Complete Works of Emile Zola (775 page)

‘Oh! be off! You worry me! “

Sometimes she called Lazare to her to tell him to look after Louise, as though she had been a child.

‘See that she doesn’t get bored. She wants amusing. Take her for a good long walk; I shall get on very well without you for the rest of the day.”

When she was left alone, her eyes seemed to be following them from a distance. She spent her time in reading, waiting till she should be strong again, for she was still so weak that it quite exhausted her to sit up for two or three hours in an easy-chair. She would often let her book slip on to her lap, while her thoughts dreamily wandered off after her cousin and her friend. She wondered whether they were walking along the beach, and had got to the caves, where it was so pleasant on the sands amidst the fresh breezes and rising tide. In those long reveries she fancied that the feeling of sorrow which depressed her came merely from the fact that she was unable to be with them. She soon grew weary of reading. The novels which lay about the house, love-stories abounding in romantic falsity and treason, had always offended her sense of honour, for she felt how impossible it would be, after once giving her heart, to with­draw it again. Was it true, then, that people’s hearts could lie so, and that, after having once loved, they could ever cease to love? She threw the books from her in disgust; and with her wandering gaze saw, in imagination, her cousin bringing her friend home, he supporting her weary steps, as they came along side by side, whispering and laughing.

‘Here is your draught, Mademoiselle,’ suddenly said Véronique, whose deep voice, coming from behind, aroused Pauline from her reverie with a start.

By the end of the first week Lazare never came to her room without first knocking. One morning as he opened the door he caught sight of her, combing her hair as she sat up in bed, with her arms bare.

‘Oh! I beg your pardon!’ he cried, stepping back.

‘What’s the matter?’ said she. ‘Are you frightened of me?’ Then he took courage, but he was afraid lest he should embarrass her, and turned his head aside until she had finished fastening up her hair.

A fortnight before, when he had thought that she was dying, he had lifted her in his arms as though she had been a child, without even noticing her nakedness. But now the very disorder of the room disquieted him. And the girl herself, catching his feeling of uneasiness, soon refrained from asking of him any of the little services that he had lately been accustomed to render her.

‘Shut the door, Véronique’!’ she cried one morning, as she heard the young man’s step on the landing. ‘Put all those things out of sight and give me that fichu.’

She was gradually growing stronger, and her great pleasure, when she was able to stand up and lean against the window, was to watch the progress that was being made with the defensive works. She could distinctly hear the blows of the hammers, and see the gang of seven or eight men, who bustled about like big ants over the yellowish shingle on the beach. Between the tides they worked away energeti­cally, but they were obliged to retire before the rising water. It was with special interest, too, that Pauline’s eyes followed Lazare’s white jacket and Louise’s pink gown, both of which glittered conspicuously in the sun. She followed them con­stantly with her gaze, and could have told their every action, almost their every gesture, throughout the day. Now that the operations were being pushed so vigorously forward they could no longer wander off together, or ramble to the caves inside the cliffs; and thus Pauline constantly had them within half a mile of her, always plainly visible beneath the wide expanse of sky, though their stature was reduced by distance to that of dolls. Quite unknown to herself, this jealous pleasure of accompanying them in fancy did much to cheer her convalescence and recruit her strength.

‘It amuses you, eh, to watch the workmen?’ Véronique used to repeat every day as she dusted the room. ‘Well, it’s much better for you than reading. Whenever I try to read I get a headache. And, besides, when one wants to get back strength, one must go and open one’s mouth in the sun­shine like the turkeys do, and drink in great mouthfuls of it.’

Véronique was not naturally of a talkative nature; she was even considered a little morose and taciturn; but with Pauline she chatted freely from a friendly impulse, believing that she did the girl good.

‘It’s a funny piece of business all the same! But it seems to please Monsieur Lazare. Though, indeed, he does not appear to be quite so full of it just now as he was. But he is so proud and obstinate that he will go on persisting in a thing, even if he is really sick to death of it. And if he just leaves those drunken fellows for a minute, they drive the nails in all crooked.’

After she had swept the floor under the bed she added:

‘And as for the duchess—’

Pauline, who was scarcely listening to the woman, caught this word with surprise.

‘The duchess! Whom are you talking of?’

