Thérèse Raquin (9 page)

Above, on the terrace, the puffs of air from the river drove away the
smell of fat. Therese, leaning over the balustrade, observed the quay.
To right and left, extended two lines of wine-shops and shanties of
showmen. Beneath the arbours in the gardens of the former, amid the few
remaining yellow leaves, one perceived the white tablecloths, the dabs
of black formed by men's coats, and the brilliant skirts of women.
People passed to and fro, bareheaded, running, and laughing; and with
the bawling noise of the crowd, was mingled the lamentable strains of
the barrel organs. An odour of dust and frying food hung in the calm
air.

Below Therese, some tarts from the Latin Quarter were dancing in a ring
on a patch of worn turf singing an infantine roundelay. With hats fallen
on their shoulders, and hair unbound, they held one another by the
hands, playing like little children. They still managed to find a small
thread of fresh voice, and their pale countenances, ruffled by brutal
caresses, became tenderly coloured with virgin-like blushes, while their
great impure eyes filled with moisture. A few students, smoking clean
clay pipes, who were watching them as they turned round, greeted them
with ribald jests.

And beyond, on the Seine, on the hillocks, descended the serenity
of night, a sort of vague bluish mist, which bathed the trees in
transparent vapour.

"Heh! Waiter!" shouted Laurent, leaning over the banister, "what about
this dinner?"

Then, changing his mind, he turned to Camille and said:

"I say, Camille, let us go for a pull on the river before sitting down
to table. It will give them time to roast the fowl. We shall be bored to
death waiting an hour here."

"As you like," answered Camille carelessly. "But Therese is hungry."

"No, no, I can wait," hastened to say the young woman, at whom Laurent
was fixedly looking.

All three went downstairs again. Passing before the rostrum where the
lady cashier was seated, they retained a table, and decided on a menu,
saying they would return in an hour. As the host let out pleasure boats,
they asked him to come and detach one. Laurent selected a skiff, which
appeared so light that Camille was terrified by its fragility.

"The deuce," said he, "we shall have to be careful not to move about in
this, otherwise we shall get a famous ducking."

The truth was that the clerk had a horrible dread of the water. At
Vernon, his sickly condition did not permit him, when a child, to go and
dabble in the Seine. Whilst his schoolfellows ran and threw themselves
into the river, he lay abed between a couple of warm blankets. Laurent
had become an intrepid swimmer, and an indefatigable oarsman. Camille
had preserved that terror for deep water which is inherent in women and
children. He tapped the end of the boat with his foot to make sure of
its solidity.

"Come, get in," cried Laurent with a laugh, "you're always trembling."

Camille stepped over the side, and went staggering to seat himself at
the stern. When he felt the planks under him, he was at ease, and joked
to show his courage.

Therese had remained on the bank, standing grave and motionless beside
her sweetheart, who held the rope. He bent down, and rapidly murmured in
an undertone:

"Be careful. I am going to pitch him in the river. Obey me. I answer for
everything."

The young woman turned horribly pale. She remained as if riveted to the
ground. She was rigid, and her eyes had opened wider.

"Get into the boat," Laurent murmured again.

She did not move. A terrible struggle was passing within her. She
strained her will with all her might, to avoid bursting into sobs, and
falling to the ground.

"Ah! ah!" cried Camille. "Laurent, just look at Therese. It's she who is
afraid. She'll get in; no, she won't get in."

He had now spread himself out on the back seat, his two arms on the
sides of the boat, and was showing off with fanfaronade. The chuckles of
this poor man were like cuts from a whip to Therese, lashing and urging
her on. She abruptly sprang into the boat, remaining in the bows.
Laurent grasped the skulls. The skiff left the bank, advancing slowly
towards the isles.

Twilight came. Huge shadows fell from the trees, and the water ran
black at the edges. In the middle of the river were great, pale, silver
trails. The boat was soon in full steam. There, all the sounds of the
quays softened; the singing, and the cries came vague and melancholy,
with sad languidness. The odour of frying and dust had passed away. The
air freshened. It turned cold.

