The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
was due to savings effected during the year in view of the event. Her contribution was forty thousand francs, which she said had been left her by Forestier.
She returned to him as a subject of conversation. “He was a very steady, economical, hard-working fellow. He would have made a fortune in a very short time.”
Duroy no longer listened, wholly absorbed by other thoughts. She stopped from time to time to follow out some inward train of ideas, and then went on: “In three or four years you can be easily earning thirty to forty thousand francs a year. That is what Charles would have had if he had lived.”
George, who began to find the lecture rather a long one, replied: “I thought we were not going to Rouen to talk about him.”
She gave him a slight tap on the cheek, saying, with a laugh: “That is so. I am in the wrong.”
He made a show of sitting with his hands on his knees like a very good boy.
“You look very like a simpleton like that,” said she.
He replied: “That is my part, of which, by the way, you reminded me just now, and I shall continue to play it.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because it is you who take management of the household, and even of me. That, indeed, concerns you, as being a widow.”
She was amazed, saying: “What do you really mean?”
“That you have an experience that should enlighten my ignorance, and matrimonial practice that should polish up my bachelor innocence, that’s all.”
“That is too much,” she exclaimed.
He replied: “That is so. I don’t know anything about ladies; no, and you know all about gentlemen, for you are a widow. You must undertake my education — this evening — and you can begin at once if you like.”
She exclaimed, very much amused: “Oh, indeed, if you reckon on me for that!”
He repeated, in the tone of a school boy stumbling through his lesson: “Yes, I do. I reckon that you will give me solid information — in twenty lessons. Ten for the elements, reading and grammar; ten for finishing accomplishments. I don’t know anything myself.”
She exclaimed, highly amused: “You goose.”
He replied: “If that is the familiar tone you take, I will follow your example, and tell you, darling, that I adore you more and more every moment, and that I find Rouen a very long way off.”
He spoke now with a theatrical intonation and with a series of changes of facial expression, which amused his companion, accustomed to the ways of literary Bohemia. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, finding him really charming, and experiencing the longing we have to pluck a fruit from the tree at once, and the check of reason which advises us to wait till dinner to eat it at the proper time. Then she observed, blushing somewhat at the thoughts which assailed her: “My dear little pupil, trust my experience, my great experience. Kisses in a railway train are not worth anything. They only upset one.” Then she blushed still more as she murmured: “One should never eat one’s corn in the ear.”
He chuckled, kindling at the double meanings from her pretty mouth, and made the sign of the cross, with a movement of the lips, as though murmuring a prayer, adding aloud: “I have placed myself under the protection of St. Anthony, patron-saint of temptations. Now I am adamant.”
Night was stealing gently on, wrapping in its transparent shadow, like a fine gauze, the broad landscape stretching away to the right. The train was running along the Seine, and the young couple began to watch the crimson reflections on the surface of the river, winding like a broad strip of polished metal alongside the line, patches fallen from the sky, which the departing sun had kindled into flame. These reflections slowly died out, grew deeper, faded sadly. The landscape became dark with that sinister thrill, that deathlike quiver, which each twilight causes to pass over the earth. This evening gloom, entering the open window, penetrated the two souls, but lately so lively, of the now silent pair.
They had drawn more closely together to watch the dying day. At Nantes the railway people had lit the little oil lamp, which shed its yellow, trembling light upon the drab cloth of the cushions. Duroy passed his arms round the waist of his wife, and clasped her to him. His recent keen desire had become a softened one, a longing for consoling little caresses, such as we lull children with.
He murmured softly: “I shall love you very dearly, my little Made.”
The softness of his voice stirred the young wife, and caused a rapid thrill to run through her. She offered her mouth, bending towards him, for he was resting his cheek upon the warm pillow of her bosom, until the whistle of the train announced that they were nearing a station. She remarked, flattening the ruffled locks about her forehead with the tips of her fingers: “It was very silly. We are quite childish.”
But he was kissing her hands in turn with feverish rapidity, and replied: “I adore you, my little Made.”
Until they reached Rouen they remained almost motionless, cheek against cheek, their eyes turned to the window, through which, from time to time, the lights of houses could be seen in the darkness, satisfied with feeling themselves so close to one another, and with the growing anticipation of a freer and more intimate embrace.
They put up at a hotel overlooking the quay, and went to bed after a very hurried supper.
The chambermaid aroused them next morning as it was striking eight. When they had drank the cup of tea she had placed on the night-table, Duroy looked at his wife, then suddenly, with the joyful impulse of the fortunate man who has just found a treasure, he clasped her in his arms, exclaiming: “My little Made, I am sure that I love you ever so much, ever so much, ever so much.”
She smiled with her confident and satisfied smile, and murmured, as she returned his kisses: “And I too — perhaps.”
But he still felt uneasy about the visit of his parents. He had already forewarned his wife, had prepared and lectured her, but he thought fit to do so again.
“You know,” he said, “they are only rustics — country rustics, not theatrical ones.”
She laughed.
“But I know that: you have told me so often enough. Come, get up and let me get up.”
He jumped out of bed, and said, as he drew on his socks:
“We shall be very uncomfortable there, very uncomfortable. There is only an old straw palliasse in my room. Spring mattresses are unknown at Canteleu.”
She seemed delighted.
“So much the better. It will be delightful to sleep badly — beside — beside you, and to be woke up by the crowing of the cocks.”
She had put on her dressing-gown — a white flannel dressing-gown — which Duroy at once recognized. The sight of it was unpleasant to him. Why? His wife had, he was aware, a round dozen of these morning garments. She could not destroy her trousseau in order to buy a new one. No matter, he would have preferred that her bed-linen, her night-linen, her underclothing were not the same she had made use of with the other. It seemed to him that the soft, warm stuff must have retained something from its contact with Forestier.
He walked to the window, lighting a cigarette. The sight of the port, the broad stream covered with vessels with tapering spars, the steamers noisily unloading alongside the quay, stirred him, although he had been acquainted with it all for a long time past, and he exclaimed: “By Jove! it is a fine sight.”
Madeleine approached, and placing both hands on one of her husband’s shoulders, leaned against him with careless grace, charmed and delighted. She kept repeating: “Oh! how pretty, how pretty. I did not know that there were so many ships as that.”
They started an hour later, for they were to lunch with the old people, who had been forewarned some days beforehand. A rusty open