‘Mademoiselle Louise, of course! Wouldn’t anyone say that she had sprung straight from Jupiter’s thigh? If you were to go and look in her room and see all her little pots and pomades and scents — Why, as soon as ever you open the door, it all catches you at the throat, the place smells so! But she can’t match you in good looks, for all that!’

‘Oh, nonsense! I’m a mere country girl,’ Pauline said with a smile; ‘Louise is very graceful and refined.’

‘Well, she may be all that; but she hasn’t got a pretty face, all the same. I have had a good look at her when she has been washing herself; and I know that, if I were a man, I shouldn’t be long in making up my mind between you.’

Carried off by her feeling of enthusiastic conviction, she came and leaned against the window, close to Pauline.

‘Just glance at her there on the beach! Doesn’t she look a mere shrimp? She is certainly a long way off, and one can’t expect her to appear as big as a church, but she ought to show a figure of some sort! Ah! there’s Monsieur Lazare lifting her up, so that she mayn’t wet her pretty little shoes. She can’t weigh very much in his arms, that’s certain! But there are some men who seem to prefer bones!’

Véronique checked herself suddenly, as she felt Pauline quivering by her side. She was ever harping on this subject, as if she itched to talk of it. All that she heard and all that she saw — the conversations in the evening when Pauline was calumniated, the furtive smiles of Lazare and Louise, and the utter ingratitude of the whole family, which was rapidly grow­ing into treason — stuck in her throat and made her choke. If she had gone up to the sick girl’s room at the times when her honest heart glowed with a sense of some fresh injustice, she could not have restrained herself from revealing every­thing to Pauline, but her fear of making her ill kept her stamping about her kitchen, knocking her pots and pans about, and swearing that she could not go on much longer in that way, but would soon be driven into telling them all very roundly what she thought about them. However, when she got upstairs into Pauline’s room, and a word that might vex or disturb the girl escaped her lips, she tried to recall it or explain it away with a touching awkwardness.

‘But, thank goodness, Monsieur Lazare isn’t the kind to fall in love with a bag of bones. He has been in Paris, and knows what’s what. He has too much good taste. Look! he has set her on the ground again just as if he were throwing a match away!’

Then Véronique, in fear of letting her tongue slip again, began to flourish her feather brush once more; while Pauline, buried in deep thought, watched till evening Louise’s pink gown and Lazare’s white jacket both gleaming in the distance amidst the dark forms of the workmen. When she was beginning to feel fairly well again, Chanteau was seized with another violent attack of the gout; and this induced the young girl to come downstairs at once. The first time that she left her room it was to go and sit by the sick man’s bed­side. As
Madame Chanteau said, very bitterly, the house was becoming quite a hospital. For some time her husband had not left his chair. After repeated seizures his whole body was now attacked by his foe; the disease mounted from his feet to his knees, and then to his elbows and hands. The little white pearl on his ear had fallen away, but others, of larger size, had appeared. All his joints became swollen, and spots of chalky tophus showed whitely, like lobster’s eyes, through his skin in all parts. It was from chronic gout that he now suffered, chronic and incurable; the kind of gout which stiffens and deforms the body.

‘Good heavens! what agony I’m in!’ Chanteau kept repeating. ‘My left knee is as stiff as a log; I can’t move either my foot or my knee; and my elbow burns as though it were on fire. Just look at it!’

Pauline looked, and observed an inflamed swelling on his left elbow. He complained bitterly of the agony he was suffering there; indeed, it very soon became unendurable. He kept his arm stiffly stretched, as he sighed and groaned, with his eyes constantly fixed upon his hand, which was a pitiable sight, with all the finger-joints knotted and swollen, and the thumb warped as though it had been beaten with a hammer.

‘I cannot keep like this. You must come and help me to move. I thought just now that I had got myself fairly com­fortable, but I am as bad again as ever I was. It is just as though my bones were being scraped with a saw. Try to raise me a little.’

Twenty times in an hour did he have to be helped to change his position. He was in a continual state of anxious restlessness, always hoping to find relief in some new change. But Pauline still felt too weak to venture to move him without assistance.

‘Véronique,’ she would say softly, ‘take hold of him very gently and help me to move him.’

‘No, no! not Véronique!’ Chanteau would cry out, ‘she shakes me so!’

