Complete Works of Emile Zola (779 page)

The young man shrugged his shoulders in the angry fashion of a child who is not to be taken in by fine stories. Then he exclaimed:

‘And you never gave me any warning, Doctor, though you attended her quite recently! These dreadful diseases never come on all at once. Had you no idea of it?’

‘Well, yes,’ Cazenove murmured, ‘I had indeed noticed some faint indications.’

Then, as Lazare broke out into a sneering laugh, he added:

‘Listen to me, my fine fellow. I don’t think that I’m a greater fool than others, and yet this is not the first time when it has happened to me to have had no inkling of what was coming, and to find myself taken by surprise. It is absurd of you to expect us to be able to know everything; it is already a great deal to be able to spell out the first few lines of what is going on in that intricate piece of mechanism — the human body.’

He seemed vexed, and dashed his pen about angrily as he wrote his prescription, tearing the thin paper provided for him. The naval surgeon cropped up once more in the brusque movements of his big frame. However, when he stood up again, with his old face tanned brown with the sea air, he softened as he saw both Pauline and Lazare hanging their heads hopelessly in front of him.

‘My poor children,’ he said, ‘we will try our best to bring her round. You know that I never put on grand airs before you. So I tell you frankly that I can say nothing. But it seems to me that there is, at any rate, no immediate danger.’

Then he left the house, having ascertained that Lazare had a supply of tincture of digitalis. The prescription simply ordered some applications of this tincture to the patient’s legs, and a few drops of it to be taken in a glass of sugar and water. This treatment, said the Doctor, would suffice for the moment; he would bring some pills with him in the morning. It was possible, too, that he might make up his mind to bleed her. Pauline went out with him to his gig in order to ask him to tell her the real truth, but the real truth was that he did not dare to say one thing or the other. When she re­turned into the kitchen the girl found Lazare re-perusing the prescription. The mere word digitalis had made him turn pale once more.

‘Don’t distress yourself so much,’ said Véronique, who had begun to pare some potatoes, as an excuse for remaining where they were and hearing what was said. ‘The doctors are all croakers. And surely there can’t be much the matter when they can’t tell you what it is.’

They began to discuss the question round the bowl into which the cook was cutting the potatoes, and Pauline appeared to grow a little easier in her mind. She had gone that morning to kiss her aunt, and had found her looking well. A person with cheeks like here could not surely be dying. But Lazare went on twisting the prescription with his feverish fingers. The word digitalis blazed before his eyes. His mother was doomed.

‘I am going up again,’ he said at last.

As he reached the door he seemed to hesitate, and turned to his cousin and asked:

‘Won’t you come, just for a minute?’

Pauline then seemed to hesitate in her turn, and finally murmured:

‘I’m afraid she mightn’t be pleased if I did.’

And so, after a moment of silent embarrassment, Lazare went upstairs by himself, without saying another word.

When Lazare, for fear lest his father should be disquieted by his absence, appeared again at luncheon, he was very pale. From time to time during the day a ring of the bell summoned Véronique, who ran up with platefuls of soup, which the patient could scarcely be induced to taste; and when she came downstairs again she told Pauline that the poor young man was growing perfectly distracted. It was heart-breaking, she said, to see him shivering with fever by his mother’s bedside, wringing his hands and with his face racked by grief, as though he every moment feared that he should see her torn from him. About three o’clock, as the servant came downstairs once more, she leant over the balustrade and called to Pauline; and as the girl reached the first-floor landing she said to her:

‘You ought to go in, Mademoiselle, and help him a little. So much the worse if it displeases her. She wants Monsieur Lazare to turn her round, and he can only groan, without daring to touch her. And she won’t let me go near her!’

Pauline entered the room. Madame Chanteau lay back, propped up by three pillows, and, as far as mere appear­ances went, if it had not been for the quick, distressful breathing which set her shoulders heaving, she might have been keeping her bed from sheer idleness. Lazare stood before her, stammering:

‘It’s on your right side, then, that you want me to turn you?’

‘Yes; just turn me a little. Ah! my poor boy, how difficult it seems to make you understand!’

But Pauline had already taken hold gently of her aunt and turned her, saying:

‘Let me do it! I am used to doing it for my uncle. There! Are you comfortable now?’

