Doctor Pascal Part 29

"No, no; to-morrow we shall love each other as we love each other to-day. Love me with all your strength, as I love you."

And never had they eaten with more relish. She displayed the appet.i.te of a healthy young girl with a good digestion; she ate the potatoes with a hearty appet.i.te, laughing, thinking them delicious, better than the most vaunted delicacies. He, too, recovered the appet.i.te of his youthful days. They drank with delight deep draughts of pure water. Then the grapes for dessert filled them with admiration; these grapes so fresh, this blood of the earth which the sun had touched with gold. They ate to excess; they became drunk on water and fruit, and more than all on gaiety. They did not remember ever before to have enjoyed such a feast together; even the famous breakfast they had made, with its luxuries of cutlets and bread and wine, had not given them this intoxication, this joy in living, when to be together was happiness enough, changing the china to dishes of gold, and the miserable food to celestial fare such as not even the G.o.ds enjoyed.

It was now quite dark, but they did not light the lamp. Through the wide open windows they could see the vast summer sky. The night breeze entered, still warm and laden with a faint odor of lavender. The moon had just risen above the horizon, large and round, flooding the room with a silvery light, in which they saw each other as in a dream light infinitely bright and sweet.

XI.

But on the following day their disquietude all returned. They were now obliged to go in debt. Martine obtained on credit bread, wine, and a little meat, much to her shame, be it said, forced as she was to maneuver and tell lies, for no one was ignorant of the ruin that had overtaken the house. The doctor had indeed thought of mortgaging La Souleiade, but only as a last resource. All he now possessed was this property, which was worth twenty thousand francs, but for which he would perhaps not get fifteen thousand, if he should sell it; and when these should be spent black want would be before them, the street, without even a stone of their own on which to lay their heads. Clotilde therefore begged Pascal to wait and not to take any irrevocable step so long as things were not utterly desperate.

Three or four days pa.s.sed. It was the beginning of September, and the weather unfortunately changed; terrible storms ravaged the entire country; a part of the garden wall was blown down, and as Pascal was unable to rebuild it, the yawning breach remained. Already they were beginning to be rude at the baker's. And one morning the old servant came home with the meat from the butcher's in tears, saying that he had given her the refuse. A few days more and they would be unable to obtain anything on credit. It had become absolutely necessary to consider how they should find the money for their small daily expenses.

One Monday morning, the beginning of another week of torture, Clotilde was very restless. A struggle seemed to be going on within her, and it was only when she saw Pascal refuse at breakfast his share of a piece of beef which had been left over from the day before that she at last came to a decision. Then with a calm and resolute air, she went out after breakfast with Martine, after quietly putting into the basket of the latter a little package--some articles of dress which she was giving her, she said.

When she returned two hours later she was very pale. But her large eyes, so clear and frank, were s.h.i.+ning. She went up to the doctor at once and made her confession.

"I must ask your forgiveness, master, for I have just been disobeying you, and I know that I am going to pain you greatly."

"Why, what have you been doing?" he asked uneasily, not understanding what she meant.

Slowly, without removing her eyes from him, she drew from her pocket an envelope, from which she took some bank-notes. A sudden intuition enlightened him, and he cried:

"Ah, my G.o.d! the jewels, the presents I gave you!"

And he, who was usually so good-tempered and gentle, was convulsed with grief and anger. He seized her hands in his, crus.h.i.+ng with almost brutal force the fingers which held the notes.

"My G.o.d! what have you done, unhappy girl? It is my heart that you have sold, both our hearts, that had entered into those jewels, which you have given with them for money! The jewels which I gave you, the souvenirs of our divinest hours, your property, yours only, how can you wish me to take them back, to turn them to my profit? Can it be possible--have you thought of the anguish that this would give me?"

"And you, master," she answered gently, "do you think that I could consent to our remaining in the unhappy situation in which we are, in want of everything, while I had these rings and necklaces and earrings laid away in the bottom of a drawer? Why, my whole being would rise in protest. I should think myself a miser, a selfish wretch, if I had kept them any longer. And, although it was a grief for me to part with them--ah, yes, I confess it, so great a grief that I could hardly find the courage to do it--I am certain that I have only done what I ought to have done as an obedient and loving woman."

And as he still grasped her hands, tears came to her eyes, and she added in the same gentle voice and with a faint smile:

"Don't press so hard; you hurt me."

Then repentant and deeply moved, Pascal, too, wept.

"I am a brute to get angry in this way. You acted rightly; you could not do otherwise. But forgive me; it was hard for me to see you despoil yourself. Give me your hands, your poor hands, and let me kiss away the marks of my stupid violence."

