Pot Luck Read online

  The attic overlooked the courtyard at the far end of the right wing. But Octave, who had not been up there since the day of his arrival, was going along the left-hand passage when suddenly a sight which met his eyes through one of the half-open doors caused him to stop short in amazement. A gentleman in shirtsleeves was standing before a small looking-glass, tying his white cravat.

  ‘What! You here?’ he exclaimed.

  It was Trublot. At first he seemed petrified. No one ever came up at that hour. Octave, who had stepped into the room, looked first at Trublot and then at the narrow iron bedstead and washstand, where a little ball of woman’s hair was floating on the soapy water in the basin. Seeing a black dress-coat still hanging up among some aprons, he could not help exclaiming:

  ‘So you sleep with the cook?’

  ‘Of course not!’ replied Trublot, looking startled.

  Then, realizing the stupidity of telling such a lie, he began to laugh complacently.

  ‘Well, she’s really good fun, my dear chap; and very chic, too.’

  Whenever he dined out he used to slip out of the drawing-room and go and pinch the cooks over their ovens, and when one of them let him have her key he would leave before midnight and wait patiently in her room, sitting on her trunk in his evening clothes and white cravat. The next morning, at about ten o’clock, he would leave by the front stairs and walk past the concierge’s lodge as if he had been calling on one of the tenants at an early hour. As long as he kept office hours his father was satisfied. Besides, he had to be at the Bourse now every day from twelve to three. On Sundays he sometimes spent the whole day in some servant’s bed, quite happy, with his nose buried under her pillow.

  ‘You as well, who are going to be so rich some day!’ said Octave, with a look of disgust.

  Then Trublot learnedly declared:

  ‘My dear boy, you don’t know what she’s like, so you can’t judge.’

  And he began to sing the praises of Julie, a tall Burgundian woman of forty, her big face all pockmarked, but whose body was superbly built. You could strip all the other women in the house; they were all sticks, not one of them would come up to her knee. Moreover, she was a well-to-do girl; and to prove this he opened some drawers and showed Octave a bonnet, some jewellery, and some lace-trimmed skirts, all of which had doubtless been stolen from Madame Duveyrier. Octave, in fact, now noticed a certain coquettishness about the room—some gilt cardboard boxes on the drawers, a chintz curtain hanging over the petticoats, and other things which suggested that the cook was trying to play the fine lady.

  ‘With this one,’ said Trublot, ‘I don’t mind owning up. If only the rest were like her!’

  Just then there was a noise on the back stairs; it was Adèle coming up to wash her ears, for Madame Josserand, furious, had forbidden her to touch the meat until she had cleaned them with soap and water. Trublot peeped out and recognized her.

  ‘Shut the door, quick,’ he said anxiously. ‘Hush! Not a word.’

  Listening attentively, he followed Adèle’s footstep along the passage.

  ‘So you sleep with her too, then?’ asked Octave, surprised to see him turn so pale, and guessing that he was afraid of a scene.

  This time, however, Trublot’s cowardice got the better of him:

  ‘Of course not—not with that slut! My dear fellow, what do you take me for?’

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed waiting to finish dressing, and begged Octave not to move. So they both remained perfectly still while Adèle scrubbed her ears, an operation which lasted a good ten minutes. They heard the water slopping about in the basin.

  ‘There’s a room, though, between this one and hers,’ Trublot explained, in a whisper. ‘It’s let to a workman, a carpenter, who stinks the place out with his onion soup. This morning again it almost made me sick. And, you know, these days they make the partitions in the servants’ rooms as thin as paper. I don’t know what the landlords think they’re doing, but I don’t call it decent; you can hardly turn round in your bed. Most inconvenient, I think!’

