She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water.
The next day Madame Bovary, senior, arrived. She and her son wept much. Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.
Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much affection for this man whom hitherto he had thought he cared little about. Madame Bovary, senior, was thinking of her husband. The worst days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what she would, became lost in external sensations.
She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered around her. Madame Bovary, senior, was plying her scissors without looking up, and Charles in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking the sand in the walks with her spade.
Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux, the linen-draper, come in through the gate.
He came to offer his services ‘under the sad circumstances.’ Emma answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not to be beaten.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘but I should like to have a private talk with you.’ Then in a low voice, ‘It’s about that affair – you know.’
Charles crimsoned to his ears. ‘Oh, yes! certainly.’ And in his confusion, turning to his wife, ‘Couldn’t you, my darling?’
She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his mother, ‘It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle.’ He did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches.
As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he had to work devilish hard, although he didn’t make enough, in spite of all people said, to find butter for his bread.
Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two days.
‘And so you’re quite well again?’ he went on. ‘My word! I saw your husband in a sad state. He’s a good fellow, though we did have a little misunderstanding.’
She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the dispute about the goods supplied to her.
‘Why, you know well enough,’ cried Lheureux. ‘It was about your little fancies – the travelling trunks.’
He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable manner. Did he suspect anything? She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went on – ‘We made it up, all the same, and I’ve come again to propose another arrangement.’
This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course, would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just now, when he would have a lot of worry. ‘And he would do better to give it over to someone else, – to you, for example. With a power of attorney it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our little business transactions together.’
She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade, Lheureux declared that Madame must require something. He would send her a black barège, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown.
‘The one you’ve on is good enough for the house, but you want another for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I’ve the American eye!’
He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself agreeable, useful, ‘enfeoffing himself’, as Homais would have said, and always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her, but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her illness.
But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her practical good sense. It would be necessary to make enquiries, to look into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction or of liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated the difficulties of settling his father’s affairs so much, that at last one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux’s lessons.
Charles naïvely asked her where this paper came from.
‘Monsieur Guillaumin’; and with the utmost coolness she added, ‘I don’t trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we ought to consult – we only know – no one.’
‘Unless Léon – ’ replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness – ‘No, I will go!’
‘How good you are!’ he said, kissing her forehead.
The next morning she set out in the ‘Hirondelle’ to go to Rouen to consult Monsieur Léon, and she stayed there three days.
3
They were three full, exquisite days – a true honeymoon. They were at the Hôtel de Boulogne, on the quays; and there they lived, with drawn blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups brought to them from early morning.
Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the islands. It was the hour when one hears from the dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hulls of vessels. The tar-smoke rose between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the water undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze.
They rowed down amid moored boats, whose long oblique cables grazed lightly against the bottom of their boat. The din of the town gradually grew distant; the rumble of carriages, the tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet, and they landed on their island.
They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires.
At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder trailing behind plashed ceaselessly against the water.
Once the moon rose; and then they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry.
She even began to sing – ‘One night, do you remember, we were sailing’, etc.
Her faint, musical voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Léon heard pass like the flapping of wings about him.
She was facing him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards Heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.
Léon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said – ‘Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets – everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying, ‘Now tell us something, Adolphe – Dolpe, I think.’
A shudder passed through her.
‘Are you in pain?’ asked Léon, coming closer to her.
‘Oh, it’s nothing! No, doubt it is only the night air.’
‘And who doesn’t want for women, either,’ softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.
