The Kill - Emile Zola [38]
She cut herself short, still whimpering, her voice still tearful as though out of pity for poor Angèle. This was a way of making her brother impatient and compelling him to question her, so that she would not bear sole responsibility for the offer she had come to make. The clerk was indeed smoldering with irritation.
“Come on, finish what you were saying! Why do they want to find a husband for this girl?”
“She’s just out of boarding school,” the businesswoman rejoined in a plaintive voice. “She was visiting the country house of the parents of one of her friends when a man led her astray. The girl’s father learned of her crime only recently. He wanted her dead. To save the dear child, her aunt persuaded her to tell her father a tall tale. They’ve convinced him that the guilty party is an honorable young fellow who asks only to be allowed to atone for his momentary lapse.”
“So?” asked Saccard in a tone of surprise and apparent annoyance. “This fellow from the country is going to marry the girl?”
“No, he can’t. He’s already married.”
For a while nothing was said. Angèle’s rattle made a more doleful sound in the shivering air. Little Clotilde had stopped playing with her doll. She looked at Mme Sidonie and her father with her big, dreamy child’s eyes, as if she had understood their conversation. Saccard put a series of short questions to his sister:
“How old is the girl?”
“Nineteen.”
“Pregnant for how long?”
“Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage.”
“And the family is rich and respectable?”
“Old bourgeoisie. The father was a magistrate. A very nice fortune.”
“How much is the aunt willing to sacrifice?”
“A hundred thousand francs.”
Another silence ensued. Mme Sidonie had stopped weeping. She was doing business now, and her voice took on the metallic sound of a secondhand dealer haggling over a sale. Her brother looked at her with a sidelong glance and, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “And you? What do you want out of it?”
“We’ll see about that later,” she replied. “Someday you’ll do me a favor.”
She waited a few seconds, and then, since he said nothing, put it to him directly. “So, what have you decided? These poor women are desperate. They’re trying to avoid a scene. They’ve promised to tell the girl’s father the guilty man’s name tomorrow. . . . If you agree, I’ll send a messenger to them with your card.”
Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream. Thinking he heard a faint noise from the bedroom next door, he winced and turned in fright toward the source of the sound. “But I can’t,” he said in great distress, “you know very well that I can’t.”
Mme Sidonie fixed him with a cold and disdainful stare. All the Rougon blood in his veins, all his ardent desires, rushed to his head. He took a card from his wallet and gave it to his sister, who thrust it into an envelope after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went out. It was just past nine o’clock.
Saccard, left alone, went to the window and leaned his forehead against the frosted pane. Unconsciously he drummed the glass with his fingertips. But the night was so dark, the shadows outside hulked in such peculiar shapes, that he felt ill at ease and unthinkingly returned to the room in which Angèle lay dying. He had forgotten her, and it came as a horrible shock to find her sitting propped up against the pillows. Her eyes were wide open, and life seemed to have flooded back into her cheeks and lips. Little Clotilde, still clutching her doll, had sat down on the edge of the bed. The moment her father’s back was turned, she had hastily slipped into the bedroom from which she had been banished earlier, drawn there by the childish curiosity that was the source of all her joy. Saccard, his head still filled with his sister’s story, saw his dream dashed. A dreadful thought must have glared in his eyes. Angèle, seized by terror, tried to shrink back into the bed, pressing herself against the wall; but death had arrived, and this awakening in the throes of agony was only the final flaring up of the lamp before