Complete Works of Emile Zola (940 page)

On that day, as soon as he got out of doors, he remembered his son, the captain. The two of them together might have achieved something fine! But he dismissed from his thoughts the memory of the fool who preferred trailing a sword! He had no child now; he would end his days in solitude. Then his neighbours came into his mind, more especially the Coquarts, some landowners who cultivated their farm of Saint-Juste — father, mother, three sons, and two daughters; and who succeeded scarcely better than he did. At La Chamade, the farmer, being near the end of his lease, had left off manuring, letting the property go to rack and ruin. So it was. There was calamity everywhere. One had to work one’s self to death, and not complain. Little by little, a soothing calm rose from the broad green fields he was skirting. Some light showers, in April, had brought on the fodder-crops beautifully. The purple clover transported him with delight; he forgot every­thing else. Then as he was taking a short cut across some ploughed land, to have a look at the work of his two waggoners, the soil clung to his feet; he felt that it was rich and fertile, and it seemed to clasp and hold him back; taking him once more wholly to itself, while the virility, the vigour, the hey-day of his thirty years returned to him. Was not this the only wife for a man? Of what consequence were the whole set of Cognettes, plates out of which every one ate, and with which one might be well content, provided they were clean enough? This excuse, so consonant with his low craving for the baggage, crowned his gaiety. He walked for three hours, and jested with a girl — the servant of those very Coquarts — who was returning from Cloyes on a donkey, and showing her legs.

When Hourdequin went back to La Borderie, he noticed Jacqueline saying good-bye to the farm cats. There were always a troop of them; but whether a dozen, fifteen, or twenty, nobody precisely knew, for the she-cats used to litter in various odd nests of straw, and re-appear with trains of five or six kittens. Next, she went up to the kennels of Emperor and Massacre, the shepherd’s two dogs; but they detested her, and growled.

The dinner, in spite of the farewells taken of the animals, went off just as on other days. The master ate and con­versed as usual. And at the close of the day nothing more was said about anybody’s departure. They all went to sleep, and darkness enwrapped the silent farm.

That very night, too, Jacqueline slept in the room of the late Madame Hourdequin: the state chamber, with its large bed in the depths of an alcove with red hangings. In this room there stood a wardrobe, a small round table, and an arm-chair of the Voltaire style; while above a little mahogany writing-table there hung some medals, framed under glass, and won by the farmer at agricultural competitions. When La Cognette, in her chemise, had mounted on to the conjugal couch, she stretched herself upon it, with her turtle-dove chuckle, spreading out her arms and legs as if to take posses­sion of the entire bed.

On the morrow, when she fell on Jean’s neck, he repulsed her. Things having now taken a serious turn, it wasn’t proper, and he wouldn’t consent any more.

CHAPTER II

One evening, some days later, Jean was walking back from Cloyes when, a mile or so before reaching Rognes, he was astonished by the mode of progress of a peasant’s cart which was going along, ahead of him. It seemed empty. No one sat on the driver’s seat, and the horse, left to its own devices, was leisurely jogging back to its stable, being evidently well acquainted with the road. Accordingly, the young man quickly caught it up. He stopped it, and raised himself on tip-toe to look into the vehicle. A man was lying at the bottom — a short, fat old man of sixty, who had fallen back­wards, and whose face was so purple that it appeared black.

Such was Jean’s surprise that he began to talk aloud:

“Hallo, there! Is he asleep or drunk? Why, if it isn’t old Mouche, the father of those two down yonder. Heavens! I think he’s kicked the bucket! Well, well, here’s a start!”

But, although laid low by a fit of apoplexy, Mouche still breathed, in a short and laboured way. So Jean raised his head and straightened him out; and then sat himself down in front and whipped up the horse, driving the dying man home at a round trot, for fear that he might slip through his fingers.

Just as he turned into the church-square, he perceived Françoise standing before her door. The sight of the young fellow in their cart, driving Coco, dumbfounded her.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Your father’s not well.”

“Where is he?”

“There. Look!”

She climbed up on the wheel and looked. For a moment she stood there, without seeming to understand, and staring stupidly at that purple face, half of which had been, as it were, wrenched downwards. The night was falling, and a great livid cloud, which turned the sky yellow, lit up the dying man as with the glow of a conflagration.

