Complete Works of Emile Zola (159 page)

“You will spend the day with me,” said James; “we will have dinner together.”

She shook her head in refusal and put on her hat.

“What! You are not going away, are you?” exclaimed the young fellow, in surprise.

“I am in a hurry,” she replied, in a strange tone. “Somebody is waiting for me.”

James began to laugh and did not insist. He showed her to the landing and said as he kissed her:

“Another time, when you can get away to come and see me, try to have the whole day free — We will go to Verrières.”

She looked him in the face, as if these words had given her a box on the ears. Her lips opened for a moment, then she shook her head excitedly and hurried off, rapidly descending the staircase without saying a word. She had been with James not more than twenty minutes.

When she was in the street she began to walk feverishly, with her head down, hardly knowing where she was going. The rattle of the conveyances, the shoves from the passers-by, all the bustle and movement with which she was surrounded, was lost for her in the whirl of thoughts and sensations with which she was carried away. She stopped two or three times before the shop-windows, as if absorbed in a sight which she did not even see, and each time she started off again with a more excited step. Her face had the besotted appearance of drunkenness, and people turned round as they heard her talking to herself. “What sort of a creature am I, then?” she muttered. “I went to this man’s rooms to raise myself in his estimation, and I fell into his arms like a prostitute. He had only to touch me with the tip of his finger, and I felt no repugnance, nay, a vile sensation of pleasure came over me, as I felt myself giving way.” Her lips were silent for a moment, and she hurried on. Then she continued, with secret violence: “Yet, I was strong this morning; I had calculated everything, and I knew what I was Gong to say. The fact is, I am accursed, as Geneviève says. My body is infamous. Oh! what disgrace!” And she gave a shrug of disgust, and passed along by the houses like a madwoman.

She had been walking like this for more than an hour when she suddenly stopped. The thought of to-morrow, of the days she was going to live in the future, had just presented itself to her mind. She raised her head and looked at the place to which she had found her way. She had walked mechanically to the Madeleine: she saw at her feet the boxes of flowers, and the bunches of blown roses whose fragrance had mounted to her brain in the morning. She walked through the market again, thinking: “I will kill myself, then all will be over and I shall suffer no more.” Then she made towards the Rue de Boulogne. A few days before she had noticed a big hunting-knife in a drawer, and as she walked, she could see this knife; she could see it open before her, retreating as she advanced, fascinating her and drawing her towards their little house. And she thought: “I shall have it directly; I will get it out of the drawer, and plunge it to my heart.” But as she was going up the Rue de Clichy, the thought of a death like this filled her with repugnance. She would like to see William before killing herself, and explain to him the reasons for her death. Her fever grew calm and the thought of a fatal thrust seemed odious.

She turned in the direction of the station and caught a train which was just starting for Mantes. During the two hours of the journey, one thought only revolved in her brain: “I shall kill myself at La Noiraude,’’ she said,” when I have proved to William the necessity for my death.” The regular and monotonous jerks of the carriage and the deafening noise of the moving train lulled her project of suicide in a strange fashion, for she fancied she could hear the rumbling of the wheels re-echo: “I will kill myself, I will kill myself.” At Mantes she took the coach. Resting her elbows on the coach-door, she gazed on the country, and recognized, by the road side, certain houses which she had seen by night a few months before, when she had come this way in the gig with William. And the country, the houses and everything, seemed to repeat the only thought that filled her being: “I will kill myself, I will kill myself.”

She got out of the coach a little way from Véteuil, in order to take a cross road which would lead her directly to La Noiraude. It was just growing dusk and the night was delightfully pleasant. The quivering horizon was disappearing in the gloom, and the fields were becoming black beneath the milky sky, peopled with the sound of expiring songs and prayers, which accompanied day’s departing footsteps. As Madeleine was walking rapidily along a lane bordered with hawthorn hedges, she heard the footsteps of somebody coming towards her. A cracked voice rose in the air singing:

There was a rich pasha,

Whose name was Mustapha,

He bought for his harem

A certain Miss Wharem.

