Laurent carefully closed the door behind him, and for a moment or two
stood leaning against it, gazing round the apartment in anxiety and
embarrassment.
A clear fire burned on the hearth, sending large sheets of light dancing
on ceiling and walls. The room was thus lit-up by bright vacillating
gleams, that in a measure annulled the effects of the lamp placed on
a table in their midst. Madame Raquin had done her best to convey
a coquettish aspect to the apartment. It was one mass of white, and
perfumed throughout, as if to serve as a nest for young, fresh love. The
good lady, moreover, had taken pleasure in adding a few bits of lace to
the bed, and in filling the vases on the chimney-piece with bunches of
roses. Gentle warmth and pleasant fragrance reigned over all, and not a
sound broke the silence, save the crackling and little sharp reports of
the wood aglow on the hearth.
Thérèse was seated on a low chair to the right of the chimney, staring
fixedly at the bright flames, with her chin in her hand. She did not
turn her head when Laurent entered. Clothed in a petticoat and linen
night-jacket bordered with lace, she looked snowy white in the bright
light of the fire. Her jacket had become disarranged, and part of her
rosy shoulder appeared, half hidden by a tress of raven hair.
Laurent advanced a few paces without speaking, and took off his coat
and waistcoat. When he stood in his shirt sleeves, he again looked at
Thérèse, who had not moved, and he seemed to hesitate. Then, perceiving
the bit of shoulder, he bent down quivering, to press his lips to it.
The young woman, abruptly turning round, withdrew her shoulder, and in
doing so, fixed on Laurent such a strange look of repugnance and horror,
that he shrank back, troubled and ill at ease, as if himself seized with
terror and disgust.
Laurent then seated himself opposite Thérèse, on the other side of the
chimney, and they remained thus, silent and motionless, for fully five
minutes. At times, tongues of reddish flame escaped from the wood, and
then the faces of the murderers were touched with fleeting gleams of
blood.
It was more than a couple of years since the two sweethearts had
found themselves shut up alone in this room. They had arranged
no love-meetings since the day when Thérèse had gone to the Rue
Saint-Victor to convey to Laurent the idea of murder. Prudence had kept
them apart. Barely had they, at long intervals, ventured on a pressure
of the hand, or a stealthy kiss. After the murder of Camille, they had
restrained their passion, awaiting the nuptial night. This had at last
arrived, and now they remained anxiously face to face, overcome with
sudden discomfort.
They had but to stretch forth their arms to clasp one another in a
passionate embrace, and their arms remained lifeless, as if worn out
with fatigue. The depression they had experienced during the daytime,
now oppressed them more and more. They observed one another with timid
embarrassment, pained to remain so silent and cold. Their burning dreams
ended in a peculiar reality: it sufficed that they should have succeeded
in killing Camille, and have become married, it sufficed that the lips
of Laurent should have grazed the shoulder of Thérèse, for their lust to
be satisfied to the point of disgust and horror.
In despair, they sought to find within them a little of that passion
which formerly had devoured them. Their frames seemed deprived of
muscles and nerves, and their embarrassment and anxiety increased. They
felt ashamed of remaining so silent and gloomy face to face with one
another. They would have liked to have had the strength to squeeze each
other to death, so as not to pass as idiots in their own eyes.
What! they belonged one to the other, they had killed a man, and played
an atrocious comedy in order to be able to love in peace, and they sat
there, one on either side of a mantelshelf, rigid, exhausted, their
minds disturbed and their frames lifeless! Such a denouement appeared
to them horribly and cruelly ridiculous. It was then that Laurent
endeavoured to speak of love, to conjure up the remembrances of other
days, appealing to his imagination for a revival of his tenderness.
“Thérèse,” he said, “don’t you recall our afternoons in this room? Then
I came in by that door, but today I came in by this one. We are free
now. We can make love in peace.”
