Complete Works of Emile Zola (953 page)

“And so,” resumed Buteau, “you’ve looked in to see us as you were passing by.”

Françoise, hitherto silent, now came forward and said distinctly:

“No: it was I who begged uncle to come.”

Lise, who was standing by the table shelling peas, left off and waited motionless, a harsh expression suddenly coming over her face. Buteau, who had at first clenched his fists, resumed his genial air, having determined not to lose his temper.

“Yes,” explained the old man, slowly, “the child spoke to me yesterday. You see now how right I was when I wanted to have matters settled at the outset. To each his own. There’s nothing in that for any one to get angry about; on the contrary, it prevents quarrels. It’s now high time to make an end of it. She has a right, hasn’t she? to know exactly how she stands. Otherwise I should be to blame. So we’ll fix a day, and go together to Monsieur Baillehache’s.”

Lise could hold out no longer.

“Why don’t she send for the gendarmes? Good Heavens! one would suppose she was being robbed. What if I were to go about and tell everybody what a filthy beast she is, and that there’s no knowing where to take hold of her?”

Françoise was about to reply in the same strain, when Buteau, who had playfully caught her up from behind, cried out:

“A pack of nonsense! People may badger each other, but they love each other all the same, eh? A nice thing it would be if sisters fell out!”

The girl had shaken herself free, and the quarrel was about to continue, when Buteau raised a joyous shout on seeing the door again open:

“Jean! Sopping wet! Why, he’s a regular poodle!”

Jean, who had run over from the farm, as he often did, had merely thrown a sack over his shoulders for protection; and he was wet through — dripping, steaming, and laughing good-humouredly through it all. While he was shaking himself, Buteau, returning to his window, grew more and more expan­sive at the sight of the steady, endless downpour.

“Oh, how it’s coming down! What a blessing! My! it’s quite a game to see it come down like that!”

Then, turning back, he said to Jean:

“You come pat. These two were tearing each other’s eyes out. Françoise wants the property divided, so that she may leave us.”

“What? That child!” cried Jean, amazed.

His desire had become a violent hidden passion, and the only satisfaction he had was to see her in this house, where he was received as a friend. He would have proposed for her half a score of times already, if he had not so keenly felt the disparity in their ages. It was in vain that he had waited; the fifteen years’ difference had not been spanned. In the country, a great difference of age is reckoned such an obstacle, that nobody — not she herself, nor her sister, nor even her brother-in-law — seemed to imagine he could ever fix his thoughts on her. And this was why Buteau received him so cordially, without any fear of the consequences.

“You may well say child!” said he, paternally shrugging his shoulders.

But Françoise, standing rigidly erect, with her eyes on the ground, proved obstinate.

“I want my share.”

“It would be the wisest thing,” murmured old Fouan.

Then Jean gently took hold of her wrists, and drew her towards him. Holding her thus, his hands quivering at the contact of her flesh, he addressed her in his kind voice, which faltered as he besought her to remain. Where could she go:

Into service with some strangers at Cloyes or Châteaudun? Was she not better off in the house where she had grown up, amid people who loved her? She listened to him, and she also softened; for although she scarcely thought of him as a lover, she was wont to obey him readily, chiefly out of regard for him and a little from fear, thinking him a very serious person.

“I want my share,” she repeated, beginning to give way, “but I don’t say that I shall go away.”

“Why, stupid!” interposed Buteau, “what on earth would you do with your share if you stay? Everything is as much yours as it is your sister’s or mine. What do you want the half for? Pooh! it’s enough to send one into fits! Harkee, the day you marry the property shall be divided.”

Jean’s eyes, which were fixed on her, fell, as if his heart had failed him.

“You hear? On your wedding day.”

She felt oppressed, and made no reply.

“And now, my little Françoise, go and kiss your sister. That’ll be much better.”

Lise, the buxom matron, was still good-hearted in her gay, noisy way, and she wept when Françoise fell on her neck, Buteau, delighted at having postponed the evil day, cried out that, God’s mercy! they would have a drink. He fetched five glasses, uncorked one bottle, and went back to fetch another. Old Fouan’s bronzed face had flushed as he explained that he was in favour of order and duty. They all drank, women and men alike, to the health of every one present.

