The World's Greatest Books - Volume 8 Part 47

_III.--Starting on the Down Road_

No great change took place in their affairs until one day Coupeau fell from the roof of a house and was laid up for three months. Lying idle so long he lost the habit of work, and as he grew stronger again, he wasted his time and Gervaise's earnings in drinking shops. But he slapped his chest as he boasted that he never drank anything but wine, always wine, never brandy. Money grew scarcer and Gervaise's one ambition--a laundry of her own--seemed to fade away. But the Goujets came to her aid, and lent her five hundred francs to begin business with. Engaging three a.s.sistants, Gervaise was able, with her industry and beautiful work and her cheerful face and manner, to obtain plenty of custom and to lay up money again.

Never before had Gervaise shown so much complaisance. She was as quiet as a lamb and as good as bread. In her slight gluttonous forgetfulness, when she had lunched well and taken her coffee, she yielded to the necessity for a general indulgence all round. Her common saying was "One must forgive one another if one does not wish to live like savages."

When people talked of her kindness she laughed. It would never have suited her to have been cruel. She protested, she said, no merit was due to her for being kind. Had not all her dreams been realised? Had she any other ambition in life?

It was to Coupeau especially that Gervaise behaved so well. Never an angry word, never a complaint behind her husband's back. The zinc-worker had at last resumed work, and as his employment was at the other side of Paris, she gave him every morning forty sous for his luncheon, his drink and his tobacco. Only two days out of every six Coupeau would stop on the way, drink the forty sous with a friend, and return home to lunch with some grand story or other. Once even he did not take the trouble to go far, he treated himself and four others to a regular feast at the "Capuchin," on the Barriere de la Chapelle. Then, as his forty sous were not sufficient, he had sent the waiter to his wife with the bill, and to say that he was under lock for the balance. She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. Where was the harm if her good man amused himself a little while? You must give men a long rein if you want to live peaceably at home. Gracious powers! It was easy to understand. Coupeau still suffered from his leg; besides, he was drawn in sometimes. He was obliged to do as the others did, or else he would pa.s.s for a m.u.f.f. It was really a matter of no consequence. If he came home a little bit elevated, he went to bed, and two hours afterwards he was all right again.

But Coupeau was becoming a continual drag on his wife. Most of his time and few earnings were wasted in Colombe's "a.s.sommoir." And Nana, between her mother's toil and her father's shiftlessness, ran wild about the streets.

Then one day Coupeau came in drunk. He almost smashed a pane of gla.s.s with his shoulder as he missed the door. He was in a state of absolute drunkenness, with his teeth clinched and his nose inflamed. And Gervaise at once recognised the "vitriol" of the "a.s.sommoir" in the poisoned blood which made his skin quite pale. She tried to make fun and get him to bed, as she had done on the days when the wine had made him merry, but he pushed her aside, without opening his lips, and raised his fist to her in pa.s.sing as he went to bed of his own accord. Then she grew cold. She thought of the men she knew--of her husband, of Goujet, of Lantier--her heart breaking, despairing of ever being happy.

_IV.--Lantier's Return_

At this stage of Coupeau's affairs Virginie reappeared. She expressed great joy in meeting her former foe, declaring that she retained no bad feeling. She mentioned that Gervaise might be interested to know that she had recently seen Lantier in the neighbourhood. Gervaise received the news with apparent indifference. Then, on the evening of her _fete_ Lantier appeared and, strangely enough, it was the zinc-worker who, heated with the festival drinking, welcomed him most warmly.

Gervaise, feeling meek and stupid, gazed at them one after the other. At first when her husband pushed her old lover into the shop, she could not believe it possible; the walls would fall in and crush the whole of them. Then, seeing the two men seated together, and without so much as the muslin curtains moving, she suddenly thought it the most natural thing in the world.

On the following Sat.u.r.day Coupeau brought Lantier home with him in the evening. He remained standing and avoided looking at Gervaise.

