Cousin Bette (29 page)

The Baron climbed the stairs again to Madame Marneffe's apartment with a radiant face, convinced that he was the man, the only man, loved by that shameless courtesan, as treacherous, but also as beautiful and enchanting, as a siren.

Crevel and Marneffe were beginning their second piquet. Crevel was losing, as a man cannot help losing when his mind is not on the game. Marneffe, who was well aware of the cause of the Mayor's distraction, had no scruples about taking full advantage of it. He was looking at the cards to be drawn, and discarding accordingly; then, knowing his opponent's hand, he played with confidence. Playing for twenty-sou stakes, he had already rooked the Mayor of thirty francs when the Baron came in again.

‘Well, well,' said the Councillor of State, surprised to find all the guests gone; ‘so you're all alone! Where is everyone?'

‘Your charming display of temper frightened them all away,' answered Crevel.

‘No, it was my wife's cousin arriving,' said Marneffe. ‘The visitors thought that Valérie and Henri must have something to say to each other after three years, so they showed their tact by going away. If I had been here I would have made them stay; but as it happens I should have been doing the wrong thing, because Lisbeth always serves tea at half past ten, and her indisposition has put everything at sixes and sevens.'

‘Is Lisbeth really not well?' asked Crevel angrily.

‘So they told me,' replied Marnefte with the amoral unconcern of a man for whom women have ceased to exist.

The Mayor looked at the clock. By his reckoning the Baron had spent forty minutes in Lisbeth's room. Hulot's joyful expression cast the gravest suspicion upon Hector, Valérie, and Lisbeth.

‘I have just seen her. She's in dreadful pain, poor thing,' said the Baron.

‘Other people's pain is your pleasure, then, is it?' returned Crevel acidly. ‘Because you've come back to us, my dear friend, with a face positively beaming with jubilation! Can it be that Lisbeth is in serious danger? Your daughter is her heir, I think. You look like a different person: you went off with a face like the Moor of Venice, and come back looking like Saint-Preux! I would very much like to see Madame Marneffe's face.…'

‘Just what do you mean by that?' demanded Marneffe, gathering his cards together and slapping them down in front of him.

The dull eyes of this worn-out man, decrepit at forty-seven, kindled; faint colour suffused his cold and flabby cheeks; he opened his denuded mouth with its discoloured lips, to which rose a white chalky foam. The rage of this impotent man, whose life hung on a thread, who in a duel would be risking nothing, while Crevel would have everything to lose, inspired the Mayor with fear.

‘I say,' Crevel replied, ‘that I would like to see Madame Marneffe's face, and I have all the more reason, because yours at this moment is a very unpleasant sight. Upon my word, you are as ugly as sin, my dear Marneffe.'

‘Do you know that you are not very polite?'

‘A man who wins thirty francs from me in forty-five minutes never looks very handsome to me.'

‘Ah! if you had only seen me,' the deputy head clerk said, ‘seventeen years ago.…'

‘You were captivating?' inquired Crevel.

‘That's what's been my ruin. Now if I had been like you, I should be a Mayor and a Peer too.'

‘Yes,' said Crevel, with a smile, ‘you have gone to the
wars too often. There are two different metals to be won by cultivating the god of commerce, and you've got the baser – dross, dregs, drugs!' And Crevel burst into a roar of laughter.

Although Marneffe might take offence when his honour was imperilled, he always took such coarse and vulgar pleasantries well. They were the ordinary small change of conversation between Crevel and himself.

‘Eve has cost me dear, that's true enough; but, faith – short and sweet is my motto.'

‘A better one, to my mind, is happy ever after,' said Crevel.

Madame Marneffe, coming in, saw her husband and Crevel playing cards, and the Baron: the three remaining occupants of the drawing-room. One glance at the Mayor's face told her all the agitating thoughts that had passed through that dignitary's mind, and her line of action was at once determined.

‘Marneffe, my pet,' she said, going to lean on her husband's shoulder, and drawing her pretty fingers through his uninviting grey hair in an unsuccessful attempt to cover his scalp, ‘it is very late for you; you ought to go to bed. You know that tomorrow you have to take a dose; the doctor said so, and Reine is to give you some herb tea at seven. If you want to go on living, that's enough piquet.…'

‘Shall we do five more?' Marneffe asked Crevel.

