‘I know that well enough. Leave me alone.’
She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and when Charles came in she would have to say to him – ‘Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I, poor man, who have ruined you.’
Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.
‘Yes,’ she murmured, grinding her teeth, ‘he will forgive me, he who would give me a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never! never!’
This thought of Bovary’s superiority to her exasperated her. Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately, tomorrow he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Lheureux’s seized her – what would be the use? To write to her father – it was too late; and perhaps she began to repent now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go into the tax-collector’s.
She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to the attic, where, hidden by some linen spread across props, they stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet’s room.
He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece – he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels turned and droned; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.
‘Ah! there she is!’ exclaimed Madame Tuvache.
But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word ‘francs,’ and Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice – ‘She is begging him to give her time to pay her taxes.’
‘Apparently!’ replied the other.
They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the candlesticks, the bannister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked his beard with satisfaction.
‘Do you think she wants to order something of him?’ said Madame Tuvache.
‘Why, he doesn’t sell anything,’ objected her neighbour.
The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.
‘Is she making him advances?’ said Madame Tuvache.
Binet was scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands.
‘Oh, it’s too much!’
And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the tax-collector – yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for the cross – suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying – ‘Madame! what do you mean?’
‘Women like that ought to be whipped,’ said Madame Tuvache.
‘But where is she?’ continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.
‘Mère Rollet,’ she said on reaching the nurse’s, ‘I am choking; unlace me!’ She fell on the bed sobbing. Mére Rollet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing beside her. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning her flax.
‘Oh, leave off!’ she murmured, fancying she heard Binet’s lathe.
‘What’s bothering her?’ said the nurse to herself. ‘Why has she come here?’
She had rushed thither, impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from her home.
Lying motionless on her back, with staring eyes, she saw things but vaguely, although she tried to with inane persistence. She stared at the scales on the walls, at two brands smoking end to end, at a long spider crawling over her head in the hollow of the roof tree. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She remembered – one day – Léon – Oh! how long ago that was – the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to recall the day before.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
Mère Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying – ‘Nearly three.’
‘Ah! thanks, thanks!’
For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would, perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was there, and she told the nurse to run to her house to fetch him.
‘Be quick!’
‘But, my dear lady, I’m going, I’m going!’
She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first. Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And already she saw herself at Lheureux’s spreading out her three bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to Bovary. What should it be?
The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mère Rollet said to her – ‘There is no one at your house!’
‘What?’
‘Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they’re looking for you.’
Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, blind to the fact that she was hastening to offer herself to the very thing which had so lately infuriated her, quite unconscious of her prostitution.
8
She wondered as she walked, ‘What am I going to say? How shall I begin?’ And as she went on she began to recognise the thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the château yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow dripped from the buds to the grass.
She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached the avenue bordered by its double row of dense lime trees. They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought out no one.
