Complete Works of Emile Zola (37 page)

“Our time is very much taken up; besides, we did not wish to intrude upon you.”

“Oh, come now,” interposed Lorin with emphasis; “you know very well you are always welcome. I will take no excuse, but shall expect you at the first opportunity. Do you know that you are two notabilities who are in everybody’s mouth just now? You must be earning a vast amount of money.” Then, remembering that he had his wife on his arm, he added: “My dear, I wish to present to you Monsieur Daniel Raimboult and Monsieur George Raymond, our young and illustrious scholars.” Jeanne bowed slightly, and looking at Daniel, she said: “I already know this gentleman.”

“By Jove, yes, I was forgetting,” exclaimed Lorin, laughing heartily; “he took you out often enough on the Seine.

“Ah, my dear Daniel, you have indeed done well in becoming a celebrity! It pained me deeply to see you the secretary of Monsieur Tellier. You know that he died lately, some say from apoplexy, others from a speech that had been ill received. I was told yesterday that his wife was about to retire into a convent. These queens of fashion always end in that way.”

Jeanne was pained at this speech. The loud voice of her husband irritated her. Her lips trembled, and she turned her head aside as if to escape the unpleasantness of being on the arm of such a man.

Lorin was no longer the young gallant who played the part of a lover so gracefully. Little by little his old instincts had taken hold of him again; he was once more the rough, hard trader. Directly he was married he no longer felt any necessity to make himself agreeable to his wife.

Daniel noticed even that Lorin’s general appearance was not as elegant as it was formerly, and he felt a great pity for Jeanne.

“Very well, depend on our coming,” he said, “and at an early date.”

And he moved off, taking George with him, who had not as yet opened his lips, but had gazed at Jeanne with admiring and sympathetic eyes. When they were a short distance off, George asked:

“You know Lorin’s wife, then?”

“Yes,” quietly answered Daniel; “she is the niece of the deputy in whose house I worked.”

“I am sorry for her, with all my heart,” said George, “for her clumsy clown of a husband must cause her great unhappiness. Do you intend to go and see them?”

“Most decidedly.”

“I will accompany you.... That poor young woman, with her great, sad eyes, has moved my heart wonderfully.”

Daniel changed the conversation as soon as he could. He also was very much moved, and he rebuked himself with a kind of bitter joy that misery had most probably commenced what his affection could not do. He saw very well that Jeanne’s heart was at last awakened, and that now she suffered.

Every evening, for nearly a week, George said to him:

“Well, are we going to Lorin’s to-morrow?” Daniel began to feel timid of going to see Jeanne. It seemed as if the fever of love was again about to take possession of him. Since the evening “at home,” when he had met her, she was always before his eyes, looking at him with a melancholy, sad smile; and every now and then he felt his heart beating, and mad hopes entered his brain. At last he made up his mind to go. One evening George and he fulfilled their promise. It just happened that it was a reception night. The drawing - room when they arrived was already full of people, and Lorin pointed them out to his guests as lions of the day. The evening was a most distressing one for Daniel. He saw all, he understood all.

He found Jeanne nervous and restless. She was no longer the heedless young girl who queened it in her ignorance; she was a broken woman, whose heart had expanded only to bleed. As long as her affections had been dormant she had remained a mere coquettish doll, who lived quietly on in her mocking frigidity. But now her heart had spoken loudly; she wanted love, and she found no one to love. A rebellion arose within her, and she accused herself bitterly of letting her heart sleep too long.

The awakening had been cruel for Jeanne. Two or three months after her marriage she found out she had a soul which hitherto she had known nothing about Her husband, with his low instincts, his crooked and wicked nature, caused her a revulsion of feeling that suddenly opened her eyes. His coarseness repelled her. When she discovered what manner of man it was she had married all her woman’s pride and instinct revolted. Her mother spoke in her; her inner being grew, dominated, and drove out the outer being that circumstances alone had created. And the veil was torn aside.