But Madame Chanteau irritably exclaimed that they were shaking her to pieces. She seemed unable to make the slightest movement without being almost suffocated, and for a moment, indeed, she lay panting, with her face quite livid. Lazare had stepped behind the bed-curtains to conceal his expression of despair; still, he remained present while Pauline rubbed her aunt’s legs with the tincture of digitalis. At first he turned his head aside, but some fascination ever made his eyes return to those swollen limbs, those inert masses of pale flesh, the sight of which made him almost choke with agony. When his cousin saw how utterly upset he was she thought it safer to send him out of the room. She went up to him, and, as Madame Chanteau dozed off, tired out by the mere changing of her position, she whispered to him softly:

‘You would do better to go away.’

For a moment or two he resisted; his tears blinded him. Then he yielded and went down, ashamed, and sobbing:

‘Oh, God! God! I cannot endure it! I cannot endure it!’

When the sick woman again awoke, she did not at first notice her son’s absence. She seemed to be in a state of stupor, and as if egotistically seeking to make sure that she was really alive. Pauline’s presence alone appeared to disquiet her, although the girl sat far away and neither spoke nor moved. As her aunt bent forward, however, she felt that she must just say a word to let her know why Lazare was absent.

‘It is I. Don’t worry. Lazare has gone to Verchemont, where he has to see the carpenter.’

‘All right,’ Madame Chanteau murmured.

‘You are not so ill that he should neglect his business, are you?’

‘Oh! certainly not.’

From that moment she spoke but seldom of her son, not­withstanding the adoration she had manifested for him only the previous night. He became obliterated from the rest of her life, after being so long the sole reason and object of her existence. The softening of her brain, which was now beginning, merely left her a physical anxiety about her own health. She accepted her niece’s care and attendance, with­out apparently being conscious of the change, merely follow­ing her constantly with her eyes, as though she were troubled by increasing suspicions as she saw the girl pass to and fro before the bed.

Lazare had gone down into the kitchen, where he re­mained nerveless, beside himself. The whole house frightened him. He could not stay in his own room, the emptiness of which oppressed him, and he dared not cross the dining-room, where the sight of his father, quietly reading a newspaper, threw him into sobs. So it was to the kitchen that he constantly betook himself, as being the one warm, cheerful spot in the house — one where he was comforted by the sight of Véronique, bustling about amongst her pans, as in the old tranquil times. As she saw him seat himself near the fireplace on a rush-bottomed chair, which he made his own, she frankly told him what she thought of his lack of courage.

‘It’s not much use you are, Monsieur Lazare. It’s poor Mademoiselle Pauline who will have everything to do again. Anyone would suppose, to see you, that there had never been a sick woman in the house before, and yet, when your cousin nearly died of her sore throat, you nursed her so attentively. Yes, you know you did, and you stayed with her for a whole fortnight helping her to change her position whenever it was necessary.’

Lazare listened to Véronique with a feeling of surprise. This inconsistency of his had not struck him before, and he could not understand his own illogical and varying feelings and thoughts.

‘Yes; that is quite true,’ he said, ‘quite true.’

‘You would not let anybody enter the room,’ the servant continued, ‘and Mademoiselle was even a more distressing sight than Madame is, her suffering was so great. When­ever I came away from her room I felt completely upset, and couldn’t have eaten a mouthful of anything. But now the mere sight of your mother in bed makes your heart faint. You can’t even take her a cup of gruel. Whatever your mother may be, you ought to remember that she’s still your mother.’

Lazare no longer heard her; he was gazing before him into space. At last he said:

‘I can’t help it; I really can’t. It’s perhaps because it is my mother, but I can’t do anything. When I see her and those poor legs of hers, and think that she is dying, some­thing seems to be snapping inside me, and I should burst out crying if I did not rush from the room.’

He began to tremble all over again. He had picked up a knife which had fallen from the table, and gazed at it with his tear-dimmed eyes without seeing it. For some time neither spoke. Véronique busied herself over her soup, which was cooking, to conceal the emotion which choked her. At last she resumed:

‘You had better go down to the beach for a little while, Monsieur Lazare. You bother me by always being here in my way. And take Matthew with you. He is very tiresome, and no more knows what to do with himself than you do. I have no end of trouble to keep him from going upstairs to Madame’s room.’

