The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (22 page)

‘Well, Bourdoncle!’ shouted Mouret, ‘are you still worried?’

He had returned to his favourite position, at the top of the mezzanine staircase, by the balustrade; and, surveying the massacre of materials spread out below him, he gave a victorious laugh. His fears of the morning, that moment of unpardonable weakness which nobody would ever know about, had given him an even greater desire for triumph. And so the campaign was finally won, the small tradespeople of the neighbourhood reduced to shreds, Baron Hartmann, with his millions and his building sites, conquered. As he watched the cashiers bent over
their ledgers, adding up the long columns of figures, as he listened to the tinkle of the gold falling from their fingers into brass bowls, he could already see the Ladies’ Paradise growing beyond all measure, its hall expanding, its arcades being extended as far as the Rue du Dix-Décembre.

‘Aren’t you convinced now,’ he resumed, ‘that the shop is too small? We could have sold twice as much.’

Bourdoncle was happy to humble himself; he was delighted in fact at having been wrong. But then they saw a sight which made them serious again: Lhomme, the chief sales cashier, had just collected the individual takings from each cash-desk as he did every evening; after adding them up, he usually wrote out the total amount on a sheet of paper and put it on his spike-file; he would then carry the takings up to the counting-house, in a wallet or bags according to the type of cash. On that particular day gold and silver predominated, and he slowly went upstairs, carrying three enormous bags. As he had lost his right arm, which was amputated at the elbow, he clasped them to his chest with his left arm, holding one of them firmly with his chin to prevent it slipping. His heavy breathing could be heard from afar as he went along, laden down and proud, amid the respectful shop assistants.

‘How much, Lhomme?’ asked Mouret.

‘Eighty thousand, seven hundred and forty-two francs, and ten centimes!’

A laugh of pleasure shook the Ladies’ Paradise. News of the figure spread rapidly. It was the highest figure ever attained in one day by a draper’s shop.

That evening, when Denise went up to bed, she leaned against the walls of the narrow corridor under the zinc roof. Once in her room and with the door closed, she threw herself on the bed; her feet were hurting her so much. For a long time she stared vacantly at the dressing-table, at the wardrobe, at the whole bare room. This was where she was going to live; and thoughts of her first horrible, endless day welled up in her mind. She would never have the courage to go through it again. Then she noticed that she was dressed in silk; her uniform depressed her, and before unpacking her trunk she had a childish desire to put on her old woollen dress, which had been left on the back of a chair.
But when she was once more dressed in her own poor garment she was overcome with emotion, and the sobs which she had been holding back since the morning suddenly burst forth in a flood of bitter tears. She fell back on the bed again, weeping at the thought of the two children, and she went on weeping, without having the strength to take off her shoes, completely overcome with weariness and sorrow.

T
HE
next day Denise had scarcely been in the department for half an hour when Madame Aurélie said to her in her sharp voice:

‘Mademoiselle Baudu, you’re wanted in the head office.’

The girl found Mouret alone, sitting in the great office hung with green rep. He had just remembered the ‘unkempt girl’, as Bourdoncle called her; and, although he was usually reluctant to play the policeman, he had had the idea of sending for her to give her a bit of a jolt, in case she was still looking dowdy like a girl from the provinces. The day before, in spite of the joke he had made, his vanity had been wounded when the smartness of one of his salesgirls had been discussed in front of Madame Desforges. His feelings were confused, a mixture of sympathy and anger.

‘Mademoiselle Baudu,’ he began, ‘we took you on out of consideration for your uncle, and you must not put us to the painful necessity …’

But he stopped. Opposite him, on the other side of the desk, Denise was standing erect, serious and pale. Her silk dress was no longer too big, but fitted tightly round her pretty figure, moulding the pure lines of her virgin shoulders; and if her hair, knotted in thick braids, remained untamed, she was at least trying to control it. She had fallen asleep fully clothed, all her tears spent, and when she woke at about four o’clock she had felt ashamed of her attack of nervous sensibility. She had immediately set about taking in her dress, and had spent an hour in front of the narrow mirror, combing her hair, without being able to smooth it down as she would have liked.

‘Oh! Thank goodness,’ murmured Mouret. ‘You look better this morning … But there’s still that terrible hair!’

He had got up, and went over to her to try and smooth it down with the same familiar gesture as Madame Aurélie when she had tried to arrange it the day before.

