Pot Luck

by Emile Zola

  ‘Are you a close friend of hers?’ asked Madame Hédouin, as she whirled round on Octave’s arm, having accepted his invitation to dance.

  The young man fancied that he felt a slight quiver run through her straight, calm figure.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘They got me involved in the affair, which was very annoying. The poor devil swallowed everything.’

  ‘It’s very bad,’ she said, in her grave way.

  Octave must have been mistaken, for when he withdrew his arm from her waist Madame Hédouin was not even out of breath, her eyes were clear, her hair as neat and straight as ever. But before the ball ended there was another scandalous incident. Uncle Bachelard, who at the buffet had become monstrously drunk, had launched into a piece of merriment. He was suddenly seen dancing a grossly indecent dance in front of Gueulin. He stuffed some napkins into the front of his coat, giving him the appearance of a well endowed wet-nurse; two large oranges, attached to the napkins, stuck out prominently. This time there was a general protest. It was all very well to earn lots of money, but really there were limits which no decent-minded man should ever overstep, especially when young people were present. In shame and despair, Monsieur Josserand got his brother-in-law to withdraw, while Duveyrier did not conceal his intense disgust.

  At four o’clock the bridal couple returned to the Rue de Choiseul. They brought Théophile and Valérie back in their carriage. As they went up to the second floor, where an apartment had been prepared for them, they came upon Octave, who was also going upstairs to bed. The young man politely stood aside, but Berthe made a similar movement and they bumped into each other.

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, mademoiselle!’ he said.

  The word ‘mademoiselle’ amused them greatly. She looked at him, and he remembered the first time their eyes had met on that very staircase, her bold, carefree glance, which again he found charmingly inviting. Perhaps they understood each other. She blushed, and he carried on upstairs to his room, amid the deathly silence of the upper floors.

  Auguste, his left eye closed, and half mad with the migraine he had had since the morning, was already in the apartment, where other members of the family now assembled. Then, just as she was leaving Berthe, Valérie, in a sudden fit of emotion, embraced her, crumpling her white dress as she kissed her and saying in a low voice:

  ‘Ah, my dear, I wish you better luck than I’ve had.’

  IX

  Two days later, at about seven o’clock, as Octave arrived at the Campardons’ for dinner, he found Rose by herself, dressed in a cream-coloured silk dressing-gown trimmed with white lace.

  ‘Are you expecting someone?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she replied, somewhat embarrassed. ‘We’ll have dinner as soon as Achille comes.’

  Recently the architect had lost his punctual habits and never came back for meals at the proper time, but eventually he would appear, red in the face, flustered, and cursing business. And every night he went off somewhere, making all sorts of excuses: appointments at cafés, distant meetings, and the like. Thus Octave often kept Rose company until eleven o’clock, for he had begun to see that her husband, in taking him as a boarder, only wanted him as a companion for his wife. She would gently complain and tell him her fears: oh yes, she let Achille do just as he liked, but she always began to worry if he was not home by midnight!

  ‘Don’t you think he’s been looking rather sad lately?’ she asked, in her gentle, timorous way.

  No, Octave had not noticed. ‘He may be rather preoccupied,’ he said. ‘The restorations at Saint-Roch are probably giving him a lot of trouble.’

  But she shook her head, and did not reply. Then she showed her interest in Octave by asking him how he had spent his day, affectionately, as if she were his mother or sister. During the nine months that he had been their boarder she had treated him as if he were one of the family.

  At last Campardon appeared.

  ‘Good evening, my pet! Good evening, my darling!’ he said, kissing her affectionately like a good husband. ‘Another idiot kept me talking a whole hour in the street!’

  Octave had moved away, but heard them exchange a few words under their breath.

  ‘Is she coming?’

  ‘No; what’s the point? But you really shouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘You said she’d come!’

  ‘All right then, she is coming! Are you pleased? I only asked her to come for your sake.’

