A Chambermaid's Diary/Chapter 14

by Octave Mirbeau

XIV

November 18.

Rose is dead. Decidedly, misfortune hangs over the captain’s house. Poor captain! His ferret dead . . . Bourbaki dead . . . and now it is Rose’s turn! After a sickness of some days, she was carried off day before yesterday, in the evening, by a sudden attack of congestion of the lungs. She was buried this morning. From the windows of the linen-room I saw the procession pass in the road. The heavy coffin, borne by six men, was covered with crowns and with bunches of white flowers, like that of a young virgin. A considerable crowd, in long, dark, babbling files,—all Mesnil-Roy—followed Captain Mauger, who, wearing a tightly-fitting black frock-coat, and holding himself very stiffly, led the mourners, in thoroughly military fashion. And the church bells, tolling in the distance, responded to the sound of the rattle waved by the beadle. Madame had warned me that I was not to go to the funeral. However, I had no desire to go. I did not like this fat and wicked woman; her death leaves me very calm and indifferent. Yet perhaps I shall miss Rose; perhaps I shall miss my occasional conversations with her in the road. But what a source of gossip this event must be at the grocer’s!

I was curious to know what impression this sudden death had made upon the captain. And, as my masters were visiting, I took a walk in the afternoon along the hedge. The captain’s garden is sad and deserted. A spade stuck in the ground indicates abandoned work. "The captain will not come into the garden," said I to myself; "he is undoubtedly weeping in his chamber, among the souvenirs." And suddenly I perceive him. He has taken off his fine frock-coat, and put on his working-clothes again, and, with his old foraging-cap on his head, he is engaged in manuring his lawns. I even hear him humming a march in a low voice. He leaves his wheelbarrow, and comes toward me, carrying his fork on his shoulder. "I am glad to see you, Mademoiselle Célestine."

I should like to offer him consolation or pity. I search for words, for phrases. But how can one find a touching word in presence of such a droll face? I content myself with repeating:

"A great misfortune, captain, a great misfortune for you! Poor Rose!"

"Yes, yes," he says, tamely.

His face is devoid of expression. His movements are uncertain. He adds, jabbing his fork into a soft spot in the ground near the hedge:

"Especially as I cannot get along without anybody."

I insist upon Rose’s domestic virtues.

"You will not easily replace her, Captain."

Decidedly, he is not touched at all. One would say even, from looking at his eyes that have suddenly become brighter and from watching his movements, now more alert, that he has been relieved from a great weight.

"Bah!" says he, after a short silence, "everything can be replaced."

This resignation astonishes me, and even scandalizes me a little. To amuse myself, I try to make him understand all he has lost in losing Rose.

"She knew so well your habits, your tastes, your manias! She was so devoted to you!"

"Well, if she had not been, that would have been the last straw," he growled.

And, making a gesture by which he seems to put aside all sorts of objections, he goes on:

"Besides, was she so devoted to me? Oh! I may as well tell you the truth. I had had enough of Rose. Yes, indeed! After we took a little boy to help us, she attended to nothing in the house, and everything went badly, very badly. I could not even have an egg boiled to my taste. And the scenes that went on, from morning to night, apropos of nothing. If I spent ten sous, there were cries and reproaches. And, when J talked with you, as I am doing now,—well, there was a row, indeed; for she was jealous, jealous. Oh!no. She went for you; you should have heard her. In short, I was no longer at home in my own house."

He breathes deeply, noisily, and, with the new and deep joy that a traveler feels on returning from a long journey, he contemplates the sky, the bare grass-plots in the garden, the violet interlacings of the branches of the trees against the light, and his little house.

This joy, so offensive to Rose’s memory, now seems to me very comical. I stimulate the captain to further confidences. And I say to him, in a tone of reproach:

"Captain, I think you are not just to Rose."