Laurent, resting on his skulls, allowed the boat to drift along in the
current.

Opposite, rose the great reddish mass of trees on the islands. The two
sombre brown banks, patched with grey, were like a couple of broad bands
stretching towards the horizon. The water and sky seemed as if cut from
the same whitish piece of material. Nothing looks more painfully calm
than an autumn twilight. The sun rays pale in the quivering air, the old
trees cast their leaves. The country, scorched by the ardent beams of
summer, feels death coming with the first cold winds. And, in the sky,
there are plaintive sighs of despair. Night falls from above, bringing
winding sheets in its shade.

The party were silent. Seated at the bottom of the boat drifting with
the stream, they watched the final gleams of light quitting the tall
branches. They approached the islands. The great russety masses grew
sombre; all the landscape became simplified in the twilight; the Seine,
the sky, the islands, the slopes were naught but brown and grey patches
which faded away amidst milky fog.

Camille, who had ended by lying down on his stomach, with his head over
the water, dipped his hands in the river.

"The deuce! How cold it is!" he exclaimed. "It would not be pleasant to
go in there head foremost."

Laurent did not answer. For an instant he had been observing the two
banks of the river with uneasiness. He advanced his huge hands to his
knees, tightly compressing his lips. Therese, rigid and motionless, with
her head thrown slightly backward, waited.

The skiff was about to enter a small arm of the river, that was sombre
and narrow, penetrating between two islands. Behind one of these islands
could be distinguished the softened melody of a boating party who seemed
to be ascending the Seine. Up the river in the distance, the water was
free.

Then Laurent rose and grasped Camille round the body. The clerk burst
into laughter.

"Ah, no, you tickle me," said he, "none of those jokes. Look here, stop;
you'll make me fall over."

Laurent grasped him tighter, and gave a jerk. Camille turning round,
perceived the terrifying face of his friend, violently agitated. He
failed to understand. He was seized with vague terror. He wanted to
shout, and felt a rough hand seize him by the throat. With the instinct
of an animal on the defensive, he rose to his knees, clutching the side
of the boat, and struggled for a few seconds.

"Therese! Therese!" he called in a stifling, sibilant voice.

The young woman looked at him, clinging with both hands to the seat. The
skiff creaked and danced upon the river. She could not close her eyes,
a frightful contraction kept them wide open riveted on the hideous
struggle. She remained rigid and mute.

"Therese! Therese!" again cried the unfortunate man who was in the
throes of death.

At this final appeal, Therese burst into sobs. Her nerves had given way.
The attack she had been dreading, cast her to the bottom of the boat,
where she remained doubled up in a swoon, and as if dead.

Laurent continued tugging at Camille, pressing with one hand on his
throat. With the other hand he ended by tearing his victim away from
the side of the skiff, and held him up in the air, in his powerful arms,
like a child. As he bent down his head, his victim, mad with rage and
terror, twisted himself round, and reaching forward with his teeth,
buried them in the neck of his aggressor. And when the murderer,
restraining a yell of pain, abruptly flung the clerk into the river, the
latter carried a piece of his flesh away with him.

Camille fall into the water with a shriek. He returned to the surface
two or three times, uttering cries that were more and more hollow.

Laurent, without losing a second, raised the collar of his coat to hide
his wound. Then seizing the unconscious Therese in his arms, he capsized
the skiff with his foot, as he fell into the Seine with the young woman,
whom he supported on the surface, whilst calling in a lamentable voice
for help.

The boating party he had heard singing behind the point of the island,
understanding that an accident had happened, advanced with long, rapid
strokes of the oars, and rescued the immerged couple. While Therese was
laid on a bench, Laurent gave vent to his despair at the death of his
friend. Plunging into the water again, he searched for Camille in places
where he knew he was not to be found, and returned in tears, wringing
his hands, and tearing his hair, while the boating party did their best
to calm and console him.