  Then they sat down for dinner. Throughout the whole meal they talked of nothing but the English language, which little Angèle had been learning for two weeks. Campardon had suddenly insisted on the necessity for a young lady to know English and, as Lisa had come to them from an actress who had just returned from London, every meal was devoted to discussing the English names for the dishes that were brought in. That evening, after long and ineffectual attempts to pronounce the word ‘rump-steak’, they had to send the meat back, for Victoire had left it too long over the fire and it was as tough as boot-leather.

  During dessert, a ring at the bell made Madame Campardon start.

  ‘It’s madame’s cousin,’ said Lisa on returning, in the injured tone of a servant who has been excluded from some family secret.

  It was, in fact, Gasparine. She looked quite plain in her black woollen dress, with her thin face and tired, shop-girl air. Snug in her cream-coloured silk dressing-gown Rose, looking plump and fresh, stood up to greet her with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she murmured, ‘how nice of you! We’ll let bygones be bygones, won’t we?’

  Putting her arms round her, she kissed her twice. Octave was about to withdraw discreetly, but they insisted that he should stay; he was one of the family. So he amused himself by watching the whole scene. Campardon, at first greatly embarrassed, avoided looking at the women but fussed about in search of a cigar, while Lisa, as she roughly cleared the table, exchanged glances with the astonished Angèle.

  At length the architect addressed his daughter: ‘This is your cousin. You’ve heard us talk about her. Come and give her a kiss.’

  Angèle kissed her in her sulky way, feeling uncomfortable under the scrutiny of Gasparine’s governess eyes as she answered her questions about how old she was and what she was learning at school. Then, as they went into the drawing-room, she preferred to follow Lisa, who slammed the door and remarked, without any concern about being overheard:

  ‘Well, things are getting very interesting!’

  In the drawing-room Campardon uneasily began to make excuses.

  ‘Of course, it wasn’t my idea, it was Rose’s; she wanted to make it up. Every day, for more than a week, she kept saying, “Go and fetch her”. So in the end I did as she said.’

  Then, as if he felt the need to convince Octave, he led him to the window.

  ‘Well, women will be women. I was fed up with the whole thing, because I dread scenes myself. With one on the right and the other on the left, no squabbling was possible. But I had to give in. Rose says we’ll all be much happier. Well, we’ll try it. It depends on those two if my life is comfortable or not.’

  Meanwhile Rose and Gasparine sat on the sofa side by side. They talked of old times, of days spent with good papa Domergue, at Plassans. Rose at that time had a complexion the colour of lead, and the puny limbs of a child that has been ailing since birth; while Gasparine, already a woman at fifteen, was tall and attractive-looking, with beautiful eyes. Now they hardly recognized each other—the one cool and plump in her enforced chastity, the other dried up by the nervous passion that was consuming her. For a moment Gasparine was dismayed because, with her sallow face and shabby dress, she formed such a contrast to Rose, arranged as she was in silk, and with her soft, white neck swathed in delicate lace. But she overcame this twinge of jealousy, at once accepting her position as poor relation grovelling before her cousin’s grace and elegance.

  ‘How’s your health?’ she asked softly. ‘Achille spoke to me about it. Is it no better?’<
br />
  ‘No, no better,’ replied Rose, mournfully. ‘You see, I can eat, and I look perfectly well. But it doesn’t get any better; it never will get any better.’

  She began to cry, and Gasparine, in her turn, took her in her arms and pressed her against her flat, burning bosom, while Campardon hastened to console them.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ she asked, with maternal concern. ‘The main thing is that you’re not in pain. What does it matter, if you always have people around you who love you?’

  Rose, calmer now, smiled through her tears. Then, carried away by his feelings, Campardon clasped them both in one embrace and, kissing them, murmured:

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ll all love one another, and love you too, my poor darling. You’ll see how well everything will go now that we’re united.’

  Then, turning to Octave, he added:

  ‘You can say what you like, my boy, there’s nothing like family life.’

