Complete Works of Emile Zola (939 page)

Among the hay Jean and Jacqueline were restraining their breath, when the former, whose ears were on the alert, heard the frame of the ladder creak. He leapt up, and, at the risk of his life, dropped down the opening that was used for throwing fodder down. Hourdequin’s head just then appeared on the other side, on a level with the trap-door. He saw at the same glance the shadow of the retreating man, and the woman, still supine, with her legs in the air. Such a fury seized hold of him, that it never occurred to him to descend in pursuit of the gallant; but, with a buffet that would have felled an ox, he overturned Jacqueline, who was now getting up on to her knees again.

“Strumpet!” he shouted.

With a shriek of rage, she denied the evidence.

“It’s false!”

He had to exercise all his powers of self-restraint to refrain from kicking her into a jelly.

“I saw it! Confess it’s true, or I’ll kill you.”

“No, no, no! It’s not true.”

Then, when at length she had got upon her feet again, she grew insolent and irritating, resolved to bring her power into full play.

“Besides, what’s it got to do with you?” she asked. “Am I your wife? As you don’t choose that I should sleep in your bed, I’m free to lie where I like.”

She spoke with her dove-like coo, as if in lascivious raillery.

“Come, move out of the way! Let me go down. I’ll leave this evening.”

“This instant!”

“No, this evening. Wait and think it over.”

He was left quivering and beyond himself, not knowing on whom to vent his wrath. Though he no longer had the courage to turn her into the street forthwith, how gladly would he have kicked her gallant out of doors. But how was he to catch him now? He had gone straight up into the loft, guided by the open doors, without examining the beds; and when he got down again the four waggoners from the stable were dressing, as was Jean, in his garret. Which of the five had it been? One as likely as the other, and, perhaps, the whole lot, one after the other. Nevertheless, he hoped the man would betray himself. Then he gave his morning orders, sent nobody into the fields, and did not go out himself, but rambled about the farm with clenched fists, scowling and hankering after somebody to knock down.

After the seven o’clock breakfast, this exasperated review of the master’s set the whole household in a tremble. At La Borderie there were five hands for the five ploughs, three threshers, two cow-herds or yard-men, a shepherd, and a little swine-herd; in all, twelve servants, without counting the house­maid. Hourdequin began in the kitchen by abusing the latter, because she hadn’t put the baking-shovels back in their places on the ceiling. Then he prowled into the two barns, one for oats, the other for wheat, the latter being of immense size, as large as a church, with doors five yards high; and he picked a quarrel with the threshers, whose flails, he said, cut up the straw too much. Then he went through the cow-house, and became furious at finding the thirty cows in good order, the central passage scoured, and the troughs clean. He did not know on what ground to fall foul of the cow-herds, till, glancing outside at the cisterns, which were also under their charge, he noticed that a discharge-pipe was stopped up by some sparrows’ nests. As in all the Beauce farms, the rain-water from the slate roofs was here sedulously collected and conducted off by a complicated system of gutters. So he asked, roughly, if they meant to let him die of thirst for the benefit of the sparrows. But the storm finally burst on the waggoners. Although the litters of the fifteen horses in the stable were clean, he began by bawling out that it was disgusting to leave them in such filth. Then, ashamed of his own injustice, and the more exasperated, while paying a visit to the four sheds at the four corners of the farm buildings, where the implements were kept, he was delighted to find a plough with its handles broken. Then he regularly stormed. Did the five beggars amuse themselves by breaking his stock on purpose? He’d send the whole five of them about their business; yes, the whole five of them! He’d have no invidious distinctions! While he swore at them, his flashing eyes looked them through, expecting some paleness or quiver that would reveal the traitor. Nobody flinched, however, and he left them with a wild gesture of despair.

On ending his inspection at the sheep-fold, it occurred to Hourdequin to cross-question the shepherd Soulas. This old fellow of sixty-five had been half-a-century at the farm, and had saved nothing by it, having been preyed upon by his wife, a drunkard and a drab, whom he had just had the happiness of laying beneath the sod. He was in dread lest his old age should presently entail his dismissal, and was hurriedly saving up the few coppers requisite to rescue him from want. Possibly the master might help him; but, then, there was no saying which might die first. And did they give money for tobacco and a nip? Besides, he had made an enemy of Jacqueline, whom he loathed with the jealous hatred of an old servant disgusted by the rapid advancement of such an upstart. Whenever she gave him orders, he was beside himself with rage, remembering how he had seen her in rags and filth. She would assuredly have dismissed him, if she had felt herself strong enough to do so; and this made him prudent. He wanted to keep his place, and shunned all conflict, no matter how sure he might be of his master’s support.

