| I Chapter Five The brick front was just in a line with the street , or rather the road . Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar , a bridle , and a black leather cap , and on the floor , in a corner , were a pair of leggings , still covered with dry mud . On the right was the one apartment , that was both dining and sitting room . A canary yellow paper , relieved at the top by a garland of pale flowers , was puckered everywhere over the badly stretched canvas ; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways at the length of the window ; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under oval shades . On the other side of the passage was Charles 's consulting room , a little room about six paces wide , with a table , three chairs , and an office chair . Volumes of the " Dictionary of Medical Science , " uncut , but the binding rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone , occupied almost along the six shelves of a deal bookcase . The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw patients , just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in the consulting room and recounting their histories . Then , opening on the yard , where the stable was , came a large dilapidated room with a stove , now used as a wood-house , cellar , and pantry , full of old rubbish , of empty casks , agricultural implements past service , and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess . The garden , longer than wide , ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots , to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field . In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal ; four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed . Right at the bottom , under the spruce bushes , was a cure in plaster reading his breviary . Emma went upstairs . The first room was not furnished , but in the second , which was their bedroom , was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery . A shell box adorned the chest of drawers , and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle . It was a bride 's bouquet ; it was the other one 's . She looked at it . Charles noticed it ; he took it and carried it up to the attic , while Emma seated in an arm-chair ( they were putting her things down around her ) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox , and wondered , dreaming , what would be done with them if she were to die . During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house . She took the shades off the candlesticks , had new wallpaper put up , the staircase repainted , and seats made in the garden round the sundial ; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes . Finally her husband , knowing that she liked to drive out , picked up a second-hand dogcart , which , with new lamps and splashboard in striped leather , looked almost like a tilbury . He was happy then , and without a care in the world . A meal together , a walk in the evening on the highroad , a gesture of her hands over her hair , the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener , and many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure , now made up the endless round of his happiness . In bed , in the morning , by her side , on the pillow , he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek , half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap . Seen thus closely , her eyes looked to him enlarged , especially when , on waking up , she opened and shut them rapidly many times . Black in the shade , dark blue in broad daylight , they had , as it were , depths of different colours , that , darker in the centre , grew paler towards the surface of the eye . His own eyes lost themselves in these depths ; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders , with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open . He rose . She came to the window to see him off , and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium , clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her . Charles , in the street buckled his spurs , his foot on the mounting stone , while she talked to him from above , picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him . Then this , eddying , floating , described semicircles in the air like a bird , and was caught before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless at the door . Charles from horseback threw her a kiss ; she answered with a nod ; she shut the window , and he set off . And then along the highroad , spreading out its long ribbon of dust , along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours , along paths where the corn reached to the knees , with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils , his heart full of the joys of the past night , his mind at rest , his flesh at ease , he went on , re-chewing his happiness , like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are digesting . Until now what good had he had of his life ? His time at school , when he remained shut up within the high walls , alone , in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work , who laughed at his accent , who jeered at his clothes , and whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs ? Later on , when he studied medicine , and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress ? Afterwards , he had lived fourteen months with the widow , whose feet in bed were cold as icicles . But now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored . For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat , and he reproached himself with not loving her . He wanted to see her again ; he turned back quickly , ran up the stairs with a beating heart . Emma , in her room , was dressing ; he came up on tiptoe , kissed her back ; she gave a cry . He could not keep from constantly touching her comb , her ring , her fichu ; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks , or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder , and she put him away half-smiling , half-vexed , as you do a child who hangs about you . Before marriage she thought herself in love ; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come , she must , she thought , have been mistaken . And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity , passion , rapture , that had seemed to her so beautiful in books . |