[CHAPTER V.]
The months glided along; winter passed away, and then the spring. At Rognes matters went on in the same old way; whole years were necessary for the accomplishment of any really perceptible change in that weary, dull life of work and toil, which began afresh with every returning day. In July, amid the burning heat of the blazing sun, the approaching elections threw the village into a state of excitement. This time they were invested with a peculiar interest, and the canvassing visits of the candidates were eagerly discussed and anxiously awaited.
On the morning of the Sunday for which the arrival of Monsieur Rochefontaine, the contractor of Châteaudun, had been promised, there was a terrible scene at the Buteaus' between Lise and Françoise, showing that hostility can go on smouldering invisibly beneath an outward appearance of calmness till it breaks out with unquenchable violence. The last slender bond of union between the sisters, which had always been strained almost to breaking, though constantly knotted again, had at last become so slight, worn away by perpetual quarrelling, that this time it snapped atwain, beyond all hope of repair. And the immediate cause of this final rupture was the merest trifle in the world.
As Françoise was bringing her cows home that morning she stopped to have a moment's chat with Jean, whom she met in front of the church. It must be confessed that she did so purposely, stopping just in front of the Buteaus' house, with the express intention of irritating them.
"When you want to see your men," Lise cried angrily to her as she returned into the house, "be good enough to choose some other place than just under our windows!"
Buteau was standing by mending a bill-hook and listening.
"My men!" retorted Françoise. "I see too many men here. And there's one fellow, let me tell you, whom I could see if I wanted, not under the window, but in this very house, the swine that he is!"
This allusion to Buteau made Lise wild with anger. For a long time past she had been consumed with an absorbing desire to turn her sister out of doors, so that the house might become peaceful; and this even at the risk of a law-suit, and having to surrender half the land. It was her persistence in this respect that led her husband to beat her, for he was quite opposed to her scheme, hoping to trick the girl out of her land somehow, and also to succeed in getting possession of her person. The wife was exasperated at no longer being mistress in her own house, and showed a peculiar kind of jealousy. While she was quite ready to let her husband forcibly possess himself of the girl for the sake of making an end of the matter, yet, at the same time, it enraged her to see him lusting so hotly after this chit, whom she hated for her youth, her firm-fleshed bosom, and the roundness of her arms, that showed so plumply whenever her sleeves were rolled up. She would have liked to stand by and see her husband foul and wreck all these alluring charms, and she would gladly have helped him. Indeed, the mere fact of sharing her husband with her sister would not have caused her any trouble. Her anguish of mind arose from their rivalry, which was growing even more bitter and rancorous, and the consciousness that her sister was prettier than herself, and thus capable of stimulating her husband's hot desires.