Cousin Bette (19 page)

‘He's a good fellow, Baron Hulot, all the same,' said Cousin Bette.

‘A good fellow, very likeable, too likeable!' agreed Crevel. ‘I don't wish him any harm; but I want my revenge, and I intend to have it. It's a notion I've got into my head!'

‘Has this notion of yours something to do with the fact that you don't come to visit Madame Hulot any more?'

‘That may be.…'

‘Ah! So you were courting my cousin?' said Lisbeth, smiling. ‘I thought as much.'

‘And she has treated me like a dog! Worse than that, like a lackey! I'll go further still, like a political prisoner! But I'll have my way!' he said, striking his brow with his clenched fist.

‘Poor man, it would be too dreadful for him to find his wife deceiving him, after being cast off by his mistress!'

‘Josépha!' cried Crevel. ‘Josépha has left him, sent him packing, thrown him out? Bravo, Josépha! Josépha, you have avenged me! I will send you two pearls for your ears, my ex-love! This is all news to me, for since I saw you, the day
after the fair Adeline last begged me not to darken her door again, I have been at Corbeil, staying with the Lebas, and have only just got back. Héloïse moved heaven and earth to induce me to go to the country, and I have just found out what her little game was: she wanted to have a house-warming party without me, at the rue Chauchat, with artists, barnstormers, literary fellows, I don't know who all.… She made a fool of me! But I'll forgive her, for Héloïse makes me laugh. She's a sort of Déjazet, in a new version. The girl's a comedian! Just listen to the note I had from her yesterday:

Dear old chap, I have pitched my tent in the rue Chauchat. I took the precaution of letting some friends dry the plaster out properly first. All goes well. Come when you like, Monsieur. Hagar awaits her Abraham.

Héloïse will tell me all about it, for she has all the bohemian gossip tripping off her tongue.'

‘But my cousin has taken this unpleasantness very well,' observed Lisbeth.

‘That's not possible!' said Crevel, stopping short in his pacing to and fro like the pendulum of a clock.

‘Monsieur Hulot has reached a certain age,' Lisbeth pointed out, with malice.

‘I know,' returned Crevel; ‘but we are like one another in one respect; Hulot cannot do without an attachment. He is capable of returning to his wife,' he said reflectively. ‘That would be a change for him; but farewell my revenge! You smile, Mademoiselle Fischer.… Ah! you know something?…'

‘I'm laughing at your ideas,' Lisbeth replied. ‘Yes, my cousin is still beautiful enough to inspire passion. I should fall in love with her myself, if I were a man.'

‘The man who has tasted pleasure once will go to the well again,' exclaimed Crevel. ‘You're making fun of me! The Baron must have found some consolation.'

Lisbeth nodded.

‘Well, he's very lucky to be able to replace Josépha overnight!' Crevel went on. ‘But I'm not really surprised. He told me once, over supper, that when he was a young man he always had three mistresses so that he should never be caught
unprovided for: one that he was on the verge of leaving, the reigning queen, and one that he was courting for the future. He must have kept some gay little shop-girl in reserve in his fish-pond! In his deer-park! He is very Louis XV, the rascal! Oh, what a lucky man he is to be so handsome! All the same, he's not getting younger, he's showing signs… he must have taken up with some little working girl.'

‘Oh, no!' answered Lisbeth.

‘Ah!' said Crevel. ‘What would I not give to prevent him from hanging his hat up! I could never hope to cut him out with Josépha. Women like her don't return to their first love. Besides, as they say, a return is never the same thing. But, Cousin Bette, I would certainly give – that is I would willingly spend – fifty thousand francs to take that big handsome fellow's mistress away from him and let him see that a fat old papa with a Major's corporation and the panache of a future Mayor of Paris doesn't let his girl be snaffled from him without getting even.'

‘In the position I am in,' replied Bette, ‘I have to hear everything and know nothing. You can talk to me freely; I never repeat a word of the things people care to tell me in confidence. What reason should I have to break this rule I follow? If I did, no one would ever trust me again.'

‘Yes, I know,' answered Crevel. ‘You are a pearl among spinsters.… Only, there are exceptions, hang it! See here, they have never made up an income for you, in the family.…'

‘But I have my pride. I don't want to be beholden to anyone,' said Bette.

