Part 17

The captain gives me a long, sly, amorous look, and says:

"Well, that depends on you."

"On me?"

"Yes, on you; on you alone."

"And how is that?"

A moment of silence follows, during which, straightening up and twisting his pointed beard, he seeks to envelop me in a seductive fluid.

"Come," he says, suddenly, "let us go straight to the point. Let us speak squarely,--soldier-fashion. Do you wish to take Rose's place?"

I was expecting the attack. I had seen it coming from the depth of his eyes. It does not surprise me. I receive it with a serious and unmoved expression.

"And the wills, Captain?"

"Oh! I tear them up."

I object:

"But I do not know how to cook."

"Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything."

He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles. He leans towards the hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot. And in a lower voice he says:

"If you came to me, Célestine,--well...."

"Well, what?"

"Well, the Lanlaires would die of rage. Ah! that's an idea!"

I lapse into silence, and pretend to be profoundly dreaming. The captain becomes impatient. He digs the heels of his shoes into the sandy path.

"See, Célestine, thirty-five francs a month; the master's table; the master's room; a will; does that suit you? Answer me."

"We will see later. But, while waiting, take another."

And I run away that I may not blow into his face the tempest of laughter that is roaring in my throat.

I have, then, only the embarrassment of choice. The captain or Joseph? To live as a servant-mistress, with all the contingencies that such a position involves,--that is, to remain still at the mercy of a stupid, coarse, changeable man, and dependent upon a thousand disagreeable circumstances and a thousand prejudices; or else to marry, and thus acquire a sort of regular and respected liberty, in a situation free from the control of others, and liberated from the caprice of events? Here at last a portion of my dream promises to be realized.

It is very evident that I should have liked a realization on a grander scale. But, when I think how few chances present themselves, in general, in the existence of a woman like me, I must congratulate myself that something is coming to me at last other than this eternal and monotonous tossing back and forth from one house to another, from one bed to another, from one face to another face.

Of course, I put aside at once the captain's plan. Moreover, I had no need of this last conversation with him to know the sort of grotesque and sinister mountebank, the type of odd humanity, that he represents. Beyond the fact that his physical ugliness is complete,--for there is nothing to relieve and correct it,--he gives one no hold on his soul. Rose believed firmly in her assured domination over this man, and this man tricked her. One cannot dominate nothing; one can have no influence over emptiness. I cannot, without choking with laughter, think of myself for an instant in the arms of this ridiculous personage and caressing him. Yet, in spite of this, I am content, and I feel something akin to pride. However low the source from which it comes, it is none the less an homage, and this homage strengthens my confidence in myself and in my beauty.

Quite different are my feelings toward Joseph. Joseph has taken possession of my mind. He retains it, he holds it captive, he obsesses it. He disturbs me, bewitches me, and frightens me, by turns. Certainly, he is ugly, brutally, horribly ugly; but, when you analyze this ugliness, you find something formidable in it, something that is almost beauty, that is more than beauty, that is above beauty,--something elemental. I do not conceal from myself the difficulty, the danger, of living, whether married or not, with such a man, of whom I am warranted in suspecting everything, and of whom, in reality, I know nothing. And it is this that draws me to him with a dizzy violence. At least he is capable of many things in crime, perhaps, and perhaps also in the direction of good. I do not know. What does he want of me? What will he do with me? Should I be the unscrupulous instrument of plans that I knew nothing of, the plaything of his ferocious passions? Does he even love me? And why does he love me? For my beauty; for my vices; for my intelligence; for my hatred of prejudices,--he who makes parade of all the prejudices? I do not know. In addition to this attraction which the unknown and mysterious has for me, he exercises over me the bitter, powerful charm of force. And this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers my passive and submissive flesh. It is something which I cannot define exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex, revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:

"You are like me, Célestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our two souls are alike; our two souls resemble each other."

Our two souls! Is that possible?

These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute's rest, and that I remain always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read and walk in the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in the present, but he possesses it also in the past. Joseph so interposes himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak, nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears. Cléophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have been branded forever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately, I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my sorrowful heart,--all of them shadows already! Uncertain and ludicrous shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then become confused dreams ... intangible, forgotten realities ... vapors ... nothing. Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself:

"No, no, it is not possible. I am under the influence of a fit of madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not possible."

And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!"

Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in the sneering faces of demons and bucks.

Joseph has obtained from Madame six days' leave of absence, and to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little café. But for some months he will not run it himself. He has some one there, a trusted friend, who is to take charge of it.