“Wine’s a good thing,” said Buteau, slapping down his glass, “but, say what you like, that falling water’s a deal better. Just look at it! There it goes, and there it goes again. Isn’t it glorious? “

Crowding to the windows, with radiant faces, and in a sort of religious ecstacy, they all watched the warm, slow, endless rain stream down, as though beneath this beneficent water they had seen the tall green corn visibly growing.

CHAPTER II

One day that summer old Rose, who had suffered from swooning fits, and whose legs were failing her, sent for her grand-niece, Palmyre, to clean the house. Fouan had gone out to prowl round the fields, as usual; and while the wretched creature, drenched with water, was scrubbing with all her might, the other woman followed her about, step by step, both of them going over the same eternal old gossip.

They began with Palmyre’s misfortunes, for her brother Hilarion had taken to beating her. The soft-witted cripple had grown malicious; and, as he did not know how strong he was with his fists, which were capable of pulverising stones, she was in terror of her life whenever he seized hold of her. Still she wouldn’t have any interference; and when anybody came she sent them away, managing to appease the young fellow by dint of the infinite fondness which she entertained for him. The other week there had been a scandal, which all Rognes was still talking about: such a fight that the neighbours had run in, and had found him behaving abominably. “Tell me, my child,” asked Rose, to elicit some confidential revelation, “what was the brute doing?”

Palmyre, ceasing to scrub, and squatting in her dripping rags, flew into a passion without giving an answer.

“Is it any business of those folks I should like to know? What do they want to come spying in our house for? We don’t rob any one.”

“Well, well!” resumed the old woman, “all the same, if you do as people say, it’s a very dreadful thing.”

For an instant the poor creature remained silent; and an expression of suffering came over her features as her eyes vacantly stared afar. Then, bending down once more, she mumbled, with the to-and-fro movement of her skinny arms breaking in upon her words:

“I don’t know about it being so very dreadful. The priest sent for me, to say that we both of us should go to hell. Not that poor darling, anyhow. ‘A natural, your reverence,’ says I to him ‘a mere child with no more sense than a babe three days old, and who’d have died if I hadn’t fed him — and perhaps it’d have been better for him if he had?’ It’s my affair alone, isn’t it? The day he strangles me, in one of the fits of rage such as have lately come over him, I shall see fast enough whether the blessed God’ll forgive me.”

Seeing that she would not obtain any fresh particulars, Rose, who had long known the truth, sagely concluded: “Sure enough, things must be one way or the other. But put it as you like, it’s not a life you’re leading, my girl.”

Then she lamented that everybody had their misfortunes. The miseries, now, that she and her husband had gone through, since they’d been kind enough to strip themselves for their children’s benefit! Once started on this topic she never stopped. It was an eternal subject of complaint with her.

“Deary me! One can get used to disrespect. When one’s children are swine, they’re swine, and that’s all about it. But if they’d only pay their allowance—”

Then she explained, for the twentieth time, that Delhomme alone brought his fifty francs every quarter, and punctual, too, to the tick! Buteau was always in arrears, and haggled over coppers. Thus, although the money was ten days overdue, she was still awaiting payment. He had promised to pay up that very night. As for Hyacinthe, that was a simpler matter. He didn’t pay anything; they never saw the colour of his money. And he’d actually had the cheek to send La Trouille that morning to borrow five francs, to enable her to make some broth for him as he was very ill. Oh, yes! they all knew what he suffered from — a spark in his inside! And so the wench had been sent to the right-about in no time, with orders to tell her father that if he didn’t bring his fifty francs that night, like his brother Buteau, he should have the lawyer after him.

“Just to frighten him, you know, for the poor boy’s not bad at heart, after all,” added Rose, whose partiality for the elder son had already softened her.

At night-fall, Fouan having come in to his dinner, she began again at table while he bent silently over his food. Could it be possible that, out of their six hundred francs, they should only get two hundred from Delhomme, scarcely a hundred from Buteau, and nothing at all from the other? That made just half the allowance. And the scamps had signed at the notary’s; it was set down in black and white, and was under the charge of the law! But a vast deal their children cared about the law!

