Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (37 page)

“ ’Tis rather warm here!”

Frédéric understood what her discreet glance meant.

“Ah! excuse me! the two leaves of the door are merely drawn together.”

“Yes, that’s true!”

And she smiled, as much as to say:

“I’m not a bit afraid!”

Then he asked her the reason for her visit.

“My husband,” she replied with an effort, “has urged me to call on you, not venturing to take this step himself!”

“And why?”

“You know M. Dambreuse, don’t you?”

“Yes, slightly.”

“Ah! slightly.”

She fell silent.

“No matter! finish what you were going to say.”

Thereupon she told him that, two days before, Arnoux had found himself unable to meet four bills of a thousand francs, made payable at the banker’s order and with his signature attached to them. She felt sorry for having compromised her children’s fortune. But anything was preferable to dishonour; and, if M. Dambreuse stopped the proceedings, they would certainly pay him soon, for she was going to sell a little house which she had at Chartres.

“Poor woman!” murmured Frédéric. “I will go. You can rely on me!”

“Thank you!”

And she arose to go.

“Oh! there is nothing to hurry you yet.”

She remained standing, examining the trophy of Mongolian arrows suspended from the ceiling, the bookcase, the bindings, all the utensils for writing. She lifted up the bronze bowl which held his pens. Her feet rested on different portions of the carpet. She had visited Frédéric several times before, but always accompanied by Arnoux. They were now alone together—alone in his own house. It was an extraordinary event—almost a stroke of luck.

She wished to see his little garden. He offered her his arm to show her his property—thirty feet of ground enclosed by some houses, adorned with shrubs at the corners and flower-beds in the middle. The early days of April had arrived. The leaves of the lilacs were already turning green. A breeze stirred the air, and the little birds chirped, their song alternating with the distant sound that came from a coachmaker’s forge.

Frédéric went to look for a fire-shovel; and, while they walked on side by side, the child kept making sand-pies on the walk.

Madame Arnoux did not believe that, as he grew older, he would have a great imagination; but he had a winning disposition. His sister, on the other hand, possessed a caustic humour that sometimes wounded her.

“That will change,” said Frédéric. “We must never despair.”

She returned:

“We must never despair!”

This automatic repetition of the phrase he had used appeared to him a sort of encouragement; he plucked a rose, the only one in the garden.

“Do you remember a certain bouquet of roses one evening, in a carriage?”

She blushed a little; and, with an air of bantering pity:

“Ah, I was very young then!”

“And this rose,” went on Frédéric, in a low tone, “will it be the same way with it?”

She replied, while turning about the stem between her fingers, like the thread of a spindle:

“No, I will preserve it.”

She called the nurse, who took the child in her arms; then, on the threshold of the door in the street, Madame Arnoux sniffed the flower, leaning her head on her shoulder with a look as sweet as a kiss.

When he had gone up to his study, he gazed at the armchair in which she had sat, and every object which she had touched. Something of her swirled around him. The caress of her presence lingered there still.

“So, then, she came here,” he said to himself:

And his soul was bathed in waves of infinite tenderness.

Next day, at eleven o’clock, he presented himself at M. Dambreuse’s house. He was received in the dining-room. The banker was seated opposite, his wife at lunch. Beside her sat her niece, and at the other side of the table appeared the governess, an English woman, whose face was heavily pock-marked.

M. Dambreuse invited his young friend to take a seat among them, and when he declined:

“What can I do for you?”

Frédéric confessed, while affecting indifference, that he had come to make a request on behalf, of one Arnoux.

“Ah! Ah! the ex-art-dealer,” said the banker, with a noiseless laugh which exposed his gums. “Oudry used to act as his guarantor; they have since had a falling-out.”

And he proceeded to read the letters and newspapers which lay close beside him on the table.

Two servants attended without making the least noise on the parquet; and the high-ceilinged room, which had three door-curtains of richest tapestry, and two white marble fountains, the polish of the chafing-dish, the arrangement of the hors-d’oeuvres, and even the crisp folds of the napkins, all this sumptuous comfort impressed Frédéric’s mind with the contrast between it and another lunch at the Arnouxs’ house. He did not take the liberty of interrupting M. Dambreuse.