Coupeau looked at them, and then spoke his mind very plainly. They were not going to behave like a couple of geese, he hoped. The past was the past, was it not? If people nursed grudges after nine and ten years, one would end by no longer seeing anybody. No, no, he carried his heart in his hand, he did. He knew who he had to deal with, a worthy woman and a worthy man--in short, two friends.

"Oh! that's certain, quite certain," repeated Gervaise.

"She's a sister now--nothing but a sister," murmured Lantier.

From that evening Lantier frequently called at the Rue de la Goutte d'Or. He came when the zinc-worker was there, inquiring after his health the moment he pa.s.sed the door, and affecting to have solely called for him. Then, shaved, his hair nicely divided, and always wearing his overcoat, he would take a seat by the window, and converse politely with the manners of a man who had received a good education. Thus the Coupeaus learnt little by little some particulars of his life.

During the last eight years he had for a while managed a hat factory; and when they asked him why he had retired from it, he merely alluded to the rascality of a partner. He was forever saying that he was on the point of making a first-cla.s.s arrangement; some wholesale manufacturers were about to establish him in business and trust him with an enormous stock. Meanwhile, he did nothing whatever but walk about like a gentleman. In his effusiveness Coupeau suggested that Lantier become a lodger, and overruled all objections. Nevertheless, Lantier showed no intention for a long while of trespa.s.sing on the bibulous good nature of Coupeau.

_V.--The Beginning of the End_

Coupeau was now becoming a confirmed drunkard and presently Lantier ceased paying for his lodging, talking of clearing up everything as soon as he had completed an agreement. Thus Gervaise had two men to support, while her increasing indolence and gluttony continuously reduced her earnings. Custom began to fall away faster and faster and soon they were living almost entirely on credit. Then Madame Coupeau, who had come to live with her son and Gervaise soon after the shop was opened, died. The funeral was celebrated with pomp and feast greatly in excess of the resources of the Coupeaus and helped considerably towards the final ruin.

As they were sitting down to the funeral meal the landlord presented himself, looking very grave, and wearing a broad decoration on his frock coat. He bowed in silence, and went straight to the little room, where he knelt down. He was very pious; he prayed in the accustomed manner of a priest, then made the sign of the cross in the air, whilst he sprinkled the body with the sprig of box. All the family leaving the table, stood up, greatly moved. Mr. Marescot, having ended his devotions, pa.s.sed into the shop and said to the Coupeaus, "I have called for the two quarters' rent which remain unpaid. Can you give it me?"

"No, sir, not quite," stammered Gervaise. "You will understand, with the misfortune which has--"

"No doubt, but everyone has his troubles," resumed the landlord, spreading out his immense fingers. "I am very sorry, but I cannot wait any longer. If I am not paid by the morning after to-morrow, I shall be forced to have recourse to expulsion."

Gervaise, struck dumb, imploringly clasped her hands, her eyes full of tears. With an energetic shake of his big bony head, he gave her to understand that all supplications were useless. Besides, the respect due to the dead forbade all discussion. He discreetly retired, walking backwards.

Gervaise was persuaded by the jealous Lorilleux to resign the lease of her shop to Virginie and her husband. That evening when Gervaise found herself at home again after the funeral she continued in a stupefied state on a chair. It seemed to her that the rooms were very large and deserted. Really, it would be a good riddance. But it was certainly not only mother Coupeau that she missed. She missed, too, many other things, very likely a part of her life, and her shop, and her pride of being an employer, and other sentiments besides, which she had buried on that day. Yes, the walls were bare, and her heart also; it was an absolute deplenishment, a tumble into the pit.

It was the beginning of the end. She got employment with her old employer, Madame Fauconnier, but presently she began to be looked upon with disfavour. She was not nearly so expert; she did her work so clumsily that the mistress had reduced her wages to forty sous a day, the price paid to the stupidest. With all that she was very proud and very susceptible, throwing at everybody's head her former position of a person in business. Some days she never appeared at all, whilst on others she would leave in the midst of her work through nothing but a fit of temper. After these outbursts, she would be taken back out of charity, which embittered her still more.

