Cousin Bette (56 page)

Twenty minutes later, an old man who looked about eighty, with perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold in a pale and wrinkled face like an old woman's, shuffled up in carpet slippers, his back bent. He was wearing a threadbare alpaca coat with no decoration, and at his wrists protruded the sleeves of a knitted woollen garment, and shirt-cuffs of doubtful cleanliness. He came timidly up, looked at the cab, recognized Lisbeth, and appeared at the door.

‘Ah, my dear Cousin,' she said. ‘What a sad state you are in!'

‘Élodie takes all the money for herself!' said Baron Hulot. ‘Those Chardins are low scum.…'

‘Do you want to come back to us?'

‘Oh, no, no!' said the old man. ‘I wish I could go to America.…'

‘Adeline is on your track.'

‘Ah, if my debts could only be paid!' said the Baron questioningly, with a furtive look. ‘For Samanon is after me.'

‘We haven't yet paid off your arrears. Your son still owes a hundred thousand francs.'

‘Poor boy!'

‘And your pension will not be free for seven or eight months.… If you'll wait, I have two thousand francs here!'

The Baron held out his hand in a gesture of shocking avidity.

‘Give it to me, Lisbeth! God bless you for it! Give it to me! I know where I can go!'

‘But you will tell me where, you old monster?'

‘Yes, I can wait eight months, because I have found a little angel, a good creature, an innocent soul, not old enough yet to have been corrupted.'

‘Remember the police court,' said Lisbeth, who cherished the hope of seeing Hulot there one day.

‘Oh, she lives in the rue de Charonne!' said Baron Hulot. ‘That's a quarter where there's no scandal, whatever happens. Oh, no one will ever find me there. I'm disguised, Lisbeth, as Père Thorec; they think I'm a retired cabinet-maker. The child loves me, and I'm not going to let them shear me like a sheep any more.'

‘No, that's been done!' said Lisbeth, looking at his coat. ‘Suppose I drive you there, Cousin?…'

Baron Hulot climbed into the cab, casting off Mademoiselle Élodie, like a novel read and thrown away, without even saying good-bye.

Half an hour later, a half hour spent by the Baron in talking to Lisbeth uninterruptedly of little Atala Judici, for he had by degrees become the victim of the terrible obsessive passions that destroy old men, his cousin set him down with two thousand francs in his pocket in the rue de Charonne, in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, at the door of a dubious and sinister-looking house.

‘Good-bye, Cousin. You will be Père Thorec now, is that right? Don't send anyone to me except porters, and always hire them from different places.'

‘Agreed. Oh! I'm very lucky I' said the Baron, his face alight with anticipation of a quite new happiness.

‘They'll not find him there!' said Lisbeth to herself; and she stopped her cab on the boulevard Beaumarchais, and from there returned by omnibus to the rue Louis-le-Grand.

*

On the following day, when the whole family was gathered in the drawing-room after lunch, Crevel was announced. Célestine ran to throw her arms round her father's neck, and behaved as if he had been there only the evening before, although this was his first visit in two years.

‘How do you do, Father?' said Victorin, holding out his hand.

‘Good morning, my children,' said Crevel pompously. ‘Madame la Baronne, I lay my homage at your feet. Heavens, how these children grow! This crowd is treading on our heels! They're saying to us “Grandpapa, I want my place in the sun!” Madame la Comtesse, you are still as wonderfully beautiful as ever!' he went on, looking at Hortense. ‘Ah, and here's the balance of our pocketful, Cousin Bette, the wise virgin! Well, you are all very comfortable here…' he said, after he had handed out these remarks to each in turn, with an accompaniment of hearty laughs that moved the rubicund flesh of his heavy cheeks only with difficulty. And he looked round his daughter's drawing-room with some contempt.

‘My dear Célestine, I'll make you a present of all my furniture from the rue des Saussayes; it will do very well here. Your drawing-room is in need of a bit of furbishing up.… Ah, here's Wenceslas, funny little chap! Well, now, grandchildren, are we all good children? We must mind our manners and morals, you know.'

‘To make up for those who haven't any,' said Lisbeth.

‘That sarcasm, my dear Lisbeth, doesn't affect me now. I am going to put an end to the false position I have been in for so long, my children. I am here, like a proper father and head of the family, to announce to you that I am going to be married, just like that, without any bones about it.'

