Complete Works of Emile Zola (988 page)

Françoise had continued to approach with leisurely, easy steps, concealing her feeling of uneasy alarm. She now un­derstood the cause of the Buteaus’ angry gestures. Jean’s plough must have sliced off a strip of their land. Disputes were continually arising on this score, and not a month passed without some quarrel taking place as to the boundary-line. Blows and litigation seemed likely to be the inevitable result.

“You are trespassing on our land,” cried Buteau, raising his voice, “and I shall prosecute you!”

The young woman, however, stepped up to her patch of lucern, without even turning her head.

“Don’t you hear us?” now screamed Lise, in a towering rage. “Come and look at the boundary-stone for yourself, if you think we’re liars! You’ll have to make good the damage!”

Her sister’s persistent silence and contemptuous air now so thoroughly enraged her that she lost all control over herself, and rushed up to her, clenching her fists.

“So you think you can flout us as you please, do you, hussy? I am your elder sister, and I’ll teach you to treat me with proper respect; and I’ll make you go down on your knees and beg my pardon for all your impertinence to me!”

She was now standing in front of Françoise, mad with hate and anger, hesitating whether she should kill her sister with her fists, or whether she should kick her to death or knock out her brains with a stone.

“Down on your knees, hussy, down on your knees!”

Still persisting in her silence, Françoise now spat in her sister’s face, just as she had done on the evening of the eject­ment. Lise then broke out into a roar, but Buteau immediately interposed, and thrust her violently aside.

“Get away!” he said; “this is my business.”

Ah, yes, she would gladly get away, and leave him to settle the matter. He was at perfect liberty to wring her sister’s neck or break her back; he might cut her up and give her flesh to the dogs, or he might make her his drab; and, so far from trying to prevent him, she would do all she could to help him. She now braced herself up and glanced round her, keeping watch so that no one should come and interfere with what­ever her husband chose to do. The vast grey plain stretched out beneath the gloomy sky, and not a single human being was in view.

“Now’s the time! There’s no one in sight!”

Buteau then stepped up to Françoise; and, as the young woman saw him advancing with stern-set face and stiff-braced arms, she thought he was going to thrash her. She still held her scythe, but she began to tremble, and Buteau seizing hold of the implement by the handle, tore it from her and tossed it into the lucern. Her only means of escaping him was by stepping backwards. She continued doing so till she reached the ad­joining field, making for the rick which stood there, as though she hoped to use it in some way as a protecting rampart. Buteau followed her up quite leisurely; and he, on his part, seemed to be wishing to drive her towards the rick. His arms were slightly extended, and his face was broadened by a silent grin which disclosed his gums. Suddenly it flashed upon Françoise that he did not mean to thrash her. No, it was something very different that he meant; that something which she had so long refused him. She now began to tremble still more violently, and she felt as though all her strength were failing her; she who had always so valiantly resisted and belaboured him, and sworn that he should never gain his ends! But she was no longer the high-spirited girl she had been; she had just completed her twenty-third year, on Saint Martin’s Day, and she was now a woman, with the fresh bloom already taken off her by hard work, though her lips were still red and her eyes as big as crown-pieces. She felt such a sensation of flushed languor that her limbs seemed quite enervated and life­less.

Buteau, still continuing to force her backwards, at last spoke in a deep, excited voice.

“You know very well that all is not over between us. This time I mean to succeed!”

He had now managed to bring her to a stand against the rick; and he abruptly took her by the shoulders and threw her upon her back. Dazed and enervated though she was, for a moment or two she began to struggle and fight, instinctively prompted thereto by her old habits of resistance. Buteau, however, dodged her kicks.

“What difference can it make to you, you silly idiot?” said he. “You needn’t be afraid!”

Françoise now burst into tears, and seemed taken with a sort of fit. Though she made no further effort to defend her­self, she was so violently shaken by nervous contortions that Buteau could not succeed in his purpose. His anger at being thus foiled maddened him, and, turning towards his wife, he cried out:

“You damned helpless idiot, what are you standing staring there for. Come and help me!”

Lise had remained standing bolt upright some ten yards away, without ever stirring; now scanning the distance to see if any one was coming, and now glancing at Françoise and Buteau, without any sign of feeling on her face. When her husband called her, she did not evince the slightest hesitation, but strode up to him, and seizing hold of her sister, she sat down upon her as heavily as if she wanted to crush her. Finally Buteau proved victorious. He was just rising when old Fouan popped out his head from behind the rick, where he had sought shelter from the cold. The old man had seen all, and it evidently frightened him, for he at once concealed himself behind the straw again.

