Pot Luck Page 10

  Then Madame Josserand exploded:

  ‘Ah, but it won’t come to nothing this time, that I swear! Even if I have to hook him on to you myself! He’ll pay for all the others. Yes, yes, Monsieur Josserand, you can stare, as if you didn’t understand. The wedding will come off; and, if you don’t like it, you can stay away. So, Berthe, you’ve only got to pick him up, do you hear?’

  Saturnin apparently did not understand. He was looking under the table. The girl pointed to him, but Madame Josserand gestured as if to say that he would be got out of the way. And Berthe murmured:

  ‘So it’s settled then, it’s to be Monsieur Vabre? It’s all the same to me. But I do think you could have saved me a sandwich!’

  IV

  The next day Octave began to focus his attention on Valérie. He studied her habits, and worked out the times when he was likely to meet her on the stairs, managing to go up frequently to his room, either when lunching at the Campardons’ or when he got away under some pretext from the Ladies’ Paradise. He soon noticed that every day, at about two o’clock, when taking her child to the Tuileries gardens, the young woman went down the Rue Gaillon. Accordingly, he would stand at the door and wait for her, then greet her with one of his charming shopman’s smiles. Every time they met Valérie nodded politely, but never stopped, though he noticed that her dark glance was full of the fire of passion, and he found encouragement in her ravaged complexion and the supple undulation of her hips.

  He had already made his plan—the bold one of a seducer used to the easy conquest of shop-girl virtue. It was simply a question of luring Valérie into his room on the fourth floor; the staircase was always silent and deserted, and up there nobody would ever discover them. He laughed to himself at the thought of the architect’s moral advice; for having a woman who lived in the house was not the same as bringing one into it.

  There was one thing, however, that made him uneasy. The Pichons’ kitchen was separated from their dining-room by the passage, and this constantly obliged them to leave their door open. At nine in the morning Pichon went off to his office, and did not return until five o’clock. On alternate evenings he went out after dinner, from eight to twelve, to do some bookkeeping. Moreover, as soon as she heard Octave’s step, the young woman, who was very shy, would push the door to, and he would only get a back view of her as she fled, with her light hair tied up in a small bun. He had thus only caught discreet glimpses of part of the room: the furniture, sad-looking and clean; the linen, of a dull whiteness in the grey light of an unseen window; the corner of a cot, at the back of the small bedroom—in fact, all the monotonous solitude of a woman who busies herself from morning till night with the petty cares of a clerk’s household. But not a sound was heard there; the child seemed as silent and apathetic as its mother. At times Marie could be heard humming some tune for hours in a feeble voice. Octave, however, was furious with the stuck-up bitch, as he called her. Perhaps she was spying on him. In any case, Valérie could never come up to his room if the Pichons’ door was always being opened in this way.

  He was just beginning to think that things were going well. One Sunday, in the husband’s absence, he had managed to be on the first-floor landing just as Valérie, in her dressing-gown, was leaving her sister-in-law’s to return to her own apartment. She was obliged to speak to him, and they had stood for several minutes exchanging polite remarks. He hoped that next time she would ask him in. With a woman of her temperament the rest would follow as a matter of course.

  That evening Valérie was the subject of conversation during dinner at the Campardons’, as Octave tried to draw them out. But as Angèle was listening, and casting sly glances at Lisa, who was gravely handing round the roast mutton, the parents at first did nothing but sing her praises. Besides, the architect was forever extolling the respectability of the house, with the conceited assurance of a tenant who appeared to derive from this confirmation of his own moral probity.

  ‘Most respectable people, my dear boy! You met them at the Josserands’. The husband is no fool—he’s full of ideas; some day he’ll make some great discovery. As for his wife, she’s got a certain style, as we artists say.’

  Then Madame Campardon, rather worse than the day before and half recumbent, though her illness did not prevent her from eating large slices of meat, languidly murmured:

  ‘Poor Monsieur Théophile! He’s like me; he just drags along. There’s a lot to be said for Valérie—it’s not easy to be tied to a man who’s forever shaking with fever, and whose ailments make him irritable and unreasonable.’

