The Debacle - Emile Zola [80]
‘Who’s that?’ he shouted arrogantly. ‘Is it you, Silvine?’
No answer. He threatened to fire and repeated his question. Then a breathless, scared voice managed to say:
‘Yes, yes, it’s me, Monsieur Fouchard.’
Then she asked at once:
‘What about Chariot?’
‘In bed and asleep.’
‘Oh good, thank you.’
Then she gave up hurrying and fetched a deep sigh, breathing out all her anxiety and fatigue.
‘Go in through the window,’ Fouchard went on. ‘I’ve got company.’
She jumped in through the window, but stood dumbfounded when she saw the three men. In the flickering light of the candle she could be seen: very dark with thick black hair, fine large eyes which in themselves made her beautiful, set in an oval face denoting calm and steady resignation. But then the sudden sight of Honoré brought all the blood up from her heart to her cheeks; and yet she was not surprised to find him there, indeed she had been thinking of him while she was running all the way from Raucourt.
His voice failed him and he almost reeled, but put on an appearance of the utmost calm:
‘Good evening, Silvine.’
‘Good evening, Honoré.’
But then she turned away so as not to burst into tears. She smiled at Maurice, whom she recognized. Jean embarrassed her. As she felt stifled she took off the scarf she had round her neck.
Honoré went on, avoiding the affectionate terms of long ago:
‘We were worried about you, Silvine, because of all the Prussians coming.’
She suddenly went pale and her face fell, and glancing involuntarily towards the room where Chariot was asleep she gestured with her hand as though she were fending off some abominable vision, and murmured:
‘The Prussians, oh yes, yes, I saw them!’
She sank on to a chair, exhausted and then told them her story; that when the 7th corps had overrun Raucourt she had fled to the house of her godfather, Dr Dalichamp, hoping that old Fouchard would think of going there for her before he went home. The main street was jammed with such a crush of people that even a dog would not have ventured along it. She had waited patiently until about four, not too worried, making bandages with some ladies for the doctor who, thinking that they might perhaps send some wounded from Metz and Verdun if there was any fighting round there, had been busy for a fortnight fixing up a casualty station in the big room at the town hall. Some people had come and said that the station might be needed at once, and in fact by noon they had heard gunfire in the direction of Beaumont. But that was still a long way off and nobody was worried; and then all of a sudden, just as the last French soldiers were leaving Raucourt, a shell came down with a terrific noise and smashed in the roof of a house quite near. Two more followed; it was a German battery shelling the rearguard of the 7th. There were already some wounded from Beaumont at the town hall and it was feared that a shell might finish them off as they lay on straw mattresses waiting for the doctor to deal with them. Mad with terror, the wounded men got up and tried to go down into the cellars in spite of their smashed limbs which were making them scream with pain.
‘And then,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know how it happened, but there was a sudden silence… I had gone upstairs to a window looking on to the road and the open country. I couldn’t see a soul, not one red-trouser, and then I heard loud, heavy steps, and a voice shouted something and all the rifle-butts hit the ground together. There, at the end of the street, were a lot of little, dark, dirty-looking men with big ugly heads surmounted by helmets like the ones our firemen wear… I was told they were Bavarians. Then as I looked up I saw, oh, thousands and thousands of them coming along all the roads, over the fields, through the woods, in close-packed ranks, endlessly. A black invasion, like black grasshoppers, on and on, so that in no time you couldn’t see the ground for them.’
She shuddered and again made the gesture