‘There! Tuck that one behind your ear … The bun is too high.’

She said nothing, but let him continue to arrange her hair. In spite of her vow to be brave, when she had reached the office she had been cold all over, certain that she had been sent for to be given notice. And Mouret’s obvious kindness did not reassure her; she was still afraid of him, she still felt an uneasiness when close to him, which she explained as a natural anxiety in the presence of a powerful man on whom her fate depended. When he saw how she was trembling as his hands brushed against the nape of her neck, he regretted his gesture of kindness, for the one thing he was afraid of was losing his authority.

‘So remember, Mademoiselle Baudu,’ he resumed, once more putting the desk between them, ‘try to pay attention to your appearance. You’re not in Valognes any more; study the girls here in Paris … If your uncle’s name was enough to allow you into our shop, I would like to believe that you will live up to what you seemed to me to promise. Unfortunately, not everyone here shares my opinion … So now you’ve been warned, haven’t you? Don’t prove me wrong.’

He was treating her like a child, with more pity than kindness, his curiosity about the feminine sex merely awakened by the disturbing woman he felt developing in this poor, awkward child. And while he was lecturing her, she, having noticed the portrait of Madame Hédouin whose handsome regular face was smiling gravely in its gold frame, felt herself trembling once more, in spite of the encouraging things he was saying to her. It was the dead lady, the one whom the neighbourhood accused him of having killed so that he could found the shop on her life-blood.

Mouret was still talking.

‘You can go,’ he said at last, and he carried on writing without standing up.

She left, and in the corridor she heaved a deep sigh of relief. From that day on Denise showed great courage. Beneath her attacks of sensitivity her common sense was always at work; the fact of being weak and alone strengthened her resolve, and she carried on cheerfully with the task she had set herself. She made very little fuss, but went straight ahead to her goal ignoring all obstacles; and she did so simply and naturally, for this invincible gentleness was the essence of her nature.

At first she had to learn to cope with the terrible rigours of work in the department. The parcels of clothes made her arms ache so much that, during the first six weeks, she would cry out with pain when she turned over at night, utterly worn out, her shoulders black and blue. But her shoes caused her even more suffering, for they were heavy shoes she had brought from Valognes, lack of money preventing her from replacing them with light boots. She was always on her feet, trotting about from morning to night, scolded if she was caught leaning up against the woodwork for a minute, and her feet, which were like the feet of a little girl, were swollen and felt as though they were being crushed by instruments of torture; her heels were inflamed and throbbed, the soles of her feet were covered with blisters, the skin of which was peeling off and stuck to her stockings. She felt her whole body being worn down, her limbs and organs were strained by the exhaustion of her legs, she had sudden disorders of a feminine nature which were betrayed by the pallor of her skin. And yet, although she was so thin and looked so frail, she kept at it, while many salesgirls were forced to leave the drapery business because they contracted occupational diseases. When she was almost ready to give in, worn out by work which would have made men succumb, she kept going, smiling and erect, because of her obstinate courage and her ability to suffer with good grace.

A further torment was that the whole department was against her. To her physical martyrdom was added the surreptitious persecution of her colleagues. Two months of patience and gentleness had not so far disarmed them. She was the object of wounding remarks and cruel tricks, and constant slights which, in her need for affection, cut her to the quick. They had teased her for a long time about her unfortunate first day; the words ‘clogs’ and ‘gollywog’ circulated, girls who failed to make a sale were ‘sent to Valognes’, in short she was considered the duffer of the counter. Later on, as she quickly became accustomed to the workings of the shop, and proved herself to be a remarkable saleswoman, there was indignant amazement, and from then on the girls conspired never to let her have a good customer. Marguerite and Clara pursued her with instinctive hatred, joining forces in order not to be destroyed by this newcomer whom they
really feared in spite of their affectation of disdain. As for Madame Aurélie, she was hurt by the girl’s proud reserve, by the fact that she did not hover round her with an air of admiration; she therefore abandoned Denise to the spite of girls she particularly liked, court favourites who were always sucking up to her, busy feeding her with the endless flattery which her strong, authoritarian personality needed to make it blossom out. For a while the assistant buyer, Madame Frédéric, seemed not to enter into the conspiracy, but this must have been an oversight, for she became just as brutal as the others as soon as she realized the difficulties she might get into because of her good manners. Denise was thus completely abandoned, and they were all utterly hostile to the ‘unkempt girl’, whose life was a perpetual struggle; in spite of her courage it was with the greatest difficulty that she succeeded in keeping her place in the department.

