Complete Works of Emile Zola (351 page)

‘Wow! wow!’ he barked in hoarse, prolonged notes.

He gave a spring into the air and fell upon his side.

Then a dreadful scene ensued. He began to writhe like a worm, beat his face with his fist, and tore his flesh with his nails. In a short time he was half naked, his clothes in rags, and himself bruised and lacerated and groaning.

‘Come away, madame, come away!’ cried the warder. Marthe stood rooted to the floor. She recognised in the scene before her her own writhings at home. It was in that way that she had thrown herself upon the floor of her bed­room; it was in that way that she had beaten and torn herself. She even recognised the very tones of her voice. Mouret vented the same rattling groan. It was she who had brought the poor man into this miserable state.

‘He is not mad!’ she stammered; ‘he cannot be mad, it would be too horrible! I would rather die!’

The warder put his arm round her and pushed her out of the cell, but she remained leaning against the door on the other side. She could hear a terrible struggle going on within, screams like those of a pig being slaughtered; then a dull fall like that of a bundle of damp linen, and afterwards death-like silence. When the warder came out of the cell, the night had nearly fallen. Through the partially open doorway, Marthe could see nothing.

‘Well, upon my word, madame,’ cried the warder, ‘you are a very queer person to say that he is not mad. I nearly left my thumb behind me; he got firmly hold of it between his teeth. However, he’s quieted now for a few hours.’

And as he took her back to her uncle, he continued: ‘You’ve no idea how cunning they all are. They are as quiet as can be for hours together, and talk to you in quite a sensible manner; and then, without the least warning, they fly at your throat. I could see very well that he was up to some mischief or other just now when he was talking to you about the children, for there was such a strange look in his eyes.’

When Marthe got back to Macquart, in the small court­yard, she exclaimed feverishly in a weak, broken voice: ‘He is mad! he is mad!’

‘There’s no doubt he’s mad,’ said her uncle with a snigger. ‘Why, what did you expect to find? People are not brought here for nothing. And the place isn’t healthy either. If I were to be shut up there for a couple of hours, I should go mad myself.’

He was watching her askance, and he noted her nervous start and shudder. Then, in his good-natured way, he said:

‘Perhaps you would like to go and see the grandmother?’

Marthe made a gesture of terror, and hid her face in her hands.

‘It would be no trouble to anyone,’ he said. ‘Alexandre would be glad to take us. She is over yonder, on that side, and there is nothing to be afraid of with her. She is perfectly quiet. She never gives any trouble, does she, Alexandre? She always remains seated and gazing in front of her. She hasn’t moved for the last dozen years. However, if you’d rather not see her, we won’t go.’
1

As the warder was taking his leave of them, Macquart invited him to come and drink a glass of mulled wine, wink­ing the while in a certain fashion which seemed to induce Alexandre to accept the invitation. They were obliged to support Marthe, whose legs sank beneath her at each step. When they reached the house, they were actually carrying her. Her face was convulsed, her eyes were staring widely, and her whole body was rigidly stiffened by one of those nervous seizures which kept her like a dead woman for hours at a time.

‘There! what did I tell you?’ cried Rose, when she saw them. ‘A nice state she’s in! How are we to get home, I should like to know? Good heavens! how can people take such absurd fancies into their heads? The master ought to have given her neck a twist, and it would have taught her a lesson, perhaps.’

‘Pooh!’ said Macquart; ‘I’ll lay her down on my bed. It won’t kill us if we have to sit up round the fire all night.’

He drew aside a calico curtain which hung in front of a recess. Rose proceeded to undress her mistress, growling as she did so. The only thing they could do, she said, was to put a hot brick at her feet.

‘Now that she’s all snug, we’ll have a drop to drink,’ resumed Macquart, with his wolfish snigger. ‘That wine of yours smells awfully nice, old lady!’

‘I found a lemon on the mantel-piece,’ Rose said, ‘and I used it.’

‘You did quite right. There is everything here that is wanted. When I make a brew, there’s nothing missing that ought to be in the place, I assure you.’

He pulled the table in front of the fire, and then he sat down between Rose and Alexandre, and poured the hot wine into some big yellow cups. When he had swallowed a couple of mouthfuls with great gusto, he smacked his lips and cried:

‘Ah! that’s first-rate. You understand how to make it. It’s really better than what I make myself. You must leave me your recipe.’

