Part 20

She was melting. Little by little, her mask of dignity fell. I was now confronted simply with the former chambermaid, expert at all rascalities. Now she had the piggish eye, the fat and flabby movements, the sort of ritual lapping of the mouth characteristic of the procuress, and which I had observed on the lips of "Madame Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery." She repeated:

"For my part, I call it conduct."

"It! What?" I exclaimed.

"Come, Mademoiselle, you are not a beginner, and you are acquainted with life. One can talk with you. It is a question of a single gentleman, already old, not extremely far from Paris, and very rich,--yes, in fact, rich enough. You will keep his house,--something like a governess, do you understand? Such places are very delicate, much in demand, and highly profitable. This one offers a certain future for a woman like you, as intelligent as you are, as pretty as you are,--especially, I repeat, with conduct."

This was my ambition. Many times I had built marvelous futures on an old man's fancy, and now this paradise that I had dreamed of was before me, smiling, calling me. By an inexplicable irony of life, by an imbecile contradiction, the cause of which I cannot understand, I squarely refused this good fortune which I had wished for so many times, and which at last presented itself.

"An old rake! Oh! no! Besides, men are too disgusting to me,--the old, the young, all of them."

For a few seconds Mme. Paulhat-Durand stood in amazement. She had not expected this sally. Resuming her severe and dignified air, which placed so great a distance between the correct _bourgeoise_ that she wished to be and the bohemian girl that I am, she said:

"Ah! Mademoiselle, what do you think, then? What do you take me for? What are you imagining?"

"I imagine nothing. Only I repeat that I have had enough of men."

"Do you really know of whom you are speaking? This gentleman, Mademoiselle, is a very respectable man. He is a member of the Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. He has been a royalist deputy."

I burst out laughing.

"Yes, yes, of course. I know your Saint-Vincent-de-Pauls, and all the devil's saints, and all the deputies. No, thank you!"

Then, suddenly, without transition, I asked:

"Just what is your old man? To be sure, one more or less will make no difference. It is not a matter of great consequence, after all."

But Mme. Paulhat-Durand did not unbend. She declared, in a firm voice:

"It is useless, Mademoiselle. You are not the serious woman, the trusty person, that this gentleman needs. I thought you were more suitable. With you, one cannot be sure of anything."

I insisted a long time, but she was inflexible. And I went back to the ante-room in a very uncertain state of mind. Oh! that ante-room, so sad and dark, always the same! These girls sprawling and crushed upon the benches, this market for human meat to tempt _bourgeois_ voracity, this flux of filth and this reflux of poverty that bring you back there, mournful waifs, wreckage from the sea, eternally tossed hither and thither.

"What a queer type I am!" thought I. "I desire things ... things ... things ... when I think them unrealizable, and, so soon as they promise realization, so soon as they present themselves to me in clearer outline, I no longer want them."

There was something of this, certainly, in my refusal; but there was also a childish desire to humiliate Mme. Paulhat-Durand a little, and to take a sort of vengeance upon her by catching the contemptuous and haughty creature in the very act of catering to lust.

I regretted this old man, who now exercised over me all the seductions of the unknown, all the charms of an inaccessible ideal. And I found pleasure in picturing him to my fancy,--a spruce old man, with soft hands, a pretty smile, a pink and shaven face, and gay, and generous, and good-natured, not so much a maniac as M. Rabour, allowing himself to be led by me, like a little dog.

"Come here. Come, come here."

And he came, caressing, frisking about, with a kind and submissive look.

"Now sit up."

And he sat up, in such a funny way, with his forepaws beating the air.

"Oh! the good bow-wow!"

I gave him sugar; I stroked his silky skin. He no longer disgusted me. And again I reflected:

"How stupid I am, all the same! A good doggy, a fine garden, a fine house, money, tranquillity, an assured future,--to think that I have refused all these, and without knowing why. And never to know what I want, and never to will what I desire! At bottom I am afraid of man,--worse than that, I have a disgust for man,--when he is far away. When he is near me, I am capable of anything. I have no power of resistance save against things that are not to happen and men whom I shall never know. I really believe that I shall never be happy."