‘You have a perfect right to get married,' said Victorin. ‘And for my part I release you from the promise you made me when you gave me my dear Célestine's hand.…'

‘What promise?' demanded Crevel.

‘A promise that you would not remarry,' answered the lawyer. ‘You will do me the justice of agreeing that I did not ask you to give such a promise, that you made it quite voluntarily, in spite of what I said, for at the time I pointed out that you ought not to bind yourself in that way.'

‘Yes, I remember, my dear fellow,' said Crevel, rather taken aback.'And see here, bless me, upon my word!… my dear children, if you will only get on well with Madame Crevel,
you will have no reason to regret it. I am grateful for your proper feeling, Victorin. No one treats me with generosity without having his reward.… See here, now, come on! Accept your stepmother in a friendly way and come to the wedding!'

‘You don't tell us, Father, who your fiancée is?' said Célestine.

‘Why that's no secret to anyone,' returned Crevel. ‘Let's not play hide and seek! Lisbeth must have told you…'

‘My dear Monsieur Crevel,' answered Lisbeth, ‘there are names that are not mentioned here.…'

‘Well, it's Madame Marneffe!'

‘Monsieur Crevel,' said the lawyer sternly, ‘neither I nor my wife will be present at that marriage, not because it affects our interests, for what I said just now was meant sincerely. Yes, indeed, I should be very glad to know that you would find happiness in marriage. But there are considerations of honour and delicacy that you will understand, which I must not put into words, because it would mean reopening wounds here that are still fresh.'

The Baroness made a sign to the Countess, who picked up her son, saying:

‘Come, it's time for your bath, Wenceslas! Good-bye, Monsieur Crevel.'

The Baroness bowed to Crevel silently. Crevel could not help smiling at the child's surprise at finding himself threatened with this unexpected bath.

‘The woman you intend to marry, Monsieur,' said the lawyer sharply, when he was alone with Lisbeth, his wife, and his father-in-law, ‘is a woman loaded with spoils from my father, who in cold blood has brought him to his present state, who after destroying him is living with his son-in-law, and has caused my sister intense suffering.… And do you imagine that we will publicly approve your folly by my presence? I am sincerely sorry for you, my dear Monsieur Crevel! You lack family feeling; you do not understand the solidarity that in honour binds a family's several members. One cannot reason with the passions – I know that, unfortunately, only too well. Men swept by passion are both deaf
and blind. Your daughter Célestine's sense of filial duty is too strong to allow her to reproach you.'

‘It would be a pretty thing if she did!' said Crevel, endeavouring to stem this harangue.

‘Célestine would not be my wife if she made a single protest,' the lawyer went on; ‘but I am free to try to stop you when you are about to step over a precipice, especially as I have given you proof of my disinterestedness. It is certainly not your fortune, it is yourself that I am concerned about.… And in order to make my feelings quite clear to you, I may add, if only to set your mind at rest in the matter of your future marriage contract, that my position now leaves nothing to be desired.'

‘Thanks to me!' exclaimed Crevel, whose face had turned purple.

‘Thanks to Célestine's fortune,' the lawyer replied; ‘and if you regret having given your daughter, as your share of her dowry, a sum that is less than half of what her mother left her, we are quite prepared to return it to you.…'

‘Do you know, my learned son-in-law,' said Crevel, striking his pose, ‘that when I give Madame Marneffe the protection of my name, she is not required to answer to the world for her conduct, otherwise than as Madame Crevel?'

‘That is perhaps very chivalrous,' said the lawyer; ‘it is treating matters of the heart, the aberrations of passion, generously. But I do not know a name, or law, or title, that can cover the theft of three hundred thousand francs meanly extorted from my father! I tell you plainly my dear father-in-law, that your future wife is unworthy of you, that she is deceiving you, that she is madly in love with my brother-in-law, Steinbock, whose debts she has paid.'

‘I paid them!'

‘Very well,' returned the lawyer; ‘I'm happy to hear it, for Count Steinbock's sake – he may be able to pay what he owes some day. But he is the lover, very much loved, very often loved.…'

‘He is her lover!' said Crevel, whose face showed how upset he was. ‘It is cowardly and filthy and mean and vulgar
to slander a woman! When a man says that sort of thing, Monsieur, he must be prepared to prove it.'

