The Debacle - Emile Zola [216]
Dr Dalichamp, who was watching the scene with keen interest, made a sign to prevent Henriette from answering. When Maurice had had some sleep he would no doubt be calmer, and indeed he did sleep all that day and the following night, for more than twenty hours without moving a finger. Nevertheless, when he woke on the following morning, his resolve to go away was still there and unshakable. There was no more feverishness, but he was gloomy, restless and anxious to escape from all the temptations to a quiet life that he felt round him. His sister wept but realized that she must not insist. And Dr Dalichamp, when he came, promised to facilitate his flight, using the papers of an ambulance man who had died at Raucourt. Maurice would put on the grey shirt and red-cross armband and go through Belgium and thence back to Paris, which was still open.
He did not leave the farmhouse that day, but remained in hiding, waiting for night. He hardly opened his mouth, but he did try to take Prosper with him.
‘Look, aren’t you tempted to go back and see the Prussians again?’
The ex-Chasseur d’Afrique, who was finishing some bread and cheese, lifted his knife in the air.
‘Well, from what we’ve seen of them it’s not much use… Since the cavalry is no good for anything except to get killed after it’s all over, what do you want me to go back for? Oh no, I’ve got so fed up with them never giving me anything worth doing!’
After a pause he went on, possibly to stifle the misgivings in his soldier’s heart:
‘Besides, there’s too much work to do here. The big ploughing is coming soon, and then there will be the sowing. You’ve got to think of the land as well, haven’t you? Because of course it’s all very well to fight, but what would become of us all if we didn’t plough the fields?… You see, I can’t just leave the job. It isn’t that old Fouchard is much good, for I very much doubt whether I shall ever see the colour of his money, but the animals are beginning to take to me, and really this morning when I was up there in the Vieux-Clos and looked down at that bloody old Sedan in the distance I felt jolly glad to be on my own again in the bright sunshine with my animals and pushing my plough!’
As soon as it was dark Dr Dalichamp was there with his trap. He proposed to drive Maurice himself as far as the frontier. Fouchard, glad to see the back of one at least, went down to keep an eye on the road to make sure that no patrol was about, while Silvine finished mending the ambulance man’s old shirt and putting the red-cross armband on the sleeve. Before they left the doctor examined Jean’s leg again and could not yet promise to save it. The wounded man was still in a state of complete somnolence, recognizing nobody and not speaking. Maurice was going to leave without saying good-bye, but when he bent down to give him a kiss he saw him open his eyes very wide, his lips moved and he said in a weak voice,
‘You’re off?’
And as they were all surprised:
‘Yes, I heard you all but I couldn’t move… Maurice, you take all the money. Look in my trouser pocket.’
There remained about two hundred francs each out of the money from the regimental cash, which they had shared.
‘Money!’ Maurice expostulated. ‘But you need it more than I do, for I’ve got my two legs. With two hundred francs I’ve got enough to get me back to Paris, and to be killed after that won’t cost me anything… But we’ll be seeing each other again, my dear Jean, and bless you for all the sensible and good things you’ve done, for without you I should certainly now be in some field like a dead dog.’
Jean stopped him with a gesture.
‘You don’t owe me anything, we’re quits. I’m the one the Prussians would have picked up out there if you hadn’t carried me on your back. And only yesterday again you got me out of their