‘All right… I have two already,' replied Crevel.

‘How long will that take?' Valérie asked.

‘Ten minutes,' replied Marneffe.

‘It's eleven o'clock,' said Valérie. ‘Really, Monsieur Crevel, anyone would think that you wanted to kill my husband. Well, at least, don't be too long about it.'

This ambiguous command made both Crevel and Hulot smile, and even Marneffe himself. Valérie went over to speak to her Hector.

‘Leave now, my dear,' she whispered in Hector's ear. ‘Go for a little walk in the rue Vanneau, and come back when you see Crevel leave.'

‘I would rather leave the apartment, and then come back to your room by the dressing-room door. You could tell Reine to open it for me.'

‘Reine is upstairs, looking after Lisbeth.'

‘Well, suppose I went up to Lisbeth's room?'

Danger awaited Valérie on all sides. Knowing that there would be a scene with Crevel, she did not want Hulot in her room, where he might overhear everything.… And the Brazilian was waiting in Lisbeth's apartment.

‘Really, you men,' she said to Hulot, ‘when you get an idea into your heads, you would burn down the house to force your way in. In Lisbeth's present state she's not fit to receive you. Are you afraid of catching cold in the street? Off you go… or good night to you!'

‘Good night, gentlemen,' said the Baron, aloud.

Once piqued in his old man's vanity, Hulot was set on proving that he could play the young man and wait for the lovers' hour in the street, and he departed.

Marneffe said good night to his wife, and took her hands with a show of affection. Valérie pressed her husband's hand significantly, meaning ‘Get rid of Crevel for me'.

‘Good night, Crevel,' said Marneffe. ‘I hope you don't intend to stay long with Valérie. I'm a jealous man. Ah! jealousy's caught me a bit late in life, but it has fairly got me in its clutches.… And I'll come back to see if you have gone.'

‘We have business to discuss, but I won't stay long,' said Crevel.

‘Speak softly!' said Valérie under her breath, and then aloud, ‘Well, what is it?' And she looked Crevel up and down with a mixture of arrogance and contempt.

When he met her haughty stare, Crevel, who had rendered great services to Valérie, and had been counting on making the most of the fact, subsided into humility and submission.

‘That Brazilian…'

Quailing before Valérie's fixed contemptuous stare, Crevel broke off.

‘What of him?' she said.

‘That cousin…'

‘He's not my cousin,' she said flatly. ‘He's my cousin to the world, and to Monsieur Marneffe. If he were my lover, you would have no right to say a word. A tradesman who buys a
woman in order to have his revenge, in my opinion, is lower than the man who buys her for love. You did not fall in love with me. You saw only Monsieur Hulot's mistress in me, and you bought me like a man buying a pistol to do his enemy to death. I needed money to buy my bread, and I agreed!'

‘And you haven't kept your part of the bargain,' replied Crevel, the shopkeeper coming uppermost in him again.

‘Ah! you want Baron Hulot to know that you have robbed him of his mistress, to have your revenge for his carrying Josépha off? Could anything prove more clearly how despicable you are? You say you love a woman, call her a duchess, and then you want to bring dishonour upon her! Well, perhaps, my dear, you are right. This woman that you have bought is not to be compared with Josépha. That young lady stands up bravely in her shame, while I'm just a hypocrite who deserves to be publicly whipped. Josépha, of course, is protected by her talent and her wealth. The only protection I possess is my reputation. I am still a respectable middle-class wife of good repute; but if you create a scandal, what shall I be? If I had a lot of money, it wouldn't matter so much; but all I have, as you know very well, is fifteen thousand francs a year at most.'

‘Oh, much more,' said Crevel; ‘I have doubled your savings during the last couple of months, in Paris–Orléans Railway shares.'

‘Well, no one counts for anything in Paris who has less than fifty thousand francs a year; you needn't try to tell me in francs the value of the reputation I shall lose! And all I am asking is to see Marneffe made a head clerk. Then his salary would be six thousand francs. He has twenty-seven years' service, so that in three more years I should be entitled to a pension of fifteen hundred francs when he dies. And yet you, on whom I have lavished kindness, whom I have gorged with happiness, you can't wait. And that's what you call love!' she exclaimed.

