Four Short Stories By Emile Zola Part 52

"Bravo, Nana! Nana's ours again!"

What idiots they were, to be sure! Did they think she was the sort to cut old friends? She had come back just at the auspicious moment.

Now then, 'tenshun! The race was beginning! And the champagne was accordingly forgotten, and everyone left off drinking.

But Nana was astonished to find Gaga in her carriage, sitting with Bijou and Louiset on her knees. Gaga had indeed decided on this course of action in order to be near La Faloise, but she told Nana that she had been anxious to kiss Baby. She adored children.

"By the by, what about Lili?" asked Nana. "That's certainly she over there in that old fellow's brougham. They've just told me something very nice!"

Gaga had adopted a lachrymose expression.

"My dear, it's made me ill," she said dolorously. "Yesterday I had to keep my bed, I cried so, and today I didn't think I should be able to come. You know what my opinions were, don't you? I didn't desire that kind of thing at all. I had her educated in a convent with a view to a good marriage. And then to think of the strict advice she had and the constant watching! Well, my dear, it was she who wished it. We had such a scene--tears--disagreeable speeches! It even got to such a point that I caught her a box on the ear. She was too much bored by existence, she said; she wanted to get out of it. By and by, when she began to say, ''Tisn't you, after all, who've got the right to prevent me,' I said to her: 'you're a miserable wretch; you're bringing dishonor upon us.

Begone!' And it was done. I consented to arrange about it. But my last hope's blooming well blasted, and, oh, I used to dream about such nice things!"

The noise of a quarrel caused them to rise. It was Georges in the act of defending Vandeuvres against certain vague rumors which were circulating among the various groups.

"Why should you say that he's laying off his own horse?" the young man was exclaiming. "Yesterday in the Salon des Courses he took the odds on Lusignan for a thousand louis."

"Yes, I was there," said Philippe in affirmation of this. "And he didn't put a single louis on Nana. If the betting's ten to one against Nana he's got nothing to win there. It's absurd to imagine people are so calculating. Where would his interest come in?"

Labordette was listening with a quiet expression. Shrugging his shoulders, he said:

"Oh, leave them alone; they must have their say. The count has again laid at least as much as five hundred louis on Lusignan, and if he's wanted Nana to run to a hundred louis it's because an owner ought always to look as if he believes in his horses."

"Oh, bos.h.!.+ What the deuce does that matter to us?" shouted La Faloise with a wave of his arms. "Spirit's going to win! Down with France--bravo, England!"

A long s.h.i.+ver ran through the crowd, while a fresh peal from the bell announced the arrival of the horses upon the racecourse. At this Nana got up and stood on one of the seats of her carriage so as to obtain a better view, and in so doing she trampled the bouquets of roses and myosotis underfoot. With a sweeping glance she took in the wide, vast horizon. At this last feverish moment the course was empty and closed by gray barriers, between the posts of which stood a line of policemen.

The strip of gra.s.s which lay muddy in front of her grew brighter as it stretched away and turned into a tender green carpet in the distance.

In the middle landscape, as she lowered her eyes, she saw the field swarming with vast numbers of people, some on tiptoe, others perched on carriages, and all heaving and jostling in sudden pa.s.sionate excitement.

Horses were neighing; tent canvases flapped, while equestrians urged their hacks forward amid a crowd of pedestrians rus.h.i.+ng to get places along the barriers. When Nana turned in the direction of the stands on the other side the faces seemed diminished, and the dense ma.s.ses of heads were only a confused and motley array, filling gangways, steps and terraces and looming in deep, dark, serried lines against the sky. And beyond these again she over looked the plain surrounding the course.