He took her hands again in his tenderly; he covered them with kisses; he thought them inestimably precious, so delicate and bare, thus stripped of their rings. Consoled now, and joyous, she told him of her escapade--how she had taken Martine into her confidence, and how both had gone to the dealer who had sold him the corsage of point d'Alencon, and how after interminable examining and bargaining the woman had given six thousand francs for all the jewels. Again he repressed a gesture of despair--six thousand francs! when the jewels had cost him more than three times that amount--twenty thousand francs at the very least.

"Listen," he said to her at last; "I will take this money, since, in the goodness of your heart, you have brought it to me. But it is clearly understood that it is yours. I swear to you that I will, for the future, be more miserly than Martine herself. I will give her only the few sous that are absolutely necessary for our maintenance, and you will find in the desk all that may be left of this sum, if I should never be able to complete it and give it back to you entire."

He clasped her in an embrace that still trembled with emotion.

Presently, lowering his voice to a whisper, he said:

"And did you sell everything, absolutely everything?"

Without speaking, she disengaged herself a little from his embrace, and put her fingers to her throat, with her pretty gesture, smiling and blus.h.i.+ng. Finally, she drew out the slender chain on which shone the seven pearls, like milky stars. Then she put it back again out of sight.

He, too, blushed, and a great joy filled his heart. He embraced her pa.s.sionately.

"Ah!" he cried, "how good you are, and how I love you!"

But from this time forth the recollection of the jewels which had been sold rested like a weight upon his heart; and he could not look at the money in his desk without pain. He was haunted by the thought of approaching want, inevitable want, and by a still more bitter thought--the thought of his age, of his sixty years which rendered him useless, incapable of earning a comfortable living for a wife; he had been suddenly and rudely awakened from his illusory dream of eternal love to the disquieting reality. He had fallen unexpectedly into poverty, and he felt himself very old--this terrified him and filled him with a sort of remorse, of desperate rage against himself, as if he had been guilty of a crime. And this embittered his every hour; if through momentary forgetfulness he permitted himself to indulge in a little gaiety his distress soon returned with greater poignancy than ever, bringing with it a sudden and inexplicable sadness. He did not dare to question himself, and his dissatisfaction with himself and his suffering increased every day.

Then a frightful revelation came to him. One morning, when he was alone, he received a letter bearing the Pla.s.sans postmark, the superscription on which he examined with surprise, not recognizing the writing. This letter was not signed; and after reading a few lines he made an angry movement as if to tear it up and throw it away; but he sat down trembling instead, and read it to the end. The style was perfectly courteous; the long phrases rolled on, measured and carefully worded, like diplomatic phrases, whose only aim is to convince. It was demonstrated to him with a superabundance of arguments that the scandal of La Souleiade had lasted too long already. If pa.s.sion, up to a certain point, explained the fault, yet a man of his age and in his situation was rendering himself contemptible by persisting in wrecking the happiness of the young relative whose trustfulness he abused. No one was ignorant of the ascendency which he had acquired over her; it was admitted that she gloried in sacrificing herself for him; but ought he not, on his side, to comprehend that it was impossible that she should love an old man, that what she felt was merely pity and grat.i.tude, and that it was high time to deliver her from this senile love, which would finally leave her with a dishonored name! Since he could not even a.s.sure her a small fortune, the writer hoped he would act like an honorable man, and have the strength to separate from her, through consideration for her happiness, if it were not yet too late. And the letter concluded with the reflection that evil conduct was always punished in the end.

From the first sentence Pascal felt that this anonymous letter came from his mother. Old Mme. Rougon must have dictated it; he could hear in it the very inflections of her voice. But after having begun the letter angry and indignant, he finished it pale and trembling, seized by the s.h.i.+ver which now pa.s.sed through him continually and without apparent cause. The letter was right, it enlightened him cruelly regarding the source of his mental distress, showing him that it was remorse for keeping Clotilde with him, old and poor as he was. He got up and walked over to a mirror, before which he stood for a long time, his eyes gradually filling with tears of despair at sight of his wrinkles and his white beard. The feeling of terror which arose within him, the mortal chill which invaded his heart, was caused by the thought that separation had become necessary, inevitable. He repelled the thought, he felt that he would never have the strength for a separation, but it still returned; he would never now pa.s.s a single day without being a.s.sailed by it, without being torn by the struggle between his love and his reason until the terrible day when he should become resigned, his strength and his tears exhausted. In his present weakness, he trembled merely at the thought of one day having this courage. And all was indeed over, the irrevocable had begun; he was filled with fear for Clotilde, so young and so beautiful, and all there was left him now was the duty of saving her from himself.

