Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete

G >> Guy de Maupassant >> Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete


"'So long, then; till to-morrow noon!'

"'So long!'

"I spent the morning working in the office of the collector-general of
the Department. The chief wished me to stay to luncheon, but I told him
that I had an engagement with a friend. As he had to go out, he
accompanied me.

"I asked him:

"'Can you tell me how I can find the Rue du Coq-qui-Chante?'

"He answered:

"'Yes, it's only five minutes' walk from here. As I have nothing special
to do, I will take you there.'

"We started out and soon found ourselves there. It was a wide,
fine-looking street, on the outskirts of the town. I looked at the houses
and I noticed No. 17. It was a large house with a garden behind it. The
facade, decorated with frescoes, in the Italian style, appeared to me as
being in bad taste. There were goddesses holding vases, others swathed in
clouds. Two stone cupids supported the number of the house.

"I said to the treasurer:

"'Here is where I am going.'

"I held my hand out to him. He made a quick, strange gesture, said
nothing and shook my hand.

"I rang. A maid appeared. I asked:

"'Monsieur Patience, if you please?'

"She answered:

"'Right here, sir. Is it to monsieur that you wish to speak?'

"'Yes.'

"The hall was decorated with paintings from the brush of some local
artist. Pauls and Virginias were kissing each other under palm trees
bathed in a pink light. A hideous Oriental lantern was ranging from the
ceiling. Several doors were concealed by bright hangings.

"But what struck me especially was the odor. It was a sickening and
perfumed odor, reminding one of rice powder and the mouldy smell of a
cellar. An indefinable odor in a heavy atmosphere as oppressive as that
of public baths. I followed the maid up a marble stairway, covered with a
green, Oriental carpet, and was ushered into a sumptubus parlor.

"Left alone, I looked about me.

"The room was richly furnished, but in the pretentious taste of a
parvenu. Rather fine engravings of the last century represented women
with powdered hair dressed high surprised by gentlemen in interesting
positions. Another lady, lying in a large bed, was teasing with her foot
a little dog, lost in the sheets. One drawing showed four feet, bodies
concealed behind a curtain. The large room, surrounded by soft couches,
was entirely impregnated with that enervating and insipid odor which I
had already noticed. There seemed to be something suspicious about the
walls, the hangings, the exaggerated luxury, everything.

"I approached the window to look into the garden. It was very big, shady,
beautiful. A wide path wound round a grass plot in the midst of which was
a fountain, entered a shrubbery and came out farther away. And, suddenly,
yonder, in the distance, between two clumps of bushes, three women
appeared. They were walking slowly, arm in arm, clad in long, white
tea-gowns covered with lace. Two were blondes and the other was
dark-haired. Almost immediately they disappeared again behind the trees.
I stood there entranced, delighted with this short and charming
apparition, which brought to my mind a whole world of poetry. They had
scarcely allowed themselves to be seen, in just the proper light, in that
frame of foliage, in the midst of that mysterious, delightful park. It
seemed to me that I had suddenly seen before me the great ladies of the
last century, who were depicted in the engravings on the wall. And I
began to think of the happy, joyous, witty and amorous times when manners
were so graceful and lips so approachable.

"A deep voice male me jump. Patience had come in, beaming, and held out
his hands to me.

"He looked into my eyes with the sly look which one takes when divulging
secrets of love, and, with a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his
sumptuous parlor, his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the
back of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the note of pride was
prominent, he said:

"'And to think that I began with nothing--my wife and my
sister-in-law!'"




ABANDONED

"I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in
such weather as this. You have had some very strange notions for the last
two months. You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have
never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have
been married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without
consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for
walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a
country walk on the hottest day of the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with
you, as he is ready to gratify all your whims. As for me, I am going back
to have a nap."

Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:

"Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?"

He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former years:

"I will go wherever you go," he replied.

"Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke," Monsieur de Cadour said; and
he went back to the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an hour or two.

As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off,
and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his hand:

"At last! at last!"

"You are mad," he said in a whisper. "I assure you that you are mad.
Think of the risk you are running. If that man--"

She started.

"Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him."

"Very well," he said abruptly, "if our son guesses anything, if he has
any suspicions, he will have you, he will have us both in his power. You
have got on without seeing him for the last forty years. What is the
matter with you to-day?"

They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea to the
town, and now they turned to the right, to go to Etretat. The white road
stretched in front of him, then under a blaze of brilliant sunshine, so
they went on slowly in the burning heat. She had taken her old friend's
arm, and was looking straight in front of her, with a fixed and haunted
gaze, and at last she said:

"And so you have not seen him again, either?"

"No, never."

"Is it possible?"

"My dear friend, do not let us begin that discussion again. I have a wife
and children and you have a husband, so we both of us have much to fear
from other people's opinion."