As for Coupeau, he did perhaps work, but in that case he certainly made a present of his labour to the government; for Gervaise never saw his money. She no longer looked in his hands when he returned home on paydays. He arrived swinging his arms, his pockets empty, and often without his handkerchief. Good gracious! Yes, he had lost his fogle, or else some rascally comrade had sneaked it. At first he made excuses; he invented all sorts of lies--ten francs for a subscription, twenty francs fallen through a hole which he showed in his pocket, fifty francs disbursed in paying off imaginary debts. After a little, he no longer troubled himself to give any explanations. The money evaporated, that was all!

Yes, it was their fault if they descended lower and lower every season.

But that is the sort of thing one never tells one self, especially when one is down in the gutter. They accused their bad fortune; they pretended that fate was against them. Their home had become a little h.e.l.l by this time. They bickered away the whole day. However, they had not yet come to blows, with the exception of a few smacks which somehow were given at the height of their disputes. The saddest thing was that they had opened the cage of affection; the better feelings had all taken flight like so many canaries. The loving warmth of father, mother, and child, when united and wrapped up in each other, deserted them, and left them shivering, each in his or her own corner. The whole three--Coupeau, Gervaise, and Nana--were ever ready to seize one another by the hair, biting each other for nothing at all, their eyes full of hatred. What use was he, that drunkard? thought Gervaise. To make her weep, to eat up all she possessed, to drive her to sin. Well, men so useless as he should be thrown as quickly as possible into the hole, and the polka of deliverance be danced over them.

_VI.--The Final Ruin_

Presently, Gervaise took to fuddling with her husband at the "a.s.sommoir." She sank lower than ever; she missed going to her work oftener, gossipped for whole days, and became as soft as a rag whenever she had any work to do. If a thing fell from her hands, it might remain on the floor; it was certainly not she who would have bent down to pick it up. She intended to save her bacon. She took her ease, and never handled a broom except when the acc.u.mulation of filth almost upset her.

She could keep no work, and at last came to scrub out the shop and rooms for Virginie. She came on Sat.u.r.day morning with a pail and a scrubbing brush, without appearing to suffer in the least at having to perform a dirty, humble duty, a charwoman's work, in the home where she had reigned as the beautiful, fair-haired mistress--for thirty sous. It was a last humiliation, the end of her pride. Virginie must have enjoyed herself, for a yellowish flame darted from her cat's eyes. At last she was revenged for that thrashing she had received at the wash-house, and which she had never forgotten.

Coupeau went from worse to worse. He was not sober once in six months.

Then he fell ill and had to go to the asylum, but when he came out repaired he would begin to pull himself to bits again and need another mending. In three years he went seven times to the asylum in this fashion, until he died in the extremities of delirium.

Gervaise was next compelled to descend to begging of Lorilleux and his wife. But they refused her a son or a crumb and laughed at her. It was terrible. She remembered her ideal of former days; to work quietly, always having bread to eat and a tidy home to sleep in, to bring up her children not to be thrashed, and to die in her bed. No, really, it was droll how all that was be? coming realised! She no longer worked, she no longer ate, she slept on filth; all that was left for her to do was to die on the pavement, and it would not take long if, on getting into her room, she could only screw up enough courage to fling herself out of the window. What increased her ugly laugh was the remembrance of her grand hope of retiring into the country after twenty years spent in ironing.

Well! she was on her way to the country. She was about to have her green corner in the Pere-Lachaise cemetery.

Gervaise lasted in this state several months. She fell lower and lower still, dying of starvation a little every day. As soon as she had four sous, she drank and fought the walls. Her landlord had decided to turn her out of her room on the sixth floor, but allowed her to turn into a hole under the staircase. It was inside there, on some old straw, that her teeth chattered, whilst her stomach was empty and her bones were frozen. The earth would not have her evidently. She was becoming idiotic; she did not even think of making an end of herself by jumping out of the sixth floor window on to the pavement of the court-yard beneath. Death was to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her thus to the end through the accursed existence she had made for herself. It was never even exactly known what she did die of. There was some talk of a cold, but the truth was she died of privation, and of the filth and hardship of her spoilt life. Over-gorging and dissoluteness killed her, said the Lorilleux.