Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (60 page)

‘Madame, here is my client, we must get the matter settled.’

At the sight of the girl, the Countess had shuddered. She looked at her, dressed in garish colours, her coarse black hair falling down upon her eyebrows, her wide, flabby face, her whole person sordid and vile, worn out by ten years of prostitution. And the Countess felt wounded, her womanly pride cut to the quick after so many years of forgiving and forgetting. It was, dear Lord! for creatures destined to fates like this, that the Count had betrayed her.

‘The matter must be settled,’ Busch insisted, ‘because my client needs to get back to the Rue Feydeau.’

‘Rue Feydeau,’ the Countess repeated, uncomprehending.

‘Yes, that’s where she is. In the brothel.’

Bewildered and with trembling hands, the Countess went over to close the alcove properly, since only one of the doors was pushed to. Alice had just moved, feverishly, under her coverlet. If only she went back to sleep! If only she didn’t see, and didn’t hear!

Busch was already going on:

‘Look, Madame, just understand… Mademoiselle has entrusted me with this business, and I represent her, that’s all. That’s why I wanted her to come in person to explain what she is seeking… Come then, Léonide, explain yourself.’

Anxious and ill at ease in the role he was making her play, Léonide turned her big, cloudy eyes on him with a hangdog look. But the hope of the thousand francs he had promised made her decide. And while he, once more, unfolded and held up the Count’s note, she, with her hoarse voice, roughened by alcohol, began:

‘Yes, that’s it, that’s the paper Monsieur Charles signed for me… I was the daughter of the carter, Cron the cuckold, as he was called, you see, Madame!… And then Monsieur Charles was always there, hanging on to my skirts, asking for all sorts of dirty things. For me, it was just annoying. When you’re young, you don’t know much, do you? So you’re not kind to old people… So Monsieur Charles signed this paper for me one evening when he’d taken me into the stable…’

Standing there, crucified, the Countess was just letting her talk, when she thought she heard a moan from the alcove. She gestured in anguish.

‘Be quiet!’

But Léonide was in full flow and wanted to finish.

‘It’s really not honest after all, when you don’t want to pay, to go seducing a good little girl… Yes, Madame, your Monsieur Charles was a thief. That’s what they all think, the women I’ve told about it… And I assure you it was well worth the money.’

‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’ cried the Countess in fury, throwing her arms in the air, as if to knock her down, if she went on.

Frightened, Léonide raised her elbow to protect her face, with the instinctive movement of a girl who is used to being slapped. A dreadful silence fell, in which another sound, a moan, choking with tears, seemed to come from the alcove.

‘Well, what do you want?’ said the Countess, trembling, and lowering her voice. Now Busch intervened.

‘But Madame, the girl wants to be paid. And she’s quite right, the poor thing, to say that the Count de Beauvilliers treated her very badly. It’s a straightforward swindle.’

‘Never will I pay such a debt.’

‘Well then, we’ll take a cab as soon as we’ve left you, and go to the Palais de Justice, where I shall lodge the complaint which I’ve already drafted, as you can see here… It contains all the facts Mademoiselle has just told you…’

‘Monsieur, that’s an abominable piece of blackmail; you won’t do that.’

‘I beg your pardon, Madame, I shall do it at once. Business is business.’

An immense weariness, an utter discouragement, came over the Countess. That last bit of pride which had held her up had just been broken, and all her violence, all her strength, collapsed with it. She clasped her hands, and stammered:

‘But you can see how it is with us. Just look round this room… We have nothing left, tomorrow perhaps not even anything to eat… Where do you expect me to get money, ten thousand francs, my God!’

Busch smiled the smile of a man well used to fishing about in ruins of this sort.

‘Oh, ladies like you always have some resources. If you look hard enough, you’ll find something.’

For a moment or so, he had been looking with interest at an old jewel-box the Countess had left on the mantelpiece that morning while emptying a trunk; and he could scent jewels, with the sureness of instinct. His eyes blazed with such fire that she saw where he was looking, and understood.

‘No! No!’ she cried. ‘Not the jewels!’