  When Adèle had gone downstairs again, his bold air returned as he finished dressing with the help of Julie’s combs and pomade. When Octave mentioned the attic he insisted on showing him where it was, as he knew the top floor intimately. And as they passed the doors of the servants’ rooms he familiarly mentioned their names: at this end of the passage, after Adèle, came Lisa, the Campardons’ maid, a wench who got what she wanted outside; then there was Victoire, their cook, a pathetic old whale of seventy, but the only one for whom he had any respect. Then came Françoise, who, the day before, had entered Madame Valérie’s service, and whose trunk would perhaps remain only twenty-four hours behind the squalid bed in which so many maids had slept that you always had to make sure that it was empty before going there to wait between the warm sheets. Then there was a quiet couple in the service of people on the second floor; then came their coachman, a strapping fellow, of whom he spoke jealously, as one handsome man might speak of another, suspecting him of going from door to door, silently enjoying each maid in turn. At the other end of the passage there was Clémence, the Duveyriers’ maid, whom her neighbour, Hippolyte the butler, visited conjugally every night; and finally there was little Louise, the orphan whom Madame Juzeur had engaged on trial, a mere girl of fifteen, who must hear some strange things at night if she were a light sleeper.

  ‘Don’t lock the door again, there’s a good fellow,’ said Trublot, when he had helped Octave to get out the books. ‘You see, when the attic’s left open you can hide there and wait.’

  Having consented to deceive Monsieur Gourd, Octave returned with Trublot to Julie’s room, where the latter had left his overcoat. Then he could not find his gloves; he shook the petticoats, turned the bedclothes inside out, raising such a cloud of dust and such a fusty smell of dirty linen that Octave, half-choking, opened the window. It looked on to the narrow inner courtyard, from which all the kitchens in the house got whatever light they had. He was leaning over this damp well, from which there rose the fetid odours of dirty sinks, when a sound of voices made him hastily withdraw.

  ‘That’s their little morning gossip,’ said Trublot, who was on all fours, still looking under the bed. ‘Just listen to it.’

  It was Lisa, who was leaning out of the Campardons’ kitchen to talk to Julie, two floors below.

  ‘So it’s come off this time, has it?’

  ‘Seems so,’ replied Julie, looking up. ‘You know, she did everything but pull his trousers down in her efforts to catch him. Hippolyte came back from the drawing-room so disgusted that he was nearly sick.’

  ‘If we were only to do a quarter as much!’ said Lisa.

  For a moment she disappeared to drink some broth that Victoire had brought her. They got on well together, pandering to each other’s vices, the maid hiding the cook’s drunkenness, and the cook helping the maid to have those outings from which she came back quite worn out, her back aching and her eyelids blue.

  ‘Ah, my children,’ said Victoire, leaning out in her turn, her elbows touching Lisa’s, ‘you’re young! Wait until you’ve seen what I’ve seen! At old Campardon’s there was his niece, a girl who had been well brought up, who used to look at men through the keyhole.’

  ‘Fine goings-on!’ muttered Julie, with the scandalized air of a lady. ‘If I’d been the little girl on the fourth floor, I’d have given Monsieur Auguste such a smack on the face if he’d pinched me in the drawing-room. A nice fellow, indeed!’

  At these words a shrill laugh came from Madame Juzeur’s kitchen. Lisa, who was opposite, looked quickly round the room and spotted Louise, who in her precocity delighted in listening to the servants.

  ‘That brat keeps spying on us from morning till night,’ she said. ‘It’s a real nuisance having a child like that hanging around! We won’t be able to talk at all soon!’

  She did not finish, for the noise of a window opening suddenly made them all vanish. There was a profound silence; then the
y ventured to look out again. What was it, after all? They thought it was Madame Valérie or Madame Josserand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Lisa. ‘They’re all soaking their faces in their basins. Too concerned about their complexions to think about bothering us! It’s the only time in the day that we can breathe!’

  ‘So things are still the same at your place, are they?’ enquired Julie, as she peeled a carrot.

  ‘Still the same!’ replied Victoire. ‘She’s completely stopped up now.’

  The other two sniggered gleefully, titillated by this crude reference to Madame Campardon.

  ‘What does that idiot of an architect do, then?’

  ‘He just has her cousin instead, of course!’