Behind the ivy-clad mill to the right, meadows, dotted over with great patches of umbrageous wood, stretched away into the distance, while opposite to her, as far as the Seine flowing at the foot of a hill, the avenues of the park intersected one another, filled at that moment with long, motionless files of waiting carriages; and in the direction of Boulogne, on the left, the landscape widened anew and opened out toward the blue distances of Meudon through an avenue of paulownias, whose rosy, leafless tops were one stain of brilliant lake color. People were still arriving, and a long procession of human ants kept coming along the narrow ribbon of road which crossed the distance, while very far away, on the Paris side, the nonpaying public, herding like sheep among the wood, loomed in a moving line of little dark spots under the trees on the skirts of the Bois.

Suddenly a cheering influence warmed the hundred thousand souls who covered this part of the plain like insects swarming madly under the vast expanse of heaven. The sun, which had been hidden for about a quarter of an hour, made his appearance again and shone out amid a perfect sea of light. And everything flamed afresh: the women's sunshades turned into countless golden targets above the heads of the crowd. The sun was applauded, saluted with bursts of laughter. And people stretched their arms out as though to brush apart the clouds.

Meanwhile a solitary police officer advanced down the middle of the deserted racecourse, while higher up, on the left, a man appeared with a red flag in his hand.

"It's the starter, the Baron de Mauriac," said Labordette in reply to a question from Nana. All round the young woman exclamations were bursting from the men who were pressing to her very carriage step. They kept up a disconnected conversation, jerking out phrases under the immediate influence of pa.s.sing impressions. Indeed, Philippe and Georges, Bordenave and La Faloise, could not be quiet.

"Don't shove! Let me see! Ah, the judge is getting into his box. D'you say it's Monsieur de Souvigny? You must have good eyesight--eh?--to be able to tell what half a head is out of a fakement like that! Do hold your tongue--the banner's going up. Here they are--'tenshun! Cosinus is the first!"

A red and yellow banner was flapping in mid-air at the top of a mast.

The horses came on the course one by one; they were led by stableboys, and the jockeys were sitting idle-handed in the saddles, the sunlight making them look like bright dabs of color. After Cosinus appeared Hazard and Boum. Presently a murmur of approval greeted Spirit, a magnificent big brown bay, the harsh citron color and black of whose jockey were cheerlessly Britannic. Valerio II scored a success as he came in; he was small and very lively, and his colors were soft green bordered with pink. The two Vandeuvres horses were slow to make their appearance, but at last, in Frangipane's rear, the blue and white showed themselves. But Lusignan, a very dark bay of irreproachable shape, was almost forgotten amid the astonishment caused by Nana. People had not seen her looking like this before, for now the sudden sunlight was dyeing the chestnut filly the brilliant color of a girl's red-gold hair.

She was s.h.i.+ning in the light like a new gold coin; her chest was deep; her head and neck tapered lightly from the delicate, high-strung line of her long back.

"Gracious, she's got my hair!" cried Nana in an ecstasy. "You bet you know I'm proud of it!"

The men clambered up on the landau, and Bordenave narrowly escaped putting his foot on Louiset, whom his mother had forgotten. He took him up with an outburst of paternal grumbling and hoisted him on his shoulder, muttering at the same time:

"The poor little brat, he must be in it too! Wait a bit, I'll show you Mamma. Eh? Look at Mummy out there."

And as Bijou was scratching his legs, he took charge of him, too, while Nana, rejoicing in the brute that bore her name, glanced round at the other women to see how they took it. They were all raging madly. Just then on the summit of her cab the Tricon, who had not moved till that moment, began waving her hand and giving her bookmaker her orders above the heads of the crowd. Her instinct had at last prompted her; she was backing Nana.

La Faloise meanwhile was making an insufferable noise. He was getting wild over Frangipane.

"I've an inspiration," he kept shouting. "Just look at Frangipane. What an action, eh? I back Frangipane at eight to one. Who'll take me?"

"Do keep quiet now," said Labordette at last. "You'll be sorry for it if you do."

"Frangipane's a screw," Philippe declared. "He's been utterly blown upon already. You'll see the canter."

The horses had gone up to the right, and they now started for the preliminary canter, pa.s.sing in loose order before the stands. Thereupon there was a pa.s.sionate fresh burst of talk, and people all spoke at once.