"It is all my fault," he exclaimed. "I ought never to have allowed that
poor fellow to dance and move about as he did. At a certain moment we
all three found ourselves on one side of the boat, and we capsized. As
we fell into the water, he shouted out to me to save his wife."

In accordance with what usually happens under similar circumstances,
three or four young fellows among the boating party, maintained that
they had witnessed the accident.

"We saw you well enough," said they. "And, then, hang it all, a boat is
not so firm as a dancing floor. Ah! the poor little woman, it'll be a
nice awakening for her."

They took their oars, and towing the capsized skiff behind them,
conducted Therese and Laurent to the restaurant, where the dinner was
ready to be served.

The restaurant keeper and his wife were worthy people who placed their
wardrobe at the service of the drenched pair. When Therese recovered
consciousness, she had a nervous attack, and burst into heartrending
sobs. It became necessary to put her to bed. Nature assisted the
sinister comedy that had just been performed.

As soon as the young woman became calmer, Laurent entrusting her to
the care of the host and his wife, set out to return to Paris, where
he wished to arrive alone to break the frightful intelligence to Madame
Raquin, with all possible precautions. The truth was that he feared the
nervous feverish excitement of Therese, and preferred to give her time
to reflect, and learn her part.

It was the boating men who sat down to the dinner prepared for Camille.

Laurent, in the dark corner of the omnibus that took him back to Paris,
continued perfecting his plan. He was almost certain of impunity, and
he felt heavy, anxious joy, the joy of having got over the crime. On
reaching the gate at Clichy, he hailed a cab, and drove to the residence
of old Michaud in the Rue de Seine. It was nine o'clock at night when he
arrived.

He found the former commissary of police at table, in the company of
Olivier and Suzanne. The motive of his visit was to seek protection, in
case he should be suspected, and also to escape breaking the frightful
news to Madame Raquin himself. Such an errand was strangely repugnant to
him. He anticipated encountering such terrible despair that he feared he
would be unable to play his part with sufficient tears. Then the grief
of this mother weighed upon him, although at the bottom of his heart, he
cared but little about it.

When Michaud saw him enter, clothed in coarse-looking garments that were
too tight for him, he questioned him with his eyes, and Laurent gave an
account of the accident in a broken voice, as if exhausted with grief
and fatigue.

"I have come to you," said he in conclusion, "because I do not know what
to do about the two poor women so cruelly afflicted. I dare not go to
the bereaved mother alone, and want you to accompany me."

As he spoke, Olivier looked at him fixedly, and with so straight a
glance that he terrified him. The murderer had flung himself head down
among these people belonging to the police, with an audacity calculated
to save him. But he could not repress a shudder as he felt their eyes
examining him. He saw distrust where there was naught but stupor and
pity.

Suzanne weaker and paled than usual, seemed ready to faint. Olivier, who
was alarmed at the idea of death, but whose heart remained absolutely
cold, made a grimace expressing painful surprise, while by habit
he scrutinised the countenance of Laurent, without having the least
suspicion of the sinister truth. As to old Michaud, he uttered
exclamations of fright, commiseration, and astonishment; he fidgeted
on his chair, joined his hands together, and cast up his eyes to the
ceiling.

"Ah! good heavens," said he in a broken voice, "ah! good heavens, what
a frightful thing! To leave one's home, and die, like that, all of a
sudden. It's horrible. And that poor Madame Raquin, his mother, whatever
shall we say to her? Certainly, you were quite right to come and find
us. We will go with you."

Rising from his seat, he walked hither and thither about the apartment,
stamping with his feet, in search of his hat and walking-stick; and, as
he bustled from corner to corner, he made Laurent repeat the details of
the catastrophe, giving utterance to fresh exclamations at the end of
each sentence.

At last all four went downstairs. On reaching the entrance to the Arcade
of the Pont Neuf, Laurent was stopped by Michaud.

"Do not accompany us any further," said he; "your presence would be a
sort of brutal avowal which must be avoided. The wretched mother would
suspect a misfortune, and this would force us to confess the truth
sooner than we ought to tell it to her. Wait for us here."