He spoke in a hesitating, spiritless manner, and the young woman,
huddled up on her low chair, continued gazing dreamily at the flame
without listening. Laurent went on:
“Remember how I used to dream of staying a whole night with you? I
dreamed of waking up in the morning to your kisses, now it can come
true.”
Thérèse all at once started as though surprised to hear a voice
stammering in her ears. Turning towards Laurent, on whose countenance
the fire, at this moment, cast a broad reddish reflection, she gazed at
his sanguinary face, and shuddered.
The young man, more troubled and anxious, resumed:
“We have succeeded, Thérèse; we have broken through all obstacles, and
we belong to one another. The future is ours, is it not? A future of
tranquil happiness, of satisfied love. Camille is no longer here----”
Laurent ceased speaking. His throat had suddenly become dry, and he was
choking, unable to continue. On hearing the name of Camille, Thérèse
received a violent shock. The two murderers contemplated one another,
stupefied, pale, and trembling. The yellow gleams of light from the
fire continued to dance on ceiling and walls, the soft odour of roses
lingered in the air, the crackling of the wood broke the silence with
short, sharp reports.
Remembrances were abandoned. The spectre of Camille which had been
evoked, came and seated itself between the newly married pair, in front
of the flaming fire. Thérèse and Laurent recognised the cold, damp smell
of the drowned man in the warm air they were breathing. They said to
themselves that a corpse was there, close to them, and they examined
one another without daring to move. Then all the terrible story of their
crime was unfolded in their memory. The name of their victim sufficed
to fill them with thoughts of the past, to compel them to go through all
the anguish of the murder over again. They did not open their lips, but
looked at one another, and both at the same time were troubled with the
same nightmare, both with their eyes broached the same cruel tale.
This exchange of terrified looks, this mute narration they were about
to make to themselves of the murder, caused them keen and intolerable
apprehension. The strain on their nerves threatened an attack, they
might cry out, perhaps fight. Laurent, to drive away his recollections,
violently tore himself from the ecstasy of horror that enthralled him in
the gaze of Thérèse. He took a few strides in the room; he removed his
boots and put on slippers; then, returning to his former place, he
sat down at the chimney corner, and tried to talk on matters of
indifference.
Thérèse, understanding what he desired, strove to answer his questions.
They chatted about the weather, endeavouring to force on a commonplace
conversation. Laurent said the room was warm, and Thérèse replied that,
nevertheless, a draught came from under the small door on the staircase,
and both turned in that direction with a sudden shudder. The young man
hastened to speak about the roses, the fire, about everything he saw
before him. The young woman, with an effort, rejoined in monosyllables,
so as not to allow the conversation to drop. They had drawn back from
one another, and were giving themselves easy airs, endeavouring to
forget whom they were, treating one another as strangers brought
together by chance.
But, in spite of themselves, by a strange phenomenon, whilst they
uttered these empty phrases, they mutually guessed the thoughts
concealed in their banal words. Do what they would, they both thought
of Camille. Their eyes continued the story of the past. They still
maintained by looks a mute discourse, apart from the conversation they
held aloud, which ran haphazard. The words they cast here and there
had no signification, being disconnected and contradictory; all their
intelligence was bent on the silent exchange of their terrifying
recollections.
When Laurent spoke of the roses, or of the fire, of one thing or
another, Thérèse was perfectly well aware that he was reminding her
of the struggle in the skiff, of the dull fall of Camille; and, when
Thérèse answered yes or no to an insignificant question, Laurent
understood that she said she remembered or did not remember a detail of
the crime. They charted it in this manner open-heartedly without needing
words, while they spoke aloud of other matters.
Moreover, unconscious of the syllables they pronounced, they followed
their secret thoughts sentence by sentence; they might abruptly have
continued their confidences aloud, without ceasing to understand each
other. This sort of divination, this obstinacy of their memory in
presenting to themselves without pause, the image of Camille, little
by little drove them crazy. They thoroughly well perceived that they
guessed the thoughts of one another, and that if they did not hold their
tongues, the words would rise of themselves to their mouths, to name the
drowned man, and describe the murder. Then they closely pinched their
lips and ceased their conversation.