Madame noticed his embarrassment.

“Do you occasionally see our friend Martinon?”

“He will be here this evening,” said the young girl in a lively tone.

“Ah! so you know him?” said her aunt, fixing on her a freezing look.

At that moment one of the men-servants, bending forward, whispered in her ear.

“Your dressmaker, Mademoiselle—Miss John!”

And the governess, in obedience to this summons, left the room along with her pupil.

M. Dambreuse, annoyed at the disarrangement of the chairs by this movement, asked what was the matter.

“ ’Tis Madame Regimbart.”

“Wait a moment! Regimbart! I know that name. I have come across his signature.”

Frédéric finally broached the subject. Arnoux deserved some consideration; he was even going, for the sole purpose of fulfilling his obligations, to sell a house belonging to his wife.

“She is considered very pretty,” said Madame Dambreuse.

The banker added, with a display of good-nature:

“Are you an intimate friend of theirs?”

Frédéric, without giving an explicit reply, said that he would be very much obliged to him if he considered the matter.

“Well, if it makes you happy so be it; we will wait. I have some time to spare yet; suppose we go down to my office. Would you mind?”

They had finished lunch. Madame Dambreuse bowed slightly towards Frédéric, smiling in an odd fashion, with a mixture of politeness and irony. Frédéric had no time to reflect on it, for M. Dambreuse, as soon as they were alone:

“You did not come to get your shares?”

And, without permitting him to make any excuses:

“Well! well! ’tis right that you should know a little more about the business.”

He offered Frédéric a cigarette, and began his statement.

The General Union of French Coal Mines had been constituted. All that they were waiting for was the order for its incorporation. The mere fact of the merger had diminished the cost of administration and of manual labour, and increased the profits. Besides, the company had conceived a new idea, which was to give the workmen an interest in the enterprise. It would build houses for them, with hygenic living conditions; finally, it would constitute itself the purveyor of its
employés,
and would have everything supplied to them at net prices.

“And they will gain by it, Monsieur: that’s true progress! that’s the way to reply effectively to certain Republican grumblings. We have on our Board”—he showed the prospectus—“a peer of France, a scholar who is a member of the Institute, a retired senior-officer of the engineers, well-known names, such elements reassure the timid capitalists, and appeal to intelligent capitalists!”

The company would have in its favour the sanction of the State, then the railways, the steam service, the iron works, the gas companies, and ordinary households.

“Thus we heat, we light, we penetrate to the very hearth of the humblest home. But how, you will say to me, can we be sure of selling? By the aid of protective laws, dear Monsieur, and we shall get them!—that is a matter that concerns us! For my part, however, I am a downright prohibitionist! The country before anything!”

He had been appointed a director; but he had no time to occupy himself with certain details, amongst other things with the editing of their publications.

“I find myself rather muddled with my authors. I have forgotten my Greek. I am in need of someone who can interpret my ideas.”

And suddenly: “Will you be the man to perform those duties, with the title of general secretary?”

Frédéric did not know what reply to make.

“Well, what is there to prevent you?”

His functions would be confined to writing a report every year for the shareholders. He would find himself day after day in communication with the most notable men in Paris. Representing the company with the workmen, he would ere long be worshipped by them as a natural consequence, and by this means he would be able, later, to push him into the General Council, and into the position of a representative.

Frédéric’s ears tingled. Whence came this good-will? He thanked M. Dambreuse profusely. But it was important, the banker said, that he not be dependent on anyone. The best course was to take some shares, “a splendid investment besides, for your capital guarantees your position, as your position does your capital.”

“About how much should it amount to?” said Frédéric.

“Oh, well! whatever you please—from forty to sixty thousand francs, I suppose.”

This sum was so miniscule in M. Dambreuse’s eyes, and his authority was so great, that the young man resolved immediately to sell a farm.

He accepted the offer. M. Dambreuse would fix an appointment one of these days in order to finish their arrangements.