She did not reply; she was thinking of her long past youth and of many
sad things that had occurred. How well she recalled all the details of
their early friendship, his smiles, the way he used to linger, in order
to watch her until she was indoors. What happy days they were, the only
really delicious days she had ever enjoyed, and how quickly they were
over!

And then--her discovery--of the penalty she paid! What anguish!

Of that journey to the South, that long journey, her sufferings, her
constant terror, that secluded life in the small, solitary house on the
shores of the Mediterranean, at the bottom of a garden, which she did not
venture to leave. How well she remembered those long days which she spent
lying under an orange tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amid the
green leaves. How she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose
fresh breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small waves she could
hear lapping on the beach. She dreamed of its immense blue expanse
sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small vessels, and a
mountain on the horizon. But she did not dare to go outside the gate.
Suppose anybody had recognized her!

And those days of waiting, those last days of misery and expectation! The
impending suffering, and then that terrible night! What misery she had
endured, and what a night it was! How she had groaned and screamed! She
could still see the pale face of her lover, who kissed her hand every
moment, and the clean-shaven face of the doctor and the nurse's white
cap.

And what she felt when she heard the child's feeble cries, that wail,
that first effort of a human's voice!

And the next day! the next day! the only day of her life on which she had
seen and kissed her son; for, from that time, she had never even caught a
glimpse of him.

And what a long, void existence hers had been since then, with the
thought of that child always, always floating before her. She had never
seen her son, that little creature that had been part of herself, even
once since then; they had taken him from her, carried him away, and had
hidden him. All she knew was that he had been brought up by some peasants
in Normandy, that he had become a peasant himself, had married well, and
that his father, whose name he did not know, had settled a handsome sum
of money on him.

How often during the last forty years had she wished to go and see him
and to embrace him! She could not imagine to herself that he had grown!
She always thought of that small human atom which she had held in her
arms and pressed to her bosom for a day.

How often she had said to M. d'Apreval: "I cannot bear it any longer; I
must go and see him."

But he had always stopped her and kept her from going. She would be
unable to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and
take advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be lost.

"What is he like?" she said.

"I do not know. I have not seen him again, either."

"Is it possible? To have a son and not to know him; to be afraid of him
and to reject him as if he were a disgrace! It is horrible."

They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun, and
continually ascending that interminable hill.

"One might take it for a punishment," she continued; "I have never had
another child, and I could no longer resist the longing to see him, which
has possessed me for forty years. You men cannot understand that. You
must remember that I shall not live much longer, and suppose I should
never see him, never have seen him! . . . Is it possible? How could I
wait so long? I have thought about him every day since, and what a
terrible existence mine has been! I have never awakened, never, do you
understand, without my first thoughts being of him, of my child. How is
he? Oh, how guilty I feel toward him! Ought one to fear what the world
may say in a case like this? I ought to have left everything to go after
him, to bring him up and to show my love for him. I should certainly have
been much happier, but I did not dare, I was a coward. How I have
suffered! Oh, how those poor, abandoned children must hate their
mothers!"

She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley
was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat,
and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among
the sparse yellow grass on both sides of the road.

"Sit down a little," he said.

She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch and sank down with
her face in her hands. Her white hair, which hung in curls on both sides
of her face, had become tangled. She wept, overcome by profound grief,
while he stood facing her, uneasy and not knowing what to say, and he
merely murmured: "Come, take courage."

She got up.

"I will," she said, and wiping her eyes, she began to walk again with the
uncertain step of an elderly woman.

A little farther on the road passed beneath a clump of trees, which hid a
few houses, and they could distinguish the vibrating and regular blows of
a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil; and presently they saw a wagon
standing on the right side of the road in front of a low cottage, and two
men shoeing a horse under a shed.

Monsieur d'Apreval went up to them.

"Where is Pierre Benedict's farm?" he asked.

"Take the road to the left, close to the inn, and then go straight on; it
is the third house past Poret's. There is a small spruce fir close to the
gate; you cannot make a mistake."

They turned to the left. She was walking very slowly now, her legs
threatened to give way, and her heart was beating so violently that she
felt as if she should suffocate, while at every step she murmured, as if
in prayer:

"Oh! Heaven! Heaven!"

Monsieur d'Apreval, who was also nervous and rather pale, said to her
somewhat gruffly:

"If you cannot manage to control your feelings, you will betray yourself
at once. Do try and restrain yourself."

"How can I?" she replied. "My child! When I think that I am going to see
my child."

They were going along one of those narrow country lanes between
farmyards, that are concealed beneath a double row of beech trees at
either side of the ditches, and suddenly they found themselves in front
of a gate, beside which there was a young spruce fir.

"This is it," he said.

She stopped suddenly and looked about her. The courtyard, which was
planted with apple trees, was large and extended as far as the small
thatched dwelling house. On the opposite side were the stable, the barn,
the cow house and the poultry house, while the gig, the wagon and the
manure cart were under a slated outhouse. Four calves were grazing under
the shade of the trees and black hens were wandering all about the
enclosure.