The next morning Doctor Cazenove was still doubtful. A sudden catastrophe was possible, he said, or the patient might recover for a longer or shorter time, if the swelling could be reduced. He gave up the idea of bleeding her, and confined himself to ordering her to take some pills which he brought, and to continue the use of the tincture of digitalis. His air of vexation showed that he felt little confidence in those remedies in a case of organic disorder, when the successive derangement of every organ renders a physician’s skill of no avail. However, he was able to assure them that the sick woman suffered no pain; and, indeed, Madame Chanteau made no complaint of actual suffering. Her legs felt as heavy as lead, and she breathed with constantly increasing difficulty whenever she moved; but, whilst she lay there quietly on her back, her voice remained so firm and strong, and her eyes so bright and clear, that even she herself was deceived as to the gravity of her condition. Her son was the only one of those around her who did not venture to be hope­ful at seeing her looking so calm. When the Doctor went away in his gig, he told them not to grieve too much, for that it was a great mercy both for herself and for them that she was quite unaware of her danger.

The first night had been a very hard one for Pauline. Reclining in an easy chair, she had not been able to get any sleep, for the heavy breathing of the sick woman constantly filled her ears. Whenever she was on the point of dropping off, her aunt’s breath seemed to shake the house; and then, when she opened her eyes again, she felt sad and oppressed; all the troubles which had been marring her life for the last few months sprang up in her mind with fresh force. Even by the side of that death-bed she could not feel at peace, she could not constrain herself to forgive. Amidst her night­mare-like vigil during the mournful night hours Véronique’s assertions caused her great torture. Old outbursts of anger and bitter jealousy surged up in her again, as she mentally recapitulated the painful details. To be loved no more! To find herself deceived, betrayed by those she had loved! And to find herself all alone, full of contempt and revolt! Her heart’s wound opened and bled afresh, and never before had she experienced such bitter pain from Lazare’s insulting faithlessness. Since they had, so to say, murdered her, it mattered little to her now who died! And, amidst her aunt’s heavy breathing, she went on brooding ceaselessly over the robbery of her money and her affections.

The next morning she still felt contrary influences at work within her; she experienced no return of affection; it was a sense of duty alone which kept her in her aunt’s room. The consciousness of this made her unhappy, and she wondered if she too were growing as wicked as the others. In this troubled state the day passed away, and, discontented with herself, repelled by her aunt’s suspicions, she forced herself into attentive activity. Madame Chanteau received her ministrations snappishly, and followed her movements with suspicious eyes, carefully watching her every action. If she asked her niece for a handkerchief, she always sniffed it before using it, and when she saw the girl bring her a hot-water bottle she wanted to examine the jug.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Pauline whispered very softly to Véronique. ‘Does she think me capable of trying to do her harm?’

When Véronique gave her a dose of her draught after the Doctor had gone away, Madame Chanteau, not noticing her niece, who was looking for some linen in the ward­robe, inquired of the servant: ‘Did the Doctor prepare this?’

‘No, Madame, it was Mademoiselle Pauline.’

Then the sick woman just sipped it with her lips, and made a grimace.

‘Ah! it tastes of copper. I don’t know what she has been making me take, but I’ve never had the taste of copper out of my mouth since yesterday.’

And suddenly she tossed the spoon away behind the bed. Véronique looked on in amazement.

‘Whatever’s the matter? What an idea to get into your head!’

‘I don’t want to go away before my time,’ replied Madame Chanteau, as she laid her head back again upon her pillow. ‘Listen! my lungs are quite sound; and it’s not impossible that she may go before I do, for she isn’t very healthy.’

Pauline had heard her. She turned with a heart-pang and looked at Véronique; and instead of coming any nearer she stepped further away, feeling quite ashamed of her aunt for her abominable suspicions. A sudden change came over her feelings. The idea of that unhappy woman, consumed by fear and hatred, moved her to the deepest pity; far from feeling any increase of bitterness, it was sorrowful emotion that she experienced as her eyes caught sight of all the medi­cine which her aunt had thrown away under the bed, from a fear of being poisoned. Until the evening she evinced persevering gentleness, and did not appear to notice the distrustful glances with which her aunt followed every motion of her hands. Her one ardent desire was to overcome the dying woman’s fears by affectionate attentions, in order that she might not carry such frightful suspicions to the grave. And she forbade Véronique to distress Lazare further by telling him the truth.