"Do you understand?" he says to me. "It must first be repainted, and made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt letters: 'To the French Army!' And besides, I cannot leave my place yet. That I cannot do."

"Why not, Joseph?"

"Because I cannot now."

"But when will you go, for good?"

Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly glance, and says:

"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."

I feel that he does not wish to speak. Nevertheless I insist:

"It depends on what?"

He hesitates to answer; then, in a mysterious and, at the same time, somewhat excited tone, he says:

"On a certain matter; on a very important matter."

"But what matter?"

"Oh! on a certain matter, that's all."

This is uttered in a brusque voice,--a voice not of anger exactly, but of impatience. He refuses to explain further.

He says nothing to me of myself. This astonishes me, and causes me a painful disappointment. Can he have changed his mind? Has my curiosity, my hesitation, wearied him? Yet it is very natural that I should be interested in an event in the success or failure of which I am to share. Can the suspicion that I have not been able to hide, my suspicion of the outrage committed by him upon the little Claire, have caused Joseph to reflect further, and brought about a rupture between us? But I feel from the tremor of my heart that my resolution, deferred out of coquetry, out of a disposition to tease, was well taken. To be free, to be enthroned behind a bar, to command others, to know that one is looked at, desired, adored by so many men! And that is not to be? And this dream is to escape me, as all the others have? I do not wish to seem to be throwing myself at Joseph's head, but I wish to know what he has in his mind. I put on a sad face, and I sigh:

"When you have gone, Joseph, the house will no longer be endurable to me. I have become so accustomed to you now, to our conversations."

"Oh! indeed!"

"I too shall go away."

Joseph says nothing.

He walks up and down the harness-room, with anxious brow and preoccupied mind, his hands nervously twirling a pair of garden-shears in the pocket of his blue apron. The expression of his face is unpleasant. I repeat, as I watch him go back and forth:

"Yes, I shall go away; I shall return to Paris."

He utters not a word of protest, not a cry; not even an imploring glance does he turn upon me. He puts a stick of wood in the stove, as the fire is low, and then begins again his silent promenade up and down the room. Why is he like this? Does he, then, accept this separation? Does he want it? Has he, then, lost his confidence in me, the love that he had for me? Or does he simply fear my imprudence, my eternal questions?

Trembling a little, I ask him:

"Will it cause you no pain, Joseph, if we do not see each other again?"

Without halting in his walk, without even glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, in the manner so characteristic of him, he says:

"Of course. But what can you expect? One cannot oblige people to do what they refuse to do. A thing either pleases, or it does not please."

"What have I refused to do, Joseph?"

"And besides, you are always full of bad ideas about me," he continues, without answering my question.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because...."

"No, no, Joseph; you no longer love me; you have something else in mind now. I have refused nothing; I have reflected, that is all. It is natural enough, isn't it? One does not make a life-contract without reflection. My hesitation, on the contrary, ought to make you think well of me. It proves that I am not light-headed,--that I am a serious woman."

"You are a good woman, Célestine, an orderly woman."

"Well, then?"

At last Joseph stops walking, and, gazing at me with profound and still suspicious, but yet tenderer, eyes, he says, slowly:

"It is not that, Célestine. There is no question of that. I do not prevent you from reflecting. Reflect all you like. There is plenty of time, and we will talk again on my return. But what I do not like, you see, is so much curiosity. There are things that do not concern women; there are things...."

And he finishes his phrase with a shake of his head.

After a moment's silence he resumes:

"I have nothing else in mind, Célestine. I dream of you; I am crazy over you. As true as the good God exists, what I have said once I say always. We will talk it over again. But you must not be curious. You do what you do; I do what I do. In that way there is no mistake, no surprise."

Approaching me, he grasps my hands.

"I have a hard head, Célestine; yes, indeed! But what is in it stays in it, and cannot be gotten out of it. I dream of you, Célestine, of you ... in the little café."

XV

_November 20._

Joseph started for Cherbourg yesterday morning, as had been agreed. On coming down stairs, I find him already gone. Marianne, half awake, with swollen eyes and hawking throat, is pumping water. The plate from which Joseph has just eaten his soup, and the empty cider-pitcher, are still on the kitchen table. I am anxious, and at the same time I am content, for I feel that, starting from to-day, a new life is at last preparing for me. The sun has scarcely risen; the air is cold. Beyond the garden the country is still sleeping under a curtain of fog, and in the distance, coming from an invisible valley, I hear the very feeble sound of a locomotive whistle. It is the train that bears Joseph and my destiny. I can eat no breakfast; it seems to me that something huge and heavy fills my stomach. I no longer hear the whistle. The fog is thickening; it has entered the garden.