The ante-room was oppressive to me. This obscurity, this dim light, these sprawling creatures, made my ideas more and more lugubrious. Something heavy and irremediable hovered over me. Without waiting for the bureau to close, I went away, with heavy heart and choking throat. On the stairs I met M. Louis. Clinging to the banister, he was ascending the steps, slowly and painfully. We looked at each other for a second. He did not say anything, and I too found no word; but our looks said all. Ah! he, as well as I, was not happy. I listened to him a moment, as he went up the steps; then I plunged down the stairway. Poor little wretch!

In the street I stood for a moment as if stunned. I looked about for love's recruiting-agents, for the round back and black costume of "Mme. Rebecca Ranvet, Millinery." Ah! if I had seen her, I would have gone to her, I would have delivered myself to her. But there was no such person there. The people passing were busy and indifferent, and paid no attention to my distress. Then I stopped at a wine-shop, where I bought a bottle of brandy, and, after strolling about for a while, still stupid and with heavy head, I went back to my hotel.

Toward evening, late, I heard a knock at my door. I lay stretched upon my bed, half naked, stupefied by drink.

"Who is there?" I cried.

"It is I."

"Who are you?"

"The waiter."

I rose, with my loosened hair falling from my shoulders, and opened the door.

"What do you want?"

The waiter smiled. He was a tall fellow with red hair, whom I had met several times on the stairs, and who always looked at me strangely.

"What do you want?" I repeated.

The waiter smiled again, apparently embarrassed, and, rolling in his fat fingers the bottom of his blue apron, covered with grease spots, he stammered:

"Mam'zelle ... I...."

He surveyed my person with a sort of dismal desire.

"Well, come in, you brute," I cried, suddenly.

And pushing him into my room, I closed the door again, violently.

Oh! misery me!

The waiter was discharged. I never knew his name!

I should not like to leave the subject of Mme. Paulhat-Durand's employment-bureau, without giving my recollection of a poor devil whom I met there. He was a gardener, who had been a widower for four months, and who was looking for a place. Among the many lamentable faces that passed through the bureau I saw none as sad as his, none that seemed to me more overwhelmed by life. His wife had died of a miscarriage ... of a miscarriage?... the night before the day when, after two months of poverty, they were at last to take positions on an estate,--he in charge of the garden, she in charge of the barn-yard. Whether from ill-luck, or from weariness and from disgust of life, he had found nothing since this great misfortune; he had not even looked for anything. And during this period of idleness his little savings had quickly melted away. Although he was very suspicious, I succeeded in taming him a little. I put into the form of an impersonal narrative the simple and poignant tragedy that he related to me one day when I, greatly moved by his misfortune, had shown more interest and pity than usual. Here it is.

When they had examined the gardens, the terraces, the conservatories, and the gardener's house at the park entrance, sumptuously clothed with ivies, climbing plants, and wild vines, they came back slowly, without speaking to each other, their souls in anguish and suspense, toward the lawn where the countess was following with a loving gaze her three children, who, with their light hair, their bright trinkets, and their pink and prosperous flesh, were playing in the grass, under the care of the governess. At a distance of twenty steps they halted respectfully, the man with uncovered head and holding his cap in his hand, the woman, timid under her black straw hat, embarrassed in her dark woollen sack, and twisting the chain of a little leather bag, to give herself confidence. The undulating greensward of the park rolled away in the distance, between thick clusters of trees.

"Come nearer," said the countess, in a voice of kind encouragement.

The man had a brown face, skin tanned by the sun, large knotty hands of the color of earth, the tips of the fingers deformed and polished by the continual handling of tools. The woman was a little pale, with a gray pallor underlying the freckles that besprinkled her face,--a little awkward, too, and very clean. She did not dare to lift her eyes to this fine lady, who was about to examine her inconsiderately, overwhelm her with torturing questions, and turn her inside out, body and soul, as others had done before. And she looked intently at the pretty picture of the three babies playing in the grass, already showing manners well under control and studied graces.

