Pot Luck Page 32

  ‘Well, you know,’ he falteringly continued, ‘you must be patient. Your husband’s not a bad sort. If you know how to handle him he’ll give you what you want.’

  Beneath hollow talk such as this, they felt the same thought seize them both. They were alone, free, in no danger of being surprised, the door bolted. Such safety as this and the warm atmosphere of the room touched their senses. And yet he did not dare; the feminine side of him, his womanly instinct, was so strong in this moment of passion that it made him the woman in their encounter. Then, as if remembering one of her early lessons, she dropped her handkerchief.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ she said to the young man as he picked it up.

  Their fingers touched; this momentary contact brought them closer to each other. Now she smiled fondly; her waist grew soft and supple, for she remembered that men hate boards. One must not behave like a simpleton; one must submit to a little playfulness without appearing to do so, if one wished to make a catch.

  ‘It’s getting quite dark,’ she said, as she went to close the window.

  He followed, and in the shadow of the curtains she allowed him to take her hand. She began to laugh louder—a silvery laugh that almost dazed him—and enveloped him with her pretty gestures. Then, as he at length grew bold, she threw back her head, displaying her soft young neck, quivering with excitement. Distracted by this vision, he kissed her under the chin.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur Octave!’ she said, making a pretence of gracefully keeping him in his proper place.

  Then, catching hold of her, he threw her backwards on to the bed, which she had just been arranging; and, his desire satisfied, all his brutal instincts returned—his ferocious disdain for women, usually hidden under his gentle air of adoration. She submitted in silence, without pleasure. When she got up, with limp wrists and her face drawn by a spasm of pain, all her contempt for men was apparent in the black look she gave him. They remained silent. The only sound to be heard was the regular beat of Saturnin’s brush as he sat outside the door cleaning the husband’s boots.

  Meanwhile Octave, in the flush of his triumph, kept thinking of Valérie and Madame Hédouin. At any rate, he was now something more than little Madame Pichon’s lover! It was as if he had rehabilitated himself in his own eyes. Then, noticing Berthe’s look of pain, he felt somewhat ashamed and kissed her with great tenderness. She soon recovered her composure, however, her face resuming its expression of resolute insouciance. With a gesture she seemed to say: ‘It can’t be helped; it’s done now.’ Yet she felt the need to express the sad thoughts within her.

  ‘Ah, if only you had married me!’ she murmured.

  He felt surprised, almost uneasy; but kissing her again, he answered:

  ‘Yes, how nice that would have been!’

  That evening, the dinner with the Josserands was quite delightful. Berthe had never seemed so sweet and gentle. She never said a word to her parents about the quarrel, and greeted her husband with an air of submission. Delighted, he took Octave aside to thank him, doing this with such warmth and squeezing his hands so vigorously in sign of gratitude that the young man felt quite embarrassed. In fact, they all lavished attention on him. Saturnin, who at table behaved extremely well, also looked at him with loving eyes, as if he had shared in the sweetness of his sin. Hortense even deigned to listen to him, while Madame Josserand, full of motherly devotion, kept filling his glass.

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Berthe during dessert. ‘I want to take up my painting again. I’ve wanted for ages to decorate a cup for Auguste.’

  Auguste was greatly moved by this loving thought on the part of his wife. Meanwhile, under the table, Octave had kept his foot on Berthe’s ever since the soup—a gesture of possession, so to speak, at this little bourgeois gathering. Berthe, however, was not without a certain uneasiness before Rachel, whom she always caught staring at her. Was it visible then? Obviously, the girl must either be dismissed or bought off.

  Monsieur Josserand, sitting next to his daughter, managed to soothe her by slipping nineteen francs, wrapped up in paper, under the tablecloth. Bending down, he whispered in her ear:

  ‘That came from my own little work, you know. If you’ve got any debts, you must pay them.’

  Thus, between her father, who nudged her knee, and her lover, who gently rubbed her foot, she felt perfectly happy. Life would now be wonderful. And they all became very relaxed, determined to enjoy such a pleasant family gathering, unspoiled by quarrels of any sort. It was really almost too good to be true; something must be going to bring them good luck. Auguste alone had a splitting headache which, however, he had expected after so much high emotion. At about nine o’clock he was obliged to go to bed.

