Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [107]
That evening, Grivet sat down beside her and talked at length, filling in the questions and answers as he usually did. But he could not even get a glance out of her. When half past eleven struck, the guests got up briskly.
‘We’re so happy here,’ Grivet said, ‘that we never consider leaving.’
‘The fact is,’ Michaud added, ‘that I’m never sleepy here, though my usual bedtime is half past nine.’
Olivier thought it was time for his little joke.
‘You see,’ he said, exhibiting his yellow teeth, ‘there’s a whiff of honesty hereabouts, that’s why we’re so happy.’
Grivet, annoyed that Olivier had got in first, declaimed with an expansive gesture: ‘This room is the Temple of Peace.’
Meanwhile, knotting the ribbons on her bonnet, Suzanne said to Thérèse: ‘I’ll be here tomorrow at nine.’
‘No,’ the young woman replied, quickly. ‘Don’t come until the afternoon. I’ll probably go out in the morning.’
She spoke in an odd, anxious voice. She accompanied her guests into the passage; Laurent came down, too, with a lamp in his hand. When they were alone, the couple gave a sigh of relief; they must have been suffering a vague feeling of impatience the whole evening. Since the previous day, they had been in a more sombre mood and were behaving more anxiously. They avoided looking at one another and went back upstairs in silence. Their hands were twitching convulsively and Laurent had to put the lamp down on the table to avoid dropping it.
Before putting Mme Raquin to bed, they were in the habit of tidying up the dining room, getting a glass of sugar water for the night and coming and going around the cripple, until everything was prepared. But that evening, when they came back up, they sat down for a moment, staring into space and pale-lipped. After a moment’s silence, Laurent seemed to start, as though coming out of a dream, and asked: ‘Well, then! Aren’t we going to bed?’
‘Yes, yes, we’re going to bed,’ Thérèse replied shivering, as though feeling very cold.
She got up and took the water jug.
‘Leave it!’ her husband shouted, trying to control his voice. ‘I’ll make the sugar water. You look after your aunt.’
He took the jug out of his wife’s hands and filled a glass with water. Then, half turning away, he emptied the little stone flask into it and added a piece of sugar. While this was going on, Thérèse was crouching in front of the sideboard. She had taken the kitchen knife and was trying to slip it into one of the large pockets hanging from her belt.
At that moment, the strange sensation that warns one of the approach of danger made the couple instinctively turn round. They looked at one another. Thérèse saw the flask in Laurent’s hands and Laurent saw the silver flash of the knife shining in the folds of Thérèse’s dress. For a few seconds, silently, coldly, they stared at one another, the husband beside the table, the wife crouching next to the sideboard. They understood. Each one felt a cold chill on discovering that they had both had the same thought. As they mutually read their secret plans on their devastated faces, they felt pity and horror for themselves and each other.
Mme Raquin, sensing that the end was nigh, was watching them with a keen stare.
And, suddenly, Thérèse and Laurent burst into tears. A supreme crisis overwhelmed them and drove them into each other’s arms, as weak as children. They felt as though something soft and loving had awoken in their breasts. They wept, without speaking, thinking of the degraded life they had led, and that they would continue to lead, if they were cowards enough to go on living. So, remembering the past, they felt so weary and sickened