And tra la la, tra la la a,

Tra la la la, la la, la la.

It was Verdigris. The “tra la la’s,” at this hour of melancholy serenity, had on her lips a ring of painful irony. You might have thought it was the laughter of a madwoman who was becoming touched and melting into tears. Madeleine stopped, as if rooted to the spot. This voice, this song heard under such circumstances, in the midst of the thrills of the evening, brought a rapid and painful vision before her eyes; She called to mind their old walks at Verrières. At night fall she used to descend from the wood with Verdigris on her arm, and both would be singing the ballad of the Pasha Mustapha. Far away in the lanes that were now filling with the shade, women’s voices responded to theirs with other choruses, and they would see through the foliage white dresses flitting over the ground like mist, and gradually becoming confused with the shadows. Then everything became quite black. The distant voices sank into plaintive notes, and the smutty jokes and obscene couplets that had fallen gratingly on the ears from absinthe-scorched throats, floated gently on the air, filling the heart with a tender feeling of melancholy.

These memories filled Madeleine’s soul with distress. She could still hear the footsteps of Verdigris, who was coming nearer, and she had begun to turn back to avoid finding herself face to face with this woman whose mournful features she could already make out. After a short silence the voice broke out again:

He bought for his harem

A certain Miss Wharem.

Her price was a sou,

And she was dear at that too.

And tra la la, tra la la la,

Tra la la la, la la, la la.

Then Madeleine, terrified by the maniacal laughter of the singer, and moved to tears by this hoarse and sad voice which, sang of her youth in the freshness of the falling night, made a gap through the thorn hedge and fled across the fields. She arrived thus at La Noiraude. As she was opening the gate she saw the window of the laboratory quite red and casting a sinister light on the gloomy front of the house. She had never seen this window lit up, and its gleam in the indistinct light of the dusk caused her a singular feeling of dread.

CHAPTER XIII.

A FRESH blow awaited her at La Noiraude. Little Lucy had died during the day.

When William had arrived, he bad found the child at the point of death. One of those sudden attacks of fever which not unfrequently return when a patient is perfectly convalescent was carrying her off. Her little body was quite hot, and she kept continually trying to bury her hands in the cool part of the clothes, and putting her poor trembling aims out of the bed. Then in the crisis of delirium she would writhe and struggle against some invisible object on which she appeared to be fixing an earnest yet vacant glance. You might have thought that her face consisted of nothing but eyes. Then their brightness would become dull, like springs of clear water made muddy by a sandy stream. When her father had come in she had not recognised him. As he leaned over the bed, gazing at her with tear-stricken eyes, he felt his heart breaking. By the anguish in his breast at each of her gasps, he knew that she was his entirely, and a deep regret at the thought of having been harsh towards her made him bend over her, and filled him with a desire to clasp her to his heart and wrest her from the hand of death. There was an unspeakable anguish in this awakening of his affection.

Yet Lucy was dying. For a moment she had an interval of consciousness and a pretty pouting smile passed over her lips. Then, looking round her, as if she were awaking from sleep, she seemed to remember herself and recognise everything. She held out her hands to her father, repeating, with affectionate endearment, her usual words:

“Take me, take me.”

William kissed her, and became quite distracted with gratitude, as he thought her saved. But just as he was going to lift her up, he felt her little body crack with a sudden shock. She was dead. When he had laid her down, he fell on his knees in silence, unable to weep. Soon, he did not dare to look at her, for death was contracting her lips and James’s serious expression was settling on her mouth. Terrified by this effect of the rigidity of death, which was gradually imparting to the face of his daughter a likeness to this man, he tried to pray again, looking now only at the little one’s hands crossed on her breast. But, in spite of himself, he could not prevent his eyes from wandering to her face, and at last he left the room, leaving Geneviève alone with Lucy.