  During dessert Octave, seated between the architect and his wife, got to know more than he had asked. They forgot Angèle’s presence, and talked with hints and winks that underlined the double meaning of their words; and if these failed them, they leaned over and whispered crudely in his ear. In short, Théophile was both stupid and impotent, and deserved to be what his wife had made him. As for Valérie, she was not worth much; she would have behaved just as badly even if her husband had been able to satisfy her, being so carried away by her natural impulses. Moreover, everybody knew that, two months after her marriage, in despair at finding that she could never have a child by her husband, and fearing that she would lose her share of old Vabre’s fortune if Théophile happened to die, she had conceived her little Camille with the help of a brawny young butcher’s assistant in the Rue Saint-Anne.

  Finally, Campardon whispered:

  ‘In short, my dear fellow, a hysterical woman!’

  And he put into the words all the lascivious indecency of the bourgeoisie, together with the loose-lipped grin of the father of a family, whose imagination, suddenly let loose, creates images of wild orgies. Angèle looked down at her plate, afraid that she would burst out laughing if she caught Lisa’s eye. The conversation then took another turn: they spoke about the Pichons, lavishing upon them words of praise.

  ‘Oh, such respectable people!’ repeated Madame Campardon. ‘Sometimes, when Marie takes her little Lilitte out for a walk, I let Angèle go with her. And I can assure you, Monsieur Mouret, that I wouldn’t entrust my daughter to everybody; I must be absolutely certain that their morals are unquestionable. You’re very fond of Marie, aren’t you, Angèle?’

  ‘Yes, mamma,’ replied the little girl.

  Then came other details. It would be impossible to find a woman better brought up than she, or who had stricter principles. And how happy her husband was! Their little home was so neat, so pretty; each adored the other, and they never exchanged a single cross word!

  ‘Besides, if they misbehaved, they wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the house,’ said the architect gravely, forgetting his disclosures about Valérie. ‘We only want decent folk here. My word! I’d give notice the day my daughter ran the risk of meeting disreputable women on the stairs.’

  He had secretly arranged to take Gasparine, that very evening, to the Opéra-Comique. So he at once went to fetch his hat, saying something about a business engagement which might detain him until very late. However, Rose must have known something about the arrangement, for Octave heard her murmur, in her resigned, motherly way, as Campardon kissed her with his usual effusive tenderness:

  ‘Enjoy yourself—and don’t catch cold coming out.’

  The following morning Octave had an idea. It was to make Madame Pichon’s acquaintance by doing her a few neighbourly favours; in this way, if she ever caught Valérie she would say nothing. That very day an opportunity presented itself. Madame Pichon used to take out her little Lilitte, aged eighteen months, in a wicker pram; this always annoyed Monsieur Gourd, who would never allow the vehicle to be taken up by the main staircase, so that Madame Pichon had to pull it up by the servants’ stairway. Moreover, as the door of her apartment was too narrow, she had to take the wheels off every time, which was quite a job. It so happened that on this particular day, as Octave returned home, he found Marie struggling with her gloves on to unscrew the wheels. When she felt him standing behind her, waiting until t
he way was clear, her hands trembled and she quite lost her head.

  ‘Why do you take all that trouble, madam?’ he asked after a while. ‘It would be much simpler to put the pram at the end of the passage, behind my door.’

  She did not reply but remained in a squatting position, her excessive timidity preventing her from rising, and under the flaps of her bonnet he noticed that her neck and ears were suffused by a hot blush. Then he insisted:

  ‘I assure you, madam, it won’t bother me in the least.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he lifted the pram and carried it off in his easy, confident way. She had to follow him, but felt so confused, so disturbed at this startling adventure in her humdrum everyday existence, that she simply looked on, unable to do more than stammer out a few disjointed phrases:

  ‘Dear me, sir, it’s too much trouble. I don’t think … It’ll be so inconvenient for you … My husband will be very pleased …’

  She went in, this time tightly fastening the door after her, feeling somehow ashamed. Octave thought she must be stupid. The pram was very much in his way, for it prevented him from opening his door, and he had to slip into his room sideways. But he seemed to have won her over, the more so because Monsieur Gourd, thanks to Campardon’s influence, had graciously consented to sanction this obstruction at the end of this out-of-the-way passage.

