Complete Works of Emile Zola (133 page)

And when they had shut the door, William would take a singular delight in telling himself that his happiness was unknown to everybody. He looked on each visit as a charming adventure, as an appointed meeting with a staid maiden. He was completely forgetting the months they had spent in the Rue de Boulogne. Besides, Madeleine was a different woman; she no longer had her fits of dreaming, she was bright and lively, and still she loved him; she loved him secretly, like a lady with a character to think of; she received him in her bedroom with sudden blushes, in that bedroom where he simply paid his visits now, and where the peculiar fragrance caused him at each visit a deep-felt emotion. He had nothing of his own in this room, not even slippers.

This pleasant life lasted the whole of the summer. The days glided by in happy peacefulness. The lovers were full of mutual gratitude and affection for the bliss they were conferring on each other, just as formerly they had nearly, quarrelled as they felt that they were making each other unhappy.

Madeleine had taken the little house about the middle of April. She knew nothing of the country except a few nooks in the neighbourhood of Paris. Life in the open fields, for a whole summer, was for her a life of delight and health. She saw the trees bloom and the fruits ripen, standing by with happy surprise at the working of the soil. When she came, the bright green leaves were still tender; the country, still moist with the rains of winter, was bursting into life beneath the vernal rays of the sun, with the charming grace of a child just waking from sleep; from the depths of these pale horizons there came a sort of breezy and virginal freshness to her heart. Then, the caresses of the zephyrs became warmer, the leaves grew darker, the soil became a woman, an amorous and fruitful woman whose womb trembled with a mighty pleasure in the pangs of maternity. Madeleine, strengthened and soothed by the warmth of spring, felt the heat of the summer fill her with energy and give a steady strong flow to the blood in her veins. She thus found, in the sunshine, peace and vigour; she resembled one of those shrubs which though battered by the winter winds spring up again, which become young in order to grow afresh and unfold in the vigour of their foliage.

She felt a need of the free air, a love for the open sky which made her delight in long walks. Nearly every day she went out, and walked for miles and miles without ever complaining of fatigue. Usually, she met William in a little wood through which ran the brook where her lover had in former days hunted for crawfish. When they met each other, they walked away gently on the soft grass, hidden by the trees on both sides, ascending a sort of valley concealed by foliage and refreshingly cool. At their feet flowed the brook, a silver streak gliding noiselessly over the sand; here and there were little waterfalls whose crystal tones seemed as though they proceeded from a shepherd’s flute. And, on both sides, rose the big tree-trunks, like the shafts of fantastical pillars, eaten away with a leprosy of moss and ivy; among these trunks, briars had sprung up, throwing out to one another their long prickly arms, and forming green walls which enclosed the valley and turned it into an interminable path of foliage. Above their heads, the vault was peopled with wrens, like big humming flies; in places, the branches became more open, which permitted them to catch a glimpse, through this green verdure, of the blue sky. William and Madeleine loved this secluded valley, this natural bower whose end they could never discover; they forgot themselves for hours as they followed its windings; the coolness of the water and the silence of the trees filled them with exquisite delight. With their arms round each other’s waists, they clasped each other more closely in the hollows where the shade became thicker. At times they would play like children, running after one another, getting entangled in the briars and slipping on the grass. Suddenly Madeleine would disappear; she had hidden behind a bush; then her lover, who clearly saw a bit of her bright skirt, would pretend to hunt for her with an uneasy look; then, with a sudden spring, he would catch her and hold her on the ground, shaking with laughter, in his arms.

Sometimes, Madeleine would declare that she felt cold, and that she wanted to walk in the sun; the shade always became oppressive to her vigorous nature. Then they would go into the sun, the hot July sun. They would stride over the wall of briars and find themselves at the edge of immense corn-fields, undulating in bright waves right to the horizon, and lulled to rest in the heat of the mid-day sun. The atmosphere was sweltering. Madeleine walked comfortably in this burning furnace; she took a delight in letting the sun scorch her neck and bare arms; somewhat pale, her forehead beaded with little drops of perspiration, she revelled in the caresses of the orb of day. It gave her new strength, she said, when she was tired; she felt better under the crushing weight of the burning sky which pressed lightly on her strong shoulders. But William suffered a good deal from this heat; so when she saw him panting, she led him into the shady walk again, by the side of the clear cool brook.

