Complete Works of Emile Zola (792 page)

‘My poor fellow, if you really loved me, instead of arguing with me as you are doing, you would be clasping me in your arms and sobbing, and finding some very different way of persuading me.’

He turned still paler, and threw up his hands with a vague gesture of protest as he let himself fall upon a chair.

‘No!’ the girl went on; ‘it is quite clear that you love me no longer. But it can’t be helped. We are, no doubt, not suited to each other. When we were shut up here together, you were driven into thinking about me. But all your fancy vanished later on; it did not last, because there was nothing in me that could keep you to me.’

A final paroxysm of exasperation carried him off, and he swayed about in his chair as he stammered:

‘Well! what do you want? What is the meaning of all this? I quietly return home, and come up here to put on my slippers, and then you suddenly fall on me, and without the least warning launch out into an extravagant harangue—”I don’t love you any longer”—”We are not made for one another”—”The wedding must be broken off.” Once more I ask you, what is the meaning of it all?’

Pauline, who had drawn near him, slowly answered:

‘It means that you love someone else, and that I advise you to marry her.’

For a moment Lazare remained silent. Then he began to sneer. Good! They were going to have the old scenes over again. Everything was going to be turned topsy-turvy once more by her idiotic jealousy! She couldn’t bear to see him cheerful even for a single day without wanting to banish everyone away from him.

Pauline listened with an expression of profound grief; then she suddenly laid her trembling hands upon his shoulders, and an involuntary cry burst from her heart:

‘Oh! my dear, can you believe that I want to distress you? Can’t you see that my only desire is to make you happy? I would endure anything to win you a single hour’s happiness. You love Louise; is that not so? Well, I tell you to marry her. Understand me. I am in the way no longer. Marry her; I give her to you!’

Her cousin looked at her in amazement. With his nervous, ill-balanced nature his feelings rushed to extremes at the slightest impulse. His eyelids quivered, and he burst into sobs.

‘Oh, don’t talk like that!’ he cried. ‘I am utterly worth­less! Yes, indeed, I despise myself bitterly for all that has happened in this house for years past. I am deeply in your debt. Don’t say I am not! We took your money, I squandered it like a fool, and now I have sunk so low that you make me alms of my word and promise, and give them back to me out of sheer pity, as to a man destitute of courage and honour!’

‘Lazare! Lazare!’ she murmered, quite frightened.

But he sprang furiously to his feet and began striding about the room, drumming on his breast with his fists.

‘Leave me! I should kill myself straight off if I treated myself as I deserve. Do I not owe you my love? Isn’t it a disgrace and an abomination for me to wish for that other girl, who was not meant for me and isn’t nearly so good or so pretty as you are? When a man descends to conduct like this, there must be mud in his soul! You see that I am hiding nothing from you, that I am not attempting to defend myself. Listen to me! Rather than accept your sacrifice, I would myself turn Louise out of the house, and then go off to America and never see either of you again!’

For a long time Pauline tried to calm him and reason with him. Couldn’t he try for once, she asked, to take life as it was, without any exaggeration? Couldn’t he see that the advice she offered him was good advice, resolved upon after long deliberation? The marriage she advocated would be good for everyone. She was able to speak of it in such calm tones because, far from the thought of it paining her, she now sincerely wished it. Then, carried away by her desire to convince him, she unfortunately made an allusion to Louise’s fortune, and hinted that Thibaudier, when the marriage had taken place, would certainly find some post for his son-in-law.

‘Ah! that’s it!’ he broke out violently. ‘You want to sell me now! Say plainly that I can no longer care for you, because I have ruined you, and that it only remains for me to be base enough to marry a rich girl. No, no, indeed; that is too mean and degrading! Never will I do it — never! Do you hear me? Never!’

Pauline, whose strength was exhausted, ceased her en­treaties. Silence reigned. Lazare had thrown himself on the chair again, while the girl paced slowly up and down the big room, lingering before each piece of furniture. Those old familiar things, the table which she had worn away with the pressure of her elbows, the wardrobe where her childish playthings were still stowed away, all the old souvenirs littered about the room, made a feeling of hope, which she strove to dismiss, spring up in her heart — a hope whose sweet­ness, in spite of herself, gradually thrilled her. Suppose he did really love her sufficiently to refuse to take another! But she knew too well the weak morrows that followed his passionate outbursts of sentiment. Besides, it was very weak of her to harbour hope, and she must guard against allowing herself to yield to his nerveless vacillating nature.

