The Debacle - Emile Zola [244]
One evening Gilberte entered in her gay, fly-away manner. She stopped dead, pretending to be surprised. Captain von Gartlauben rose to his feet and was tactful enough to retire almost at once. But the next day he found Gilberte already there, and he took his usual place on one side of the fireplace. That was the first of some delightful evenings spent in the study, and not in the drawing-room, which established a subtle distinction. Even later, when she consented to give her guest musical selections, which he loved, she went alone into the adjoining drawing-room, merely leaving the door open. Through this hard winter the ancient oaks of the Ardennes sent flames leaping high in the lofty fireplace, and at about ten they had a cup of tea and talked in the cosy warmth of the big room. Captain von Gartlauben had obviously fallen madly in love with this young woman with the merry laugh, who flirted with him as in the old days at Charleville she used to do with Captain Beaudoin’s friends. He took even more care of his appearance, displayed the most exaggerated gallantry and gratefully accepted the tiniest favour, tortured by his one anxiety not to be taken for a barbarian, a brutal soldier who raped women.
Thus there were, so to speak, two parallel existences in the huge dark house in the rue Maqua. Whereas at meal times Edmond, with his pretty face like a wounded cherub, answered Delaherche’s ceaseless prattle in monosyllables and blushed if Gilberte asked him to pass the salt, and in the evenings Captain von Gartlauben sat in the study listening with swimming eyes to a Mozart sonata she was playing for him in the drawing-room, the adjoining room in which Colonel de Vineuil and Madame Delaherche lived was always silent, with closed shutters, lamp eternally burning as though it were a tomb lit by a candle. December had buried the town in snow, and the dreadful news took second place in the intense cold. After the defeat of General Ducrot at Champigny and the loss of Orleans there was only one grim hope left, that the land of France itself would become the avenging land, the exterminating land devouring its own conquerors. Let the snow fall in ever thicker flakes, let the earth split open under blocks of ice and all Germany find its grave therein! Then a new anguish twisted old Madame Delaherche’s heart. One night when her son was called away into Belgium on business she had heard, as she passed Gilberte’s door, the sound of soft voices, stifled kisses and laughter. She went back to her own room horrified by the abomination she suspected. It could only be the Prussian in there; she had as a matter of fact thought she had noticed a certain understanding in the way they looked at each other, and she was stunned by this ultimate shame. Oh, this woman her son had brought into the home against her advice, this harlot whom she had already forgiven once, by holding her peace after Captain Beaudoin’s death! And it was all beginning again, and this time it was the lowest infamy! What should she do? Such a monstrous thing could not go on under her roof. The agony of the cloistered life she lived was made worse, and she had days of fearful struggle. On the days when she came into the colonel’s room sadder than ever and silent for hours, with tears in her eyes, he looked at her and imagined that France had suffered yet another defeat.
It was at this juncture that Henriette appeared one morning in the rue Maqua to try to interest the Delaherches in the