Complete Works of Emile Zola (995 page)

“Your lumps of sugar are very large, cousin,” he said.

The girl’s blushes deepened, and she could not find anything to reply, being utterly confused by the amiable young fellow’s words.

Nénesse, like the artful scamp he was, had only disclosed one half of his scheme in the morning. Since he had seen Elodie at the funeral, he had suddenly widened his plans. He would not only obtain Number 19, he wanted the girl as well; that would simplify matters. In the first place, he would get the business for nothing, for he would only take Elodie with the house as her dowry; and, then, even allowing that this declining business was the only dowry he got with her in the immediate present, she would later on inherit all Monsieur and Madame Charles’s property, a fortune in itself. It was for these reasons that he had brought his father with him, resolved to make his proposal without delay.

For a moment or two they talked about the weather, which was very mild for that time of year. The pear-trees were looking well, but would the bloom set? As they finished their coffee, the conversation began to flag.

“My dear,” Monsieur Charles now said abruptly to Elodie, “suppose you go and take a turn in the garden.”

He was anxious to get her out of the room, so that he might make his bargain with the Delhommes.

However Nénesse interposed: “Excuse me, uncle,” said he, “but I should be much obliged if you would kindly allow my cousin to remain. There is a matter which interests me deeply that I want to speak to you about; and it’s always better — don’t you think so? — to settle matters at once than to return to them two or three times.”

Then rising from his seat, he proceeded to make his pro­posal like a well-mannered young man.

“I wish to tell you that it would make me very happy to have my cousin for my wife, if you would consent to it, and if she would also.”

This declaration caused great surprise. Elodie was so overwhelmed with confusion that she sprang up from her seat and threw herself on Madame Charles’s breast, in such a thrill of speechless bashfulness that she blushed to her very ears. Her grandmother exerted herself to calm her.

“Come, come, my little puss, this is really foolish of you!” said she. “Be reasonable, my dear. Your cousin won’t eat you because he wants to marry you. I’m sure he said nothing that wasn’t very nice and proper. Come, look at him, and don’t be foolish.”

Nothing, however, that her grandmother said could induce Elodie to show her face again.

“Upon my word, my lad,” Monsieur Charles now said, “your proposal has taken me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it would have been better if you had spoken to me privately about it, for you see how very sensitive our darling is. But, whatever happens, you may satisfy yourself that you possess my esteem and respect, for you seem to me a good and indus­trious young fellow.”

Delhomme, whose face had hitherto remained a perfect blank, now allowed three words to escape him:

“That he is!”

Then Jean felt called upon to say something polite, and so he added:

“Ah! yes, indeed!”

Monsieur Charles was recovering his composure, and he had already come to the conclusion that Nénesse would be no bad match for his grand-daughter. He was young, well mannered, active, and the only son of comfortably-situated parents. Thus Elodie could hardly do better. And so, after exchanging a glance with Madame Charles, he continued:

“You will understand, of course, that my wife and I say neither yes nor no. We shall leave it entirely with Elodie. We shall not in any way constrain her. We shall leave her perfectly at liberty to please herself.”

Then Nénesse gallantly renewed his proposal to his cousin.

“My dear cousin,” he began, “will you confer upon me the happiness and the honour—”

The girl’s face was still buried in her grandmother’s bosom, but she did not allow her cousin to complete his sentence; she accepted him at once by an energetic nod of her head, which she repeated three times, burying her face still more deeply out of sight. She seemed to gain courage by not looking at any­thing. The company sat in silence, quite astonished by the girl’s hurry to consent. Could she be in love with this young man whom she had so seldom seen? Or was it that she was anxious for a husband, no matter whom, so long as he was a good-looking fellow?

Madame Charles smiled, and kissed the girl’s hair.

“My poor little darling!” she said; “my poor little darling! “

“Very well,” exclaimed Monsieur Charles, “since she is satisfied, we are.”

Then a sudden reflection saddened him. His heavy eyelids drooped, and an expression of regret passed over his counte­nance.

“Of course, my good lad,” he said, “we shall now abandon the other scheme which you proposed to me this morning.”

