Complete Works of Emile Zola (942 page)

Jean felt happy there, without troubling his head to inquire what the attraction was. Lise, who gave him a good welcome, was as gay and buxom as ever. Nevertheless, she was already looking older than twenty-five; indeed, she was growing very plain, more especially since her confinement. But she had good stout arms, and applied herself to her work with such zest — bustling about, shouting, and laughing — that it was delightful to look at her. Jean treated her as a grown-up woman, and did not thee and thou her as he did Françoise, whose fifteen years made her seem to him quite a mere child. The younger girl, whose good looks out-of-door life and hard work had not yet had time enough to spoil, retained her pretty, long face, with its slight, headstrong forehead, its dark, pensive eyes, and its thick lips, shaded by a precocious down. Although deemed a child, she was a woman also; and apt to conceive, as her sister used to say, without being tickled very closely. It was Lise who had brought her up, their mother being dead; and thence came their great fondness, active and noisy on the part of the elder sister, and passionate and restrained on that of the younger one.

Françoise was reputed to have a strong will of her own. Injustice exasperated her. When she had said: “This is mine, and that is yours,” she would have gone to the scaffold rather than retract; and, putting everything else aside, she adored Lise, from a notion that such adoration was Lise’s due. Withal, she was tractable and very good, free from bad thoughts, and only tormented by her early womanhood, which made her nerveless, slightly dainty, and lazy. One day she also began to address Jean in the second person singular, he being quite a middle-aged and kindly-natured friend, who was wont to draw her out, and sometimes tease her, telling falsehoods of malice aforethought, and defending injustice for the fun of seeing her choke with rage.

One Sunday afternoon in June, the heat already being intense, Lise was engaged in the kitchen garden, hoeing some peas and nipping them round. She had placed Jules under a plum-tree, where he had dozed off to sleep. The sun was beating straight down upon her, and she was puffing as she bent forward to pull up some weeds, when a voice came from behind the hedge:

“What, what! No rest even on Sunday?”

She had recognised the voice, and drew herself up, with red arms and a flushed face, but laughing through it all.

“No, indeed! The work doesn’t do itself on a Sunday any more than on a week-day!”

It was Jean. He skirted the hedge, and came in through the yard.

“Let that alone; I’ll soon polish off your work!”

However, she refused. She would soon have finished. And then, if she didn’t do that, she would be doing something else. There was never a chance of being idle. Although she got up at four o’clock in the morning, and sat sewing till late in the evening by candlelight, she never got to the end of it all.

So as not to oppose her, Jean sat himself in the shade of the neighbouring plum-tree, being careful not to sit upon Jules. He watched Lise, stooping double again, and every now and then pulling down her petticoat, which kept working up behind and showing her fat legs; and then with her head close to the ground, she worked away with her arms without any fear of the rush of blood that swelled her neck.

“Lucky for you,” he said, “that you’re sturdily built!”

She took some pride in that, and laughed complacently without getting up. He laughed too, conscientiously admiring her, thinking her as strong and energetic as a man. No im­proper desire was suggested to him by her attitude, by her tense calves, by this woman on all fours, sweating and smelling like an animal in heat. He was simply thinking that with limbs like that one could get through a rare lot of work. It was quite certain that, in a household, a woman of that build would be worth as much as her husband.

No doubt some association of ideas worked in him, for he involuntarily blurted out a piece of news which he had resolved to keep to himself.

“I saw Buteau the day before yesterday.” Lise slowly rose up. But she had no time to question him, for Françoise — who had heard Jean’s voice, and who, with her arms bare and white with milk, was now coming from the dairy at the further end of the cow-house — flew at once into quite a temper.

“Oh, you’ve seen him? The cad!”

Her antipathy had increased. She could never now hear her cousin mentioned without being stirred by one of her gusts of honest indignation, as if she had had a personal injury to avenge.

“Certainly he’s a cad,” declared Lise calmly; “but it don’t do any good to say so at this time of day.”

She had stuck her arms a-kimbo, and now in a serious voice she asked:

“And what’s Buteau got to say for himself?”

