‘You’re right, sir,’ she replied gently, ‘it was wrong of me to stop and talk, and I apologize … That young man comes from my part of the country.’
‘I’ll throw him out!’ shouted Mouret, putting all his suffering into this cry of fury.
And, completely distraught, abandoning his role as the general manager lecturing a salesgirl guilty of breaking the rules, he burst out in a torrent of violent words. Wasn’t she ashamed? A girl like her giving herself to a creature like that! And he made all sorts of appalling accusations: he threw Hutin’s name at her, and others as well, such a flood of words that she could not even defend herself. He was going to make a clean sweep; he would kick them all out. The telling-off which, as he had followed Jouve, he had promised himself he would give her was degenerating into a violent scene of jealousy.
‘Yes, your lovers! I was told you had them, and I was stupid enough not to believe it… But I was the only one! I was the only one!’
Denise, stunned and bewildered, stood listening to these terrible reproaches. At first she had not understood. Did he really think she was immoral? He made a further remark, even more violent than before, upon which she turned silently towards the door. He made a movement to stop her, but she said:
‘That’s enough, sir, I must leave … If you think I’m what you say, I don’t wish to remain in this shop another second.’
He rushed to the door.
‘Defend yourself, at least! Say something!’
She stood very erect, in icy silence. For a long time he pressed her with questions, growing more and more anxious; and the virgin’s silent dignity seemed once more to be the cunning ruse of a woman experienced in the tactics of passion. She could not have played a game more calculated to throw him at her feet, so torn with doubt was he, so anxious to be convinced.
‘But you say he comes from your part of the world … Perhaps you met each other there … Swear to me that nothing’s happened between you.’
And as she maintained an obstinate silence, and still wished to open the door and leave, he finally lost his head, and burst out in a climactic expression of his torment.
‘My God! I love you, I love you … Why do you delight in tormenting me like this? You can see that nothing else exists, that the people I speak about to you only affect me through you, that you’re the only person in the world who matters … I thought you were jealous, so I gave up my pleasures. People told you I had mistresses; well, I haven’t any more, I hardly ever go out. Didn’t I show my preference for you when we were in that lady’s house? Didn’t I break with her so that I could belong only to you? I’m still waiting for a word of thanks, a little gratitude. And if you’re afraid that I’ll go back to her you needn’t worry: she’s taking her revenge by helping one of our ex-assistants to set up a rival shop … Tell me! must I get down on my knees to move your heart?’
He had reached that point. He who would not tolerate his salesgirls making a slip, who threw them into the street at his slightest whim, found himself reduced to imploring one of them not to leave, not to abandon him to his misery. He was barring the door to her, he was ready to forgive her, to shut his eyes to everything if only she would condescend to lie about it. And it was true, he had become sick of girls picked up backstage in small theatres and night-clubs; he had given up Clara, he had not set foot again in Madame Desforges’s house, where Bouthemont now reigned supreme, pending the opening of the new shop, the Quatre Saisons, for which the newspapers were already full of advertisements.
‘Tell me, must I get down on my knees?’ he repeated, choking back his tears.
She stopped him with a gesture, no longer able to hide her own confusion, deeply affected by this tortured passion.
‘You’re wrong to make yourself unhappy, sir,’ she replied at last. ‘I swear to you that all those wicked stories are just lies … That poor boy you saw a moment ago is no more guilty than I am.’
She was as wonderfully frank as ever and her clear eyes were looking him straight in the face.
‘Very well, I believe you,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t dismiss any of your friends, since you’ve taken them all under your wing … But why do you reject me, if you don’t love anyone else?’
Denise was overcome with sudden embarrassment and anxious modesty.
‘You do love someone, don’t you?’ he went on in a trembling voice. ‘You can say so, I have no claim on your affections … You do love someone.’
She was blushing deeply; it was on the tip of her tongue to say what was in her heart, and she felt that, with her emotion betraying her and her repugnance for falsehood allowing the truth to show on her face in spite of everything, it would be impossible to lie.