  They laughed louder still, until Françoise, Madame Valérie’s new maid, looked out. It was she who had caused the alarm by opening the window. At first there was an exchange of civilities.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, mademoiselle!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, mademoiselle! I’m trying to straighten up this kitchen, but it’s so filthy!’

  Then came certain nauseous details.

  ‘You’ll have to have the patience of Jove to stop there. The last one had her arms all scratched by the child, and madame made her work so hard that we could hear her crying from here.’

  ‘Well, that won’t suit me very long!’ said Françoise. ‘Thanks, though, for telling me.’

  ‘Where is she, your missus?’ asked Victoire inquisitively.

  ‘She’s just gone out to have lunch with a lady friend.’

  Leaning out, Lisa and Julie exchanged glances. They knew her well, that lady. A funny sort of lunch, too, with her head down and her legs in the air! How could people dare to tell such shocking lies! They did not pity the husband, who deserved all he got; but all the same, it was a disgrace to humanity when a woman could not behave better.

  ‘There’s Dish-cloth!’ cried Lisa, as she spied the Josserands’ maid above her.

  Then a volley of vulgar abuse was bawled out from this hole, as dark and stinking as a sewer. All of them, looking up at Adèle, yelled violently at her; she was their scapegoat—the dirty, clumsy creature on whom all those in the building vented their spite.

  ‘Oh, look! She’s washed herself, that’s obvious!’

  ‘Just you throw your offal into the yard again, and I’ll come and rub your face in it!’

  ‘Well you can go and stick God in your gob! The dirty cow, she chews it over like the cud from one Sunday to the next.’

  Adèle, bewildered, looked down at them, her body half out of the window. At last she said:

  ‘Leave me alone, or you’ll get a bucketful!’

  But the shouts and laughter increased.

  ‘You got your young mistress married last night, did you? Perhaps it’s you who taught her how to catch men!’

  ‘Oh, the spineless thing! She stays in a place where they don’t give you enough to eat! That’s what really annoys me about her! What a fool you are! Why don’t you tell them all to go to hell?’

  Adèle’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Stop talking nonsense,’ she stammered. ‘It’s not my fault if I don’t get enough to eat.’

  The voices grew louder, as harsh words were exchanged between Lisa and the new servant, Françoise, who sided with Adèle; but suddenly the latter, forgetting how they had abused her, and yielding to her instinctive esprit de corps, cried:

  ‘Look out! Here’s madame!’

  The courtyard became as silent as the grave. They all plunged back into their kitchens; and from the dark bowels of the narrow courtyard only the stench of drains came up, like the smell of the hidden filth of the various families, stirred up by the servants’ rancour. This was the sewer of the house, draining off the house’s shames, while the masters lounged about in their slippers and the front staircase displayed all its solemn majesty amid the stuffy silence of the hot-air stove. Octave remembered the sudden explosion that had greeted him from the courtyard on entering the Campardons’ kitchen, the day of his arrival.

  ‘How charming,’ he said simply.

  Leaning out in his turn, he looked at the walls as if annoyed that he had not seen through the whole sham at once, covered up as it was by imitation marble and gilt stucco.

  ‘Where the devil has she put them?’ said Trublot, who had been looking everywhere for his white gloves.

  He finally discovered them at the bottom of the bed; they were flattened out and quite warm. He gave a last glance at the mirror, and then hid the bedroom key in the place agreed upon, at the end of the passage, under an old sideboard left behind by some lodger. Then he led the way downstairs, accompanied by Octave. On the front stairs, having got past the Josserands’ door, all his assurance returned as he buttoned his overcoat up to his neck to hide his evening clothes and white tie.

  ‘Goodbye, old chap,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘I was rather worried, so I just called to see how the ladies were. They slept very well, it seems. Goodbye!’

  Octave, smiling, watched him as he went downstairs. Then, as it was almost lunchtime, he decided to return the key to the loft later on. During lunch, at the Campardons’, he watched Lisa with particular interest as she waited at table. She looked pleasant and neat as usual, though her foul words still echoed in his mind. His flair for women had not deceived him with regard to this flat-chested wench. Madame Campardon continued to be delighted with her, and was pleasantly surprised that she did not steal anything. That was true enough, for her vice was of another kind. Moreover, she appeared to be very kind to Angèle, and the mother trusted her completely.

