Lucy Stewart, who was conversing with Steiner and Blanche, overheard the invitation. She raised her voice, and said to the banker, “Is it a mania they’ve all got? One of them has even stolen my puppy. Really, now, is it my fault if you’ve discarded her?”
Rose turned her head. Her face was very pale as she looked fixedly at Steiner, slowly sipping her coffee the while, and all the repressed anger she felt at her abandonment gleamed in her eyes like a flame of fire. She understood the matter better than Mignon. It was absurd to try and repeat the Jonquier experiment. That sort of things did not come off twice. Well, so much the worse! she would have Fauchery. She had felt a hankering for him ever since the supper, and if Mignon didn’t like it, it would teach him to act differently another time.
“You are not going to fight, I hope?” Vandeuvres came and said to Lucy Stewart.
“Oh, no! never you fear. Only she had better keep quiet, or I’ll give her a piece of my mind”; and, calling to Fauchery in a haughty tone of voice, Lucy added, “Young ‘un, I’ve got your slippers at home. I’ll have ’em left to-morrow with your concierge.”
He tried to jest about it, but she moved away from him with the air of a queen. Clarisse, who was leaning against the wall so as the more conveniently to drink a glass of kirsch, shrugged her shoulders. What a fuss to make about a man! Wasn’t it the custom, whenever two women found themselves together with their lovers, for each to try and get hold of the other’s? It was quite a settled thing. If she had chosen, she might have scratched out Gaga’s eyes, all on account of Hector. But, pooh! she didn’t care a button. Then, as La Faloise passed near her she contented herself with saying to him, “Listen! you seem to like them very far advanced. You are not satisfied with their being ripe, you want them rotten!”
La Faloise appeared very much put out. He continued uneasy. Seeing Clarisse scoffing at him he suspected her. “No humbug,” he murmured, “you have taken my handkerchief. Give me my handkerchief.”
“What a nuisance he is with his handkerchief!” she cried. “Look here, you idiot; what should I have taken it for?”
“Why,” said he, mistrustfully, “to send it to my relations, so as to compromise me.”
All this while Foucarmont was going in strongly for the liqueurs. He continued to sneer as he watched Labordette, who was drinking his coffee surrounded by the women, and he kept uttering a number of unconnected phrases, much in this style: “The son of a horse-dealer, others said the bastard offspring of a countess—no means, and yet always twenty-five louis in his pocket—the servant of all the girls of easy virtue—a fellow who never went to bed.”
“No, never! never!” he repeated, growing angry. “I can’t help it; I must really slap his face.”
He tossed off a glass of chartreuse. Chartreuse never upset him; not that much, said he, and he clacked his thumb-nail between his teeth. But all of a sudden, just as he was advancing towards Labordette, he turned ghastly pale, and fell all in a heap in front of the sideboard. He was dead drunk. Louise Violaine was in an awful way. She had said that it would end badly; now she would be the rest of the night nursing him. But Gaga reassured her. She examined the officer with the eye of an experienced woman, and declared that there was no cause for alarm. The gentleman would sleep like that for twelve or fifteen hours without the least accident; so they removed Foucarmont.
“Hallo! wherever has Nana got to?” asked Vandeuvres.
Yes, as a matter of fact, she had disappeared on leaving the supper table. They now began to think of her; every one made inquiries. Steiner suddenly became most anxious, questioned Vandeuvres with respect to the old gentleman, who had also disappeared; but the count calmed his fears. He had just seen the old gentleman off. He was a distinguished foreigner, whose name it was unnecessary to mention. He was very rich, and was satisfied with paying for the suppers. Then, every one again forgetting Nana, Vandeuvres noticed Daguenet’s head at the door, signalling to him to come; and in the bedroom, he found the mistress of the house seated quite rigid, with her lips all white, whilst Daguenet and George were standing watching her with looks of consternation.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, surprised.
She did not reply, nor did she even turn her head. He repeated his question.
“I don’t intend to be made a fool of in my own place!” she at length exclaimed. “That’s what’s the matter.”