‘Yes,’ she admitted weakly. ‘Please let me go, sir, you’re distressing me.’
She was now suffering in her turn. Wasn’t it enough to have to defend herself against him? Would she also have to defend herself against herself, against the waves of tenderness which at times swept away all her courage? When he talked to her like that, when she saw him so deeply moved, so overcome, she didn’t know why she still resisted him; and it was only afterwards that she rediscovered, at the very roots of her healthy temperament, the dignity and reason which maintained her virginal obstinacy. It was an instinctive desire for happiness that made her persist in refusing, to satisfy her need for a peaceful life, and not to conform to any idea of virtue. She would have fallen into his arms, her body overcome and her heart seduced, if she had not felt a resistance, almost a repulsion at the idea of giving herself to him, without knowing what might ensue. The thought of a lover frightened her, with that instinctive fear which makes a woman blanch at the approach of the male.
Meanwhile Mouret had made a gesture of complete discouragement. He did not understand. He turned round to his desk, where he shuffled some papers and put them down again immediately, saying:
‘I won’t detain you any longer, Mademoiselle Baudu; I can’t keep you against your will.’
‘But I’m not asking to leave,’ she replied with a smile. ‘If you think I’m respectable, I’ll stay … You should always believe women to be respectable, sir. There are many who are, I assure you.’
Denise had, involuntarily, looked up at the portrait of Madame Hédouin, that lady so beautiful and wise, whose blood, so they said, brought luck to the shop. Mouret followed the girl’s glance with a start, for he thought he’d heard his dead wife uttering this phrase; it was one of her phrases, which he recognized immediately. It was like a resurrection; he was rediscovering in Denise the good sense and sound balance of the woman he had lost, even down to the gentle voice, sparing of superfluous words. He was deeply struck by this resemblance, which made him sadder than ever.
‘You know I belong to you,’ he murmured in conclusion. ‘Do what you like with me.’
At that she went on gaily:
‘Very well, sir. A woman’s opinion, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to, if she’s got any sense … If you put yourself in my hands, I shall certainly make a decent man of you.’
She was joking, with her simple manner which was so charming. In his turn he gave a feeble smile and escorted her to the door as he would a lady.
The next day Denise was promoted to buyer. The management had split the dress and suit department into two, by creating specially for her a department for children’s suits, which was set up near the ladieswear department. Since her son’s dismissal Madame Aurélie lived in fear, for she could feel the management becoming cool towards her, and saw the girl’s power growing daily. Were they going to sacrifice her to Denise, on some pretext or other? Her emperor-like mask, puffy with fat, seemed to have become thinner at the shame which now tainted the Lhomme dynasty; and she made a great show of going away every evening on her husband’s arm, for they had become reconciled by misfortune, and understood that the trouble came from their home life being so messy; while her poor husband, who was even more affected than she was, and had a morbid fear of
being suspected of theft too, would count the takings twice over, very noisily performing real miracles with his bad arm as he did so. And so, when she saw Denise promoted to buyer in the children’s suit department, she felt such acute joy that she began to behave with the greatest affection towards her. It was really wonderful of her not to have taken her job away from her! She overwhelmed her with gestures of friendship; from then on she treated her as an equal and often went with a stately air to chat with her in the neighbouring department, like a queen mother visiting a young queen.
In any case, Denise now commanded great respect in the shop. Her appointment as buyer had broken down the last resistance around her. If some still talked, because of that itch for gossip which ravages any assembly of men and women, they nevertheless bowed very low before her, right down to the ground in fact. Marguerite, now assistant buyer in the ladieswear department, was full of praise for her. Even Clara, filled with secret respect before such good fortune, which she herself was incapable of attaining, had bowed her head. But Denise’s victory was even more complete over the men—over Jouve, who now bent double whenever he addressed her; over Hutin, full of anxiety at feeling his job crumbling beneath him; over Bourdoncle, at last rendered powerless. When the latter had seen her coming out of Mouret’s office, smiling, with her usual composed air, and when the next day the director had insisted that the board should create the new department, he had given in, conquered by a superstitious fear of Woman. He had always given in like that to Mouret’s charm; he recognized him as his master, in spite of the wild flights of his genius and his idiotic impulsive actions. This time the woman had proved the stronger, and he was to be swept away by the disaster.
