She only got angry once when he pulled a strand of her hair while trying to force a kiss from her.
Towards the end of June, Coupeau lost his liveliness.
He became most peculiar.
Gervaise, feeling uneasy at some of his glances, barricaded herself in at night.
Then, after having sulked ever since the Sunday, he suddenly came on the Tuesday night about eleven o’clock and knocked at her room.
She would not open to him; but his voice was so gentle and so trembling that she ended by removing the chest of drawers she had pushed against the door.
When he entered, she thought he was ill; he looked so pale, his eyes were so red, and the veins on his face were all swollen.
And he stood there, stuttering and shaking his head.
No, no, he was not ill.
He had been crying for two hours upstairs in his room; he wept like a child, biting his pillow so as not to be heard by the neighbors.
For three nights past he had been unable to sleep.
It could not go on like that.
“Listen, Madame Gervaise,” said he, with a swelling in his throat and on the point of bursting out crying again; “we must end this, mustn’t we?
We’ll go and get married.
It’s what I want. I’ve quite made up my mind.”
Gervaise showed great surprise.
She was very grave.
“Oh! Monsieur Coupeau,” murmured she, “whatever are you thinking of?
You know I’ve never asked you for that. I didn’t care about it — that was all.
Oh, no, no! it’s serious now; think of what you’re saying, I beg of you.”
But he continued to shake his head with an air of unalterable resolution.
He had already thought it all over.
He had come down because he wanted to have a good night.
She wasn’t going to send him back to weep again he supposed!
As soon as she said “yes,” he would no longer bother her, and she could go quietly to bed.
He only wanted to hear her say “yes.”
They could talk it over on the morrow.
“But I certainly can’t say ‘yes’ just like that,” resumed Gervaise.
“I don’t want you to be able to accuse me later on of having incited you to do a foolish thing. You shouldn’t be so insistent, Monsieur Coupeau.
You can’t really be sure that you’re in love with me. If you didn’t see me for a week, it might fade away.
Sometimes men get married and then there’s day after day, stretching out into an entire lifetime, and they get pretty well bored by it all. Sit down there; I’m willing to talk it over at once.”
Then until one in the morning, in the dark room and by the faint light of a smoky tallow candle which they forgot to snuff, they talked of their marriage, lowering their voices so as not to wake the two children, Claude and Etienne, who were sleeping, both heads on the same pillow.
Gervaise kept pointing out the children to Coupeau, what a funny kind of dowry they were.
She really shouldn’t burden him with them.
Besides, what would the neighbors say?
She’d feel ashamed for him because everyone knew about the story of her life and her lover. They wouldn’t think it decent if they saw them getting married barely two months later.
Coupeau replied by shrugging his shoulders.
He didn’t care about the neighbors!
He never bothered about their affairs.
So, there was Lantier before him, well, so what?
What’s so bad about that?
She hadn’t been constantly bringing men upstairs, as some women did, even rich ladies!
The children would grow up, they’d raise them right.
Never had he known before such a woman, such sound character, so good-hearted.
Anyway, she could have been anything, a streetwalker, ugly, lazy and good-for-nothing, with a whole gang of dirty kids, and so what? He wanted her.
“Yes, I want you,” he repeated, bringing his hand down on his knee with a continuos hammering.
“You understand, I want you. There’s nothing to be said to that, is there?”
Little by little, Gervaise gave way.
Her emotions began to take control when faced with his encompassing desire.
Still, with her hands in her lap and her face suffused with a soft sweetness, she hesitantly offered objections.