‘You must think it all over,’ she said in conclusion, as she stopped short before him. ‘I won’t bother you any more at present. I am sure you will be more reasonable in the morning.’

The next day, however, was passed in painful constraint. The house once more seemed to be under the depressing influence of a vague bitter sorrow. Louise’s eyes were red, and Lazare avoided her and spent whole hours by himself in his room. But again the days went on; the constraint began to disappear, and laughter and whispering once more came back. Pauline still waited, indulging in foolish hopes even against her own convictions. Backed by un­certainty, she thought that she had never before really known what suffering was. But, at last, as she was going down to the kitchen one evening in the dusk to get a candle, she found Lazare and Louise kissing each other in the passage. Louise made her escape laughing; while Lazare, emboldened by the darkness, caught hold of Pauline and imprinted two brotherly kisses on her cheeks.

‘I have thought it over,’ he murmured. ‘You are better and wiser than she is; and I still love you, but I love you as I loved my mother.’

She had just strength to say:

‘It is settled, then. I am very glad.’

She felt that she had turned so pale, and her face was so cold, that she dared not go into the kitchen for fear she should faint. Without waiting to get a candle, she went upstairs again, saying that she had forgotten something. When she had shut herself up in the darkness, she thought she was going to die, for she felt suffocated, and could not shed a single tear. What had she done, she cried to herself, that he should have been cruel enough to make her torture still greater? Why couldn’t he have accepted her sacrifice on the day when she proposed it to him, when she had possessed all her strength, unweakened by any false hope? Now the sacrifice had become a double one. She had lost him a second time, and all the more painfully since she had allowed herself to hope that she was winning him back. Ah, Heaven! She would be brave and bear it, but it was wicked to make her task such torture.

Everything was speedily arranged. Véronique, quite aghast, could make nothing out of it. She thought that things had got turned upside down since her mistress’s death. It was, however, Chanteau who was most surprised by the news. He, who usually took no interest in anything and just nodded his head in approval of any scheme that was men­tioned to him, as though he were completely absorbed in the selfish enjoyment of the calm moments which he stole from his tormenting pain, burst into tears when Pauline herself announced the new arrangement to him. He gazed at her, and stammered incoherent protests and confessions. It wasn’t his fault: he had wanted to do very differently long ago, both about the money and about the marriage, but, as she knew, he was too ill. However, the girl kissed him, protesting that it was she herself who was making Lazare marry Louise for very good reasons. At first he could scarcely believe her, and, blinking his eyes sadly, he asked her:

‘Is that really the truth? Really?’

Then, when he saw her smile, he quickly consoled him­self and grew quite gay. It was a great relief to have things settled, for the matter had long been distressing him, though he had never dared to open his mouth about it. He kissed Louise on the cheeks, and in the evening, over the dessert, he sang a merry song. Just as he was going to bed, however, he was troubled by a last disquieting thought.

‘You will stay with us, eh?’ he asked Pauline.

The girl hesitated for a moment, and then, blushing at her falsehood, she answered, ‘Oh! no doubt.’

A whole month was required for the completion of the necessary formalities. Thibaudier, Louise’s father, had, however, at once consented to the proposal of Lazare, who was his godson. There was only one dispute between them, a couple of days before the wedding, when the young man roundly refused to go to Paris and manage an Insurance Company, in which the banker was the principal shareholder. He intended remaining for a year or two longer at Bonne­ville and writing a novel, which was to be a masterpiece, before he started off to bring Paris to his feet. At this Thibaudier just shrugged his shoulders, and in a friendly way called him a big simpleton.

