Complete Works of Emile Zola (741 page)

“We all know what’s the matter with him,” replied Hutin, “Is it my fault if that little jade in the dress-department is turning his head? My dear fellow, you can see the blow comes from there. He’s aware I’ve slept with her, and he doesn’t like it; or perhaps it’s she herself who wants to get me pitched out, because I’m in her way. But I swear she shall hear from me, if ever she crosses my path.”

Two days after, as Hutin was going up into the work-room, upstairs, under the roof, to recommend a person, he started on perceiving at the end of a passage Denise and Deloche leaning out of a window, and plunged so deeply in private conversation that they did not even turn round. The idea of having them caught occurred to him suddenly, when he perceived with astonishment that Deloche was weeping. He at once went away without making any noise; and meeting Bourdoncle and Jouve on the stairs, told them some story about one of the extincteurs the door of which seemed to be broken; in this way they would go upstairs and drop on to the two others. Bourdoncle discovered them first. He stopped short, and told Jouve to go and fetch the governor, whilst he remained there. The inspector had to obey, greatly annoyed at being forced to compromise himself in such a matter.

This was a lost corner of the vast world in which the people of The Ladies’ Paradise worked. One arrived there by a complication of stairs and passages. The work-rooms occupied the top of the house, a succession of low sloping rooms, lighted by large windows cut in the zinc roof, furnished solely with long tables and enormous iron stoves; and right along were a crowd of work-girls of all sorts, for the under-clothing, the lace, the dressmaking, and the house furnishing; living winter and summer in a stifling heat, amidst the odor special to the business; and one had to go straight through the wing, and turn to the right on passing the dressmakers, before coming to this solitary end of the corridor. The rare customers, that a salesman occasionally brought here for an order, gasped for breath, tired out, frightened, with the sensation of having been turning round for hours and hours, and of being a hundred leagues above the street.

Denise had often found Deloche waiting for her. As secondhand she had charge of the arrangements between her department and the work-room where only the models and alterations were done, and was always going up and down to give the necessary orders. He watched for her, inventing any pretext to run after her; then he affected to be surprised when he met her at the work-room door. She got to laugh about the matter, it became quite an understood thing. The corridor ran alongside the cistern, an enormous iron tank containing twelve thousand gallons of water; and there was another one of equal size on the roof, reached by an iron ladder. For an instant, Deloche would stand talking, leaning with one shoulder against the cistern in the continual abandonment of his long body, bent with fatigue. The noise of the water was heard, a mysterious noise of which the iron tank ever retained the musical vibration. Notwithstanding the deep silence, Denise would turn round anxiously, thinking she had seen a shadow pass on the bare, yellow-painted walls. But the window would soon attract them, they would lean out, and forget themselves in a pleasant gossip, in endless souvenirs of their native place. Below them, extended the immense glass roof of the central gallery, a lake of glass bounded by the distant housetops, like a rocky coast. Beyond, they saw nothing but the sky, a sheet of sky, which reflected in the sleeping water of the glazed work the flight of its clouds and the tender blue of its azure.

It so happened that Deloche was speaking of Valognes that day. “I was six years old; my mother took me to Valognes market in a cart. You know it’s ten miles away; we had to leave Bricquebec at five o’clock. It’s a fine country down our way. Do you know it?”

“Yes, yes,” replied Denise, slowly, her looks lost in the distance. “I was there once, but was very little then. Nice roads with grass on each side, aren’t there? and now and again sheep browsing in couples, dragging their clog along by the rope.” She stopped, then resumed with a vague smile: “Our roads run as straight as an arrow for miles between rows of trees which afford a lot of shade. We have meadows surrounded with hedges taller than I am, where there are horses and cows feeding. We have a little river, and the water is very cold, under the brushwood, in a spot I know well.”

“It is the same with us, exactly!” cried Deloche, delighted. “There’s grass everywhere, each one encloses his plot with thorns and elms, and is at once at home; and it’s quite green, a green far different to what we see in Paris. Dear me! what fun I’ve had at the bottom of the road, to the left, coming down from the mill!”

