Complete Works of Emile Zola (954 page)

This allusion to Hyacinthe disquieted Rose, who, not daring to interfere, confined herself to twitching her husband’s jacket. He had made a gesture of anger, but checked himself.

“Good. Hand over your fifty francs. I’ve drawn out the receipt.”

Buteau leisurely fumbled in his clothes. He had glanced in a vexed way at La Grande, and seemed put out by her pre­sence. She dropped her knitting, and glared at him in ex­pectation of seeing the money produced. The parents, too, had drawn near, and never took their eyes off the young fellow’s hand. Under the stare of those three pairs of eyes, he reluctantly drew out his first five-franc piece.

“One,” said he, laying it down on the table. Others followed, more and more slowly. He went on counting them aloud, in faltering tones. After producing the fifth he stopped, and had to make an exhaustive search to find another; then he shouted loudly and emphatically:

“And six!”

The Fouans still waited, but nothing more came.

“What, six?” the father said at last. “There ought to be ten. Are you making fun of us? Last quarter, forty francs; and only thirty this time.”

Buteau immediately assumed a whining tone. Nothing prospered. Wheat had fallen still lower, the oats were wretched. There was even a swelling on his horse’s stomach, and he had had to send twice for Monsieur Patoir. In short, he was ruined, and he didn’t know how to make both ends meet.

“That’s no concern of mine,” repeated the old man furiously. “Hand over the fifty francs, or I’ll summons you!”

He grew cooler, however, as it occurred to him to accept the six coins on account; and he spoke of making out a fresh receipt.

“Then you will give me the twenty francs next week? I’ll put that on the paper.”

Buteau, however, had immediately snatched up the money lying on the table.

“No, no! None of that! We must be quits. Leave the receipt as it is, or I’m off. Likely thing! It wouldn’t be worth while my pinching and screwing if I were still to be in your debt.”

Then there was a terrible scene. Both father and son held out stubbornly, untiringly repeating the same phrases; the one exasperated at not having pocketed the money in the first instance, the other clutching it firmly, and determined not to give it up again without having the receipt in full. Once more the mother had to twitch her husband’s jacket, and once more he gave way.

“There, you confounded thief; there’s the paper! You ought to have it smacked on your jaw! Hand over the money.”

The transfer was made from fist to fist, and Buteau, having played the comedy out, began to laugh. He went off, pleasant and contented, wishing the company a very good evening. Fouan, who looked exhausted, had sat down at the table; and La Grande, before resuming her knitting, shrugged her shoulders and shouted in his face:

“You stupid fool!”

Silence ensued. Then the door re-opened, and Hyacinthe came in. Having been informed by La Trouille that his brother was to pay that night, he had watched him on the road, and had waited for him to leave before presenting himself in his turn. His mild expression was simply due to the maudlin effects of dissipation over-night. From the door-way, his glance fell straight on the six five-franc pieces which Fouan had been imprudent enough to leave on the table.

“Ah, it’s Hyacinthe,” exclaimed Rose, pleased to see him.

“Yes, it’s me. Hope I see you all well!”

He came forward, with his eyes riveted on the white coins, which glistened like so many moons in the candle light. His father, who had turned his head, observed his look, and perceived the money with a start of disquietude. He clapped a plate over the coins to hide them, but it was too late.

“Infernal fool I was!” thought he, irritated at his own carelessness. “La Grande is right.”

Then, aloud, and coarsely: “You do well to come and pay us, for as true as that candle’s shining, I’d have sent the lawyer to you to-morrow.”

“Yes, La Trouille told me so,” groaned Hyacinthe very humbly: “and so I put myself about to come, because you surely can’t wish my death, do you? Pay, good Lord! what’s one to pay with, when one hasn’t even bread enough to live on? We’ve sold everything — oh! I’m not kidding; come and see for yourself if you think I’m kidding. There are now no sheets on the beds, no more furniture, no nothing! And on the top of that, I’m ill.”

A guffaw of incredulity interrupted him. He went on without heeding:

“Perhaps it doesn’t show much, but, all the same, there’s something wrong in my inside. I cough, I feel that I’m going. If I could only get some broth! But when one can’t even get broth, one kicks the bucket, eh? That’s true enough. To be sure I’d pay you if I had the money. Tell me where there is any, and I will give you some, and boil a bit of beef to begin with. It’s now a fortnight since I tasted meat, indeed it is! on my honour.”