  XIII

  For some time past Monsieur Gourd had gone prowling about, looking mysteriously ill at ease. One met him moving noiselessly along, his eyes peeled and his ears pricked up, forever going up and down both staircases, where the tenants had even seen him doing his rounds at dead of night. It was clear that the morality of the house troubled him; a breath of scandal had come to disturb the courtyard in its frigid nakedness, ruffling the claustral serenity of the hall and menacing the spotless virtue of the families on every floor.

  One evening Octave found the concierge standing stock-still and without a light at the end of his corridor, leaning against the door opening on to the back stairs. Surprised, he asked him the reason.

  ‘I want to find out something, Monsieur Mouret,’ replied Gourd, as he shuffled off to bed.

  The young man was greatly alarmed. Did the concierge have suspicions as to his relations with Berthe? Perhaps he was spying on them. There were perpetual obstacles to their relationship in a house as carefully supervised as this, whose inhabitants all professed to be so strictly moral. Thus he could only see his mistress on rare occasions; and if she went out in the afternoon without her mother, his sole joy was to leave the shop on some pretext and join her at the end of some out-of-the-way arcade, where he would walk about with her arm-in-arm for an hour. Moroever, ever since the end of July, Auguste slept away from home every Tuesday, as he went to Lyons, where he had been foolish enough to take a share in a silk factory that was in difficulties. So far, however, Berthe had refused to take advantage of this night of liberty. The thought of Rachel made her tremble, and she feared that some forgetfulness on her part might put her in the girl’s power.

  It was precisely on a Tuesday evening that Octave caught Monsieur Gourd on the watch near his room. This increased his anxiety. For the last week he had been vainly imploring Berthe to come upstairs to his room when everybody was asleep. Was this what Gourd suspected? Octave went back to bed discontented, tortured alike by passion and fear. His love was growing troublesome; it was turning into an insane passion, and he angrily saw himself giving way to every sort of sentimental absurdity. As it was, he could never meet Berthe in an arcade without buying her whatever took her fancy in a shop-window. For instance, only the day before in the Passage de la Madeleine, she had looked so avidly at a little bonnet that he went into the shop and bought it for her as a present—chip straw, with just a garland of roses, something delightfully simple, but costing two hundred francs! A bit much, he thought.

  Towards one o’clock he fell asleep, after feverishly tossing about for a long while between the sheets. Then he was roused by a gentle tapping at his door.

  ‘It’s me,’ whispered a woman’s voice.

  It was Berthe. Opening the door, he clasped her passionately to him in the dark. But she had not come upstairs for that. Lighting a candle, he saw that she was in a state of great agitation about something. The day before, as he had not had enough money with him, he had been unable to pay for the bonnet, while she was so delighted that she actually gave her name; accordingly they had just sent her the bill. So, terrified that they might call on her husband for the money in the morning, she had ventured to come upstairs, emboldened by the profound silence of the house and feeling certain that Rachel was asleep.

  �
�Tomorrow morning, without fail!’ she implored, trying to escape his grasp. ‘It must be paid tomorrow morning!’

  But he again clasped her to him.

  ‘Stay here!’

  Half awake and shivering, he whispered the words in her ear as he drew her nearer to the warm bed. Wearing only a petticoat and a dressing-jacket, she felt as if naked, with her hair already knotted up for the night and her shoulders still warm from the dressing-gown she had thrown over them on coming out.

  ‘I promise I’ll let you go in an hour. Stay!’

  She stayed. Slowly the clock chimed the hours in the voluptuous warmth of the room; and at each stroke he begged her not to go, pleading so tenderly that all her strength deserted her. She succumbed. Then, at about four o’clock, just as she had finally resolved to go, they both fell asleep in each other’s arms. When they opened their eyes, broad daylight was streaming in through the window. It was nine o’clock. Berthe uttered a cry of despair.

  ‘Good heavens! I’m lost!’

