Money (Oxford World’s Classics) (45 page)

The Baroness at once announced her pretext:

‘Monsieur, I have taken it upon myself to see you personally with my request… It’s a lottery for charity…’
*

He didn’t let her go on, for he was very charitable and always bought two tickets, especially when ladies he had met in society took the trouble to bring them to him. But he had to ask her to wait a
moment, as a clerk had brought him the papers of some deal or other. Enormous numbers were rapidly exchanged.

‘Fifty-two million, you were saying? And the credit was how much?’

‘Sixty million, Sir.’

‘Ah well, take it up to seventy-five million.’

He was just getting back to the Baroness, when a word he overheard in a conversation his son-in-law was having with a jobber made him rush over to him.

‘But not at all! At the rate of five hundred and eighty-seven fifty, that makes ten sous less per share.’

‘Oh, Monsieur,’ said the jobber, humbly, ‘it would only make forty-three francs less.’

‘What! Forty-three francs! But that’s enormous! Do you think I steal money? Everyone should get what’s due. That’s all I know!’

At last, to be able to talk in peace, he decided to take the Baroness into the dining-room, where the table was already laid. He was not fooled by the pretext of the charity lottery, for he knew of her affair, thanks to a whole police-force of obsequious informers, and he easily guessed that she had come on some serious matter. So he came straight to the point.

‘Come now; tell me what you have to say to me.’

She affected surprise. She had nothing to say, she only wanted to thank him for his kindness.

‘So you haven’t been given some message for me?’

And he seemed disappointed, as if he had thought for a moment that she had come on a secret mission from Saccard, about some scheme or other from that madman.

Now that they were alone, she looked at him with a smile and that falsely ardent air of hers, by which men were so futilely excited.

‘No, no, I have nothing to say to you, and since you are so kind, I might rather perhaps have something to ask of you.’

She leant over towards him, brushing against his knee with her delicate gloved hands. She told him about herself, spoke of her deplorable marriage to a foreigner who had never understood either her nature or her needs. And she explained how she had taken to gambling in order to maintain her position in society. And finally she told of her solitude, and her need for advice and guidance on the frightening terrain of the Bourse, where any false step can cost one dear.

‘But’, he interrupted, ‘I thought you already had someone.’

‘Oh, someone,’ she murmured with a gesture of deep disdain. ‘No, no, there’s no one, I have no one… it’s your advice I’d like to have, you the master, the god. And really it wouldn’t cost you much just to be my friend and say a word to me, just a word from time to time. If you only knew how happy you’d make me, and how grateful I’d be—oh! with my whole being.’

She drew even closer, wrapping him in her warm breath, and the fine and powerful scent her whole body exhaled. But he remained very calm, not even drawing back, his flesh being quite dead, without a twinge of excitement to suppress. While she was speaking, he, whose digestion was also destroyed, and who lived on a milk diet, was taking some grapes, one by one, out of a fruit-bowl on the table and eating them mechanically, the only debauch he sometimes allowed himself, in his most sensual moments, knowing he would pay for it with days of suffering.

He gave the sardonic smile of a man who knows he is invincible, when the Baroness, as if forgetfully, in the ardour of her plea, at last laid on his knee her little seductive hand with its predatory fingers, supple as a nest of snakes. Smiling, he took that hand and removed it, nodding a thank-you as if refusing a useless gift. And without wasting any more time he went straight to the point:

‘Look, you are very charming. And I’d like to be helpful to you… So, my beautiful friend, on the day you bring me a piece of good advice, I promise to do the same for you. Come and tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do… That’s a bargain, right?’

He had got up, and she had to go back with him into the big room. She had perfectly well understood the bargain he was offering: espionage and treason. But she chose not to reply, and took it upon herself to talk once more about her charity lottery; while he, with a mocking nodding of his head, seemed to add that he didn’t really need any help, for the logical and inevitable outcome would happen anyway, even if perhaps a little later. And when at last she left, he was already caught up again in other matters, in the extraordinary tumult of this great money market, amid the procession of market people, the rushing about of the clerks, and the playing of the grandchildren, who had just torn the doll’s head off, with shouts of triumph. Gundermann sat down at his narrow table and, absorbed in the contemplation of a sudden new idea, became deaf to everything.