  That very morning, as it happened, Angèle disappeared at dessert, and they heard her laughing in the kitchen. Octave ventured to remark:

  ‘Perhaps it’s not very wise to let her be so familiar with the servants.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no great harm in that!’ replied Madame Campardon, in her languid way. ‘Victoire saw my husband born, and I have every confidence in Lisa. And, you know, the child gives me headaches. I’d go mad if she was dancing round me all day.’

  The architect sat gravely chewing the end of his cigar.

  ‘I’m the one’, he said, ‘who makes Angèle spend two hours in the kitchen every afternoon. I want her to learn housekeeping, and that’s the best way to teach her. She never goes out, my dear boy; she’s always under our wing. You’ll see what a treasure we’ll make of her!’

  Octave said no more. Sometimes Campardon seemed to him to be absolutely stupid; and when the architect urged him to come to Saint-Roch and hear a famous preacher, he refused, obstinately persisting in remaining at home. Having told Madame Campardon that he would not dine there that evening, he was on his way to his room when he felt the key to the attic in his pocket. He thought he had better return it at once.

  On the landing an unexpected sight attracted his attention. The door of the room let to the distinguished gentleman whose name nobody knew was open. This was quite an event, for it was always shut, as if barred by the silence of the tomb. His surprise increased when, on looking for the gentleman’s writing-table, he saw in its place the corner of a large bedstead, and perceived a slim lady coming out of the room. She was dressed in black, and wore a thick veil which concealed her features. The door closed noiselessly behind her.

  His curiosity roused, he followed the lady downstairs to see if she was pretty. But she tripped along with nervous little steps, her tiny boots barely touching the stair-carpet, and leaving no trace behind her but a faint perfume of verbena. As he reached the hall she disappeared, and he only saw Monsieur Gourd standing in the doorway, cap in hand, making a low bow to her.

  As Octave returned the key, he tried to make the doorkeeper talk.

  ‘She looks very ladylike,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘A lady,’ replied Monsieur Gourd.

  And he would not add anything further. But he was more communicative regarding the gentleman on the third floor. A man, you know, who belonged to the
best society; he had taken the room to come and work there quietly one night a week.

  ‘Oh, he works, does he? I wonder what at?’ asked Octave.

  ‘He was good enough to ask me to look after his room,’ continued Monsieur Gourd, pretending not to have heard, ‘and, you know, he pays cash on the nail. Ah, sir! when you wait on people, you soon find out if they’re all right or not. He’s a real gentleman, he is; you can tell that from his clothes.’

  He was obliged to stand on one side, and Octave even had to step back for a moment into the concierge’s lodge, so as to let the carriage of the second-floor people go by on their way to the Bois de Boulogne. The horses, reined in by the coachman, pawed the ground; and as the large closed landau rolled along under the vaulted roof, two handsome children were seen through the windows, their smiling faces almost hiding the indistinct profiles of their father and mother. Monsieur Gourd stood to attention, polite but cold.

  ‘Those people don’t make much noise in the house,’ said Octave.

  ‘Nobody makes any noise,’ replied the concierge, drily. ‘Each one lives as he thinks best, that’s all. Some people know how to live, and some don’t.’

  The people on the second floor were not well regarded, because they associated with no one. They appeared to be rich, however. The husband wrote books, but Monsieur Gourd’s curled lip showed that he put little faith in that sort of thing, especially as nobody knew what went on in the household, which never seemed to want anybody, but which always appeared to be perfectly happy. That was not natural, so he thought.

  Octave was opening the hall door when Valérie came back. He politely stood aside to let her pass.

  ‘Are you well, madam?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir.’

  She was out of breath, and as she went upstairs he looked at her muddy boots, and thought about the lunch alluded to by the servants. No doubt she had walked home, not having been able to get a cab. A warm, stale smell came from her damp petticoats. Fatigue, utter physical weariness, made her catch hold of the banisters every now and then.