Such was her life now: she had to smile, put on a charming, gracious manner, and wear a silk dress which didn’t even belong to her; ill-fed and ill-treated, she suffered agonies of fatigue, in continual fear of being brutally dismissed. Her room was her only refuge, the only place where she would still give way to tears when she’d suffered too much during the day. But a terrible coldness came from the zinc roof when it was covered with December snow; she had to curl up in bed, pile all her clothes on top of her, and cry under the blanket so that her face didn’t get chapped from the frost. Mouret no longer spoke to her. When she received one of Bourdoncle’s stern looks during business hours she would begin to tremble, for she sensed in him a natural enemy, who wouldn’t forgive her the slightest lapse. In the midst of this universal hostility, she was surprised by the strange benevolence of Jouve; if he found her on her own he would smile at her, and try to say something nice; twice he had saved her from being reprimanded, although she’d showed him no gratitude, for she was more troubled than touched by his protection.

One evening, after dinner, while the girls were tidying the cupboards, Joseph came to tell Denise that a young man was asking for her downstairs. She went down, feeling very apprehensive:

‘So!’ said Clara, ‘she’s got a young man, has she?’

‘He must be desperate …’ said Marguerite.

Downstairs, at the main door, Denise found her brother Jean. She’d expressly forbidden him to come to the shop like this, as it made a very bad impression. But he seemed so beside himself that she didn’t dare scold him; he had no cap and was out of breath from having run all the way from the Faubourg du Temple.

‘Have you got ten francs?’ he stammered. ‘Give me ten francs or I’m done for.’

The young rascal looked so funny, with his flowing blond locks and his handsome girlish face, blurting out his melodramatic phrase, that she would have smiled had it not been for the anguish which this demand for money caused her.

‘What do you mean, ten francs?’ she murmured. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

He blushed and explained that he had met a friend’s sister. Denise stopped him, feeling equally embarrassed, not wishing to know any more about it. Twice already he had come running to her for similar loans; but the first time it had only been a question of one franc twenty-five centimes, and the second time one franc fifty. He was always getting involved with women.

‘I can’t give you ten francs,’ she went on. ‘I haven’t paid for Pépé this month yet, and I’ve only just got enough for that. I’ll hardly have enough left over to buy a pair of boots, which I need very badly … You really are unreasonable, Jean. It’s too bad of you.’

‘Then I’m lost,’ he repeated, with a tragic gesture. ‘Listen, Sis: she’s tall and dark; we went to a café with her brother, and I never thought that the drinks…’

She had to interrupt him again, and, as his eyes were filling with tears, she took out her purse and slipped a ten-franc coin into his hand. Immediately he began to laugh.

‘I knew you would … But I swear I’ll never ask you again! I’d have to be an absolute scoundrel to do that.’

And he ran off, kissing her wildly on the cheek. The employees watching from inside the shop seemed quite astonished.

That night Denise slept badly. Since she had started work at the Ladies’ Paradise, money had been a bitter worry to her. She was still on probation, without a regular salary; and as the girls in the department prevented her from selling, she could only just
manage to pay for Pépé’s board and lodging, thanks to the handful of unimportant customers they let her have. It was a time of dire poverty—poverty in a silk dress. Often she had to stay up all night repairing her small stock of clothes, mending her underwear, darning her night-dresses as if they were lace, not to mention her shoes, which she had patched as skilfully as any cobbler could have done. She risked washing things in her basin. Her old woollen dress worried her most of all, for she had no other, and was forced to put it on every evening when she took off the uniform silk dress, and that wore it out terribly; a spot on it gave her a fever, the slightest tear was a catastrophe. And she had nothing for herself, not a penny to help her buy the trifles a woman needs: she had had to wait two weeks to renew her stock of needles and thread. So it was a real disaster when Jean turned up all of a sudden with his stories of love-affairs and wrecked her budget. Each franc he took made a huge hole in it. As for finding ten francs the next day, there was not the slightest hope of that. Until daybreak she had nightmares of Pépé being thrown into the street, while she lifted up the paving stones with her bruised fingers to see if there was any money underneath.