Pot Luck Page 7

  ‘That’s my lookout,’ she retorted once more.

  Berthe listened in silence; she knew all about the situation, and discussed each new development with her sister every day. Like her father, she was on the side of the poor woman who, after performing all the duties of a wife for fifteen years, was about to be turned into the street. But Madame Josserand intervened:

  ‘Oh, do leave off! Dreadful women like that always end up in the gutter. Verdier, though, will never bring himself to leave her. He’s just deceiving you, my dear. If I were you I wouldn’t wait another second for him; I’d try and find somebody else.’

  Hortense’s voice grew harsher still, and two livid spots appeared on her cheeks.

  ‘You know what I’m like, mamma. I want him, and I’ll have him. I’ll never marry anybody else, even if I have to wait a hundred years!’

  Madame Josserand shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘And you call other people fools!’

  Hortense stood up, trembling with anger.

  ‘Now, don’t start on me!’ she cried. ‘I’ve finished my rabbit, and I’d rather go to bed. Since you can’t manage to find us husbands, you must let us find them ourselves in whatever way we choose!’

  And she went out, slamming the door behind her.

  Madame Josserand turned majestically towards her husband and remarked profoundly:

  ‘That, sir, is the result of your upbringing.’

  Monsieur Josserand made no reply, but kept inking little dots on his fingernail as he waited to continue his writing. Berthe, who had eaten her bread, was dipping a finger in the glass to finish her syrup. Her back was nice and warm, and she was in no hurry to go back to her room where she would have to put up with her sister’s ill-temper.

  ‘Yes, that’s how much gratitude you get,’ continued Madame Josserand, pacing up and down the dining-room again. ‘For twenty years you wear yourself out for these girls, you go without so that they can become refined, and then they won’t even give you the satisfaction of making a marriage you approve of. It would be different if they had ever been refused anything. But I’ve never spent a sou on myself; I’ve gone without proper clothes in an attempt to dress them as if we had an income of fifty thousand francs a year. No, it’s really too much. When the little brats have got the right education, with just enough religion, and the manners of rich young ladies, they turn their backs on you and talk of marrying lawyers, adventurers who lead lives of debauchery.’

  She stood in front of Berthe and, wagging her finger, said:

  ‘As for you, if you behave like your sister you’ll have me to deal with.’

  Then she resumed her pacing, talking now to herself, jumping from one idea to another, contradicting herself with the brazenness of a woman who thinks she is always right.

  ‘I did what I had to do, and if need be I’d do it all over again. In life it’s only the faint-hearted who go to the wall. Money’s money, and if you haven’t got any you might as well give up. For my part, whenever I had twenty sous I always said I had forty, because the great thing is to be envied, not pitied. It’s no good having a fine education if you haven’t got good clothes to wear, then people only look down on you. It may not be right, but that’s how it is. I’d rather wear dirty petticoats than a cotton dress. Eat potatoes if you like, but put a chicken on the table if you have people to dinner. Only fools would deny that!’

  She looked hard at her husband, for whom these last remarks were intended, but, utterly exhausted, he refused to be drawn a second time and was cowardly enough to declare:

  ‘Yes, very true! Money’s everything nowadays.’

  ‘Do you hear?’ resumed Madame Josserand, returning towards her daughter. ‘Behave correctly and try to do us credit. How did you manage to let that marriage slip through your fingers?’

  Berthe could see that it was her turn now.

  ‘I don’t know, mamma,’ she said softly.

  ‘An assistant manager,’ continued her mother, ‘not yet thirty, and with splendid prospects. Money coming in every month—a regular income, there’s nothing like it. I’m sure you made some silly blunder, as you have with all the others.’

  ‘No, I’m sure I didn’t, mamma. I expect he found out that I haven’t got a penny.’

  Madame Josserand’s voice rose.

  ‘And what about the dowry your uncle’s going to give you? Everyone knows about it. No, it must have been something else; he disappeared too abruptly. After dancing with him you went into the parlour, and …’

  Berthe became confused.