And their voices died away, they stopped with their eyes fixed and lost on the sunny lake of the glazed work. A mirage rose up before them from this blinding water, they saw an endless succession of meadows, the Cotentin bathed in the balmy breath of the ocean, a luminous vapor, which melted the horizon into a delicate pearly grey. Below, under the colossal iron framework, in the silk hall, roared the business, the trepidation of the machine at work; the entire house vibrated with the trampling of the crowd, the bustle of the shopmen, and the life of the thirty thousand persons elbowing each other there; and they, carried away by their dreams, on feeling this profound and dull clamor with which the roofs were resounding, thought they heard the wind passing over the grass, shaking the tall trees.

“Ah! Mademoiselle Denise,” stammered Deloche, “why aren’t you kinder to me? I love you so much!” Tears had come into his eyes, and as she tried to interrupt him with a gesture, he continued quickly: “No — let me tell you these things once more. We should get on so well together! People always find something to talk about when they come from the same place.”

He was choking, and she at last managed to say kindly: “You’re not reasonable; you promised me never to speak of that again. It’s impossible. I have a good friendship for you, because you’re a nice fellow; but I wish to remain free.”

“Yes, yes. I know it,” replied he in a broken voice, “you don’t love me. Oh! you may say so, I quite understand it. There’s nothing in me to make you love me. Listen, I’ve only had one sweet moment in my life, and that was when I met you at Joinville, do you remember? For a moment under the trees, when it was so dark, I thought your arm trembled, and was stupid enough to imagine — —”

But she again interrupted him. Her quick ear had just caught Bourdoncle’s and Jouve’s steps at the end of the corridor.

“Hark, there’s someone coming.”

“No,” said he, preventing her leaving the window, “it’s in the cistern: all sorts of extraordinary noises come up from it, as if there were someone inside.”

And he continued his timid, caressing complaints. She was no longer listening to him, rocked into dreamland by this declaration of love, her looks wandering over the roofs of The Ladies’ Paradise. To the right and the left of the glazed gallery, other galleries, other halls, were glistening in the sun, between the tops of the houses, pierced with windows and running along symmetrically, like the wings of a barracks. Immense metallic works rose up, ladders, bridges, describing a lacework of iron in the air; whilst the kitchen chimneys threw out an immense volume of smoke like a factory, and the great square cistern, supported in the air on wrought-iron pillars, assumed a strange, barbarous profile, hoisted up to this height by the pride of one man. In the distance, Paris was roaring.

When Denise returned from this dreamy state, from this fanciful development of The Ladies’ Paradise, in which her thoughts floated as in a vast solitude, she found that Deloche had seized her hand. And he appeared so woe-begone, so full of grief, that she had not the heart to draw it away.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “It’s all over now; I should be quite too miserable if you punished me by withdrawing your friendship. I assure you I intended to say something else. Yes, I had determined to understand the situation and be very good.” His tears again began to flow, he tried to steady his voice. “For I know my lot in life. It is too late for my luck to turn. Beaten at home, beaten in Paris, beaten everywhere. I’ve now been here four years and am still the last in the department. So I wanted to tell you not to trouble on my account. I won’t annoy you any longer. Try to be happy, love someone else; yes, that would really be a pleasure for me. If you are happy, I shall be also. That will be my happiness.”

He could say no more. As if to seal his promise he raised the young girl’s hand to his lips — kissing it with the humble kiss of a slave. She was deeply affected, and said simply, in a tender, sisterly tone, which attenuated somewhat the pity of the words:

“My poor boy!”

But they started, and turned round; Mouret was standing before them.