The sheep-fold occupied the entire building at the end of the yard, a gallery eighty yards long, in which the eight hundred sheep of the farm were only separated by hurdles. On one side, the ewes, in various groups; on the other, the lambs; and farther on, the rams. Every two months the males, reared for sale, were castrated; while the females were kept to renew the flock of mothers, the oldest of which were sold off every year. The younger were served, at fixed times, by the rams, dishleys crossed with merinos, of superb strain, and stupid gentle aspect, with the heavy head and large rounded nose seen in men addicted to vice. Those entering the sheep-fold were choked by a strong smell, the ammoniacal exhalation from the litter: stale straw on which fresh straw was laid for three months running, the racks being fitted with hangers, so as to raise them as the manure-heap ascended. There was ventilation: the windows being wide, and the floor of the loft above being formed of moveable oaken beams, which were taken away as the fodder got less. It was said, however, that this living heat, this soft, warm, fermenting heap, was necessary to the proper growth of the sheep.

Hourdequin, pushing open one of the doors, caught sight of Jacqueline escaping by another. She, also, had thought uneasily of Soulas, feeling sure she had been watched with Jean; but the old man had remained impassive, seeming not to understand why she made herself so agreeable, contrary to her custom. The sight of the young woman leaving the sheep-fold, where she never went, aggravated the farmer’s feverish uncertainty.

“Well, Soulas,” asked he, “any news this morning?”

The shepherd, very tall and thin, with a long face intersected by wrinkles, and looking as though carved with a bill-hook out of a knot of oak, replied slowly:

“No, Monsieur Hourdequin, nothing whatever, except that the shearers are coming and will soon be at work.”

The master chatted for a moment, so as not to seem to be questioning him. The sheep, who had been fed indoors since the first frosts of November, were to be let loose again towards mid-May, when the clover would be ready for them. As for the cows, they were seldom pastured until after the harvest. Yet this land of La Beauce, dry and devoid of natural herbage as it was, yielded good meat; and it was only through routine and laziness that the breeding of oxen was unknown there. Five or six pigs, even, were all that each farm fattened, for its own consumption.

Hourdequin with his hot hand stroked the soft and bright-eyed ewes who had run up with raised heads; while the lambs, pent up a little way off, surged against the hurdles, bleating.

“And so, Soulas, you saw nothing this morning?” he asked again, looking the shepherd full in the face.

The old fellow had seen, but what availed it to speak? His deceased wife, tippler and drab, had familiarised him with the vices of women and the folly of men. Very possibly La Cognette, although betrayed, would still hold her own, and then he would be made the scapegoat, so that an awkward witness might be got out of the way.

“Saw nothing, nothing at all!” he repeated, with dull eyes and stolid face.

When Hourdequin re-crossed the yard he noticed Jacqueline standing there, nervously straining her ears, in fear of what was being said in the sheep-fold. She was pretending to be busy with her poultry: six hundred head of hens, ducks, and pigeons, who were fluttering, chattering, and scratching on the manure-heap, amid a constant hurly-burty. She even relieved her feelings a bit by boxing the ears of the swine-herd, who had upset a bucket of water he was carrying to the pigs. But a single glance at the farmer reassured her. He knew nothing; the old man had held his tongue. Her insolence thus grew greater.

For instance, at the mid-day repast, she displayed a provoking gaiety. As the heavy work had not yet begun, they now only had four meals: bread-and-milk at seven, sopped toast at twelve, bread and cheese at four, soup and bacon at eight. They fed in the kitchen, a vast room, in which stretched a table flanked by two forms. Modern progress was only represented by a cast-iron stove, which took up a corner of the immense hearth. At the end the black mouth of the oven yawned; and along the smoky walls saucepans gleamed and old-fashioned utensils stood in neat rows. As the maid, a stout, plain girl, had baked that morning, a pleasant scent of hot bread rose from the open pan.

“So your stomach’s not in working order to-day?” asked Jacqueline audaciously of Hourdequin, who came in last.

