Cousin Bette (27 page)

‘If it were not for me,' Lisbeth went on, ‘your father would be even more completely ruined than he is.'

‘Let's go in,' said Hortense. ‘Mama is quick: she will suspect something, and as our kind Lisbeth says, we must hide all we can from her. We must be cheerful!'

‘Victorin, you don't know what ruin your father will bring on you, with his passion for women,' said Lisbeth. ‘Think of the future, and try to make sure of some resources by marrying me to the Marshal. You should speak to him about it this evening. I'll leave early, on purpose.'

Victorin went on into his mother's room.

‘Well, my poor little girl,' said Lisbeth in a whisper to her young cousin, ‘what about you? What are you going to do?'

‘Come to dinner with us tomorrow, and we can talk,' replied Hortense. ‘I don't know which way to turn. You know how to deal with the difficulties of life; you will advise me.'

While the whole family in concert was preaching marriage to the Marshal and Lisbeth was on her way back to the rue Vanneau, one of those incidents occurred which give new
impetus to the evil in women like Madame Marneffe, by compelling them to have recourse to vice, to make use of all the help it can give them. We may at least acknowledge an unquestionable fact: in Paris life is lived in a whirl too giddy for vicious people to seek occasion for wickedness. They use vice as a defensive weapon, that is all.

*

Madame Marneffe, with a drawing-room full of her faithful admirers, had set the usual games of whist going, when the footman, an old soldier that the Baron had taken into his service, announced:

‘Monsieur le Baron Montès de Montejanos.'

Valérie experienced a violent shock, but she flew to the door, exclaiming, ‘My cousin!'

And as she met the Brazilian, she whispered to him:

‘You are a relative of mine, or everything is over between us! Well, Henri,' she went on aloud, leading the Brazilian to the fire: ‘so you weren't shipwrecked after all, as I was told? I've been mourning you for three years.…'

‘How are you, my dear fellow?' said Monsieur Marneffe, holding out his hand to the Brazilian, who looked exactly like a millionaire from Brazil as one imagines him.

Monsieur le Baron Henri Montès de Montejanos, the product of an equatorial climate, had the physique and complexion that we all associate with Othello. At first sight he intimidated by his glowering looks, but this was a purely plastic effect, for his character was extremely gentle and affectionate, and predestined him to the kind of exploitation that weak women practise on strong men. The disdain expressed in his face, the muscular strength of his body, his obvious aggressive powers, were offensive only to men; to women homage from such a man was flattering, and flattering in a way that goes powerfully to women's heads. All men are conscious of women's susceptibility to pugnacious masculinity; and one may see a man, giving his arm to his mistress, assume a swashbuckling swagger that is very amusing. With his superb figure set off by a blue coat with buttons of solid gold, and black trousers, wearing well-polished boots of fine
leather, conventionally gloved, the Baron had nothing Brazilian about his dress but a huge diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, that glittered like a star on a sumptuous blue silk cravat. A white waistcoat revealed a glimpse of shirt of fabulously fine material. His forehead, projecting like a satyr's, a sign of obstinate tenacity in passion, was surmounted by a jet-black head of springing hair like a virgin forest, below which a pair of clear eyes glittered, so tawny and untamed as to make it seem credible that his mother when carrying him had been frightened by a jaguar.

This magnificent specimen of Portuguese Brazilian man-hood took up his stand, back to the fireplace, in an attitude which showed Parisian habits; and, his hat in one hand, resting an arm against the velvet-draped mantelpiece, he bent over Madame Marneffe to talk in a low voice to her, concerning himself very little about all the frightful bourgeois people who seemed to him to be very inopportunely cluttering up the room.

This dramatic entry upon the scene, and the Brazilian's bearing and air, provoked an identical reaction of curiosity mixed with apprehension in Crevel and the Baron. The same expression appeared on both faces, revealing the same foreboding. And the sudden, simultaneous, emotion of these two genuinely passion-possessed men was so comical that those of the company who were sufficiently observant to perceive that a secret had been disclosed could not but smile. Crevel, unalterably a middle-class shopkeeper, Mayor of Paris or no, unfortunately remained frozen in his attitude longer than his fellow-victim, so that the Baron caught a fleeting glimpse of Crevel's involuntary self-revelation. It was an additional blow to the heart of the elderly lover, who made up his mind to have the matter out with Valérie.