Buteau having risen to his feet, Lise looked at him keenly. In his eagerness he had forgotten all about the three signs of the cross, and the Ave repeated backwards. His wife stood frenzied with wild indignation. It was merely for his own pleasure that he done the deed!

Françoise, however, left him no time for explanations. For a moment she had remained lying motionless on the ground, as though she had fainted beneath a sensation such as she had never before experienced. The truth had suddenly dawned upon her. She loved Buteau! She never had, and never would, love any other. This discovery filled her with shame, and she was angered against herself at finding how false she was to her own ingrained ideas of justice. A man who did not belong to her! A man who belonged to that sister whom she now so hated! The only man in the world whom she could not possess without being false to her own oath!

Springing wildly to her feet, with her hair dishevelled and her clothes all disarranged, she spat out the anger that was raging within her in spasmodic bursts of abuse.

“You filthy swine! Yes, both of you! you’re both filthy swine! You have ruined and destroyed me! People have been guillotined for doing less than you’ve done! I will tell Jean, you filthy swine, and he’ll settle your accounts for you!”

Buteau shrugged his shoulders, and smiled his leering smile. He felt immensely satisfied, now that he had at last succeeded in gaining his ends.

“Nonsense, my dear! You were dying for it!”

This bantering speech had the effect of completing Lise’s exasperation, and she vented all her rising anger against her husband upon her sister.

“It’s quite true, you drab; I saw you!” she shouted. “I always said that all my troubles came from you! Will you dare to say now that you didn’t debauch my husband, yes, debauch him directly after we were married, when you were only a child whom I still whipped?”

She now manifested the most violent jealousy, a jealousy which appeared somewhat singular after all the complacence she had recently shown. If Françoise had never been born, she thought, she herself would never have had to share either property or husband! She hated her sister for being younger and fresher and more attractive than herself.

“You’re a liar!” cried Françoise, wild with anger. “You know that you are lying!”

“A liar, am I? You’ll tell me, I suppose, that you didn’t pursue him even into the cellar?”

“I! indeed! I’d a deal to do with it, hadn’t I? You cow! you helped him! Yes, and you’d have broken my back, if you could! You must either be a filthy pimp, or else you wanted to murder me, you dirty drab!”

Lise replied by a violent blow, which so maddened Françoise that she threw herself wildly upon her sister. Buteau stood sniggering with his hands in his pockets, and made no attempt to interfere, like a self-satisfied cock watching a couple of hens quarrelling for him. The two women continued fighting savagely, tearing each other’s caps off, their faces clawed and bleeding, and their hands eagerly seeking any spot where they might tear and rend. In scuffling and wrestling they returned to the patch of lucern, and Lise suddenly broke out into a loud roar, for Françoise had driven her nails deeply into her neck. Then, losing all self-control, the idea of murdering her sister occurred to her. She had caught sight of the scythe lying on her left hand. The handle had fallen across a clump of thistles, and the blade was sticking point upwards in the air. Like a flash of lightning she hurled Françoise on to the gleaming steel with all her force. The unfortunate young woman tottered and fell, uttering a terrible shriek. The blade of the scythe had pierced her side, “Good God! good God!” stammered Buteau.

It was all over. A single second had settled it all; the irreparable had been accomplished. Lise, dazed at seeing her wish so quickly realised, stood watching her sister’s severed dress as it reddened with a stream of blood. Had the blade penetrated deeply enough to cut the little one, that the blood flowed so plentifully? she wondered.

Old Fouan’s pale face again peeped forth from behind the rick. He had seen everything, and was perfectly stupefied.

Françoise lay quite still, and Buteau, who had stepped up to her, dared not touch her. A gust of wind now darted over the field, and filled him with a wild terror.

“She is dead! In God’s name, let us bolt!”

He seized hold of Lise’s hand, and they flew along the de­serted road as though they were possessed. The low, gloomy sky seemed as though it was about to fall down upon their heads, and behind them the sound of their galloping feet raised echoes which sounded as though a crowd of people were in hot pursuit of them. They both ran wildly on over the cropped and naked plain; Buteau, with his blouse swelling about him in the wind, and Lise, with her hair all loose and dishevelled, carrying her cap in her hand. And as they ran they both kept repeating the same words, panting like hunted animals:

“She is dead! In God’s name, let us bolt! “

Their strides grew longer, and soon they could not articu­late distinctly; still, as they fled wildly on, they gave vent to panting exclamations which kept time, as it were, with their bounds:

“Dead! good God! Dead! good God! Dead! good God!” Then they disappeared from sight.

