The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (49 page)

And he kept looking at Hutin who, in order to preserve his dignity as assistant buyer, was standing a few paces away, without taking part in the jokes. But he was so flattered by the envious way in which the others were looking at him that he deigned to murmur:

‘She really was a nuisance, that girl!’

Denise, cut to the quick, clung to the banisters. They must have seen her, for they all scattered amid laughter. He was right; she blamed herself for her ignorance in the past, when she used to dream about him. But how cowardly he was, and how she despised him now! She was deeply disturbed: it was strange that a moment ago she had found the strength to repulse a man whom she adored, whereas in the past she had felt such weakness in the presence of that wretched boy, whose love she had only dreamed about! Her reason and her courage were foundering in these contradictions of her nature, which she could not fully understand.

She hurried through the hall. Then, as a commissionaire was opening the door which had been closed since the morning, instinct made her raise her head, and she caught sight of Mouret. He was still at the top of the staircase, on the big central landing overlooking the gallery. But he had forgotten the stock-taking; he did not see his empire, the shop bursting with riches. Everything had disappeared—the resounding victories of yesterday, the colossal fortune of tomorrow. With a look of despair he was watching Denise, and when she had gone through the door there was nothing left, and the shop was plunged into darkness.

T
HAT
day Bouthemont was the first to arrive at Madame Desforges’s house at four o’clock for tea. She was still alone, in her large Louis XVI drawing-room, the brass and brocades of which shone with a bright gaiety; when he entered she stood up with an air of impatience:

‘Well?’

‘Well!’ replied the young man, ‘when I told him that I’d certainly call on you, he promised me he’d come.’

‘And you gave him to understand that I’m expecting the Baron today?’

‘Of course … That’s what seemed to make him decide to come.’

They were referring to Mouret. The year before, he had suddenly taken such a liking to Bouthemont that he had allowed him to share his private pleasures; and he had even introduced him into Henriette’s house, glad to have an obliging person at hand to enliven somewhat a liaison of which he was beginning to tire. Thus, the buyer from the silk department had finally become the confidant both of his employer and of the pretty widow: he ran small errands for them, talked about one of them to the other, and sometimes patched up their quarrels. Henriette, in her fits of jealousy, allowed herself a degree of familiarity with him that he found surprising and embarrassing, for she would lose all the discretion she possessed, as a woman of the world using all her skill to keep up appearances.

She exclaimed violently:

‘You should have brought him with you. Then I’d have been sure.’

‘But how?’ he said, with a good-natured laugh. ‘It’s not my fault if he escapes all the time nowadays … Oh! but he’s very fond of me all the same. Without him, I’d be in trouble in the shop.’

Indeed, since the last stock-taking, his position at the Ladies’ Paradise was precarious. In spite of his excuses that the wet weather was to blame, he was not forgiven his considerable
stocks of fancy silks; and as Hutin was making the most of the affair by undermining his reputation with his superiors with a fresh burst of crafty energy, he could feel the ground crumbling beneath his feet. Mouret had condemned him, tired, no doubt, of having a witness who was now preventing him from breaking off his liaison and bored with profitless familiarity with him. But, following his usual tactics, he was pushing Bourdoncle to the fore; it was Bourdoncle and the other directors who were demanding Bouthemont’s dismissal at every board meeting; whereas Mouret, according to his own account, was holding out against them—so he said—stoutly defending his friend at the risk of creating great difficulties for himself.

‘Well, I shall wait,’ Madame Desforges went on. ‘You know that girl is coming at five … I want to see them face to face. I must discover their secret.’

She described her plan, repeating in her excitement how she had asked Madame Aurélie to send Denise to her to look at a coat which fitted badly. Once she had the girl there in her room, she would easily find some way of calling Mouret; and then she would take action.

Bouthemont, sitting opposite her, watched her with his handsome laughing eyes, trying hard to look serious. This gay young fellow with his ink-black beard, whose hot Gascon blood tinged his face with crimson, was thinking that society women were not much good, and that they certainly let out a lot of secrets once they opened their hearts. His friends’ mistresses, who were shopgirls, certainly never made such detailed confessions.

‘Come now,’ he ventured to say at last, ‘why should it matter so much? I swear to you that there’s absolutely nothing between them.’

‘That’s just it!’ she exclaimed, ‘he loves her … I don’t care about the others, they’re just pick-ups, they only last a day!’