“So I can say to Jacques Arnoux—?”

“Anything you like—the poor chap—anything you like!”

Frédéric wrote to the Arnouxs’ to make their minds easy, and he dispatched the letter by his servant, who brought back the letter: “Good!” His efforts deserved better recognition. He expected a visit, or, at least, a letter. He did not receive a visit, and no letter arrived.

Was it forgetfulness on their part, or was it intentional? Since Madame Arnoux had come once, what was to prevent her from coming again? The sort of hint, of confession of which she had made him the recipient on the occasion, was nothing more, then, than a selfish manoeuvre.

“Are they playing me? and is she an accomplice of her husband?” A sort of shame, in spite of his desire, prevented him from returning to their house.

One morning (three weeks after their meeting), M. Dambreuse wrote to him, saying that he expected him the same day in an hour’s time.

On the way, the thought of Arnoux oppressed him once more, and, not having been able to discover any reason for their conduct, he was seized with anguish, a grim presentiment. In order to shake it off, he hailed a cab, and drove to the Rue de Paradis.

Arnoux was away travelling.

“And Madame?”

“In the country, at the works.”

“When is Monsieur coming back?”

“To-morrow, without fail.”

He would find her alone; this was the opportune moment. An imperious voice seemed to cry out in the depths of his consciousness: “Go, then, and meet her!”

But M. Dambreuse? “Ah! well, too bad, I’ll say that I was ill.”

He rushed to the railway-station, and, as soon as he was in the rail car:

“Perhaps I have done wrong. Oh, what does it matter?”

Green plains stretched out to the right and to the left. The train rolled on. The little station-houses glistened like stage-scenery, and the smoke of the locomotive kept constantly sending forth on the same side its big fleecy masses, which danced for a little while on the grass, and were then dispersed.

Frédéric, who sat alone in his compartment, gazed at all this out of boredom, lost in that weariness which is produced by the very excess of impatience. Finally cranes and warehouses appeared. They had reached Creil.

The town, built on the slopes of two low-lying hills (the first of which was bare, and the second crowned by woods), with its church-tower, its houses of different sizes, and its stone bridge, seemed to him a mix of gaiety, reserve, and wholesomeness. A long flat barge floated on the water’s current, which surged up under the lash of the wind.

Hens were pecking around in the straw at the foot of a crucifix erected on the spot; a woman passed with some wet linen in a basket on her head.

After crossing the bridge, he found himself on an island, where he beheld on his right the ruins of an abbey. A mill with its wheels revolving barred up the entire width of the second arm of the Oise, which the factory overlooked. Frédéric was greatly surprised by the imposing character of this structure. He felt more respect for Arnoux on account of it. Three steps further on, he turned up an alley, which had an iron gate at its far end.

He went in. The concierge called him back, exclaiming:

“Have you a permit?”

“For what purpose?”

“For the purpose of visiting the establishment.”

Frédéric said in a rather curt tone that he had come to see M. Arnoux.

“Who is M. Arnoux?”

“Why, the chief, the master, the proprietor, in fact!”

“No, monsieur! These are MM. Lebœuf and Milliet’s works!”

The good woman was surely joking! Some workmen arrived; he came up and spoke to two or three of them. They gave the same response.

Frédéric left the premises, staggering like a drunken man; and he had such a look of perplexity, that on the Pont de la Boucherie an inhabitant of the town, who was smoking his pipe, asked if he was looking for something. This man knew where Arnoux’s factory was. It was situated at Montataire.

Frédéric asked where he could find a carriage and was told that the only place was at the station. He went back there. A shaky-looking calash, to which was yoked an old horse, with torn harness hanging over the shafts, stood all alone in front of the luggage office. A street-urchin who was looking on offered to go and find Père Pilon. In ten minutes’ time he came back, and announced that Père Pilon was having his breakfast. Frédéric, unable to stand this any longer, walked away. But the gates of the thoroughfare across the train tracks were closed. He would have to wait till two trains had passed. At last, he walked off into the countryside.