Then all at once, she burst into sobs, and ran out of sight to prepare her sister.

“Lise! Lise! Oh, my God!”

Jean, on remaining alone, hesitated. Still the old man could not be left lying in the cart. The basement of the house was three steps below ground, on the side of the square; and to descend into that dark hole seemed to him inconvenient. Then he bethought himself that, on the roadway side, to the left, another door opened level into the yard. It was a good-sized yard, enclosed by a quickset hedge; the turbid water of a pool took up two-thirds of it, and two-thirds of an acre of kitchen and fruit garden extended in the rear. Jean left Coco to himself, and the horse, of his own accord, entered and drew up before his stable, near the shed in which were the two cows.

Françoise and Lise ran up with tears and lamentations. The latter, confined four months previously, and now taken by surprise while suckling her infant, had, in her affright, kept him in her arms; and he howled too. Françoise again got on one wheel, while Lise climbed up on the other. Their lamentations grew deafening; and meantime Mouche, at the bottom of the cart, still kept up his laboured wheezing.

“Papa, answer; won’t you? Say what’s the matter. Oh, dear! what is the matter? Oh, dear! oh, dear! It’s in your head, then, since you can’t even speak? Papa, papa, do speak; do answer!”

“Come down. He’d better be got out of the trap,” said Jean, sagely.

They gave no help, but only screamed the louder. Luckily a neighbour, Madame Frimat, came upon the scene, attracted by the noise. She was a tall, withered, bony old woman, who for two years had been nursing her paralytic husband, supporting him by cultivating in person, with the doggedness of a beast of burden, the single acre or so that they possessed. She was not at all put out, seeming to think the misadventure a matter of course, and she lent a helping hand as a man would have done. Jean took Mouche by the shoulders, and pulled him up until La Frimat was able to catch hold of his legs. Then they carried him into the house.

“Where’s he to be put?” asked the old woman.

The two girls, who were following, had lost their wits, and did not know. Their father’s room was a small one upstairs, partitioned off from the grain-loft, and it was almost out of the question to carry him up there. Downstairs there was the kitchen, and the large double-bedded room which he had given up to them. In the kitchen it was as dark as pitch. With their arms stiff with exertion, the young man and the old woman waited, not daring to take another step forward for fear of knocking against some piece of furniture.

“Come, something must be settled, anyhow.”

Françoise at last lit a candle, and just then the wife of the rural constable, Madame Bécu came in; she had smelt disaster in the air, or had been warned by that occult agency which is wont to carry news through a village in no time.

“Why! what’s amiss with the poor fellow?” said she. “Ah! I see; his blood has turned. Quick! Set him on a chair.”

But Madame Frimat was of a different opinion. The idea of seating a man who could not hold himself upright! The thing to do was to stretch him on one of his daughters’ beds. The discussion was growing keen, when Fanny came in with Nénesse. She had heard about it while buying some vermicelli at Macqueron’s, and had come to see what there was to be seen; being at the same time somewhat affected on her cousins’ account.

“Perhaps,” she declared, “it’s best to sit him down, so that the blood may run back.”

And so Mouche was huddled on to a chair near the table, on which the candle was burning. His chin drooped upon his chest, his arms and legs hung limp. His left eye had been drawn open by the displacement of that side of his face, and one corner of his twisted mouth wheezed more than the other. Silence fell. Death was taking possession of the damp room, with its floor of trodden earth, its stained walls, and its large gloomy fire-place.

Jean still waited in perplexity, while the two girls and the three women dangled round the old fellow, looking at him.

“Hadn’t I better go and fetch the doctor?” the young man ventured to ask.

Madame Bécu nodded her head, but no one else made any reply. If it were to be nothing after all, why incur the expense of a visit? And if it were really the end, what good could the doctor do?

“Vulnerary’s a capital thing,” said La Frimat.

“I’ve got some camphorated spirits,” murmured Fanny.

“That’s a good thing too,” declared Madame Bécu.

Lise and Françoise, now in a state of stupor, listened and took no steps at all. The one was nursing her baby, Jules; the other was holding a glass full of water which her father would not drink. Fanny, however, bustled Nénesse, who was held spell-bound by the contorted visage of the dying man.

