The Kill - Emile Zola [110]
Then he put his lips to her ear, kissed her hair, and said with a trembling voice, “I shall bring you the money tomorrow night, in your room. . . . Without a note to sign.”
But she quickly interjected that she was in no rush and did not want to put him to so much trouble. Although he had just put all his heart into that dangerous phrase, “without a note to sign,” which he had allowed to escape his lips and which he now regretted, he did not seem put out by her rejection. Straightening up, he said, “Well, then, as you wish. . . . I shall find you the money when the time comes. Larsonneau will not be involved, you understand. I mean to make you a gift.”
He smiled good-naturedly. She remained cruelly torn. She felt she would lose what little equilibrium she had left if she gave in to her husband. Her one remaining pride was that, while married to the father, she was the wife of none but the son. Frequently, when Maxime seemed cold to her, she tried to make him understand with the most transparent of allusions how things stood between her and her husband. Yet the young man, whom she expected to fall at her feet after these confessions, remained utterly unmoved, no doubt thinking that she merely wanted to reassure him that there was no possibility of his running into his father in the gray silk bedroom.
After Saccard left her, she dressed hastily and gave orders to hitch up her horses. In the carriage on the way to the Ile Saint-Louis, she went over in her mind how she was going to ask her father for the 50,000 francs. She had embraced this idea suddenly and refused to examine it closely, for in her heart she felt very cowardly and was seized with unspeakable fear regarding her chosen course of action. When she arrived, the courtyard of the Béraud mansion, as damp and dreary as a cloister, sent a chill through her, and as she climbed the wide stone staircase and listened to the echoes of her high-heeled boots, she felt like fleeing. In her haste, she had been foolish enough to wear a dress of feuillemorte silk with long flounces of white lace, trimmed with satin bows and tucked in at the waist by a belt pleated like a sash. This outfit, topped off by a small toque with a long white veil, injected such an unusual note into the somber tedium of the staircase that even she became aware of what an odd figure she cut there. She trembled as she made her way through the long series of huge austere rooms, in which the personages lurking in the tapestries seemed surprised by the billow of skirts that had invaded their gloomy solitude.
She found her father in a drawing room off the courtyard, where he often passed the time. He was reading a large book placed on a book-holder that had been fitted to the arm of his chair. Aunt Elisabeth sat in front of one of the windows knitting with long wooden needles, and in the silence of the room the click of those needles was the only sound to be heard.
Embarrassed, Renée sat down, unable to make a move without disturbing the severity of the high ceilings with the noise of rustling silk. The harsh white of her lace clashed with the dark background of tapestries and old furniture. M. Béraud Du Châtel placed his hands along the sides of the book-holder and stared at her. Aunt Elisabeth spoke of Christine’s impending marriage to the son of a very wealthy attorney. The young woman had gone shopping with one of the elderly servants, and the kindly aunt carried on all by herself in her placid voice without interrupting her knitting, chatting about household matters and darting smiling glances at Renée over her spectacles.
Renée, however, became increasingly anxious. All the silence of the house weighed on her shoulders,