THERESE RAQUIN
CHAPTER X
More than three weeks passed. Laurent came to the shop every evening, looking
weary and unwell. A light bluish circle surrounded his eyes, and his lips were
becoming pale and chapped. Otherwise, he still maintained his obtuse
tranquillity, he looked Camille in the face, and showed him the same frank
friendship. Madame Raquin pampered the friend of the family the more, now that
she saw him giving way to a sort of low fever.
Therese had resumed her mute, glum countenance and manner. She was more
motionless, more impenetrable, more peaceful than ever. She did not seem to
trouble herself in the least about Laurent. She barely looked at him, rarely
exchanged a word with him, treating him with perfect indifference. Madame
Raquin, who in her goodness of heart, felt pained at this attitude, sometimes
said to the young man:
"Do not pay attention to the manner of my niece, I know her; her face appears
cold, but her heart is warm with tenderness and devotedness."
The two sweethearts had no more meetings. Since the evening in the Rue
Saint-Victor they had not met alone. At night, when they found themselves face
to face, placid in appearance and like strangers to one another, storms of
passion and dismay passed beneath the calm flesh of their countenance. And while
with Therese, there were outbursts of fury, base ideas, and cruel jeers, with
Laurent there were sombre brutalities, and poignant indecisions. Neither dared
search to the bottom of their beings, to the bottom of that cloudy fever that
filled their brains with a sort of thick and acrid vapour.
When they could press the hands of one another behind a door, without
speaking, they did so, fit to crush them, in a short rough clasp. They would
have liked, mutually, to have carried off strips of their flesh clinging to
their fingers. They had naught but this pressure of hands to appease their
feelings. They put all their souls into them, and asked for nothing more from
one another. They waited.
One Thursday evening, before sitting down to the game of dominoes, the guests
of the Raquin family had a chat, as usual. A favourite subject of conversation
was afforded by the experiences of old Michaud who was plied with questions
respecting the strange and sinister adventures with which he must have been
connected in the discharge of his former functions. Then Grivet and Camille
listened to the stories of the commissary with the affrighted and gaping
countenances of small children listening to "Blue Beard" or "Tom Thumb." These
tales terrified and amused them.
On this particular Thursday, Michaud, who had just given an account of a
horrible murder, the details of which had made his audience shudder, added as he
wagged his head:
"And a great deal never comes out at all. How many crimes remain
undiscovered! How many murderers escape the justice of man!"
"What!" exclaimed Grivet astonished, "you think there are foul creatures like
that walking about the streets, people who have murdered and are not arrested?"
Olivier smiled with an air of disdain.
"My dear sir," he answered in his dictatorial tone, "if they are not arrested
it is because no one is aware that they have committed a murder."
This reasoning did not appear to convince Grivet, and Camille came to his
assistance.
"I am of the opinion of M. Grivet," said he, with silly importance. "I should
like to believe that the police do their duty, and that I never brush against a
murderer on the pavement."
Olivier considered this remark a personal attack.
"Certainly the police do their duty," he exclaimed in a vexed tone. "Still we
cannot do what is impossible. There are wretches who have studied crime at
Satan's own school; they would escape the Divinity Himself. Isn't that so,
father?"
"Yes, yes," confirmed old Michaud. "Thus, while I was at Vernon—you perhaps
remember the incident, Madame Raquin—a wagoner was murdered on the highway. The
corpse was found cut in pieces, at the bottom of a ditch. The authorities were
never able to lay hands on the culprit. He is perhaps still living at this hour.
Maybe he is our neighbour, and perhaps M. Grivet will meet him on his way home."
Grivet turned pale as a sheet. He dared not look round. He fancied the
murderer of the wagoner was behind him. But for that matter, he was delighted to
feel afraid.
"Well, no," he faltered, hardly knowing what he said, "well, no, I cannot
believe that. But I also have a story: once upon a time a servant was put in
prison for stealing a silver spoon and fork belonging to her master and
mistress. Two months afterwards, while a tree was being felled, the knife and
fork were discovered in the nest of a magpie. It was the magpie who was the
thief. The servant was released. You see that the guilty are always punished."
Grivet triumphed. Olivier sneered.
"Then, they put the magpie in prison," said he.
"That is not what M. Grivet meant to say," answered Camille, annoyed to see
his chief turned into ridicule. "Mother, give us the dominoes."
While Madame Raquin went to fetch the box, the young man, addressing Michaud,
continued:
"Then you admit the police are powerless, that there are murderers walking
about in the sunshine?"
"Unfortunately, yes," answered the commissary.
"It is immoral," concluded Grivet.
During this conversation, Therese and Laurent had remained silent. They had
not even smiled at the folly of Grivet. Both leaning with their arms on the
table, looking slightly pale, and with a vague expression in their eyes,
listened. At one moment those dark, ardent orbs had met. And small drops of
perspiration pearled at the roots of the hair of Therese, while chilly puffs of
breath gave imperceptible shivers to the skin of Laurent.