Pot Luck Read online

  The girls nodded. Seeing himself vanquished, he regretfully put down his pen and opened a copy of Le Temps,* which he brought home every evening from the office.

  ‘Is Saturnin asleep?’ asked Madame Josserand curtly, referring to her younger son.

  ‘Yes, ages ago,’ he replied. ‘And I told Adèle she could go to bed, too … Did you see Léon at the Dambrevilles?’

  ‘Of course! He sleeps there!’ she exclaimed, unable to contain her spite.

  Monsieur Josserand, surprised, ingenuously asked:

  ‘Do you think so?’

  Hortense and Berthe had become deaf. They smiled slightly, however, pretending to be busy with their shoes, which were in a pitiful state. By way of a diversion, Madame Josserand tried to pick another quarrel with her husband. She begged him to take away his newspaper every morning, and not to leave it lying about all day, as he had done the day before for instance. That issue happened to contain a report of a scandalous trial, which his daughters might easily have read. It was clear that he was utterly lacking in any moral sense.

  ‘Is it bedtime?’ asked Hortense. ‘I’m hungry.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Berthe. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘What!’ cried Madame Josserand, beside herself. ‘Hungry? Didn’t you have some brioche when you were there? What silly things you are! Hungry, indeed! I made sure I had something to eat.’

  But the girls persisted in saying that they were dying of hunger, so their mother at last went with them to the kitchen to see if there was anything left. Their father furtively set to work on his wrappers again. He was well aware that without those wrappers all the little luxuries in the home would have disappeared, and that was why, in spite of the scornful remarks and the bickering, he doggedly kept at his secret work until daybreak, quite pleased at the thought that just one more scrap of lace might bring about a wealthy marriage. Though expenditure on food was being cut down, they could still hardly afford to pay for dresses and those Tuesday receptions, and so he was resigned to his martyr-like task, dressed in tatters, while his wife and daughters went out to parties with flowers in their hair.

  ‘What a stench!’ cried Madame Josserand as she entered the kitchen. ‘I can never get that slut Adèle to leave the window open. She always says it makes the room so cold in the morning.’

  She opened the window, and from the narrow courtyard separating the kitchens an icy dampness rose, a stale odour like that of a musty cellar. Berthe’s lighted candle threw dancing shadows of huge bare shoulders on the opposite wall.

  ‘And what a state it’s in!’ continued Madame Josserand, sniffing about everywhere in all the dirty corners. ‘She hasn’t scrubbed her table for a fortnight. Those are the plates we used two days ago. It’s absolutely disgusting! And her sink! Just smell her sink!’

  She was getting more and more worked up. She knocked over plates and dishes with her arms all white with rice-powder and laden with gold bracelets. She trailed her red skirts through the filth until they caught in pans shoved under the tables, at the risk of spoiling her elaborate finery with the dirty peelings. Finally, at the sight of a knife with its blade badly notched, she exploded.

  ‘I’ll send her packing first thing in the morning!’

  ‘What good will that do?’ asked Hortense quietly. ‘We can never keep anybody. She’s the first one who’s stayed three months. The moment they get a little decent and learn how to make a white sauce, off they go.’

  Madame Josserand bit her lip. As a matter of fact Adèle, fresh from Brittany, dirty and stupid, had been the only one to stay in this pompous, penny-pinching bourgeois home, where they took advantage of her dirt and ignorance to starve her. Scores of times, when they had found a comb in the bread or some abominable stew had given them stomach-ache, they had talked of getting rid of her; but on reflection they preferred to put up with her rather than face the difficulty of finding another cook, for even pilferers refused to take service in such a hole, where every lump of sugar was counted.

  ‘I can’t find anything,’ muttered Berthe, poking about in a cupboard.

  The shelves had the dismal bareness and sham display of households where poor-quality meat is bought so that there can be a show of flowers on the table. There were just some clean china plates with gold edges, a crumb-brush with some of the plated silver rubbed off its handle, and a cruet-stand in which the oil and vinegar had dried up; but not a single crust, not a scrap of fruit or pastry or cheese. Obviously Adèle’s insatiable hunger made her lick the plates clean of any rare drop of gravy or sauce left by her employers, until she nearly rubbed the gilt off.