‘I will give you proofs.'

‘I'll wait to see them!'

‘The day after tomorrow, my dear Monsieur Crevel, I'll tell you the day and the hour and the minute when I shall be in a position to expose the dreadful depravity of your future wife.'

‘Very well, I shall be charmed,' said Crevel, recovering his composure. ‘Good-bye, my children,
au revoir
. Good-bye, Lisbeth…'

‘Go after him, Lisbeth,' said Célestine in Cousin Bette's ear.

‘Well, well, is that how you go off?' Lisbeth cried after Crevel.

‘Ah!' Crevel said to her. ‘He takes a high and mighty line nowadays, my son-in-law; he's outgrown his boots. What with the law courts, the Chamber, the sharp practice of lawyers, and the sharp practice of politicians, they've put a keen edge on him. Aha! he knows that I'm getting married next Wednesday, and on Sunday this gentleman claims that in three days he'll be able to fix the day on which he'll demonstrate to me that my wife is unworthy of me… that's a good one! I'm going back now to sign the contract. Well, you can come with me, Lisbeth; come on! They won't know anything about it! I meant to leave forty thousand francs a year to Célestine; but after the way Hulot has just behaved, how can I ever feel any affection for them again?'

‘Give me ten minutes, Papa Crevel. Wait for me in your carriage at the door. I'll find some excuse for going out.'

‘Well, I'll do that.…'

‘My dears,' said Lisbeth, returning to the family, now together again in the drawing-room, ‘I'm going with Crevel. The contract is to be signed this evening, and I'll be able to tell you what its terms are. It will probably be my last visit to that woman. Your father is furious. He is going to disinherit you.…'

‘His vanity will prevent that,' the barrister replied. ‘He was determined to possess Presles, and he will want to keep it in the family; I know him. Even if he should have children,
Célestine would still inherit half of what he leaves; legally it's not possible for him to give away his whole fortune.… But these questions really do not interest me; all I'm thinking about is our honour. Go with him, Cousin,' he said, pressing Lisbeth's hand, ‘and listen to the contract carefully.'

Twenty minutes later, Lisbeth and Crevel walked into the house in the rue Barbet, where Madame Marneffe was waiting in a gentle impatience to hear the result of the overtures that she had commanded Crevel to make.

Valérie had in the end fallen victim to the kind of infatuation that takes a woman's heart by storm once in a lifetime. Only doubtfully successful as an artist, Wenceslas, in Madame Marneffe's hands, became a lover so perfect that he was for her all she had been for Baron Hulot.

Valérie held slippers in one hand and the other was in Steinbock's possession, as she rested her head on his shoulder. Some conversations, such as that they had embarked on after Crevel's departure, of broken sentences and disconnected phrases, are rather like the rambling literary works of our time, on the title-page of which are set the words:
Copyright Reserved
. The intimate poetry of this duologue had led the artist to utter a natural regret, not unmixed with bitterness.

‘Oh, what a pity that I ever married!' said Wenceslas. ‘For if I had waited, as Lisbeth told me to, I could marry you now!'

‘Only a Pole could want to turn a devoted mistress into a wife!' exclaimed Valérie. ‘To exchange love for duty! Pleasure for boredom!'

‘I know how fickle you are!' said Steinbock. ‘Haven't I heard you talking to Lisbeth about Baron Montés, that Brazilian.…'

‘Would you like to get rid of him for me?' said Valérie.

‘I suppose that's the only way to keep you from seeing him,' the ex-sculptor retorted.

‘Let me tell you, my pet,' said Valérie. ‘I was keeping him in the larder to make a husband of him. You see I have no secrets from you! The things I have promised that Brazilian! Oh! long before I knew you,' she added quickly, as Wenceslas made a gesture. ‘Well, he uses those promises against me as a
kind of torture, and they mean that I'll have to be married practically in secret; for if he hears that I am marrying Crevel, he is a man who would think nothing of… of killing me!'

‘Oh! you don't need to worry about that!' said Steinbock, with a scornful gesture, signifying that for a woman loved by a Pole such danger must be negligible.