And she seized the casket, as if to defend it. These last jewels, which had been in her family for so long, these few jewels she had kept as her daughter’s sole dowry, even through times of greatest hardship, and which now remained her last resource!

‘Never! I’d rather give my flesh.’

But at that moment there was an interruption, when Madame Caroline knocked the door and entered. Arriving already very upset, she was astonished at the scene she encountered. With a brief word, she begged the Countess not to disturb herself, and she would have left, but for a supplicatory gesture from the Countess, which she thought she understood. So she stood aside, quite still, at the far end of the room.

Busch had put his hat back on, while Léonide, more and more uncomfortable, made for the door.

‘So, Madame, it only remains for us to make our departure…’

However, he did not depart. He went over the whole story in even more shameful terms, as if he wanted to humiliate the Countess in front of the newcomer, that lady he affected not to recognize, as was his habit, when he was engaged in business.

‘Goodbye, Madame, we are going straight to the Prosecutor’s office. A detailed account of the matter will be in the newspapers three days from now. And you will have only yourself to blame.’

In the newspapers! This horrible scandal falling even on the ruins of her house! So it wasn’t enough just to see the ancient fortune disappear into dust, everything had to crumble in the mud! Ah, but the honour of the name should at least be saved! And with an instinctive movement, she opened the casket. The earrings, the bracelet, and three rings appeared, diamonds and rubies in antique settings.

Busch eagerly approached. His eyes softened into a gentle caress.

‘Oh, there’s not ten thousand francs’ worth here… Let me see.’

He was already picking up the jewels one by one, turning them
over, holding them up in the air, his fat fingers trembling with love, with his sensual passion for precious stones. The purity of the rubies seemed particularly to throw him into ecstasies. And these antique diamonds, even with their sometimes imperfect cutting, what wonderful limpidity!

‘Six thousand francs,’ he said in the voice of an auctioneer, hiding his emotion under this global estimate. I’m only counting the stones; the settings are only fit to be melted down. Well, we’ll settle for six thousand.’

But the sacrifice was too hard for the Countess. Her violent feelings reawakened, she took back the jewels and clasped them in her agitated hands. No! No! This was too much, to ask her now to throw into the abyss these few jewels her mother had worn, and that her daughter was meant to wear on her wedding-day. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and streamed down her cheeks, in such tragic grief that Léonide, touched to the heart, and distraught with pity, began to tug at Busch’s coat to make him leave. She wanted to get away, this was beginning to upset her, giving so much pain to the poor old lady who seemed so good. Busch very coldly surveyed the scene, sure now that he would get the whole lot, knowing from long experience that bursting into tears, in women, precedes the collapse of the will; so he waited.

Perhaps the frightful scene would have gone on longer, if at that moment, a distant muffled voice had not burst into sobs. It was Alice crying out from beyond the alcove:

‘Oh Mama, they’re killing me! Give them everything, let them take it all!… Oh Mama, make them go away, they’re killing me, killing me!’

At this, the Countess made a gesture of desperate abandon, a gesture with which she would have given her whole life away. Her daughter had heard. Her daughter was dying of shame. And she threw the jewels at Busch, leaving him barely enough time to place the Count’s promissory note on the table in exchange, and pushed him out after Léonide, who had already disappeared. Then she reopened the doors of the alcove and went and cast herself down on Alice’s pillow, where, destroyed and utterly exhausted, the two women mingled their tears.

Madame Caroline, appalled, had been briefly tempted to intervene. Would she simply allow this wretch to rob these poor women like this? But she had now heard the whole shameful story, and what could be done to avoid the scandal? For she knew that Busch would not hesitate to carry out his threat. She herself felt ashamed in his
presence, in the complicity of the secrets they shared. Ah, such suffering, such filth! A wave of embarrassment swept over her: what had she run over here for, since she could find no word to speak, nor help to offer? All the phrases that rose to her lips, the questions or mere allusions to yesterday’s drama, seemed wounding, unclean, and impossible to utter before this still-bewildered victim, agonizing over her defilement. And what help could she offer that would not seem a derisory piece of charity? For she too was ruined, and already in difficulties, pending the result of the trial. At last she moved forward, her eyes full of tears, arms outstretched in infinite pity, with a desperate tenderness with which her whole body trembled.