And if Joseph were never to come back?

All day long I have been distracted, nervous, extremely agitated. Never did the house weigh more heavily upon me; never did the long corridors seem more dismal, more icily silent; never have I so much detested the crabbed face and shrill voice of Madame. Impossible to work. I have had with Madame a very violent scene, in consequence of which I really thought that I should be obliged to go. And I ask myself what I am going to do during these six days, without Joseph. I dread the ennui of being alone, at meals, with Marianne. I really need somebody to talk to.

As a rule, as soon as it comes night, Marianne, under the influence of drink, falls into a state of complete stupefaction. Her brain becomes torpid; her tongue becomes thick; her lips hang and shine like the worn brink of an old well; and she is sad, sad to the point of weeping. I can get nothing out of her but little plaints, little cries, something like the puling of a child. Nevertheless, last night, less drunk than usual, she confided to me, amid never-ending groans, that she is afraid she is in trouble. Well, that caps the climax! My first impulse is to laugh. But soon I feel a keen sorrow,--something like the cutting of a lash in the pit of my stomach. Suppose it were through Joseph? I remember that, on the day of my arrival here, I at once suspected them. But since then nothing has happened to justify this stupid suspicion. On the contrary. No, no, it is impossible. It cannot be. I ask:

"You are sure, Marianne?"

"Sure? No," she says; "I am only afraid."

"And through whom?"

She hesitates to answer; then, suddenly, with a sort of pride, she declares:

"Through Monsieur."

This time I came near bursting with laughter. Marianne, mistaking my laugh for one of admiration, begins to laugh, too.

"Yes, yes, through Monsieur," she repeats. "I am going to see Madame Gouin to-morrow."

I feel a real pity for this poor woman whose brain is so dark and whose ideas are so obscure. Oh! how melancholy and lamentable she is! And what is going to happen to her now? An extraordinary thing,--love has given her no radiance, no grace. She has not that halo of light with which voluptuousness surrounds the ugliest faces. She has remained the same,--heavy, flabby, lumpy.

I left her with a somewhat heavy heart. Now I laugh no more; I will never laugh at Marianne again, and the pity that I feel for her turns into a real and almost painful emotion.

But I feel that my emotion especially concerns myself. On returning to my room, I am seized with a sort of shame and great discouragement. One should never reflect upon love. How sad love is at bottom! And what does it leave behind? Ridicule, bitterness, or nothing at all. What remains to me now of Monsieur Jean, whose photograph is on parade on the mantel, in its red plush frame? Nothing, except my disappointment at having loved a vain and heartless imbecile. Can I really have loved this insipid beauty, with his white and unhealthy face, his regulation black mutton-chops, and his hair parted down the middle? This photograph irritates me. I can no longer have continually before me those two stupid eyes that look at me with the unchangeable look of an insolent and servile flunky. Oh! no, let it go to keep company with the others, at the bottom of my trunk, pending the time when I shall make of my more and more detested past a fire of joy and ashes.

And I think of Joseph. Where is he at the present moment? What is he doing? Is he even thinking of me? Undoubtedly he is in the little café. He is looking, discussing, measuring; he is picturing to himself the effect that I shall produce at the bar, before the mirror, amid the dazzling of the glasses and the multi-colored bottles. I wish that I knew Cherbourg, its streets, its squares, its harbor, that I might represent Joseph to myself going and coming, conquering the city as he has conquered me. I turn and turn again in my bed, a little feverish. My thought goes from the forest of Raillon to Cherbourg, from the body of Claire to the little café. And, after a painful period of insomnia, I finally go off to sleep with the stern and severe image of Joseph before my eyes, the motionless image of Joseph outlining itself in the distance against a dark and choppy background, traversed by white masts and red yards.

To-day, Sunday, I paid a visit in the afternoon to Joseph's room. The two dogs follow me eagerly. They seem to be asking me where Joseph is. A little iron bed, a large cupboard, a sort of low commode, a table, two chairs, all in white-wood, and a porte-manteau, which a green lustring curtain, running on a rod, protects from the dust,--these constitute the furnishings. Though the room is not luxurious, it is extremely orderly and clean. It has something of the rigidity and austerity of a monk's cell in a convent. On the white-washed walls, between the portraits of Déroulède and General Mercier, holy pictures unframed,--Virgins, an Adoration of the Magi, a Massacre of the Innocents, a view of Paradise. Above the bed a large crucifix of dark wood, serving as a holy-water basin, and barred with a branch of consecrated box.

