The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (44 page)

‘But, sir, there are salesgirls who’ve been in the department much longer than I have.’

‘What does that matter?’ he went on. ‘You’re the most capable and the most reliable. It’s very natural that I should choose you … Aren’t you pleased?’

She blushed. She felt a delicious sensation of happiness and embarrassment in which her initial fear was dissolving. Why had she thought first of all of the assumptions with which this unhoped-for favour would be greeted? And she remained confused, in spite of her surge of gratitude. He was smiling and looking at her, in her simple silk dress, without a single piece of jewellery, with no other extravagance than her regal head of blonde hair. She had become more refined; her skin was fairer, her manner softer and more serious. The skinny insignificance she had had in the past was developing into a charm which was discreet, yet penetrating.

‘You’re very kind, sir,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t know how to express …’

But she was cut short. Framed in the doorway stood Lhomme. With his sound hand he was holding a big leather wallet, and with his mutilated arm he was pressing an enormous portfolio to his chest; behind him, his son Albert was carrying a load of bags which were making his arms break.

‘Five hundred and eighty-seven thousand, two hundred and ten francs thirty centimes!’ exclaimed the cashier, whose flabby, worn face seemed lit up with a ray of sunshine, reflected by such a sum.

It was the takings for the day, the largest the Paradise had ever had. Far away, in the depths of the shop through which Lhomme had just slowly walked with the heavy gait of an overloaded ox, could be heard the uproar, the stir of surprise and joy which these giant takings left in their wake.

‘It’s magnificent!’ said Mouret, delighted. ‘My dear Lhomme, put it down there, and have a rest, for you look quite done in. I’ll
have the money taken to the counting-house … Yes, yes, put it all on my desk. I want to see it piled up.’

He was like a child in his happiness. The cashier and his son unloaded themselves. The wallet gave out the clear ring of gold, streams of silver and copper came from two of the bursting sacks, while corners of bank notes were sticking out from the portfolio. One end of the large desk was entirely covered; it was like the crumbling of a fortune which had taken ten hours to collect.

When Lhomme and Albert had retired, mopping their brows, Mouret remained motionless for a moment, lost in thought, his eyes on the money. Then he looked up and caught sight of Denise, who had stepped back. He began to smile again; he made her come forward, and ended by saying that he would give her as much as she could take in one handful; and behind his joke there was a kind of love-bargain.

‘Take some from the wallet! I bet you can’t take more than a thousand francs, your hand is so small!’

But she drew back again. So he was in love with her? Suddenly she understood; she felt the growing flame of desire with which he had been surrounding her ever since her return to the ladieswear department. What overwhelmed her even more was feeling her own heart beating as if it would burst. Why did he offend her with all that money, when she was brimming over with gratitude and he could have rendered her helpless with one friendly word? He was coming closer to her, still joking, when, to his great annoyance, Bourdoncle appeared under the pretext of giving him the entry figure, the enormous figure of seventy thousand customers who had visited the Paradise that day. She quickly took her leave, after thanking him once again.

O
N
the first Sunday in August stock-taking took place, and it had to be finished by the evening. All the employees were at their posts early in the morning as if it was a weekday, and the task had begun behind closed doors, in the shop now empty of customers.

Denise had not come down at eight o’clock, with the other salesgirls. She had been confined to her room since the preceding Thursday with a sprained ankle, which she had acquired when going up to the work-rooms; she was now much better, but, as Madame Aurélie was pampering her, she was not hurrying, and sat putting her shoe on with difficulty, resolved to put in an appearance in the department all the same. The girls’ rooms were now on the fifth floor of the new buildings, along the Rue Monsigny; there were sixty of them on either side of a corridor, and they were more comfortable, though still furnished with the iron bedstead, large wardrobe, and little walnut dressing-table. As the girls’ situation improved, so their personal habits became cleaner and more refined; they developed a taste for expensive soap and dainty underwear, and there was a natural upward movement towards the middle class; but coarse words and banging doors could still be heard as they dashed in and out morning and evening, as if in a cheap hotel. In any case Denise, being assistant buyer, had one of the biggest rooms, with two dormer windows overlooking the street. Now that she was better off she allowed herself little luxuries—a red eiderdown covered with lace, a small carpet in front of the wardrobe, two blue glass vases on the dressing-table in which some roses were wilting.