Then she uttered everything that came readily to her tongue. Yes, yes, she wasn’t an idiot; she could see what it all meant. They had all made a fool of her during supper. They had said the most beastly things, just to show that they didn’t care a curse for her. A parcel of strumpets, who were not fit to clean her boots. She wouldn’t worry herself for them another time, just to be treated in that scurvy way afterwards! She didn’t know what it was kept her from kicking the whole dirty lot out of the place; and, her rage choking her, she sobbed aloud.
“Come, my girl, you’re drunk,” said Vandeuvres in a most affectionate manner. “You must be reasonable.”
No, she refused beforehand; she would remain there. “I may be drunk, it’s very possible; but I intend to be respected.”
For a quarter of an hour past, Daguenet and George had been vainly entreating her to return to the dining-room; but she was obstinate. Her guests might do what they liked; she had too great a contempt for them to return amongst them. Never, never! They might cut her up into pieces, but she would remain in her room.
“I ought to have expected it,” she resumed. “It’s that strumpet Rose who organised the plot; and it’s no doubt she who prevented that respectable lady I invited from coming.”
She was speaking of Madame Robert. Vandeuvres assured her, on his word of honour, that Madame Robert had of her own free will declined the invitation. He listened and discussed without laughing, used to such scenes, and knowing how to deal with women when they were in that state; but the moment he tried to take hold of Nana’s hands, to raise her from her chair and lead her away, she struggled with increased fury. No one would ever make her believe, for instance, that Fauchery had not dissuaded Count Muffat from coming. He was a regular serpent, that Fauchery, a most envious fellow, a man who was capable of sticking to a woman until he had destroyed her happiness; for she knew very well the count had taken a fancy to her. She might have had him.
“He, my dear—never!” exclaimed Vandeuvres, forgetting himself and laughing.
“But why not?” asked she, serious, and slightly sobered.
“Because he’s mixed up with the priests, and if he only touched you with the tip of his finger, he would go and confess it on the morrow. Now listen to a good piece of advice. Don’t let the other one escape.”
For a moment she reflected in silence. Then she rose, and went and bathed her eyes. Yet, when they again tried to get her into the dining-room, she furiously declined to go. Vandeuvres left the room with a smile, without insisting any more; and directly he was gone, she had a fit of tenderness, throwing herself into Daguenet’s arms, and saying,
“Ah! my Mimi, there is no one like you. I love you, as you know! I love you so much! It would be too good if we could always live together. Oh! why are women such unhappy creatures ?”
Then noticing George, who had turned very red on seeing them embrace each other, she kissed him also. Mimi could not be jealous of a baby. She wished Paul and George always to get on well together, because it would be so nice to remain like that, all three knowing that they loved one another so much. But a peculiar noise disturbed them. Some one was snoring in the room. Then, looking about, they discovered Bordenave, who, after drinking his coffee, had apparently made himself comfortable there. He was asleep on two chairs, his head resting on the edge of the bed, and his leg stretched straight out. Nana thought he looked so comic, with his mouth wide open and his nose moving at each snore, that she quite shook with laughter. She left the room, followed by Daguenet and George, and, passing through the dining-room, entered the drawing-room, laughing m
ore than ever.
“Oh, my dear!” cried she, almost throwing herself into Rose’s arms, “you have no idea—come and see.”
All the women were obliged to go with her. She caressingly seized hold of their hands, and dragged them away, in so genuine a transport of gaiety, that they laughed before knowing why. They all disappeared, and then returned after having remained for a minute, with bated breath, around Bordenave, majestically stretched out. And then their laughter burst forth afresh, when one of them called for silence, Bordenave could be plainly heard snoring in the distance.
