Complete Works of Emile Zola (778 page)

She did not seem to be at all alarmed herself. She merely remarked that she felt a little tired, and the members of the family simply supposed that she was suffering from a slight attack of lumbago. As Lazare had gone off on one of his rambles along the shore, and Pauline refrained from entering her aunt’s room, knowing that her presence there would be unwelcome, the sick woman occupied herself by dinning furious charges against her niece into the servant’s ears. She seemed to have lost all control of herself. The immobility to which she was condemned and the palpitations of the heart which stifled her at the slightest movement goaded her into ever-increasing exasperation.

‘What’s she doing downstairs? Up to some fresh wickedness, I’m sure! She’ll never think of bringing me even a glass of water, you’ll see!’

‘But, Madame,’ urged Véronique, ‘it is you who drive her from you.’

‘Ah! you don’t know her! There never was such a hypocrite as she is. Before other people she pretends to be kind and generous, but there’s nothing she wouldn’t do or say when your back’s turned. Yes, my good girl, you were the only one who saw things clearly on the day I first brought her here. If she had never come, we shouldn’t now be in the state we are. She will prove the ruin of us all. Your master has suffered all the agonies of the damned since she has been in this house, and she has worried and distressed me till she has quite undermined my health; while as for my son, she made him lose his head entirely.’

‘Oh, Madame! how can you say that when she is so kind and good to you all?’

Eight up to the evening Madame Chanteau thus unbur­dened herself of her anger. She raved about everything, par­ticularly about the abominable way in which Louise had been turned out of the house, though it was the money question that aroused her greatest anger. When Véronique, after dinner, was able to go down to the kitchen again she found Pauline there, occupying herself by putting the crockery away; and so the servant, in her turn, took the opportunity of unburdening herself of the angry indignation which was choking her.

‘Ah! Mademoiselle, it is very good of you to bother about their plates. If I were you, I should smash the whole lot to bits!’

‘What for?’ the girl asked in astonishment.

‘Because, whatever you were to do, you couldn’t come up to half of what they accuse you of!’

Then she broke out angrily, raking up everything from the day of Pauline’s arrival there.

‘It would put God Almighty Himself into a rage to see such things! She has drained your money away sou by sou, and she has done it in the most shameless manner imaginable. Upon my word, to hear her talk one would suppose that it was she who had been keeping you. When she had your money in her secrétaire she made ever so much fuss about keeping it safe and untouched, but all that didn’t prevent her greedy hands from digging pretty big holes in it. It’s a nice piece of play-acting that she’s been keeping up all this time, contriving to make you pay for those salt workshops and then keeping the pot boiling with what was left! Ah! I daresay you don’t know, but if it hadn’t been for you they would all have starved! She got into a pretty flurry when the people in Paris began to worry her about the accounts! Yes, indeed, you could have had her sent right off to the assize court if you had liked. But that didn’t teach her any lesson; she’s still robbing you, and she’ll end by stripping you of your very last copper. I daresay you think I’m not speaking the truth, but I swear that I am! I have seen it all with my eyes and heard it with my ears; and I have too much respect for you, Mademoiselle, to tell you the worst things, such as how she went on when you were ill and she couldn’t go rummaging in your chest of drawers.’

Pauline listened without finding a single word with which to interrupt the narrative. The thought that the family were actually living upon her and rapaciously plundering her had, indeed, frequently cast a gloom over her happiest days. But she had always refused to allow her mind to dwell on the subject; she had preferred to go on living in ignorance and accusing herself secretly of avarice. To-day, however, she had to hear the whole truth of the matter, and Véronique’s outspokenness seemed to make facts worse than she had believed. At each fresh sentence the young girl’s memory awoke within her; she recalled old incidents, the exact meaning of which she had not at the time understood, and she now saw clearly through all Madame Chanteau’s machinations to get hold of her money. Whilst listening she had slowly dropped upon a chair, as though suddenly overcome with great fatigue, and an expression of grief and pain appeared upon her lips.

‘You are exaggerating!’ she murmured.