Rose began to be affected, while Fouan got more angry.

“You’ve turned everything into drink, you good-for-nothing vagabond. So much the worse for you! You’ve pledged all that fine land that had been in the family for years and years! Yes, you’ve been on the spree for months, you and your daughter; and if it’s finished now, well, go and die.”

Hyacinthe hesitated no longer, but sobbed.

“It isn’t fatherly to say that. Only unnatural people cast off their children. It’s because I’m good-hearted that I shall come to grief. If you hadn’t any money one could make allowances! But when a father has the cash, does he refuse alms to a son? I shall go and beg at other people’s houses; and a nice thing that’ll be — a very nice thing indeed!”

At every phrase, jerked out amid his tears, he made the old man tremble by casting sidelong glances at the plate. Then, pretending to suffocate, he screamed in a deafening way as if he were having his throat cut.

Rose, who was quite upset and vanquished by his sobs, clasped her hands in supplication to Fouan.

“Come, husband.”

But he, struggling with himself, and still refusing, cut her short.

“No, no, he’s only making fools of us. Will you hold your tongue, you brute? Is there any sense in howling like that? The neighbours will come in. You’re making us ill.”

This only made the sot increase his clamour, as he bellowed out:

“I haven’t told you. But the lawyer is coming to-morrow to put in an execution for a bill I gave Lambourdieu. I’m a swine; I disgrace you; I must put an end to it. Pig that I am, and I deserve to be soused in the Aigre for good. If I only had thirty francs!”

Fouan, tried beyond endurance, and overcome by the scene, started at the mention of thirty francs. He removed the plate. What good was it, when the scamp saw the money and counted it through the china?

“You want the whole. In God’s name, is that reasonable? Look here! You’re driving us distracted. Take half, and go; and don’t let us see you again.”

Hyacinthe, suddenly cured, apparently took counsel with himself. Then he declared:

“No, fifteen francs is too little; it would be of no use. Call it twenty, and I’ll leave you.”

Then, when he’d got the four five-franc pieces, he made them all laugh by relating what a trick he had played Bécu, with some imitation bottom lines so placed in the reserved part of the Aigre that the rural constable had tumbled into the water while trying to get them out. At last he went away, after getting himself offered a glass of the bad wine sent by Delhomme, whom he called a dirty scoundrel to dare send such stuff to a father.

“He’s a pleasant fellow, anyhow!” said Rose, when the door had shut behind him.

La Grande had risen, and was folding up her knitting, prior to leaving. She stared at her sister-in-law and then at her brother; and finally in her turn she went out after screaming, in a fit of passion long suppressed:

“Not a copper, you infernal fools! Never ask me for a copper, never!”

Outside, she met Buteau, who was returning from Macqueron’s, having been astonished to see Hyacinthe come in there, looking very lively, and rattling a pocketful of crowns. He had at once smelt a rat.

“Oh, yes! The rascal’s making off with your money. Ah, what a night of it he’ll make! and what an ass he’ll think you are!”

Buteau, beside himself, knocked with both fists at the Fouans’ door. If they hadn’t let him in he would have broken it down. The old folks were already going to bed. The mother had taken off her cap and her dress, and was in her petticoat, with her grey hair falling over her temples. When they de­cided to open the door, he burst in upon them, shouting in a stifled voice:

“My money! My money!”

They recoiled in fear and bewilderment, not understanding him as yet.

“Do you suppose I half-kill myself for that scoundrel, my brother? So he’s to do nothing, and I’m to provide for him! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Fouan tried to deny it, but Buteau coarsely interrupted him.

“What’s that? Oh, you’re going to lie, now! I tell you he’s got my money. I smelt it; I heard it rattling in the blackguard’s pocket! My money, that I sweated for, and that he’s going to spend in tipple! If it’s not so, show it me! Show me the coins, if you have them still. I know them; I can tell them. Show me the coins!”

He stubbornly repeated this phrase a score of times, as if applying the spur to his anger. He got to thumping the table with his fist, demanding the coins on the spot, at once, swearing that he did not want to take them back, but simply to see them. Then, as the old folks shook and stammered, he burst out furiously:

“He’s got them; that’s clear! Hell and thunder, if I ever bring you another copper! One might bleed one’s-self for you; but I’d sooner cut off my arms than keep that sodden cur!”