They advanced a few steps, slowly, and both of them, with a mechanical and simultaneous movement, folded their hands over their stomachs.

"Well," asked the countess, "you have seen everything?"

"Madame the Countess is very good," answered the man. "It is very grand and very beautiful. Oh! it is a superb estate. There must be plenty of work, indeed!"

"And I am very exacting, I warn you,--very just, but very exacting. I love to have everything perfectly kept. And flowers, flowers, flowers, always and everywhere. However, you have two assistants in summer, and one in winter. That is sufficient."

"Oh!" replied the man, "the work does not worry me; the more there is, the better I like it. I love my calling, and I know it thoroughly,--trees, early vegetables, mosaics, and everything. As for flowers, with good arms, taste, water, good straw coverings, and--saving your presence, Madame the Countess--an abundance of manure, one can have as many as one wants."

After a pause, he continued:

"My wife, too, is very active, very skilful, and a good manager. She does not look strong, but she is courageous, and never sick, and nobody understands animals as she does. In the place where we last worked there were three cows and two hundred hens."

The countess nodded approvingly.

"How do you like your lodge?"

"The lodge, too, is very fine. It is almost too grand for little people like us, and we have not enough furniture for it. But one need not occupy the whole of it. And besides, it is far from the château, and it ought to be. Masters do not like to have the gardeners too near them. And we, on the other hand, are afraid of being embarrassed. Here each is by himself. That is better for all. Only...."

The man hesitated, seized with a sudden timidity, in view of what he had to say.

"Only what?" asked the countess, after a silence that increased the man's embarrassment.

The latter gripped his cap more tightly, turned it in his fat fingers, rested more heavily on the ground, and, making a bold plunge, exclaimed:

"Well, it is this. I wanted to say to Madame the Countess that the wages do not correspond with the place. They are too low. With the best will in the world it would be impossible to make ends meet. Madame the Countess ought to give a little more."

"You forget, my friend, that you are lodged, heated, lighted; that you have vegetables and fruits; that I give a dozen eggs a week and a quart of milk a day. It is enormous."

"Ah, Madame the Countess gives milk and eggs? And she furnishes light?"

And he looked at his wife as if to ask her advice, at the same time murmuring:

"Indeed, that is something! One cannot deny it. That is not bad."

The woman stammered:

"Surely that helps out a little."

Then, trembling and embarrassed:

"Madame the Countess no doubt gives presents also in the month of January and on Saint Fiacre's day?"

"No, nothing."

"It is the custom, however."

"It is not mine."

In his turn the man asked:

"And for the weasels and pole-cats?"

"No, nothing for those either; you can have the skins."

This was said in a dry, decisive tone, that forbade further discussion. And suddenly:

"Ah! I warn you, once for all, that I forbid the gardener to sell or give vegetables to any one whomsoever. I know very well that it is necessary to raise too many in order to have enough, and that three-fourths of them are wasted. So much the worse! I intend to allow them to be wasted."

"Of course, the same as everywhere else!"

"So it is agreed? How long have you been married?"

"Six years," answered the woman.

"You have no children?"

"We had a little girl. She is dead."

"Ah! that is well; that is very well," approved the countess, in an indifferent tone. "But you are both young; you may have others yet."

"They are hardly to be desired, Madame the Countess, but they are more easily obtained than an income of three hundred francs."

The countess's eyes took on a severe expression.

"I must further warn you that I will have no children on the premises, absolutely none. If you were to have another child, I should be obliged to discharge you at once. Oh! no children! They cry, they are in the way, they ruin everything, they frighten the horses and spread diseases. No, no, not for anything in the world would I tolerate a child on my premises. So you are warned. Govern yourselves accordingly; take your precautions."