‘This evening,' Crevel, too, was saying to himself as he arranged his cards, ‘we'll have an end put to this.…'

‘
You have a heart!
' cried Marneffe, ‘and you have just revoked!'

‘Ah! excuse me,' said Crevel, putting out his hand to take back his card. ‘That Baron strikes me as being a bit too much,' he continued in his interior monologue. ‘If Valérie lives
with my own Baron, that's my revenge, and I know how to get rid of him, but that cousin!… that's a Baron too many. I don't intend to be made a fool of. I should like to know in exactly what way he is related to her!'

That evening, by one of those happy chances that occur only to pretty women, Valérie was looking charming. Her bosom gleamed dazzlingly white, framed in lace whose russet tint set off the matt satin of her beautiful shoulders. All Parisian women, by what means no one knows, manage to possess lovely contours and yet remain slender. Her dress, of black velvet, seemed about at any moment to slip from her shoulders; and she wore a lace cap trimmed with clusters of flowers. Her arms, at once slender and rounded, emerged from puff sleeves frilled with lace. She was like those luscious fruits, arranged enticingly on a fine plate, which make the very metal of the knife-blade ache to bite into them.

‘Valérie,' the Brazilian was saying in the young woman's ear, ‘I have come back still faithful to you. My uncle is dead, and I am twice as rich as I was when I went away. I want to live and die in Paris, for your sake and with you!'

‘Hush, Henri, for heaven's sake!'

‘Ah bah! Even if I have to throw all this mob out of the window first, I mean to speak to you this evening, especially as I've wasted two days trying to find you. You'll let me stay after the others, won't you?'

Valérie smiled at her so-called cousin, and said:

‘Remember that you are the son of a sister of my mother's, who married your father during Junot's campaign in Portugal.'

‘I, Montès de Montejanos, great-grandson of one of the conquerors of Brazil, tell a lie!'

‘Not so loud, or we'll never see each other again.…'

‘And why not?'

‘Because of Marneffe. He's like all dying men – they set their minds on a last passion, and he's taken a fancy for me.'

‘That worm?' said the Brazilian, who knew his Marneffe. ‘I'll settle him.…'

‘You're dreadfully violent!'

‘I say, where did you get all these fine things?' said the
Brazilian, at last taking note of the splendours of the drawing-room.

She began to laugh.

‘What bad manners, Henri!' she said.

She had just caught two pairs of eyes fixed on her, full of such blazing jealousy that she could not help but look at the two souls in pain. Crevel was playing against the Baron and Monsieur Coquet, and had Marneffe for partner. The pairs were equally matched, because Crevel and the Baron were equally distracted, and were piling mistake upon mistake. The two old men had both, in the same instant, declared the passion that Valérie had succeeded in making them conceal for three years; but Valérie herself had not known how to hide the joy in her eyes, her happiness at seeing again the first man to make her heart beat faster, her first love. The rights of these fortunate mortals endure for the whole lifetime of the woman over whom they have acquired them.

In the centre of these three absolute passions, sustained in one man by the insolent pride of money, in another by right of possession, and in the third by youth, strength, fortune and priority, Madame Marneffe remained as calm and self-possessed as Bonaparte besieging Mantua, when he had to hold off two armies in order to continue his blockade of the city.

The jealousy distorting Hulot's face made him as terrible to look upon as the late Marshal Montcornet leading a cavalry charge against a Russian square. As a handsome man, the Councillor of State had never before known jealousy, just as Murat never experienced fear. He had always been confident of triumph. His setback with Josépha, the first of his life, he had attributed to her greed for money. He told himself that he had been supplanted by a million and not by an abortion, meaning the Duc d'Hérouville. The poisons and dizzy potions which that insane emotion secretes in quantity had poured into his heart, in that instant. Throwing down his cards, he turned violently from the whist-table towards the fireplace with an eloquent gesture, reminiscent of Mirabeau; and fixed the Brazilian and Valérie with a challenging stare. The company felt the mixed alarm and curiosity excited by the spectacle of violence threatening momently to erupt. The so-called
cousin looked at the Councillor of State as if he were examining some globular Chinese pot. The situation could not continue without leading to a shattering scene. Marneffe was just as much afraid of what Baron Hulot might do as Crevel was of Marneffe, for he did not care for the idea of dying a deputy head clerk. Dying men have their minds fixed on life as convicts have on liberty. This man was determined to be head clerk, come what might. Alarmed, with good reason, by the pantomime being enacted by Crevel and the Councillor of State, he got up and said a word in his wife's ear; and to the great surprise of the company, Valérie went into her bedroom with the Brazilian and her husband.

