Cousin Bette (46 page)

‘That's enough, Monsieur Crevel!' said Madame Hulot, no longer dissembling her disgust, and allowing all her shame to be seen on her face. ‘I am punished now beyond what my sin deserves. My conscience, that has been so fiercely repressed by
necessity's iron hand, cries out to me, at this supreme insult, that such sacrifices are impossible. I have no pride left; I do not blaze with anger against you as I did once before, I shall not say to you “Leave this house!” now that I have been dealt this mortal blow. I have lost the right to do so. I offered myself to you like a prostitute… Yes,' she went on, in answer to his protesting gesture, ‘I have defiled my life, that was pure until now, by a vile intention, and… I have no excuse, I knew what I was doing… I deserve all the insults that you are heaping upon me! May God's will be done! If he desires the death of two beings worthy to go to him, may they die. I will weep for them. I will pray for their souls. If he wills the humiliation of our family, let us bow under the avenging sword, and kiss it like the Christians we are! I know how I must expiate the shame of a few moments whose memory will afflict me all my remaining days. It is not Madame Hulot, Monsieur, who is speaking to you now, it is the poor humble sinner, the Christian whose heart from now on will hold only one emotion – repentance, and for whom prayer and charity will be her only purpose in life. I can be only the humblest of women and the first among penitents with a sin of such magnitude to atone for. You have been the instrument of my return to reason, to the voice of God that now speaks in me, and I thank you for it!'

She was trembling with the nervous tremor which from that moment was not to leave her again. Her voice was gentle, in contrast with the earlier feverish utterance of a woman resolved on dishonour in order to save her family. The blood left her cheeks, she grew pale, and her eyes were dry.

‘I acted my part very badly, in any case, didn't I?' she added, regarding Crevel with the same sweetness that the martyrs must have shown as they looked on the proconsul. ‘True love, the holy and devoted love of a wife, offers different pleasures from those that are bought in the market from prostitutes!… Why do I use such words?' she said, reflecting, and taking another step forward on the way of perfection. ‘They seem to show a wish to taunt, and I have none at all! Forgive me for them. In any case, Monsieur, it was perhaps only myself that I wanted to hurt.…'

The majesty of virtue and its celestial light had swept away the fleeting stain upon this woman's purity, and, resplendent in the beauty that was properly her own, she appeared to Crevel to have grown taller. Adeline in that sublime moment resembled those symbolic figures of Religion, upheld by a cross, that we see in the paintings of the early Venetians. She expressed all the magnitude of her misfortune, and all the greatness of the Catholic Church to which she was taking flight for refuge like a wounded dove. Crevel was dazzled, astounded.

‘Madame, I will do whatever you wish, without conditions!' he said in an inspired burst of generosity. ‘We will look into things, and… What's to be done? The impossible? Well! I'll do it! I'll deposit securities at the bank, and within two hours you shall have your money.…'

‘Oh God, a miracle!' said poor Adeline, throwing herself upon her knees.

She recited a prayer with a fervour which affected Crevel so powerfully that Madame Hulot saw tears in his eyes when she rose, her prayer ended.

‘Be my friend, Monsieur!' she said to him. ‘Your heart is better than your conduct and your words suggest. God gave you your heart, and you take your ideas from the world and from your passions! Oh! I will love you sincerely!' she exclaimed, with an angelic ardour which contrasted strangely with her futile attempts at coquetry.

‘Don't go on trembling so,' said Crevel.

‘Am I trembling?' asked the Baroness, who had not noticed the infirmity that had manifested itself so suddenly.

‘Yes. Look here,' said Crevel, taking Adeline's arm and demonstrating its nervous shaking to her. ‘Come, Madame,' he continued, with respect, ‘keep calm. I'm going to the bank.…'

‘Come back quickly! Just think, my friend,' she said, giving up her secrets, ‘it is to prevent my poor Uncle Fischer from suicide, as he has been compromised by my husband. You see I can trust you now and so I am telling you everything! Ah! if we can't raise the money in time, I know what will happen. I know the Marshal – his honour is so sensitive that
he would not survive the knowledge of this for more than a day or two.'

‘I'm off then,' said Crevel, kissing the Baroness's hand. ‘But what has poor Hulot been up to?'

