Complete Works of Emile Zola (672 page)

“What concerns us, concerns us, Monsieur Mouret, and what doesn’t concern us, doesn’t concern us. Over there, for instance, is something which quite puts me beside myself. Look at it, look at it!”

And, stretching out his arm, he pointed to the boot-stitcher, that tall pale girl who had arrived at the house in the middle of the funeral. She walked with difficulty; she was evidently in the family way, and her condition was exaggerated by the sickly skinniness of her neck and legs.

With his arm tragically thrust out, the doorkeeper continued to point at her, whilst she went towards the servants’ staircase. It seemed to him that this woman’s condition cast a gloom over the chilly cleanliness of the courtyard, and even over the imitation marble and the gilded zinc work of the vestibule. In his eyes it gave a disgraceful character to the building, making even the very walls feel uncomfortable, and causing an unpleasant perturbation in the morality of the different storeys.

“On my word of honour! sir, if this sort of thing was likely to continue, we would prefer to retire to our home, at Mort-la-Ville; would we not, Madame Gourd? for thank heaven! we have sufficient to live on, we are dependent on no one. A house like this to be made the talk of the place by such a creature! for so it is, sir!”

“She seems very ill,” said Octave following her with his eyes, not daring to pity her too much. “I always see her looking so sad, so pale, so forlorn. But of course she has a lover.”

At this, Monsieur Gourd gave a violent start.

“Now we have it! Do you hear, Madame Gourd?
Monsieur Mouret is also of opinion that she has a lover. It’s clear, such things don’t come of themselves. Well! sir, for two months past I’ve been on the watch, and I’ve not yet seen the shadow of a man. How full of vice she must be! Ah! if I only found her chap, how I would chuck him out! But I can’t find him, and it’s that which worries me.”

“Perhaps no one comes,” Octave ventured to observe.

The doorkeeper looked at him with surprise.

“That would not be natural. Oh! I’m determined, I’ll catch him. I’ve still six weeks before me, for I got the landlord to give her notice to quit in October. Just fancy her being confined here! And, you know, though Monsieur Duveyrier showed his indignation by insisting upon her going elsewhere for that event, I can scarcely sleep at night, for she is capable of playing us the trick of not waiting till then. In short, all these sort of accidents would have been avoided had it not been for that curmudgeon, old Vabre. Just to make a hundred and thirty francs a year more, and against my advice! The carpenter ought to have been a sufficient lesson for him. Not at all, he must needs go and let to a boot-stitcher. Go it, rot your house with labourers, lodge a lot of dirty people who work! When you have the lower classes in your house, sir, that’s the sort of thing you have to expect!”

And, with his arm still thrust out, he pointed to the young woman who was painfully wending her way up the servants’ staircase. Madame Gourd was obliged to calm him: he took the respectability of the house too much to heart, he would end by making himself ill. Then, mother Pérou having dared to manifest her presence by a discreet cough, he returned to her, and coolly deducted the sou she had charged for the odd quarter of an hour. She was at length going off with her twelve francs sixty centimes, when he offered to take her back, but at three sous an hour only. She burst into tears, and accepted.

“I shall always be able to get some one,” said he. “You’re no longer strong enough, you don’t even do two sous’ worth.”

Octave felt his mind relieved as he returned to his room for a minute. On the third floor, he caught up Madame Juzeur who was also going to her apartments she was obliged now to run down every morning after Louise, who loitered at the different shops.

“How proud you are becoming,” said she with her sharp smile. “One can see very well that you are being spoilt elsewhere.”

These words once more aroused all the young man’s anxiety. He followed her into her drawing-room, pretending to joke with her the while. Only one of the curtains was slightly drawn back, and the carpet and the hangings before the doors subdued still more this alcove-like light; and the noise of the street did not penetrate more than to the extent of a faint buzz in this room as soft as down. She made him seat himself beside her on the low wide sofa. But as he did not take her hand and kiss it, she asked him archly:

“Do you then no longer love me?
”

He blushed and protested that he adored her. Then she gave him her hand of her own accord with a little stifled laugh; and he was obliged to raise it to his lips, so as to dispel her suspicions, if she had any. But she almost immediately withdrew it again.