Baroness Sandorff twice went back to the offices of
L’Ésperance
to give Jantrou an account of her actions, but he was not there. At last Dejoie let her in one day, when his daughter Nathalie was chatting with Madame Jordan on a bench in the corridor. It had been raining torrents since the day before; and in this damp, grey weather the mezzanine of the old building, deep in the dark well of the courtyard, seemed dreadfully melancholy. The gas was lit in the murky twilight. Marcelle, waiting for Jordan, who was out hunting for money to pay a new instalment to Busch, was listening with a melancholy air to Nathalie, who was chattering away like a conceited magpie, with her harsh voice and the angular gestures of a girl grown up too fast in Paris.

‘You understand, Madame, Papa doesn’t want to sell. A certain person is urging him to sell, trying to frighten him into it. I shan’t name the person, for it’s hardly her role to go around frightening people… Now it’s I who am stopping Papa from selling… Sell? Not likely, when it’s still going up! You’d have to be really stupid, wouldn’t you?’

Marcelle simply answered: ‘No doubt.’

‘The shares, you know, are at two thousand five hundred,’ Nathalie went on. ‘I keep the accounts, for Papa can hardly write… So, with our eight shares, that already makes twenty thousand francs. Eh? Isn’t that nice!… At first, Papa wanted to stop at eighteen thousand, because that was the sum he wanted: six thousand francs for my dowry and twelve thousand for him, a little income of six hundred francs that he would really have earned, after all this excitement… But say, isn’t it lucky he didn’t sell? For now there are two thousand francs more!… So now we want more, we want an income of at least a thousand francs. And we shall have it, Monsieur Saccard has said so… He is so nice, Monsieur Saccard!’

Marcelle could not help smiling.

‘So you’re not intending to get married any more?’

‘Oh yes, yes, as soon as the shares stop rising… We were in a hurry, especially Theodore’s father, because of his business. But after all, one can hardly block up the source when the money’s coming through. Oh, Theodore understands, especially since if Papa has a better income, there’s that much more capital to come our way in due course. My goodness! It’s worth considering… And there you are, we are all waiting. We’ve had the six thousand francs for months, so
we could get married, but we prefer to let the francs multiply… Do you read the articles about the shares in the newspapers?’

And, without waiting for an answer, she added:

‘Myself, I read them in the evening. Papa brings me the newspapers… He has read them already and I have to reread them for him… We could go on and on reading them, it’s so lovely, the things they promise. When I go to bed my head is full of them, and I dream of them in the night. And Papa, too, tells me that he sees things that are very good omens. The day before yesterday we both had the same dream, about shovelling up five-franc coins in the street. It was very funny.’

Once again she stopped short to ask: ‘How many shares do you have?’

‘We don’t have any,’ Marcelle replied.

Nathalie’s little face, with her pale blonde hair flying around it, took on an expression of immense pity. Ah, the poor souls who had no shares! And when her father called her to ask her to deliver a package of proofs to a reporter on her way back up to the Batignolles, she took herself off with the amusing self-importance of a capitalist who, almost every day now, went down to the newspaper office to learn the stock-market prices as soon as possible.

Left by herself on the bench, Marcelle sank into a melancholy reverie, she who was usually so cheerful and stalwart. Lord! How dark it was, and how dismal! And her poor husband pacing the streets in this torrential rain! He had such contempt for money, was so uncomfortable at the mere idea of concerning himself with it, that it cost him a huge effort to ask for money even from those who owed it to him. Lost in thought, and deaf to everything, she began to relive her day since waking, this bad day; whilst the feverish work of the newspaper went on all around her, the rushing about of reporters, the hustle and bustle of news items coming in, doors slamming and bells ringing.