At last, however, the father also got into a passion.

“Now then, haven’t you about finished,” said he. “Is it any business of yours what we do? The money’s my own, and I can do what I like with it.”

“What’s that you say?” retorted Buteau, going up to him, pale and with clenched fists. “So you expect me to give up everything. Well, then, I tell you it’s simply filthy — yes, filthy — to get money out of your children, when you have certainly enough to live on. Oh! it’s no use your denying it! You’ve got a hoard in there, I know!”

The startled old man was struggling wildly, his voice and arms both failing him, with nought of his old authority left to turn his son out.

“No, no; there’s not a copper. Will you go off?”

“Suppose I look! Suppose I look!” repeated Buteau, already opening some drawers and tapping the walls.

Rose, terrified, and dreading an encounter between father and son, hung on the latter’s shoulder, and faltered:

“You unfortunate fellow, do you want to kill us?”

Turning sharply upon her, he seized her by the wrists, and shouted in her face, regardless of her poor, grey, worn, and weary head:

“It’s all your fault! It was you that gave the money to Hyacinthe. You never liked me, you old hag!”

With these words he gave her so rough a push that, uttering a faint cry, she fell swooning in a heap against the wall. He looked at her for an instant as she reclined there, huddled up like a bundle of rags, and then madly rushed out, slamming the door and swearing.

The next day Rose could not leave her bed. Doctor Finet was called in, and returned three times, without being able to afford her any relief. At his third visit, finding her in extremity, he took Fouan aside, and asked as a favour to be allowed to write out the burial certificate, and leave it. This plan, which he generally adopted for distant hamlets, would save him a journey. Nevertheless, Rose survived for thirty-six hours longer. The doctor, when questioned, had replied that she was dying of old age and over-work: that the end was bound to come when the body was worn out. But in Rognes, where the story was known, all the folks said that she had died of “curdled blood,” meaning apoplexy. There were a great many people at the funeral, and Buteau and the rest of the family behaved with great decorum.

When the grave had been filled up, old Fouan went back alone to the house where the two of them had lived and suffered for fifty years. He ate a bit of bread and cheese standing. Then he prowled through the empty buildings and garden, not knowing what occupation would enable him to get rid of his grief. He had nothing more to do now, so he went up to his old fields on the plateau to see if the wheat were growing.

CHAPTER III

For a whole year Fouan lived in this fashion, silent and alone, in the empty house. He was ever to be found there on his legs, roaming hither and thither with trembling hands and doing nothing. He would stay for hours in front of the mouldy troughs in the cow-house; and then he would turn and station himself at the door of the empty barn, as if riveted there in profound reverie. The garden still gave him some occupation; but he was growing weaker, and stooped more and more, as though the soil were recalling him little by little to herself. Twice had he been picked up lying face downwards among his young salads.

Since those twenty francs had been given to Hyacinthe, Delhomme alone paid his share of the allowance. Buteau stubbornly refused a single copper, declaring he would rather go into a court of law than see his money pass into the pockets of his disreputable brother. The latter did, indeed, from time to time, wring some alms from his father, whom his tearful heroics prostrated.

Then it was that Delhomme, seeing the old man’s growing distress, his enfeeblement and forlornness, conceived the notion of taking him into his own home. Why should not Fouan sell the house and live at his daughter’s? He would want for nothing there; and they would no longer have to pay him the two hundred francs’ allowance. The next day Buteau, having heard of this offer, hastened to make a similar one, with an elaborate display of filial affection. Money to fling away — no, no, indeed! But if it were merely a question of caring for his father, why the latter could come and eat and sleep and enjoy himself. At bottom, no doubt, Buteau’s idea must have been that his sister was only trying to get hold of the old man with the intention of grabbing the suppositious hoard. Yet even he was beginning to doubt the existence of that money, which he had hunted after in vain. And he was in two minds — offering his father a shelter out of pride, expecting that the old man would refuse, and yet exasperated at the notion that he might accept Delhomme’s hospitality. Fouan, on his side, displayed great repugnance, almost dread, as regards both pro­posals. No, no! Better dry bread in his own house than roast meat at other people’s; it was less bitter. He had lived there and there he would die.