It was nearly four o‘clock. In the dining-room a card-table had been placed, around which Vandeuvres, Steiner, Mignon, and Labordette hastened to seat themselves. Lucy and Caroline stood behind them betting; whilst Blanche, feeling very drowsy and dissatisfied with her evening, kept asking Vandeuvres every five minutes if they would not soon be going. In the drawing-room others were trying to dance. Daguenet was kindly assisting at the piano, as Nana said she wouldn’t have any strumming, and Mimi could play as many waltzes and polkas as any one could wish. But the dancing flagged; many of the women were reclining on the sofas, chatting among themselves. All on a sudden there was a frightful uproar. Eleven young men, who had just arrived together, were laughing very loudly in the anteroom, and pushing their way towards the drawing-room door. They had just left the ball at the Ministry of the Interior, and were all in evening dress and bedecked with various unknown decorations. Nana, annoyed at the noise they made, called the waiters, who were still in the kitchen, and ordered them to chuck the gentlemen out, swearing that she had never seen them before. Fauchery, Labordette, Daguenet, and the other men hastened forward to insure the respect due to the lady of the house. Angry words were uttered, fists were shaken. Another minute, and there would have been a general punching of heads. However, a little fair-haired fellow, with a most sickly appearance, kept on repeating, “Come now, Nana; the other night, at Peters’s, in the big red room. You surely must recollect! You invited us.”
The other night, at Peters’s? She did not remember it at all. First of all, what night? And when the little fair-haired fellow told her the day, Wednesday, she recollected that she had supped at Peters’s on the Wednesday, but she had invited no one, of that she was almost certain.
“But yet, my girl, if you did invite them,” murmured Labordette who began to have doubts on the subject, “you were perhaps a little bit on.”
Then Nana laughed. It was possible, she couldn’t say. However, as the gentlemen were there, they had better come in. And so it was settled. Many of the new comers found friends of theirs amongst those in the drawing-room, and the squabble ended in a general hand-shaking. The little fair-haired fellow with the sickly appearance bore one of the greatest names of France. Besides, they announced that several others were following them; and, true enough, the door opened every minute to admit men with white kid gloves and in their most official get-up. They all came from the ball at the Ministry of the Interior. Fauchery jokingly inquired if the minister himself would not soon arrive; but Nana, very much annoyed, replied that the minister visited people who were certainly not as good as she. What she did not mention was a hope she entertained—that of seeing Count Muffat enter in the midst of all the others. He might have altered his mind; and, as she conversed with Rose, she kept watching the door.
Five o‘clock struck. The dancing had ceased. The players alone stuck to their cards. Labordette had given up his seat, and the women had gone back into the drawing-room. The somnolence that accompanies a prolonged dissipation hung heavily over all in the dull light of the lamps, the charred wicks of which gave a reddish hue to the globes. The women had reached that maudlin state when they feel the desire to relate their own histories. Blanche de Sivry talked of her grandfather the general, whilst Clarisse invented quite a romance about a duke who had seduced her at her uncle’s, where he had come to hunt the wild boar; and each, with her back turned, kept shrugging her shoulders, and asking if it was possible to tell such crammers. As for Lucy Stewart, she quietly avowed her humble origin, and talked freely of the days of her youth, when her father, the porter on the Northern Railway, used to treat her to an apple turnover on a Sunday.
“Oh! I must tell you!” suddenly exclaimed little Maria Blond. “There’s a gentleman living opposite to me, a Russian, in short a man who’s awfully rich. Well, yesterday I received a basket of fruit—oh! such a basket of fruit!—some enormous peaches, grapes as big as that, something really extraordinary at this time of the year. And in the middle of all, six bank notes of a thousand francs each. It was the Russian. Of course I sent all back again, but I was rather sorry to do so, because of the fruit! ”
The other women looked at each other trying not to smile. Little Maria Blond possessed rare cheek for her age. As if that sort of adventures happened to such hussies as she! They all felt a great contempt for each other. Many were furiously jealous of Lucy on account of her three princes. Ever since Lucy had taken to riding on horseback of a morning in the Bois de Boulogne, which had been the starting-point of her great success, they had all been seized with a violent mania for learning to ride.
The day was about to break. Nana no longer watched the door, having lost all hope. Every one was bored to death. Rose Mignon had refused to sing the “Slipper,” and was curled up on the sofa, where she was whispering with Fauchery, whilst waiting for Mignon, who had already won about fifty louis from Vandeuvres. A stout, distinguished-looking gentleman, wearing a decoration, had, it is true, just recited “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” in Alsatian patois,aj spiced with a certain amount of profanity; only, as no one understood more than a word or two, the recitation fell very flat.