‘He has robbed the state!'

‘Good God! I'll be quick, Madame. I understand, and I admire you.'

Crevel bent a knee, kissed Madame Hulot's dress, and vanished with the words, ‘I'll be back again soon.'

Unfortunately, on his way from the rue Plumet to get his share certificates from his own house, Crevel passed the rue Vanneau, and he could not resist the pleasure of going to see his little duchess. He arrived there with a face still showing traces of emotional storm. He went into Valérie's bedroom, and found her maid doing her hair. She studied Crevel in the glass, and even before hearing anything of the occasion, was shocked, as any woman of her kind would be, to see him showing strong emotion of which she was not the cause.

‘What's the matter, my pet?' she asked him. ‘Is this the way a man comes into his little duchess's room? I won't be your duchess any more, Monsieur, or even your little ducky darling, you old monster!'

Crevel answered with a sad smile, and a glance at Reine.

‘Reine, my girl, that'll do for today. I'll finish my hair myself. Give me my Chinese dressing-gown, for my Monsieur looks as rum as an old Mandarin.'

Reine, a girl with a face pitted like a colander, who seemed to have been created expressly to serve as a foil for Valérie, exchanged a smile with her mistress and brought the dressing-gown. Valérie took off her wrap, under which she was wearing her vest, and slid into the dressing-gown like a snake under its tuft of grass.

‘Madame is at home to no one?'

‘What a question!' said Valérie. ‘Come, tell me, my big pussy, have the railway shares slumped?'

‘No.'

‘They've raised the price of the house?'

‘No.'

‘You are afraid that you are not the father of your little Crevel?'

‘Rubbish!' Crevel replied, in the full conviction that he was loved.

‘Well, really, I'm not playing this game any longer!' said Madame Marneffe. ‘When I'm forced to screw his troubles out of a friend like corks out of champagne bottles, I just give up. Go away; you annoy me.…'

‘It's nothing,' said Crevel. ‘I have to find two hundred thousand francs within two hours.…'

‘Oh, you'll certainly find them! Well, for that matter, I haven't used the fifty thousand francs we got out of Hulot over the police business, and I can ask Henri for fifty thousand!'

‘Henri! Always Henri!' said Crevel, with some heat.

‘Do you imagine, my green infant Machiavelli, that I would send Henri away? Does France disarm her fleet?… Henri is a dagger hanging in its sheath suspended from a nail. That boy acts as a test of whether you love me or not.… And you don't love me this morning.'

‘I don't love you, Valérie?' said Crevel. ‘I love you a million!'

‘That's not enough!' she retorted, jumping on to Crevel's knee and hanging on to him with both arms round his neck, like a coat on a coat-peg. ‘You have to love me ten millions, all the gold in the world, and more. Henri would never leave me for five minutes in doubt as to what was weighing on his mind! Now, now, what's the matter, my old sweetie? Let's get it off our little chest… Let's tell it all, and smartly too, to our little ducky darling!'

And she brushed Crevel's face with her hair, and nudged the end of his nose.

‘How can a man have a nose like this,' she said, ‘and keep a secret from his Vava – lélé – ririel'

‘Vava,' the nose went to the right; ‘lélé,' to the left; ‘ririe,' and she pushed it gently in the centre again.

‘Well, I've just seen…'

Crevel stopped, and looked at Madame Marneffe.

‘Valérie, my jewel, do you promise me on your honour…
you know, out honour, not to repeat a word of what I'm going to tell you?'

‘Agreed, Mayor! We raise our right hand so, look!… And our foot as well!'

She struck a pose in a fashion that was enough to lay Crevel wide open, as Rabelais put it, from his brain to his heels; she was so funny and so bewitching, with her bare flesh visible through the mist of fine lawn.

‘I have just seen virtue in despair!'

‘Is there any virtue in despair?' she inquired, shaking her head and crossing her arms like Napoleon.

‘It's poor Madame Hulot. She has to have two hundred thousand francs! Otherwise the Marshal and old Fischer will blow their brains out; and because you are a little the cause of all that, my little duchess, I'm going to mend the damage. Oh! she's a saint of a woman. I know her; she'll pay it all back.'