When she got her shoes on she tried to walk round the room. She had to hold on to the furniture, for she was still lame. But she would soon improve. All the same, she had been right to decline uncle Baudu’s invitation to dinner that evening, and to ask her aunt to take out Pépé, whom she had again sent to lodge with Madame Gras. Jean, who had come to see her the day before, was also dining with his uncle. She was still gingerly trying to walk, having resolved that she would go to bed early so as to rest her leg, when Madame Cabin, the housekeeper,
knocked on the door and, with an air of mystery, gave her a letter.

When the door was closed again Denise, astonished by the woman’s discreet smile, opened the letter. She dropped on to a chair; the letter was from Mouret, and in it he said he was happy to hear that she was better, and invited her to come down that evening to dine with him, as she could not go out. The tone of the note, at once familiar and paternal, was in no way offensive; but it was impossible for her to mistake its meaning; the Paradise was well aware of the true significance of these invitations, which had become legendary. Clara had dined with him, others too, all the girls who had caught their employer’s eye. After the dinner, so wags among the salesmen used to say, came the dessert. And the girl’s pale cheeks were gradually flooded with colour.

The letter slipped on to her lap and, her heart pounding, Denise remained with her eyes fixed on the blinding light from one of the windows. In this very room, during hours of insomnia, she had been forced to make a confession to herself: if she still trembled when he passed, she knew now that it was not from fear; and her uneasiness in the past, her former dread, could have been nothing but her frightened ignorance of love, the confusion caused by feelings which were beginning to dawn in her childish shyness. She did not reason with herself; she simply felt that she had always loved him, ever since the first moment when she had stood trembling and stammering before him. She had loved him when she had feared him as a pitiless master, she had loved him when her bewildered heart, giving way to a need for affection, had unconsciously dreamed of Hutin. Perhaps she might have given herself to another, but never had she loved anyone but this man, whose mere glance terrified her. Her past experiences were coming back, unfolding before her in the light from the window—the hardships she had suffered at the beginning, the walk which had been so pleasant beneath the shady trees in the Tuileries, and lastly his desire, which had been brushing against her ever since her return to the shop. The letter slipped on to the floor; Denise still gazed at the window, dazzled by the glare of the sun.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and she hastened to pick up the letter and hide it in her pocket. It was Pauline who,
having found a pretext to escape from her department, had come to have a chat with her.

‘Are you better, my dear? We never see each other these days.’

But as it was forbidden to go upstairs to their rooms and, above all, for two girls to shut themselves up there together, Denise took her to the end of the corridor where there was a common-room—a present from Mouret to the girls, who could chat or work there until eleven o’clock. The room, decorated in white and gold, had the commonplace bareness of a hotel room, and was furnished with a piano, a pedestal table in the centre, and armchairs and sofas protected with white covers. However, after a few evenings spent together there in the first flush of its novelty, the salesgirls could no longer meet there without immediately starting to quarrel with each other. They had yet to be educated to it; the little phalansterian city lacked harmony. Meanwhile there was hardly anyone there in the evening but the assistant buyer from the corset department, Miss Powell, who would strum Chopin discordantly on the piano and whose envied talent succeeded in putting the others to flight.

‘You see, my foot’s better,’ said Denise. ‘I was coming down.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Pauline. ‘What enthusiasm! I’d stay and take it easy if I had an excuse!’

They were both sitting on a sofa. Pauline’s attitude had changed since her friend had become assistant buyer in the ladieswear department. Mingled with her good-natured heartiness there was now a shade of respect, of surprise that the salesgirl who had been such a skinny little thing in the past was now on the road to success. However, Denise was very fond of her and, of the two hundred women now employed in the shop who were endlessly rushing about in it, she confided only in her.

