Part 6

Eugenie escaped into the garden, quite frightened as she heard the staircase shaking under her father’s step. Already she felt the effects of that virgin modesty and that special consciousness of happiness which lead us to fancy, not perhaps without reason, that our thoughts are graven on our foreheads and are open to the eyes of all. Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of her father’s house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her cousin’s elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,--what, she did not know. Ingenuous and truthful, she followed her angelic nature without mistrusting her impressions or her feelings. The mere sight of her cousin had wakened within her the natural yearnings of a woman,--yearnings that were the more likely to develop ardently because, having reached her twenty-third year, she was in the plenitude of her intelligence and her desires. For the first time in her life her heart was full of terror at the sight of her father; in him she saw the master of the fate, and she fancied herself guilty of wrong-doing in hiding from his knowledge certain thoughts. She walked with hasty steps, surprised to breathe a purer air, to feel the sun’s rays quickening her pulses, to absorb from their heat a moral warmth and a new life. As she turned over in her mind some stratagem by which to get the cake, a quarrel--an event as rare as the sight of swallows in winter--broke out between la Grande Nanon and Grandet. Armed with his keys, the master had come to dole out provisions for the day’s consumption.

“Is there any bread left from yesterday?” he said to Nanon.

“Not a crumb, monsieur.”

Grandet took a large round loaf, well floured and moulded in one of the flat baskets which they use for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut it, when Nanon said to him,--

“We are five, to-day, monsieur.”

“That’s true,” said Grandet, “but your loaves weigh six pounds; there’ll be some left. Besides, these young fellows from Paris don’t eat bread, you’ll see.”

“Then they must eat _frippe_?” said Nanon.

_Frippe_ is a word of the local lexicon of Anjou, and means any accompaniment of bread, from butter which is spread upon it, the commonest kind of _frippe_, to peach preserve, the most distinguished of all the _frippes_; those who in their childhood have licked the _frippe_ and left the bread, will comprehend the meaning of Nanon’s speech.

“No,” answered Grandet, “they eat neither bread nor _frippe_; they are something like marriageable girls.”

After ordering the meals for the day with his usual parsimony, the goodman, having locked the closets containing the supplies, was about to go towards the fruit-garden, when Nanon stopped him to say,--

“Monsieur, give me a little flour and some butter, and I’ll make a _galette_ for the young ones.”

“Are you going to pillage the house on account of my nephew?”

“I wasn’t thinking any more of your nephew than I was of your dog,--not more than you think yourself; for, look here, you’ve only forked out six bits of sugar. I want eight.”

“What’s all this, Nanon? I have never seen you like this before. What have you got in your head? Are you the mistress here? You sha’n’t have more than six pieces of sugar.”

“Well, then, how is your nephew to sweeten his coffee?”

“With two pieces; I’ll go without myself.”

“Go without sugar at your age! I’d rather buy you some out of my own pocket.”

“Mind your own business.”

In spite of the recent fall in prices, sugar was still in Grandet’s eyes the most valuable of all the colonial products; to him it was always six francs a pound. The necessity of economizing it, acquired under the Empire, had grown to be the most inveterate of his habits. All women, even the greatest ninnies, know how to dodge and dodge to get their ends; Nanon abandoned the sugar for the sake of getting the _galette_.

“Mademoiselle!” she called through the window, “do you want some _galette_?”

“No, no,” answered Eugenie.

“Come, Nanon,” said Grandet, hearing his daughter’s voice. “See here.” He opened the cupboard where the flour was kept, gave her a cupful, and added a few ounces of butter to the piece he had already cut off.

“I shall want wood for the oven,” said the implacable Nanon.

“Well, take what you want,” he answered sadly; “but in that case you must make us a fruit-tart, and you’ll cook the whole dinner in the oven. In that way you won’t need two fires.”

“Goodness!” cried Nanon, “you needn’t tell me that.”

Grandet cast a look that was well-nigh paternal upon his faithful deputy.

“Mademoiselle,” she cried, when his back was turned, “we shall have the _galette_.”

Pere Grandet returned from the garden with the fruit and arranged a plateful on the kitchen-table.

“Just see, monsieur,” said Nanon, “what pretty boots your nephew has. What leather! why it smells good! What does he clean it with, I wonder? Am I to put your egg-polish on it?”

“Nanon, I think eggs would injure that kind of leather. Tell him you don’t know how to black morocco; yes, that’s morocco. He will get you something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine.”