‘If I began with a selfish motive,' said Crevel, ‘I have become your own
bow-wow
since. You trample all over my feelings, crush me and humiliate me, and I love you as I have never loved anyone before. Valérie, I love you as much
as I love Célestine! I would do anything for you.… Listen! Instead of coming twice a week to the rue Dauphin, come three times.'

‘Is that all? You are growing young again, my dear.…'

‘Let me send Hulot packing, take him down a peg, get rid of him for you,' said Crevel, disregarding her insolence. ‘Don't see that Brazilian again; be all mine and you will not regret it. To begin with, I'll set apart shares for you worth eight thousand francs a year, but just for the interest at first; I'll give you the capital only when you have been faithful to me for five years.'

‘There's no end to these bargains! Shopkeepers will never learn to give! Do you want to set up relays of love for yourself throughout life with your transfers of shares?… Ah! shopkeeper, hair-oil seller that you are, you put a price-ticket on everything! Hector told me that the Duc d'Hérouville brought, Josépha bonds worth thirty thousand francs a year in a cornet of sugared almonds! And I'm worth six Joséphas! Ah! to be loved!' she sighed, twisting her ringlets round her fingers and going to look at herself in the glass. ‘Henri loves me. He would kill you like a fly at a flicker of my eyelids! Hulot loves me – he leaves his wife destitute! Go away and be a good family man, my dear. Why, you have three hundred thousand francs just to play about with, over and above your fortune – a stack of money, in fact, and all you think of is how to make more.…'

‘For you, Valérie, for I offer you half of it!' he said, falling on his knees.

‘Well, so you're still here!' cried the hideous Marneffe, appearing in his dressing-gown. ‘What are you doing?'

‘He's begging my pardon, my love, for an insulting proposal that he's just made to me. As he couldn't get anything from me, it occurred to Monsieur that he might buy me.…'

Crevel would have liked to sink through the floor to the cellar, vanish through a trapdoor, as the trick is worked on the stage.

‘Get up, my dear Crevel,' said Marneffe, grinning. ‘You look quite ridiculous. I can see from Valérie's expression that I'm in no danger.'

‘Go to bed, and sleep well,' said Madame Marneffe.

‘How quick-witted she is!' thought Crevel. ‘She is adorable! She has saved my life!'

When Marneffe had gone back to his room, the Mayor took Valérie's hands in his and kissed them, leaving traces of tears there as he raised his head.

‘Everything in your own name!' he said.

‘That is the way to love,' she murmured in his ear. ‘Well, love for love. Hulot is below, in the street. The poor old fellow is waiting, hoping to come up when I place a candle at one of my bedroom windows. I give you permission to tell him that you are the only man I love. He will never dream of believing you, so take him to the rue du Dauphin, give him proofs, sink him without trace. I allow you – no, I command you to do it. That great walrus bores me, bores me to extinction. Keep your man close in the rue du Dauphin for the whole night, roast him over a slow fire, take your revenge for Josépha's carrying off. It will perhaps be the death of Hulot, but we shall be saving his wife and children from utter ruin. You know that Madame Hulot is working for her living?…'

‘Oh, poor lady! Upon my word, that's dreadful!' exclaimed Crevel, his native good nature reviving.

‘If you love me, Célestin,' she said in a whisper, lightly touching Crevel's ear with her lips as she spoke, ‘keep him away, or I am lost. Marneffe is suspicious, and Hector has the key of the carriage entrance door and means to come back!'

Crevel clasped Madame Marneffe in his arms, and left, walking on air. Valérie accompanied him fondly as far as the landing, and then like a woman magnetically attracted, unable to break free, followed him to the first floor, and on to the foot of the staircase.

‘My own Valérie, go upstairs again! Don't compromise yourself in the porters' eyes.… Go back, my life and my wealth, everything is for you.… Go back, my duchess!'

‘Madame Olivier!' called Valérie softly when the door had closed behind him.

‘Why, Madame! You here?' said Madame Olivier, in surprise.

‘Bolt the big door top and bottom, and don't open it again.'

‘Very well, Madame.'

When the door was bolted, Madame Olivier told the story of how the high official had stooped to trying to bribe her.