Nénesse seemed overcome with astonishment.

“Why? “said he.

“What? Why? Why, because — because — well, you surely know why! You may be sure that we didn’t leave the child with the Sisters of the Visitation till twenty years of age to — well, in short, it is quite impossible!”

He winked his eyes and twisted his mouth in his attempts to make himself understood without saying too much. To think of the girl being in the Rue aux Juifs! a young lady who had received such an education! a maiden of such absolute purity, brought up in complete ignorance of evil, and carefully screened from its slightest breath!

“Excuse me,” exclaimed Nénesse, bluntly, “but that won’t suit me at all. I am taking a wife because I wish to settle down to work, and I want both my cousin and the busi­ness—”

“The confectionery business!” exclaimed Madame Charles.

She then began to discuss the question more openly, though they continued to call the establishment the confectionery shop. For instance, was it reasonable that the confectionery business should be given up? The young man and his father persisted in claiming it as Elodie’s dowry. They could not allow it to be relinquished, they said; it would certainly prove a hand­some fortune in the future; and they called upon Jean to support them in their assertions, which he did by wagging his chin. At last they all spoke at once, and they were quickly forgetting all their previous caution, going into details and calling things by their real names, then suddenly an unex­pected incident reduced them to silence.

Elodie had at last gradually raised her head from her grandmother’s bosom; and she was now standing up, looking like some tall lily that had grown in a shady corner, with her chlorotic white face, her pale eyes and colourless hair. She gazed at the others for a moment, and then said very quietly:

“My cousin is right; the business ought not to be given up!”

“Oh! my darling, if you only knew—” Madame Charles began to stammer in confusion.

“I do know,” Elodie interrupted. “Victorine, the maid whom you sent away on account of the men, told me all about it long ago. Yes, I know all about it, and I have thought it well over, and I am quite convinced that it must not be given up.”

Monsieur and Madame Charles were perfectly stupefied They opened their eyes, and sat staring at the girl in a state of amazement. What! She knew all about Number 19, what was done there, and what was sold there; she knew all about it, and yet spoke of it in this calm, placid fashion! Ah, blessed innocence! it is too pure to see harm in anything!

“It must certainly not be given up,” she repeated with increasing decision. “It is too good and profitable a business for that. And then, too, a house which you established your­selves, and where you worked so hard, could you think of allowing it to go out of the family?”

Monsieur Charles was completely bewildered. An indescribable thrill shot up from his heart and seemed to choke him.

He rose up from his seat, reeled and tottered, and then sup­ported himself upon Madame Charles, who was also standing trembling and feeling suffocated. They both of them seemed to look upon the girl’s offer as a sacrifice, and called out in distracted tones:

“Oh darling, darling, it cannot be; it really cannot be.”

Elodie’s eyes were growing moist, and she kissed her mother’s old wedding-ring which she wore upon her finger, that wedding-ring which had grown so thin owing to hard work.

“Yes, yes,” she resumed, “let me follow my own inclina­tion. I want to follow in my mother’s steps. What she did, I can do. There is no dishonour in it, for you did it yourselves. The idea affords me great pleasure, I assure you. And you will see how I’ll help my cousin, and how we will raise the house between us. Ah! you don’t know me, but I will show you what I can do!”

This outburst carried the day. Monsieur and Madame Charles, overwhelmed with deep emotion, burst into tears, and sobbed like a couple of children. Although they had certainly brought Elodie up with very different intentions, still what was to be done when the instinct of her blood spoke out like that? They recognised in it the accents of a genuine voca­tion. It had been the same with Estelle. She, too, had led a secluded life with the Sisters of the Visitation, had been kept in perfect ignorance of the world, and instructed in the princi­ples of the most rigid morality; but in spite of everything she had become an excellent woman of business. It was clear that education went for naught; it was natural sentiment which settled everything. However, the Charles’s emotion deepened, and the tears which fell from their eyes streamed yet more copiously at the glorious thought that Number 19, their own creation, their very flesh, so to say, was about to be saved from ruin. Their work would still be continued there by Elodie and Nénesse with all the fresh energy of youth. They already saw the house restored to its former glory, established once more in public favour, with the same brilliant reputation as it had possessed in the palmiest days of their own reign.

