Complete Works of Emile Zola (306 page)

‘We must ask your pardon for disturbing you,’ he said to Mouret. ‘We have just left Abbé Bourrette’s; he, no doubt, gave you notice of our coming!’

‘Not at all!’ Mouret exclaimed. ‘The Abbé never be­haves like other people. He always seems as though he had just come down from paradise. Only this morning, sir, he told me that you would not be here for another couple of days. Well, we must put you in possession of your rooms all the same.’

Abbé Faujas apologised. He spoke in a deep voice which fell very softly at the end of each sentence. He was ex­tremely distressed, said he, to have arrived at such a moment. And when he had expressed his regret in a very few well-chosen words, he turned round to pay the porter who had brought his trunk. His large well-shaped hands drew from the folds of his cassock a purse of which only the steel rings could be seen. Keeping his head bent, he cautiously fumbled in it for a moment. Then, without anyone having seen the piece of money which he had received, the porter went away, and the priest resumed in his refined way:

‘I beg you, sir, sit down again. Your servant will show us the rooms, and will help me to carry this.’

As he spoke, he stooped to grasp one of the handles of his trunk. It was a small wooden trunk, bound at the edges with iron bands, and one of its sides seemed to have been repaired with a cross-piece of deal. Mouret looked surprised, and his eyes wandered off in search of other luggage, but he could see nothing excepting a big basket, which the elderly lady carried with both hands, holding it in front of her, and despite her fatigue obstinately determined not to put it down. From underneath the lid, which was a little raised, there peeped, amongst some bundles of linen, the end of a comb wrapped in paper and the neck of a clumsily corked bottle.

‘Oh! don’t trouble yourself with that,’ said Mouret, just touching the trunk with his foot; ‘it can’t be very heavy, and Rose will be able to carry it up by herself.’

He was quite unconscious of the secret contempt which oozed out from his words. The elderly lady gave him a keen glance with her black eyes, and then let her gaze again fall upon the dining-room and the table, which she had been examining ever since her arrival. She kept her lips tightly compressed, while her eyes strayed from one object to another. She had not uttered a single word. Abbé Faujas consented to
leave his trunk where it was. In the yellow rays of the sunlight which streamed in from the garden, his threadbare cassock looked quite ruddy; it was darned at the edges; and, though it was scrupulously clean, it seemed so sadly thin and wretched that Marthe, who had hitherto remained seated with a sort of uneasy reserve, now in her turn rose from her seat. The Abbé, who had merely cast a rapid glance at her, and had then quickly turned his eyes else­where, saw her leave her chair, although he did not appear to be watching her.

‘I beg you,’ he repeated, ‘do not disturb yourselves. We should be extremely distressed to interfere with your dinner.’

‘Very well,’ said Mouret, who was hungry, ‘Rose shall show you up. Tell her to get you anything you want, and make yourselves at home.’

Abbé Faujas bowed and was making his way to the staircase, when Marthe stepped up to her husband and whispered:

‘But, my dear, you have forgotten — ‘

‘What
?
what?’ he asked, seeing her hesitate.

‘There is the fruit, you know.’

‘Oh! bother it all, so there is!’ he exclaimed with an expression of annoyance.

And as Abbé Faujas stepped back and glanced at him questioningly, he added:

‘I am extremely vexed, sir. Father Bourrette is a very worthy man, but it is a little unfortunate that you commis­sioned him to attend to your business. He hasn’t got the least bit of a head. If we had only known of your coming, we should have had everything ready; but, as it is, we shall have to clear the whole place out for you. We have been using the rooms, you see; we have stowed all our crop of fruit, figs, apples and raisins, away on the floors upstairs.’

The priest listened with a surprise which all his politeness did not enable him to hide.

‘But it won’t take us long,’ Mouret continued. ‘If you don’t mind waiting for ten minutes, Rose will get the rooms cleared for you.’

An anxious expression appeared on the priest’s cadaverous face.

‘The rooms are furnished, are they not?’ he asked.

‘Not at all; there isn’t a bit of furniture in them. We have never occupied them.’