Just then one of the children, who had fallen, came, crying, to take refuge in his mother's gown. She took him in her arms, lulled him with soothing words, caressed him, kissed him tenderly, and sent him back to rejoin the two others, pacified and smiling. The woman suddenly felt her heart growing heavy. She thought that she would not be able to keep back her tears. Joy, tenderness, love, motherhood, then, were for the rich only? The children had begun to play again on the lawn. She hated them with a savage hatred; she felt a desire to insult them, to beat them, to kill them; to insult and kill also this insolent and cruel woman, this egoistic mother, who had just uttered abominable words, words that condemned not to be born the future humanity that lay sleeping in her womb. But she restrained herself, and said simply, in response to a new warning, more imperative than the other:

"We will be careful, Madame the Countess; we will try."

"That's right; for I cannot too often repeat it to you,--this is a principle here, a principle upon which I cannot compromise."

And she added, with an inflection in her voice that was almost caressing:

"Moreover, believe me, when one is not rich, it is better to have no children."

The man, to please his future mistress, said, by way of conclusion:

"Surely, surely. Madame the Countess speaks truly."

But there was hatred within him. The sombre and fierce gleam that passed over his eyes like a flash gave the lie to the forced servility of these last words. The countess did not see this murderous gleam, for she had fixed her eyes instinctively on the person of the woman whom she had just condemned to sterility or infanticide.

The bargain was quickly concluded. She gave her orders, detailed minutely the services that she expected of her new gardeners, and, as she dismissed them with a haughty smile, she said, in a tone that admitted of no reply:

"I think that you have religious sentiments, do you not? Here everybody goes to mass on Sunday, and receives the sacrament at Easter. I insist upon it absolutely."

They went away without speaking to each other, very serious, very sober. The road was dusty and the heat oppressive, and the poor woman walked painfully, dragging her legs after her. As she was stifling a little, she stopped, placed her bag upon the ground, and unlaced her corsets.

"Ouf!" she exclaimed, taking in deep breaths of air.

And her figure, which had been long compressed, now swelled out, revealing the characteristic roundness, the stain of motherhood, the crime. They continued on their way.

A few steps further on they entered an inn by the roadside, and ordered a quart of wine.

"Why didn't you say I was pregnant?" asked the woman.

The man answered:

"What? That she might show us the door, as the three others have done?"

"To-day or to-morrow makes but little difference."

Then the man murmured between his teeth:

"If you were a woman,--well, you would go this very evening to Mother Hurlot. She has herbs."

But the woman began to weep. And in her tears she groaned:

"Don't say that; don't say that! That brings bad luck."

The man pounded the table, and cried:

"Must we, then, die, my God!"

The bad luck came. Four days later the woman had a miscarriage ... a miscarriage?... and died in the frightful pains of peritonitis.

And, when the man had finished his story, he said to me:

"So now here I am, all alone. No wife, no child, nothing. I really thought of revenging myself; yes, for a long time I thought of killing those three children that were playing on the lawn, although I am not wicked, I assure you. But that woman's three children, I swear to you, I could have strangled with joy, with real joy! Oh! yes. But then, I did not dare. What do you expect? We are afraid; we are cowards; we have courage only to suffer!"

XVI

_November 24._

No letter from Joseph. Knowing how prudent he is, I am not greatly astonished at his silence, but it causes me a little suffering. To be sure, Joseph is not unaware that the letters go through Madame's hands before reaching ours, and doubtless he does not wish to expose himself or me to the danger of their being read by her, or even have the fact that he writes to me made a subject of Madame's malicious comments. Yet, with his great mental resources, it seems to me that he could have found a way of sending me news. He is to return to-morrow morning. Will he return? I am not without anxiety, and cannot keep from thinking about it. Why, too, was he unwilling to give me his Cherbourg address? But I do not wish to think of all these things, that split my head and put me into a fever.