  ‘She must have eaten all the rabbit!’ cried Madame Josserand.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hortense, ‘there were some leftovers! Ah, here they are! I’d have been surprised if she’d dared to have them. They’ll do me. They’re cold, but they’re better than nothing.’

  Berthe kept rummaging about, but without success. At last she caught hold of a bottle in which her mother had diluted the contents of an old pot of jam, so as to manufacture some redcurrant syrup for her evening parties. She poured herself a glass, saying:

  ‘I’ll soak some bread in this, since there’s nothing else.’

  But Madame Josserand, looking very anxious, said cuttingly:

  ‘Oh, don’t hold back; fill your tumbler up while you’re about it. Tomorrow I’ll just offer our guests cold water.’

  Luckily, another of Adèle’s misdeeds cut her reprimand short. As she was prying about, searching for evidence of the servant’s crimes, she caught sight of a book lying on the table, and this provoked a supreme outburst.

  ‘Oh, the slut! She’s brought my Lamartine into the kitchen again!’

  It was a copy of Jocelyn.* Picking it up, she rubbed it, as if to get it clean, and went on saying that she had told her scores of times not to drag it about with her everywhere to write her accounts on. Meanwhile Berthe and Hortense had divided the little piece of bread between them, and carrying their suppers said they would undress first. Their mother cast a parting glance at the ice-cold oven and went back to the dining-room, holding her Lamartine tightly under her fleshy arm.

  Monsieur Josserand continued writing. He hoped that his wife would be satisfied with a crushing look of contempt as she went past on her way to bed. But she again sank into a chair and gazed at him without speaking. Her gaze made him so uncomfortable that his pen kept sputtering on the flimsy wrapping-paper.

  ‘So it was you who stopped Adèle from making a custard for tomorrow night,’ she said at last.

  He looked up in amazement.

  ‘I did, my dear?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll deny it, as you always do! So, why hasn’t she made it as I told her to? You know very well that uncle Bachelard is coming to dinner before the party tomorrow; it’s his saint’s day,* unfortunately, on the same day as our party! If there’s no custard we must have ice cream, which means throwing away another five francs!’

  He did not try to exculpate himself. Afraid to carry on with his work, he began to toy with the penholder. There was a lull.

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ resumed Madame Josserand, ‘I’d like you to call on the Campardons and remind them as politely as you can that we’re expecting them in the evening. The young man who’s staying with them arrived this afternoon. Ask them to bring him along. Remember, I want him to come.’

  ‘What young man?’

  ‘A young man; it would take far too long to explain. I’ve found out everything about him. I have to try everything, since you leave your daughters entirely to me, like a bundle of rubbish—you don’t seem to care in the slightest about getting them married.’

  Her anger was rekindled.

  ‘You see, I keep it to myself, but, oh! it’s more than I can stand. Don’t say anything, sir; don’t say anything, or I’ll explode!’

  He said nothing, and she exploded all the same.

  ‘I won’t put up with it any more. I warn you, one of these fine days I’ll go off an
d leave you with your two empty-headed daughters. Do you think I was born to lead such a miserable life as this? Always straining to make ends meet, never even having a decent pair of boots, and never able to entertain my friends properly! And it’s all your fault! Don’t shake your head, sir; don’t make me even more angry! Yes, it’s your fault; I repeat, your fault! You deceived me, sir; basely deceived me. One shouldn’t marry a woman if one has resolved to let her go without everything. You boasted about your fine future, you claimed you were the friend of your employer’s sons, those Bernheim brothers who’ve made such a fool of you. What! Do you dare to pretend that they didn’t make a fool of you? You ought to be their partner by now! It was you who made their business what it is—one of the biggest in Paris, and you’re still just their cashier, a subordinate, an underling! Really! You’ve got no spirit! Hold your tongue!’

  ‘I get eight thousand francs a year,’ murmured the hireling. ‘It’s a very good position.’