  ‘Yes, mamma, and, as we were alone, he tried to do all sorts of horrid things—he caught me by the waist and kissed me. I was frightened, and pushed him up against a table …’

  Her mother, once more overcome with rage, interrupted her.

  ‘Pushed him up against a table! Oh, you stupid thing! You pushed him up against a table, did you?’

  ‘Well, mamma, he caught hold of me …’

  ‘What of it? Caught hold of you? As if that mattered. A lot of good it is to send simpletons like you to school! Whatever did they teach you there, eh?’

  A rush of colour rose to the girl’s cheeks and shoulders, while, in her virginal confusion, tears came into her eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. He looked so wicked; I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Didn’t know what to do? She didn’t know what to do! Haven’t I told you a hundred times not to be so absurdly timid? You’ve got to live in society. When a man takes liberties it means he’s in love with you, and there’s always a nice way of keeping him in his place. Just for a kiss behind the door! It’s not even worth mentioning! And you go pushing people up against a table and spoiling all your chances of getting married!’

  Then, assuming a sage air, she went on:

  ‘I give up; there’s nothing to be done with you—you’re so silly, my dear. I’d have to coach you in everything, and that would be a bore. Try and understand that, as you’ve no fortune, you’ve got to catch a man by some other means. You should be friendly, give tender glances, let your hand go sometimes, and permit a little playfulness without appearing to do so; in short, you should fish for a husband. And it certainly doesn’t improve your eyes to cry like a big baby.’

  Berthe was sobbing violently.

  ‘You really annoy me—do stop crying! Monsieur Josserand, just tell your daughter not to spoil her face by crying like that. If she lost her looks, that would really be too much.’

  ‘My dear,’ said her father, ‘be good and listen to your mother’s advice. You mustn’t spoil your looks, my darling.’

  ‘What irritates me is that she can be pleasant enough when she likes,’ continued Madame Josserand. ‘Come on, wipe your eyes and look at me as if I was a gentleman courting you. You must smile and drop your fan, so that, as he picks it up, his fingers just touch yours. No, no, not like that! You’re holding your head up too stiffly—it makes you look like a sick hen. Lean back more, show your neck; you’re still young enough to show it off.’

  ‘Like this, mamma?’

  ‘Yes, that’s better. Don’t be so stiff; keep your waist supple. Men don’t care for girls who look like wooden planks. And, above all, if they go a bit too far don’t behave like a simpleton. When a man goes too far, he’s cooked, my dear.’

  The drawing-room clock struck two and, excited as she was by sitting up so late, and becoming quite frenzied in her desire for an immediate marriage, Madame Josserand began thinking aloud as she twisted her daughter about like a Dutch doll. Berthe, heavy at heart, submitted in a tame, spiritless fashion; fear and confusion half choked her. Suddenly, in the middle of a merry laugh that her mother was forcing her to attempt, she burst into tears and exclaimed:

  ‘No, no, it’s no use; I just can’t do it!’

  For a moment Madame Josserand remained speechless with amazement. Ever since leaving the Dambrevilles’ party her hand had been itching; all at once she slapped Berthe with all her might.

  �
�There, take that! You’re really so annoying, you great ninny! If you ask me, the men are right!’

  This convulsion had made her drop her Lamartine. Picking it up, she wiped it and swept majestically out of the room without another word.

  ‘It was bound to end like that,’ muttered Monsieur Josserand, who was afraid to detain his daughter. She also went off to bed, holding her cheek and sobbing louder than ever.

  As Berthe felt her way across the anteroom she found that her brother Saturnin, barefooted, was still up, listening. Saturnin was a big, hulking fellow of twenty-five, wild-eyed, who had remained childish after an attack of brain fever. Without being actually insane, he occasionally terrified everybody in the house by fits of blind fury whenever anybody annoyed him. Berthe alone was able to subdue him by a look. When she was still a little girl he had nursed her through a long illness, obedient as a dog to all her little caprices; and ever since he had saved her, he adored her with a deep, passionate devotion.

  ‘Has she been beating you again?’ he asked, in a low, tender voice.

  Disturbed at meeting him, Berthe tried to send him back to his room.

  ‘Go to bed; it has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes, it has. I won’t let her beat you. She woke me up with her shouting. She’d better not do it again, or I’ll give her one back.’

  She caught hold of his wrists, and talked to him as if he were a disobedient animal. He was subdued at once, and started whimpering like a little boy:

  ‘It hurts terribly, doesn’t it? Show me where, so that I can kiss it better.’

  When he had found her cheek in the dark, he kissed it, wetting it with his tears, as he repeated:

  ‘Now it’s better again; now it’s better again.’

  Meanwhile Monsieur Josserand, left alone, had put down his pen, too grieved to go on writing. After a few minutes he got up and went quietly to listen at the various doors. Madame Josserand was snoring. No sounds of weeping came from his daughters’ room. All was dark and silent. Then, somewhat reassured, he came back. He adjusted the lamp, which was smoking, and mechanically began writing again. He did not feel the two great tears which fell on to the wrappers, in the solemn silence of the sleeping house.

  III

  As soon as the fish had been served (some dubiously fresh skate in black butter, which the clumsy Adèle had swamped in vinegar), Hortense and Berthe, seated on either side of uncle Bachelard, kept urging him to drink, filling his glass in turns and repeating:

  ‘It’s your saint’s day, you should drink to it! Here’s to your health, uncle!’

  They had plotted to make him give them twenty francs. Every year their mother deliberately placed them thus, on either side of her brother, leaving him to their tender mercies. But it was hard work, needing all the cupidity of two girls spurred on by visions of Louis Quinze shoes and five-button gloves. To get him to give them the twenty francs, they had to make him completely drunk. He was ferociously miserly whenever he was with his own family, though elsewhere he would squander in drunken debauchery the eighty thousand francs a year he made from his commission agency. Fortunately, that evening he had arrived half-drunk, having spent the afternoon with a lady in the Faubourg Montmartre, a dyer, who used to get vermouth for him from Marseilles.

  ‘Your health, duckies!’ he replied in his thick, husky voice, each time he emptied his glass.

  Covered in jewellery, and with a rose in his buttonhole, he sat in the middle of the table—the type of huge, rough, boozing tradesman who had wallowed in all sorts of vice. There was a lurid brilliancy about the false teeth in his furrowed, dissolute face; his great red nose shone like a beacon beneath his snow-white, close-cropped hair; while now and again his eyelids drooped involuntarily over his pale, rheumy eyes. Gueulin, the son of his wife’s sister, declared that his uncle had never been sober during the whole ten years that he had been a widower.

  ‘Narcisse, can I give you some skate? It’s excellent,’ said Madame Josserand, smiling at her brother’s drunken condition, though inwardly somewhat disgusted.

  She sat opposite him, with little Gueulin on her left, and on her right, Hector Trublot, a young man to whom she was obliged to show some attention. She usually took advantage of this family dinner to pay back certain invitations she had received, and so it was that Madame Juzeur, a lady living in the house, was also present, next to Monsieur Josserand. As the uncle always behaved very badly at table, and it was only the thought of his fortune which helped to temper their disgust, she only asked her intimate acquaintances to meet him, or else such people whom she no longer considered it worth trying to impress. For instance, at one time she had thought of young Trublot as a son-in-law, for he was then in a money-changer’s office, waiting for his wealthy father to buy him a share in the business. But as Trublot professed total contempt for marriage she no longer took any trouble over him, even putting him next to Saturnin, who had never learnt how to eat properly. Berthe, who always had to sit next to her brother, was charged with keeping him in order with a look whenever his fingers strayed too often into the gravy.

  After the fish came a meat pie, and the young ladies thought the moment had come to begin their attack.

  ‘Have some more wine, uncle dear!’ said Hortense. ‘It’s your saint’s day; aren’t you going to give us something on your saint’s day?’

  ‘Oh! so it is,’ added Berthe, innocently. ‘People always give something on their saint’s day; so you must give us twenty francs.’

  As soon as he heard the mention of money, Bachelard pretended to be more tipsy still. It was his usual trick. His eyelids drooped, and he became absolutely drivelling.