“Run home and tell them to give you the little bottle of Camphorated spirits on the left in the wardrobe. D’ye hear? In the wardrobe on the left. And call at grandfather Fouan’s, and at your aunt La Grande’s. Tell them that uncle Mouche is taken very bad. Run, run quick!”

The urchin having bounded out of sight, the women continued their dissertations on the case. La Bécu knew a gentleman who had been saved by having the soles of his feet tickled for three hours. La Frimat, remembering that she had some linden-flowers left out of the pennyworth bought the previous winter for her good man, went and fetched it. She was coming back with the little bag, and Lise was lighting a fire, after handing her child to Françoise, when Nénesse reappeared.

“Grandpapa Fouan had gone to bed. La Grande said that if uncle Mouche hadn’t drunk so much he wouldn’t have made himself so sick.”

Fanny examined the bottle he handed her, and then cried:

“You fool! I told you on the left. You’ve brought me the Eau de Cologne.”

“That’s a good thing, too,” said La Bécu.

They forced the old man to take a cup of linden-flower tea, by inserting the spoon between his clenched teeth. Then they rubbed his head with Eau de Cologne. And yet he didn’t get any better: it was most discouraging. His face had become blacker still. They were obliged to hitch him up on the chair, for he was sinking down, and on the point of tumbling flat on the floor.

“Oh!” muttered Nénesse, who had gone to the door again, “it’s going to rain like I don’t know what. The sky’s a funny sort of colour.”

“Yes,” said Jean, “I saw a villainous cloud gathering.” And, as if brought back to his first idea: “It’s no odds. I’ll go and fetch the doctor if you like.”

Lise and Françoise looked at each other, frightened and anxious. At last the second came to a resolution in the generous impulse of her youth.

“Yes, yes, Corporal. Go to Cloyes and fetch Monsieur Finet. It sha’n’t be said that we didn’t do our duty.”

Coco, in the midst of the bustle, had not even been unhar­nessed, and Jean had only to jump into the cart. They heard the clink of iron, and the rumble of the wheels. Then La Frimat mentioned the priest; but the others signified by a ges­ture that enough trouble was already being taken in the matter. And Nénesse having proposed to walk the two miles or so to Bazoches-le-Doyen, his mother lost her temper. A likely thing that she was going to let him trot off on so threatening a night, with that dreadful rust-coloured sky! Besides, as the old man neither heard nor answered, one might as well knock up the priest to minister to a mile-stone.

Ten o’clock struck from the cuckoo-clock of painted wood. Here was a surprise! To think that they had been there more than two hours without effecting anything. But not one of them seemed inclined to stir, they were fascinated by the sight, and resolved to see it out. A ten-pound loaf lay on the bread-box, with a knife. First the girls, racked with hunger despite their anguish, mechanically cut themselves slices of bread, which they unconsciously ate, quite dry. Then the three women followed their example. The bread diminished, and one or the other of them was always cutting and munching. No other candle had been lighted; they omitted even to snuff the one that was burning; and it was not lively, sitting in that poor, gloomy, bare, peasant room, and listening to the death-rattle of the form huddled together near the table.

All at once, half an hour after Jean’s departure. Mouche tumbled over and fell headlong to the floor. He no longer breathed; he was dead!

“What did I tell you? Only you insisted on sending for the doctor,” remarked La Bécu, tartly.

Françoise and Lise, stupefied for a moment, burst out into fresh tears. With an instinctive impulse they had thrown themselves into each other’s arms in their tender, sisterly adoration; and in broken phrases they repeated: “Oh, dear! We have only each other now. It’s all over; there are only the two of us. What will become of us! Oh, dear!”

But the corpse could not be left on the floor. In a trice La Frimat and La Bécu did everything necessary. As they dared not carry the body, they went and drew a mattress off a bed, brought it, and stretched Mouche out upon it, covering him up to the chin with a sheet. Meanwhile Fanny lit the candles in two other candlesticks, and placed them on the floor in lieu of wax tapers on either side of the head. For the moment all was well, except that Mouche’s left eye, although closed three times by one of the women with her thumb, per­sisted in opening again, and seemed to be looking at everybody from out of the distorted purple face, which contrasted so sharply with the whiteness of the linen.