The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (56 page)

Meanwhile Mouret had made a gesture of complete discouragement. He did not understand. He turned round to his desk, where he shuffled some papers and put them down again immediately, saying:

‘I won’t detain you any longer, Mademoiselle Baudu; I can’t keep you against your will.’

‘But I’m not asking to leave,’ she replied with a smile. ‘If you think I’m respectable, I’ll stay … You should always believe women to be respectable, sir. There are many who are, I assure you.’

Denise had, involuntarily, looked up at the portrait of Madame Hédouin, that lady so beautiful and wise, whose blood, so they said, brought luck to the shop. Mouret followed the girl’s glance with a start, for he thought he’d heard his dead wife uttering this phrase; it was one of her phrases, which he recognized immediately. It was like a resurrection; he was rediscovering in Denise the good sense and sound balance of the woman he had lost, even down to the gentle voice, sparing of superfluous words. He was deeply struck by this resemblance, which made him sadder than ever.

‘You know I belong to you,’ he murmured in conclusion. ‘Do what you like with me.’

At that she went on gaily:

‘Very well, sir. A woman’s opinion, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to, if she’s got any sense … If you put yourself in my hands, I shall certainly make a decent man of you.’

She was joking, with her simple manner which was so charming. In his turn he gave a feeble smile and escorted her to the door as he would a lady.

The next day Denise was promoted to buyer. The management had split the dress and suit department into two, by creating specially for her a department for children’s suits, which was set up near the ladieswear department. Since her son’s dismissal Madame Aurélie lived in fear, for she could feel the management becoming cool towards her, and saw the girl’s power growing daily. Were they going to sacrifice her to Denise, on some pretext or other? Her emperor-like mask, puffy with fat, seemed to have become thinner at the shame which now tainted the Lhomme dynasty; and she made a great show of going away every evening on her husband’s arm, for they had become reconciled by misfortune, and understood that the trouble came from their home life being so messy; while her poor husband, who was even more affected than she was, and had a morbid fear of being suspected of theft too, would count the takings twice over, very noisily performing real miracles with his bad arm as he did so. And so, when she saw Denise promoted to buyer in the children’s suit department, she felt such acute joy that she began to behave with the greatest affection towards her. It was really
wonderful of her not to have taken her job away from her! She overwhelmed her with gestures of friendship; from then on she treated her as an equal and often went with a stately air to chat with her in the neighbouring department, like a queen mother visiting a young queen.

In any case, Denise now commanded great respect in the shop. Her appointment as buyer had broken down the last resistance around her. If some still talked, because of that itch for gossip which ravages any assembly of men and women, they nevertheless bowed very low before her, right down to the ground in fact. Marguerite, now assistant buyer in the ladieswear department, was full of praise for her. Even Clara, filled with secret respect before such good fortune, which she herself was incapable of attaining, had bowed her head. But Denise’s victory was even more complete over the men—over Jouve, who now bent double whenever he addressed her; over Hutin, full of anxiety at feeling his job crumbling beneath him; over Bourdoncle, at last rendered powerless. When the latter had seen her coming out of Mouret’s office, smiling, with her usual composed air, and when the next day the director had insisted that the board should create the new department, he had given in, conquered by a superstitious fear of Woman. He had always given in like that to Mouret’s charm; he recognized him as his master, in spite of the wild flights of his genius and his idiotic impulsive actions. This time the woman had proved the stronger, and he was to be swept away by the disaster.

However, Denise responded to her triumph in a calm, charming manner. She was touched by these marks of consideration, and tried to see in them sympathy for the misery of her earlier days in the shop, and her final success after being courageous for so long. Therefore she welcomed the slightest gestures of friendship with joyful smiles, which made her really loved by some, for she had such a kind, sympathetic, and generous nature. The only person for whom she felt permanent repugnance was Clara, for she had learned that the girl had amused herself one evening by taking Colomban home as she had jokingly planned to do; and the assistant, carried away by this long-awaited satisfaction of his passion, now slept out all the time, while poor Geneviève was
dying. They talked about it at the Paradise and thought it very amusing.