It was arranged that the marriage should take place at Caen. During the previous fortnight there were continual comings and goings, a perfect fever of journeyings. Pauline went about with Louise, seeking to divert her thoughts with all the bustle, and returning home quite exhausted. As Chanteau was not able to leave Bonneville, she had to promise to attend the ceremony, at which she would be the only representative of her cousin’s family. The near ap­proach of the day filled her with terror. She had arranged that she would not spend the night at Caen, for she thought she would suffer less if she returned to sleep at Bonneville. She pretended that her uncle’s health made her very uneasy, and that she was unwilling to remain long away from him. Chanteau himself vainly pressed her to spend a few days at Caen. He wasn’t ill at all, he urged. On the contrary, he was very much excited by the idea of the approaching wedding and the thought of the banquet at which he would not be present; and he was craftily planning to make Véronique supply him with some forbidden dish, such as a young truffled partridge, which he could never eat without the absolute certainty of a fresh attack of gout. However, in spite of all that could be urged, the girl declared that she would return home in the evening. She thought that this course would allow her greater facilities for packing her trunk the next morning and disappearing.

A drizzling rain was falling, and midnight had just struck as Malivoire’s old coach brought Pauline back to Bonneville on the evening of the wedding. Wearing a blue silk gown, and ill protected by a little shawl, she was pale and shivering though her hands were hot. In the kitchen she found Véronique sitting up for her and dozing beside the table. The tall flame of the candle made the girl’s eyes blink, full as they still were of the darkness of the journey, during which they had remained wide open all the way from Arromanches. She could only drag a few incoherent words from the drowsy servant: the master had been very foolish, but he was asleep now, and nobody had called. Then Pauline took a candle and went upstairs, chilled by the emptiness of the house, heart-sick amidst all the gloom and silence which seemed to weigh upon her shoulders.

When she reached the second floor she wished to take immediate refuge in her own room, but an irresistible impulse, at which she felt surprised, led her to open Lazare’s door. She raised her candle to enable her to see, as though she fancied the room was full of smoke. Nothing was changed. Every piece of furniture was in its accustomed place, but she felt conscious of calamity, annihilation; it was a vague terror, as though she were in some chamber of death. She slowly walked up to the table and looked at the inkstand, the pen, and an unfinished page of manuscript still lying there. Then she went away. All was over, and the door closed on the echoing emptiness of the room.

When she reached her own chamber, the same vague sensation of strangeness that she had felt in Lazare’s again affected her. Could this indeed be her room, with its wall­paper of blue roses and its little muslin-curtained iron bed? Was it really here that she had lived so many years? Still keeping her candle in her hand, she, who was usually so courageous, made a minute inspection of the apartment, pushed the curtains aside, looked under the bed and behind the furniture. She felt overcome by a strange kind of stupor, which kept her standing in front of the different things. She could not have believed that such keen anguish could ever have possessed her beneath that ceiling, whose every stain was familiar to her; and she now began to regret that she had not stayed at Caen. For she felt frightened in that old house, which was so empty and yet so full of memories of the past, and so cold, too, and so dark that stormy night. The thought of going to bed was intolerable to her. She sat down without even taking off her hat, and for several minutes remained motionless, her eyes fixed upon the candle-flame, which dazzled them. Suddenly, however, she started up in astonishment. What was she doing there, with her head throbbing wildly, with a violence that quite prevented her from thinking? It was one o’clock. She ought to be in bed. And she began to undress with slow, feverish hands.

Her orderly habits showed themselves even in this crisis of her life. She carefully put away her hat, and glanced anxiously at her boots to see if they had sustained any damage. She had folded her dress and laid it over the back of a chair, when her glance fell upon her bosom. Gradually a flush crimsoned her cheeks. In her troubled brain arose the thought of those two others over yonder. Alas! the harvest of love was not for her! To another were given the embraces of that husband for whose coming she herself had looked forward for so many years! Never would she be a wife or mother; the years would come and go, and she would age in utter loneliness. Then wild jealousy came upon her. She yearned to live, to live to the full, to drain the joys of life, she who loved life so dearly! She was more beautiful than that scraggy, fair-haired girl; she was stronger and healthier, and yet her cousin had not chosen her. Never now would he be hers; never, as in the past, might she again wait for him, expect him. She was tossed aside like an old rag. It was, no doubt, her own doing; and yet how awful was the thought of the others being together while she was all alone, shivering with fever in that cold, gloomy house!