Complete Works of Emile Zola (963 page)

Buteau had launched the first one, and Jean, still stooping, would have had his head split open, had he not leapt backwards. By a quick contraction of his muscles, he at once raised his flail, and brought it down in the same style as a thresher crushing grain. But the other was also striking; and the two flaps met, and swung back upon their straps like wounded birds swooping wildly. Thrice there was the same shock. Each time the flaps whirled and whizzed through the air, and they all but fell and split the skulls they threatened. The contest could not be of long duration, for the first blow must be a mortal one.

Delhomme and Fouan, however, were rushing forward, when the women shrieked. Jean had rolled over in the straw, Buteau having treacherously aimed a whip-like blow, which swept along the ground, and, although fortunately deadened, reached his opponent’s legs. Jean got up again without letting go of his flail, which he brandished with a fury increased ten­fold by pain. The flap made a wide sweep and fell on the right, while the other was expecting it on the left. A fraction of an inch nearer and Buteau’s brains would have been dashed out. As it was, his ear was grazed, and the blow coming down obliquely fell full on his arm, which was sharply broken atwain. The bone was heard to snap as if it had been breaking glass. Buteau’s hand fell limply down, dropping the flail it was holding.

“The murderer!” yelled Buteau, “he’s killed me!” Jean, with a haggard face and blood-shot eyes, also dropped his weapon. He glanced round at them all for a moment, as if stupefied by the sudden turn that things had taken, and then limped away with a wild gesture of despair.

When he had turned the corner of the house, going towards the plain, he espied La Trouille, who had witnessed the fight over the garden hedge. She was still chuckling over it, having come there to prowl around the christening party, to which neither she nor her father had been invited. What fun it would all be for Hyacinthe — this little family fête and his brother’s broken arm! She was wriggling as if she were being tickled, and nearly fell over backwards, so highly was she amused.

“Oh, Corporal, what a whack!” she cried. “The bone gave such a crack! It was fun!”

He made no answer, but slackened his pace with a dejected air. She followed him, whistling to her geese, which she had taken with her, so as to have a pretext for eavesdropping behind the walls. Jean returned mechanically to the threshing machine, which was still in action, though the day was waning. He thought to himself that it was all over; that he could never go back to the Buteaus, that they would never give him Françoise. What folly it was! Ten minutes had sufficed: an unsought quarrel, and so unlucky a blow, just when everything was in such trim! And now, never, never more! The snorting of the machine amid the twilight was prolonged like a great cry of distress.

Another encounter just then occurred. At the corner of a cross road La Trouille’s geese, which she was taking back home, found themselves face to face with old Saucisse’s geese on their way down to the village, unaccompanied. The two ganders, in the van, pulled up short, resting on one leg, with their large yellow beaks turned towards each other. All the beaks of each flock turned simultaneously in the same direction as the leaders’, and the geese’s bodies were inclined to the same side. For an instant perfect immobility was preserved. It was like an armed reconnaissance; two patrols exchanging watch-words. Then one of the ganders, with round, contented eyes, went straight on, while the other bore to the left; and each troop filed off behind its own leader, going about its busi­ness with the same uniform waddling gait.

PART IV

CHAPTER I

After the shearing and the sale of the lambs in May, Soulas, the shepherd, had removed the sheep from La Borderie. Nearly four hundred head there were, which he led away without any other assistance than that of the little swine-herd Firmin, and his two formidable dogs, Emperor and Massacre. Until August the flocks grazed in the fallows amongst the clover and lucern, or in the waste-lands along the roads; and barely three weeks had now elapsed since he had turned them out into the stubble, immediately after the harvest, in the last blazing days of September.

This was the terrible season of the year. The fields of La Beauce lay stripped and desolate and bare, without a single fleck of green about them. The torrid summer, and the com­plete absence of all moisture, had dried up the splitting soil, and almost all signs of vegetation had disappeared. There was nothing left save a tangle of dead grass, and the hard bristles of the stubble-fields, which stretched out their mournful, bare nudity as far as the eye could reach, making all the plain look as though some giant conflagration had swept from horizon to horizon. The soil still seemed to be giving out a yellowish glow, a weird, threatening light, livid like that of a storm. Everything looked yellow, a frightfully mournful yellow; the baked earth, the stubble, and the high-roads and by-paths, rutted and torn up by passing wheels. The slightest breeze set clouds of dust flying, and covering the banks and hedges as with cinders. The blue sky and the blazing sun only seemed to render the scene of desolation still more mournful.