But this sorrow, the only one she had outside the shop, did not affect Denise’s even temper. It was in her own department that she was seen at her best, surrounded by a crowd of little children of all ages. She adored children, and a better position could not have been found for her. Sometimes there would be as many as fifty little girls and the same number of boys there, a kind of boisterous boarding-school let loose in their growing coquettish desires. The mothers would lose their heads completely. She, soothing and smiling, would get all the youngsters lined up on chairs; and when she saw some rosy-cheeked little girl in the crowd whose pretty little face attracted her, she would serve her herself and would bring the dress and try it on the child’s chubby shoulders with the tender care of a big sister. There would be peals of laughter, little cries of ecstasy in the midst of scolding voices. Sometimes a little girl of nine or ten, quite grown up already, when trying on a cloth coat would study it in front of a looking-glass, turning round with an absorbed look, her eyes shining with the desire to please. The counters were littered with unfolded goods, dresses in pink or blue tussore for children from one to five, zephyr sailor-suits, a pleated skirt and blouse trimmed with appliquéd cambric, Louis XV costumes, coats, jackets, a jumble of small garments, stiff in their childish grace, rather like the cloakroom of a collection of big dolls, taken out of cupboards and left to be ransacked. Denise always had some sweets in her pockets, and would soothe the tears of some infant in despair at not being able to take a pair of red trousers away with him; she lived there among the little ones as if they were her own family, and she herself felt younger because of all the innocence and freshness ceaselessly renewed around her.

She now had long friendly conversations with Mouret. When she had to go to his office for instructions or to give information he would keep her talking, enjoying the sound of her voice. This was what she laughingly called ‘making a decent man of him’. In her shrewd, rational, Norman mind all sorts of projects were forming, ideas on modern business methods which she had already ventured to float at Robineau’s, and some of which she had expressed on that fine evening when she and Mouret had walked
together in the Tuileries Gardens. She could never do anything herself, or watch a task being carried out, without being obsessed with the need to put method into it, to improve the system. Thus, ever since she had been taken on at the Ladies’ Paradise, she had been troubled above all by the precarious situation of the junior assistants. The sudden dismissals shocked her; she considered them clumsy and iniquitous, as harmful to the shop as they were to the staff. The sufferings of her early days in the shop were still fresh in her mind, and her heart was wrung with pity each time she met a newcomer in one of the departments, with sore feet and tears in her eyes, shuffling along miserably in her silk dress, persecuted constantly by the girls who had been there longer than she had. This dog’s life made even the best of them turn bad, and their sad decline would begin. They were all worn out by their profession before they were forty; they would disappear, go off into the unknown, many would die in harness of consumption or anaemia, brought on by fatigue and bad air, and some would end up on the street, while the luckier ones would marry and be buried in some small provincial shop. Was it humane or right, this appalling consumption of human flesh every year by the big shops? She would plead the cause of the cogs in this great machine, not for sentimental reasons, but with arguments based on the employers’ own interests. When one wants a sound machine one uses good metal; if the metal breaks or is broken there’s a stoppage of work, repeated expense in getting it started again, a considerable wastage of energy. Sometimes she would become quite excited, imagining a huge, ideal emporium, a phalanstery of trade, in which everyone would have a fair share of the profits according to merit, and his or her future would be assured by a contract. Mouret would brighten up when she spoke like this, in spite of his misery. He would accuse her of socialism, and confuse her by pointing out the difficulties of putting it all into practice; for she spoke with the simplicity of her heart, and would bravely put her trust in the future whenever she perceived a dangerous pitfall in her own tender-hearted methods. He was disturbed and captivated, however, by her young voice, still trembling from the ills she had suffered, and so full of conviction when pointing out reforms which would benefit the shop; and although he laughed at her, he listened to her:
the salesmen’s lot gradually improved, the mass dismissals were replaced by a system of leave given during the slack seasons, and there was also a plan to create a mutual aid society which would protect them against forced redundancy and would guarantee them a pension. This was the embryo of the vast trade unions of the twentieth century.