"Egad!" he rejoins, quickly. "You do not know; you don’t know anything about it. She did not go to tell you of all the scenes that she made, her tyranny, her jealousy, her egoism. Nothing belonged to me here any longer. Everything in my house was hers. For instance, you would not believe it, my Voltaire arm-chair was never at my disposition. She had it all the time. She had everything, for that matter. To think that I could no longer eat asparagus with oil, because she did not like it! Oh! she did well todie. It was the best thing that could happen to her, for, in some way or other, I should have gotten rid of her. Yes, yes, I should have gotten rid of her. She was becoming too much for me. I had had enough. And let me tell you; if I had died before her, Rose would have been prettily trapped. I had a bitter pill in store for her. My word for it!"

His lip curls in a smile that ends in an atrocious grimace. He continues, chopping each of his words with moist little puffs of laughter:

"You know that I made a will, in which I gave her everything,—house, money, dividends, everything. She must have told you; she told everybody. Yes, but what she did not tell you, because she did not know it, is that, two months later, I made a second will, cancelling the first, in which I did not leave her anything,—not a sou."

Unable to contain himself longer, he bursts out laughing, a strident laugh that scatters through the garden like a flight of scolding sparrows. And he cries:

"Ah! that's an idea, hey? Oh! her head,—you can see it from here,—on learning that I had left my little fortune to the French Academy. For, my little Célestine, it is true; I had left my fortune to the French Academy. Ah! that's an idea!"

I allow his laughter to become quieter, and then I gravely ask him:

"And now, Captain, what are you going to do?"

The captain gives me a long, sly, amorous look, and says:

"Well, that depends on you."

"On me?"

"Yes, on you; on you alone."

"And how is that?"

A moment of silence follows, during which, straightening up and twisting his pointed beard, he seeks to envelop me in a seductive fluid.

"Come," he says, suddenly, "let us go straight to the point. Let us speak squarely,—soldier-fashion. Do you wish to take Rose's place?"

I was expecting the attack. I had seen it coming from the depth of his eyes. It does not surprise me. I receive it with a serious and unmoved expression.

"And the wills, Captain?"

"Oh! I tear them up."

I object:

"But I do not know how to cook."

"Oh! I will do the cooking; I will make my bed; I will do everything."

He becomes gallant, sprightly; his eye sparkles. He leans towards the hedge, stretching out his neck. His eyes become bloodshot. And in a lower voice he says:

"If you came to me, Célestine,—well" . . .

"Well, what?"

"Well, the Lanlaires would die of rage. Ah! that's an idea!"

I lapse into silence, and pretend to be profoundly dreaming. The captain becomes impatient. He digs the heels of his shoes into the sandy path.

"See, Celestine, thirty-five francs a month; the master’s table; the master’s room; a will; does that suit you? Answer me."

"We will see later. But, while waiting, take another."

And I run away that I may not blow into his face the tempest of laughter that is roaring in my throat.

I have, then, only the embarrassment of choice. The captain or Joseph? ‘To live as a servant- mistress, with all the contingencies that such a position involves,—that is, to remain still at the mercy of a stupid, coarse, changeable man, and dependent upon a thousand disagreeable circumstances and a thousand prejudices; or else to marry, and thus acquire a sort of regular and respected liberty, in a situation free from the control of others, and liberated from the caprice of events? Here at last a portion of my dream promises to be realized.

It is very evident that I should have liked a realization on a grander scale. But, when I think how few chances present themselves, in general, in the existence of a woman like me, I must congratulate myself that something is coming to me at last other than this eternal and monotonous tossing back and forth from one house to another, from one bed to another, from one face to another face.

Of course, I put aside at once the captain’s plan. Moreover, I had no need of this last conversation with him to know the sort of grotesque and sinister mountebank, the type of odd humanity, that he represents. Beyond the fact that his physical ugliness is complete,—for there is nothing to relieve and correct it,—he gives one no hold on his soul. Rose believed firmly in her assured domination over this man, and this man tricked her. One cannot dominate nothing; one can have no influence over emptiness. I cannot, without choking with laughter, think of myself for an instant in the arms of this ridiculous personage and caressing him. Yet, in spite of this, I am content, and I feel something akin to pride. However low the source from which it comes, it is none the less an homage, and this homage strengthens my confidence in myself and in my beauty.

Quite different are my feelings toward Joseph. Joseph has taken possession of my mind. He retains it, he holds it captive, he obsesses it. He disturbs me, bewitches me, and frightens me, by turns. Certainly, he is ugly, brutally, horribly ugly; but, when you analyze this ugliness, you find something formidable in it, something that is almost beauty, that is more than beauty, that is above beauty,—something elemental. I do not conceal from myself the difficulty, the danger, of living, whether married or not, with such a man, of whom I am warranted in suspecting everything, and of whom, in reality, I know nothing. And it is this that draws me to him with a dizzy violence. At least he is capable of many things in crime, perhaps, and perhaps also in the direction of good. I do not know. What does he want of me? What will he do with me? Should I be the unscrupulous instrument of plans that I knew nothing of, the plaything of his ferocious passions? Does he even love me? And why does he love me? For my beauty; for my vices; for my intelligence; for my hatred of prejudices,—he who makes parade of all the prejudices? I do not know. In addition to this attraction which the unknown and mysterious has for me, he exercises over me the bitter, powerful charm of force. And this charm, yes, this charm acts more and more on my nerves, conquers my passive and submissive flesh. It is something which I cannot define exactly, something that takes me wholly, by my mind and by my sex, revealing in me instincts of which I was unaware, instincts that slept within me without my knowledge, and that no love, no thrill of voluptuousness had before awakened. And I tremble from head to foot when I remember the words of Joseph, saying to me:

"You are like me, Célestine. Oh! not in features, of course. But our two souls are alike our two souls resemble each other."

Our two souls! Is that possible?

These sensations that I feel are so new, so imperious, so strongly tenacious, that they do not leave me a minute’s rest, and that I remain always under the influence of their stupefying fascination. In vain do I seek to occupy my mind with other thoughts. I try to read.and walk in the garden, when my masters are away, and, when they are at home, to work furiously at my mending in the linen-room. Impossible! Joseph has complete possession of my thought. And not only does he possess it in the present, but he possesses it also in the past. Joseph so interposes himself between my entire past and myself that I see, so to speak, nothing but him, and that this past, with all its ugly or charming faces, draws farther and farther from me, fades away, disappears. Cléophas Biscouille; M. Jean; M. Xavier; William, of whom I have not yet spoken; M. Georges, himself, by whom I believed my soul to have been branded for- ever, as the shoulder of the convict is branded by the red iron; and all those to whom, voluntarily, joyously, passionately, I have given a little or much of myself, of my vibrant flesh and of my sorrowful heart,—all of them shadows already! Un- certain and ludicrous shadows that fade away until they are hardly recollections, and then become confused dreams . . . intangible, forgotten realities . . . vapors . . . nothing. Sometimes, in the kitchen, after dinner, when looking at Joseph and his criminal mouth, and his criminal eyes, and his heavy cheek-bones, and his low, knotty, humpy forehead, upon which the lamplight accumulates hard shadows, I say to myself:

"No, no, it is not possible. “I am under the influence of a fit of madness; I will not, I cannot, love this man. No, no, it is not possible."

And yet it is possible, and it is true. And I must at last confess it to myself, cry out to myself: "I love Joseph!"

Ah! now I understand why one should never make sport of love; why there are women who rush, with all the consciencelessness of murder, with all the invincible force of nature, to the kisses of brutes and to the embraces of monsters, and who voluptuously sound the death-rattle in the sneering faces of demons and bucks.

Joseph has obtained from Madame six days’ leave of absence, and to-morrow he is to start for Cherbourg, pretending to be called by family matters. It is decided; he will buy the little café. But for some months he will not run it himself. He has some one there, a trusted friend, who is to take charge of it.

"Do you understand?" he says tome. "It must first be repainted, and made to look like new; it must be very fine, with its new sign, in gilt letters: ‘To the French Army!’ And besides, I cannot leave my place yet. That I cannot do." "Why not, Joseph?"

"Because I cannot now."

"But when will you go, for good?"

Joseph scratches his neck, gives me a sly’glance, and says:

"As to that I do not know. Perhaps not for six months yet; perhaps sooner; perhaps even later. I cannot tell. It depends."

I feel that he does not wish to speak. Neverthe- less I insist:

"It depends on what?"

He hesitates to answer; then, in a mysterious and, at the same time, somewhat excited tone, he says:

"On a certain matter; on a very important matter."

"But what matter?"

"Oh! on a certain matter, that’s all."

This is uttered in a brusque voice,—a voice not of anger exactly, but of impatience. He refuses to explain further.

He says nothing to me of myself. This astonishes me, and causes me a painful disappointment. Can he have changed his mind? Has my curiosity, my hesitation, wearied him? Yet it is very natural that I should be interested in an event in the success or failure of which I am to share. Can the suspicion that I have not been able to hide, my suspicion of the outrage committed by him upon the little Claire, have caused Joseph to reflect further, and brought about a rupture between us? But I feel from the tremor of my heart that my resolution, deferred out of coquetry, out of a disposition to tease, was well taken. To be free, to be enthroned behind a bar, to command others, to know that one is looked at, desired, adored by so many men! And that is not to be? And this dream is to escape me, as all the others have? I do not wish to seem to be throwing myself at Joseph’s head, but I wish to know what he has in his mind. I put on a sad face, and I sigh:

"When you have gone, Joseph, the house will no longer be endurable to me. I have become so accustomed to you now, to our Conversations."

"Oh! indeed!"

"I too shall go away."

Joseph says nothing.

He walks up and down the harness-room, with anxious brow and preoccupied mind, his hands nervously twirling a pair of garden-shears in the pocket of his blue apron. The expression of his face is unpleasant. I repeat, as I watch him go back and forth:

"Yes, I shall go away; I shall return to Paris."

He utters not a word of protest, not a cry; not even an imploring glance does he turn upon me. He puts a stick of wood in the stove, as the fire is low, and then begins again his silent promenade up and down the room. Why is he like this?

Does he, then, accept this separation? Does he want it? Has he, then, lost his confidence in me, the love that he had for me? Or does he simply fear my imprudence, my eternal questions?

Trembling a little, I ask him:

"Will it cause you no pain, Joseph, if we do not see each other again?"

Without halting in his walk, without even glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, in the manner so characteristic of him, he says:

"Of course. But what can you expect? One cannot oblige people to do what they refuse to do. A thing either pleases, or it does not please."

"What have I refused to do, Joseph?"

"And besides, you are always full of bad ideas about me," he continues, without answering my question.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because" . . .

"No, no, Joseph; you no longer love me; you have something else in mind now. I have refused nothing; I have reflected, that is all. It is natural enough, isn't it? One does not make a life-contract without reflection. My hesitation, on the contrary, ought to make you think well of me. It proves that I am not light-headed,—that I am a serious woman."

"You are a good woman, Célestine, an orderly woman."

"Well, then?"

At last Joseph stops walking, and, gazing at me with profound and still suspicious, but yet tenderer, eyes, he says, slowly:

"It is not that, Célestine. There is no question of that. I do not prevent you from reflecting. Reflect all you like. There is plenty of time, and we will talk again on my return. But what I do not like, you see, is so much curiosity. There are things that do not concern women; there are things" ...

And he finishes his phrase with a shake of his head.

After a moment’s silence he resumes:

"I have nothing else in mind, Célestine. I dream of you; I am crazy over you. As true as the good God exists, what I have said once I say always. We will talk it over again. But you must not be curious. You do what you do; I do what Ido. In that way there is no mistake, no surprise."

Approaching me, he grasps my hands.

"I have a hard head, Célestine; yes, indeed! But what is in it stays in it, and cannot be gotten out of it. I dream of you, Celestine, of you in the little café."