  Every Sunday Marie’s parents, Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume, came to spend the day with her. The following Sunday, as Octave was going out, he saw the whole family just about to have their coffee, and was discreetly hurrying past when Marie quickly whispered something to her husband. The latter at once rose, saying:

  ‘Excuse me, sir. I’m always out, and I haven’t yet had the opportunity to thank you; I really wanted to tell you how pleased I was …’

  Octave, protesting, was at last obliged to go in and, though he had already had some coffee, was persuaded to accept another cup. He was given the place of honour between Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume. Marie, facing him on the other side of the round table, had one of her sudden blushing fits, which for no apparent reason sent all the blood from her heart to her face. He observed her for a while, noting how she never seemed at her ease. But, as Trublot would say, she wasn’t his type; she looked puny and washed-out, with her flat face and thin hair, though her features were delicate, even pretty. When she had somewhat regained her composure, she began laughing as she described the pram incident, a topic she never tired of.

  ‘Jules, if you could only have seen the way Monsieur Mouret picked it up! It didn’t take a second!’

  Pichon reiterated his thanks. He was tall and thin, with a mournful air, already bowed beneath the dull routine of office life, and his eyes had a look of weary resignation, like those of an old cab-horse.

  ‘Please, it was really no trouble,’ Octave said at last. ‘It isn’t worth mentioning. Your coffee, madam, is delicious; I’ve never tasted any quite like it.’

  She blushed again, so violently this time that even her hands turned bright pink.

  ‘Don’t spoil her, sir,’ said Monsieur Vuillaume gravely. ‘Her coffee’s good, but there’s better than that to be got. You see how proud she’s become all of a sudden.’

  ‘Pride comes before a fall,’ declared Madame Vuillaume. ‘We’ve always taught her to be modest.’

  They were both little, shrivelled, grey-faced old people—she squeezed into a black dress, and he into an undersized frock-coat, with a large red ribbon in his button-hole.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I was decorated when I was sixty, the day I got my pension, after thirty-nine years as clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Well, sir, that day I dined just as usual, without letting pride interfere with my ordinary habits. The cross was my due, I knew that. I simply felt profoundly grateful.’

  His record was impeccable, and he wanted everybody to know it. After twenty-five years’ service his salary had been raised to four thousand francs. His pension therefore amounted to two thousand. But he had been obliged to re-enter the service as a copying clerk, with a salary of fifteen hundred, as little Marie had been born to them late in life, when Madame Vuillaume had given up all hope of having either a girl or a boy. Now that the child had a home of her own they lived on the pension-money, saving everything they could, in the Rue Durantin in Montmartre, where it was less expensive.

  ‘And I’m seventy-six,’ he said, in conclusion. ‘So there, my dear son-in-law, just think of that.’

  Pichon, tired and silent, looked at him, his eyes fixed on the decoration in his buttonhole. Yes, if fortune smiled on him he would be able to tell the same story. He was the youngest son of a greengrocer’s widow, who had spent everything earned at the shop in enabling him to take the baccalaureate, because all her neighbours pronounced him to be such an intelligent lad; and she had died insolvent a week after his triumph at the Sorbonne. After three years of bullying at an uncle’s, he had had the good luck to get a government appointment, which ought to lead him on to great things, and on the strength of which he had married.

  ‘We do our duty, and so does the government,’ he murmured, reckoning that he would have another thirty-six years to wait before he could be decorated and obtain a pension of two thousand francs.

  Then, turning to Octave, he said:

  ‘Children, you know, are such a burden.’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ remarked Madame Vuillaume. ‘If we’d had another one we would never have been able to make ends meet. So remember, Jules, what I made you promise when I gave you our Marie: one child and no more, or else we’ll fall out. It’s only the working classes that have children as hens lay eggs, regardless of what it’ll cost them. It’s true, they turn them loose into the street like so many flocks of sheep. I must say it makes me quite sick.’

