Sunday by Georges Simenon Read Free Book Online Page A

grounds and the business.
    'I have been given the address of a notary in Cannes, and all we have to do is go and sign in his presence . . .'
    To all appearances Berthe had not had any hand in this transaction. She certainly had not been kept informed of the correspondence between her mother and the lawyer in Luçon. For her, the marriage itself was enough, without other documents.
    It was, perhaps, partly love. Emile often came to think about it afterwards, and he would ask himself the question. He had scruples about blackening her character. He would be only too glad to allow that she had a kind of love for him. He even used to wonder whether it had not begun before his departure from Luçon, when she was only a child.
    There exist girls like that who, the moment they become adolescents, decide that such and such a boy shall become their husband. It was a fact that she had not given herself to anyone else, that she had not gone about with other young men and that when she had come to him in the Cabin she was a virgin.
    But didn't Emile's mother love her son, too, in her fashion!
    When the subject had been raised of a marriage contract designed, basically, to defend her against her husband, to safeguard her fortune, Berthe had said no, simply, firmly.
    Was she hoping he would be grateful to her for it and see it as a gesture of generosity or blind love?
    It turned out in precisely the opposite way. Emile had not protested, nor argued. He accepted. Chiefly because he had no say in the matter, because, up till now, he had in fact been nothing more than the employee of Big Louis, and then of the two women.
    The roles, within the two couples, had been reversed. Big Louis had married his servant, after giving her a child.
    His daughter was marrying their servant after giving herself to him.
    So much the worse for Emile if he were making a mistake. At all events he was sincere: for him, there was no difference between the two cases.
    And if the idea of going off, of leaving the mother and daughter there, entered his head for a second, he did not pay it much attention. Perhaps he had suspected for a long time that what did happen was the only logical solution.
    La Bastide had become his personal possession. He had found it still unformed, incomplete, and it might have been thought then in danger of imminent collapse. Big Louis on his own, even without his illness, would probably have given up because, contrary to his expectation and hopes, he had not become acclimatized.
    He was a man in exile, a man who had played the wrong card and who, in his heart of hearts, had perhaps been relieved to find himself delivered from his responsibilities by the stroke which left him paralysed all one side of his body.
    Thus he had got out of it. It was up to Emile and the two women to make the best of things.
    He had gone, almost without suffering, and his last gaze had fallen not upon his spouse, nor upon his daughter, but upon his employee.
    God alone knew what that look meant. It was better not to think about it, not to try to guess the message which, perhaps, it contained.
    So they had signed the documents drawn up by Palud, and the notary in the Rue des États-Unis had seemed surprised.
    'Are you all three in agreement?'
    This already constituted a kind of marriage, but a marriage of three, with Madame Harnaud saying 'yes' first and bending forward at once to sign with the pen which was held out to her.
    Next, Emile's father and mother had arrived from Champagne, the day before the wedding, the father in his black suit, the mother in a new dress of white flowers on a violet background.
    Odile had not been able to come, as she was expecting a child any day. As for their brother Henri, he had to remain behind to look after the inn.
    Madame Harnaud's sister and niece had made the journey, but three days earlier, so as to take the opportunity to see the Riviera, and the three women had gone to Grasse, Nice and Monte-Carlo by bus.
    The wedding had