What is more, Denise did not confine herself to dressing the open wounds from which she herself had bled: the subtle, feminine ideas she whispered to Mouret delighted the customers. She also made Lhomme happy by supporting a plan he had had for some time, of forming a band from among the staff. Three months later Lhomme had a hundred and twenty musicians under his direction; his life’s dream had come true. A big festival was organized in the shop, a concert and a ball, in order to introduce the band to the customers and to the whole world. The newspapers took it up, and even Bourdoncle, devastated by these innovations, had to acknowledge what superb advertising this was. Next, a games room for the assistants was installed, with two billiard tables as well as backgammon and chess boards. In the evenings, classes were held in the shop; there were English and German lessons, as well as lessons in grammar, arithmetic, and geography; there were even lessons in riding and fencing. A library was created, and ten thousand volumes were put at the disposal of the staff. A resident doctor gave free consultations, and there were baths, bars, and a hairdressing salon. Every need in life was provided for, everything was obtainable without leaving the building—study, refreshment, sleeping accommodation, clothing.
*
The Ladies’ Paradise was self-sufficient in both pleasures and necessities, and the heart of Paris was filled with its din, with this city of labour which was growing so vigorously out of the ruins of the old streets which had at last been opened up to the sunlight.

There was a fresh wave of opinion in favour of Denise. Since Bourdoncle, now defeated, kept repeating in despair to his friends that he would have given a great deal to put her in Mouret’s bed himself, it had been concluded that she had not yielded, and that her all-powerfulness resulted from her refusals. From then on, she became popular. People knew that they were indebted to her for various comforts, and she was admired for
her strength of will. There was one person, at least, who knew how to hold the governor at her mercy, who was avenging them all, and who knew how to get something more than promises out of him! She had come at last, a woman who forced people to have some regard for the underprivileged! When she went through the departments, with her delicate but determined expression and her gentle yet invincible air, the salesmen would smile at her and feel proud of her, and would gladly have shown her off to the crowd. Denise was happy to allow herself to be swept along by this growing sympathy towards her. Could it really be true? She could see herself arriving in her shabby skirt, scared and lost among the gear-wheels of the terrifying machine; for a long time she had had the sensation of being nothing, hardly a grain of millet under the millstones crushing everyone beneath them. Now she was the very soul of that world, only she mattered, with a word she could speed up or slow down the colossus lying vanquished at her feet. And yet none of this had been premeditated; she had simply presented herself at the shop, with no ulterior motive and with nothing but her charming gentleness. Her supremacy sometimes caused her uneasy surprise: what was it that made them all obey her like that? She was not pretty, nor would she do them any harm. Then, her heart soothed, she would smile, for there was nothing in her but kindness and good sense and a love of truth and logic which was her great strength.

Now that she was in favour, one of Denise’s joys was to be able to help Pauline. The latter was pregnant, and was very anxious, because two salesgirls in a fortnight had been forced to leave in the seventh month of their pregnancy. The management did not tolerate accidents of that kind; maternity was not allowed since it was considered cumbersome and indecent—marriage was occasionally allowed, but children were forbidden. Pauline’s husband worked in the shop, of course; but she was very nervous all the same, for it did not make it any easier for her to appear in the department; and in order to delay her probable dismissal, she laced herself in till she could hardly breathe, determined to hide her condition as long as she could. One of the two salesgirls who had been dismissed had just had a stillborn child from having tortured her waist in this way; and there was little hope that she
herself would recover. Meanwhile Bourdoncle was observing Pauline’s complexion turning leaden, and thought he could see a painful stiffness in her gait. One morning he was standing near her in the trousseau department when a porter who was taking away a parcel bumped into her so hard that she gave a cry and put both hands on her stomach. He immediately led her away and made her confess, and then recommended to the board that she be dismissed, under the pretext that she needed some country air; the story of the blow she had received would get around, and if she had a miscarriage the effect on the public would be disastrous, as had occurred the year before with a girl from the babywear department. Mouret, who was not present at the board meeting, could only give his opinion in the evening. But Denise had had time to intervene, and he told Bourdoncle to keep quiet in the shop’s own interest. Did they want to stir up the mothers against them, and offend all the young customers who had recently had babies? It was pompously decided that any married salesgirl who became pregnant would be entrusted to a special midwife as soon as her presence in the department became an offence to morality.