To every complaint Palmyre, who was scouring the tiled floor of the kitchen in the dark, made the same answer, which sounded like a refrain of misery.

“Sure enough, we’ve all of us got our troubles; they bring us to the grave!”

Rose was at length deciding to light the candle when La Grande came in with her knitting. During the summer there was no evening meeting; but, to avoid using even a candle-end, she was wont to spend an hour at her brother’s before groping her way to bed in the darkness. She established herself forthwith; and Palmyre, who had still the pots and pans to scour, breathed not a word more, over-awed by the sight of her grandmother.

“If you want any hot water, my girl,” said Rose, “undo a faggot.”

Then she contained herself for a moment, and forced herself to talk of other matters. In La Grande’s presence the Fouans avoided complaining, knowing how pleased she was whenever she heard them regret having parted with their property. But passion was too much for Rose, and finally she spoke again:

“And you may as well put on the whole faggot at once, if they call that a faggot, indeed! Merely some dead twigs and hedge-clippings! Fanny must certainly scrape the floor of her wood-house to send us rotten stuff like that!”

Fouan, who had remained at table, with his glass full, then broke the silence in which he had seemingly wished to enwrap himself.

“God a’ mercy!” he shouted. “Haven’t we had enough of your faggots? They’re muck, and we know it! But what’s to be said, pray, of the beastly dregs that Delhomme gives me for wine?”

He raised his glass to the candle and glanced at it.

“Eh? What the devil has he put into it? It’s worse even than the rinsings of casks. And he’s the honest one! The two others would let us die o’ thirst, before they’d go and fetch us even a bottle of water from the river.”

At length he made up his mind to drink his wine at a gulp. But he spat violently afterwards.

“Ugh! the poison! P’raps it’s to kill me right off.”

After that Fouan and Rose gave way to their rancour, and, casting all restraint aside, relieved their aching hearts. There was a perfect litany of recriminations, each in turn exposing his or her wrongs. Take, for instance, the ten quarts of milk per week. To begin with, they only got six; and then what milk it was!

Although it didn’t pass through the priest’s hands it must be real Christian milk, judging by the way it was baptised! The same with the eggs. They must have been specially ordered of the fowls, for such little ones could never have been found in all the Cloyes markets. They were regular curiosities, and so grudgingly given, that they had time enough to go bad on the way. As for the cheeses! Cheeses indeed! Rose was doubled up with colic every time she ate any. She ran to fetch one, insisting on Palmyre’s tasting it. Well, wasn’t it horrible? Didn’t this demand redress? They must put flour into it, and perhaps plaster as well. Then Fouan struck in, lamenting that he was cut down to a sou’s worth of tobacco per day; and Rose immediately regretted her black coffee which she had had to give up. Finally, both together, they taxed their children with the death of their decrepit old dog, which they had drowned the day before, because he cost them too much to keep.

“I gave them everything,” cried the old fellow; “and the scamps don’t care a damn about me. It’ll kill us for certain — it makes us so wild to be left in such wretchedness!”

At length they became silent, and La Grande, who had not unclosed her lips, looked from one to the other with her round, evil, bird-of-prey-like eyes.

“Serve you right!” said she.

Just at that moment, however, Buteau came in. Palmyre, having finished her work, took advantage of the opening of the door to slip out and make her escape, with the fifteen sous which Rose had just put into her hand. Buteau stood motion­less in the middle of the room, maintaining the prudent silence of the peasant, who will never be the first to speak. A couple of minutes elapsed, and then the father was forced to open the discussion.

“So you’ve made up your mind. That’s fortunate. We’ve had plenty of time to wait for you during these last ten days.”

The son swayed carelessly from side to side, and eventually said: “One can’t do more than one can. Every one knows how his bread bakes.”

“Possibly. But if things were to go on at that rate, you’d be eating your bread while we starved. You signed, and you ought to pay up on the right day.”

Seeing his father’s ill-humour, Buteau began to laugh.

“If I’m too late, you know, I can go back. It’s not so nice to have to pay as it is. Some don’t pay at all.”