‘Ah! if you were willing to help me to have my revenge,' the retired shopkeeper continued, ‘I could set aside a life interest in ten thousand francs for you. Tell me, fair cousin, only tell me who Josépha's successor is, and you shall have the wherewithal to pay your rent and buy your breakfast in the morning, your morning coffee, the good coffee you like so much, pure Mocha you will be able to treat yourself to… how about that? Oh! just think how delicious the best Mocha is!'

‘I don't care so much for a ten-thousand-franc annuity, which would mean nearly five hundred francs a year, as I do for keeping my own counsel absolutely,' said Lisbeth;
‘because you know, my good Monsieur Crevel, the Baron is very kind to me, he is going to pay my rent.…'

‘Oh, yes, and for how long? You think you can count on that!' cried Crevel.' Where will the Baron find the money?'

‘Ah, that I don't know. But he's spending more than thirty thousand francs on the apartment he's preparing for the little lady.'

‘She's a lady, is she? What! a society woman? The rascal, doesn't he land on his feet! He has all the luck!'

‘A married woman, a real lady,' Cousin Bette went on.

‘You don't say?' exclaimed Crevel, opening envious eyes set burning by the magic words ‘a real lady'.

‘Yes,' answered Bette, ‘talented, musical, twenty-three years old, with a pretty innocent face, a dazzlingly fair skin, teeth like a puppy's, eyes like stars, a superb brow… and tiny feet; I've never seen anything like them, they're no bigger than her bodice front.'

‘What about her ears?' demanded Crevel, deeply stirred by this recital of charms.

‘Ears you would like to take a cast of,' she replied.

‘Little hands?'

‘I tell you, in a word, she's a jewel of a woman, and with such perfect good manners, such reserve, such refinement!… with a lovely nature, an angel, distinguished in every way, for her father was a Marshal of France.'

‘A Marshal of France!' Crevel exclaimed, with a prodigious start of excitement. ‘Good Lord! Bless my soul! Confound it! Blast it and bother it! Ah! the scoundrel! Excuse me, Cousin, it drives me mad! I would give a hundred thousand francs, I believe…'

‘Yes, indeed! I can tell you she's a respectable woman, a virtuous wife. And the Baron has done things handsomely for her.'

‘He hasn't got a sou, I tell you.'

‘There's a husband that he has pushed…'

‘Pushed where?' said Crevel with a sardonic laugh.

‘He's already been appointed deputy head clerk, this husband, and he'll no doubt prove accommodating… and nominated for the Cross of the Legion of Honour.'

‘The Government ought to be careful and respect the persons it has decorated, and not go scattering Crosses broadcast,' said Crevel, with the air of a man piqued on political grounds. ‘But what has that confounded sly old dog of a Baron got?' he went on. ‘It seems to me I'm just as good as he is,' he added, turning to look at himself in a glass, and striking his pose. ‘Héloïse has often told me, at a moment when women tell the truth, that I am astonishing.'

‘Oh!' replied Cousin Bette, ‘women love fat men, they are nearly all kind-hearted; and if I had to choose between you and the Baron, I would choose you. Monsieur Hulot is clever, a handsome man, he cuts a fine figure; but you, you're solid, and then, you see… you strike one as being even more of a scamp than he is!'

‘It's incredible how all the women, even the pious ones, fall for men who have that look!' exclaimed Crevel, advancing upon Bette and taking her by the waist in his exhilaration.

‘That's not where the difficulty lies,' continued Bette. ‘You understand that a woman who is doing so well for herself will not be unfaithful to her protector for a mere trifle, and
that
would cost at least a hundred thousand francs, because the little lady looks forward to seeing her husband head clerk of a department within two years from now. It is poverty that's driving this poor little angel astray…'

Crevel strode up and down his drawing-room frantically.

‘He must think a lot of this woman?' he asked, after a pause during which his desire, spurred on by Bette, rose to a kind of frenzy.

‘It's not hard to guess!' replied Lisbeth. ‘I don't believe he's had
that
from her!' she added, clicking her thumb-nail against one of her huge white teeth, ‘and he's already spent about ten thousand francs in presents for her.'

‘Oh, what a joke,' cried Crevel, ‘if I got in before him!'