Upon that particular day there was a high wind, blowing in quick, warm puffs, which brought along heavy, scudding clouds; and when the sun shone fully out, his rays seemed to burn the skin like red-hot iron. Ever since early morning, Soulas had been expecting a supply of water for himself and his flock — water which was to be brought to him from the farm — for the stubble lands where he found himself lay to the north of Rognes, far away from any pond. In the grazing ground, between the light, movable hurdles secured with staves the sheep were lying on their bellies, panting and breathing only with difficulty; while the two dogs, stretched at full length outside the hurdles, were also panting, with their tongues lolling out of their mouths. The shepherd, to protect himself from the wind and to procure a little shade, was seated, leaning against a little hut raised on two wheels — a narrow box which served him for bed, and wardrobe, and pantry — and which he pushed along at every change of the grazing ground.

At noon, however, when the sun shone down perpendicu­larly, Soulas rose to his feet again, and scanned the distance to ascertain if he could see Firmin returning from the farm, where he had sent him to find out why the water did not come.

At last the little swine-herd made his appearance.

“They’ll be here soon,” he cried. “They had no horses this morning.”

“You silly little fool, haven’t you brought a bottle of water for us to drink ourselves?”

“Oh, dear, I never thought about it.”

Soulas struck out a swinging blow with his closed fist, which the lad avoided by jumping aside. Then the shepherd began to swear, but he decided that he would eat without drinking, although he was almost choked with thirst. By his orders, Firmin warily took out of the hut some bread a week old, some shrivelled walnuts, and some dry cheese. Then they both sat down to eat, intently watched by the two dogs, who came and sat down in front of them, getting a crust tossed to them now and then, so hard that it cracked between their teeth as if it had been a bone. In spite of his seventy years, the old man got as quickly through his food with his gums as the youngster did with his teeth. Soulas was still straight and up­right, flexible and tough like a thorn wood stick. Time seemed merely to have scored furrows in his face, which was gnarled like a tree trunk beneath a tangle of faded hair, now the colour of earth.

The little swine-herd did not manage to escape his cuffing, for just as he was about to stow the remains of the bread and cheese inside the hut, and was no longer suspecting an attack, Soulas gave him a thumping whack which sent him rolling into the shelter-place.

“There, you silly little fool,” cried the old man; “take and drink that, till the water comes!”

Two o’clock arrived without there being a sign of anybody coming. The heat had gone on increasing, and was well-nigh intolerable amid the complete calms which suddenly set in. Then, every now and again the breeze would rise and sweep up the powdery soil in little wheeling whirlwinds which seemed composed of blinding, suffocating smoke, and terribly enhanced the pangs of thirst.

At last the shepherd, who bore his sufferings with stoical, uncomplaining patience, gave a grunt of satisfaction.

“Thank heaven!” he exclaimed; “they’ve come none too soon.”

Two carts, which in the distance looked scarcely bigger than a man’s fist, had now at length made their appearance on the line where the plain intersected the horizon. In the first one, which was driven by Jean, Soulas had distinctly recog­nised the barrel of water. The second one, which Tron was in charge of, was loaded with sacks of corn, which were being taken to the mill, whose lofty wooden carcass could be seen some five hundred yards away. This second cart came to a stand-still on the road, and Tron accompanied Jean through the stubble-fields up to the sheep-fold, under pretence of lending him a hand with the water, but really for the sake of idling and indulging in a few minutes’ gossip.

“Do they want us all to die of thirst?” cried the shepherd.

The sheep, also having sniffed the water, had sprung up in eager tumult, and were now pressing against the hurdles, craning out their heads, and bleating plaintively.

“Patience! patience!” replied Jean; “there’s something here to make you tipsy.”

