The Beast Within - Emile Zola [27]
The cuckoo clock now said twenty past three. Roubaud shook his hand at it in frustration. Where on earth had Séverine got to? She only had to walk into a shop and you couldn’t get her out of it! In an effort to take his mind off the pangs of hunger that were churning away inside his stomach, he decided to lay the table. He knew the room well. It was a large room with two windows and it served as bedroom, dining room and kitchen all in one. All the furniture was in walnut — a bed with a red cotton quilt, a sideboard-cum-dresser, a round table and a Normandy wardrobe. He opened the sideboard and took out napkins, plates, knives and forks and two glasses. Everything was spotlessly clean. He enjoyed performing his little domestic chores, like a little girl laying the table for a dolls’ tea-party, admiring the beautiful white tablecloth, thinking how very much in love with his wife he was and smiling to himself as he thought of her breezing into the room and laughing when she saw his handiwork. He placed the pate on a plate and put the bottle of white wine beside it. Suddenly a puzzled expression came over his face; there was something missing. He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out two packages that he had forgotten — a small tin of sardines and a piece of Gruyère cheese.
A clock chimed half past three. Roubaud paced up and down the room, listening intently for the least sound on the staircase. There was nothing he could do but wait. As he passed in front of the mirror he stopped and looked at himself. He didn’t look his age. He was approaching forty, but still had a good head of strikingly red, curly hair, with not a sign of grey. He sported a full, vigorous, shiny blond beard. He was of no more than average height but he looked very fit. He prided himself on his appearance — the shape of his head, his low forehead, his strong neck, his round face, his fresh colouring and the glint in his big, bright eyes. His eyebrows met in a bristly line across his forehead, lending his face a permanent frown, like a jealous lover. He had married a woman fifteen years younger than himself and he often looked in the mirror; he found it reassuring.
He heard footsteps on the stairs and ran to open the door. But it was a woman who sold newspapers at the station, coming home next door. He walked back across the room. On the sideboard he noticed a box decorated with sea-shells. It was something he remembered, a present from Séverine to Madame Victoire, who had nursed her when she was a baby. It was a tiny little thing, but one glance had reminded him of how he came to marry her. It was now almost three years ago.
He had been born in Plassans,10 in the South of France. His father was a carter. He had completed his military service and gained his sergeant’s stripes and had then worked for several years as a porter at the station at Mantes. He had been promoted to head porter at Barentin, and it was there that he had made the acquaintance of the woman he fell in love with, when she came to catch the train on her way back from Doinville with Mademoiselle Berthe, the daughter of President Grandmorin.11 Séverine Aubry came from a fairly humble background; she was the youngest daughter of a gardener on the Grandmorins’ estate, who had died while in their employ. But the President, who was Séverine’s godfather and guardian, simply doted on her. He arranged to have her looked after at the château, and she and his daughter became the closest of friends. He sent them both to the same boarding school in Rouen. Séverine had such a naturally genteel manner that for some time Roubaud resigned himself to worshipping her from afar, with the same sort of passion as a working-class person who has risen in the world might covet a fine piece of jewellery that he thought was worth a lot of money. Séverine was the only love of his life, and he would have been quite