‘Heavens, it's very wrong of me to pass on this tittle-tattle,' said Lisbeth, appearing to experience some feeling of remorse.

‘No. I'm going to put your family to shame. Tomorrow I'll set aside a sum of money in five per cents, enough to give you six hundred francs a year, but you must tell me everything:
the name of this Dulcinea, and where she lives. I may as well tell you, I've never had a real lady, and the greatest of my ambitions is to have one as my mistress. Mohammed's houris are nothing in comparison with society women as I imagine them. In short, they are my ideal, my passion, to such a degree that, believe me or not, Baroness Hulot will never be fifty years old in my eyes,' he said, echoing unawares one of the finest wits of the past century. ‘Listen, my good Lisbeth. I've made up my mind to sacrifice a hundred, two hundred… Hush! here come my young folk, I see them crossing the court. I have never heard a whisper of this from you, I give you my word; for I don't want to lose the Baron's trust – on the contrary.… He must be pretty deeply in love with this woman, my old crony!'

‘Oh, he's mad about her!' said Cousin Bette. ‘He couldn't find forty thousand francs for his daughter's dowry, and he has managed to dig them up for this new flame.'

‘And do you think she cares for him?' asked Crevel.

‘What! At his age?' the old maid answered.

‘Oh, what a fool I am!' exclaimed Crevel. ‘Of course I put up with Héloïse's artist, just like Henri IV letting Gabrielle have Bellegarde. Oh! old age, old age! How are you, Célestine, how are you, my pet? And where is the youngster? Ah! here he is! Upon my word, he's beginning to look like me. How d'ye do, Hulot, my boy, how are you?… So we are soon to have another wedding in the family?'

Célestine and her husband looked at Lisbeth, and then exchanged a look with Crevel; and the girl coolly answered her father:

‘A marriage? Whose?'

Crevel looked slyly at her, as if to reassure her that he would cover up his indiscretion, and said: ‘Hortense's marriage; but it's not settled yet, of course. I've been staying with the Lebas, and they were talking of Mademoiselle Popinot for our young Councillor. He is very anxious to become president of a provincial court.… Come, let's have dinner.'

By seven o'clock Lisbeth was already on an omnibus on her way home, for she could not wait to see Wenceslas again, whose dupe she had been for the past three weeks. She was
bringing him her work-basket piled high with fruit by Crevel himself; for Crevel had become twice as solicitously attentive to
his
Cousin Bette.

She climbed to the attic in breathless haste, and found the artist busy completing the decoration of a box which he intended to give to his dear Hortense. The lid was ornamented with a border of hydrangeas –
hydrangea hortensis –
among whose flower-heads Cupids played. To raise money for the malachite box, the penniless lover had made two candelabra, fine pieces of work, for Florent and Chanor, selling them the copyright.

‘You have been working too hard, lately, my dear boy,' said Lisbeth wiping the sweat from his forehead and kissing him. ‘So much exertion in the month of August seems dangerous to me. Really, you might damage your health by it. Look, here are some peaches and plums from Monsieur Crevel. There is no need to worry so much. I have borrowed two thousand francs, and all being well we can pay it back if you sell your clock! I have some doubts about the lender, all the same, for he has just sent this document.'

She placed the writ of arrest for debt under a sketch of Marshal Montcornet.

‘For whom are you making these lovely things?' she asked, lifting the red wax clusters of hydrangea flowers that Wenceslas had laid down in order to eat the fruit.

‘A jeweller.'

‘Which jeweller?'

‘I don't know. Stidmann asked me to twist the thing together for him because he's very busy.'

‘But these are hortensias,' she said in a hollow voice. ‘Why is it that you have never modelled anything in wax for me? Was it so difficult to design a dagger, or a little box, or some little thing as a keepsake!' she said, flashing a terrifying look at the artist, whose eyes, fortunately, were lowered. ‘And you say that you love me!'

‘Can you have any doubt about that… Mademoiselle?'

‘Oh, that's a nice cordial “Mademoiselle”.… You know, you have been my only thought since I saw you dying there. When I saved you, you gave yourself to me. I have
never spoken to you of that pledge, but I pledged myself too, in my own mind. I said to myself: “Since this boy gives himself into my hands, I will make him happy and rich!” Well, now I have succeeded in making your fortune!'