These two wretched, utterly ruined creatures in this dreary lodging-house alcove, this was all that remained of the ancient race of the Beauvilliers, formerly such powerful rulers. They had owned lands the size of a kingdom, twenty leagues of the Loire had belonged to them, with their castles, meadows, farmland, and forests. Then this immense landed fortune had gradually dwindled away with the passing of centuries, and the Countess had just swallowed up the last remnants in one of these storms of modern speculation, that she did not understand at all; first her twenty thousand francs of savings, collected sou by sou for her daughter, then the sixty thousand francs borrowed on the farm at Les Aublets, then the farm itself. The house in the Rue Saint-Lazare would not be enough to pay her creditors. Her son had died far away, ingloriously. Her injured daughter had been brought to her, soiled by a scoundrel, like a child picked up in the road, bleeding and muddy after being knocked down by a cab. And the Countess, formerly so noble, so tall and slim and pale, with her grand air of a previous age, was now no more than a ruined old woman, broken by all this devastation; while Alice, with neither beauty nor youth, untidily clad in her nightdress that showed all too clearly her overlong neck, had the eyes of a madwoman, eyes that revealed the mortal grief of her last vestige of pride, her virginity now violated. And the two women went on weeping, weeping on and on.

Madame Caroline didn’t utter a word; she just gathered them both up and clasped them tightly to her bosom. She could not think of anything else to do; she wept with them. And the two unhappy women understood, their tears flowing even more freely and more gently. Even if there was no possible consolation, it was still necessary to go on living, wasn’t it? To go on living in spite of everything?

When Madame Caroline was once again out on the street, she saw Busch deep in conversation with La Méchain. He had hailed a cab, into which he pushed Léonide, and disappeared from sight. But as Madame Caroline hurried along, La Méchain walked straight up to her. She had doubtless been waiting for her, for she immediately spoke of Victor, already informed of what had happened the day before at the Work Foundation. Ever since Saccard had refused to pay the four thousand francs, she had gone on raging, striving to find some way of getting something out of the affair; and she had just learned the story, there on the Boulevard Bineau, where she often went, hoping for something profitable to turn up. She must have already made her plan, and told Madame Caroline that she was immediately going in search of Victor. That unfortunate child, it was too terrible that he should have been abandoned like that to his evil instincts; they must take him back if they didn’t want to see him one fine morning in the Assize Court. And while she was talking, her little eyes, lost in the flabby flesh of her face, were exploring this good lady, delighted to see how upset she was, and telling herself that as soon as she found the lad again she would once more be able to get the odd hundred-sou coin out of her.

‘So, Madame, it’s agreed—I’m going to take care of it… If you need news, don’t bother to rush all the way to the Rue Marcadet, just go up to Busch’s office in the Rue Feydeau, where you can be sure to find me every day around four o’clock.’

Madame Caroline returned to the Rue Saint-Lazare, tormented by a new anxiety. It was true, as Victor wandered about, hunted, and abandoned by everyone, what evil heredity would that monster need to satisfy, moving through the world like a voracious wolf? She ate a quick lunch and took a cab, with time enough to call at the Boulevard Bineau before going to the Conciergerie, burning with desire to get some information immediately. On the way, in her feverish agitation, an idea took hold of her, even took possession of her; it was to go first of all to see Maxime, take him to the Work Foundation, and force him to concern himself with Victor, who was, after all, his brother. He was the only one who was still rich, he alone could intervene and deal with the matter effectively.

But once in the hallway of the luxurious little dwelling in the Avenue de l’Impératrice, Madame Caroline felt suddenly chilled. Upholsterers were removing the hangings and carpets, servants were
putting covers on the chairs and chandeliers, while from the disturbance of all these pretty things there arose, over the furniture, over the bookshelves, a faded scent like that of a bouquet thrown away the day after a ball. And at the far end of the bedroom she found Maxime, standing between two enormous trunks which his valet was just finishing packing with a wonderful trousseau of clothes, rich and delicate, fit for a bride.

When he saw her, it was he who spoke first, in a very cold, dry voice.