She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, on to which a row of doors opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the latch her strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.
He was in front of the fire, both feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe.
‘What! is that you?’ he said, rising hurriedly.
‘Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice.’ And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her lips.
‘You have not changed; you are as charming as ever!’
‘Oh,’ she replied bitterly, ‘they are poor charms since you disdained them.’
Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.
She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him, so that she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed, in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a third person.
‘No matter!’ she said, looking at him sadly. ‘I have suffered much.’
He replied philosophically – ‘Such is life!’
‘Has life,’ Emma went on, ‘been good to you at least, since our separation?’
‘Oh, neither good nor bad.’
‘Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’
‘You think so?’ she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. ‘Oh, Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!’
It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she said to him – ‘How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you about all that and you will see. And you – you fled from me!’
For all the three years he had carefully avoided her in consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went on with roguish little nods more coaxing than an amorous kitten – ‘You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we’ll begin again, won’t we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!’
And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.
He had drawn her on his knees, and the back of his hand was caressing her smooth hair, where one last ray of the sun in the twilight was mirrored like a golden arrow. She lowered her brow; at last he kissed her gently on the eyelids with the tips of his lips.
‘Why, you have been crying! What for?’
She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of resistance, and then he cried out – ‘Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it? Tell me!’ He was kneeling by her.
‘Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs.’
‘But – but – ’ said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave expression.
‘You know,’ she went on quickly, ‘that my husband had placed his whole fortune at a notary’s. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don’t pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not finished yet; we shall have the money later on. But today we are to be sold up for want of three thousand francs. It is to be at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I have come to you.’
‘Ah!’ thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, ‘that’s what she came for.’ At last he said with a calm air – ‘Dear madame, I have not got them.’
He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive.
First she looked at him for some moments.
‘You have not got them!’ she repeated several times. ‘You have not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me. You are no better than the others.’
She was betraying, ruining herself.
Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was ‘hard up’ himself.
‘Ah! I pity you,’ said Emma. ‘Yes – very much.
And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carbine, that shone against its panoply, ‘But when one is so poor one doesn’t have silver on the butt of one’s gun. One doesn’t buy a clock inlaid with tortoiseshell,’ she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, ‘nor silver-gilt whistles for one’s whips,’ and she touched them, ‘nor charms for one’s watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well. You have a château, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that,’ she cried, taking up two studs from the mantelpiece, ‘Why! one could get money for the least of these trifles! Oh, I don’t want them; keep them!’
And she threw the two links away, and their gold chain broke as it struck the wall.
‘But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile, for a look, to hear you say “Thanks!” And you sit there quietly in your armchair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you, and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you loved me – you said so. And but a moment since – Ah! it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter? it tore my heart! And then when I come back to him – to him, rich, happy, free – to implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would cost him three thousand francs!’
‘I haven’t got them,’ replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm with which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.
She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive château, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the façade.
She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her father, Lheureux’s closet, their room at home, another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory, as wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.
Night was falling, crows were wheeling in the sky.
Suddenly it seemed as if fiery spheres were exploding in the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating her. Everything vanished; she recognised the lights of the houses shining through the mist.
Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the footpath, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop. She was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was burning. Justin in his shirtsleeves was carrying out a dish.