"Lusignan's too long in the back, but he's very fit. Not a cent, I tell you, on Valerio II; he's nervous--gallops with his head up--it's a bad sign. Jove! Burne's riding Spirit. I tell you, he's got no shoulders. A well-made shoulder--that's the whole secret. No, decidedly, Spirit's too quiet. Now listen, Nana, I saw her after the Grande Poule des Produits, and she was dripping and draggled, and her sides were trembling like one o'clock. I lay twenty louis she isn't placed! Oh, shut up! He's boring us with his Frangipane. There's no time to make a bet now; there, they're off!"

Almost in tears, La Faloise was struggling to find a bookmaker. He had to be reasoned with. Everyone craned forward, but the first go-off was bad, the starter, who looked in the distance like a slim dash of blackness, not having lowered his flag. The horses came back to their places after galloping a moment or two. There were two more false starts. At length the starter got the horses together and sent them away with such address as to elicit shouts of applause.

"Splendid! No, it was mere chance! Never mind--it's done it!"

The outcries were smothered by the anxiety which tortured every breast.

The betting stopped now, and the game was being played on the vast course itself. Silence reigned at the outset, as though everyone were holding his breath. White faces and trembling forms were stretched forward in all directions. At first Hazard and Cosinus made the running at the head of the rest; Valerio II followed close by, and the field came on in a confused ma.s.s behind. When they pa.s.sed in front of the stands, thundering over the ground in their course like a sudden stormwind, the ma.s.s was already some fourteen lengths in extent.

Frangipane was last, and Nana was slightly behind Lusignan and Spirit.

"Egad!" muttered Labordette, "how the Englishman is pulling it off out there!"

The whole carriageload again burst out with phrases and exclamations.

Everyone rose on tiptoe and followed the bright splashes of color which were the jockeys as they rushed through the sunlight.

At the rise Valerio II took the lead, while Cosinus and Hazard lost ground, and Lusignan and Spirit were running neck and neck with Nana still behind them.

"By jingo, the Englishman's gained! It's palpable!" said Bordenave.

"Lusignan's in difficulties, and Valerio II can't stay."

"Well, it will be a pretty biz if the Englishman wins!" cried Philippe in an access of patriotic grief.

A feeling of anguish was beginning to choke all that crowded mult.i.tude.

Another defeat! And with that a strange ardent prayer, which was almost religious, went up for Lusignan, while people heaped abuse on Spirit and his dismal mute of a jockey. Among the crowd scattered over the gra.s.s the wind of excitement put up whole groups of people and set their boot soles flas.h.i.+ng in air as they ran. Hors.e.m.e.n crossed the green at a furious gallop. And Nana, who was slowly revolving on her own axis, saw beneath her a surging waste of beasts and men, a sea of heads swayed and stirred all round the course by the whirlwind of the race, which clove the horizon with the bright lightning flash of the jockeys. She had been following their movement from behind while the cruppers sped away and the legs seemed to grow longer as they raced and then diminished till they looked slender as strands of hair. Now the horses were running at the end of the course, and she caught a side view of them looking minute and delicate of outline against the green distances of the Bois. Then suddenly they vanished behind a great clump of trees growing in the middle of the Hippodrome.

"Don't talk about it!" cried Georges, who was still full of hope. "It isn't over yet. The Englishman's touched."

But La Faloise was again seized with contempt for his country and grew positively outrageous in his applause of Spirit. Bravo! That was right!

France needed it! Spirit first and Frangipane second--that would be a nasty one for his native land! He exasperated Labordette, who threatened seriously to throw him off the carriage.

"Let's see how many minutes they'll be about it," said Bordenave peaceably, for though holding up Louiset, he had taken out his watch.

One after the other the horses reappeared from behind the clump of trees. There was stupefaction; a long murmur arose among the crowd.

Valerio II was still leading, but Spirit was gaining on him, and behind him Lusignan had slackened while another horse was taking his place.

People could not make this out all at once; they were confused about the colors. Then there was a burst of exclamations.