The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (55 page)

On that particular day, as it happened, Deloche was talking about Valognes.

‘I was six, and my mother used to take me in a cart to the market. You know it’s a good eight miles; we had to leave Briquebec at five o’clock … It’s very beautiful there. Do you know it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ replied Denise, slowly, gazing into the distance, ‘I went there once, but I was very little … The roads have grass
verges on either side, haven’t they? And there are sheep, roaming about in pairs, trailing their tethering ropes …’

She was silent for a while, then resumed with a vague smile:

‘In our part of the world, the roads run absolutely straight for miles, between trees which make them very shady … We have meadows surrounded by hedges which are taller than I am, where there are horses and cows … We’ve got a little river, and the water’s very cold under the brushwood, in a spot I know very well.’

‘It’s just like that with us!’ Deloche exclaimed in delight. ‘There’s nothing but grassland, and everyone surrounds his piece with hawthorns and elms and feels at home, and it’s all green, a green you don’t see in Paris … Oh! I used to play for hours at the bottom of the sunken path, on the left, on the way down from the mill!’

Their voices died away, and they remained there, gazing fixedly at the sunny lake of the window-panes. From this blinding water a mirage rose up before them; they could see endless pastures, the Cotentin soaked with breezes from the ocean, bathed in a luminous haze which was melting away on the horizon in the delicate grey of a water-colour. Below them, beneath the colossal iron framework, there was the roar of the buying and selling in the silk department, the reverberation of the machine at work, the whole shop vibrating with the trampling of the crowd, the bustle of salesmen, the life of the thirty thousand people packed together there; but, carried away by their dreams, they felt this deep, muffled roar with which the roofs were resounding, and thought they were listening to the wind from the sea blowing over the pastures, shaking the tall trees as it went.

‘Mademoiselle Denise,’ stammered Deloche, ‘why aren’t you kinder to me? I love you so much!’

Tears had come into his eyes, and when she tried to interrupt him with a gesture, he continued quickly:

‘No, let me tell you this just once more … We’d get on so well together! There’s always something to talk about when you come from the same part of the world.’

He was choking with tears and at last she was able to say gently:

‘You’re not being sensible; you promised not to talk about that any more … It’s impossible. I’m very fond of you, because you’re a very nice boy, but I want to stay free.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he went on in a broken voice. ‘You don’t love me. Oh! You can say so, I understand, there’s nothing to make you love me … I’ve only had one good hour in my life, that evening when I met you in Joinville, do you remember? For a moment, under the trees where it was so dark, I thought I felt your arm trembling. I was stupid enough to imagine …’

But she cut him short once more. Her sharp ears had just heard the footsteps of Bourdoncle and Jouve at the other end of the corridor.

‘Listen, there’s someone coming.’

‘No,’ he said, preventing her from leaving the window. ‘It’s in the cistern: it makes all sorts of strange noises; you’d think there were people inside it.’

He went on with his timid complaints. She was no longer listening to him, once more lulled into a day-dream by his talk of love, letting her glances stray over the roofs of the Ladies’ Paradise. To the right and left of the glazed gallery, other galleries and other halls were gleaming in the sunshine, between gables pitted with windows and set out symmetrically like barrack wings. Metal structures rose up, ladders and bridges, whose lacework stood out against the blue sky; while the chimney from the kitchens was belching out enough smoke for a factory, and the great square cistern, supported in the air by iron pillars, seemed like some barbaric construction hoisted up there by the pride of one man. The roar of Paris could be heard in the distance.

When Denise returned from space, from this airy development of the Paradise where her thoughts had been floating as if in some vast retreat, she saw that Deloche had taken her hand. His face was so distressed that she did not take it back.

‘Forgive me,’ he murmured, ‘it’s all over now, it would make me too unhappy if you punished me by taking away your friendship … I swear to you that I didn’t mean to say that to you. Yes, I’d promised myself to understand the situation, to be reasonable …’

His tears were flowing once more; he was trying to steady his voice.

‘Because I know now what my lot in life is. And my luck isn’t likely to change now. I was beaten back there at home, I’m beaten in Paris, I’m beaten everywhere. I’ve been here four years now, and I’m still on the bottom rung in the department… So I wanted to tell you that you shouldn’t be upset on my account. I won’t bother you any more. Try to be happy, love someone else; yes, that would make me happy. If you’re happy, I’ll be happy … That’ll be my joy.’

He could not go on. As if to seal his promise, he had placed his lips on the girl’s hand and was kissing it with the humble kiss of a slave. She was deeply touched, and with a sisterly tenderness which toned down the pity in her words, she said simply:

‘You poor boy!’

But they gave a start and turned round. Mouret was standing there. For ten minutes Jouve had been looking for the governor in the shop. But the latter had been on the site for the new shop-front in the Rue du Dix-Décembre. He spent hours there every day, trying to take an interest in this work he had dreamed of for so long. He found a refuge from his torments among the masons laying the corner-stones and the metalworkers putting up great iron girders. Already the shop-front was rising up, outlining the vast porch, the bays on the first floor, the birth of a palace. He would go up ladders, discuss the decorations—which were to be something quite new—with the architect, climb over ironwork and bricks, and even go down into the cellars; and the roar of the steam-engine, the tick-tock of the winches, the banging of the hammers, and the clamour of the crowd of workmen in this huge cage surrounded by echoing boards succeeded in numbing his feelings for a few moments. He would leave white with plaster, black with iron filings, his feet splashed by the water from the pumps, his trouble so far from being cured that his anguish would return and make his heart beat even more loudly as the din of the building site died away behind him. It so happened, on that particular day, that a diversion had restored his gaiety: he had become fascinated by an album of drawings of the mosaics and terracotta tiles with which the friezes were to be decorated,
when Jouve, out of breath and very annoyed at having to get his frock-coat dirty among the building materials, had come to fetch him. At first Mouret had shouted that they could wait for him; then, after the shopwalker had said a few words to him in an undertone, he had followed him, trembling, overwhelmed by his passion again. Nothing else existed; the shop-front was crumbling before it had been built: what was the good of this supreme triumph of his pride, if the mere name of a woman, murmured in an undertone, tortured him to this extent!

Upstairs Bourdoncle and Jouve thought it wise to disappear. Deloche had already fled. Denise stood facing Mouret alone, paler than usual, but looking straight up at him.

‘Please follow me, miss,’ he said in a hard voice.

She followed him; they went down two floors and crossed the furniture and carpet departments without saying a word. When he reached his office, he opened the door wide.

‘Go in, please, miss.’

He closed the door and went straight to his desk. His new office was more luxurious than the old one: green velvet hangings had replaced the rep, a bookcase inlaid with ivory filled the whole of one wall; but, on the other walls, the only picture was still the portrait of Madame Hédouin, a young woman with a beautiful, calm face, smiling in her golden frame.

‘Mademoiselle Baudu,’ he said finally, trying to remain coldly severe, ‘there are certain things we cannot tolerate … Good behaviour is compulsory here …’

He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully in order not to give way to the rage which was mounting inside him. It was that boy she loved, that wretched salesman, the laughing-stock of his department! She preferred the humblest and clumsiest of them all to him, the master! For he had clearly seen them, Denise letting him take her hand, and Deloche covering that hand with kisses.

‘I’ve been very good to you, Mademoiselle Baudu,’ he continued, making a fresh effort. ‘I hardly expected to be repaid in this way.’

From the moment she entered, Denise’s eyes had been drawn to the portrait of Madame Hédouin; and, in spite of her great confusion, she remained preoccupied by it. Every time she went
into Mouret’s office her eyes met those of this lady. She was a little afraid of her, and yet she felt that she was very kind. This time, she felt as if, in her, she had a protector.

‘You’re right, sir,’ she replied gently, ‘it was wrong of me to stop and talk, and I apologize … That young man comes from my part of the country.’

‘I’ll throw him out!’ shouted Mouret, putting all his suffering into this cry of fury.

And, completely distraught, abandoning his role as the general manager lecturing a salesgirl guilty of breaking the rules, he burst out in a torrent of violent words. Wasn’t she ashamed? A girl like her giving herself to a creature like that! And he made all sorts of appalling accusations: he threw Hutin’s name at her, and others as well, such a flood of words that she could not even defend herself. He was going to make a clean sweep; he would kick them all out. The telling-off which, as he had followed Jouve, he had promised himself he would give her was degenerating into a violent scene of jealousy.

‘Yes, your lovers! I was told you had them, and I was stupid enough not to believe it… But I was the only one! I was the only one!’

Denise, stunned and bewildered, stood listening to these terrible reproaches. At first she had not understood. Did he really think she was immoral? He made a further remark, even more violent than before, upon which she turned silently towards the door. He made a movement to stop her, but she said:

‘That’s enough, sir, I must leave … If you think I’m what you say, I don’t wish to remain in this shop another second.’

He rushed to the door.

‘Defend yourself, at least! Say something!’

She stood very erect, in icy silence. For a long time he pressed her with questions, growing more and more anxious; and the virgin’s silent dignity seemed once more to be the cunning ruse of a woman experienced in the tactics of passion. She could not have played a game more calculated to throw him at her feet, so torn with doubt was he, so anxious to be convinced.

‘But you say he comes from your part of the world … Perhaps you met each other there … Swear to me that nothing’s happened between you.’

And as she maintained an obstinate silence, and still wished to open the door and leave, he finally lost his head, and burst out in a climactic expression of his torment.

‘My God! I love you, I love you … Why do you delight in tormenting me like this? You can see that nothing else exists, that the people I speak about to you only affect me through you, that you’re the only person in the world who matters … I thought you were jealous, so I gave up my pleasures. People told you I had mistresses; well, I haven’t any more, I hardly ever go out. Didn’t I show my preference for you when we were in that lady’s house? Didn’t I break with her so that I could belong only to you? I’m still waiting for a word of thanks, a little gratitude. And if you’re afraid that I’ll go back to her you needn’t worry: she’s taking her revenge by helping one of our ex-assistants to set up a rival shop … Tell me! must I get down on my knees to move your heart?’

He had reached that point. He who would not tolerate his salesgirls making a slip, who threw them into the street at his slightest whim, found himself reduced to imploring one of them not to leave, not to abandon him to his misery. He was barring the door to her, he was ready to forgive her, to shut his eyes to everything if only she would condescend to lie about it. And it was true, he had become sick of girls picked up backstage in small theatres and night-clubs; he had given up Clara, he had not set foot again in Madame Desforges’s house, where Bouthemont now reigned supreme, pending the opening of the new shop, the Quatre Saisons, for which the newspapers were already full of advertisements.

‘Tell me, must I get down on my knees?’ he repeated, choking back his tears.

She stopped him with a gesture, no longer able to hide her own confusion, deeply affected by this tortured passion.

‘You’re wrong to make yourself unhappy, sir,’ she replied at last. ‘I swear to you that all those wicked stories are just lies … That poor boy you saw a moment ago is no more guilty than I am.’

She was as wonderfully frank as ever and her clear eyes were looking him straight in the face.

‘Very well, I believe you,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t dismiss any of your friends, since you’ve taken them all under your
wing … But why do you reject me, if you don’t love anyone else?’

Denise was overcome with sudden embarrassment and anxious modesty.

‘You do love someone, don’t you?’ he went on in a trembling voice. ‘You can say so, I have no claim on your affections … You do love someone.’

She was blushing deeply; it was on the tip of her tongue to say what was in her heart, and she felt that, with her emotion betraying her and her repugnance for falsehood allowing the truth to show on her face in spite of everything, it would be impossible to lie.

‘Yes,’ she admitted weakly. ‘Please let me go, sir, you’re distressing me.’

She was now suffering in her turn. Wasn’t it enough to have to defend herself against him? Would she also have to defend herself against herself, against the waves of tenderness which at times swept away all her courage? When he talked to her like that, when she saw him so deeply moved, so overcome, she didn’t know why she still resisted him; and it was only afterwards that she rediscovered, at the very roots of her healthy temperament, the dignity and reason which maintained her virginal obstinacy. It was an instinctive desire for happiness that made her persist in refusing, to satisfy her need for a peaceful life, and not to conform to any idea of virtue. She would have fallen into his arms, her body overcome and her heart seduced, if she had not felt a resistance, almost a repulsion at the idea of giving herself to him, without knowing what might ensue. The thought of a lover frightened her, with that instinctive fear which makes a woman blanch at the approach of the male.