Here everything goes on in the same way, except that there are fewer events and still greater silence. Joseph's work is done by the sacristan, out of friendship. He comes every day, punctually, to groom the horses and to tend to the garden-frames. Impossible to get a single word out of him. He is more silent and suspicious than Joseph, and his manners are more doubtful. He is more ordinary, too, and lacks his greatness and power. I see him only when I have an order to deliver to him. He is a queer type, too. The grocer tells me that, when young, he studied for the priesthood, and was expelled from the seminary on account of his indelicacy and immorality. May it not have been he who outraged the little Claire in the woods? Since then, he has tried his hand at all trades. Now a pastry-cook, now a church-singer, now a peddler, a notary's clerk, a domestic, the town drummer, an auctioneer, and an employee in the sheriff's office, for the last four years he has been sacristan. To be sacristan is to be also something of a priest. Moreover, he has all the slimy and crawling manners of the ecclesiastical bugs. Surely he would not recoil from the vilest tasks. Joseph does wrong to make him his friend. But is he his friend? Is he not, rather, his accomplice?

Madame has a sick headache. It seems she has one regularly every three months. For two days she remains shut up in her room, with drawn curtains and without light, only Marianne being allowed to enter. She does not want me. Madame's sickness means a good time for Monsieur. Monsieur makes the most of it. He does not leave the kitchen.

Captain Mauger, who does not speak to me any more, but casts furious glances at me over the hedge, has become reconciled with his family,--at least, with one of his nieces, who has come to live with him. She is not bad-looking,--a tall blonde with a nose that is too long, but with a fresh complexion and a good figure. People say she is to keep the house, and take Rose's place.

As for Mme. Gouin, Rose's death must have been a blow to her Sunday mornings. She saw at once that she could not get along without a leading lady. Now, it is that pest of a haberdasher who leads off in the gossip, and undertakes to maintain the admiration of the girls of Mesnil-Roy for the clandestine talents of this infamous grocer. Yesterday being Sunday, I went to the grocery-shop. It was a very brilliant occasion; they were all there. There was very little said about Rose, and, when I told the story of the wills, there was a general shout of laughter. Ah! the captain was right when he said to me: "Everything can be replaced." But the haberdasher has not Rose's authority, for she is a woman concerning whom, from the point of view of morals, there unhappily is nothing to be said.

In what a hurry I am to see Joseph! With what nervous impatience I await the moment when I shall know what I must hope or fear from destiny! I can no longer live as I am living now. Never have I been so distressed by this mediocre life that I live, by these people whom I serve, by all these dismal mountebanks around me, among whom I am growing more stupid from day to day. If I were not sustained by the strange feeling that gives a new and powerful interest to my present life, I think it would not be long before I, too, should plunge into the abyss of stupidity and vileness which I see continually widening around me. Ah! whether Joseph succeeds or not, whether he changes his mind about me or not, I have come to a final decision; I will no longer stay here. A few hours more, another whole night of anxiety, and then I shall be settled regarding my future.

I am going to spend this night in a further revival of old memories, perhaps for the last time. It is the only way that I have of avoiding the anxieties of the present and not splitting my head over the dreams of to-morrow. In reality these recollections amuse me, and deepen my contempt. What singular and monotonous faces, all the same, I have met on my path of servitude! When I see them again, in my mind's eye, they do not make on me the impression of really living beings. They live, or at least give the illusion of life, only through their vices. Take away the vices that sustain them as bandages sustain mummies, and they are no longer even phantoms ... they are nothing but dust ... ashes ... death.

Oh! that was a famous house, for instance, to which, a few days after my refusal to go into the service of the old gentleman in the country, I was sent, with all sorts of admirable references, by Mme. Paulhat-Durand. My masters were a very young couple, without animals or children, living in an ill-kept interior, though the furniture was stylish and there was a heavy elegance about the decorations. Luxury and great waste! A single glance as I entered showed me all; I saw clearly with whom I had to deal. It was my dream! Now then, I was going to forget all my miseries,--M. Xavier, and the good sisters of Neuilly, and the killing sessions in the ante-room of the employment-bureau, and the long days of anguish, and the long nights of solitude and debauchery.