“They look good to eat,” said the cook, putting the boots to her nose. “Bless me! if they don’t smell like madame’s eau-de-cologne. Ah! how funny!”

“Funny!” said her master. “Do you call it funny to put more money into boots than the man who stands in them is worth?”

“Monsieur,” she said, when Grandet returned the second time, after locking the fruit-garden, “won’t you have the _pot-au-feu_ put on once or twice a week on account of your nephew?”

“Yes.”

“Am I to go to the butcher’s?”

“Certainly not. We will make the broth of fowls; the farmers will bring them. I shall tell Cornoiller to shoot some crows; they make the best soup in the world.”

“Isn’t it true, monsieur, that crows eat the dead?”

“You are a fool, Nanon. They eat what they can get, like the rest of the world. Don’t we all live on the dead? What are legacies?”

Monsieur Grandet, having no further orders to give, drew out his watch, and seeing that he had half an hour to dispose of before breakfast, he took his hat, went and kissed his daughter, and said to her:

“Do you want to come for a walk in the fields, down by the Loire? I have something to do there.”

Eugenie fetched her straw bonnet, lined with pink taffeta; then the father and daughter went down the winding street to the shore.

“Where are you going at this early hour?” said Cruchot, the notary, meeting them.

“To see something,” answered Grandet, not duped by the matutinal appearance of his friend.

When Pere Grandet went to “see something,” the notary knew by experience there was something to be got by going with him; so he went.

“Come, Cruchot,” said Grandet, “you are one of my friends. I’ll show you what folly it is to plant poplar-trees on good ground.”

“Do you call the sixty thousand francs that you pocketed for those that were in your fields down by the Loire, folly?” said Maitre Cruchot, opening his eyes with amazement. “What luck you have had! To cut down your trees at the very time they ran short of white-wood at Nantes, and to sell them at thirty francs!”

Eugenie listened, without knowing that she approached the most solemn moment of her whole life, and that the notary was about to bring down upon her head a paternal and supreme sentence. Grandet had now reached the magnificent fields which he owned on the banks of the Loire, where thirty workmen were employed in clearing away, filling up, and levelling the spots formerly occupied by the poplars.

“Maitre Cruchot, see how much ground this tree once took up! Jean,” he cried to a laborer, “m-m-measure with your r-r-rule, b-both ways.”

“Four times eight feet,” said the man.

“Thirty-two feet lost,” said Grandet to Cruchot. “I had three hundred poplars in this one line, isn’t that so? Well, then, three h-h-hundred times thir-thirty-two lost m-m-me five hundred in h-h-hay; add twice as much for the side rows,--fifteen hundred; the middle rows as much more. So we may c-c-call it a th-thousand b-b-bales of h-h-hay--”

“Very good,” said Cruchot, to help out his friend; “a thousand bales are worth about six hundred francs.”

“Say t-t-twelve hundred, be-c-cause there’s three or four hundred francs on the second crop. Well, then, c-c-calculate that t-twelve thousand francs a year for f-f-forty years with interest c-c-comes to--”

“Say sixty thousand francs,” said the notary.

“I am willing; c-c-comes t-t-to sixty th-th-thousand. Very good,” continued Grandet, without stuttering: “two thousand poplars forty years old will only yield me fifty thousand francs. There’s a loss. I have found that myself,” said Grandet, getting on his high horse. “Jean, fill up all the holes except those at the bank of the river; there you are to plant the poplars I have bought. Plant ‘em there, and they’ll get nourishment from the government,” he said, turning to Cruchot, and giving a slight motion to the wen on his nose, which expressed more than the most ironical of smiles.

“True enough; poplars should only be planted on poor soil,” said Cruchot, amazed at Grandet’s calculations.

“Y-y-yes, monsieur,” answered the old man satirically.

Eugenie, who was gazing at the sublime scenery of the Loire, and paying no attention to her father’s reckonings, presently turned an ear to the remarks of Cruchot when she heard him say,--

“So you have brought a son-in-law from Paris. All Saumur is talking about your nephew. I shall soon have the marriage-contract to draw up, hey! Pere Grandet?”