When Madeleine entered the hall, she felt a presentiment of something wrong. The dining-room was cold and dark, and the house seemed deserted. The mournful singing of a psalm guided the young mother to the first floor, till she came to the room where lay Lucy’s body, with Geneviève chanting prayers at the bed-head. The terrible sight which awaited her, the child whose pale head gently indented the pillow, and the fanatic praying in the flickering light of a candle, held her rooted to the spot on the threshold. She saw everything at a glance. Then she stepped slowly forward. Since morning, the thought of her child had escaped her memory. She felt a sort of joy at finding her dead. It was one obstacle less in the way of her suicide; she could put an end to herself now, without a dread of leaving behind her a poor creature doomed to misery through its birth. When she came to the bed, she shed no tear, but said to herself, simply, that in a few hours she would he like that, dead and cold. If she had not had to die herself, she would no doubt have fallen on the corpse with heart-rending cries, but the certainty that she would soon be no more prevented her from feeling the loss of her child. She had one desire only, and that was to kiss her once more, for the last time. But, as she leaned over, she fancied she saw James before her, for it seemed to her that Lucy had James’s lips, the lips that she had kissed with so much passion that very morning. She stepped back with a movement of terror.

Geneviève, who, had just ceased her prayers for a while, saw this alarmed shudder. She was looking fixedly at Madeleine, with her implacable expression.

“Thus are punished the children of the guilty,” she murmured, without removing her eyes from Madeleine; “God punishes sinners through their offspring, for ever.”

Madeleine felt a sudden fit of wild fury at this woman, whom she found by her side at each fresh blow, ever casting her horrid beliefs in her face.

“Why do you stare at me like that?” she exclaimed.
“
I must be a curious object to look at. I had forgotten, you are going to insult me. I ought to have known that you would dog me to the very last hour, with uplifted arm, and as pitiless as fate. You are fate, you are punishment itself.”

There was a gleam in the eyes of the fanatic, and she repeated with savage glee, in a sort of prophetic ecstasy:

“The hour is coming, the hour is coming.”

“Oh! I have sorrow enough,” replied Madeleine, bitterly. “I wish to be punished, and I will punish myself. But it is not you who condemn me. You have not gone astray, you have not seen life, and you cannot judge it. Can you comfort me?
”

“
No,” replied the protestant,
“
your tears must flow, and you must kiss the hand that chastises you.”

“Can you make William love me still, and find peace again? Can you promise me that I alone shall suffer, the day I humble myself?”

“No, if William suffers, it is because he is guilty. God knows where he is inflicting punishment.’’ — .

Madeleine drew herself up in a sudden burst of pride.

“Well then!” she exclaimed,
“
if you can do none of these things, what are you doing now, and why do you torment me? I have no need of God. I judge and condemn myself.”

She stopped through exhaustion. As she lowered her head, she saw the dead body looking as though it were listening to her with open mouth. She was ashamed of her anger, whose transports passed noisily over this poor sleeping corpse. She stood buried for a moment in the contemplation of this nothingness, as if attracted by the pleasant foretaste of death. Lucy’s calm tranquillity, and the expression of settled repose on her face, promised her an eternity of sleep, and an endless, soothing dream in the arms of oblivion. Then the singular wish occurred to her to know how long it would take her to become stiff and rigid, like her daughter.

“At what hour did she die?” she asked Geneviève, who had resumed her prayers.

“At twelve o’clock,” replied the protestant.

This short reply fell on Madeleine’s head like a heavy blow. Could Geneviève be right? Was it really her fault that had killed her girl? At twelve o’clock she was in James’s arms, and at twelve o’clock Lucy was dying. This coincidence seemed fatal and terrible. She could hear her moans of passion mingling with the death-rattle of her child, and she became mad as she compared that scene of pleasure with this scene of death. For a few minutes, she stood crushed and stupefied. Then she asked herself what she was doing there and what she had come to seek at La Noiraude. She failed to find an answer, for her head was empty. She said to herself, in her anguish: “Why did I hurry away so quickly from Paris? I had some object in view.’’ And she ransacked her brain with painful efforts. At last her memory came suddenly back.” I know,” she thought, “I want to kill myself, I want to kill myself! Where is William?” she asked Geneviève.