  ‘A good position, indeed! After more than thirty years’ service. They grind you down, and you’re delighted. Do you know what I would have done, if it had been me? I would have made sure that the business filled my pockets twenty times over. It would have been so easy; I saw it when I married you, and I’ve never stopped urging you to do so ever since. But it needed initiative and intelligence, rather than just going to sleep like a blockhead on the office stool!’

  ‘Come, come,’ broke in Monsieur Josserand, ‘are you going to reproach me now for being honest?’

  She stood up and advanced towards him, brandishing her Lamartine.

  ‘Honest! What do you mean? You can start by being honest towards me; others come second, I hope! And I tell you again, sir, it’s not honest to take a girl in by pretending to want to become rich some day, and then to lose your wits looking after someone else’s money! It’s true, I was absolutely swindled! If only I could turn the clock back! Ah, if I’d only known what your family was like!’

  She was pacing up and down the room in a rage. He could not restrain a gesture of impatience, despite his great desire for peace.

  ‘You ought to go to bed, Eléonore,’ he said. ‘It’s past one o’clock, and this work must be finished. My family has done you no harm, so why mention them?’

  ‘And why not, may I ask? Your family is no more sacred than anybody else’s, I presume? Everyone at Clermont knows that your father, after selling his solicitor’s practice, let himself be ruined by a servant girl. You could have married your daughters off long ago if he hadn’t taken up with a tart when he was over seventy. He swindled me, too!’

  Monsieur Josserand turned pale, and replied in a trembling voice, which grew louder as he went on:

  ‘Look, don’t let us start attacking each other’s family again. Your father still hasn’t paid me your dowry of thirty thousand francs, as he promised.’

  ‘Eh? What? Thirty thousand francs!’

  ‘That’s right; don’t pretend to be surprised. If my father was unfortunate, yours has behaved most shamefully towards us. I never got to know what really happened to his will; there were all sorts of funny deals so that your sister’s husband would get the school in the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor. That no-hoper just ignores us now. We were robbed, as plain as could be!’

  Madame Josserand grew livid with suppressed rage at this inconceivable outburst on the part of her husband.

  ‘Don’t say a word against papa! For forty years he was a credit to his profession. Mention the Bachelard Academy in the Panthéon quarter, and see what they say! And as for my sister and her husband, they are what they are. They tricked me, I know; but it’s not for you to tell me so, and I won’t tolerate it, do you hear me? Do I ever talk to you about your sister, who ran off with an army officer? Oh! Your family’s perfect, isn’t it?’

  ‘But the officer married her, madam. And then there’s Bachelard, that immoral brother of yours.’

  ‘Are you going mad, sir? He’s rich, he’s made a fortune with his commission agency, and he’s promised to give Berthe a dowry. Have you no respect for anyone?’

  ‘Ah! yes, give Berthe a dowry! I wouldn’t mind betting he won’t give her a sou, and that we’ll have to put up with his revolting habits for nothing. Every time he comes here I’m quite ashamed of him. A liar, a womanizer, an opportunist who takes advantage of the situation, who for the last fifteen years has got me to spend two hours every Saturday in his office checking his accounts, because he can see us grovelling before his fortune! That saves him five francs, but he hasn’t given us a sou yet!’

  Madame Josserand, catching her breath, paused for a moment. Then she uttered a final cry:

  ‘And you, sir, have got a nephew in the police!’

  There was another pause. The light from the little lamp grew dimmer, as Monsieur Josserand feverishly gesticulated and the wrappers fluttered about in all directions. He looked at his wife full in the face, as she sat there in her low-necked dress; quivering with courage, he was resolved to say everything.

  ‘With eight thousand francs a year one can do a great deal,’ he went on. ‘You’re always complaining. But you shouldn’t have tried to make us live beyond our means. It’s your mania for entertaining and paying visits, for having your “at homes” with tea and cakes …’

  She did not let him finish. ‘Now we’re getting down to it! You’d better shut me up in a box at once. Why don’t you scold me for not going about stark naked? And your daughters, sir, how are they to get husbands if we never see anybody? We don’t see many people as it is. To think that after all the sacrifices I’ve made, I’m judged in this despicable way!’