She spoke of Clara with contempt. She had heard that Mouret, after Denise’s refusal, had fallen back on that big redhead with a face like a horse; no doubt it was a calculated move, for he kept her in the department, loading her with presents in order to draw attention to her. In any case, for almost three months now he had been leading a tremendous life of pleasure, scattering money with an extravagance which was causing a great deal of comment: he had bought a house for some chorus girl
and, at the same time, was being milked by two or three other tarts, who seemed to be competing with each other in expensive, idiotic whims.

‘It’s that creature’s fault,’ Henriette was repeating. ‘I feel he’s ruining himself with the others because she’s spurning him … In any case, I don’t care about his money! I’d have loved him more if he’d been poor. You’ve become our friend, and you know how much I love him.’

She stopped, choking, on the verge of bursting into tears; and, with a gesture of abandon, she held out both hands to him. It was true, she adored Mouret for his youth and his triumphs; never had a man possessed her so completely, thrilling both her body and her pride; but, at the thought of losing him, she could also hear the knell of forty sounding, and she was wondering with terror how to fill the place of this great love.

‘But I’ll have my revenge,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll have my revenge if he behaves badly!’

Bouthemont was still holding her hands. She was still beautiful, but she would be a nuisance as a mistress, and she wasn’t really his type. Yet it was worth considering; it might be worth risking the problems it could involve.

‘Why don’t you set up on your own?’ she said suddenly, withdrawing her hands.

He was taken aback. Then he replied:

‘But it would require a lot of capital… I kept thinking about it last year. I’m sure there are still enough customers in Paris for one or two more big shops; but the district would have to be chosen very carefully. The Bon Marché has got the Left Bank; the Louvre is in the middle; at the Paradise we monopolize the rich districts of the west. That leaves the north, where a rival to the Place Clichy could be created. And I’d discovered a superb site, near the Opéra …’

‘Well?’

He began to laugh heartily.

‘Just imagine, I was stupid enough to speak to my father about it… Yes, I was naïve enough to ask him to find shareholders in Toulouse.’

He told her gaily about the old man’s rage and how, in his little country shop, he was bitterly opposed to the big Parisian stores. Old Bouthemont, infuriated by the thirty thousand francs his
son earned, had replied that he’d rather give his money and that of his friends to charity than contribute a penny to one of those shops which were nothing more than the brothels of business.

‘Besides,’ the young man concluded, ‘it would require millions.’

‘And if you could find them?’ said Madame Desforges simply.

He looked at her, suddenly serious. Was it just the phrase of a jealous woman? But without giving him time to question her, she added:

‘Well, you know what an interest I take in you … We’ll talk about it again.’

The bell in the hall had sounded. She stood up, and with an instinctive movement he drew his chair away, as if they were already liable to be caught unawares. Silence reigned in the drawing-room; with its pretty hangings and its profusion of green plants it looked rather like a miniature wood between the two windows. She stood waiting, listening with strained attention.

‘Here he is,’ she murmured.

The servant announced:

‘Monsieur Mouret, Monsieur de Vallagnosc’

She could not help making a gesture of anger. Why didn’t he come alone? He must have gone to fetch his friend, fearing a possible tête-à-tête. Then she gave a smile, and held out her hand to the two men.

‘I see you so rarely these days! And that goes for you, too, Monsieur de Vallagnosc’

Her figure was her despair; she squeezed herself into black silk dresses to conceal the fact that she was putting on weight. But her face was still pretty, with her dark hair, and she had not lost the delicacy of her features. Mouret, sweeping his eyes over her, was able to say to her familiarly:

‘There’s no need to ask how you are … You’re as fresh as a daisy.’

‘Oh! I’m too well,’ she replied. ‘In any case, I might have been dead; you wouldn’t have known anything about it.’

She was examining him too, and thought he looked very nervous and tired, with puffy eyes and a livid complexion.

‘Well!’ she resumed in a tone which she tried to make agreeable, ‘I’m not going to return your flattery. You don’t look at all well this evening.’

‘Overwork!’ said Vallagnosc.

Mouret made a vague gesture, without replying. He had just noticed Bouthemont, and nodded to him in a friendly way. During the time when they had been on intimate terms he used to carry Bouthemont off from the department at the busiest time of the afternoon, and take him to Henriette’s. But times had changed, and he said to him in a low voice:

‘You left very early … You know, they saw you leaving and they’re furious, in the shop.’

He was talking of Bourdoncle and the other directors as if he was not the master.

