walked out of his room to her door, attracted by the charm of her child-like frankness and innocence.

‘Good-night!’ he repeated, stretching out his arms to her. She thereupon threw her puny little arms round his neck and pressed him to her, quite regardless of the scantiness of her attire.

‘Good-night, cousin!’

Five minutes later she bravely blew her candle out, and buried herself in her muslin-curtained bed. For a long time her slumber was light and broken, from her very weariness. She heard Véronique come upstairs, without the least care to hush her footsteps, and then push her furniture about with noise enough to waken everybody. After a while, how­ever, there was nothing to be heard save the tumult of the storm outside. The rain beat down upon the slates; the wind shook the windows and whistled under the doors, and the girl long listened to that cannonading, and trembled and quivered as each wave broke against the cliff. It seemed to her that the house, now silent and lifeless, was being carried out to sea like a ship, Then, as she grew warm and snug beneath her blankets, her wandering thoughts strayed, with sympathetic pity, to the poor people down in the village, whom the sea was driving from their beds. But at last everything faded from her mind, and she slept soundly, scarce breathing.

CHAPTER II

From the first week Pauline’s presence in the house proved a source of joy and pleasure to the family. Her cheerful healthiness and her calm, tranquil smile spread a softening influence over the asperities of the Chanteau household. In her the father found a nurse, while the mother was made happy by the fact that her son now spent more of his time at home. It was only Véronique who went on grumbling and growling. The knowledge that there were a hundred and fifty thousand francs locked up in the secrétaire, although they were to remain scrupulously untouched, seemed also to give the family a semblance of wealth. There was a new influence in their midst, and fresh hopes arose, though what they were it would have been difficult to say.

On the third night after Pauline’s arrival, the attack of gout, which Chanteau had foreseen, broke out in all its vio­lence. For a week past he had been experiencing prickings in his joints, tremblings and quiverings in his legs, and an utter distaste for all exercise. He had gone to bed feeling somewhat easier, but about three o’clock in the morning had been seized with a frightful pain in the big toe of his left foot. Thence it had quickly spread to his heel, and then risen to his ankle. He endured the agony as well as he could till morn­ing, sweating beneath his blankets, anxious as he was to dis­turb nobody. His attacks were the dread of the whole house, and he always put off calling for assistance till the last pos­sible minute, feeling ashamed of his helplessness, and dread­ing the angry reception which awaited the announcement of each fresh attack. But when he heard Véronique go past his door, about eight o’clock in the morning, he could no longer restrain a groan, as a sharper spasm of pain than previously shot through his foot.

‘There we are again!’ growled the cook. ‘Just listen to him bellowing!’

She came into the room and watched him as he lay moan­ing and tossing his head about. And her only attempt at consolation was to say: ‘You don’t suppose this will please Madame when she hears of it, do you?’

As soon as Madame Chanteau heard of her husband’s fresh attack she bounced into the room, and, letting her hands drop by her sides in angry desperation, cried out: ‘What, again! No sooner do I get back than this begin afresh!’

For the last fifteen years she had harboured intense hatred against gout. She cursed it as an enemy, a thief that had blighted her existence, ruined her son, blasted all her hopes. If it had not been for that gout, would they have all been living a life of exile in that forsaken hole? Thus, in spite of all her natural kindness, she always manifested a petulant, hostile disposition towards her husband in his attacks, declaring, too, that she was quite incapable of nursing him.

‘Oh! what agony I suffer!’ groaned the unhappy man. ‘I know it is going to be much worse this time than it was the last. Don’t stop there, as it puts you out so, but send for Doctor Cazenove at once.’