‘Exaggerating! I!’ Véronique continued violently. « It isn’t so much the money part of the business that makes me so angry. But what I can’t forgive her is for having taken Monsieur Lazare from you after once having given him to you. Oh yes! it was very nice of her to rob you of your money and then to turn against you because you were no longer rich enough, and Monsieur Lazare must needs marry an heiress! Yes, indeed; what do you think of it? They first pillage you, and then toss you aside because you are no longer rich enough for them! No, Mademoiselle, I will not give over! There is no need to tear people’s hearts to shreds after emptying their pockets. As you loved your cousin, and it was his duty to pay you back with affection and kindness, why, it was abominable of your aunt to steal him from you! She did everything. I saw through it all! Yes, every evening she excited the girl; she made her fall in love with the young man by all her talk about him. As certainly as that lamp is shining, it was she who threw them into each other’s arms. Bah! she would have been only too glad to have seen them compelled to marry; and it isn’t her fault if that didn’t take place. Try and defend her if you can, she who trampled you under foot and caused you so much grief, for you sob in the night like a Magdalene! I can hear you from my room! I feel beside myself with all that cruelty and injustice!’

‘Don’t say any more, I beseech you!’ stammered Pauline, whose courage failed her. ‘You are giving me too great pain.’

Big tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt quite con­scious that Véronique was only telling her the truth, and her heart bled within her. All the past sprang up before her eyes in lively reality, and she again saw Lazare pressing Louise to his breast, while Madame Chanteau kept guard on the landing. Ah, God! what had she done that every­one should join in deceiving her, when she herself had kept faith with all?

‘I beg you, say no more! I am choking with it all!’

Then Véronique, seeing that she was painfully overcome, contented herself with adding:

‘Well, it’s for your sake and not for hers that I don’t go on. She’s been spitting out a string of abominations about you ever since the morning. She quite exhausts my patience and makes my blood boil when I hear her turning all the kindnesses you’ve done her into evil. Yes, indeed! She pretends that you have been the ruin of the family, and that now you are killing her son! Go and listen at the door, if you don’t believe me!’

Then, as Pauline burst into a fit of sobbing, Véronique, quite unnerved, flung her arms round her neck and kissed her hair, saying:

‘There, there, Mademoiselle, I’ll say no more. But it’s only right that you should know. It’s too shameful for you to be treated in such a way. But there, I won’t say another word, so don’t take on so!’

They were silent for a time, while the servant raked out the embers still burning in the grate, but she could not refrain from growling:

‘I know very well why she’s swelling out! All her wickedness has gathered in her knees!’

Pauline, who was looking intently at the tiled floor, her mind upset and heavy with grief, raised her eyes and asked Véronique what she meant. Had the swelling, then, come back again? The servant showed some embarrassment, as she had to break the promise of silence which she had given to Madame Chanteau. Though she allowed herself full liberty to judge her mistress, she still obeyed her orders. Now, how­ever, she was obliged to admit that her legs had again swollen badly during the night, though Monsieur Lazare was not to know it. While the servant gave details of Madame Chanteau’s condition the expression of Pauline’s face changed — depression gave place to anxiety. In spite of all that she had just learned of the old lady’s conduct, she was painfully alarmed by the appearance of symptoms which she knew betokened grave danger.

‘But she mustn’t be left alone like this!’ she exclaimed, springing up. ‘She is in danger!’

‘In danger, indeed?’ cried Véronique, unfeelingly. ‘She doesn’t at all look like it, and she certainly doesn’t think so herself, for she’s far too busy befouling other folks and giving herself airs in her bed like a Pasha. Besides, she’s asleep just now, and we must wait till to-morrow, which is just the day when the Doctor always comes to Bonneville.’

The next day it was no longer possible to conceal from Lazare his mother’s condition. All night long had Pauline listened, constantly awakened from brief dozes, and ever believing that she heard groans ascending through the floor. Then in the morning she fell into so deep a sleep that it was only at nine o’clock she was roused by the slamming of a door. When, after hastily dressing herself, she went down­stairs to make inquiries, she encountered Lazare on the landing of the first floor. He had just left his mother’s room. The swelling was reaching her stomach, and Véronique had come to the conclusion that the young man must be warned.

‘Well?’ asked Pauline.