Thereupon the Abbé lost his self-control, and his grey eyes flashed as he exclaimed with suppressed indignation:

‘But I gave distinct instructions in my letter that fur­nished rooms were to be taken. I could scarcely bring my furniture along with me in my trunk.’

‘Well, that just fits in with what I have been saying!’ cried Mouret, in a louder voice. ‘The way that Bourrette goes on is quite incredible. He certainly saw the apples when he came to look at the rooms, sir, for he took up one of them and remarked that he had rarely seen such fine fruit. He said that everything seemed quite suitable, that the rooms were all that was necessary, and he took them.’

Abbé Faujas was no longer listening to Mouret; his cheeks were flushed with anger. He turned round and stam­mered in a broken voice:

‘Do you hear, mother? There is no furniture.’

The old lady, with her thin black shawl drawn tightly round her, had just been inspecting the ground-floor, stepping furtively hither and thither, but without once putting down her basket. She had gone to the door of the kitchen and had scrutinised the four walls there, and then, standing on the steps that overlooked the terrace, she had taken in all the garden at one long, searching glance. But it was the dining-room that seemed more especially to interest her, and she was now again standing in front of the table laid for dinner, watching the steam of the soup rise, when her son repeated:

‘Do you hear, mother? We shall have to go to the hotel.’

She raised her head without making any reply; but the expression of her whole face seemed to indicate a settled determination to remain in that house, with whose every corner she had already made herself acquainted. She shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly, and again her wandering eyes strayed from the kitchen to the garden and then from the garden to the dining-room.

Mouret, however, was growing impatient. As he saw that neither the mother nor her son seemed to make up their minds to leave the place, he said:

‘We have no beds, unfortunately. True, there is, in the loft, a folding-bedstead, which perhaps, at a pinch, madame might make do until to-morrow. But I really don’t know how Monsieur l’Abbé is to manage to sleep.’

Then at last Madame Faujas opened her lips. She spoke in a curt and somewhat hoarse voice:

‘My son will take the folding-bedstead. A mattress on the floor, in a corner, will be quite sufficient for me.’

The Abbé signified his approval of this arrangement by a nod. Mouret was going to protest and try to think of some other plan, but, seeing the satisfied appearance of his new tenants, he kept silence and merely exchanged a glance of astonishment with his wife.

‘To-morrow it will be light,’ he said, with his touch of
bourgeois
banter, ‘and you will be able to furnish as you like. Rose will go up and clear away the fruit and make the beds. Will you wait for a few minutes on the terrace? Come, children, take a couple of chairs out.’

Since the arrival of the priest and his mother, the young people had remained quietly seated at the table, curiously scrutinising the new-comers. The Abbé had not appeared to notice them, but Madame Faujas had stopped for a moment before each of them and stared them keenly in the face as though she were trying to pry into their young heads. As they heard their father, they all three hastily rose and took some chairs out.

The old lady did not sit down; and when Mouret, losing sight of her, turned round to find out what had become of her, he saw her standing before a window of the drawing-room which was ajar. She craned out her neck and com­pleted her inspection with all the calm deliberation of a person who is examining some property for sale. Just as Rose took up the little trunk, however, she went back into the passage, and said quietly:

‘I will go up and help you.’

Then she went upstairs after the servant. The priest did not even turn his head; he was smiling at the three young people who still stood in front of him. In spite of the hard­ness of his brow and the stern lines about his mouth, his face was capable of expressing great gentleness, when such was his desire.

‘Is this the whole of your family, madame?’ he asked Marthe, who had just come up to him.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, feeling a little confused beneath the clear gaze which he turned upon her.

Looking again at her children, he continued:

‘You’ve got two big lads there, who will soon be men — Have you finished your studies yet, my boy?’

It was to Serge that he addressed this question. Mouret interrupted the lad as he was going to reply.

‘Yes, he has finished,’ said the father; ‘though he is the younger of the two. When I say that he has finished, I mean that he has taken his bachelor’s degree, for he is staying on at college for another year to go through a course of philosophy. He is the clever one of the family. His brother, the elder, that great booby there, isn’t up to much. He has been plucked twice already, but he still goes on idling his time away and larking about.’

