“There’s no reason why you should go saying. .” Directly Deodat had left the house Ferdinand began to wring his hands. Why had Valtier not warned him? What was going on behind his back? Didn’t it seem to them surprising that the girl should be arriving three days after Zephe had intercepted the letter?. .
Honore shrugged his shoulders, finding all this merely tiresome. So far as he was concerned, he was more pleased than otherwise at the prospective arrival of Marguerite Maloret, although he did not quite know why. He simply felt that his campaign against Zephe Maloret would be the livelier in consequence. Reflecting upon all the opportunities for revenge which he had neglected, he began to feel that he had done so in a spirit of economy, in order to save them up for something bigger and better. And he thought happily of all his children, four of them round the table, without counting Ernest, who was doing his military service at Epinal.
Nine
Honore and Juliette in the barn were threshing corn with flails. At first Honore had not wanted his daughter to help with what was really man’s work. He said that the corn was so ripe that a mere touch would be enough to shake it out of the husk; and that if necessary, seeing that they were in a hurry because the household was almost out of flour, he would get in a man to help. But day-labour was not easy to come by in Claquebue at harvest-time, and, as Adelaide said, one thinks twice about taking on men who want thirty-five sous a day and their food: and then take the chance of stuffing themselves at another man’s table so that they can scarcely do their work. Adelaide had decided to help with the threshing herself. But tough and stringy though she was, she lacked muscle and the youthful suppleness which alone can replace habit, apart from the fact that childbearing had distended her stomach muscles so that the effort hurt her. After half an hour her blows with the flail grew weak, losing their rhythm, and with every stroke she risked hitting herself on the head.
“For God’s sake drop it!” said Honore. “You’re getting in my way and that’s about all you’re doing.”
So Juliette had insisted on taking her mother’s place.
“I won’t try to do more than I can manage. When I’m tired I promise I’ll stop.”
Honore had laughed as he looked at her. She was a good big wench, no denying it, but still young and tender as the white flesh of a fowl. He let her try just to see how she would get on, just for the fun of it, laughing privately at the thought that she would very soon have had enough. But too proud to give way, she had not flagged all the morning. Once she had got her hand in the flail had fallen steadily, with no break in its rhythm. She had worked like a man.
It was nearly as hot in the barn as outside. Juliette was clad in a long, sleeveless smock, tied round her waist with string. Sweat made it cling to her body the length of her back and down to her calves. When she lifted her flail her breasts were pressed against the thin cotton, always in the same place, the nipple protruding at the centre of two circles of sweat the size of saucers. Father and daughter brought down their flails alternately, each time with a grunt, but in the throat only, to avoid opening their mouths. A fine dust rose up from the straw and filled their noses; and their mouths were filled with it whenever they were obliged to open them, so that their tongues and throats were as dry and rough as tinder.
Adelaide brought in drinks for them at regular intervals, filling these rest-periods with her indignation.
“Well, you can be quite sure the Malorets aren’t making their daughter work! I’ve seen her, the hussy, going round in a flowered apron and high-heeled shoes, and wriggling her bottom the way you’d think she’d been brought up in a chateau!”
“You can tell us about it some other time,” said Honore.
He dabbed wine and water on his neck, sniffed a little up his nose to clear it, and tossing the glass onto a heap of straw picked up his flail again. Adelaide went off still loudly vociferating, filled with fury and prophecy. Never had she felt her wrath to be more righteous. The night before Honore had told her everything. They had lain side by side on their bed, turning and tossing in the heat that rose up out of the earth and lay oppressively upon the room, and with his head full of the business, as it had been for the past two days, so that he could no longer keep it to himself, he had told her the whole story from the beginning. He had told it all, murmuring to her on the pillow, the arrival of the Prussians, the creaking of the mattress above his head, down to this most recent development, the stealing of the letter. And having finished he had started again, and they had grown so heated, so worked up over the behaviour of that Bavarian sergeant, that he had clutched her to him and the night had become riotous. .
In the kitchen, as Adelaide meditated on her night and her anger, Clotilde appeared, peeping round the door with a face at once timid and sullen. Adelaide hung her milk-skimmer on the edge of the pan and seized the child and dragged her into the light.
“Let’s see your tongue. I thought as much! All the trouble I take to keep you well!. . The first day it rains you shall have a good dose!”
Adelaide considered it unwise to administer a purge in very hot weather: the body is full of dangerous matter which may easily turn to acid and corruption. A touch of the sun on top of a purge and the oil may go to the heart or get mixed with the blood. One had knowm it to happen. That was how' old Another Domine’s man had died: on a fourteenth of July it was; he’d wranted to give himself a proper clearing out, and the three tablespoons of castor-oil had churned all day in his stomach, and in the evening he’d broken out into a sweat, all ready to die at midnight, which is what he did. And a man you’d have said was good for another twenty years.
Clotilde gazed at her mother in terror, recalling the time last year when Ernest had held her nose while the spoon was thrust into her mouth. With tears in her eyes she addressed a prayer to Heaven. “Please, God, it isn’t true that I want a dose. I go quite easily. Please don’t let it rain, not ever!. .” Adelaide went out to take more drink to the threshers. Clotilde cut short her prayer, chuckled and bolted for the dining-room, where she locked herself in.
Adelaide found father and daughter seated on a pile of cornsheaves with their hands hanging limp between their knees.
“I can’t even spit, I’m so dry,” said Honore. “Look! You see? No spit at all!”
“I’m just as bad,” said Juliette. “If anything, I’ve got even less spit.”
Adelaide thrust glasses into their hands, condoling and scolding.
“Look at the state you’re both in! That child with her smock wringing wet! But what can you expect when you go threshing in this heat? Oh, I know we needed to get it done. We can’t afford to wait, like some people. Some people are lucky, with little sluts to make money for them, we all know how! They can wait to do their threshing when it’s cooler in the barn!.
Honore and Juliette gulped their drinks without listening, smiling at one another in animal content.
“And then when the threshing's done there’s the winnowing, and tearing yourself apart to keep the fans going — up and down, up and down, and never mind if you rupture yourself! But they won’t have that trouble at all. They’ve bought a machine. A machine! With slut-money I need hardly say!”
“It’s a useful thing to have, a winnoxving-machine,” said Honore abstractedly.
J
“Useful! All you’ve got to do is turn the handle and the work does itself! Yes, and so now they’ve got a winnow-ing-machine, and that’s not all. .
Honore laid a hand over his daughter’s shoulders and pulled her towards him, saying with a smile: