Pot Luck Page 16

  ‘What an awful day, madam, isn’t it?’

  ‘Awful, and so close, too!’

  On reaching the first floor, they parted. At a glance Octave saw how haggard her face was, how heavy with sleep her eyelids were, and how her unkempt hair showed underneath her hastily tied bonnet. As he proceeded upstairs, his thoughts troubled and angered him. Why would she not do it with him? He was not more stupid or ugly than anybody else.

  On passing the door to Madame Juzeur’s apartment on the third floor, he remembered his promise of the previous evening. He felt quite curious about that discreet little woman with eyes like periwinkles. He rang. It was Madame Juzeur herself who answered the door.

  ‘Oh, my dear sir, how good of you! Do come in!’

  There was a certain stuffiness about the apartment. There were carpets and curtains everywhere, chairs as soft as eiderdown, and the atmosphere as warm and heavy as that of a chest lined with old rainbow-coloured satin. In the drawing-room, which with its double curtains had the solemn stillness of a sacristy, Octave was asked to take a seat on a broad, low sofa.

  ‘This is the lace,’ said Madame Juzeur, as she came back with a sandalwood box full of pieces of stuff. ‘I want to make a present of it to somebody, and I’m curious to know its value.’

  It was a piece of very fine old point d’Angleterre. Octave examined it with his professional eye, and declared that it was worth three hundred francs. Then, without waiting further, as they were both handling the lace, he bent down and kissed her fingers, which were as small and delicate as those of a little girl.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur Octave, at my age! You can’t think what you’re doing!’ exclaimed Madame Juzeur, with a pretty air of surprise, though not at all annoyed.

  She was thirty-two, and gave out that she was quite an old woman. As usual, she spoke of her troubles: goodness gracious! Ten days after their marriage the cruel man had disappeared one morning and had never returned—nobody knew why.

  ‘You can understand’, she said, gazing up at the ceiling, ‘that after a shock like that, it’s all over for any woman.’

  Octave had kept hold of her warm little hand, which seemed to melt into his, and he kept lightly kissing it on the fingertips. She looked at him vaguely, tenderly, and then, in a maternal way, she exclaimed:

  ‘Child!’

  Thinking himself encouraged, he tried to put his arm round her waist and pull her on to the sofa, but she gently freed herself from his grasp, laughing, as if she thought he was just playing.

  ‘No, leave me alone, and don’t touch me if you want us to remain good friends.’

  ‘Then you don’t want to?’ he asked in a low voice.

  ‘Want what? I don’t know what you mean. Oh! you can hold my hand as long as you like.’

  He caught hold of her hand again. But this time he opened it, and began kissing the palm. With half-shut eyes, she treated the process as a joke, opening her fingers as a cat puts out its claws to be tickled inside its paw. She would not let him go further than the wrist. The first day a sacred line was drawn there beyond which impropriety began.

  ‘Father Mauduit is coming upstairs,’ said Louise, suddenly returning from an errand.

  The orphan had the sallow complexion and insignificant features of a foundling. She giggled idiotically when she caught sight of the gentleman nibbling at her mistress’s hand. But at a glance from Madame Juzeur she disappeared.

  ‘I fear I’ll never be able to do anything with her,’ said Madame Juzeur. ‘But, all the same, one ought to try and put one of those poor creatures on the right path. Would you come this way, Monsieur Mouret?’

  She took him into the dining-room, so as to leave the other room for the priest, whom Louise showed in. As she said goodbye, she expressed the hope that Octave would come again and have a chat. It would be a little company for her; she was always so lonely and depressed. Happily, in religion she had her consolation.

  That evening, at about five o’clock, Octave felt positively relieved as he made himself at home at the Pichons’ while waiting for dinner. The house and its inmates bewildered him somewhat. After feeling all the provincial’s awe for the grave splendour of its staircase, he was gradually becoming filled with supreme contempt for all that he imagined took place behind those big mahogany doors. He did not know what to think; these bourgeois women, whose virtue had frozen him at first, seemed now as if they would surrender at a mere sign, and when one of them resisted it filled him with surprise and vexation.

  Marie blushed with pleasure when she saw him put down the parcel of books he had fetched for her that morning.

  ‘How good of you, Monsieur Octave!’ she kept repeating. ‘Thank you so much. How nice of you to come so early. Will you have a glass of sugar and water, with some cognac in it? It’s very good for the appetite.’

  Just to please her, he accepted. Everything about the evening seemed very pleasant to him, even Pichon and the Vuillaumes, who slowly rehearsed their usual Sunday conversation. Every now and then Marie ran to the kitchen where she was cooking a shoulder of mutton, and Octave jokingly followed her, and catching her round the waist, in front of the oven, kissed the back of her neck. Without a cry, without a start, she turned round and kissed him on the mouth with her icy lips. To the young man their coldness seemed delicious.

  ‘Well, what do you think of your new minister?’ he asked Pichon, on coming back to the drawing-room.

  The clerk gave a start. What! there was going to be a new minister of public instruction? He had heard nothing about it; in the sort of office he worked in they never took any interest in that sort of thing.

  ‘The weather is so awful,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s quite impossible to keep one’s trousers clean!’

  Madame Vuillaume was talking about a girl at Batignolles who had gone to the bad.

  ‘You’ll hardly believe me, sir,’ she said. ‘The girl was extremely well brought up, but she was so bored at having to live with her parents that she twice tried to jump out of the window. It’s beyond belief!’

  ‘They should put bars over the windows,’ remarked Monsieur Vuillaume simply.

  The dinner was delightful. The same sort of conversation went on all the while, as they sat round the frugal board, which was lighted by a little lamp. Pichon and Monsieur Vuillaume, having got on to the subject of government officials, talked interminably about directors and sub-directors. The father-in-law obstinately upheld those of his day, and then remembered that they were dead, while Pichon, for his part, went on talking about the new ones, amid an endless muddle of names. On one point, however, the two men, as well as Madame Vuillaume, were agreed: fat old Chavignat, whose wife was so ugly, had had far too many children. With an income such as his it was quite absurd. Octave, feeling happy and at ease, smiled; he had not spent such a pleasant evening for a long time. After a while he, too, roundly condemned Chavignat. Marie soothed him with her innocent, docile look; she was quite untroubled to see him sitting next to her husband, and helped them both to what they liked best, in her languidly obedient way.

  At ten o’clock exactly the Vuillaumes rose to go. Pichon put on his hat. Every Sunday he went with them as far as their omnibus. It was a habit which, out of deference, he had observed ever since his marriage, and the Vuillaumes would have been very hurt if he had now tried to discontinue it. They all three set out for the Rue de Richelieu, and walked slowly up it, scrutinizing the Batignolles omnibuses, which were always full. Pichon thus was often obliged to go as far as Montmartre, for it would never have done for him to leave the Vuillaumes before putting them on their bus. As they walked very slowly, it took him nearly two hours to go there and back.

  There was much friendly shaking of hands on the landing. As Octave went back with Marie to the sitting-room, he said:

  ‘It’s raining. Jules won’t get back before midnight.’

  As Lilitte had been put to bed early, he at once made Marie sit on his knee, drinking the remainder of the coffee with her out of the s
ame cup, like a husband who is glad that his guests have gone and that he is left all to himself after the excitement of a little family gathering, and able to kiss his wife at his ease, with the doors closed. A drowsy warmth pervaded the little room, in which a dish of frosted eggs had left a faint odour of vanilla. As he was lightly kissing the young woman under the chin, someone knocked at the door. Marie did not even give a start. It was the half-witted Josserand boy. Whenever he could escape from the apartment opposite he would come across and chat to her, as her gentleness attracted him; they both got on very well together, sitting in silence for ten minutes at a time, occasionally dropping the odd disconnected remark.

  Octave, very put out, stayed silent.

  ‘They’ve got some people there tonight,’ stammered Saturnin. ‘I don’t care a damn if they won’t let me sit with them. I took the lock off and got away. Serves ’em right!’

  ‘They’ll wonder what’s happened to you. You ought to go back,’ said Marie, who had noticed Octave’s impatience.

  But the idiot simply laughed with delight, and falteringly told her all that had happened at home. Each visit seemed to be in order to relieve his memory.

  ‘Papa has been working all night again, and mamma gave Berthe a slap. Tell me, when people get married, does it hurt?’

  Then, as Marie did not answer, he excitedly continued:

  ‘I won’t go to the country, I won’t! If they touch her, I’ll strangle them; it’s easy enough, at night, while they’re asleep. The palm of her hand is as smooth as notepaper; but the other is a beast of a girl …’

  Then he began again, and got more muddled, as he could not express what he had come to say. Marie finally persuaded him to go back to his parents, without his even having noticed Octave’s presence.

  Fearing another interruption, Octave wanted to take the young woman across to his own room but, blushing violently, she refused. Not understanding such bashfulness, he continued to assure her that they would be certain to hear Jules coming upstairs, and she would have plenty of time to get back to her room; and as he began to pull on her arm she became quite angry, as indignant as a woman threatened by violence.

  ‘No, not in your room; never! That would be too awful. Let’s stay here.’ She ran to the back of the apartment. Octave was still on the landing, surprised at such unexpected resistance, when the sound of a violent quarrel arose from the courtyard. Everything seemed to be going wrong for him; he should simply have gone off to bed. A noise of this sort was so unusual at that hour that at last he opened a window so as to listen. Monsieur Gourd was shouting out:

  ‘I tell you, you shall not pass! The landlord has been sent for. He’ll come down and kick you out himself!’

  ‘Kick me out? What for?’ said a gruff voice. ‘Don’t I pay my rent? Go on, Amélie, and if the gentleman touches you, he’ll know about it!’

  It was the carpenter from upstairs, who was returning with the woman they had chased away that morning. Octave leaned out of the window, but in the black courtyard he only saw great moving shadows thrown by the dim gaslight in the hall.

  ‘Monsieur Vabre! Monsieur Vabre!’ cried the porter, as the carpenter pushed him aside. ‘Quick, quick! she’s coming in!’

  Despite her bad legs Madame Gourd had gone to fetch the landlord, who just then was at work on his great task. He was coming down. Octave heard him furiously repeating:

  ‘It’s scandalous, disgraceful! I won’t allow such a thing in my house!’

  Then, addressing the workman, who at first seemed somewhat abashed, he said: ‘Send that woman away at once! At once, do you hear? We don’t want any women brought in here.’

  ‘But she’s my wife!’ replied the carpenter, with a scared look. ‘She’s in service—she only comes once a month, when her people let her have a day off. What a fuss! It’s not your place to prevent me from sleeping with my wife, is it?’

  Then both porter and landlord lost their heads.

  ‘I’m giving you notice to quit,’ stuttered Monsieur Vabre, ‘and, meanwhile, I forbid you to turn my premises into a brothel! Gourd, turn that creature into the street. No, sir, I don’t like bad jokes. If a man is married he should say so. Hold your tongue, I’ll have no more of your insolence!’

  The carpenter, good-natured fellow as he was, and who, no doubt, had had a little too much wine, burst out laughing.

  ‘It’s a damned funny thing, all the same. Well, Amélie, as the gentleman objects, you’d better go back to your employer’s. We’ll make our baby some other time. We wanted to make a baby, that’s all we wanted. I’ll accept your notice with pleasure! I don’t want to stay in this hole. There are some nice goings-on here. He won’t have women brought into the house—oh, no! But he tolerates well-dressed hussies on every floor, who lead filthy lives behind closed doors. You bloody toffs!’

  Amélie had made herself scarce, so as not to cause her husband any more bother, while he continued his good-humoured banter. In the meantime Gourd covered Monsieur Vabre’s retreat while venturing to make certain remarks out loud. What a filthy lot the lower orders were! One workman in the house was quite enough to infect it.

  Octave closed the window. Then, just as he was returning to Marie, someone lightly brushed past him in the passage.

  ‘What! you again?’ he said, recognizing Trublot.