  The evening ended delightfully. Campardon, who, if he stayed at home, usually fell asleep immediately after dinner, rediscovered some of the gaiety of his artist days as he rehearsed the old jokes and bawdy songs of the École des Beaux Arts. When Gasparine got ready to leave, at about eleven o’clock, Rose insisted on accompanying her to the door, in spite of the difficulty which, that day, she found in walking. Leaning over the banisters, in the solemn silence of the staircase, she called after her cousin:

  ‘Come and see us whenever you like!’

  The next day, feeling curious, Octave tried to question Gasparine at the Ladies’ Paradise, as they were sorting a consignment of linen goods. But she gave him curt answers, and he felt that she was hostile, annoyed that he had been a witness the previous evening. In any case she did not like him, and even in their dealings at work she showed a kind of spite towards him. She had long since seen through the game he was playing with regard to the mistress, and for his assiduous courtship she had only black looks and a contemptuous curl of the lip, which at times made him quite uneasy. As long as this lanky devil of a girl thrust her skinny hands between them, he had the clear impression that Madame Hédouin would never be his.

  Octave, however, had given himself six months. Although four had scarcely elapsed, he was growing impatient. Every month he asked himself whether he should not hasten matters somewhat, seeing what little progress he had made in the affections of this woman, always so icy and so calm. However, she had come to show considerable respect for him, taken by his grand ideas, his dreams of huge modern emporiums, unloading millions of francs’ worth of merchandise in the streets of Paris.* Often, when her husband was not there, as she and the young man opened the letters in the morning, she kept him talking and asked for his advice. Thus a kind of commercial intimacy was established between the two. Their hands met amid piles of invoices; as they counted rows of figures, they felt each other’s warm breath on their cheeks in moments of excitement over the cashbox after unusually large receipts. He even sought to take advantage of such moments, his plan now being to reach her heart through her tradeswoman’s instincts, and to conquer her on a day of weakness, in the midst of the excitement of some unexpected sale. So he kept waiting for some surprising stroke of luck which would deliver her up to him. However, whenever he did not keep her talking business, she at once resumed her quiet tone of authority, politely giving him instructions just as she would with the other shopmen. She superintended the operations of the whole shop in her cool way, looking like an ancient statue with a man’s little necktie round her neck, and a sober, tight-fitting bodice of eternal black.

  About this time Monsieur Hédouin fell ill and went to take a course of the waters at Vichy. Octave was frankly delighted. Though as cold as marble, Madame Hédouin, during this time of widowhood, would, so he thought, relent. But it was in vain that he watched for a single shiver, a single languorous symptom of desire. Never had she seemed so active, her head so clear, her eyes so bright. Rising at daybreak, she herself received the deliveries of goods in the basement, looking as busy as a clerk with her pen behind her ear. She was everywhere—upstairs, downstairs, in the silk department, in the linen department, superintending the window-dressers and the saleswomen, gliding past the huge piles without getting so much as a speck of dust on her. When he met her in some narrow passage between a wall of woollens and a pile of napkins, Octave would stand awkwardly to one side, so that for a second she would be pressed against his chest. But she was so busy that he hardly felt her dress brush past him. Moreover, he was much embarrassed by Mademoiselle Gasparine’s cold gaze, which he always found fixed upon them at such moments as these.

  However, Octave did not despair. At times he thought he had reached his goal, and was already mapping out his life for the day, so close at hand, when he would be the lover of his employer’s wife. He had maintained his contact with Marie merely to sustain his patience; nevertheless, though she was obliging and cost him nothing, she might eventually prove troublesome with her dog-like fidelity. So, while still visiting her on nights when he was bored, he began to think of how to break off their intimacy. To drop her abruptly seemed inexpedient. One holiday morning, as he was on his way to join her in bed while her husband was taking an early constitutional, he conceived the idea of giving her back to Jules and of letting them fall amorously into each other’s arms, so that, his conscience clear, he could withdraw. It would be a kind action, after all, so touching, in fact, that it would leave him free of all remorse in the matter. Nevertheless he waited, not wishing to be bereft of all female company.