  Then came a moment of confusion. She leaped out of bed, her eyes half closed with sleep and weariness, groping about blindly, putting her clothes on inside out, while emitting stifled cries of terror. Octave, equally desperate, had rushed to the door to stop her from going out dressed that way at such an hour. Was she mad? People might meet her on the stairs; it was far too risky. They must think up some plan by which she could get downstairs unobserved. But she insisted that she had to leave immediately, and tried to push past him in order to get to the door. Suddenly he thought of the back staircase. Nothing could be more convenient; she could slip through the kitchen to her room. But as Marie Pichon was always in the corridor in the morning, Octave thought it prudent to go and divert her attention while Berthe made her escape. He hurriedly put on his trousers and an overcoat.

  ‘Really! How slow you are!’ muttered Berthe, to whom the bedroom had become a veritable furnace.

  At last Octave went out in his usual nonchalant fashion. To his surprise, he found Saturnin in Marie’s apartment, calmly watching her do her housework. The madman was glad to take refuge there as he used to, for she left him to himself; here he was sure not to be told what to do. Marie did not find him in her way but willingly tolerated his presence, though his conversational powers were not great. Still, he was company in a way; and she went on singing her song in a low, mournful voice.

  ‘Hullo! There you are with your sweetheart!’ said Octave, contriving to keep the door closed behind him.

  Marie turned crimson. Poor Monsieur Saturnin! Was it likely? It seemed to hurt him if one simply touched his hand by accident! The madman grew angry as well. He would never be anyone’s sweetheart, never, never! Anybody who told his sister such a lie would have him to deal with. Surprised at his sudden irritability, Octave had to pacify him.

  Meanwhile Berthe slipped out by the servants’ staircase. She had to go down two flights of stairs. On the very first step she stopped short at the sound of shrill laughter that came from Madame Juzeur’s kitchen below; trembling, she caught hold of the railing of the open window overlooking the narrow courtyard. Then, all at once, there was a babel of voices; the morning sewage surged up in waves from this fetid drain. It was the maids, who were furiously abusing little Louise for spying on them in their rooms, through the keyhole, as they were undressing. A fine thing for a dirty brat like that, not yet fifteen, to do. Louise only laughed the louder. She did not deny it. She knew what Adèle’s behind looked like. What a sight! Lisa was dreadfully skinny, while Victoire’s belly was bashed in like an old cask. To make her stop, they all drenched her with disgusting language. Then, annoyed at having been stripped naked, so to speak, before each other, and longing for some method of self-defence, they began to attack their mistresses, stripping them naked in their turn. Ah yes, Lisa might be skinny, but she wasn’t as skinny as the other Madame Campardon, who was like a dried shark—quite a tasty morsel for an architect. Victoire merely wished that all the Vabres, Duveyriers, and Josserands in the world might possess as well- preserved a belly as hers if ever they reached her age. As for Adèle, she certainly would not exchange her behind for such pathetic little things as those of Madame Josserand’s daughters. Thus Berthe, standing motionless and amazed, received this kitchen swill full in the face. She had never dreamed of such a cesspool as this; it was her first revelation of maidservants washing their dirty linen, while their masters were busy shaving.

  Suddenly a voice shouted:

  ‘There goes the bell for master’s hot water.’

  At once windows were closed and doors slammed. Complete silence ensued, but Berthe did not yet dare to move. When she at last went down it occurred to her that Rachel would probably be in the kitchen waiting for her. This threw her into a fresh panic. She dreaded going in now; she would rather have gone out into the street and run off, never to return. However, she pushed the door half open and was relieved at not finding her maid there. Then, gleeful as a child at seeing herself home again and safe, she hurried to her room. But there, beside the bed, which had not even been turned down, stood Rachel. The maid looked at the bed and then at her mistress, her face impassive. In her confusion Berthe stammered out, as an excuse, something about her sister being unwell upstairs. Then, appalled at such a miserable falsehood, and aware that all was discovered, she burst into tears. Sinking into a chair, she sobbed bitterly.

