Suddenly disquieted by her flushed cheeks and hot eyes, Honore repeated:
“Zephe?”
“Ask his daughter! Perhaps she’ll tell you!”
Juliette departed for the barn where her mother was soaping a tubful of clothes while she awaited developments.
“What happened?” demanded Honore. “My God, if I thought-”
“Nothing at all happened,” said Marguerite. “You’ve no need to worry. Noel may have pinched her arm while I had my back turned. Certainly it was nothing serious. Aren’t you going to ask me in? It’s hot out here.”
Without awaiting Honore’s reply she joined him in the dining-room, pushed the bolt on the door and shut the window.
“I’m not closing the shutters,” she said. “I like to see what I’m doing.”
Honore forgot the questions that had been on his lips an instant before. He had become as helpless as an animal. Marguerite took off her dress, her petticoat and her bodice while he regarded her without speaking. She was left scantily clad in stays from which emerged a transparent chemise tied with blue ribbon, and very short drawers beneath the frills of which her stockings were visible almost above the knee. Honore moved towards her with his arms extended, but she slipped away from him.
“I’m going to wind up the clock. You never seem to bother. I like to know what time it is!”
He followed her, his gaze fixed upon the lines of the corset.
“I’d never have thought you were so well filled-out,” he murmured.
Marguerite raised the glass cover and felt for the key behind the figure of Agriculture.
“I daresay it’s lost,” said Honore. “Leave it alone.”
“Perhaps someone’s put it underneath.”
She put her hand under the clock and brought out an envelope.
“So now I’m the postman!” she said, and laughed because the thought of the real postman had crossed her mind, doing his job so steadily.
Honore took the letter, somewhat put out by this diversion. He looked at it while Marguerite, having found the key, started to wind the clock.
“My dear Honore, — The black horse was taken with colic at the beginning of the week. . ”
The first line told him what it was, and he put it in his pocket. Dumbfounded at first, and then tempted to laugh at the circumstances in which the discovery had been made, he regarded Marguerite with a greater detachment. The tail of her chemise hung out behind through a parting in her drawers, like a spaniel’s tail, and he suppressed a smile. He had become sufficiently master of himself to look coldly on his weakness of a moment before. He recalled Juliette’s anger, and the few words she had spoken. Perhaps the Malorets had displayed a greater audacity than Zephe’s daughter had chosen to admit. In any case, Juliette’s manner had told him a good deal. He began to feel somewhat ashamed of his readiness to accommodate this wench in underclothes, reflecting that with the Malorets one must not give way to lightheartedness, but must keep tight hold of one’s wrath.
He considered the bare arms and shoulders, the stays so snugly fitting the slim waist, the drawers puffed out over the buttocks, and he shrugged his shoulders. Whether they had really done anything to Juliette or not, they need not suppose that the outrage could be paid back on this little slut. It would be too easy! So brazen a trollop that the whole countryside knew and even her own family was ashamed — she did not count as a Maloret!
“I’m setting it at two o’clock,” said Marguerite.
“As you please,” said Honore, and he pursued the course of his reflections. To think that he had so nearly let himself be caught! Ernest had had more sense. He had seen that it wouldn’t mean anything. .
Marguerite replaced the glass cover and turned towards him.
“Good news?”
“Just an old letter that had been left lying about.”
She smiled, and pressing herself against him with her head thrown back, put her bare arms round his neck. He was taken unawares by a strong scent of armpits and lily-of-the-valley, and he thought, “. . the same as if I was at Seventeen, Rue des Oiseaux!. He felt the soft warmth of the arms round his neck, and was near to giving way. But then, looking over the girl’s shoulder, he gazed through the window and far out over the plain. He saw the fields and the work he did there with Adelaide and the children. He thought of his daughter, the first after his eldest son, standing so sturdily at his side, whether to toil with the flail or to take revenge, the good partner that she was. He thought of his wife as well, not pretty and already grown old what with working in the fields and at the wash-tub, and never had been beautiful, come right down to it, but who had given him the children he had, between one washing-day and the next, taking to her bed only for the time it took to bear them. And considering his work and the hard lives of his women, Honore could not be proud of the white arms round his neck. He felt ashamed as he looked over the plain. Yet the girl was young and pretty, with her belly and thighs pressed hard against him. He made a ponderous effort such as one makes to prevent oneself dying, and pushed her gently away and said:
“You might as well get dressed again, seeing that your chap’s not coming.”
He went to the door. Seeing him draw the bolt she ran after him, clung to him with arms and legs, and moaned. But Honore, now strong with the fortitude of all the saints in the knowledge that he had a toiling, devoted wife who never spared herself and a daughter no less sturdy, carried her on his back right out into the passage; and would have carried her into the sunshine if she had not ended by letting go and running back to put on her clothes. .
Out in the barn Adelaide was bent over her wash-board while Juliette, clearing the straw off the threshing-floor with a fork, told her what had happened at the Alalorets’ house. At moments Adelaide stood upright snorting with indignation, to fling herself upon her washing again and rub till she nearly took the skin off her hands.
“And look,” said Juliette, pulling up her skirt, “he tore my petticoat, the good one Aunt Helene gave me.”
“They’ll find out what that costs!” said Adelaide furiously. But then she remarked in a more matter-of-fact voice: “It’s not a week-day petticoat. I don’t know why you were wearing it.”
She made the comment in passing, without attaching tny importance to it, but Juliette was so put out that she stood silent, her fork waving in the air, while she sought for an explanation.
And at this point Honore appeared, glowing with fortitude and nobility, to tell them what had happened, and to add that if they wanted to see the artful little piece take her departure they had only to watch through the doorway. And indeed a moment later Zephe’s daughter walked rapidly across the yard, but not so rapidly that Adelaide’s loud laughter did not reach her ears, to which, however, she made no reply.
“She’s a very pretty girl,” murmured Honore, “as you’ve got to admit.”
“A disgraceful hussy!” retorted Adelaide. “A fly-by-night who makes no more bones about it than a bitch in heat! You needn’t give yourself such airs! If Juliette hadn't warned you just now, we shouldn’t have seen you coming out of the house so soon!”
She looked at him with eyes blazing, and Honore said that this was a bit hard. Look how he’d behaved, and all she did was storm at him!
“Well, it’s true and you can’t deny it — Juliette had to show you what was right. You'd never have seen for yourself that Zcphe doesn’t care what happens to Marguerite any more than if it was Dur’s daughter or Corenpot’s. You were too stupid to think of that, weren’t you? Or perhaps you just pretended not to think of it, eh? — to suit yourself!. . No, you needn’t start arguing! As though you weren’t as bad as the worst of them! You’ve stayed awake at nights thinking about that slut, and then you let your own daughter go alone to their house, and if it hadn’t been for the postman-”