Complete Works of Emile Zola (962 page)

And, turning towards Lise, she added: “I thought of you, too, in the matter of linen. There is nothing so useful in a house as old linen; so I asked my daughter for some, and ransacked all her drawers.”

Hearing linen mentioned, everybody had drawn near — La Grande, the Delhommes, and Fouan himself. Gathering in a ring round the trunk, they watched the old lady unpack a whole lot of rags, all clean and white, and exhaling, despite the washing, a persistent odour of musk. First came some fine linen sheets, in tatters; then a quantity of chemises, all slit down, with the lace palpably torn off.

Madame Charles unfolded the things, shook them out, and explained:

“The sheets are not new. They’ve been quite five years in use; and in time, what with friction and so on, they wear out. You see that they’ve all a large hole in the middle, but the edges are still good, and a host of things may be cut out of them.”

They all stuck their noses into the sheets, and felt them, with approving nods, particularly the women — La Grande and Fanny, whose pinched-up lips were expressive of suppressed envy. Buteau was indulging in silent laughter, tickled by certain jocular ideas which he kept to himself, for propriety’s sake; while Fouan and Delhomme testified by their extreme gravity to the respect they felt for linen, which was the only wealth, worth calling so, next to land.

“As for the chemises,” resumed Madame Charles, unfolding them in their turn, “see for yourselves. They’re not worn at all. Lots of slits in them, no doubt! They’re torn to ruina­tion! And as they can’t always be sewn up again, because that would make thick seams, and look a little paltry, why, they’re thrown away for old linen. But they’ll come in handy for you, Lise—”

“Why, I’ll wear them,” cried the peasant woman. “It makes no odds to me to wear a mended chemise.”

“As for me,” declared Buteau, with a sly wink, “I shall be glad enough if you’ll make me some handkerchiefs out of them.”

This set them laughing undisguisedly. Little Elodie, who had not taken her eyes off a single sheet or chemise, now cried out:

“Oh, what a funny smell! How strong! Was all that linen mamma’s?”

Madame Charles did not hesitate a moment.

“Why, certainly, darling. That is, it’s the linen of her shop­girls. A lot of girls are wanted in business, I can tell you!”

As soon as Lise had put the whole lot away in her wardrobe, with Françoise’s help, they clinked glasses and drank the health of the baby, whom the godmother had christened Laure, after herself. Then they tarried for a moment, lost in conver­sation; and Monsieur Charles, sitting on the trunk, was heard questioning Madame Charles, without waiting to get her alone, so great, indeed, was his impatience to hear how things were going on over yonder. It was still a passion with him; his head was always running upon the house so energetically established in days gone by, and so deeply regretted since! The news was not good. True enough, their daughter Estelle had a hand and a head; but their son-in-law Vaucogne, that milksop Achilles, did not give her proper support. He spent the whole day smoking his pipe, and let everything go to rack and ruin. The curtains of No. 3 were stained, the mirror in the small red drawing-room was cracked, the water-jugs and basins were chipped all over the house; and he never so much as raised a finger. And a man’s arm was so necessary to ensure due respect for one’s goods and chattels! At every fresh piece of damage thus brought under his notice, Monsieur Charles fetched a sigh, and became paler. One last grievance, communicated in a whisper, finished him off.

“Lastly, he himself goes upstairs with that stout woman of No. 5—”

“What’s that you say?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it; I’ve seen them.”

Monsieur Charles, who was quivering, clenched his fists in a burst of exasperated indignation.

“The wretch! Disgracing himself in that way! That beats everything!”

With a gesture, Madame Charles silenced him, for Elodie was coming back from the yard, where she had been to see the hens. Another quart bottle was drained, and the trunk was again placed in the cart, which Monsieur and Madame Charles followed on foot as far as their house. All the others also went off to give a glance indoors while awaiting the feast.

As soon as Buteau was alone, feeling dissatisfied with this waste of an afternoon, he took off his jacket and set to work threshing in the paved corner of the yard; he wanted a sack of corn for the morrow. However, he soon got tired of thresh­ing alone. To warm him to his work he needed the cadence of two flails, keeping time together. So he called to Françoise, who frequently helped him in this work, as her loins were strong, and her arms as hard-set as a young man’s. In spite of the slowness and the fatigue of this primitive method of threshing, Buteau had always refused to buy a machine, say­ing, like all petty landowners, that he preferred to thresh at a time just the quantity he needed.