All was perfectly still; the house door was open, but nobody was to be
seen, and so they went in, when immediately a large black dog came out of
a barrel that was standing under a pear tree, and began to bark
furiously.

There were four bee-hives on boards against the wall of the house.

Monsieur d'Apreval stood outside and called out:

"Is anybody at home?"

Then a child appeared, a little girl of about ten, dressed in a chemise
and a linen, petticoat, with dirty, bare legs and a timid and cunning
look. She remained standing in the doorway, as if to prevent any one
going in.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Is your father in?"

"No."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"And your mother?"

"Gone after the cows."

"Will she be back soon?"

"I don't know."

Then suddenly the lady, as if she feared that her companion might force
her to return, said quickly:

"I shall not go without having seen him."

"We will wait for him, my dear friend."

As they turned away, they saw a peasant woman coming toward the house,
carrying two tin pails, which appeared to be heavy and which glistened
brightly in the sunlight.

She limped with her right leg, and in her brown knitted jacket, that was
faded by the sun and washed out by the rain, she looked like a poor,
wretched, dirty servant.

"Here is mamma," the child said.

When she got close to the house, she looked at the strangers angrily and
suspiciously, and then she went in, as if she had not seen them. She
looked old and had a hard, yellow, wrinkled face, one of those wooden
faces that country people so often have.

Monsieur d'Apreval called her back.

"I beg your pardon, madame, but we came in to know whether you could sell
us two glasses of milk."

She was grumbling when she reappeared in the door, after putting down her
pails.

"I don't sell milk," she replied.

"We are very thirsty," he said, "and madame is very tired. Can we not get
something to drink?"

The peasant woman gave them an uneasy and cunning glance and then she
made up her mind.

"As you are here, I will give you some," she said, going into the house,
and almost immediately the child came out and brought two chairs, which
she placed under an apple tree, and then the mother, in turn, brought out
two bowls of foaming milk, which she gave to the visitors. She did not
return to the house, however, but remained standing near them, as if to
watch them and to find out for what purpose they had come there.

"You have come from Fecamp?" she said.

"Yes," Monsieur d'Apreval replied, "we are staying at Fecamp for the
summer."

And then, after a short silence, he continued:

"Have you any fowls you could sell us every week?"

The woman hesitated for a moment and then replied:

"Yes, I think I have. I suppose you want young ones?"

"Yes, of course."

"'What do you pay for them in the market?"

D'Apreval, who had not the least idea, turned to his companion:

"What are you paying for poultry in Fecamp, my dear lady?"

"Four francs and four francs fifty centimes," she said, her eyes full of
tears, while the farmer's wife, who was looking at her askance, asked in
much surprise:

"Is the lady ill, as she is crying?"

He did not know what to say, and replied with some hesitation:

"No--no--but she lost her watch as we came along, a very
handsome watch, and that troubles her. If anybody should find it, please
let us know."

Mother Benedict did not reply, as she thought it a very equivocal sort of
answer, but suddenly she exclaimed:

"Oh, here is my husband!"

She was the only one who had seen him, as she was facing the gate.
D'Apreval started and Madame de Cadour nearly fell as she turned round
suddenly on her chair.

A man bent nearly double, and out of breath, stood there, ten-yards from
them, dragging a cow at the end of a rope. Without taking any notice of
the visitors, he said:

"Confound it! What a brute!"

And he went past them and disappeared in the cow house.

Her tears had dried quickly as she sat there startled, without a word and
with the one thought in her mind, that this was her son, and D'Apreval,
whom the same thought had struck very unpleasantly, said in an agitated
voice:

"Is this Monsieur Benedict?"

"Who told you his name?" the wife asked, still rather suspiciously.

"The blacksmith at the corner of the highroad," he replied, and then they
were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house,
which formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing
could be seen inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and
footsteps and the sound of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the
floor, and soon the man reappeared in the door, wiping his forehead, and
came toward the house with long, slow strides. He passed the strangers
without seeming to notice them and said to his wife:

"Go and draw me a jug of cider; I am very thirsty."

Then he went back into the house, while his wife went into the cellar and
left the two Parisians alone.

"Let us go, let us go, Henri," Madame de Cadour said, nearly distracted
with grief, and so d'Apreval took her by the arm, helped her to rise, and
sustaining her with all his strength, for he felt that she was nearly
fainting, he led her out, after throwing five francs on one of the
chairs.

As soon as they were outside the gate, she began to sob and said, shaking
with grief:

"Oh! oh! is that what you have made of him?"

He was very pale and replied coldly:

"I did what I could. His farm is worth eighty thousand francs, and that
is more than most of the sons of the middle classes have."

