The softness of his voice stirred the young wife, and caused a rapid
thrill to run through her. She offered her mouth, bending towards him,
for he was resting his cheek upon the warm pillow of her bosom, until
the whistle of the train announced that they were nearing a station. She
remarked, flattening the ruffled locks about her forehead with the tips
of her fingers: "It was very silly. We are quite childish."
But he was kissing her hands in turn with feverish rapidity, and
replied: "I adore you, my little Made."
Until they reached Rouen they remained almost motionless, cheek against
cheek, their eyes turned to the window, through which, from time to
time, the lights of houses could be seen in the darkness, satisfied with
feeling themselves so close to one another, and with the growing
anticipation of a freer and more intimate embrace.
They put up at a hotel overlooking the quay, and went to bed after a
very hurried supper.
The chambermaid aroused them next morning as it was striking eight. When
they had drank the cup of tea she had placed on the night-table, Duroy
looked at his wife, then suddenly, with the joyful impulse of the
fortunate man who has just found a treasure, he clasped her in his arms,
exclaiming: "My little Made, I am sure that I love you ever so much,
ever so much, ever so much."
She smiled with her confident and satisfied smile, and murmured, as she
returned his kisses: "And I too--perhaps."
But he still felt uneasy about the visit of his parents. He had already
forewarned his wife, had prepared and lectured her, but he thought fit
to do so again.
"You know," he said, "they are only rustics--country rustics, not
theatrical ones."
She laughed.
"But I know that: you have told me so often enough. Come, get up and let
me get up."
He jumped out of bed, and said, as he drew on his socks:
"We shall be very uncomfortable there, very uncomfortable. There is only
an old straw palliasse in my room. Spring mattresses are unknown at
Canteleu."
She seemed delighted.
"So much the better. It will be delightful to sleep
badly--beside--beside you, and to be woke up by the crowing of the
cocks."
She had put on her dressing-gown--a white flannel dressing-gown--which
Duroy at once recognized. The sight of it was unpleasant to him. Why?
His wife had, he was aware, a round dozen of these morning garments. She
could not destroy her trousseau in order to buy a new one. No matter, he
would have preferred that her bed-linen, her night-linen, her
under-clothing were not the same she had made use of with the other. It
seemed to him that the soft, warm stuff must have retained something
from its contact with Forestier.
He walked to the window, lighting a cigarette. The sight of the port,
the broad stream covered with vessels with tapering spars, the steamers
noisily unloading alongside the quay, stirred him, although he had been
acquainted with it all for a long time past, and he exclaimed: "By Jove!
it is a fine sight."
Madeleine approached, and placing both hands on one of her husband's
shoulders, leaned against him with careless grace, charmed and
delighted. She kept repeating: "Oh! how pretty, how pretty. I did not
know that there were so many ships as that."
They started an hour later, for they were to lunch with the old people,
who had been forewarned some days beforehand. A rusty open carriage bore
them along with a noise of jolting ironmongery. They followed a long and
rather ugly boulevard, passed between some fields through which flowed a
stream, and began to ascend the slope. Madeleine, somewhat fatigued, had
dozed off beneath the penetrating caress of the sun, which warmed her
delightfully as she lay stretched back in the old carriage as though in
a bath of light and country air.