Then, haunted by every word, by every phrase of the letter, he tortured himself at first by trying to persuade himself that she did not love him, that all she felt for him was pity and grat.i.tude. It would make the rupture more easy to him, he thought, if he were once convinced that she sacrificed herself, and that in keeping her with him longer he was only gratifying his monstrous selfishness. But it was in vain that he studied her, that he subjected her to proofs, she remained as tender and devoted as ever, making the dreaded decision still more difficult. Then he pondered over all the causes that vaguely, but ceaselessly urged their separation. The life which they had been leading for months past, this life without ties or duties, without work of any sort, was not good. He thought no longer of himself, he considered himself good for nothing now but to go away and bury himself out of sight in some remote corner; but for her was it not an injurious life, a life which would deteriorate her character and weaken her will? And suddenly he saw himself in fancy dying, leaving her alone to perish of hunger in the streets. No, no!

this would be a crime; he could not, for the sake of the happiness of his few remaining days, bequeath to her this heritage of shame and misery.

One morning Clotilde went for a walk in the neighborhood, from which she returned greatly agitated, pale and trembling, and as soon as she was upstairs in the workroom, she almost fainted in Pascal's arms, faltering:

"Oh, my G.o.d! oh, my G.o.d! those women!"

Terrified, he pressed her with questions.

"Come, tell me! What has happened?"

A flush mounted to her face. She flung her arms around his neck and hid her head on his shoulder.

"It was those women! Reaching a shady spot, I was closing my parasol, and I had the misfortune to throw down a child. And they all rose against me, crying out such things, oh, such things--things that I cannot repeat, that I could not understand!"

She burst into sobs. He was livid; he could find nothing to say to her; he kissed her wildly, weeping like herself. He pictured to himself the whole scene; he saw her pursued, hooted at, reviled. Presently he faltered:

"It is my fault, it is through me you suffer. Listen, we will go away from here, far, far away, where we shall not be known, where you will be honored, where you will be happy."

But seeing him weep, she recovered her calmness by a violent effort. And drying her tears, she said:

"Ah! I have behaved like a coward in telling you all this. After promising myself that I would say nothing of it to you. But when I found myself at home again, my anguish was so great that it all came out. But you see now it is all over, don't grieve about it. I love you."

She smiled, and putting her arms about him she kissed him in her turn, trying to soothe his despair.

"I love you. I love you so dearly that it will console me for everything. There is only you in the world, what matters anything that is not you? You are so good; you make me so happy!"

But he continued to weep, and she, too, began to weep again, and there was a moment of infinite sadness, of anguish, in which they mingled their kisses and their tears.

Pascal, when she left him alone for an instant, thought himself a wretch. He could no longer be the cause of misfortune to this child, whom he adored. And on the evening of the same day an event took place which brought about the solution hitherto sought in vain, with the fear of finding it. After dinner Martine beckoned him aside, and gave him a letter, with all sorts of precautions, saying:

"I met Mme. Felicite, and she charged me to give you this letter, monsieur, and she told me to tell you that she would have brought it to you herself, only that regard for her reputation prevented her from returning here. She begs you to send her back M. Maxime's letter, letting her know mademoiselle's answer."

It was, in fact, a letter from Maxime, and Mme. Felicite, glad to have received it, used it as a new means of conquering her son, after having waited in vain for misery to deliver him up to her, repentant and imploring. As neither Pascal nor Clotilde had come to demand aid or succor from her, she had once more changed her plan, returning to her old idea of separating them; and, this time, the opportunity seemed to her decisive. Maxime's letter was a pressing one; he urged his grandmother to plead his cause with his sister. Ataxia had declared itself; he was able to walk now only leaning on his servant's arm. His solitude terrified him, and he urgently entreated his sister to come to him. He wished to have her with him as a rampart against his father's abominable designs; as a sweet and upright woman after all, who would take care of him. The letter gave it to be understood that if she conducted herself well toward him she would have no reason to repent it; and ended by reminding the young girl of the promise she had made him, at the time of his visit to Pla.s.sans, to come to him, if the day ever arrived when he really needed her.

Pascal turned cold. He read the four pages over again. Here an opportunity to separate presented itself, acceptable to him and advantageous for Clotilde, so easy and so natural that they ought to accept it at once; yet, in spite of all his reasoning he felt so weak, so irresolute still that his limbs trembled under him, and he was obliged to sit down for a moment. But he wished to be heroic, and controlling himself, he called to his companion.

"Here!" he said, "read this letter which your grandmother has sent me."