At first Lazare, who looked utterly upset, made no reply. Yielding to a habit that had grown upon him, he grasped his chin with his trembling fingers, and when at last he tried to speak he could scarcely stammer:

‘It is all over with her!’

He went upstairs to his own room with a dazed air. Pauline followed him. When they reached that big room on the second floor, which she had never entered since the day she had surprised Louise there in her cousin’s arms, Pauline closed the door and tried to reassure the young man.

‘You don’t even know what is the matter with her. Wait till the Doctor comes, at any rate, before you begin to alarm yourself. She is very strong, and we may always hope for the best.’

But he was possessed by a sudden presentiment, and re­peated obstinately:

‘It is all over with her; all over.’

It was a perfectly unexpected blow, and quite overcame him. When he had risen that morning, he had looked at the sea, as he always did, yawning with boredom and complaining of the idiotic emptiness of life. Then, his mother having shown him her knees, the sight of her poor swollen limbs, puffed out by oedema, huge and pallid, looking already like lifeless trunks, had thrilled him with panic-stricken tender­ness. It was always like this. At every moment fresh trouble came. Even now, as he sat upon the edge of his big table, trembling from head to foot, he did not dare to give the name of the disease whose symptoms he had recognised. He had ever been haunted by a dread of heart disease seizing upon himself and his relations, for his two years of medical study had not sufficed to show him that all diseases were liable to lead to death. To be stricken at the heart, at the very source of life, that to him seemed the all-terrible, pitiless cause of death. And it was this death that his mother was going to die, and which he himself would infallibly die also in his own turn!

‘Why should you distress yourself in this way?’ Pauline asked him. ‘Plenty of dropsical people live for a very long time. Don’t you remember Madame Simonnot? She died in the end of inflammation of the lungs.’

But Lazare only shook his head. He was not a child, to be deceived in that manner. His feet went on swinging to and fro, and he still continued trembling, while he kept his eyes fixed persistently on the window. Then, for the first time since their rupture, Pauline kissed him on the brow in her old manner. They were together again, side by side, in that big room, where they had grown up, and all their feeling against one another had died away before the great grief which was threatening them. The girl wiped the tears from her eyes, but Lazare could not cry, and simply went on repeating, mechanically, as it were: ‘It is all over with her; all over.’

When Doctor Cazenove called, about eleven o’clock, as he generally did every week after his round through Bonneville, he appeared very much astonished at finding Madame Chan­teau in bed. ‘What was the matter with the dear lady?’ he asked. He even grew jocular, and declared that they were quite turning the house into an ambulance. But when he had examined and sounded the patient, he became more serious, and, indeed, needed all his great experience to conceal the fact that he was much alarmed.

Madame Chanteau herself had no idea of the gravity of her condition.

‘I hope you are going to get me out of this, Doctor,’ she said gaily. ‘There’s only one thing I’m frightened about, and that is that this swelling may stifle me if it goes on mounting higher and higher.’

‘Oh! keep yourself easy about that,’ he replied, smiling in turn. ‘It won’t go any higher, and if it does we shall know how to stop it.’

Lazare, who had come into the room after the Doctor’s examination, listened to him trembling, burning to take him aside and question him, so that he might know the worst.

‘Now, my dear Madame,’ Doctor Cazenove resumed, ‘don’t worry yourself. I will come and have a little chat with you again to-morrow. Good-morning; I will write my prescription downstairs.’

When they got down, Pauline prevented the Doctor and Lazare from entering the dining-room, for in Chanteau’s presence nothing more serious than ordinary lumbago had ever been mentioned. The girl had already put ink and paper on the table in the kitchen. And, noticing their im­patient anxiety, Doctor Cazenove confessed that the case was a grave one; but he spoke in long and involved sentences, and avoided telling them anything definite.

‘You mean that it is all over with her, eh?’ Lazare cried at last, in a kind of irritation. ‘It’s the heart, isn’t it?’

Pauline gave the Doctor a glance full of entreaty, which he understood.

‘The heart? Well, I’m not quite so sure about that,’ he replied. ‘But, at any rate, even if we can’t quite cure her, she may go on for a long time yet, with care.’