Therese Raquin: Chapter 10

Chapter 10

More than three weeks passed. Laurent came to the shop every evening,
looking weary and unwell. A light bluish circle surrounded his eyes, and
his lips were becoming pale and chapped. Otherwise, he still maintained
his obtuse tranquillity, he looked Camille in the face, and showed him
the same frank friendship. Madame Raquin pampered the friend of the
family the more, now that she saw him giving way to a sort of low fever.

Therese had resumed her mute, glum countenance and manner. She was more
motionless, more impenetrable, more peaceful than ever. She did not seem
to trouble herself in the least about Laurent. She barely looked at
him, rarely exchanged a word with him, treating him with perfect
indifference. Madame Raquin, who in her goodness of heart, felt pained
at this attitude, sometimes said to the young man:

"Do not pay attention to the manner of my niece, I know her; her face
appears cold, but her heart is warm with tenderness and devotedness."

The two sweethearts had no more meetings. Since the evening in the
Rue Saint-Victor they had not met alone. At night, when they found
themselves face to face, placid in appearance and like strangers to one
another, storms of passion and dismay passed beneath the calm flesh of
their countenance. And while with Therese, there were outbursts of fury,
base ideas, and cruel jeers, with Laurent there were sombre brutalities,
and poignant indecisions. Neither dared search to the bottom of their
beings, to the bottom of that cloudy fever that filled their brains with
a sort of thick and acrid vapour.

When they could press the hands of one another behind a door, without
speaking, they did so, fit to crush them, in a short rough clasp. They
would have liked, mutually, to have carried off strips of their flesh
clinging to their fingers. They had naught but this pressure of hands
to appease their feelings. They put all their souls into them, and asked
for nothing more from one another. They waited.

One Thursday evening, before sitting down to the game of dominoes, the
guests of the Raquin family had a chat, as usual. A favourite subject
of conversation was afforded by the experiences of old Michaud who was
plied with questions respecting the strange and sinister adventures
with which he must have been connected in the discharge of his former
functions. Then Grivet and Camille listened to the stories of the
commissary with the affrighted and gaping countenances of small children
listening to "Blue Beard" or "Tom Thumb." These tales terrified and
amused them.

On this particular Thursday, Michaud, who had just given an account of
a horrible murder, the details of which had made his audience shudder,
added as he wagged his head:

"And a great deal never comes out at all. How many crimes remain
undiscovered! How many murderers escape the justice of man!"

"What!" exclaimed Grivet astonished, "you think there are foul creatures
like that walking about the streets, people who have murdered and are
not arrested?"

Olivier smiled with an air of disdain.

"My dear sir," he answered in his dictatorial tone, "if they are not
arrested it is because no one is aware that they have committed a
murder."

This reasoning did not appear to convince Grivet, and Camille came to
his assistance.

"I am of the opinion of M. Grivet," said he, with silly importance. "I
should like to believe that the police do their duty, and that I never
brush against a murderer on the pavement."

Olivier considered this remark a personal attack.

"Certainly the police do their duty," he exclaimed in a vexed tone.
"Still we cannot do what is impossible. There are wretches who have
studied crime at Satan's own school; they would escape the Divinity
Himself. Isn't that so, father?"

"Yes, yes," confirmed old Michaud. "Thus, while I was at Vernon--you
perhaps remember the incident, Madame Raquin--a wagoner was murdered
on the highway. The corpse was found cut in pieces, at the bottom of a
ditch. The authorities were never able to lay hands on the culprit. He
is perhaps still living at this hour. Maybe he is our neighbour, and
perhaps M. Grivet will meet him on his way home."

Grivet turned pale as a sheet. He dared not look round. He fancied the
murderer of the wagoner was behind him. But for that matter, he was
delighted to feel afraid.

"Well, no," he faltered, hardly knowing what he said, "well, no, I
cannot believe that. But I also have a story: once upon a time a servant
was put in prison for stealing a silver spoon and fork belonging to
her master and mistress. Two months afterwards, while a tree was being
felled, the knife and fork were discovered in the nest of a magpie. It
was the magpie who was the thief. The servant was released. You see that
the guilty are always punished."

Grivet triumphed. Olivier sneered.

"Then, they put the magpie in prison," said he.

"That is not what M. Grivet meant to say," answered Camille, annoyed to
see his chief turned into ridicule. "Mother, give us the dominoes."

While Madame Raquin went to fetch the box, the young man, addressing
Michaud, continued:

"Then you admit the police are powerless, that there are murderers
walking about in the sunshine?"

"Unfortunately, yes," answered the commissary.

"It is immoral," concluded Grivet.

During this conversation, Therese and Laurent had remained silent. They
had not even smiled at the folly of Grivet. Both leaning with their
arms on the table, looking slightly pale, and with a vague expression in
their eyes, listened. At one moment those dark, ardent orbs had met. And
small drops of perspiration pearled at the roots of the hair of Therese,
while chilly puffs of breath gave imperceptible shivers to the skin of
Laurent.

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