Nobody knew what to be at to infuse some gaiety into the proceedings, to finish the night in a sufficiently wild manner. For an instant Labordette had the idea of secretly denouncing the women to La Faloise, who kept prowling round each to see if she hadn’t his handkerchief stowed away in her bosom. However as some bottles of champagne remained on the side-board, the young men started drinking again. They called to each other, they tried to excite one another; but an invincibly mournful drunkenness, of a stupidity to make one weep, overcame them all. Then the little fair-haired fellow, he who bore one of the greatest names of France, quite at a loss what to do, in despair at not being able to think of something funny, had a sudden idea; he took up a bottle of champagne and emptied the contents into the piano. All the others writhed with laughter.
“Hallo!” said Tatan Néné, who had watched him with astonishment, “why does he pour champagne into the piano?”
“What! my girl, don’t you know that?” replied Labordette, seriously. “There is nothing so good as champagne for pianos. It improves the tone.”
“Ah! really,” murmured Tatan Néné, thoroughly convinced.
And as every one laughed, she got into a temper. How was she to know? They were always telling her wrong. Things were decidedly going from bad to worse. The night seemed likely to end in an unpleasant kind of manner. In a corner of the room, Maria Blond was having a row with Léa de Horn, whom she accused of receiving men who were not sufficiently rich; and they had come to oaths, as they abused each other’s looks. Lucy, who was ugly, quieted them. Looks were nothing; the thing was to have a good figure. Farther off, on a sofa, an attaché to an embassy had passed his arm round Simone’s waist, and was trying to kiss her on the neck; but Simone, quite tired out, and very sulky, pushed him away each time, saying, “Don’t bother me!” and hitting him on the head with her fan. Besides, the other women would not allow anybody to touch them. Who did they take them for? Gaga, however, who had caught hold of La Faloise, kept him by her, almost on her knees; whilst Clarisse, shaking with the nervous laugh of a woman being tickled, was disappearing between two gentlemen. Around the piano the little game continued, in a fit of stupidity. There was a good deal of pushing; each one wanted to empty his bottle into it. It was simple and neat.
“Here! old fellow, ta
ke a drink. The devil! isn’t he thirsty, the poor piano! Look out there! here’s another; we mustn’t lose a drop. ”
Nana, who had her back turned towards them, did not see what they were after. She had evidently made up her mind to do the best she could with stout old Steiner, who was seated beside her. So much the worse! It was all that Muffat’s fault, for he had not been willing. In her dress of soft white silk, light and crumpled like a chemise, with her touch of intoxication, which had taken the colour from her face and made her eyes look heavy, she seemed to be offering herself in a quiet, good-natured sort of way. The roses she had placed in her dress and hair were now all withered, and only the stalks remained. Suddenly Steiner withdrew his hand from off her dress, where he had just encountered the pins placed by George. A few drops of blood issued from his fingers. One fell on the dress and stained it.
“Now it is signed,” said Nana seriously.
The day had dawned. An awfully sad and dubious sort of light entered by the windows. Then the breaking-up began—a leave-taking full of uneasiness and ill-nature. Caroline Héquet, annoyed at having wasted her night, said it was time for those to go who did not wish to assist at some very strange things. Rose made a face like that of a respectable woman who had been compromised. It was always the same with those hussies. They never knew how to behave themselves; they were always most disgusting from the first. And Mignon having quite stumped Vandeuvres, the couple went off, without troubling themselves about Steiner, though not until they had again invited Fauchery for the morrow. Lucy, then, refused to let the journalist see her home, and told him out loud to go with his dirty actress. Rose, who heard her, turned round, and answered with “Filthy hag!” muttered between her teeth; but Mignon, well versed in women’s quarrels, paternally pushed his wife outside, and told her to dry up. Behind them, Lucy, all alone, descended the staircase like a queen. Then it was La Faloise, feeling quite ill and sobbing like a child, who was led away by Gaga, whilst he called for Clarisse, long ago gone off with her two gentlemen. Simone also had disappeared. There still remained Tatan, Léa, and Maria; but Labordette obligingly offered to take charge of them.