  At the Campardons’ another complication gave Octave further food for thought. He felt that the time was coming when he would have to take his meals elsewhere. For three weeks Gasparine had been making herself thoroughly at home there, her authority increasing by the day. At first she had come every evening, then she had appeared at lunch, and, in spite of her work at the shop, she began to take charge of everything, whether it was Angèle’s education or the household shopping. Rose never stopped saying to Campardon:

  ‘Oh, if only Gasparine lived with us!’

  But every time the architect, conscientiously scrupulous, blushed and, tormented with shame, replied:

  ‘No, no; that would never do! Besides, where would she sleep?’

  And he explained that he would have to give Gasparine his study as a bedroom, while he would have to move his table and plans into the drawing-room. Certainly it would not inconvenience him at all, and one day, perhaps, he would agree to the alteration, for he did not need a drawing-room, and his study was becoming too small for all the work he now had in hand. Yet Gasparine had better stay where she was. It was no good living on top of each other.

  ‘When things are working well,’ he would say to Octave, ‘it would be a mistake to change them.’

  About that time he was obliged to go to Evreux for a couple of days. The work for the archbishop worried him. He had acceded to the wishes of Monseigneur, though no credit had been opened for the purpose, to construct new kitchens and heating apparatus; the cost of this seemed likely to be very heavy, far too heavy to include in the cost of repairs. In addition to this, the pulpit, for which there was a grant of three thousand francs, would cost ten at least. To keep things under control, he wanted to come to some arrangement with the archbishop.

  Rose did not expect him home before Sunday evening. He arrived, however, in the middle of lunch, and his sudden appearance gave them quite a scare. Gasparine was at table, sitting between Octave and Angèle. They pretended to be totally at ease, but there was clearly something mysterious in the air. Lisa had just closed the drawing-room door, in response to a despairing gesture of her mistress, while Gasparine kicked out of sight some pieces of paper which were lying about. When he talked of changing his things, they stopped him.

  ‘Wait a moment. Have some coffee, if you lunched at Evreux.’

  At last, as he could see how embarrassed Rose was, she threw her arms round his neck.

  ‘You mustn’t scold me, dear. If yo
u hadn’t come until this evening you would have found everything straight.’

  She tremblingly opened the doors and took him into the drawing-room and the study. A mahogany bedstead, brought in that morning from a furniture dealer’s, stood in the place of his drawing-table, which had been moved into the middle of the next room. But nothing had been put straight yet; portfolios were mixed up with some of Gasparine’s clothes, while the Virgin of the Bleeding Heart was leaning against the wall, propped up by a new washstand.

  ‘It was going to be a surprise!’ murmured Madame Campardon as, with swelling heart, she hid her face in the folds of her husband’s waistcoat.

  Deeply moved, he looked about him. He said nothing, and avoided Octave’s gaze. Then Gasparine, in her dry voice, asked:

  ‘Does it bother you, cousin? Rose pestered me to agree to it. But if you think I’d be in the way I can still leave.’

  ‘My dear cousin!’ cried the architect at last; ‘whatever Rose does is right.’

  Then, as his wife burst out sobbing on his breast, he added:

  ‘There, there, darling, it’s silly to cry. I’m very pleased. You want to have your cousin with you—very well, so you shall! It doesn’t bother me in the least. Now, don’t cry any more! See, I’ll kiss you as I love you—such a lot!’

  He devoured her with kisses. Rose, who would dissolve into tears at a word but smile again immediately afterwards, took comfort while she wept. She, in her turn, kissed him on his beard, saying gently:

  ‘You were rather hard on her. Give her a kiss, too.’

  Campardon kissed Gasparine. They called Angèle, who had been looking on from the dining-room, her mouth open, her eyes wide; she too had to kiss Gasparine. Octave had stood back, having come to the conclusion that in this family they were getting far too affectionate. He had noticed with surprise Lisa’s respectful manner and smiling attentiveness towards Gasparine. An intelligent girl, evidently, that hussy with the blue eyelids!