Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

About three o'clock the next afternoon, La Teuse and Brother Archangias,
who were chatting on the parsonage-steps, saw Doctor Pascal's gig come
at full gallop through the village. The whip was being vigorously
brandished from beneath the lowered hood.

'Where can he be off to at that rate?' murmured the old servant. 'He
will break his neck.'

The gig had just reached the rising ground on which the church was
built. Suddenly, the horse reared and stopped, and the doctor's head,
with its long white hair all dishevelled appeared from under the hood.

'Is Serge there?' he cried, in a voice full of indignant excitement.

La Teuse had stepped to the edge of the hill. 'Monsieur le Cure is in
his room,' she said. 'He must be reading his breviary. Do you want to
speak to him? Shall I call him?'

Uncle Pascal, who seemed almost distracted, made an angry gesture with
his whip hand. Bending still further forward, at the risk of falling
out, he replied:

'Ah! he's reading his breviary, is he? No! no! don't call him. I should
strangle him, and that would do no good. I wanted to tell him that
Albine was dead. Dead! do you hear me? Tell him, from me, that she is
dead!'

And he drove off, lashing his horse so fiercely that it almost bolted.
But, twenty paces away, he pulled up again, and once more stretching out
his head, cried loudly:

'Tell him, too, from me, that she was _enceinte_! It will please him to
know that.'

Then the gig rolled on wildly again, jolting dangerously as it ascended
the stony hill that led to the Paradou. La Teuse was quite dumbfounded.
But Brother Archangias sniggered and looked at her with savage delight
glittering in his eyes. She noticed this at last, and thrust him away
from her, almost making him fall down the steps.

'Be off with you!' she stammered, full of anger, seeking to relieve her
feelings by abusing him. 'I shall grow to hate you. Is it possible to
rejoice at any one's death? I wasn't fond of the girl, myself; but it is
very sad to die at her age. Be off with you, and don't go on sniggering
like that, or I will throw my scissors in your face!'

It was only about one o'clock that a peasant, who had gone to Plassans
to sell vegetables, had told Doctor Pascal of Albine's death, and had
added that Jeanbernat wished to see him. The doctor now was feeling a
little relieved by what he had just shouted as he passed the parsonage.
He had gone out of his way expressly to give himself that satisfaction.
He reproached himself for the death of the girl as for a crime in which
he had participated. All along the road he had never ceased overwhelming
himself with insults, and though he wiped the tears from his eyes that
he might see where to guide his horse, he ever angrily drove his gig
over heaps of stones, as if hoping that he would overturn himself and
break one of his limbs. However, when he reached the long lane that
skirted the endless wall of the park, a glimmer of hope broke upon him.
Perhaps Albine was only in a dead faint. The peasant had told him that
she had suffocated herself with flowers. Ah! if he could only get there
in time, if he could only save her! And he lashed his horse ferociously
as though he were lashing himself.

It was a lovely day. The pavilion was all bathed in sunlight, just as it
had been in the fair spring-time. But the leaves of the ivy which
mounted to the roof were spotted and patched with rust, and bees no
longer buzzed round the tall gilliflowers. Doctor Pascal hastily
tethered his horse and pushed open the gate of the little garden. All
around still prevailed that perfect silence amidst which Jeanbernat had
been wont to smoke his pipe; but, to-day, the old man was no longer
seated on his bench watching his lettuces.

'Jeanbernat!' called the doctor.

No one answered. Then, on entering the vestibule, he saw something that
he had never seen before. At the end of the passage, below the dark
staircase, was a door opening into the Paradou, and he could see the
vast garden spreading there beneath the pale sunlight, with all its
autumn melancholy, its sere and yellow foliage. The doctor hurried
through the doorway and took a few steps over the damp grass.

'Ah! it is you, doctor!' said Jeanbernat in a calm voice.

The old man was digging a hole at the foot of a mulberry-tree. He had
straightened his tall figure on hearing the approach of footsteps. But
he promptly betook himself to his task again, throwing out at each
effort a huge mass of rich soil.