  This lasted a whole minute. Not a word was exchanged; sobs alone broke the deep silence of the room. Exaggerating her discretion, maintaining the frosty manner of a girl who knows everything but says nothing, Rachel turned round and pretended to smooth the pillows, as if she had just finished making the bed. Then, as the silence only distressed Berthe even more, Rachel said respectfully, as she carried on her dusting:

  ‘Madame shouldn’t take on so, monsieur is not very nice to her.’

  Berthe stopped crying. She would tip the girl; that was the best thing to do. So she at once gave her twenty francs. Then it struck her that that was rather mean, and feeling uneasy, having fancied she saw the girl’s lip curl disdainfully, she followed her into the kitchen and brought her back to make her a present of a nearly new dress.

  Meanwhile Octave, for his part, was again in a state of alarm on account of Monsieur Gourd. On leaving the Pichons’, he found him standing silently in the same place as on the previous night, spying behind the door of the servants’ staircase. He followed him, without even venturing to speak. The concierge gravely descended to the front staircase. On the floor below he took out a key, and went into the apartment which was let to the gentleman of distinction who came one night a week to work. Through the half-open door Octave got a good view of his room, which always remained as closely shut as a tomb. That morning it was in a terrible state of disorder, as, no doubt, the gentleman had been working there the night before—a large bed with the sheets stripped off it, an empty wardrobe with a glass door, the remains of a lobster and two half-empty bottles, two basins full of dirty water, one near the bed and the other on a chair. In a manner as calm as that of a retired magistrate, Monsieur Gourd proceeded to empty the basins and rinse them out.

  As he hurried to the Passage de la Madeleine to pay for the bonnet, Octave’s fears of discovery still haunted him. On his way back, he decided to draw out the concierge and his wife. Reclining in her commodious armchair, Madame Gourd was taking the air which came in through the open window, flanked by two flowerpots. Near the door old Mother Pérou, looking humble and abashed, stood waiting.

  ‘Any letters for me?’ asked Octave, by way of a start.

  Just then Monsieur Gourd came down from the third-floor apartment. To keep this place in order was the only work in the house that he deigned to do, and he appeared flattered that the gentleman should show such confidence in him, paying him generously as well, on condition that the washbasins did not pass through other hands.

  ‘No, Monsieur Mouret, nothing at all!’ he replied.

  Though perfectly aware of old Mother Pérou’
s presence, Gourd pretended not to see her. The day before he had sent her packing, furious with her for having spilt a pail of water in the hall. Now she had come for her money, trembling at the sight of him and cringing close to the wall.

  While Octave lingered to make conversation with Madame Gourd, the concierge suddenly turned towards poor Mother Pérou.

  ‘So you’ve come for your money. How much is it?’

  But Madame Gourd interrupted.

  ‘Look, dear; there’s that girl again with her horrible dog.’

  It was Lisa, who, a few days before, had picked up a stray spaniel in the street. Ever since there had been continual quarrels with Gourd and his wife. The landlord would not have any animals in the house. No, no animals and no women! The little thing was not even allowed to go into the courtyard; it could do its business perfectly well in the street. As it had been raining that morning the dog’s paws were wet, so Monsieur Gourd, rushing forward, exclaimed:

  ‘I won’t have it running upstairs! Do you hear? Carry it in your arms!’

  ‘So I get all dirty!’ said Lisa insolently. ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if he dirtied the back stairs! Go on, doggie!’

  Monsieur Gourd tried to grab the animal and nearly slipped, so he vented his fury on all those filthy servants. He was forever at war with them, ill-tempered as any former servant who wishes to be waited upon in his turn. All at once Lisa turned on him, and with the strident voice of a girl reared in the gutters of Montmartre she shouted out:

  ‘Eh! Can’t you leave me alone, you dirty old flunkey? Why don’t you go and empty the duke’s piss-pots?’

  It was the only insult that could silence Monsieur Gourd, and all the servants made ample use of it. He withdrew, fuming, muttering to himself, saying that he was proud to have been in the duke’s service, and that she would not have stayed there two hours, useless bag that she was. Then he fell upon Mother Pérou, who nearly jumped out of her skin.