‘What’s the matter?’ Pauline asked sharply, when she noticed Denise’s agitation.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she assured her, with an embarrassed smile.

‘Oh yes, there is something the matter … Don’t you trust me now, if you won’t tell me your troubles any more?’

At that Denise, her breast heaving with emotion and unable to regain her composure, gave way. She held out the letter to her friend, stammering:

‘Look! He’s just written to me!’

When they were together they had never spoken openly of Mouret. But their very silence was like a confession of their secret preoccupations. Pauline knew everything. After having read the letter she clasped Denise to her, and putting her arm round her waist murmured gently:

‘My dear, if you want me to be frank, I thought it had happened already … Don’t be shocked, I assure you the whole shop must think the same as me. After all, he promoted you to assistant buyer so quickly, and then he’s always after you, it’s so obvious!’

She gave her a big kiss on the cheek, and then asked her:

‘You’ll go tonight, of course?’

Denise looked at her without replying. Then suddenly she burst into sobs, her head resting on her friend’s shoulder. Pauline was taken by surprise.

‘Come on, calm down. There’s nothing in all this to upset you like that.’

‘No, no, leave me alone,’ stammered Denise. ‘If you knew how upset I am! Since I got that letter I haven’t known what to do with myself… Let me cry, it makes me feel better.’

Feeling sorry for her, though not understanding, Pauline tried to console her. First of all, he was no longer seeing Clara. They did say that he visited a lady outside the shop, but that was not proved. Then she explained that one couldn’t be jealous of a man in his position. He had too much money; he was the master, after all.

Denise listened to her; and if she had not been aware of her love before, she could no longer have any doubts about it after the pain she felt in her heart at the name of Clara and the allusion to Madame Desforges. She could hear Clara’s disagreeable voice, she could see Madame Desforges once more as, with the contempt of a rich woman, she had made her follow her round the shop.

‘So you’d go, would you?’ she asked.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Pauline exclaimed:

‘Of course, how could one do otherwise?’

Then she reflected, and added:

‘Not now, but in the past, because now I’m going to marry Baugé, and it wouldn’t be right.’

Indeed Baugé, who had recently left the Bon Marché for the Ladies’ Paradise, was going to marry her towards the middle of the month. Bourdoncle did not care much for married couples; however, they had obtained permission, and they even hoped to have a fortnight’s leave.

‘You see,’ declared Denise, ‘when a man loves you, he marries you … Baugé’s marrying you.’

Pauline laughed heartily.

‘But, my dear, it’s not the same thing. Baugé’s marrying me because he’s Baugé. He’s my equal, it’s quite straightforward … Whereas Monsieur Mouret! D’you think Monsieur Mouret could marry one of his salesgirls?’

‘Oh no! Oh no!’ cried Denise, shocked by the absurdity of the question. ‘And that’s why he shouldn’t have written to me.’

This reasoning completed Pauline’s astonishment. Her broad face, with her small, gentle eyes, was assuming a look of motherly commiseration. Then she stood up, opened the piano, and gently played ‘Le Roi Dagobert’
*
with one finger, no doubt in order to brighten up the situation. Sounds from the streets, the distant chant of a man selling green peas, were drifting up to the bare common-room, which the white chair-covers seemed to make even emptier. Denise was leaning back on a sofa, her head against the woodwork, shaken by a fresh bout of sobs, which she stifled in her handkerchief.

‘Again!’ resumed Pauline, turning round. ‘You really aren’t being reasonable … Why did you bring me in here? We’d have done better to stay in your room.’

She knelt down in front of her, and began lecturing to her again. How many girls would have liked to be in her place! Besides, if the idea did not appeal to her, it was very simple: she only had to say no, without taking it to heart so much. But she ought to think it over before risking her job with a refusal which would be quite inexplicable, considering that she had no other commitments. Was it really so terrible? And the lecture was ending with some gaily whispered jokes, when the sound of footsteps came from the corridor.

Pauline ran to the door and peeped out.