Then they would resume their delightful walk, finding a fresh charm in this silence and coolness which they had left for a moment. Thus they came to a sort of amphitheatre where they usually stopped and rested. The valley grew broader, the brook formed a little lake with a surface as smooth as glass, the line of trees made a gentle curve, disclosing a broad belt of sky. It might have been thought a room made of verdure. At the edge of the pool grew tall waving reeds; then a carpet of grass was spread beneath the feet, reaching from the water to the foot of the trees, where it lost itself in the tall underwood which surrounded the opening with au impenetrable wall. But the charm of their wild and pleasant retreat was a spring which gushed from a rock; the enormous block, covered at the summit with overhanging briars, projected out at the top a little, forming at its foot a sort of cavern filled with a pale blue tint; the slender stream glided, with the easy motion of an adder, from the further end of this grotto with its walls covered with climbing plants and oozing with moisture. William and Madeleine would sit here, listening to the drops as they fell one by one in regular cadence from the roof; there was in this sound an endless lullaby, a vague sensation of sleep and eternity which harmonised with their happy love. Gradually, they ceased to talk, overcome by the monotony of the continual music of the drops of water, fancying that they could hear the beating of their hearts, dreaming and smiling, hand in hand.

Madeleine always brought some fruit. She would forget her musing, and eat her supplies with hearty appetite, giving her lover a bite of her peaches and pears. William was enraptured to see her by him; each day, her beauty seemed more dazzling; he watched, with admiring surprise, the development of health and strength which the fresh air was imparting to her. The country was really making her another woman. She even seemed to have grown. Full of health and vigour and endowed with strong limbs, she had become a powerful woman, with a broad chest and a clear laugh. Her skin, though slightly tanned, had not lost its transparency. Her gold-red hair, carelessly tied up, fell on her neck in a thick glowing coil. Her whole body gave evidence of superb vigour.

William never grew tired of gazing at this healthy being, whose calm lusty kisses soothed his own feverishness. He felt that a supreme serenity was reigning in her; she had recovered her strength of will, she lived without agitation, obeying the native simplicity of her being; these surroundings of solitude and bright sunshine suited her, under their influence she was unfolding in grace and strength, becoming what she always would have been had her need for esteem and tranquillity been satisfied. During the long hours that they spent at the Spring, the name they had given to their retreat, William would gaze on Madeleine as she lay stretched on the ground, her neck all red with the reflection of her hair; he would trace, beneath her light dress, the firm lines of her limbs, and at times he would raise himself up to take her in his arms in a clasping embrace, with a sudden pride of possession. Still there was nothing of the animal in his love; it was calm and chaste.

On the days that the lovers did not visit the spring, they would drive out a few miles in a carriage, then leave their conveyance at some inn and tramp the country wherever the roads took them. They only chose the narrowest lanes, those that would lead them to the unknown. When they had walked for hours, between two hedges of apple-trees, without meeting a living soul, they were as happy as marauders who had escaped the eye of the keeper. These broad Norman plains, rich and monotonous, seemed to them the image of their tranquil affection; they never grew tired of the same horizons of meadows and corn-fields. They would often ramble in the fields or visit the farms. Madeleine loved domestic animals; a brood of chickens pecking round their mother as she clucked and spread out her wings, would amuse her for a whole afternoon; she would go into cattle-sheds to stroke the cows; the young skipping kids filled her with delight; all the little denizens of a poultry yard held her charmed and filled with a longing desire to have at her own home hens, ducks, pigeons, and geese; and had not William’s smile checked her, she would never have returned to Véteuil without carrying back some little animal or other in her skirts. She had another passion too, a passion for children; when she saw one rolling in a farm yard, on a midden, among the poultry, she would gaze at him in silence, somewhat pensively, with a softened smile; then, as if drawn to him, she would go up and take the little urchin in her arms, regardless of his face all smeared with dirt and jam. She would ask for milk, keeping hold of the child until she was served, making him skip and calling her lover to admire the dear creature’s large eyes. When she had drank her milk, she would withdraw regretfully, turning round and casting a last glance on the child.