For the last ten minutes, Jouve had been searching for the governor all over the place; but the latter was looking at the works going on for the new façade in the Rue du Dix-Décembre. He spent long hours there every day, trying to interest himself in this work, of which he had so long dreamed. This was his refuge against his torments, amidst the masons laying the immense corner-stones, and the engineers setting up the great iron framework. The façade already appeared above the level of the street, indicating the vast porch, and the windows of the first storey, a palace-like development in its crude state. He scaled the ladders, discussing with the architect the ornamentation which was to be something quite new, scrambled over the heaps of brick and iron, and even went down into the cellar; and the roar of the steam-engine, the tic-tac of the trowels, the noise of the hammers, the clamor of this people of workmen, all over this immense cage surrounded by sonorous planks, really distracted him for an instant. He came out white with plaster, black with iron-filings, his feet splashed by the water from the pumps, his pain so far from being cured that his anguish returned and his heart beat stronger than ever, as the noise of the works died away behind him. It so happened, on the day in question, a slight distraction had restored him his gaiety, and he was deeply interested in an album of drawings of the mosaics and enameled terra-cottas which were to decorate the friezes, when Jouve came up to fetch him, out of breath, annoyed at being obliged to dirty his coat amongst all this building material. At first Mouret had cried out that they must wait; then, at a word spoken in a low tone by the inspector, he had immediately followed him, shivering, a prey again to his passion. Nothing else existed, the façade crumbled away before being built; what was the use of this supreme triumph of his pride, if the simple name of a woman whispered in his ear tortured him to this extent.

Upstairs, Bourdoncle and Jouve thought it prudent to vanish. Deloche had already run away, Denise alone remained to face Mouret, paler than usual, but looking straight into his eyes.

“Have the kindness to follow me, mademoiselle,” said he in a harsh voice.

She followed him, they descended the two storeys, and crossed the furniture and carpet departments without saying a word. When he arrived at his office, he opened the door wide, saying, “Walk in, mademoiselle.”

And, closing the door, he went to his desk. The new director’s office was fitted up more luxuriously than the old one, the reps hangings had been replaced by velvet ones, and a book-case, incrusted with ivory, occupied one whole side; but on the walls there was still no picture but the portrait of Madame Hédouin, a young woman with a handsome calm face, smiling in its gold frame.

“Mademoiselle,” said he at last, trying to maintain a cold, severe air, “there are certain things that we cannot tolerate. Good conduct is absolutely necessary here.”

He stopped, choosing his words, in order not to yield to the furious anger which was rising up within him. What! she loved this fellow, this miserable salesman, the laughingstock of his counter! and it was the humblest, the most awkward of all that she preferred to him, the master! for he had seen them, she leaving her hand in his, and he covering that hand with kisses.

“I’ve been very good to you, mademoiselle,” continued he, making a fresh effort. “I little expected to be rewarded in this way.”

Denise, immediately on entering, had been attracted by Madame Hédouin’s portrait; and, notwithstanding her great trouble, was still pre-occupied by it. Every time she came into the director’s office her eyes were sure to meet those of this lady. She felt almost afraid of her, although she knew her to have been very good. This time, she felt her to be a protection.

“You are right, sir,” he said, softly, “I was wrong to stop and talk, and I beg your pardon for doing so. This young man comes from my part of the country.”

“I’ll dismiss him!” cried Mouret, putting all his suffering into this furious cry.

And, completely overcome, entirely forgetting his position as a director lecturing a saleswoman guilty of an infraction of the rules, he broke out into a torrent of violent words. Had she no shame in her? a young girl like her abandoning herself to such a being! and he even made most atrocious accusations, introducing Hutin’s name into the affair, and then others, in such a flood of words, that she could not even defend herself. But he would make a clean sweep, and kick them all out. The severe explanation he had promised himself, when following Jouve, had degenerated into the shameful violence of a scene of jealousy.

“Yes, your lovers! They told me about it, and I was stupid enough to doubt it. But I was the only one! I was the only one!”

Denise, suffocating, bewildered, stood listening to these frightful charges, which she had not at first understood. Did he really suppose her to be as bad as this? At another remark, harsher than all the rest, she silently turned towards the door. And, in reply to a movement he made to stop her, said:

“Let me alone, sir, I’m going away. If you think me what you say, I will not remain in the house another second.”

But be rushed in front of the door, exclaiming: “Why don’t you defend yourself? Say something!”

She stood there very stiff, maintaining an icy silence. For a long time he pressed her with questions, with a growing anxiety; and the mute dignity of this innocent girl once more appeared to be the artful calculation of a woman learned in all the tactics of passion. She could not have played a game better calculated to bring him to her feet, tortured by doubt, desirous of being convinced.