They returned slowly, without speaking a word. She was still crying; the
tears ran down her cheeks continually for a time, but by degrees they
stopped, and they went back to Fecamp, where they found Monsieur de
Cadour waiting dinner for them. As soon as he saw them, he began to laugh
and exclaimed:

"So my wife has had a sunstroke, and I am very glad of it. I really think
she has lost her head for some time past!"

Neither of them replied, and when the husband asked them, rubbing his
hands:

"Well, I hope that, at least, you have had a pleasant walk?"

Monsieur d'Apreval replied:

"A delightful walk, I assure you; perfectly delightful."




THE MAISON TELLIER

They went there every evening about eleven o'clock, just as they would go
to the club. Six or eight of them; always the same set, not fast men, but
respectable tradesmen, and young men in government or some other employ,
and they would drink their Chartreuse, and laugh with the girls, or else
talk seriously with Madame Tellier, whom everybody respected, and then
they would go home at twelve o'clock! The younger men would sometimes
stay later.

It was a small, comfortable house painted yellow, at the corner of a
street behind Saint Etienne's Church, and from the windows one could see
the docks full of ships being unloaded, the big salt marsh, and, rising
beyond it, the Virgin's Hill with its old gray chapel.

Madame Tellier, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors
in the Department of the Eure, had taken up her profession, just as she
would have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice which is so
violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country
places in Normandy. The peasant says:

"It is a paying-business," and he sends his daughter to keep an
establishment of this character just as he would send her to keep a
girls' school.

She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged.
Monsieur and Madame Tellier, who had formerly been innkeepers near
Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the
business at Fecamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning
to assume the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account
of the absence of the proprietors. They were good people enough in their
way, and soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbors.

Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as the new place kept him
in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout, and
his health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the frequenters
of the establishment made much of her; but people said that, personally,
she was quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house could not
discover anything against her. She was tall, stout and affable, and her
complexion, which had become pale in the dimness of her house, the
shutters of which were scarcely ever opened, shone as if it had been
varnished. She had a fringe of curly false hair, which gave her a
juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the ripeness of her figure.
She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of a joke, but there
was a shade of reserve about her, which her occupation had not quite made
her lose. Coarse words always shocked her, and when any young fellow who
had been badly brought up called her establishment a hard name, she was
angry and disgusted.

In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as
friends, yet she very frequently used to say that "she and they were not
made of the same stuff."

Sometimes during the week she would hire a carriage and take some of her
girls into the country, where they used to enjoy themselves on the grass
by the side of the little river. They were like a lot of girls let out
from school, and would run races and play childish games. They had a cold
dinner on the grass, and drank cider, and went home at night with a
delicious feeling of fatigue, and in the carriage they kissed Madame'
Tellier as their kind mother, who was full of goodness and complaisance.

The house had two entrances. At the corner there was a sort of tap-room,
which sailors and the lower orders frequented at night, and she had two
girls whose special duty it was to wait on them with the assistance of
Frederic, a short, light-haired, beardless fellow, as strong as a horse.
They set the half bottles of wine and the jugs of beer on the shaky
marble tables before the customers, and then urged the men to drink.

The three other girls--there were only five of them--formed a
kind of aristocracy, and they remained with the company on the first
floor, unless they were wanted downstairs and there was nobody on the
first floor. The salon de Jupiter, where the tradesmen used to meet, was
papered in blue, and embellished with a large drawing representing Leda
and the swan. The room was reached by a winding staircase, through a
narrow door opening on the street, and above this door a lantern inclosed
in wire, such as one still sees in some towns, at the foot of the shrine
of some saint, burned all night long.

The house, which was old and damp, smelled slightly of mildew. At times
there was an odor of eau de Cologne in the passages, or sometimes from a
half-open door downstairs the noisy mirth of the common men sitting and
drinking rose to the first floor, much to the disgust of the gentlemen
who were there. Madame Tellier, who was on friendly terms with her
customers, did not leave the room, and took much interest in what was
going on in the town, and they regularly told her all the news. Her
serious conversation was a change from the ceaseless chatter of the three
women; it was a rest from the obscene jokes of those stout individuals
who every evening indulged in the commonplace debauchery of drinking a
glass of liqueur in company with common women.

The names of the girls on the first floor were Fernande, Raphaele, and
Rosa, the Jade. As the staff was limited, madame had endeavored that each
member of it should be a pattern, an epitome of the feminine type, so
that every customer might find as nearly as possible the realization of
his ideal. Fernande represented the handsome blonde; she was very tall,
rather fat, and lazy; a country girl, who could not get rid of her
freckles, and whose short, light, almost colorless, tow-like hair, like
combed-out hemp, barely covered her head.

Raphaele, who came from Marseilles, played the indispensable part of the
handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheekbones, which were covered
with rouge, and black hair covered with pomatum, which curled on her
forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had
a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two
false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color of the rest.