  For a moment the latter was speechless; then he sought to explain his presence.

  ‘Yes; I’ve been dining with the Josserands, and I was just going up to …’

  Octave felt disgusted.

  ‘To that slut Adèle, I suppose? And you swore you didn’t sleep with her!’

  Then, resuming his swagger, Trublot said with a satisfied air:

  ‘I assure you, my dear fellow, she’s rather wonderful! Her skin is … you can’t imagine!’

  Then he abused the workman, who, with his dirty stories about women, had almost caused him to be caught coming up the back stairs. He had been obliged to come round by the front staircase. Then, as he made off, he added:

  ‘Remember next Thursday—I’m taking you to see Duveyrier’s mistress. We’ll dine together first.’

  The house regained its holy calm, lapsing into the religious silence that seemed to issue from each chaste bedchamber. Octave had rejoined Marie in her bedroom, sitting beside her on the conjugal bed while she arranged the pillows. Upstairs, as the only chair had a basin on it and an old pair of slippers, Trublot had sat down on Adèle’s narrow bed and was waiting for her in his dinner suit and white tie. When he recognized Julie’s step as she came up to bed he held his breath, for he was in constant dread of women’s quarrels. At last Adèle appeared. She was angry and, seizing his arm, said:

  ‘You could treat me better when I’m waiting at table!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you don’t even look at me, and you never say “please” when you want some bread. This evening, when I was handing the veal round, you looked as if you’d never seen me before in your life. I’ve had enough of it. They’re always getting at me, and it’s just too much if you side with them!’

  She undressed in a fury, and, flinging herself down on the old mattress, which cracked again, she turned her back on him.

  Meanwhile in the next room, the carpenter, still full of wine, was talking to himself at the top of his voice, so that the whole corridor could hear him.

  ‘Well, it’s a queer business when you can’t sleep with your own wife! So you won’t have any women in the house, will you, you silly old bugger? Just go and have a look under all the bedclothes, and you’ll soon see!’

  VII

  In order to get uncle Bachelard to give Berthe a dowry, for the past two weeks the Josserands had been asking him to dinner almost every evening, in spite of his revolting habits.

  When they told him about the marriage all he did was pat his niece on the cheek and say:

  ‘What! So you’re going to get married? That’s very nice, isn’t it, my little girl!’

 
; He turned a deaf ear to all hints, exaggerating his behaviour as a bibulous old rake, becoming suddenly drunk whenever the subject of money was mentioned.

  Madame Josserand thought of asking him to meet Auguste, the bridegroom-elect, feeling that the sight of the young man might induce him to hand over the money. This stratagem was quite heroic, for the family did not like exhibiting their uncle for fear that it might create a false impression. However, he behaved fairly well; there was only a large syrup stain on his waistcoat, no doubt acquired at some café. Yet when, after Auguste’s departure, his sister questioned him and asked what he thought of the bridegroom, he merely said, without compromising himself:

  ‘Charming, quite charming.’

  The thing must be settled somehow, for time was running out. Madame Josserand determined to put matters plainly before him.

  ‘As we’re now by ourselves,’ she continued, ‘let’s make the most of it. Could you please leave us alone, my dears; we must have a talk with your uncle. Berthe, please keep an eye on Saturnin, and see that he doesn’t take the lock off the door again.’

  Ever since they had become busy with his sister’s marriage, keeping it a secret, Saturnin wandered about the house with wild eyes, feeling that something was going on; he imagined all sorts of terrible things, to the consternation of his family.

  ‘I’ve made enquiries,’ said Madame Josserand, when she had shut herself in with Bachelard and her husband. ‘This is the Vabres’ position.’

  Then she went into long details about figures. Old Vabre had brought half-a-million with him from Versailles. If the house had cost him three hundred thousand francs, he would have two hundred thousand left, which in the last twelve years had been producing interest. Besides, every year his rents brought him in twenty-two thousand francs, and, as he lived with the Duveyriers and hardly spent anything at all, he must be worth five or six hundred thousand francs, not counting the house. Thus there were handsome expectations on that side.