Autumn came. Dark clouds crossed the leaden sky driven on by icy winds; the fields were going to repose. The lovers wished to pay one last visit to the spring. They found their retreat very desolate. A shower of yellow leaves lay strewn on the grass; the walls of verdure were falling down; the amphitheatre, exposed to all beholders, was now only formed by the slender trunks of the trees whose branches stood out in rueful nakedness against the grey sky. The little lake and the spring itself were muddy, troubled by the last storm. William could see that winter was approaching, and that their walks would have to cease. He mused sadly on this death of summer as he looked at Madeleine. The young woman, seated in front of him, full of thought, was breaking the bits of dead branches with which the turf was strewn.

Since the previous night William had been thinking of proposing to his mistress to marry her. This idea of immediate marriage had occurred to him in a farm, as he had seen Madeleine fondling one of those little darlings that she adored. He had thought that if she should ever become enceinte, he would have a bastard for his son. The memories of his childhood always frightened him at this word bastard.

Besides, everything was tending without gainsay to marriage. As he used to say in the old days to James, he was fated to love one woman only, the first he met; he was fated to love her with his whole being, and to cling to this love, out of hatred of change, out of terror for the unknown. He had been lulled to rest in Madeleine’s affection: now that he was warm, now that he was comfortable in this affection, he intended to stay there for ever. His inert mind and his gentle nature delighted in thinking. “I have a resting-place where I have taken refuge for life.” Marriage would simply legalise an union which he already looked upon as eternal.

The thought that he might have a son only made him desirous of hastening an end that he had foreseen. Then, winter was coming, he would be cold, all alone in his big deserted château; he would no longer spend his days in the warm breath of his loved one. During these long cold months, he would have to run in the rain as he went to knock at Madeleine’s door. What a happy warmth, on the contrary, if they lived in the same house! They would spend the days of bad weather in the chimney corner; they would pass their chilly honey-moon in a warm recess, which they would only leave in the following spring, to return to the sunlight. And there was too, in his resolution, the desire to love Madeleine openly, and to confer on her a mark of esteem which should touch her heart. He thought he could foresee that they would suffer no more from their intimacy, that they would no longer hurt each other’s feelings, when there was a binding bond between them.

Yet at the bottom of the project which William fondly indulged in, there lay a vague feeling of dread which kept him uneasy, and hesitating. During the months of forgetfulness that they had just passed, he had never been a prey to the terrors about the future which the suicide of his father had awakened in him; events no longer crushed him; his love, after so many rebuffs, seemed to him a sovereign repose, a balm for his sufferings and fears. The fact was, he was living in the present, in the hours that glided by, bringing each its pleasure. But since he had begun to think of the future, the unknown in this future filled him with secret uneasiness. Perhaps he was trembling unconsciously on the brink of an eternal engagement with a woman whose history he did not know. Anyhow, he was full of conflicting thoughts, for his hesitations did not assume a definite form, while his heart urged him on to his project.

He had come to the spring, fully determined to speak. But the trees were so bare, the sky so gloomy, that be did not venture to open his lips, shivering at the first breath of winter. Madeleine was cold too; a kerchief on her neck, her feet well under her skirts, she was continuing to break the bits of dead branches on the turf, unconscious of what she was doing, gazing with a melancholy air at the clouds charged with rain that were silently drifting across the sky. At last, when it was time to return, William told her his project; his voice trembled a little and he seemed to be asking for a favour. Madeleine looked at him with a surprised, almost terrified air. When he had finished she said: