The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume VI Part 14

a lot of j.a.panese trifles on the walls, and he bought for five francs quite a collection of little fans and screens, with which he hid the most obvious of the marks on the wall paper. He pasted on the window panes transparent pictures representing boats floating down rivers, flocks of birds flying across rosy skies, multi-colored ladies on balconies, and processions of little black men over plains covered with snow. His room, just big enough to sleep and sit down in, soon looked like the inside of a Chinese lantern. He thought the effect satisfactory, and pa.s.sed the evening in pasting on the ceiling birds that he had cut from the colored sheets remaining over. Then he went to bed, lulled by the whistle of the trains.

He went home early the next day, carrying a paper bag of cakes and a bottle of Madeira, purchased at the grocer's. He had to go out again to buy two plates and two gla.s.ses, and arranged this collation on his dressing-table, the dirty wood of which was covered by a napkin, the jug and basin being hidden away beneath it.

Then he waited.

She came at about a quarter-past five; and, attracted by the bright colors of the pictures, exclaimed: "Dear me, yours is a nice place. But there are a lot of people about on the staircase."

He had clasped her in his arms, and was eagerly kissing the hair between her forehead and her bonnet through her veil.

An hour and a half later he escorted her back to the cab-stand in the Rue de Rome. When she was in the carriage he murmured: "Tuesday at the same time?"

She replied: "Tuesday at the same time." And as it had grown dark, she drew his head into the carriage and kissed him on the lips. Then the driver, having whipped up his beast, she exclaimed: "Good-bye, Pretty-boy," and the old vehicle started at the weary trot of its old white horse.

For three weeks Duroy received Madame de Marelle in this way every two or three days, now in the evening and now in the morning. While he was expecting her one afternoon, a loud uproar on the stairs drew him to the door. A child was crying. A man's angry voice shouted: "What is that little devil howling about now?" The yelling and exasperated voice of a woman replied: "It is that dirty hussy who comes to see the penny-a-liner upstairs; she has upset Nicholas on the landing. As if dabs like that, who pay no attention to children on the staircase, should be allowed here."

Duroy drew back, distracted, for he could hear the rapid rustling of skirts and a hurried step ascending from the story just beneath him.

There was soon a knock at the door, which he had reclosed. He opened it, and Madame de Marelle rushed into the room, terrified and breathless, stammering: "Did you hear?"

He pretended to know nothing. "No; what?"

"How they have insulted me."

"Who? Who?"

"The blackguards who live down below."

"But, surely not; what does it all mean, tell me?"

She began to sob, without being able to utter a word. He had to take off her bonnet, undo her dress, lay her on the bed, moisten her forehead with a wet towel. She was choking, and then when her emotion was somewhat abated, all her wrathful indignation broke out. She wanted him to go down at once, to thrash them, to kill them.

He repeated: "But they are only work-people, low creatures. Just remember that it would lead to a police court, that you might be recognized, arrested, ruined. One cannot lower one's self to have anything to do with such people."

She pa.s.sed on to another idea. "What shall we do now? For my part, I cannot come here again."

He replied: "It is very simple; I will move."

She murmured: "Yes, but that will take some time." Then all at once she framed a plan, and rea.s.sured, added softly: "No, listen, I know what to do; let me act, do not trouble yourself about anything. I will send you a telegram to-morrow morning."

She smiled now, delighted with her plan, which she would not reveal, and indulged in a thousand follies. She was very agitated, however, as she went downstairs, leaning with all her weight on her lover's arm, her legs trembled so beneath her. They did not meet anyone, though.

As he usually got up late, he was still in bed the next day, when, about eleven o'clock, the telegraph messenger brought him the promised telegram. He opened it and read:

"Meet me at five; 127, Rue de Constantinople. Rooms hired by Madame Duroy.--Clo."

At five o'clock to the minute he entered the doorkeeper's lodge of a large furnished house, and asked: "It is here that Madame Duroy has taken rooms, is it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you show me to them, if you please."

The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of the long range of keys, said: "You are Monsieur Duroy?"

"Yes, certainly."

The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wall-paper of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor could be felt through it, had mahogany furniture, upholstered in green rep with a yellow pattern. The bedroom was so small that the bed three-parts filled it. It occupied the further end, stretching from one wall to the other--the large bed of a furnished lodging-house, shrouded in heavy blue curtains also of rep, and covered with an eider-down quilt of red silk stained with suspicious-looking spots.

Duroy, uneasy and displeased, thought: "This place will cost, Lord knows how much. I shall have to borrow again. It is idiotic what she has done."

The door opened, and Clotilde came in like a whirlwind, with outstretched arms and rustling skirts. She was delighted. "Isn't it nice, eh, isn't it nice? And on the ground floor, too; no stairs to go up. One could get in and out of the windows without the doorkeeper seeing one. How we will love one another here!"

He kissed her coldly, not daring to put the question that rose to his lips. She had placed a large parcel on the little round table in the middle of the room. She opened it, and took out a cake of soap, a bottle of scent, a sponge, a box of hairpins, a b.u.t.tonhook, and a small pair of curling tongs to set right her fringe, which she got out of curl every time. And she played at moving in, seeking a place for everything, and derived great amus.e.m.e.nt from it.

She kept on chattering as she opened the drawers. "I must bring a little linen, so as to be able to make a change if necessary. It will be very convenient. If I get wet, for instance, while I am out, I can run in here to dry myself. We shall each have one key, beside the one left with the doorkeeper in case we forget it. I have taken the place for three months, in your name, of course, since I could not give my own."

Then he said: "You will let me know when the rent is to be paid."

She replied, simply: "But it is paid, dear."

"Then I owe it to you."

"No, no, my dear; it does not concern you at all; this is a little fancy of my own."

He seemed annoyed: "Oh, no, indeed; I can't allow that."

She came to him in a supplicating way, and placing her hands on his shoulders, said: "I beg of you, George; it will give me so much pleasure to feel that our little nest here is mine--all my own. You cannot be annoyed at that. How can you? I wanted to contribute that much towards our loves. Say you agree, Georgy; say you agree."

She implored him with looks, lips, the whole of her being. He held out, refusing with an irritated air, and then he yielded, thinking that, after all, it was fair. And when she had gone, he murmured, rubbing his hands, and without seeking in the depths of his heart whence the opinion came on that occasion: "She is very nice."

He received, a few days later, another telegram running thus: "My husband returns to-night, after six weeks' inspection, so we shall have a week off. What a bore, darling.--Clo."

Duroy felt astounded. He had really lost all idea of her being married.

But here was a man whose face he would have liked to see just once, in order to know him. He patiently awaited the husband's departure, but he pa.s.sed two evenings at the Folies Bergere, which wound up with Rachel.

Then one morning came a fresh telegram: "To-day at five.--Clo."

They both arrived at the meeting-place before the time. She threw herself into his arms with an outburst of pa.s.sion, and kissed him all over the face, and then said: "If you like, when we have loved one another a great deal, you shall take me to dinner somewhere. I have kept

myself disengaged."

It was at the beginning of the month, and although his salary was long since drawn in advance, and he lived from day to day upon money gleaned on every side, Duroy happened to be in funds, and was pleased at the opportunity of spending something upon her, so he replied: "Yes, darling, wherever you like."

They started off, therefore, at about seven, and gained the outer boulevards. She leaned closely against him, and whispered in his ear: "If you only knew how pleased I am to walk out on your arm; how I love to feel you beside me."

He said: "Would you like to go to Pere Lathuile's?"

"Oh, no, it is too swell. I should like something funny, out of the way!

a restaurant that shopmen and work-girls go to. I adore dining at a country inn. Oh! if we only had been able to go into the country."

As he knew nothing of the kind in the neighborhood, they wandered along the boulevard, and ended by going into a wine-shop where there was a dining-room. She had seen through the window two bareheaded girls seated at tables with two soldiers. Three cab-drivers were dining at the further end of the long and narrow room, and an individual impossible to cla.s.sify under any calling was smoking, stretched on a chair, with his legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in the waist-band of his trousers, and his head thrown back over the top bar. His jacket was a museum of stains, and in his swollen pockets could be noted the neck of a bottle, a piece of bread, a parcel wrapped up in a newspaper, and a dangling piece of string. He had thick, tangled, curly hair, gray with scurf, and his cap was on the floor under his chair.