Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [197]
“It serves her right; it will be a lesson for her!” she sharply exclaimed.
They turned around in surprise. Satin had not moved. Her eyes were still fixed on the ceiling; her cigarette was held nervously between her lips.
“Well, you haven’t much feeling, you haven’t!” said Zoé.
But Satin, sitting up on the couch, looked furiously at the count, and flung her former words in his face:
“It serves her right; it will be a lesson for her!”
And she laid herself down again, slowly puffing the smoke from her mouth, as though uninterested and determined not to mix herself up in anything. No, it was too absurd!
Zoé ushered the count into the bed-room. A smell of ether hung about in the midst of a lukewarm silence, which the rare vehicles of the Avenue de Villiers scarcely broke with a dull rumbling sound. Nana, looking very white on the pillow, was not asleep; her eyes were wide open and thoughtful. She smiled, without moving, on catching sight of the count.
“Ah, ducky!” murmured she slowly. “I thought I should never see you again.”
Then when he bent forward to kiss her on her hair, she was moved, and spoke to him of the child, in good faith, as though he had been the father.
“I did not dare to tell you. I felt so happy! Oh! I had all sorts of dreams—I wanted it to be worthy of you. And now, it’s all over. Well, perhaps it’s best so. I don’t want to saddle you with any encumbrance.”
He, surprised at that paternity, stammered out a few sentences. He had taken a chair and seated himself beside the bed, one arm lying on the clothes. Then the young woman noticed his agitated countenance, his bloodshot eyes, the feverish trembling of his lips.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked she. “Are you ill also?”
“No,” he answered painfully.
She gave him a penetrating look. Then with a sign she sent off Zoé, who was arranging the bottles of medicine as an excuse for remaining in the room. And when they were alone, she drew him towards her, saying,
“What’s the matter, darling? Your eyes are full of tears, I can see them. Come, speak; you have called to tell me something.”
“No, no! I swear to you,” he stammered.
But, choking with suffering, affected all the more by that sick-room in which he so unexpectedly found himself, he burst into sobs; he buried his face in the sheets, to stifle the explosion of his anguish. Nana understood. Rose had no doubt ended by sending the letter. She let him cry a while; the convulsions that had seized him were so violent, that they shook her in the bed. At length, with an accent of maternal compassion, she asked,
“You have some worry at home?”
He nodded his head. She paused again, then added very low, “So you know all?”
He nodded his head a second time. And silence again reigned, an oppressive silence, in that room of pain. It was the night before, on returning from a party at the Empress’s, that he had received the letter written by Sabine to her lover. After a frightful night, passed in dreaming of vengeance, he had gone out early in the morning, to withstand a temptation to kill his wife. Outside in the open air, struck by the mildness of the beautiful June morning, he had been unable to collect his scattered ideas, and had come to Nana’s as he always came when in trouble. There only he would abandon himself to his misery, with the cowardly joy of being consoled.
“Come, be calm,” resumed the young woman affectionately. “I have known it for a long while; but I would never have opened your eyes. You recollect last year you had suspicions. Then, thanks to my prudence, things got all right again. In short, you had no proofs. Well! to-day, if you have any, it’s certainly hard, as I can understand. Yet you must be reasonable. One’s not dishonoured