It is not very delicate, to be sure, but I could not resist my violent desire to search everywhere, in the hope, vague though it were, of discovering some of Joseph's secrets. Nothing is mysterious in this room, nothing is hidden. It is the naked chamber of a man who has no secrets, whose life is pure, exempt from complications and events. The keys are in the furniture and in the cupboards; not a drawer is locked. On the table some packages of seeds and a book, "The Good Gardener." On the mantel a prayer-book, whose pages are yellow, and a little note-book, in which have been copied various receipts for preparing encaustic, Bordelaise stew, and mixtures of nicotine and sulphate of iron. Not a letter anywhere; not even an account-book. Nowhere the slightest trace of any correspondence, either on business, politics, family matters, or love. In the commode, beside worn-out shoes and old hose-nozzles, piles of pamphlets, numerous numbers of the "Libre Parole." Under the bed, mouse-traps and rat-traps. I have felt of everything, turned everything upside down, emptied everything,--coats, mattress, linen, and drawers. There is nothing else. In the cupboard nothing has been changed. It is just as I left it a week ago, when I put it in order in Joseph's presence. Is it possible that Joseph has nothing? Is it possible that he is so lacking in those thousand little intimate and familiar things whereby a man reveals his tastes, his passions, his thoughts, a little of that which dominates his life? Ah! yes, here! From the back of the table-drawer I take a cigar-box, wrapped in paper and strongly tied with string running four times round. With great difficulty I untie the knots, I open the box, and on a bed of wadding I see five consecrated medals, a little silver crucifix, and a rosary of red beads. Always religion!

My search concluded, I leave the room, filled with nervous irritation at having found nothing of what I was searching for, and having learned nothing of what I wanted to know. Decidedly, Joseph communicates his impenetrability to everything that he touches. The articles that he possesses are as silent as his lips, as unfathomable as his eyes and brow. The rest of the day I have had before me, really before me, Joseph's face, enigmatical, sneering, and crusty, by turns. And it has seemed to me that I could hear him saying to me:

"And much farther you have got, my awkward little one, in consequence of your curiosity. Ah! you can look again, you can search my linen, my trunks, my soul; you will never find anything out."

I do not wish to think of all this any more; I do not wish to think of Joseph any more. My head aches too hard, and I believe that I should go mad. Let us return to my memories.

Scarcely had I left the good sisters of Neuilly, when I fell again into the hell of the employment-bureaus. And yet I had firmly resolved never to apply to them again. But, when one is on the pavements, without money enough to buy even a bit of bread, what is one to do? Friends, old comrades? Bah! They do not even answer you. Advertisements in the newspapers? They cost a great deal, and involve interminable correspondence,--a great lot of trouble for nothing. And besides, they are very risky. At any rate, one must have something ahead, and Cléclé's twenty francs had quickly melted in my hands. Prostitution? Street-walking? To take men home with you who are often more destitute than yourself? Oh! no, indeed. For pleasure,--yes, as much as you like. But for money? I cannot; I do not know how; I am always victimized. I was even obliged to hang up some little jewels that I had, in order to pay for my board and lodging. Inevitably, hard luck brings you back to the agencies of usury and human exploitation.

Oh! the employment-bureaus, what dirty traps they are! In the first place, one must give ten sous to have her name entered; and then there is the risk of getting a bad place. In these frightful dens there is no lack of bad places; and, really, one has only the embarrassment of choice between one-eyed hussies and blind hussies. Nowadays, women with nothing at all, keepers of little fourpenny grocery stores, pretend to have servants and to play the _role_ of countess. What a pity! If, after discussions, and humiliating examinations, and still more humiliating haggling, you succeed in coming to terms with one of these rapacious _bourgeoises_, you owe to the keeper of the employment-bureau three per cent. of your first year's wages. So much the worse, if you remain but ten days in the place she has procured for you. That does not concern her; her account is good, and the entire commission is exacted. Oh! they know the trick; they know where they send you, and that you will come back to them soon. Once, for instance, I had seven places in four months and a half. A run on the black; impossible houses, worse than prisons. Well, I had to pay the employment-bureau three per cent. of seven years' wages,--that is, including the ten sous required for each fresh entrance of my name, more than ninety francs. And nothing had been accomplished, and all had to be begun over again. Is that just, I want to know? Is it not abominable robbery?