  ‘Eh? what?’ he stuttered.

  ‘Twenty francs. You know very well what twenty francs are; it’s no use pretending you don’t,’ said Berthe. ‘Give us twenty francs; and then we’ll love you—oh, ever so much!’

  They threw their arms round his neck, called him the sweetest names, and kissed his rubicund face, without showing the slightest disgust at the revolting odour of debauchery he exhaled. Monsieur Josserand, bothered by this smell—a mixture of absinthe, tobacco, and musk—was disturbed to see his daughter’s virginal charms in such close contact with this lecherous old rogue.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ he cried.

  ‘Why?’ asked Madame Josserand, looking daggers at her husband. ‘It’s just a game. If Narcisse wants to give them twenty francs, that’s up to him!’

  ‘Monsieur Bachelard is so good to them,’ murmured little Madame Juzeur, complacently.

  But Bachelard, still uncooperative, became more drivelling than ever, as he slobbered out:

  ‘It’s funny … I don’t know, really not! I don’t know …’

  Hortense and Berthe exchanged glances and then let him go. No doubt he had not had enough to drink. So they filled his glass once more, laughing like prostitutes about to relieve a man of his wallet. Their bare arms, delightfully plump and fresh, passed backwards and forwards under their uncle’s big red nose.

  Meanwhile, Trublot, like a quiet fellow who prefers having fun in private, kept looking at Adèle as she clumsily waited on the guests. He was very short-sighted, and thought she looked pretty with her strong Breton features and her hair the colour of dirty hemp. When she brought in the roast, a piece of veal, she stretched right across him, and he, pretending to pick up his napkin, gave her a good pinch on the calf. The girl, not understanding, looked at him as if he had asked her for some bread.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Madame Josserand. ‘Did she push against you, sir? Oh, that girl! she’s so awkward! But what can you expect? She’s quite new to service, you know, she’ll be better when she’s had some training.’

  ‘Of course; it’s quite all right,’ replied Trublot, stroking his bushy black beard with the serenity of some young Indian god.

  The conversation was becoming more animated in the dining-room, which, icy cold at first, was gradually being warmed by the steam from the dishes. Once more Ma
dame Juzeur was confiding to Monsieur Josserand the sad story of her thirty years of solitude. She raised her eyes to heaven, and contented herself with this discreet allusion to the drama of her life: her husband had left her after ten days of married bliss, and no one ever knew why; more than this she did not say. Now she lived by herself in quiet and very cosy lodgings, which were often visited by priests.

  ‘It’s so sad, though, at my age!’ she simpered, cutting up her veal in a most delicate manner.

  ‘A very unfortunate little woman,’ whispered Madame Josserand in Trublot’s ear, with an air of profound sympathy.

  But Trublot glanced indifferently at this pious woman, so full of reserve and mystery. She was not his type.

  Then they had a sudden scare. Saturnin, whom Berthe, being so busy with her uncle, was no longer watching, had begun playing with his food, cutting up his meat and arranging it into various shapes on his plate. The poor lad was a source of exasperation to his mother, who was both afraid and ashamed of him; she did not know how to rid herself of him, her pride forbidding her to make him a common workman after she had sacrificed him in favour of his sisters by taking him out of a school where his slothful intelligence could hardly be roused. During the years that he had been hanging about the house, helpless and stupid, she had lived in constant fear, especially when she had to let him appear in company. Her pride suffered cruelly.

  ‘Saturnin!’ she cried.

  But Saturnin began to chuckle, delighted at the nasty mess on his plate. He had no respect for his mother, but openly called her a lying old hag, with the strange clairvoyance of lunatics who think out loud. The situation seemed, indeed, to be turning ugly, and he would have thrown the plate at her if Berthe, reminded of her duty, had not given him a stern look. He tried to resist; then his eyes dulled and he slumped back in his chair, gloomy and depressed, as if in a trance, until dinner was over.

  ‘Gueulin, I hope you’ve brought your flute?’ asked Madame Josserand, trying to dispel the general feeling of unease.

  Gueulin was an amateur flautist, but only played in houses where he felt quite at home.