The Debacle - Emile Zola [249]
Which was wise, especially as Delaherche came in almost at once with his mother. He explained that he had sent for the carriage to take him into Belgium, as he had decided to go on by train to Brussels that evening. So he wanted to say good-bye to his wife. Then, turning to Henriette:
‘Don’t worry, Captain von Gartlauben promised when he left me that he would look into your uncle’s affair, and when I’ve gone my wife will do the rest.’
Gilberte, who felt sick with anxiety, had never taken her eyes off Madame Delaherche since she had come in. Was she going to speak and say what she had just seen and prevent her son from going? The old lady said not a word, but as soon as she came through the door fixed her eyes on her daughter-in-law. With her uncompromising code she was probably feeling the same sense of relief that had made Henriette tolerant. Ah well, as it was this young man, a Frenchman who had fought so gallantly, shouldn’t she overlook it as she had in the case of Captain Beaudoin? Her eyes softened and she looked away. Her son could go. Edmond would protect Gilberte against the Prussian. This woman, who had never been happy since the good news of the victory of Coulmiers, even smiled.
‘Well, good-bye,’ she said, kissing Delaherche. ‘I hope the business goes through all right, and hurry back home.’
She went off and slowly returned to the closed room on the opposite side of the landing, where the colonel, in his dazed way, was watching the shadow beyond the pale circle of light that fell from the lamp.
That same evening Henriette went back to Remilly and one morning, three days later, she had the pleasure of seeing old Fouchard calmly coming back into the farmhouse as though he had walked back from doing some deal in the neighbourhood. He sat down and ate some bread and cheese. Then he answered all their questions unhurriedly, like a man who had never had any fear. Why should they have kept him? He’d done nothing wrong. He wasn’t the one who had killed the Prussian, was he? Well, he had simply said to the authorities: ‘Look where you like, I don’t know anything.’ And they had had to release him, and the mayor as well, for lack of proof. But his cunning and mocking peasant’s eyes twinkled in quiet satisfaction at having diddled all those dirty buggers, for he was getting sick of the way they were now haggling about the quality of his meat.
December came to an end and Jean wanted to go. His leg was quite strong now and the doctor declared he could go and fight. It was a great sorrow for Henriette, but she tried to hide it. Since the disastrous battle of Champigny no news from Paris had reached them. They only knew that Maurice’s regiment had been exposed to withering fire and lost many men. Then the unbroken silence, no letter and never the slightest line for them when they knew that families in Raucourt and Sedan had received notes by roundabout routes. Perhaps the pigeon bearing the news they so desperately longed for had run into some voracious hawk, or had been brought down on the edge of some forest by a Prussian bullet. What haunted them most of all was fear that Maurice was dead. The silence of that great city, gagged by the siege, had become for them, in the agony of waiting, the silence of the tomb. They had given up hope of finding out anything, and when Jean said that he was determined to go Henriette could only say in a doleful tone:
‘Oh God, so it’s all over, and I’m going to stay here alone!’
Jean meant to go and join up with the army of the north which General Faidherbe had reconstituted. Now that General Manteuffel’s corps had reached Dieppe this army was defending three departments separated from the rest of France, the Nord, the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme, and Jean’s plan, which was quite easy to carry out, was simply to get to Bouillon and then work round through Belgium. He knew that the 23rd corps was being completed with all the veterans of Sedan and Metz they could muster. He had heard that General Faidherbe