“Why, nothing,” replied Jean, with some embarrassment, sorry that he hadn’t kept a quiet tongue in his head. “We spoke of his affairs, on account of his father giving out everywhere that he’ll disinherit him. Buteau says there’s no hurry about that, for the old man’s hearty enough, and that, anyway, he don’t care a curse.”

“Does he know that Hyacinthe and Fanny have signed the deed, whether or no, and that they’re both in possession of their shares?”

“Yes, he knows; and he knows, too, that old Fouan has let his son-in-law, Delhomme, the share that he, Buteau, wouldn’t have. He knows, also, that Monsieur Baillehache was in such a fury that he took an oath he’d never again have the lots drawn for before seeing the papers signed. Oh, yes; he knows that it’s all over.”

“Ah! And he said nothing?”

“No, he said nothing.”

Lise stooped down in silence, walked on a bit, pulling up some weeds and showing nothing save the full rotundity of her behind; then she turned her neck round, and added, with her head down: “It comes to this, Corporal, if you want to know, I shall have to keep Jules, and that’ll be the end of it.”

Jean, who had heretofore held out some hopes, nodded.

“Faith! you’re perhaps right.”

He glanced at Jules, whom he had forgotten. The brat still slept, swathed in his long clothes, with his little motionless face bathed in light. That was the awkward part of it, that urchin! Otherwise, why shouldn’t he have married Lise, now she was free? The idea came to him all at once, then and there, as he watched her working. Perhaps he loved her. Perhaps it was the pleasure of seeing her that brought him so much to the house. None the less was he surprised, not having desired her, not even having jested with her, as he had jested with Françoise, for instance. And, pat, as he raised his head, he saw the latter standing rigid and furious in the sunshine, with her eyes so strangely ablaze with passion that he was en­livened even in the agitation of his new discovery. Just then the sound of a trumpet, a strange topsy-turvy roll-call, rang out; and Lise, leaving her peas, exclaimed:

“Why, here comes Lambourdieu! I want to order a hood of him.”

On the road, on the other side of the hedge, there appeared a dumpy little man, blowing a trumpet, and walking ahead of a long vehicle drawn by a grey horse. It was Lambourdieu, a shopkeeper from Cloyes, who had added, bit by bit, millinery, drapery, shoemaking, and even ironmongery to his novelty business. He went from village to village, within a radius of five or six leagues, with a regular bazaar. The peasants had ended by buying everything from him, from their saucepans to their wedding clothes. His vehicle was made to open out and turn back, displaying rows of drawers, and enough goods to stock a whole shop.

When Lambourdieu had taken the order for the hood, he added:

“In the meantime you don’t happen to want a fine silk handkerchief?”

So saying he drew out of a box some gorgeous red gold-patterned handkerchiefs, and swished them up and down in the sunlight.

“There you are! Three francs each! It’s giving them away. Five francs for the pair!”

Lise and Françoise, to whom they had been handed over the hawthorn hedge, on which Jules’s napkins were drying, hankered after them. But they were sensible girls; they had no need of them, and why spend money? They were indeed handing them back, when Jean suddenly made up his mind to take Lise, baby and all. So, in order to precipitate matters, he called out to the young woman:

“No, no! Keep it. I offer it you! Oh, you wouldn’t pain me by refusing: it’s out of pure friendship, to be sure!”

He had said nothing to Françoise, and as she still held out her handkerchief to the dealer, he glanced at her, and felt a pang of grief as he fancied he saw her cheek pale and her lips quiver with pain.

“You, too, stupid! Keep it. Nay, I insist. None of that self-will of yours!”

He struggled with the two sisters who laughingly defended themselves. Lambourdieu had already held out his hand, across the hedge, for his five francs. And away he went. The horse behind him started off with the long vehicle, and the hoarse flourishes of the trumpet died away as the road wound out of sight.