Since the death of his wife and daughter he sat at the same table as his servants, as in the good old times, so that he might not have to eat alone. He took a chair at one end, while the servant-mistress did the same at the other. There were four­teen of them, and the maid did the helping.

The farmer having sat down without replying, La Cognette talked of seeing to the food. This consisted of slices of toasted bread broken into a soup-tureen, moistened with wine, and sweetened with
ripopée
, an old Beauce word for treacle. She asked for a second spoonful of this; pretended to spoil the men, and vented jests that set the table in a roar. Each of her phrases had a double meaning, reminding them that she was leaving that night. There were bickerings and part­ings, and those who would never have another chance would regret not having dipped their fingers in the gravy for the last time. The shepherd ate on in his chuckle-headed way, while the master, inpassive, also seemed not to understand. Jean, to avoid betraying himself, was obliged to laugh with the others, despite his uneasiness; for, to be sure, he deemed himself scarcely straightforward in all this.

After the meal, Hourdequin issued his orders for the after­noon. Out of doors, there were only a few little jobs to finish: the oats to be rolled, and the ploughing of the fallows to be com­pleted, pending the time for cutting the lucern and clover. So he kept two men, Jean and another, to clean the hay-loft. He himself, now plunged into despondency, with his ears buzzing from the reaction of his blood, and very wretched, set out on the prowl, not knowing what occupation to try, to get rid of his vexation. The shearers having installed themselves under one of the sheds, in a corner of the yard, he took up his stand in front of them and watched them.

There were five sallow spindled-shanked fellows, squatting on the ground, with large shears of shining steel. The shepherd passed the ewes over, ranging them on the ground like so many skin bottles, with their four feet tied together, and only just able to lift their heads and bleat. As soon as a shearer caught hold of one of them she became silent, and abandoned herself, blown out like a balloon by the thickness of her wool, which sweat and dust had coated with a hard black crust Under the rapid shears, the animal came out from the fleece like a bare hand out of a dark glove, all pink and fresh, clad in the gleaming snowy inner wool. Held between the knees of a tall wizzened man, one mother, set on her back, with her thighs apart, and her head erect and rigid, made exposure of her belly, which had the hidden whiteness, the quivering skin of an undressed person. The shearers earned three sous per head, and a good workman could shear twenty sheep a day.

Hourdequin, absorbed, was thinking that wool had fallen to eight sous a pound, and that he’d have to make haste and sell, or else it would get too dry, and lose in weight. The year before, congestion of the spleen had decimated the flocks of La Beauce. Everything was going from bad to worse; it meant ruin, bankruptcy, for grain had been falling more and more heavily every month. Once more a prey to agricultural worries, and feeling stifled in the yard, he left the farm and went to take a glance at his fields. His quarrels with La Cognette always ended thus. After swearing and clenching his fists, he gave way, oppressed by suffering, which was only re­lieved by the contemplation of the infinite green expanses of his wheat and oats.

Ah, how he loved that land of his! With a passion un­tainted by the keen avarice of the peasant; a sentimental, almost an intellectual, passion; for he felt her to be the common mother, who had given him his life and nourishment — to whom he would return. At first, when quite young, after being brought up upon her, his distaste for college, his impulse to burn his books and stop at the farm, had simply sprung from his free habits, his gay gallops over ploughed fields, his intoxicating open-air life amid the breezes of the plain. But later on, upon succeed­ing his father, he had loved the land like a lover; his love had ripened, as if he had thenceforward taken her in lawful wedlock to make her fruitful. That tenderness had grown and grown, until he now devoted to her his time, his money, his whole life, as to a good and fertile wife, whose caprices, whose treason even, he would condone. Many a time he flew into a rage when she proved shrewish, when, too damp or too dry, she consumed the seed without yielding a harvest. Then, he began to doubt, and at length accused himself as if he were an impotent or unskilful bridegroom: the fault must have been his if a child had not been born to her. Since then he had been haunted by new methods, had plunged into every innovation, regretting that he had been so lazy at college, and that he had not studied at one of those agricultural schools that he and his father used to make fun of. How many futile attempts; how many experiments ending in failure! And the machines that his servants put out of order; the chemical manure adulterated by the dealers! La Borderie had swallowed up his whole fortune, it now hardly brought him in bread and cheese, and he was expecting the agricultural crisis to finish him off. No matter; he would remain the prisoner of his own soil, and would bury his bones within it, after having kept it for wife up to the very last.