At the name ‘Hulot', and mention of two hundred thousand francs, Valérie flashed a look between her long lashes, like the flash of a cannon amidst its smoke.

‘What did the old lady do to get round you? She showed you what? Her religion?'

‘Don't jeer at her, sweetheart; she's a truly saintly, very noble, very devout woman, and she deserves respect!'

‘And so I don't deserve respect, don't I?' said Valérie, giving Crevel an ominous look.

‘I don't say that,' replied Crevel, understanding how painful the praise of virtue must be to Madame Marneffe.

‘I'm a devout woman too,' said Valérie, moving away and sitting down by herself; ‘but I don't make a show of my religion. I go to church without parading the fact.'

She sat in silence, taking no further notice of Crevel. Much perturbed, he went and stood before the chair Valérie had buried herself in; but she was lost in the thoughts that he had so foolishly aroused.

‘Valérie, my little angel…!'

Profound silence. An exceedingly problematical tear was furtively wiped away.

‘Say just one word, my darling duck…'

‘Monsieur!'

‘What are you thinking about, my precious?'

‘Ah, Monsieur Crevel, I was thinking about the day of my first Communion! How lovely I was! How pure and saintly! Immaculate! Ah, if anyone had said to my mother: “Your daughter will be a
kept woman
; she will deceive her husband. One day a police officer will find her in a little house. She will sell herself to a Crevel in order to betray a Hulot, two horrid old men…” Oh, horrible!… Why, she would have died before the end of the sentence, she loved me so much, poor woman.…'

‘Don't upset yourself like this!'

‘You don't know how much a woman must love a man to silence the pangs of remorse that gnaw an adulterous heart. I'm sorry Reine has gone; she could have told you how she found me in tears this morning, on my knees, praying. I'm not a person, you must understand, Monsieur Crevel, who scoffs at religion. Have you ever heard me say a single wrong word on the subject?'

Crevel shook his head.

‘I never allow people to talk about it in my presence. I'll make fun of anything you like: royalty, or politics, or money, everything that the world holds sacred: judges, marriage, love, young girls, old men! But not the Church! Not God! Oh, there I draw the line! I know very well that I am doing wrong, that I am sacrificing my future happiness for you.… And you haven't the faintest idea of what my love for you involves!'

Crevel clasped his hands.

‘Ah! you would have to see into my heart, see how truly and deeply I believe, to be able to understand all I am sacrificing for you! I feel that I have in me the stuff of which a Magdalen is made. And you know what respect I show to priests! Just think of the presents I give to the Church! My mother brought me up in the Catholic faith, and I am conscious of God! It is to wrongdoers like us that he speaks most terribly.'

Valérie wiped away two tears that rolled down her cheeks. Crevel was aghast. Madame Marneffe rose to her full height, in a state of exaltation.

‘Keep calm, my ducky darling! You frighten me!'

Madame Marneffe sank to her knees.

‘I am not really wicked, O God!' she said, clasping her hands. ‘Deign to gather in your wandering lamb. Beat and punish her to bring her back from the hands that make her a byword and adulteress, and with what joy she will hide her head upon your shoulder! How gladly she will return to the fold!'

She rose, and gazed at Crevel, and Crevel was appalled to see her wide-eyed blank stare.

‘And sometimes, Crevel, do you know, I'm sometimes afraid. God's justice is effective in this world as well as in the next. What good can I hope for from God? His vengeance falls upon the guilty in every kind of way; it takes every form of ill fortune. All the misfortunes that foolish people find impossible to explain are an expiation of sin. That is what my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her old age. And if I were to lose you!…' she added, hugging Crevel close in a frantic clasp. ‘Ah! I should die!'

Madame Marneffe released Crevel, fell on her knees again before her chair, clasped her hands (and in what a ravishing pose!), and with unbelievable fervour recited the following prayer:

‘And oh, St Valérie, my kind patron saint, why do you not come more often to visit the pillow of the child entrusted to your care? Oh, come this night as you came this morning, inspire me with good thoughts and I will leave the way of wickedness. I will renounce, like Magdalen, deceptive joys, the deluding glamour of the world, renounce even the one I love so much!'