  Octave looked at Marie, for he thought that so delicate a subject would have made her blush once more. But her face was pale as, serenely ingenuous, she nodded in agreement. He was bored to death, and did not know how to escape. These people would spend the whole afternoon in this chilly little dining-room, making a few mild remarks every now and then, as they talked of nothing but their affairs. Even dominoes would be too disturbing for them.

  Madame Vuillaume now began to expound her views. After a long silence, which caused them no embarrassment, as if they had felt the need to collect their thoughts, she began:

  ‘You have no child, sir? That’ll come later. Oh, it’s a great responsibility, especially for a mother! When my little girl over there was born I was forty-nine, an age when, fortunately, one knows how to behave. A boy can cope for himself, but a girl! However, I’ve got the consolation of knowing I did my duty by her!’

  Then she briefly explained her method of education. Propriety first of all. No playing on the stairs, the child always kept at home and closely watched, for children were always up to mischief. Doors and windows tightly shut; no draughts which bring with them all sorts of nasty things from the street. Out of doors, never let go of the child’s hand, and teach it always to cast its eyes downwards so as to avoid seeing anything improper. Religion should not be overdone, but simply used as a moral safeguard. Then, as she grows up, governesses must be engaged for the girl, who should never be sent to a boarding-school, where innocent children are corrupted; and one should be present at her lessons, to see that she is kept in ignorance of certain things; all newspapers should be hidden, of course, and the bookcase locked.

  ‘A girl always knows too much,’ declared the old lady, in conclusion.

  As her mother was holding forth, Marie gazed vacantly into space. In imagination she again saw the claustral little lodging, those stuffy rooms in the Rue Durantin where she was not even allowed to look out of the window. She had had a long-drawn-out childhood: all sorts of prohibitions she could not understand; lines in fashion journals which her mother had inked over—black bars that made her blush; pieces cut out of her lessons which embarrassed the governesses themselves when she asked about them. There ha
d been a sweetness about her childhood, a soft tepid growth as in a greenhouse, a waking dream in which the words and deeds of each day assumed a distorted, foolish significance. And even now, as, with a far-off look in her eyes, all these memories came back to her, the smile on her lips was the smile of a child, as ignorant after marriage as she had been before.

  ‘You may not believe me,’ said Monsieur Vuillaume, ‘but my daughter had not read a single novel until she was over eighteen. Isn’t that true, Marie?’

  ‘Yes, papa.’

  ‘I have a very nicely bound edition of George Sand,’ he continued, ‘and, despite her mother’s fears, I decided, a few months before her marriage, to let her read André, a perfectly harmless work, full of imagination, and very uplifting.* I’m all for a liberal education, you know. There’s certainly a place for literature. Well, the book had a most extraordinary effect on her. She cried at night in her sleep—proof that there is nothing like having a pure, innocent imagination to understand genius.’

  ‘It’s such a beautiful book,’ murmured Marie, her eyes sparkling.

  But, Pichon having expounded his theory of no novels before marriage and as many as one likes after marriage, Madame Vuillaume shook her head. She never read at all, and was none the worse for it. Then, Marie gently alluded to her loneliness. ‘You know, I sometimes get a book to read. Jules chooses one for me from the lending library in the Passage Choiseul. I’d really like to play the piano too.’

  For some time Octave had wanted to put in a word.

  ‘Why, madam! Don’t you play the piano?’

  There was an awkward silence, and then the parents made a long excuse about unfortunate circumstances, not wishing to admit that they had been afraid of the expense. However, Madame Vuillaume declared that Marie had sung beautifully ever since she was born, and as a little girl had known all sorts of pretty songs by heart. She had only to hear a tune once to remember it; and her mother gave as an example a song about Spain, which told of a captive who mourned for his lady-love, a song the child sang with such expression that she drew tears from the hardest of hearts. Marie, however, remained disconsolate. Pointing to the bedroom, where her little child lay asleep, she cried: