Complete Works of Emile Zola (684 page)

“Before heaven!” said she, “I swear I would have restrained myself, even if the Emperor had pestered me! One loses too much.”

She took a few steps in silence, apparently reflecting, and then added: “Moreover, it is the greatest possible shame.”

Monsieur Josserand looked at her, looked at his daughter, and his lips moved, though no sound came from them; and his whole suffering being conjured them to put an end to this cruel explanation. But Berthe, who bent before violence, was wounded by her mother’s lesson. She at length rebelled, for she was quite unconscious of her fault, thanks to the old education which she had received when a girl in search of a husband.

“Well!” said she, boldly planting her elbows on the table, “you should not have made me marry a man I did not love. Now I hate him, and I have taken another.”

And so she went on. All the story of her marriage was again gone over in her short phrases, which she let out little by little: the three winters spent in angling for men, the fellows of every colour into whose arms she was thrown, and the ill-success attending this offer of her body in the authorised thoroughfares of middle-class drawing-rooms; then, all that which mothers teach dowerless girls, a regular course of decent and permitted prostitution, the contact of the flesh when dancing, hands abandoned behind doors, the immodesty of innocence speculating on the appetites of simpletons; then, the husband hooked one fine evening, just like a street-walker landing her man, the husband caught behind a curtain, excited and falling into the trap, in the fever of his desire.

“In short, he bores me and I bore him,” declared she. “It’s not my fault, we don’t understand one another. As early as the morrow of our wedding-day, he looked as though he thought we had taken him in;
yes, he was cold and put out, just like when he has a bad day’s sale. For my part, I did not amuse myself particularly with him. Really! I don’t think much of marriage if it offers no more pleasure than that! And that’s how it all began. So much the worse! it was bound to come; I’m not the most guilty.”

She left off speaking, but shortly added with an air of profound conviction:

“Ah! mamma, how well I understand you now! You remember, when you told us you had had more than enough of it.”

Madame Josserand, standing up before her, had been listening for a minute with indignant amazement.

“Eh?
I said that!” cried she.

But Berthe, warming with her subject, would not stop.

“You have said so twenty times. And, besides, I should have liked to have seen you in my place. Auguste is not kind like papa. You would have been fighting together about money matters before a week had passed. He would precious soon have made you say that men are only good to be taken in!”

“Eh? I said that!” repeated the mother quite beside herself.

She advanced so menacingly towards her daughter, that the father held out his hands in a suppliant gesture imploring mercy. The sounds of the two women’s voices struck him to the heart unceasingly; and, at each shock, he felt the wound extend. Tears gushed from his eyes as he stammered:

“Do leave off, spare me.”

“No, it is dreadful!” resumed Madame Josserand in louder tones than ever. “This wretched creature now pretends I am the cause of her shamelessness! You will see she will soon make out that it is I who have deceived her husband. So, it’s my fault! for that is what you seem to mean. It’s my fault!”. Berthe remained with her elbows on the table, very pale, but resolute.

“It’s very certain that if you had brought me up differently — “

She did not finish. Her mother gave her a clout with all her might, and such a hard one that it banged Berthe’s head down on to the table-cover. Her hand had been itching to give it, ever since the day before; it had been making her fingers tingle, the same as in those far-off days when the child used to oversleep herself.

“There!” cried she, “that’s for your education! Your husband ought to have beaten you to a jelly.”

The young woman did not rise, but sat there sobbing, her cheek pressed against her arm. She forgot her twenty-four years, this clout brought her back to the slaps of other times, to a whole past of timorous hypocrisy. All her resolution of an emancipated grown-up person melted away in the great sorrow of a little girl.

But, on hearing her weep so bitterly, the father was seized with a terrible emotion. He at length got up, quite distracted, and he pushed the mother away, saying:

“You wish then to kill me between you?
Tell me, must I go on my knees to you?”

Madame Josserand, having relieved her feelings, and having nothing to add, was withdrawing in a royal silence, when she found Hortense listening behind the door as she suddenly opened it. This caused a fresh outburst.

“Ah! so you were listening to all this filth?
The one does the most horrible things, and the other takes a delight in hearing about them; the two make the pair. But, good heavens! who ever was it that brought you up?”

Hortense, without being in the least moved, entered the room.

“It was not necessary to listen, one can even hear you in the kitchen. The servant is wriggling with laughter. Besides, I’m old enough to be married; there is no harm in my knowing.”

“Verdier, eh?” resumed the mother bitterly. “That’s all the satisfaction you give me. Now, you are waiting for the death of a brat. You may wait, she’s big and plump, so I’ve been told. It serves you right.”

A rush of bile gave a yellow hue to the young girl’s skinny countenance. And, with clenched teeth, she replied:

“Though she’s big and plump, Verdier can leave her. And I will make him leave her sooner than you think, just to spite you all. Yes, yes, I will get married without any one else’s assistance. They’re far too solid, the marriages you put together!”

Then, as her mother was advancing towards her, she added:

“Ah! you know, I don’t intend to be slapped! Take care.”

They looked each other straight in the eyes, and Madame Josserand was the first to yield, hiding her retreat beneath an air of scornful domination. But the father thought the battle was going to begin again. Then, when, surrounded by these three women, he beheld this mother and these daughters, all those he had loved, end by devouring one another, he felt a whole world give way beneath him and went off to seek refuge in the bedroom, as though wounded to death and desirous of dying there in peace. In the midst of his sobs, he kept repeating:

“I can bear it no longer — I can bear it no longer — “

The dining-room became once more wrapped in silence. Berthe, her cheek on her arm, and still heaving long nervous sighs, was growing calmer. Hortense had quietly seated herself at the other end of the table, and was buttering the remainder of a roll, so as to pull herself together again. Then, she made her sister positively desperate by a host of sad remarks: their home was becoming quite unbearable; in her place, she would sooner receive cuffs from her husband than from her mother, for it was more natural; when she married Verdier, she would send her mother to the right about, so as to have no such scenes in her home. At this moment Adèle came to clear the table; but Hortense continued, saying that they would receive notice to quit, if that sort of thing went on; and the servant was of the same opinion: she had been obliged to shut the kitchen window, for Lisa and Julie were already poking their noses in that direction. She nevertheless thought it all awfully funny too, she was still laughing at it; Madame Berthe had come in for it sadly, she was the most hurt of the lot. Then, rolling her big body about, she uttered a profoundly philosophical remark: after all, the house did not care, the thing was to live well, every one would have forgotten all about madame and her two gentlemen in a week. Hortense, who nodded her approval of what she said, interrupted her to complain of the butter, which was quite uneatable. Well! butter at twenty-two sous could only be poison. And, as it left a stinking deposit at the bottom of the saucepans, Adèle was explaining that it was not even economical, when a dull thud, a distant shake of the floor, suddenly caused them to listen intently.

Berthe, all anxiety, at length raised her head.

“What’s that?” asked she.

“It’s perhaps madame and the other lady, in the drawing-room,” said Adèle.

Madame Josserand had started with surprise, as she crossed the drawing-room. A woman was there, all alone.

“What? you again?” cried she, when she had recognised Madame Dambreville, whom she had forgotten.

The latter did not stir. The family quarrels, the noisy voices, the slamming of doors, seemed to have passed over her without her having felt the least breath of them. She remained immovable, looking into vacancy, buried in a heap in her lovesick mania. But there was something at work within her, the advice of Léon’s mother had upset her, and was deciding her to dearly purchase a few remnants of happiness.

“Come,” resumed Madame Josserand roughly, “you can’t, you know, sleep here. I have had a note from my son, he is not coming.”

Then Madame Dambreville spoke, her mouth all clammy from her long silence, and as though she were just waking up.

“I am going, pray excuse me. And tell him from me that I have reflected. I consent. Yes, I will reflect still further, and perhaps I may help him to marry that girl, as he insists upon it. But it is I who give her to him, and I wish him to ask me for her, me alone, you understand! Oh! he must come back, he must come back!”

Her ardent voice became quite beseeching. She added in a lower tone, in the obstinate way of a woman who, after sacrificing everything, clings to a last satisfaction.

“He shall marry her, but he must live with us. Otherwise nothing will be done. I would sooner lose him.”

And she went off. Madame Josserand was most charming again. In the anteroom, she said all sorts of consoling things, she promised to send her son submissive and tender, that very evening, affirming that he would be delighted to live at his aunt-in-law’s. Then, when she had shut the door behind Madame Dambreville’s back, filled with a pitying tenderness she thought:

“Poor boy! what a price she will make him pay for it!”

But, at this moment, she also heard the dull thud, which caused the boards to tremble. Well?
what was it? was the servant smashing all the crockery, now? She hastened to the dining-room, and questioned her daughters.

“What is it?
Is the sugar-basin broken?”

“No, mamma. We don’t know.”

She turned round, looking for Adèle, when she beheld her listening at the door of the bedroom.

“Whatever are you doing??” cried she. “Everything is being smashed in your kitchen, and you’re there spying on your master. Yes, yes, one begins with prunes, and one ends with something else. For some time past, you have had a way about you which greatly displeases me; you smell of men, my girl — “

The servant stood looking at her with wide open eyes. At length she interrupted her.

“That’s not what’s the matter. I think master has fallen down in there.”

“Good heavens! she’s right,” said Berthe turning pale, “it was just like some one falling.”

They entered the room. Monsieur Josserand, seized with a fainting fit, was lying on the floor before the bed;
his head had come in contact with a chair, and a little stream of blood was issuing from the right ear. The mother, the two daughters and the servant surrounded and examined him. Berthe, alone, wept, again seized with the bitter sobs which the blow had called forth. And, when the four of them raised him to place him on the bed, they heard him murmur:

“It’s all over. They’ve killed me.”

CHAPTER XVII

Months passed by, and spring bad come again. At the house in the Rue de Choiseul, every one was talking of the approaching marriage of Octave and Madame Hédouin.

Matters, however, were not so far advanced. Octave was again in his old place at “The Ladies’ Paradise,” the business of which developed daily. Since her husband’s death, Madame Hédouin was unable to attend properly to the incessantly growing concern by herself. Her uncle, old Deleuze, nailed to his easy-chair by rheumatism, troubled himself about nothing; and, naturally, the young man, who was very active and a constant prey to the mania for doing business on a large scale, had in a little while reached a position of decisive importance in the house. Moreover, still irritated by his silly amours with Berthe, he no longer dreamed of utilizing women, but even dreaded them. He thought the best thing for him to do was to become Madame Hédouin’s partner, and then to commence the dance of millions. Recollecting therefore the ridiculous repulse he had met with at her hands, he treated her as though she were a man, which was the way she wished to be treated.

From this moment their relations became most intimate. They would shut themselves for hours together in the small room right at the back. In former days, when he had sworn to himself to seduce her, he had pursued certain tactics there, trying to take advantage of her commercial emotions, whispering figures close to her neck, watching for the days of heavy takings to profit by her enthusiasm. Now, he was simply good-natured, having no other aim but to push the business. He no longer even desired her, though he retained the recollection of her gentle quiver when waltzing with him on Berthe’s wedding-night. Perhaps she had loved. In any case it was best to remain as they were; for, as she justly said, the business demanded a great amount of order, and it would be impolitic to wish for things which would disturb them from morning till night.

Seated together at the narrow desk, they would often forget themselves, after going through the books and settling the orders. He would then return to his dreams of enlargement. He had sounded the owner of the next house, and had found him willing to sell. They would give notice to the second-hand dealer and to the umbrella man, and then establish a special department for silk. She, very grave, would listen, not daring to venture yet. But she felt an increasing sympathy for Octave’s commercial faculties, recognising her own will in his, her taste for business, the serious and practical side of her character, beneath his gallant exterior of an amiable trader. And he displayed besides a warmth, an audacity, which were wanting in her, and which filled her with emotion. It was introducing fancy into trade, the only fancy that had ever troubled her. He was becoming her master.