Rose, greatly mollified by these compliments, began to laugh. The vine-wood fire was now a great mass of glowing embers. The cups were filled again.

‘And so,’ said Macquart, leaning on his elbows and looking Rose in the face, ‘it was a sudden whim of my niece to come here?’

‘Oh, don’t talk about it,’ replied the cook; ‘it will make me angry again. Madame is getting as mad as the master. She can no longer tell who are her friends and who are not. I believe she had a quarrel with his reverence the Curé before she set off; I heard them shouting.’

Macquart laughed noisily.

‘They used, however, to get on very well together,’ said he.

‘Yes, indeed; but nothing lasts long with such a brain as madame has got. I’ll be bound that she’s now regretting the thrashings the master used to give her at nights. We found his stick in the garden.’

Macquart looked at her more keenly, and, as he drank his hot wine, he said:

‘Perhaps she came to take François back with her.’

‘Oh, Heaven forbid!’ cried Rose, with an expression of horror. ‘The master would go on finely in the house; he would kill us all. The idea of his return is one of my greatest dreads; I’m in a constant worry lest he should make his escape and get back some night and murder us all. When I think about it when I’m in bed, I can’t go to sleep. I fancy I can see him stealing in through the window with his hair bristling and his eyes flaming like matches.’

This made Macquart very merry, and he rapped his cup on the table.

‘It would be very unpleasant,’ he said, ‘very unpleasant. I don’t suppose he feels very kindly towards you, least of all towards the Curé who has stepped into his place. The Curé would only make a mouthful for him, big as he is, for madmen, they say, are awfully strong. I say, Alexandre, just imagine poor François suddenly making his appearance at home! He would make a pretty clean sweep there, wouldn’t he? It would be a fine sight, eh?’

He cast glances at the warder, who went on quietly drink­ing his mulled wine and made no reply beyond nodding his head assentingly.

‘Oh! it’s only a fancy; it’s all nonsense,’ added Macquart, as he observed Rose’s terrified looks.

Just at that moment, Marthe began to struggle violently behind the calico curtain; and she had to be held for some minutes in order that she might not fall upon the floor. When she was again stretched out in corpse-like rigidity, her uncle came and warmed his legs before the fire, reflecting and murmuring as if without paying heed to what he said:

‘The little woman isn’t very easy to manage, indeed.’

Then he suddenly exclaimed:

‘The Rougons, now, what do they say about all this busi­ness? They take the Curé’s side, don’t they?’

‘The master didn’t make himself pleasant enough for them to regret him,’ replied Rose. ‘There was nothing too bad for him to say against them.’

‘Well, he wasn’t far wrong there,’ said Macquart. ‘The Rougons are wretched skinflints. Just think that they refused to buy that cornfield over yonder, a magnificent speculation which I undertook to manage. Félicité would pull a queer face if she saw François come back!’

He began to snigger again, and took a turn round the table. Then, with an expression of determination, he lighted his pipe.

‘We mustn’t forget the time, my boy,’ he said to Alex­andre, with another wink. ‘I will go back with you; Marthe seems quiet now. Rose will get the table laid by the time I return. You must be hungry, Rose, eh? As you are obliged to stay the night here, you shall have a mouthful with me.’

He went off with the warder, and fully half an hour elapsed. Rose, who began to tire of being alone, at last opened the door and went out to the terrace, where she stood watching the deserted road in the clear night air. As she was going back into the house, she fancied she could see two dark shadows in the middle of a path behind a hedge.

‘It looks just like the uncle,’ thought she; ‘he seems to be talking to a priest.’

A few minutes later Macquart returned. That blessed Alexandre, said he, had been chattering to him interminably.

‘Wasn’t it you who were over there just now with a priest?’ asked Rose.

‘I, with a priest!’ he cried. ‘Why, you must have been dreaming; there isn’t a priest in the neighbourhood.’

He rolled his little glistening eyes. Then, as if rather uneasy about the lie he had told, he added:

‘Well, there is Abbé Fenil, but it’s just the same as if he wasn’t here, for he never goes out.’

‘Abbé Fenil isn’t up to much,’ remarked the cook. This seemed to annoy Macquart.