'What are you doing there?' asked Doctor Pascal.

Jeanbernat straightened himself again and wiped the sweat off his face
with the sleeve of his jacket. 'I am digging a hole,' he answered
simply. 'She always loved the garden, and it will please her to sleep
here.'

The doctor nearly choked with emotion. For a moment he stood by the edge
of the grave, incapable of speaking, but watching Jeanbernat as the
other sturdily dug on.

'Where is she?' he asked at last.

'Up there, in her room. I left her on the bed. I should like you to go
and listen to her heart before she is put away in here. I listened
myself, but I couldn't hear anything at all.'

The doctor went upstairs. The room had not been disturbed. Only a window
had been opened. There the withered flowers, stifled by their own
perfumes, exhaled but the faint odour of dead beauty. Within the alcove,
however, there still hung an asphyxiating warmth, which seemed to
trickle into the room and gradually disperse in tiny puffs. Albine,
snowy-pale, with her hands upon her heart and a smile playing over her
face, lay sleeping on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. And she was
quite happy, since she was quite dead. Standing by the bedside, the
doctor gazed at her for a long time, with a keen expression such as
comes into the eyes of scientists who attempt to work resurrections. But
he did not even disturb her clasped hands. He kissed her brow, on the
spot where her latent maternity had already set a slight shadow. Below,
in the garden, Jeanbernat was still driving his spade into the ground in
heavy, regular fashion.

A quarter of an hour later, however, the old man came upstairs. He had
completed his work. He found the doctor seated by the bedside, buried in
such a deep reverie that he did not seem conscious of the heavy tears
that were trickling down his cheeks.

The two men only glanced at each other. Then, after an interval of
silence, Jeanbernat slowly said:

'Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all
mere nonsense.'

He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from
the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine's skirts.

'The flowers,' he said, 'live only for a day, while the rough nettles,
like me, wear out the very stones amidst which they spring. . . . Now
it's all over; I can kick the bucket; I am nearly distracted. My last
ray of sunlight has been snuffed out. It's all nonsense, as I said
before.'

He threw himself upon one of the chairs in his turn. He did not shed a
tear; he bore himself with rigid despair, like some automaton whose
mechanism is broken. Mechanically he reached out his hand and took a
book that lay on the little table strewn with violets. It was one of the
books stored away in the loft, an odd volume of Holbach,* which he had
been reading since the morning, while watching by Albine's body. As the
doctor still remained silent, buried in distressful thought, he began to
turn its pages over. But a sadden idea occurred to him.

* Doubtless Holbach's now forgotten _Catechism of Nature_, into
which M. Zola himself may well have peeped whilst writing this
story.--ED.

'If you will help me,' he said to the doctor, 'we will carry her
downstairs, and bury her with all her flowers.'

Uncle Pascal shuddered. Then he explained to the old man that it was not
allowed for one to keep the dead in that fashion.

'What! it isn't allowed!' cried Jeanbernat. 'Well, then, I will allow it
myself! Doesn't she belong to me? Isn't she mine? Do you think I am
going to let the priests walk off with her? Let them try, if they want
to get a shot from my gun!'

He sprang to his feet and waved his book about with a terrible gesture.
But the doctor caught hold of his hands and clasped them within his own,
beseeching him to be calm. And for a long time he talked to him, saying
all that he had upon his mind. He blamed himself, made fragmentary
confessions of his fault, and vaguely hinted at those who had killed
Albine.

'Listen,' he said in conclusion, 'she is yours no longer; you must give
her up.'

But Jeanbernat shook his head, and again waved his hand in token of
refusal. However, his obstinate resolution was shaken; and at last he
said:

'Well, well, let them take her, and may she break their arms for them! I
only wish that she could rise up out of the ground and kill them all
with fright. . . . By the way. I have a little business to settle over
there. I will go to-morrow. . . . Good-bye, then, doctor. The hole will
do for me.'

And, when the doctor had left, he again sat down by the dead girl's
side, and gravely resumed the perusal of his book.

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