Then she saw herself in the hands of Lorin, tied to him for ever, and terror and anger seized her. She had wilfully brought this untoward fate upon herself; she had prepared her own sufferings, all unwitting, with a light heart. The outlook was dark indeed. Now that she had an imperative desire to love some one, she could not satisfy her desire, for she despised the only man to whom it was necessary that she should give her affections. At these thoughts she was seized with unknown, unspeakable pangs of misery, and as she wept gave up all hope of happiness.

Then cowardice followed. She feared that she would never have the strength to live on thus. The prospect of a lonely, loveless life scared her. Then she began inwardly to battle against herself. When her heart, crying with anguish, drove her to love a man other than her husband, then her duty as a wife spoke loudly and her self-respect asserted itself.

Some days she managed to prove to herself that after all love is free, and that human laws could not restore her to a young girl’s ignorant pride. But the next day duty once again raised her solemn voice, and she recoiled before the sin, accepting her martyrdom as a punishment for her blindness.

For nearly six months this inward battle lasted, and she showed many outward marks of it. Every morning, notwithstanding the resistance her self-respect made, she advanced one step nearer the gulf. She made desperate efforts, strove hard to hold back, but her head was in a whirl, and little by little her passions began to yield altogether and drag her down. She was on the point of falling when Daniel came once more across her path in life.

The young man, when he saw the burning eyes of the young woman, partly guessed the tortures she was undergoing. He saw Lorin turning to folly and fatness. For a moment the thought came to him of calling him out and killing him, so that his wife might be rid of him. Then he cross-examined himself, and, with terror, came to the conclusion that love was once more asserting its sway over him.

His eyes never left Jeanne during the whole evening he spent there. He took an infinite delight in watching her every movement; her voice, her every action gave him pleasure, and he forgot himself dangerously in this contemplation. He noticed that Jeanne’s eyes were constantly directed towards the door. Undoubtedly she was expecting some one; and he felt a burning sensation shoot across his breast. Certainly Jeanne was in a fever; she shivered, she was making her last stand before yielding. Then he drew near and spoke to her of Mesuil Rouge.

“Do you remember,” he said, “those delicious evenings and those lovely twilights? How fresh and cool it was under the trees, and what a deep calm reigned all around!” Jeanne smiled at these sweet memories of peace.

“I went again to Mesuil Rouge after that,” she answered, “and I thought of you. I had no one then to take me to the islets.”

Suddenly she looked towards the drawing room door. Daniel again felt that burning sensation in his chest; he also turned round, and in the doorway he saw a tall, smiling young man who was casting a searching look across the room.

This young man perceived Lorin and went and shook hands with him, with an exaggerated and forced warmth of manner. He joked with him for a minute or two, then turned towards Jeanne. The young wife shuddered.

Daniel drew back and took stock of the newcomer. He judged him at first sight. Here was a de Rionne who had evidently not yet quite gone down the hill of ruin. Jeanne was no doubt taken with the elegance and brilliant talk of this man. They exchanged a few words of politeness, but she was nervous and anxious, as if she were impatiently waiting for words that did not come. Daniel, without dreaming that he ought to have moved away, remained where he was, being suspicious. He also was waiting for something, fixing looks of desperation upon her meanwhile.

The young man paid no attention whatever to this stranger, whose suppressed wrath he did not even notice. He bent quickly down, and said in a low voice:

“Madame, am I to come to-morrow?” Jeanne, pale as death, was about to answer, when, raising her eyes, she perceived Daniel before her, severity and anxiety depicted on his face. Her lips trembled; she drew back, hesitated a moment, then retired without a word. The young man turned on his heel, muttering between his teeth:

“Oh, well, the fruit is not yet ripe. I must wait a little longer.”

Daniel had heard all, and understood all. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He was like a man who has just escaped a great danger and who breathes again, looking round about him to see if the danger is really and completely over. He was choking; he felt the need of breathing freely, and as he could not reflect calmly in the stifling air of the drawing room, he sought out George and drew him away into the street.

George was by no means pleased at being dragged off. He was very happy in this house, where that sad young woman who had moved him so resided. If Lorin had not been there as a kill-joy to his feelings, he would willingly have lost himself in the contemplation of Jeanne’s melancholy beauty.