Then Pauline was obliged to make the effort herself, and her shoulders gave way under the strain. And, however gently she turned him round, he groaned and screamed so terribly that Véronique rushed hastily out of the room. She said that one needed to be a saint, like Mademoiselle Pauline, to be able to do such work, for the good God Himself would run away if He were to hear her master bellowing.

The paroxysms, however, became less acute, though they did not cease, but recurred frequently both day and night, keeping the sick man in a state of perpetual exasperation. It was no longer merely in his feet that he felt as though sharp teeth were gnawing at him, his whole body seemed bruised, as though it were being crushed beneath a millstone. It was impossible to afford him any relief; all that Pauline could do was to remain by his side and yield submissively to his caprices, ever changing his position for him, though without succeeding in giving him any lasting ease. The worst of he matter was that pain made him unjust and violent, and he spoke to her harshly, as though she were a very clumsy servant.

‘Oh, stop! stop! you are as awkward as Véronique! Can’t you manage it without digging your fingers into my body like that? Your hands are as clumsy as a gendarme’s. Go away and leave me alone. I don’t want you to touch me any more.’

But Pauline, without a word of self-defence, showing a sub­missive resignation nothing could ruffle, resumed her efforts with increased gentleness. When she imagined he was getting irritated with her she would conceal herself for a moment behind the curtains, hoping that his anger would cool when he no longer saw her. And often she would give way to silent tears in her hiding-place, not for the poor man’s harsh­ness towards her, but for the frightful martyrdom which made him so hasty and violent. She listened to him as he talked to himself amidst his sighing and groaning.

‘She has gone away, the heartless girl! Ah! if I were to die, there would only be Minouche left to close my eyes. It is abominable to desert a human being in this way! I’ll be bound she’s gone off to the kitchen to have some broth!’

Then, after a little wrestling and struggling, he groaned more loudly, and ended by calling: ‘Pauline, are you there? Come and raise me a little. I can’t get easy as I am. Shall we try how the left side will do — shall we?’

Every now and then he would be suddenly seized with deep regret, and would beg the girl’s pardon for having treated her unkindly. Sometimes he would tell her to fetch Matthew, for the sake of having another companion, fancying that the dog’s presence would somehow or other alleviate his pain. But it was in Minouche rather than in Matthew that he found a faithful associate, for the cat revelled in the close, warm atmosphere of sick rooms, and spent her days lying on a couch near the bed. However, when the patient gave a more than usually loud cry she seemed surprised, and turned upon him, sitting on her tail, and staring at him with her big round eyes, in which glistened the indignant astonishment of a sober philosophic nature whose tranquillity had been deeply disturbed. What could possess him to make all that disagree­able and useless noise?

Every time that Pauline went out of the room with Doctor Cazenove she preferred the same request.

‘Can’t you inject a little morphia? It makes my heart bleed to hear him.’

But the doctor refused. It would do no good; the par­oxysms would return again with increased violence. Since the salicylic treatment appeared only to have aggravated the disease, he preferred not to try any other drug. He spoke, however, of seeing what a milk diet might do as soon as the violence of the attack was over. Until then the patient was to keep to the most sparing diet and diuretic drinks, and nothing else.

‘The truth is,’ said Cazenove, ‘that your uncle is a gourmand who is now paying dearly for all his fine dishes. He has been eating game; I know he has, for I saw the feathers in the yard. It will be much the worse for him in the end. I have warned him over and over again that the reason of his suffering is that, instead of denying himself such things, he prefers to yield to his appetite and take the consequences. But you yourself will act still more foolishly, my dear, if you over-exert yourself and make yourself ill again. Do be careful! You will, won’t you? Your health still requires looking after.’

But she looked after it very little; she devoted herself to her uncle entirely, and all notion of time and even of life itself seemed to depart from her during the long days and nights that she passed by his bedside, with her ears buzzing with the groans and cries which ever filled the room. Her devotion and self-sacrifice were so complete that she actually forgot all about Louise and Lazare. She just exchanged a few words with them now and then, when she ran across them as she passed through the dining-room. By this time the work on the shore was finished, and heavy rains had kept the young people in the house for a week past; and, when the idea that they were together once suddenly occurred to Pauline, she felt quite happy to know that they were near her.