  ‘We must all make sacrifices, madam. Léon had to make way for his sisters, leave the house, and earn his own living. As for Saturnin, the poor boy can’t even read. And as for me, I deny myself everything, and spend my nights …’

  ‘Then why did you ever have daughters, sir? You’re surely not going to grudge them their education? Any other man, in your place, would be proud of Hortense’s certificate and Berthe’s artistic talents. Everyone tonight adored the dear girl’s playing of that waltz, “Aux bords de l’Oise”, and I’m sure her last watercolour sketch will delight our guests tomorrow. But you, sir, you’re not a real father; you’d rather have your daughters look after cows than send them to school!’

  ‘Oh! and what about the insurance policy I took out for Berthe? Wasn’t it you, madam, who spent the money for the fourth instalment on chair-covers for the drawing-room? Since then you’ve even got hold of the premiums as well.’

  ‘Of course I did, because you just leave us to die of hunger. It’ll be your fault if your daughters become old maids!’

  ‘What! It’s you who scare off all the likely men, with your dresses and your ridiculous parties!’

  Never had Monsieur Josserand gone so far. His wife, gasping, stammered: ‘Me! Ridiculous!’ when the door opened. Hortense and Berthe came back in petticoats and dressing-gowns, with their hair down, and wearing slippers.

  ‘Oh, the cold in our room!’ said Berthe, shivering. ‘The food freezes in your mouth. At least there’s been a fire here this evening.’

  They both drew up their chairs and sat close to the stove, which still retained some heat. Hortense held the rabbit bone between her fingertips, and adroitly picked it. Berthe dipped bits of bread in her tumbler of syrup. But their parents were so excited that they hardly noticed them come in, and went on:

  ‘Ridiculous? Did you say ridiculous, sir? Then I won’t be ridiculous any more. I’ll be hanged if I ever wear out another pair of gloves trying to get them husbands! Now it’s your turn! Do try not to be more ridiculous than I’ve been!’

  ‘That would be difficult, madam, after the way you’ve trotted them about and compromised them everywhere! I don’t care a hang now whether you get them married or not!’

  ‘And I care even less, Monsieur Josserand! So little that if you aggravate me much more I’ll throw them into the street. And you can go too, if you like; the
door’s open. Good Lord! What a good riddance that would be!’

  The girls listened quietly. They were used to these arguments. They went on eating, their dressing-gowns unbuttoned and showing their shoulders, gently rubbing their bare skin against the warm earthenware of the stove. They looked charming in this undress, with their youth and healthy appetites, and their eyes heavy with sleep.

  ‘It’s silly of you to quarrel like this,’ said Hortense at length, with her mouth full. ‘Mamma will be in a terrible mood, and papa will be ill at the office again tomorrow. I think we’re old enough to get husbands for ourselves.’

  This created a diversion. The father, utterly worn out, pretended to carry on with his wrappers; he sat bent over the paper, unable to write, his hands trembling violently. The mother, who had been pacing up and down the room like a lioness on the loose, came and planted herself in front of Hortense.

  ‘If you’re talking about yourself,’ she cried, ‘you’re a silly fool! That Verdier of yours will never marry you!’

  ‘That’s my lookout,’ Hortense bluntly replied.

  After disdainfully refusing five or six suitors—a clerk, a tailor’s son, and other young men of no prospects, so she thought—she had finally set her sights on a lawyer, over forty, whom she had met at the Dambrevilles’. She thought him very clever, and bound to make a fortune by his talents. Unfortunately, however, for the last fifteen years Verdier had been living with a mistress, who, in their neighbourhood, even passed as his wife. Hortense was aware of this, but did not appear to be much troubled by it.

  ‘My child,’ said Monsieur Josserand, looking up from his work, ‘I begged you to give up the idea of marrying that man. You know what the situation is.’

  She stopped sucking her bone and replied impatiently:

  ‘Well, so what? Verdier’s promised to give her up. She’s just a fool.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk like that, Hortense. What if he gave you up too, one day, and went back to the woman you made him leave?’