The men now quickly put the trough into position, and filled it by the aid of a wooden spout. Some of the water ran over, and the two dogs lapped it up eagerly, while the shepherd and the little swine-herd, too thirsty to wait any longer, drank greedily out of the trough. Then the whole flock swarmed up to it, and the air was filled with the flowing murmur of refreshing water, and the gurgling sound of animals and men swallowing it, and splashing and drenching themselves with it in delight.

“Now,” said Soulas, who had become quite cheery again, “you would be doing me a kindness if you would help me to move the pens.”

Jean and Tron both helped him. The hurdles were con­stantly moved over the surface of the far-spreading stubble, never being kept for more than two or three days in the same position, just sufficient time to enable the sheep to crop down the stray vegetation. This system, moreover, had the advan­tage of gradually manuring the land, patch by patch. While the shepherd, assisted by his dogs, looked after the sheep, the two men and the little swine-herd pulled up the stakes and carried the hurdles some fifty yards further on. Then they again fixed them so as to enclose a vast square, into which the animals rushed of their own accord before it was quite com­pleted.

Despite his great age, Soulas was already propelling his wheeled-hut towards the fold.

“What’s the matter with Jean?” he presently asked. “One would say he was burying God Almighty!”

Jean only shook his head sadly. He had been very gloomy ever since he believed that he had lost Françoise.

“Ah! there’s some woman in the matter, I expect,” con­tinued the old man. “The confounded hussies, they ought all to have their necks wrung!”

Thereupon the giant-limbed Tron began to laugh with an innocent air.

“Ah!” he said, “it’s only those who are past everything that say that.”

“Do you mean to say that I am past everything?” ex­claimed the shepherd, contemptuously. “When did you find that out? But there’s one wench, my lad, whom it’s best for you not to touch, or you may be sure that matters will have a bad ending.”

This allusion to Tron’s connection with Madame Jacqueline made the farm-hand blush up to his ears. Soulas had caught them together one morning in the barn behind some sacks of oats; and in his detestation of the ex-scullerymaid, who was now so stern and harsh towards her old pals, he had, after much deliberation, determined to open his master’s eyes as to her conduct. However, at his first word, the farmer had looked at him with so angry an expression that he had said no more, resolving to remain silent, unless La Cognette forced him to extreme measures by bringing about his dismissal. The consequence was that they were now living together in a state of hostility: Soulas dreading that he might be turned away like a broken-down old beast of burden, and Jacqueline biding her time till her influence became sufficiently consolidated to induce Hourdequin, who was attached to his shepherd, to dismiss him. Throughout La Beauce nobody understood the art of sheep-grazing better than Soulas did. His flocks were well-fed and there was neither loss nor waste, the fields being clean shaved from one end to the other, without a blade of grass being left behind.

The old man, possessed by the propensity for talking which often leads those who live solitary lives to take any opportunity of unbosoming themselves, now continued:

“Ah, if my jade of a wife, before she managed to kill her­self, hadn’t put all my brass down her throat as fast as I earned it, I’d have taken myself off the farm of my own accord before now, so as to get away from the sight of so much beastliness. That Cognette has made a lot more money by her face than with her hands, and it’s her looks, not her deserts, that have gained her her present position! Just to think of the master letting her lie in his dead wife’s bed, and being so infatuated with her that he has ended by taking his meals alone with her, just as though she were his lawful wife! She’ll turn us all out of the place, neck and crop, at the first opportunity, and the master himself into the bargain. A filthy sow who has wallowed with every dirty hog!”.

At every sentence spoken by the old man, Tron clenched his fists more tightly. He was brimming over with suppressed rage, which was rendered the more terrible by his giant-like strength.

“There that will do!” he cried; “you’d better just shut up. If you hadn’t got into your dotage, I’d have knocked you down before now. There’s more decency in her little finger than there is in the whole of your old carcass.”

Soulas, however, only shrugged his shoulders jeeringly at the other’s threat; and, though he scarcely ever laughed, he now broke out into a sharp grating giggle, which seemed to come from some mechanism rusted by disuse.