Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [91]
And he threw her roughly on the bed. The cripple fainted away. Her last thought was one of fear and disgust. From now on, morning and evening, she would have to suffer the foul embrace of Laurent’s arms.
XXVII
Only a fit of terror had induced the couple to speak and confess in front of Mme Raquin. Neither one of them was cruel; they would have avoided making such a revelation out of sheer humanity, even if their safety had not required them to keep silent.
The following Thursday, they were especially uneasy. In the morning, Thérèse asked Laurent if he thought it wise to bring the paralysed woman into the dining room that evening. She knew everything and could arouse suspicions.
‘Huh!’ said Laurent. ‘She can’t move her little finger. How do you expect her to talk?’
‘She might find a way,’ Thérèse replied. ‘Since the other evening, I have seen an implacable resolve in her eyes.’
‘No, don’t you see, the doctor told me everything is really finished for her. If she does speak once more, it will be in the last gasp of her death agony ... Come on, she won’t be with us for long. It would be stupid to burden our consciences any further by stopping her from coming along this evening.’
Thérèse shuddered.
‘You don’t understand!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, you’re right, there has been enough blood. What I meant was that we could shut my aunt in her room and pretend that she has got worse, that she’s asleep.’
‘That’s great!’ said Laurent. ‘Then that idiot Michaud would march straight into the room to see his old friend even so. That would be the best way to destroy us.’
He hesitated, trying to look calm, but the anxiety made him stutter.
‘Better to let things take their course,’ he continued. ‘Those people are as daft as geese, they’ll definitely not understand anything of the old lady’s silent miseries. They’ll never guess the thing itself, because they’re too far from thinking it. Once we’ve tested the water, we can rest easy about the result of our indiscretion. You’ll see, everything will be all right.’
That evening, when the guests arrived, Mme Raquin was in her usual place, between the stove and the table. Laurent and Thérèse pretended to be in good spirits, hiding their fears and anxiously waiting for the incident that was bound to happen. They had lowered the lampshade a long way, so that only the oiled tablecloth was lit.
The guests had that banal, noisy bit of a chat that always preceded the first game of dominoes. Grivet and Michaud naturally asked Mme Raquin the usual questions about her health, and provided some excellent replies to the questions themselves, as they were accustomed to do. After that, without taking any further notice of the poor old woman, they happily immersed themselves in their game.
Since learning the dreadful secret, Mme Raquin had eagerly been awaiting this evening. She had gathered her last strength to denounce the guilty pair. Up to the last moment, she was afraid that she would not be joining the party: she thought that Laurent would spirit her away, perhaps kill her, or at least shut her up in her room. When she saw that they were allowing her to be there, and she was in the presence of the guests, she felt a warm surge of joy at the thought that she was going to try to avenge her son. Realizing that her tongue was quite dead, she tried out a new language. By an incredible exercise of will, she managed as it were to galvanize her right hand, lift it a little off the knee where it always lay, inert, and after that to make it crawl little by little up one of the table legs which was in front of her, until she managed to place it on the oilcloth. There, she moved her fingers feebly as though to attract attention.
The players were very surprised to find that dead hand, soft and white, on the table in front of them. Grivet stopped, his arm raised, just at the moment when he was going to put down a victorious double six. Since her stroke, the cripple had not once moved her hands.
‘Well, I never! Look at that, Thérèse,’ Michaud exclaimed. ‘Mme Raquin is moving