THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
sitting side by side on the tree-trunk, could not distinguish each other’s face; they saw each other indistinctly in the thick shadow cast over them by a clump of tall trees. They sat there for a few minutes without speaking. They were listening to their thoughts. There was no need to tell them aloud.
“You don’t love me, Madeleine,” murmured William at last.
“You are mistaken, my dear,” slowly answered the young woman, “I think I love you. Only I have not had time to ask and answer myself — I should have liked to wait a little longer.”
There was another spell of silence. The young man’s pride was passing through au ordeal: he would have wished to see his loved one fall into his arms of her own accord, not to be induced to do so by a sort of fatality.
“What distresses me,” he replied in a low tone, “is the thought that it is to chance that I owe your presence here — You would not have consented to stay, would you, if the roads had been passable?”
“Oh! you don’t know me,” exclaimed Madeleine: “if I stay, it is because I want to. I would have gone away when the thunderstorm was at its height, rather than have stayed here against my wish.”
She began to look thoughtful; then, in a half-distinct tone, as if she were talking to herself, she added:
“I don’t know what will happen to me later on. I consider myself quite capable of asserting my wishes, but it is so difficult to regulate one’s life.”
She stopped: she was on the point of confessing to William that it was a strange feeling of compassion only which had induced her to stay. Women yield oftener than is thought, out of pity, out of a need which they feel to be kind. She had seen the young man shudder so during the thunderstorm, he had looked at her with such tearful eyes, that she had not felt able to refuse to put herself in his hands.
William saw that this surrender of herself was almost like a gift of charity. All his susceptibilities were aroused, for he felt that an offer of love of this kind was a blow to his pride.
“You are right,” he answered, “we ought to wait a bit longer. Would you like us to start? Now, it is I who am asking you to go back to Paris.”
He spoke in a proud tone. Madeleine noticed the change in his voice.
“Why, what is the matter with you, my dear?” she asked in surprise.
“Let us go,” he repeated, “let us go, I implore you.”
She gave a despondent shrug.
“What is the good now?” she said. “We shall have to come to it sooner or later. Since the day we first met, I have felt myself yours. I had dreamed of burying myself in a convent, I had sworn not to commit a second fault. So long as I only had one lover, I kept my pride. To-day, I feel that I am prostrate in shame. Don’t be angry with me for speaking so frankly.”
She pronounced these words with such sadness that the young man’s pride softened. He became meek and cringing.
“You don’t know who I am,” he said. “Trust yourself to me. I am not like other men. I will love you as my wife, and I will make you happy, I swear to you.”
Madeleine did not answer. She thought she had some experience of life: she said to herself that William would leave her some day, and that shame would come. Still she was strong, and she knew that she could resist; but she felt no inclination for resistance, in spite of the reasonings of her own mind. All her resolutions were giving way in a fatal hour. She was astonished herself at accepting, so easily, what, the day before even, she would have resented with cold energy.
William was thinking. For the first time, the young woman had just spoken to him of her past, had confessed to him that she had had a lover; this lover, the remembrance of whom, living and indelible, he could trace in each gesture, in each word that his companion uttered, this lover seemed to him to set himself between them, now that his spirit had been evoked.
The two remained silent for a long time, resolved to be united and waiting the hour for retiring to rest with singular mistrust. They felt weighed down with oppressive and uneasy thoughts; not a word of love, not a term of endearment rose to their lips; if they had spoken, they would have told one another of their disquietude. William was holding Madeleine’s hand; but it lay cold and motionless in his. He could never have thought that his first love-prattle would have been so full of anxiety. Night was encircling him and his loved one with its shade and its mystery; they were alone, separated from the world, buried in the weird charm of a night of storm, and nothing touched their heartstrings but the fear and uncertainty of the morrow.
And around them, nature, steeped in rain, was tardily going to rest, trembling still with a last thrill of delight. The cool air was pervading everything; the pungent odour of wet mould and leaves was wafted along laden with overpowering intoxicating strength, like the vinous smell from a vat. Every cloud had now disappeared from the sky; the expanse of sombre blue was peopled with a living swarm of stars.
Madeleine gave a sudden shudder.
“I am cold,” she said, “let us go in.’’
They entered the inn without exchanging a word. The landlady showed them up to their room, and left them, leaving on the corner of the table a candle which cast a flickering light on the walls. It was a small room, hung with a vile paper with big blue flowers, faded in big patches by the damp. A large deal bedstead, painted a dull red, took up nearly the whole floor. A chilly air fell from the ceiling, there was a lurking odour of mustiness in the corners. —
The young couple shivered as they entered. They felt as if wet sheets were being put on their shoulders. They remained silent walking about the room. William wanted to close the shutters and fumbled a long time without succeeding; there was something in the way somewhere.
“There is a catch at the top,” said Madeleine in spite of herself.
William looked her in the face, with an instinctive movement. They both turned quite pale. Both suffered from this involuntary confession; the young woman knew of the catch, she had slept in this room.
Next morning Madeleine woke first. She got quietly out of bed and dressed herself watching William who was still sleeping. There was a touch almost of anger in her gaze. An indefinable expression of regret passed over her hard serious brow, which the smile of her lips was powerless to soften. At times she raised her eyes; from her lover’s face she would pass to the inspection of the walls of the room, of certain stains on the ceiling which she knew again. She felt alone, she did not fear to indulge in her memories of the past. At one moment, as she cast her eyes on the pillow where William’s head was reposing, she shuddered as if she had expected to find another head there.
When she was dressed, she went and opened the window and leaned with her elbows on the sill, gazing on the fields now yellow in the sunlight. She had mused there nearly half an hour, her brow refreshed, her face relaxed by calmer thoughts, by distant hopes, when a slight noise made her turn round.
The sleeper had just awoke. His eyes still heavy with slumber, with a vague smile of awakening on his lips, that sweet smile of recognition on the morrow of a night of love, he held out his arms to Madeleine as she approached.
“Do you love me?” he asked her in a low deep tone.
She smiled in her turn, one of her fond loving girlish smiles. The room passed from her vision, she felt pervaded with tenderness at the young fellow’s endearing question.
She returned William’s kiss.
CHAPTER II.
Madeleine Férat was the daughter of a machine-maker. Her father, who was born in a little village in the mountains of Auvergne, came barefooted and with empty pockets, to seek his fortune in Paris. He was one of those thickset broad-shouldered Auvergnians, with a dogged obstinacy for work. He put himself apprentice to a machine-maker, and there, for nearly ten years, he filed and hammered with all the might his hard hands were capable of. Sou by sou he amassed