Jean had all at once taken it into his head to push matters on with Lise, and pop the question. But an accident prevented this. The stable-door had no doubt been badly fastened, for suddenly they saw the donkey, Gédéon, valiantly chewing some carrot tops in the kitchen garden. This donkey, big, sturdy, and russet-coloured, with a large grey cross on his spine, was full of artfulness, and quite a wag in his way. He was very good at lifting latches with his mouth, was wont to fetch bread out of the kitchen, and by the style in which he wagged his long ears when he was reproached with his vices, it was obvious that he understood. As soon as he saw himself discovered he put on an indifferent, easy air; then, on being threatened and waved off, he moved away; only, instead of going back into the yard, he trotted along the walks to the bottom of the garden. Then a regular pursuit set in; and when Françoise had at length caught him, he drew himself together and huddled his head and legs against his body, as if to increase his weight, and make slower progress. He was impervious to everything, whether in the shape of kicks or blandishments. Indeed, Jean had to intervene, and hustle him from behind with his man’s strength; for Gédéon, since he had been under the management of the two women, had con­ceived the most hearty contempt for them. Jules had awoke at the noise and was now howling. The opportunity for popping the question was altogether lost, and Jean had to leave without speaking.

A week went by. A great shyness had come upon the young man, who had now lost heart. Not that the transaction seemed to him disadvantageous; contrariwise, he had, on reflection, become more deeply conscious of its advantages. Each side could not do otherwise than gain. If he had nothing, she was encumbered with her infant. That equalised matters. This was no sordid calculation on his part. He argued as much for her happiness as for his own. Then, again, marriage, by taking him away from the farm, would rid him of Jacqueline, who still worried him, and to whom he still yielded out of fleshly weakness. So at last he made up his mind, and waited for an opportunity to declare himself, conning the words he meant to say, for even regimental life had left him somewhat a ninny with women.

At last, one day at about four o’clock, he slipped away from the farm and went to Rognes, resolved to speak. This was the time when Françoise led her cows to evening pasture, and he had chosen it so as to be alone with Lise. But he was dismayed, at the outset, by a great annoyance. La Frimat was established there in her character of obliging neighbour, helping the younger woman to scald the linen in the kitchen.

The sisters had scoured it on the evening before, and since the morning the ash liquor, scented with orris root, had been boiling in a cauldron hanging from the pot-hook over a clear, poplar wood fire. With bare arms, and her skirts tucked up, Lise, with the aid of a yellow earthen jug, was drawing the water off and wetting the linen, with which the bucking-tub was filled — the sheets at the bottom, then the house-cloths, then the body linen, and, at the top of all, some other sheets. La Frimat was not of much use; but she stopped to gossip, allowing herself that recreation, and contenting herself, every now and then, with removing and emptying into the cauldron the pail which stood under the tub to catch the lye, that kept draining away.

Jean waited patiently, hoping she would leave. She did not do so, however; but went on talking of her poor paralytic hus­band, who could now only move one hand. It was a great affliction. They had never been well off; but, when he could still work, he rented land which he turned to account, whereas now she had a world of trouble to cultivate by herself the patch that was their own. She struggled her hardest; collecting horse dung from the roads as manure, for they kept no animals; tending her salad stock, beans, and peas, plant by plant; and watering even her three plum and two apricot trees. The result was that she made an enormous profit out of the ground; and started every Saturday for the Cloyes market, staggering under the burden of two tremendous baskets, with­out reckoning the heavy vegetables which a neighbour conveyed for her in his cart. She rarely returned without two or three five-franc pieces, particularly in the fruit season. Her constant grievance was the lack of manure. Neither the horse dung, nor the sweepings from the few rabbits and hens she kept, made a sufficient supply. She had come at length to utilising the excrements of her old man and herself, that human manure so much despised, which provokes disgust even in the country. This had got abroad, and people chaffed her about it, and dubbed her Mother Caca — a nickname which did her a deal of harm at the market: she had seen shopkeepers’ wives turn with aversion and disgust from her superb carrots and cabbages. Despite her great mildness, this set her beside herself with fury.

“Come, now, tell me — you, Corporal — is it reasonable? Isn’t it permissible to use all that the good God has put in our way? And then to go and say that the dung of animals is cleaner! No; it’s jealousy! Folks have a spite against me in Rognes, because the vegetables grow more vigorously on my ground. Tell me, Corporal, does it disgust you?”

Jean replied, in embarrassment: “Well, I don’t find it exactly appetising. One ain’t used to it. I daresay though, that it’s only fancy.”