As soon as Monsieur Charles was able to speak, he clasped his grand-daughter in his arms. “Your father has been the cause of much anxiety to us,” he said,” but you, my angel, will console us for everything!”

Madame Charles also strained the girl to her breast, and they all three of them stood in one another’s arms, mingling their tears.

“Then we may consider everything settled now?” asked Nénesse, who was anxious to have matters definitely decided.

“Yes, quite settled.”

Delhomme was now radiant, like a father delighted at hav­ing set his son up in life in an unhoped-for manner. He began to shuffle about as though he felt called upon to make some observation, and, indeed, at last he delivered himself in these words:

“Well, if there’s never any regret on your side, I’m sure there’ll never be any on ours. There’s no need to wish the young people good luck. That always attends honest hard work.”

Then they all sat down again in view of quietly talking over details.

Jean now felt conscious that he was in the way. He had been greatly embarrassed at finding himself amid the previous emotional, tearful outbursts, and he would have made his escape much sooner had he known how to do so. He now summoned up his courage to take Monsieur Charles aside, and speak to him about the gardener’s place. But Monsieur Charles’s dignified face assumed a severe expression. A relation of his own holding a situation in his service! No, no, that would never do! A relation was never a profitable servant; it was impossible to treat him with necessary severity. Besides, the situation had been promised to another person on the previous day. Jean, therefore, took his leave, while Elodie was saying, in her soft voice, that if her father made himself disagreeable she would undertake to bring him to reason.

When Jean got outside the house he walked on slowly, quite at a loss as to where he should now turn in search of work. Out of the hundred and twenty-seven francs he had already paid for his wife’s funeral, for the cross at the head of the grave, and for the railings round it, barely half of the money was left, but this would still keep him some time, and then he would see what happened. He was not afraid of poverty and hard work; his only anxiety arose from his unwillingness to leave Rognes on account of the legal proceedings he was con­templating. Three o’clock struck, then four, and then five. For a long time he continued wandering about the country, his brain full of confused ideas, his thoughts now dwelling upon La Borderie, and now upon the Charles family. Everywhere it was the same story, money and women; they seemed to over-ride everything else. Consequently there was little to wonder at in the fact that his own misfortunes arose from the same sources. At last he began to feel weak and faint, and bethought himself that as yet he had not had anything to eat; so he set off in the direction of the village, resolving to take up his quarters with the Lengaignes, who let lodgings. How­ever, as he crossed the open square in front of the church, the sight of the house from which he had been expelled in the morning rekindled an angry glow in his veins. Why should he let those knavish wretches keep his frock-coat and two pairs of trousers? They were his own, and he would have them, even at the risk of coming to blows again.

It was growing dark when Jean entered the yard, and he was scarcely able to distinguish old Fouan, who was sitting on the stone bench. However, as he reached the door leading to the kitchen, in which a candle was burning, Buteau caught sight of him and sprang forward to bar his passage.

“God in heaven! you here again! What do you want? “

“I want my two pairs of trousers and my frock-coat.”

A frightful quarrel now ensued. Jean doggedly insisted on getting his things out of the drawer; while Buteau, who had seized a bill-hook, swore that he would cut his throat if he crossed the threshold. At last Lise’s voice sounded from inside.

“Let him have his rags!” she cried. “You’d never think of touching the rotten fellow’s clothes yourself.”

The two men now relapsed into silence, and Jean was standing waiting, when all at once old Fouan, who was still sitting on the stone bench behind his back, gave utterance to the alarm which was troubling his dazed brain.

“Make your escape,” he stammered in his husky voice, “or they’ll bleed you as they bled the little one.”

This was a terrible revelation. Jean understood everything now — both the cause of Françoise’s death and that of her obstinate silence. He had had his suspicions before, but now he no longer doubted but what she had remained silent in order to save her relatives from the guillotine. An icy chill froze him; he felt terrified, and he was incapable of either speech or motion when Lise, through the open doorway, hurled his trousers and coat in his face.