First of all, at nine o’clock, when Jordan had just left to cover an investigation into an accident, Marcelle, who had barely had time to wash and was still in her chemise, was amazed to see Busch descending on them along with two very dirty-looking men, perhaps bailiffs, or else bandits, she hadn’t been able to decide. That abominable Busch, no doubt taking advantage of the fact that there was only a woman there, declared that they were going to seize everything, if she
didn’t pay up immediately. She had argued in vain, having no knowledge of any of the legal formalities; he maintained with such vigour that the judgement had been notified, and the notice displayed, that she ended up quite distraught, believing these things might be possible without one’s knowing about them. But she did not give up, explaining that her husband would not even be back for lunch and that she would not allow them to touch anything until he was there. There then ensued the most painful of scenes between these three undesirable persons and the not fully dressed young woman, with her hair down on her shoulders, the men already making an inventory of everything, and she closing the cupboards, and throwing herself in front of the door, to try to stop them taking anything out. Her poor little lodging that she was so proud of, her few bits of furniture that she had polished until they shone, and the Turkish bedroom curtain she had put up herself! She kept shouting, with fierce courage, that they would have to walk over her dead body; and she yelled out that Busch was a scoundrel and a thief, yes, a thief who had no shame even about demanding seven hundred and thirty francs and fifteen centimes, not to mention new costs, for a debt of three hundred francs, a debt bought for a hundred sous as part of a heap of rags and old iron! To think that they had already paid four hundred francs in instalments, and that this thief now spoke of carrying off their furniture as payment for the three hundred or so francs he still wanted to steal from them! And he knew perfectly well that they were honest people who would have paid him straight away if only they had the money. And he was taking advantage of her being on her own, to frighten her and reduce her to tears, unable to answer back, ignorant of legal procedure as she was. You scoundrel! You thief! You thief! Busch, now furious, shouted even more loudly than she did, fiercely beating his breast: Wasn’t he an honest man? Hadn’t he paid for the debt with good money? He had the law on his side and meant to see the thing through. However, when one of the two very dirty-looking men began opening the cupboard drawers in search of linen, Marcelle took on such a terrible air, threatening to rouse the whole house, and the street, that the Jew calmed down a bit. At last, after another half-hour of sordid argument, he had agreed to wait until the next day, swearing angrily that he would then take everything, if she did not keep her word. Oh, what a burning shame she still felt, to have had those horrible men in their home, wounding all her tender feelings, all her modesty,
as they rummaged about even in her bed, making such a stink in that happy bedroom that she had to leave the window wide open after they’d gone!

But another even greater grief lay in wait for Marcelle that day. She had thought of running straight away to her parents to borrow the money, so that when her husband returned in the evening, she could save him from despair, and be able to make him laugh at the events of that morning. She could already see herself describing the great battle, the ferocious assault upon their household, and the heroic way in which she had repulsed the attack. Her heart was beating fast as she entered the little house in the Rue Legendre, that comfortable house in which she had grown up, but where she thought she would now find only strangers, so different and so icy was the atmosphere. As her parents were just sitting down to eat, she had accepted their invitation to join them, to try to make them more friendly. Throughout the meal, the conversation remained stuck on the rise of the Universals, their price having gone up twenty francs just the day before; and she was astonished to find her mother more feverish, more grasping even than her father, though she, at the start, had quivered with fear at the very thought of speculation; but now, with the ferocity of a woman converted, it was she who, desperately eager for a great stroke of luck, chided him for his timidity. From the very first course, she had lost her temper, amazed that he was talking of selling their seventy-five shares at the unhoped-for price of two thousand five hundred and twenty francs, which would have made them a handsome profit of a hundred and eighty-nine thousand francs, more than a hundred thousand francs above the purchase price. Sell! When
La Cote financière
was promising a price of three thousand francs! Was he going mad? For after all,
La Cote financière
was long known for its honesty, and he himself had often said that if you followed that paper, you had nothing to worry about! Ah, no! Absolutely not, she was not going to let him sell! She would rather sell their house to buy more shares! And Marcelle, silent, felt a pang at the heart on hearing all these huge sums flying about with such passion, and wondered how she was going to dare to ask for a loan of five hundred francs in this house taken over by gambling, this house in which she had seen the steadily rising flood of financial newspapers which were now drowning it in the intoxicating dreams of their advertisements. At last, when the time came for dessert, she had risked it: they needed five hundred
francs, or they were going to be sold up, surely her parents could not abandon them in this disaster. Her father had at once bowed his head, with an embarrassed glance at his wife. But her mother was already firmly refusing. Five hundred francs! Where were they expected to find them? All their capital was tied up in their dealings; and besides, she returned to her old diatribes: when you married a pauper, a man who wrote books, you had to accept the consequences of your folly, not try to fall back as a burden on your family. No! She didn’t have a sou to offer idlers who affect a fine contempt for money, dreaming only of devouring that of other people. And she had allowed her daughter to leave in despair, with a heart bleeding from finding her mother unrecognizable, that mother who had once been so sensible and kind.