In the overwhelming silence that ensued, the two murderers continued
to converse about their victim. It appeared to them that their eyes
mutually penetrated their flesh, and buried clear, keen phrases in their
bodies. At moments, they fancied they heard themselves speaking aloud.
Their senses changed. Sight became a sort of strange and delicate
hearing. They so distinctly read their thoughts upon their countenances,
that these thoughts took a peculiarly piercing sound that agitated all
their organism. They could not have understood one another better, had
they shouted in a heartrending voice:
“We have killed Camille, and his corpse is there, extended between us,
making our limbs like ice.”
And the terrible confidence continued, more manifest, more resounding,
in the calm moist air of the room.
Laurent and Thérèse had commenced the mute narration from the day of
their first interview in the shop. Then the recollections had come one
by one in order; they had related their hours of love, their moments of
hesitation and anger, the terrible incident of the murder. It was then
that they pinched their lips, ceasing to talk of one thing and another,
in fear lest they should all at once name Camille without desiring to do
so.
But their thoughts failing to cease, had then led them into great
distress, into the affrighted period of expectancy following the crime.
They thus came to think of the corpse of the drowned man extended on a
slab at the Morgue. Laurent, by a look, told Thérèse all the horror he
had felt, and the latter, driven to extremities, compelled by a hand of
iron to part her lips, abruptly continued the conversation aloud:
“You saw him at the Morgue?” she inquired of Laurent without naming
Camille.
Laurent looked as if he expected this question. He had been reading it
for a moment on the livid face of the young woman.
“Yes,” answered he in a choking voice.
The murderers shivered, and drawing nearer the fire, extended their
hands towards the flame as if an icy puff of wind had suddenly passed
through the warm room. For an instant they maintained silence, coiled up
like balls, cowering on their chairs. Then Thérèse, in a hollow voice,
resumed:
“Did he seem to have suffered much?”
Laurent could not answer. He made a terrified gesture as if to put aside
some hideous vision, and rising went towards the bed. Then, returning
violently with open arms, he advanced towards Thérèse.
“Kiss me,” said he, extending his neck.
Thérèse had risen, looking quite pale in her nightdress, and stood half
thrown back, with her elbow resting on the marble mantelpiece. She gazed
at the neck of her husband. On the white skin she had just caught sight
of a pink spot. The rush of blood to the head, increased the size of
this spot, turning it bright red.
“Kiss me, kiss me,” repeated Laurent, his face and neck scarlet.
The young woman threw her head further back, to avoid an embrace,
and pressing the tip of her finger on the bite Camille had given her
husband, addressed him thus:
“What have you here? I never noticed this wound before.”
It seemed to Laurent as if the finger of Thérèse was boring a hole in
his throat. At the contact of this finger, he suddenly started backward,
uttering a suppressed cry of pain.
“That,” he stammered, “that----”
He hesitated, but he could not lie, and in spite of himself, he told the
truth.
“That is the bite Camille gave me. You know, in the boat. It is nothing.
It has healed. Kiss me, kiss me.”
And the wretch craned his neck which was burning him. He wanted Thérèse
to kiss the scar, convinced that the lips of this woman would appease
the thousand pricks lacerating his flesh, and with raised chin he
presented his extended neck for the embrace. Thérèse, who was almost
lying back on the marble chimney-piece, gave a supreme gesture of
disgust, and in a supplicating voice exclaimed:
“Oh! no, not on that part. There is blood.”
She sank down on the low chair, trembling, with her forehead between
her hands. Laurent remained where he stood for a moment, looking stupid.
Then, all at once, with the clutch of a wild beast, he grasped the head
of Thérèse in his two great hands, and by force brought her lips to the
bite he had received from Camille on his neck. For an instant he kept,
he crushed, this head of a woman against his skin. Thérèse had given
way, uttering hollow groans. She was choking on the neck of Laurent.