“Hallo, Françoise! Are you coming?” he called.

Lise, who was leaning over some veal stewing with carrots, after commissioning her sister to look after a loin of roast-pork, wanted to prevent the girl obeying. But Buteau, who was not in the best of temper, threatened them both with a hiding.

“You cursed females! I’ll smack your saucepans across your heads for you! One may well sweat for one’s bread when you’d go and fry the whole house, to gobble it down with other people!”

Françoise, who had already slipped on a working dress for fear of getting her best clothes stained, was obliged to follow him. She took a flail with handle and flap of cornel wood, secured together with leather buckles. It was her own, polished by friction, and closely bound with string to prevent its slipping. Swinging it round over her head with both hands she brought it down on the wheat, striking the latter smartly with the whole length of the flap. She went on without stop­ping, raising the flail very high, turning it as upon a hinge, and then banging it down again with the mechanical, rhythmical movement of a blacksmith; while Buteau, opposite her, swung his flail in alternation. They soon became hot. The rhythm was accelerated, and nothing could now be seen but the flying flaps, rebounding every time and whirling behind their necks like birds tied by the feet.

After ten minutes or so, Buteau gave a slight cry. The flails stopped, and he turned the sheaf round, whereupon the flails started again. At the end of another ten minutes he ordered a new pause, and laid the sheaf open. It had to pass thus six times under the flaps before the grain was fully separated from the ears, and the straw could be tied up. Sheaf succeeded sheaf, and for two hours the regular noise of the flails pervaded the house, though above it, in the distance, there arose the prolonged snorting of the steam-thresher.

Françoise’s cheeks were now flushed and her wrists swollen, and from all her glowing skin there emanated a kind of flame that quivered visibly in the air. Her open lips were panting. Bits of straw had become entangled in the loose locks of her hair. At every stroke, as she raised the flail, her right knee stretched her petticoat, her hip and bosom expanded, straining her dress, while the contour of her well-set frame showed roughly through the fabric. A button flew off her bodice, and Buteau saw her white skin beneath the sunburnt line of her neck — an eminence of flesh that kept rising with the swing of her arms in the powerful play of the shoulder-muscles. This seemed to excite him still more; and the flails still fell, while the grain leapt and fell like hail under the panting strokes of the coupled threshers.

At a quarter to seven, at close of day, Fouan and the Delhommes presented themselves.

“We must finish this,” shouted Buteau to them, without stopping. “Keep it up, Françoise!”

She stuck to it, striking still harder in the enthusiasm prompted by the labour and noise. And thus it was that Jean found them when he in his turn arrived. He felt a spasm of jealousy, and looked at them as if he had surprised them together. Busy with this warm work, each striking true in turn, both perspiring, so heated and so disarranged, they seemed to be engaged in some other more private business than that of threshing wheat. Perhaps Françoise, who was going at it so zealously, had the same idea, for she suddenly stopped short in embarrassment. Then Buteau, turning round, re­mained motionless for an instant, with surprise and wrath.

“What do you want here?” he cried.

Lise was just then coming out to meet Fouan and the Delhommes. She drew near in their company, and cried in her sprightly way:

“Ah, yes! I forgot to tell yon. I saw Jean this morning and asked him to come in to-night.”

Her husband’s face was so terribly inflamed that she added, by way of apology:

“I’ve a notion, Fouan, that he has a request to make of you.”

“What about?” said the old man. Jean flushed and stammered, feeling very vexed that the matter should be broached so abruptly and publicly. However, Buteau violently cut him short, the smiling look which his wife cast upon Françoise having sufficed to enlighten him.

“Do you come here to make a laughing-stock of us? She’s not for the likes of you, you ugly bird!”

This brutal reception gave Jean back his courage. He turned his back and addressed the old man.

“This is the matter, Fouan. It’s a very simple thing. As you are Françoise’s guardian, I ought to apply to you for her, oughtn’t I? Well, if she will have me, I’ll have her. I ask her in marriage.”

Françoise, who was still holding her flail, dropped it in amazement. She ought to have expected this; but she had not imagined that Jean would venture to propose for her in such a fashion all at once. Why had he not spoken to her about it first? It flurried her; she could not have told whether she was trembling with hope or fear. Vibrating from her recent toil, her bosom heaving under her unfastened bodice, she remained there between the two men, glowing with such a rush of blood that they felt the heat radiate even to where they stood.

