Читать книгу The Complete Works of Emile Zola - Emile Zola - Страница 82

HOSTILITIES ARE RENEWED

BLANCHE passed her days in tears. The autumn was giving a pale hue to the melancholy horizon, the season was becoming cold and dreary. Chill blasts stirred the sea whose voice had changed into a wail, whilst the trees were casting their leaves upon the ground. Beneath the mournful nudity of the heavens lay the bareness of the sea and shore.

This sadness of the air, this last farewell of summer spread over Blanche’s surroundings the despair which already filled her heart. She led a retired life in the little house by the shore. It was situated a short distance from the village of Saint Henri, stood alone upon a cliff and overlooked the sea which beat against the rocks beneath the windows. Blanche would spend whole days together watching and listening to the waves, whose constant noise soothed her sufferings. This was her sole diversion; she followed with her eyes the great sheets of foam which broke and leapt into the air; her aching being found relief in presence of the mild and monotonous immensity.

Occasionally of an evening she would go out, accompanied by her companion. She would descend to the seashore and seat herself on a fragment of rock. The cool night breeze calmed the fever that was consuming her. She would linger in the darkness, deafened by the breaking of the waves upon the beach, and not return home until she was shivering with the cold. The same thought was ever oppressing her. At each succeeding hour it was there, overwhelming, inexorable. In the chilliness of the night or the warmth of the day, in presence of the infinite or before the void of darkness, Blanche thought of Philippe and her unborn babe.

Fine was her great consoler. If the flower-girl had not consented to spend the Sunday afternoons with her, the poor young creature would have died of despair. She felt an imperious need of confiding her grief to some kind soul. Solitude frightened her; for, when she found herself alone again, her remorse rose before her like a spectre and filled her with terror. Directly Fine arrived, they both went up to a little room where they shut themselves in to talk and weep undisturbed. The window stood open, and far away, on the blue velvet of the sea, white sails would pass like messengers of hope. And, on each occasion, the same tears were shed, the same words spoken, heartrending and pathetic.

“Oh! how gloomy life is,” said Blanche. “I’ve been thinking all day of the hours I passed with Philippe among the rocks of Jaumegarde and the Infernets. I ought to have killed myself in those gulfs, have fallen down some precipice.”

“Why be always weeping, ever regretting?” Fine gently replied. “You’re no longer a little girl, and have sacred duties to fulfil. For heaven’s sake, think of the present, and no longer linger in an ever irreparable past. You will end by making yourself ill, by killing your child.”

Blanche shuddered.

“Kill my child!” she resumed, amidst her sobs. “Do not say that. The child must live to atone for my transgression and obtain my pardon. Ah! Philippe was right when he said that I should belong to him for ever. Though I denied him, I have vainly tried to tear the memory of him from my heart. My pride has been crushed, and I have been obliged to yield to the love filled with remorse which is torturing me. And, today, I love Philippe more than ever I did before, with all my regrets and all my despair.”

Fine said nothing. She would have liked to have seen Blanche stronger and prepared for the difficult task maternity was about to bring her. But Mademoiselle de Cazalis was always the poor, weak creature who could do nothing but cry. The flower-girl determined to act herself when the time came.

“If you knew,” continued Blanche, “how I suffer when you’re not here! I feel Philippe torturing me: he lives again in my child, and is ever with me, reproaching me with my perjury. He is always before me, or about me. I can see him on his pallet, in his cell, I hear him complaining and cursing me. I would I had no heart, then I might live in peace.”

“Come, you must be calm,” said Fine.

With such despair consolation is often powerless. The young woman assisted with a certain terror at these scenes of distress. She studied Blanche’s shattered love like a physician studies some strange and terrible malady, and said to herself: “That is how one suffers, that is what one becomes, when one loves timidly.”

One day, when in one of her fits of despair, Blanche said in a broken voice, with her eyes fixed upon her companion:

“You are going to marry him, are you not?”

Fine did not at first understand Blanche, who added hastily:

“Hide nothing from me. I would rather know all. You are a good girl and will make him happy, and I prefer to see him married to you than to know he is gadding about Marseille. When I am dead, tell him that I always loved him.”

And she burst into sobs. The flower-girl gently took her hands.

“I beg you,” she said, “think no more of your lover, but think of your child. If possible, forget everything for it. Besides, be easy, I shall never marry Philippe, though I may become his sister — “

“His sister?” interrupted Mademoiselle de Cazalis.

“Yes,” answered Fine, smiling sweetly as she thought of Marius. “I love and am beloved.”

And she told her the story of her love, appeasing her fever by speaking to her of Marius. As she listened to the recital of this peaceful courtship, Blanche’s tears fell less fast. From that day forth, she loved Fine far more; she felt only a faint sadness when thinking of Philippe, and determined to devote herself to her child. True love, the devoted generous love of her friend had entered her heart.

Sometimes, Fine found Abbé Chastanier in the little house on the cliff. The priest took Blanche the consolations of religion; he sustained her by talking to her of Heaven, by withdrawing her thoughts from the world and its passions. He would have liked to have seen Mademoiselle de Cazalis enter a convent, for he felt that there was no longer any happiness possible for her amid the pleasures of society. She would have to remain everlastingly a widow, and she did not possess the strength of mind necessary to make herself a peaceful existence in her widowhood. But the poor priest was very ignorant of matters relating to the heart. Blanche much preferred to weep with Fine whilst talking of Philippe, than to listen to Abbé Chastanier’s sermons. Yet the old man spoke to her at times in profound accents, and the girl looked at him with surprise, seized with a desire to penetrate into the peaceful world in which he lived. She wished to kneel down, to remain for ever in obeisance, absorbed in an ecstasy that would have delivered her from all her sufferings. It was thus that she became little by little that which she was destined to be, a servant of God, one of those holy women whom the world has wounded and who ascend to heaven before their death.

One day, Abbé Chastanier remained till evening, and left with Fine. He had to tell the flower-girl some bad news which he did not wish to mention before Blanche. He found Marius on the shore awaiting his sweetheart.

“My dear child,” he said, “there is more trouble in store for you. M. de Cazalis wrote to me yesterday. He is much surprised that the sentence pronounced against your brother has not yet been carried out, and informs me he is taking steps to hasten the date of the public exhibition in the pillory. How are you getting on? Do you hope soon to secure the prisoner’s release?”

“Well, no,” replied Marius sorrowfully, “I am no farther advanced than on the first day. I hoped to have still at least six weeks before me.”

“I do not think,” the abbé resumed, “that M. de Cazalis will be able to induce the president to break faith with us. Besides, our interview has remained secret, and that makes me believe that the exhibition will not take place till the end of December, as promised. But I advise you to make haste. One can never say what may happen, and I thought it right to let you know what I had been told.”

Fine and Marius were in dismay. They returned to Marseille with the priest, silently and again a prey to their anguish. Their love had in a sense blinded them during a week, and now they once more beheld the same abyss before them.