When she had freed herself from his hands, she violently wiped her
mouth, and spat in the fire. She had not said a word.
Laurent, ashamed of his brutality, began walking slowly from the bed
to the window. Suffering alone--the horrible burn--had made him exact a
kiss from Thérèse, and when her frigid lips met the scorching scar,
he felt the pain more acutely. This kiss obtained by violence had just
crushed him. The shock had been so painful, that for nothing in the
world would he have received another.
He cast his eyes upon the woman with whom he was to live, and who sat
shuddering, doubled up before the fire, turning her back to him; and he
repeated to himself that he no longer loved this woman, and that she no
longer loved him.
For nearly an hour Thérèse maintained her dejected attitude,
while Laurent silently walked backward and forward. Both inwardly
acknowledged, with terror, that their passion was dead, that they had
killed it in killing Camille. The embers on the hearth were gently dying
out; a sheet of bright, clear fire shone above the ashes. Little by
little, the heat of the room had become stifling; the flowers were
fading, making the thick air sickly, with their heavy odour.
Laurent, all at once, had an hallucination. As he turned round, coming
from the window to the bed, he saw Camille in a dark corner, between
the chimney and wardrobe. The face of his victim looked greenish and
distorted, just as he had seen it on the slab at the Morgue. He remained
glued to the carpet, fainting, leaning against a piece of furniture for
support. At a hollow rattle in his throat, Thérèse raised her head.
“There, there!” exclaimed Laurent in a terrified tone.
With extended arm, he pointed to the dark corner where he perceived
the sinister face of Camille. Thérèse, infected by his terror, went and
pressed against him.
“It is his portrait,” she murmured in an undertone, as if the face of
her late husband could hear her.
“His portrait?” repeated Laurent, whose hair stood on end.
“Yes, you know, the painting you did,” she replied. “My aunt was to have
removed it to her room. No doubt she forgot to take it down.”
“Really; his portrait,” said he.
The murderer had some difficulty in recognising the canvas. In his
trouble he forgot that it was he who had drawn those clashing strokes,
who had spread on those dirty tints that now terrified him. Terror made
him see the picture as it was, vile, wretchedly put together, muddy,
displaying the grimacing face of a corpse on a black ground. His own
work astonished and crushed him by its atrocious ugliness; particularly
the two eyes which seemed floating in soft, yellowish orbits, reminding
him exactly of the decomposed eyes of the drowned man at the Morgue.
For a moment, he remained breathless, thinking Thérèse was telling an
untruth to allay his fears. Then he distinguished the frame, and little
by little became calm.
“Go and take it down,” said he in a very low tone to the young woman.
“Oh! no, I’m afraid,” she answered with a shiver.
Laurent began to tremble again. At moments the frame of the picture
disappeared, and he only saw the two white eyes giving him a long,
steady look.
“I beg you to go and unhook it,” said he, beseeching his companion.
“No, no,” she replied.
“We will turn it face to the wall, and then it will not frighten us,” he
suggested.
“No,” said she, “I cannot do it.”
The murderer, cowardly and humble, thrust the young woman towards the
canvas, hiding behind her, so as to escape the gaze of the drowned man.
But she escaped, and he wanted to brazen the matter out. Approaching the
picture, he raised his hand in search of the nail, but the portrait gave
such a long, crushing, ignoble look, that Laurent after seeking to
stare it out, found himself vanquished, and started back overpowered,
murmuring as he did so:
“No, you are right, Thérèse, we cannot do it. Your aunt shall take it
down to-morrow.”
He resumed his walk up and down, with bowed head, feeling the portrait
was staring at him, following him with its eyes. At times, he could not
prevent himself casting a side glance at the canvas; and, then, in the
depth of the darkness, he still perceived the dull, deadened eyes of the
drowned man. The thought that Camille was there, in a corner, watching
him, present on his wedding night, examining Thérèse and himself, ended
by driving him mad with terror and despair.