Buteau did not allow Fouan time to answer. He went on in growing fury:

“What? You dare ask that. An old man of thirty-three marry a child of eighteen. Merely fifteen years difference! Isn’t it monstrous? Fancy giving young chickens to a fellow with a dirty hide like yours!”

Jean was beginning to lose his temper. “What’s it got to do with you,” he replied, “if she likes me and I like her?”

And he turned towards Françoise for her to pronounce. But she stood there startled and rigid, without seeming to understand. She could not say no, but she did not say yes. Buteau, moreover, was glaring at her so murderously as to make the yes stick in her throat. If she married, he would lose her and the land as well. The sudden thought of this result put a finishing touch to his wrath.

“Come, papa; come, Delhomme. Doesn’t it revolt you; this child to that old brute, who doesn’t even belong to our part of the country, and who comes from God knows where, after traipsing about here, there, and everywhere? A carpenter who failed in his calling and turned peasant, because he had some disgraceful affair to keep secret, of course.”

All his hatred of the town artizan burst forth.

“And what then? If I like her and she likes me!” repeated Jean, restraining himself, and resolving, out of courtesy, to let her be the first to relate their story. “Come, Françoise, say something.”

“Why, that’s true!” cried Lise, carried away by the desire to see her sister married, and thus get rid of her: “what have you to do with it, Buteau, if they agree? She doesn’t need your consent, and it’s very good of her not to send you about your business. You’re getting a perfect nuisance!”

Buteau clearly realised that the matter would be arranged, if the girl were to speak. He especially dreaded that the marriage would be considered reasonable if the past connection were made public. Just then La Grande came into the yard, followed by Monsieur and Madame Charles, who were return­ing with Elodie. Buteau beckoned them to approach without yet knowing what he would say. Then an idea struck him, and with his face swollen and shaking his fist at his wife and sister-in-law, he yelled out:

“You cursed cows! Yes, cows, trolls, both of you! If you want to know the truth, I sleep with the pair of them! and that’s why they think they can make a fool of me! With the pair of them, I tell you! Strumpets that they are!”

These words came in a volley full in the faces of Monsieur and Madame Charles, who both stood there open-mouthed. Madame Charles made a rush as if to shield the listening Elodie. Then, pushing her towards the kitchen garden, she cried in a very loud voice:

“Come and see the salads, come and see the cabbages! Oh, such fine cabbages!”

Buteau invented fresh details as he went on, relating that when one had had her share it was the other one’s turn in the coarsest terms, and venting a flood of sewerage in un­utterably beastly words. Lise, in sheer astonishment at this sudden fit, simply shrugged her shoulders, repeating:

“He’s mad! It isn’t possible otherwise. He’s mad!”

“Tell him he lies!” cried Jean to Françoise.

“Most certainly he lies!” said the girl, composedly.

“Oh, I lie?” resumed Buteau. “Oh! And it isn’t true what happened between us at harvest-time? I’ll pretty soon bring you under, the two of you, strumpets that you are!”

This rabid audacity paralysed and astounded Jean. Could he now explain what had happened between himself and Françoise? It seemed to him that it would be foul to do so, particularly as she did not give him any assistance. The others — the Delhommes, Fouan, and La Grande — remained reserved. They had not seemed surprised; and they evidently thought that, if the fellow did sleep with the two of them, he could dispose of them as he chose. When a man has his rights, he asserts them.

From that moment, Buteau felt himself victorious in the might of his undisputed possession. He turned towards Jean and cried:

“And you, just you come here again worrying me in my household. To begin with, you’ll be off pretty sharp. Eh? you won’t? Wait, wait a bit.”

He picked up his flail, and whirled the flap round. Jean only just had time to catch up the other one — Françoise’s — to defend himself with. There were shrieks, and some attempt to interpose; but the antagonists were so terrible, that every­one recoiled. With the long handles of the flails, blows could be dealt at several yards; so that the yard was soon left clear. Jean and Buteau remained alone in the middle, at a distance from one another, enlarging the circle of their twirls. They no longer spoke but kept their teeth clenched. No sound was heard but the sharp smack of the pieces of wood at each exchange of blows.