‘Has Madame Marneffe ever mentioned this cousin to you?' Crevel demanded of Baron Hulot.

‘Never!' replied the Baron, rising to his feet. ‘That's enough for this evening,' he added. ‘I've lost two louis; here they are.'

He tossed two gold coins down on the table, and went to sit on the divan with an expression on his face that everyone interpreted as a hint to be gone. Monsieur and Madame Coquet exchanged a few remarks and left the room, and Claude Vignon, in despair, followed their example. These two departures gave a lead to the more unperceptive guests, who now realized that they were in the way. The Baron and Crevel were left alone, neither of them saying a word. Hulot, who had reached the point of not even noticing that Crevel was there, went on tiptoe to listen at the bedroom door, only to recoil with a hasty leap backwards as Marneffe opened the door and appeared, looking quite calm, and evidently astonished to find only two people in the room.

‘What about tea?' he said.

‘Where is Valérie?' returned the Baron furiously.

‘My wife?' said Marneffe. ‘Oh, she's gone up to your cousin, Mademoiselle Lisbeth. She'll come back.'

‘And why has she given us the slip for the sake of that stupid nanny?'

‘Oh, but Mademoiselle Lisbeth,' said Marneffe, ‘came back from visiting Madame la Baronne, your wife, with some kind of indigestion, and Mathurine asked Valérie for tea, and she has
just gone to see what's the matter with Mademoiselle Lisbeth.'

‘What about the cousin?'

‘He's gone!'

‘And you believe that?'

‘I saw him to his carriage!' replied Marneffe, with a leer.

Wheels were heard rolling down the rue Vanneau. The Baron, accounting Marneffe's word as not worth a fig, left the room and climbed the stairs to Lisbeth's apartment. One thought filled his mind, kindled by a spark from the blazing fires of jealousy in his heart. He was so well aware of Marneffe's baseness that he suspected a shameful complicity between wife and husband.

‘What's become of everyone?' asked Marneffe, finding himself left alone with Crevel.

‘When the sun goes to bed, so does the poultry-yard,' replied Crevel. ‘Madame Marneffe has disappeared, her adorers have left. What about a game of piquet?' Crevel added, for he intended to stay.

He too believed that the Brazilian was in the house. The Mayor was as wily as the Baron: he could remain where he was indefinitely, playing with the husband, who, since the suppression of public gambling, had had to content himself with the restricted penny-counting game played socially. Monsieur Marneffe agreed to his suggestion.

Baron Hulot hurried upstairs to his Cousin Bette's room; but he found the door shut, and the conventional inquiries through the door gave sufficient time for alert and guileful women to stage the spectacle of a sufferer from indigestion being well plied with tea. Lisbeth was evidently in such pain that Valérie felt the most serious concern, and so paid practically no attention to the Baron's furious entrance. Illness is women's most useful storm-screen against a quarrel's tempests. Hulot looked covertly about him into every corner of Cousin Bette's bedroom, but found no spot suitable for hiding a Brazilian in.

‘Your indigestion, Bette, does credit to my wife's dinner,' he said, scrutinizing the old maid, who felt extremely well and was doing her best to simulate an attack of hiccups as she drank her tea.

‘You see how fortunate it is that our dear Bette lives in my house! If I hadn't been here the poor girl would have died.…' said Madame Marneffe.

‘You look as if you don't believe me,' Lisbeth added, to the Baron. ‘And that would be scandalous.…'

‘Why?' the Baron asked peremptorily. ‘So you know the reason for my visit, do you?'

And he eyed the door of a dressing-room, from which the key had been removed.