One circumstance, which would have brought a smile to the lips of anyone
else, made him completely lose his head. As he stood before the fire, he
heard a sort of scratching sound. He turned pale, imagining it came
from the portrait, that Camille was descending from his frame. Then
he discovered that the noise was at the small door opening on the
staircase, and he looked at Thérèse who also showed signs of fear.
“There is someone on the staircase,” he murmured. “Who can be coming
that way?”
The young woman gave no answer. Both were thinking of the drowned man,
and their temples became moist with icy perspiration. They sought refuge
together at the end of the room, expecting to see the door suddenly
open, and the corpse of Camille fall on the floor. As the sound
continued, but more sharply and irregularly, they thought their victim
must be tearing away the wood with his nails to get in. For the space of
nearly five minutes, they dared not stir. Finally, a mewing was heard,
and Laurent advancing, recognised the tabby cat belonging to Madame
Raquin, which had been accidentally shut up in the room, and was
endeavouring to get out by clawing at the door.
François, frightened by Laurent, sprang upon a chair at a bound. With
hair on end and stiffened paws, he looked his new master in the face, in
a harsh and cruel manner. The young man did not like cats, and François
almost terrified him. In this moment of excitement and alarm, he
imagined the cat was about to fly in his face to avenge Camille. He
fancied the beast must know everything, that there were thoughts in
his strangely dilated round eyes. The fixed gaze of the animal caused
Laurent to lower his lids. As he was about to give François a kick,
Thérèse exclaimed:
“Don’t hurt him.”
This sentence produced a strange impression on Laurent, and an absurd
idea got into his head.
“Camille has entered into this cat,” thought he. “I shall have to kill
the beast. It looks like a human being.”
He refrained from giving the kick, being afraid of hearing François
speak to him with the voice of Camille. Then he said to himself that
this animal knew too much, and that he should have to throw it out of
the window. But he had not the pluck to accomplish his design. François
maintained a fighting attitude. With claws extended, and back curved
in sullen irritation, he followed the least movement of his enemy with
superb tranquillity. The metallic sparkle of his eyes troubled Laurent,
who hastened to open the dining-room door, and the cat fled with a
shrill mew.
Thérèse had again seated herself before the extinguished fire. Laurent
resumed his walk from bed to window. It was thus that they awaited
day-light. They did not think of going to bed; their hearts were
thoroughly dead. They had but one, single desire: to leave the room they
were in, and where they were choking. They experienced a real discomfort
in being shut up together, and in breathing the same atmosphere. They
would have liked someone to be there to interrupt their privacy, to
drag them from the cruel embarrassment in which they found themselves,
sitting one before the other without opening their lips, and unable
to resuscitate their love. Their long silences tortured them, silence
loaded with bitter and despairing complaints, with mute reproaches,
which they distinctly heard in the tranquil air.
Day came at last, a dirty, whitish dawn, bringing penetrating cold with
it. When the room had filled with dim light, Laurent, who was shivering,
felt calmer. He looked the portrait of Camille straight in the face,
and saw it as it was, commonplace and puerile. He took it down, and
shrugging his shoulders, called himself a fool. Thérèse had risen
from the low chair, and was tumbling the bed about for the purpose of
deceiving her aunt, so as to make her believe they had passed a happy
night.
“Look here,” Laurent brutally remarked to her, “I hope we shall sleep
well to-night! There must be an end to this sort of childishness.”
Thérèse cast a deep, grave glance at him.
“You understand,” he continued. “I did not marry for the purpose of
passing sleepless nights. We are just like children. It was you who
disturbed me with your ghostly airs. To-night you will try to be gay,
and not frighten me.”
He forced himself to laugh without knowing why he did so.
“I will try,” gloomily answered the young woman.
Such was the wedding night of Thérèse and Laurent.