‘Oh!’ murmured Bouthemont nervously.

‘Yes, I want to talk to you … Wait for me; we’ll leave together.’

Meanwhile Henriette had sat down again; and while she was listening to Vallagnosc, who was telling her that Madame de Boves would probably be coming to see her, she did not take her eyes off Mouret. He had lapsed into silence again; he was gazing at the furniture and seemed to be looking for something on the ceiling. Then, as she laughingly complained that she no longer had anyone but men at her tea parties, he so far forgot himself as to let slip the phrase:

‘I thought I’d find Baron Hartmann here.’

Henriette had turned pale. Doubtless she knew that he came to her house only in order to meet the Baron; but he might have refrained from throwing his indifference in her face like that. Just then the door opened, and the servant stood before her. When she questioned him with a movement of her head, he leaned down and said to her in a whisper:

‘It’s about that coat. Madam told me to let her know … The young lady is here.’

Then she raised her voice to make herself heard and, releasing all the sufferings of jealousy in a few sharply contemptuous words, she said:

‘Let her wait!’

‘Shall I show her into madam’s dressing-room?’

‘No, no, let her stay in the hall!’

When the servant had gone out, she calmly resumed her conversation with Vallagnosc. Mouret, who had relapsed into his lassitude, had half heard what she had said, without really taking it in. Bouthemont, preoccupied by the affair, was lost in thought. But almost immediately the door opened again, and two ladies were shown in.

‘Just fancy!’ said Madame Marty, ‘I was getting out of the carriage when I saw Madame de Boves coming through the arcade.’

‘Yes,’ the latter explained, ‘it’s a nice day, and my doctor is always telling me I should walk …’

Then, after everyone had shaken hands, she asked Henriette:

‘So you’re engaging a new housemaid?’

‘No,’ she replied, surprised. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I’ve just seen a girl in the hall who …’

Henriette interrupted her, laughing.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Shopgirls all look like housemaids … Yes, it’s a girl who’s come to alter a coat.’

Mouret looked at her intently, suspicion crossing his mind. She went on talking with forced gaiety, explaining how she had bought the coat ready-made at the Ladies’ Paradise the week before.

‘What!’ said Madame Marty, ‘don’t you get your clothes from Sauveur any more?’

‘Yes, my dear, I do, but I wanted to make an experiment. I was quite pleased with the first thing I bought at the Paradise, a travel coat… But this time it wasn’t at all a success. You may say what you like, you just can’t dress well in those big shops of yours. I don’t mind saying it in front of Monsieur Mouret… You’ll never be able to dress a woman who has any sense of style.’

Mouret did not defend his shop; still looking at her, he was trying to reassure himself, telling himself that she would never dare to do such a thing. It was Bouthemont who had to defend the Paradise.

‘If all the society women who buy their clothes from us were to boast about it,’ he retorted gaily, ‘you’d be very surprised at the customers we have … Order a garment from us made-to-measure, and it’ll be as good as one of Sauveur’s, and it’ll cost
you half the price. And it’s only because it’s less expensive that it seems less good.’

‘So the coat’s not a success?’ Madame de Boves went on. ‘Now I recognize the girl… It’s rather dark in the hall.’

‘Yes,’ added Madame Marty, ‘I was trying to think where I’d seen that face … Well, go on, my dear, don’t stand on ceremony with us.’

Henriette made a gesture of disdainful unconcern.

‘Oh, later on, there’s no hurry.’

The ladies went on with their discussion about clothes from the big department stores. Then Madame de Boves spoke of her husband who, she said, had just left on a tour of inspection to visit the stud farm at Saint-Lô, and Henriette was telling them how the day before Madame Guibal had been called away to the Franche-Comté because of an aunt’s illness. She was not expecting Madame Bourdelais that day either, for at the end of each month the latter shut herself up with a seamstress in order to go through her children’s clothes. Meanwhile, Madame Marty seemed troubled by some secret anxiety. Monsieur Marty’s job at the Lycée Bonaparte was in jeopardy as a result of some lessons the poor man had been giving in some shady establishments which were doing quite a trade in matriculation diplomas; he was frenziedly raising money where he could, in order to meet the orgies of spending which were ruining his home; and after she’d seen him weeping one evening in fear of dismissal, she had had the idea of using her friend Henriette’s influence with an undersecretary she knew at the Ministry of Education. Finally Henriette set her mind at rest with a few words. In any case, Monsieur Marty was going to come himself to discover his fate and to thank her.