“Why the deuce do you run away like this?” he asked his friend, when in the street.

“I do not like Lorin,” stammered Daniel.

“Oh, as to that, I do not like him any better than you do; but I should like to have stayed, to find out what makes his wife look as if she were pining... We shall go there again, shall we not?”

“Oh, yes.”

They walked home together silently. George was meditating, and at moments, feelings hitherto unknown to him caused a warm, quick flow of blood to mount to his head; he gave himself up to a sweet dream that was quite new to him. Daniel strode moodily along, with his head bowed, hurrying over the ground, in haste to be alone.

When he reached his room he sat down and shuddered. He shook all over; he accused himself of returning to Paris too late. He felt sure indeed that Jeanne had not yet fully committed herself, but he did not know what course to take to bring about an immediate and violent reaction in her feelings. The dead woman’s words recurred to his mind. “When you are a man,” she had said, “remember my words; they will tell you what a woman can suffer.

I know what a burden a lonely life is, and how much determination is required not to fall.” And here was Jeanne in her loneliness wanting in determination — here she was ready to fall.

Daniel had already suffered too much to lie to himself again. He felt that his love was gnawing at his entrails afresh, and that it was only from shame, from cowardice, that he did not speak openly of it. At Mesuil Rouge he had a similar attack one dark night when a cold rain was falling. Then in a jealous fury he had wished to tear Jeanne away from Lorin. To-day he was seeking to protect her against herself, to prevent her from taking a lover, and he was enduring the utmost agony, with the same cries of agony and suffering.

To deceive himself he, to excuse his actions, pretended that it was his mission to the dead woman only that urged him on, and that he was accomplishing a sacred task. This time it was a question of the young woman’s honour, of her remaining calm and proud in her virtue, or of her suffering the remorse of sin. The strife had never been sharper nor more decisive. Then he laughed at himself in mockery, for he knew full well that he was lying again, and that it was his love alone which drove him to desire Jeanne’s happiness. His heart lay bare before him. The honourable guardian had become the passionate lover, who no longer watched over the woman entrusted to him for any other reason except that of jealousy.

And he put his face between his hands and wept, seeking with anguish a means of saving her, and of saving himself at the same time. Then, as he could think of none, he took a sheet of notepaper and began to write to Jeanne. The tears dried on his cheeks, and all the fever passed into his hand, so rapidly did he write.

For two hours he never raised his head; he was gaining consolation. His letter was an effusion of love, a flood of affection breaking down all obstacles, and spreading far and wide. All the accumulated adoration of years found an issue in that confession. This poor wretch let himself go, so to speak, and told her all. He even had no consciousness of this outpouring of his feelings; he simply yielded to that inner force that controlled him, He opened his heart to her because he was suffocating and wanted breathing space.

When he felt calmer he stopped. He did not even read over what he had written. He avoided betraying his personality in his letter, and wrote it anonymously. The next day he sent it on to Jeanne. He did not know what effect the letter would have on her. He merely lived in hope.

CHAPTER XIII

THIS is what Daniel wrote to Jeanne: “Forgive me, I can no longer keep silence; I must open my heart to you. You will never know who I am. This is the confession of an unknown, who is cowardly and has not the courage to love you without telling you so. I ask for nothing; I only wish you to read this letter in order that you may know that, in the background, there is a man on his knees praying, weeping when you weep. Sorrow is less bitter when shared with another; I, who shed lonely tears, feel how hard a lonely life is to grief-stricken hearts.

“I have no desire to be consoled, I am resigned to living on in the bitterness of sorrow; but I wish, if I can, to make your life one of supreme happiness, and give you the peace which kind and good hearts enjoy.

“And I am writing to tell you I love you, that you are not deserted, and must not give way to despair. You have never known the bitter joys of a lonely and retired life. It seems to me that I love you in another life, and that you are mine in the vast regions of dreamland. And no one has penetrated my secret. I hoard up my love as a miser hoards his gold. I am alone in loving you, and the only one that knows that I love you.