“No, no, though you pretend to excite yourself, it gives you no pleasure. Oh, I feel it does not, and, besides, it is only natural!”

What? what did she mean?
He seized her round the waist, and pressed her with questions. But she would not answer; she abandoned herself to his embrace, and kept shaking her head. At length, to oblige her to speak, he commenced tickling her.

“Well, you see,” she ended by murmuring, “you love another.”

She named Valérie, and reminded him of the evening at the Josserands’ when he devoured her with his eyes. Then, as he declared that Valérie was nothing to him, she retorted with another laugh that she knew that very well, and had been only teasing him. Only there was another; and this time she named Madame Hédouin, laughing more than ever, and amused at his protestations, which were very energetic. Who then? was it Marie Pichon? Ah! he could not deny that one. Yet he did do so; but she shook her head. She assured him that her little finger never told stories. And to draw each of these women’s names from her, he was obliged to redouble his caresses.

But she had not named Berthe. He was loosening his hold of her, when she resumed:

“Now, there’s the last one.”

“What last one?” inquired he, anxiously.

Screwing up her mouth, she again obstinately refused to say anything more, so long as he had not opened her lips with a kiss. Really, she could not name the person, for it was she who had thrown out the first idea of her marriage; and she gave Berthe’s history without mentioning her name. Then, with his lips pressed close to her delicate neck, he admitted everything, fooling a cowardly enjoyment in the avowal. How ridiculous he was to hide anything from her! Perhaps he thought she would be jealous. Why should she be?
She had granted him nothing, had she? Nothing more than mere playfulness as at present. In short, she was a virtuous woman, and almost quarrelled with him for having fancied she would be jealous.

He continued to hold her reclining in his arms. She languishingly alluded to the cruel being who had deserted her after having only been married a week. A miserable woman like her knew too much of the tempests of the heart? For a long time past, she had guessed what she styled Octave’s “little games;” for not a kiss could be exchanged in the house without her hearing it. And, in the depths of the wide sofa, they had quite a cosy little chat, interrupted now and then with all sorts of delightful caresses. She called him a big ninny, for he had missed fire with Valérie entirely through his own fault. She would have put him in the way of overcoming her, if he had merely looked in and asked her for her advice. Then she questioned him about little Pichon. But she kept returning to Berthe; she thought her charming; a superb skin; the foot of a marchioness. However, she soon had to repel him, and eventually sent him away, after making him solemnly swear to come often and confess himself, without hiding anything whatever from her, if he wished her to assume the direction of his affairs of the heart.

When Octave left her he felt more at ease. She had restored his good humour, and she amused him with her complicated principles of virtue. Downstairs, directly he entered the warehouse, he reassured Berthe with a sign, as her eyes questioned him with reference to the bonnet. Then all the terrible adventure of the morning was forgotten. When Auguste returned, a little before lunch-time, he found them both looking the same as usual, Berthe very much bored at the pay-desk, and Octave gallantly measuring off some silk for a lady.

But, after that day, the lovers’ private meetings became rarer still. He, who was very ardent, was in despair, and followed her into every corner with continual entreaties and prayers for assignations, whenever she liked, and no matter where. She, on the contrary, with the indifference of a girl who had grown up in a hot-house, seemed only to enjoy her guilty passion for the sake of the secret outings, the presents, the forbidden pleasures, and the expensive hours passed in cabs, at the theatres and the restaurants. All her early education was cropping up again, her desire for money, for dress, and for wasted luxury; and she had soon reached the point of being tired of her lover the same as of her husband, thinking him too exacting for what he gave, and trying, with a quiet unconsciousness, not to render him his full weight of love. So that, exaggerating her fears, she constantly refused him; never again would she venture in his room, she would die of fright! to receive him in hers was impossible, they might be surprised; then, when he implored her to make some assignation out of doors, she would burst into tears, and say that he could really have little respect for her. However, the expenses continued, and her caprices increased; after the bonnet, she had desired a fan covered with Alençon lace, without counting the innumerable costly little nothings which took her fancy in the shop-windows. Though he did not yet dare refuse, his avarice was aroused by the rapid sweep made of his savings. As a practical fellow, he ended by thinking it stupid to be always paying, when she, on her side, only gave him her foot under the table. Paris had decidedly brought him ill-luck;
at first, repulses, and then this silly passion, which was fast emptying his purse. He could certainly not be accused of succeeding through women. He now found a certain honour in it by way of consolation, in his secret rage at the failure of his plan so clumsily carried out up till then.

Yet Auguste was not much in their way. Ever since the bad turn affairs had taken at Lyons, he had suffered more than ever with his headaches. On the first of the month, Berthe had experienced a sudden joy on seeing him, in the evening, place three hundred francs under the bedroom timepiece for her dress; and, in spite of the reduction on the amount which she had demanded, as she had given up all hope of ever seeing a sou of it, she threw herself into his arms, all warm with gratitude.On this occasion the husband had a night of hugging such as the lover never experienced.

September passed away in this manner, in the great calm of the house emptied of its occupants by the summer months. The people of the second floor had gone to the seaside in Spain, which caused Monsieur Gourd, full of pity, to shrug his shoulders; what a fuss! as though the most distinguished people were not satisfied with Trouville! The Duveyriers, since the beginning of Gustave’s holidays, had been at their country house at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Even the Josserands went and spent a fortnight at a friend’s, near Pontoise, spreading a rumour beforehand that they were going to some watering-place.

This clearance, these deserted apartments, the staircase slumbering in a greater silence than ever, seemed to Octave to offer less danger; and he argued and so wearied Berthe that she at last received him in her room one evening whilst Auguste was away at Lyons. But this meeting also nearly took a bad turn. Madame Josserand, who had returned home two days before, was seized with such an attack of indigestion after dining out, that Hortense, filled with anxiety, went downstairs for her sister. Fortunately, Rachel was just finishing scouring her saucepans, and she was able to let the young man out by the servants’ staircase. On the following days, Berthe availed herself of that alarm to again refuse him everything.

Besides, they were so foolish as not to reward the servant. She attended to them in her cold way, and with her superior respect of a girl who hears and sees nothing; only, as madame was for ever crying after money, and as Monsieur Octave already spent too much in presents, she curled her lip more and more in that wretched establishment, where the mistress’s lover did not even present her with ten sous when he stayed there. If they fancied they had bought her for evermore, with a dress and twenty francs, ah! no, they made a mistake; she put a higher price on herself than that! Thenceforward she became less obliging, no longer shutting the doors behind them, without their being conscious of her ill-humour; for one does not thick of bestowing gratuities when, furious at not knowing where to go to exchange a kiss, one comes to quarrelling about it. And the silence of the house increased, and Octave, always on the lookout for some safe nook, encountered Monsieur Gourd everywhere, watching for the disreputable things which made the walls shudder, gliding noiselessly along, haunted by visions of pregnant women.

Meanwhile, Madame Juzeur wept with that lovesick darling who could only gaze on his mistress from a distance; and she gave him the very best advice. Octave’s passion reached such a pitch that he thought one day of imploring her to lend him her apartment; no doubt she would not have refused, but he feared rousing Berthe’s indignation by his indiscretion. He also had the idea of utilising Saturnin; perhaps the madman would watch over them like a faithful dog in some out of the way room; only, he displayed such a fantastical humour, at one time overwhelming his sister’s lover with the most awkward caresses, at another, sulking with him and casting suspicious glances gleaming with a sudden hatred. One could almost have thought him jealous, with the nervous and violent jealousy of a woman. He had been like this especially since Octave had met him at times of a morning, laughing with little Pichon. In point of fact, Octave never passed Marie’s door now without going in, seized again with a singular fancy, a fit of longing, which he would not even admit to himself; he adored Berthe, he madly desired her, and this longing to possess her gave birth to an infinite tenderness for the other one, to a love which had never appeared so sweet at the time of their former intimate connection. There was a continual charm in looking at her and in touching her, coupled with jokes and teasings, all the playfulness of a man who wishes to regain possession of a woman and is secretly bothered by the fact of his loving elsewhere. And, on those days, when Saturnin found him hanging about Marie’s skirts; the madman would threaten him with his wolf-like eyes, his teeth ready to bite, and would neither forgive him nor come and kiss his fingers, like some cowed animal, until he beheld him again faithful and loving with Berthe.