However, Denise responded to her triumph in a calm, charming manner. She was touched by these marks of consideration, and tried to see in them sympathy for the misery of her earlier days in the shop, and her final success after being courageous for so long. Therefore she welcomed the slightest gestures of friendship with joyful smiles, which made her really loved by some, for she had such a kind, sympathetic, and generous nature. The only person for whom she felt permanent repugnance was Clara, for she had learned that the girl had amused herself one evening by taking Colomban home as she had jokingly planned to do; and the assistant, carried away by this long-awaited satisfaction of his passion, now slept out all the time, while poor Geneviève was dying. They talked about it at the Paradise and thought it very amusing.
But this sorrow, the only one she had outside the shop, did not affect Denise’s even temper. It was in her own department that she was seen at her best, surrounded by a crowd of little children of all ages. She adored children, and a better position could not have been found for her. Sometimes there would be as many as fifty little girls and the same number of boys there, a kind of boisterous boarding-school let loose in their growing coquettish desires. The mothers would lose their heads completely. She, soothing and smiling, would get all the youngsters lined up on chairs; and when she saw some rosy-cheeked little girl in the crowd whose pretty little face attracted her, she would serve her herself and would bring the dress and try it on the child’s chubby shoulders with the tender care of a big sister. There would be peals of laughter, little cries of ecstasy in the midst of scolding voices. Sometimes a little girl of nine or ten, quite grown up already, when trying on a cloth coat would study it in front of a looking-glass, turning round with an absorbed look, her eyes shining with the desire to please. The counters were littered with unfolded goods, dresses in pink or blue tussore for children from one to five, zephyr sailor-suits, a pleated skirt and blouse trimmed with appliquéd cambric, Louis XV costumes, coats, jackets, a jumble of small garments, stiff in their childish grace, rather like the cloakroom of a collection of big dolls, taken out of cupboards and left to be ransacked. Denise always had some sweets in her pockets, and would soothe the tears of some infant in despair at not being able to take a pair of red trousers away with him; she lived there among the little ones as if they were her own family, and she herself felt younger because of all the innocence and freshness ceaselessly renewed around her.
She now had long friendly conversations with Mouret. When she had to go to his office for instructions or to give information he would keep her talking, enjoying the sound of her voice. This was what she laughingly called ‘making a decent man of him’. In her shrewd, rational, Norman mind all sorts of projects were forming, ideas on modern business methods which she had already ventured to float at Robineau’s, and some of which she had expressed on that fine evening when she and Mouret had walked together in the Tuileries Gardens. She could never do anything herself, or watch a task being carried out, without being obsessed with the need to put method into it, to improve the system. Thus, ever since she had been taken on at the Ladies’ Paradise, she had been troubled above all by the precarious situation of the junior assistants. The sudden dismissals shocked her; she considered them clumsy and iniquitous, as harmful to the shop as they were to the staff. The sufferings of her early days in the shop were still fresh in her mind, and her heart was wrung with pity each time she met a newcomer in one of the departments, with sore feet and tears in her eyes, shuffling along miserably in her silk dress, persecuted constantly by the girls who had been there longer than she had. This dog’s life made even the best of them turn bad, and their sad decline would begin. They were all worn out by their profession before they were forty; they would disappear, go off into the unknown, many would die in harness of consumption or anaemia, brought on by fatigue and bad air, and some would end up on the street, while the luckier ones would marry and be buried in some small provincial shop. Was it humane or right, this appalling consumption of human flesh every year by the big shops? She would plead the cause of the cogs in this great machine, not for sentimental reasons, but with arguments based on the employers’ own interests. When one wants a sound machine one uses good metal; if the metal breaks or is broken there’s a stoppage of work, repeated expense in