Some minutes later, when Jean trotted up on his horse, he was filled with terrible consternation.

“What — what has happened?” he cried.

Françoise had opened her eyes, but still lay rigidly motion­less. She gazed at Jean for a long time with her great troubled eyes, but she said nothing. Her mind seemed to be far away, absorbed in thought.

“You are wounded! You are bleeding! Speak to me, I beseech you!”

Then he turned to old Fouan, who had at length ventured to approach.

“You were here? Tell me what has happened!”

Then Françoise spoke, but very slowly, as though she were thinking of what she should say.

“I came to cut some grass — I fell on to my scythe — it went into me here. Oh, it’s all over with me!”

Her eyes sought those of Fouan, telling him, and him alone, other things — things that only her own family should know. Dazed as was the old man, he seemed to comprehend her meaning.

“Yes, that is what happened,” he said; “she fell and wounded herself. I was there, and saw it.”

Jean galloped off to Rognes for a stretcher to carry his wife home. She lost consciousness again on the journey, and they never expected to get her to the house alive.

CHAPTER IV

It happened that on the following day, Sunday, the young men of Rognes were to go to Cloyes for the conscription-ballot; and as La Grande and La Frimat, who had hurried up to the house in the dusk, were undressing Françoise and putting her to bed with the utmost care, the roll of the drum could be heard on the road below, sounding to the poor folks like a knell amid the mournful gloom.

Jean, who was quite off his head with troubled anxiety, had just set off to fetch Doctor Finet, when near the church he met Patoir, the veterinary surgeon, on his way to attend old Saucisse’s cow. He forcibly dragged him into the house to see the ailing woman, in spite of his unwillingness to go. But when Patoir saw the hideous wound, he point-blank refused to interfere in the case. What good could he do? Death was plainly written there! Two hours later, when Jean came back with Monsieur Finet, the surgeon made a gesture of hope­less despair. Nothing could be done beyond administering anæsthetics for the sake of deadening the pain. The five months’ pregnancy seriously complicated the case; and the un­born child could be felt moving within its mother’s wounded body, dying indeed of its mother’s death. Before the doctor went away, he dressed the wound as best he could, and, although he promised to return in the morning, he warned Jean that his wife would most probably pass away during the night. She lived through it, however, and she was still lingering on, when, towards nine o’clock in the morning, the drum began to beat again, summoning the young men to meet in front of the municipal offices.

All through the night the flood-gates of heaven had been open, and Jean had listened to a pouring deluge of rain as he sat watching in his wife’s room, stupefied with troubled grief, and with his eyes full of big tears. The roll of the drum sounded as though it were muffled as he heard it in the close, damp air of the morning. The rain had now ceased, but the sky was still of a leaden grey.

For a long time the drum-beating continued. The drummer was a new one, a nephew of Macqueron’s, who had just left the service, and he beat his drum as though he were leading a regiment into action. All Rognes was in a state of anxiety, for the rumours of approaching war, that had lately been circulated, had greatly increased the emotion which always attended the conscription-ballotting. The prospect of being at once marched off to be shot by the Prussians was not an allur­ing one. There were nine young men of the neighbourhood to ballot upon this occasion, probably a larger number than had ever before been known. Among them were Nénesse and Delphin, once so inseparable, but severed of late owing to the former having taken a situation in a restaurant at Chartres. On the previous evening Nénesse had gone to sleep at his father’s farm. When Delphin saw him he scarcely knew him, he was so changed; dressed quite like a gentleman, with a cane and a silk hat, and a blue scarf clasped by a ring. He now had his clothes made to order by a tailor, and cracked jokes about Lambourdieu’s ready-made suits. His neck was still scrany and long, and absolutely devoid of hair on the nape. Delphin, on the other hand, had grown massive and sturdy; his limbs were heavy, like his movements, and his face was tanned and baked by the sun. He had grown up like some vigorous plant in that beloved soil to which he was so firmly rooted. However, he and Nénesse immediately renewed their broken chumship, and were as good comrades as ever. After spending a part of the night with each other, they appeared arm-in-arm the next morn­ing in front of the municipal offices, in obedience to the persistent summons of the drum.