‘Why do you say that? Not up to much, eh? He does a great deal of good here, and he’s a very worthy sort of fellow. He’s worth a whole heap of priests who make a lot of fuss.’

His irritation, however, promptly disappeared, and he began to laugh upon observing that Rose was looking at him in surprise.

‘I was only joking, you know,’ he said. ‘You are quite right; he’s like all the other priests, they are all a set of hypocrites. I know now who it was that you saw me with. I met our grocer’s wife. She was wearing a black dress, and you must have mistaken that for a cassock.’

Rose made an omelet, and Macquart placed some cheese upon the table. They had not finished eating when Marthe sat up in bed with the astonished look of a person awaking in a strange place. When she had brushed aside her hair and recollected where she was, she sprang to the floor and said she must be off at once. Macquart appeared very much vexed at her awaking.

‘It’s quite impossible,’ said he, ‘for you to go back to Plassans to-night. You are shivering with fever, and you would fall ill on the road. Rest here, and we will see about it to­morrow. To begin with, there is no conveyance.’

‘But you can drive me in your trap,’ said Marthe.

‘No, no; I can’t.’

Marthe, who was dressing with feverish haste, thereupon declared that she would walk to Plassans rather than stay the night at Les Tulettes. Her uncle seemed to be thinking. He had locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. He entreated his niece, threatened her, and invented all kinds of stories to induce her to remain. But she paid no attention to what he said, and finished by putting on her bonnet.

‘You are very much mistaken if you imagine you can per­suade her to give in,’ exclaimed Rose, who was quietly finish­ing her cheese. ‘She would get out through the window first. You had better put your horse to the trap.’

After a short interval of silence, Macquart, shrugging his shoulders, angrily exclaimed:

‘Well, it makes no difference to me! Let her lay herself up if she likes! I was only thinking about her own good. Come along; what will happen will happen. I’ll drive you over.’

Marthe had to be carried to the gig; she was trembling violently with fever. Her uncle threw an old cloak over her shoulders. Then he gave a cluck with his tongue and set off.

‘It’s no trouble to me,’ he said, ‘to go over to Plassans this evening; on the contrary, indeed, there’s always some amusement to be had there.’

It was about ten o’clock. In the sky, heavy with rain clouds, there was a ruddy glimmer that cast a feeble light upon the road. All the way as they drove along Macquart kept bending forward and glancing at the ditches and the hedges. When Rose asked him what he was looking for, he replied that some wolves had come down from the ravines of La Seille. He had quite recovered his good humour. How­ever, when they were between two and three miles from Plassans the rain began to fall. It poured down, cold and pelting. Then Macquart began to swear, and Rose would have liked to beat her mistress, who was moaning underneath the cloak. When at last they reached Plassans the rain had ceased, and the sky was blue again.

‘Are you going to the Rue Balande?’ asked Macquart.

‘Why, of course,’ replied Rose in astonishment.

Macquart thereupon began to explain that as Marthe seemed to him to be very ill, he had thought it might perhaps be better to take her to her mother’s. After much hesitation, however, he consented to stop his horse at the Mourets’ house. Marthe had not even thought of bringing a latchkey with her. Rose, however, fortunately had her own in her pocket, but when she tried to open the door it would not move. The Trouches had shot the bolts inside. She rapped upon it with her fist, but without rousing any other answer than a dull echo in the hall.

‘It’s of no use your giving yourself any further trouble,’ said Macquart with a laugh. ‘They won’t disturb themselves to come down. Well, here you are shut out of your own home. Don’t you think now that my first idea was a good one? We must take the poor child to the Rougons’. She will be better there than in her own room; I assure you she will.’

Félicité was overwhelmed with alarm when she saw her daughter arrive at such a late hour, drenched with rain and apparently half dead. She put her to bed on the second floor, set the house in great commotion, and called up all the ser­vants. When she grew a little calmer, as she sat by Marthe’s bedside, she asked for an explanation.

‘What has happened? How is it that you have brought her to me in such a state as this?’

Then Macquart, with a great show of kindness, told her about
‘
the dear child’s’ expedition. He defended himself, declared that he had done all that be could to dissuade her from going to see François, and ended by calling upon Rose to confirm him, for he saw that Félicité was scanning him narrowly with her suspicious eyes. Madame Rougon, how­ever, continued to shake her head.