getting it started again, a considerable wastage of energy. Sometimes she would become quite excited, imagining a huge, ideal emporium, a phalanstery of trade, in which everyone would have a fair share of the profits according to merit, and his or her future would be assured by a contract. Mouret would brighten up when she spoke like this, in spite of his misery. He would accuse her of socialism, and confuse her by pointing out the difficulties of putting it all into practice; for she spoke with the simplicity of her heart, and would bravely put her trust in the future whenever she perceived a dangerous pitfall in her own tender-hearted methods. He was disturbed and captivated, however, by her young voice, still trembling from the ills she had suffered, and so full of conviction when pointing out reforms which would benefit the shop; and although he laughed at her, he listened to her: the salesmen’s lot gradually improved, the mass dismissals were replaced by a system of leave given during the slack seasons, and there was also a plan to create a mutual aid society which would protect them against forced redundancy and would guarantee them a pension. This was the embryo of the vast trade unions of the twentieth century.
What is more, Denise did not confine herself to dressing the open wounds from which she herself had bled: the subtle, feminine ideas she whispered to Mouret delighted the customers. She also made Lhomme happy by supporting a plan he had had for some time, of forming a band from among the staff. Three months later Lhomme had a hundred and twenty musicians under his direction; his life’s dream had come true. A big festival was organized in the shop, a concert and a ball, in order to introduce the band to the customers and to the whole world. The newspapers took it up, and even Bourdoncle, devastated by these innovations, had to acknowledge what superb advertising this was. Next, a games room for the assistants was installed, with two billiard tables as well as backgammon and chess boards. In the evenings, classes were held in the shop; there were English and German lessons, as well as lessons in grammar, arithmetic, and geography; there were even lessons in riding and fencing. A library was
created, and ten thousand volumes were put at the disposal of the staff. A resident doctor gave free consultations, and there were baths, bars, and a hairdressing salon. Every need in life was provided for, everything was obtainable without leaving the building—study, refreshment, sleeping accommodation, clothing.* The Ladies’ Paradise was self-sufficient in both pleasures and necessities, and the heart of Paris was filled with its din, with this city of labour which was growing so vigorously out of the ruins of the old streets which had at last been opened up to the sunlight.
There was a fresh wave of opinion in favour of Denise. Since Bourdoncle, now defeated, kept repeating in despair to his friends that he would have given a great deal to put her in Mouret’s bed himself, it had been concluded that she had not yielded, and that her all-powerfulness resulted from her refusals. From then on, she became popular. People knew that they were indebted to her for various comforts, and she was admired for her strength of will. There was one person, at least, who knew how to hold the governor at her mercy, who was avenging them all, and who knew how to get something more than promises out of him! She had come at last, a woman who forced people to have some regard for the underprivileged! When she went through the departments, with her delicate but determined expression and her gentle yet invincible air, the salesmen would smile at her and feel proud of her, and would gladly have shown her off to the crowd. Denise was happy to allow herself to be swept along by this growing sympathy towards her. Could it really be true? She could see herself arriving in her shabby skirt, scared and lost among the gear-wheels of the terrifying machine; for a long time she had had the sensation of being nothing, hardly a grain of millet under the millstones crushing everyone beneath them. Now she was the very soul of that world, only she mattered, with a word she could speed up or slow down the colossus lying vanquished at her feet. And yet none of this had been premeditated; she had simply presented herself at the shop, with no ulterior motive and with nothing but her charming gentleness. Her supremacy sometimes caused her uneasy surprise: what was it that made them all obey her like that? She was not pretty, nor would she do them any harm. Then, her heart soothed, she would smile, for there was nothing in her but kindness and good sense and a love of truth and logic which was her great strength.