Octave listened to his father’s reproaches with a smile, while Serge bent his head beneath his praises. Faujas seemed to be studying them for a moment in silence, and then, going up to Désirée and putting on an expression of gentle tenderness, he said to her:

‘Will you allow me, mademoiselle, to be your friend?’ She made no reply but, half afraid, hastened to hide her face against her mother’s shoulder. The latter, instead of making her turn round again, pressed her more closely to her, clasping an arm around her waist.

‘Excuse her,’ she said with a touch of sadness, ‘she hasn’t a strong head, she has remained quite childish. She is an “innocent,” we do not trouble her by attempting to teach her. She is fourteen years old now, and as yet she has only learned to love animals.’

Désirée’s confidence returned to her with her mother’s caresses, and she lifted up her head and smiled. Then she boldly said to the priest:

‘I should like you very much to be my friend; but you must promise me that you will never hurt the flies. Will you?’

And then, as every one about her began to smile, she added gravely:

‘Octave crushes them, the poor flies! It is very wicked of him.’

Abbé Faujas sat down. He seemed very much tired. He yielded for a moment or two to the cool quietness of the terrace, glancing slowly over the garden and the neighbouring.

The perfect calmness and solitude of this quiet corner of the little town seemed somewhat to surprise him.

‘It is very pleasant here,’ he murmured.

Then he relapsed into silence, and seemed lost in reverie. He started slightly as Mouret said to him with a laugh:

‘If you will allow us, sir, we will now go back to our dinner.’

And then, catching a glance from his wife, Mouret added:

‘You must sit down with us and have a plate of soup. It will save you the trouble of having to go to the hotel to dine. Don’t make any difficulty, I beg.’

‘I am extremely obliged to you, but we really don’t require anything,’ the Abbé replied in tones of extreme polite­ness, which allowed of no repetition of the invitation.

The Mourets then returned to the dining-room and seated themselves round the table. Marthe served the soup and there was soon a cheerful clatter of spoons. The young people chattered merrily, and Désirée broke into a peal of ringing laughter as she listened to a story which her father, who was now in high glee at having at last got to his dinner, was telling. In the meantime, Abbé Faujas, whom they had quite forgotten, remained motionless upon the terrace, facing the setting sun. He did not even turn his head, he seemed to hear nothing of what was going on behind him. Just as the sun was disappearing he took off his hat as if overcome by the heat. Marthe, who was sitting with her face to the window, could see his big bare head with its short hair that was already silvering about the temples. A last red ray light­ing up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.

Not wishing to summon Rose, Marthe herself went to get a lamp and brought in the first dish. As she was returning from the kitchen, she met, at the foot of the staircase, a woman whom she did not at first recognise. It was Madame Faujas. She had put on a cotton cap and looked like a ser­vant in her common print gown, with a yellow kerchief crossed over her breast and knotted behind her waist. Her wrists were bare, she was quite out of breath with the work she had been doing, and her heavy laced boots clattered on the flooring of the passage.

‘Ah! you’ve got all put right now, have you, madame?’ Marthe asked with a smile.

‘Oh, yes! it was a mere trifle and was done directly,’ Madame Faujas replied.

She went down the steps that led to the terrace, and called in a gentler tone:

‘Ovide, my child, will you come upstairs now? Every­thing is quite ready.’

She was obliged to go and lay her hand upon her son’s shoulder to awaken him from his reverie. The air was growing cool, and the Abbé shivered as he got up and followed his mother in silence. As he passed before the door of the dining-room which was all bright with the cheer­ful glow of the lamp and merry with the chatter of the young folks, he peeped in and said in his flexible voice:

‘Let me thank you again, and beg you to excuse us for having so disturbed you. We are very sorry — ‘

‘No! no!’ cried Mouret, ‘it is we who are sorry and distressed at not being able to offer you better accommodation for the night.’

The priest bowed, and Marthe again met that clear gaze of his, that eagle glance which had affected her before. In the depths of his eyes, which were generally of a melancholy grey, flames seemed to gleam at times like lamps earned behind the windows of slumbering houses.