“You g-g-got up very early to t-t-tell me that,” said Grandet, accompanying the remark with a motion of his wen. “Well, old c-c-comrade, I’ll be frank, and t-t-tell you what you want t-t-to know. I would rather, do you see, f-f-fling my daughter into the Loire than g-g-give her to her c-c-cousin. You may t-t-tell that everywhere,--no, never mind; let the world t-t-talk.”

This answer dazzled and blinded the young girl with sudden light. The distant hopes upspringing in her heart bloomed suddenly, became real, tangible, like a cluster of flowers, and she saw them cut down and wilting on the earth. Since the previous evening she had attached herself to Charles by those links of happiness which bind soul to soul; from henceforth suffering was to rivet them. Is it not the noble destiny of women to be more moved by the dark solemnities of grief than by the splendors of fortune? How was it that fatherly feeling had died out of her father’s heart? Of what crime had Charles been guilty? Mysterious questions! Already her dawning love, a mystery so profound, was wrapping itself in mystery. She walked back trembling in all her limbs; and when she reached the gloomy street, lately so joyous to her, she felt its sadness, she breathed the melancholy which time and events had printed there. None of love’s lessons lacked. A few steps from their own door she went on before her father and waited at the threshold. But Grandet, who saw a newspaper in the notary’s hand, stopped short and asked,--

“How are the Funds?”

“You never listen to my advice, Grandet,” answered Cruchot. “Buy soon; you will still make twenty per cent in two years, besides getting an excellent rate of interest,--five thousand a year for eighty thousand francs fifty centimes.”

“We’ll see about that,” answered Grandet, rubbing his chin.

“Good God!” exclaimed the notary.

“Well, what?” cried Grandet; and at the same moment Cruchot put the newspaper under his eyes and said:

“Read that!”

“Monsieur Grandet, one of the most respected merchants in Paris, blew his brains out yesterday, after making his usual appearance at the Bourse. He had sent his resignation to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, and had also resigned his functions as a judge of the commercial courts. The failures of Monsieur Roguin and Monsieur Souchet, his broker and his notary, had ruined him. The esteem felt for Monsieur Grandet and the credit he enjoyed were nevertheless such that he might have obtained the necessary assistance from other business houses. It is much to be regretted that so honorable a man should have yielded to momentary despair,” etc.

“I knew it,” said the old wine-grower to the notary.

The words sent a chill of horror through Maitre Cruchot, who, notwithstanding his impassibility as a notary, felt the cold running down his spine as he thought that Grandet of Paris had possibly implored in vain the millions of Grandet of Saumur.

“And his son, so joyous yesterday--”

“He knows nothing as yet,” answered Grandet, with the same composure.

“Adieu! Monsieur Grandet,” said Cruchot, who now understood the state of the case, and went off to reassure Monsieur de Bonfons.

On entering, Grandet found breakfast ready. Madame Grandet, round whose neck Eugenie had flung her arms, kissing her with the quick effusion of feeling often caused by secret grief, was already seated in her chair on castors, knitting sleeves for the coming winter.

“You can begin to eat,” said Nanon, coming downstairs four steps at a time; “the young one is sleeping like a cherub. Isn’t he a darling with his eyes shut? I went in and I called him: no answer.”

“Let him sleep,” said Grandet; “he’ll wake soon enough to hear ill-tidings.”

“What is it?” asked Eugenie, putting into her coffee the two little bits of sugar weighing less than half an ounce which the old miser amused himself by cutting up in his leisure hours. Madame Grandet, who did not dare to put the question, gazed at her husband.

“His father has blown his brains out.”

“My uncle?” said Eugenie.

“Poor young man!” exclaimed Madame Grandet.

“Poor indeed!” said Grandet; “he isn’t worth a sou!”

“Eh! poor boy, and he’s sleeping like the king of the world!” said Nanon in a gentle voice.

Eugenie stopped eating. Her heart was wrung, as the young heart is wrung when pity for the suffering of one she loves overflows, for the first time, the whole being of a woman. The poor girl wept.

“What are you crying about? You didn’t know your uncle,” said her father, giving her one of those hungry tigerish looks he doubtless threw upon his piles of gold.

“But, monsieur,” said Nanon, “who wouldn’t feel pity for the poor young man, sleeping there like a wooden shoe, without knowing what’s coming?”

“I didn’t speak to you, Nanon. Hold your tongue!”

Eugenie learned at that moment that the woman who loves must be able to hide her feelings. She did not answer.

“You will say nothing to him about it, Ma’ame Grandet, till I return,” said the old man. “I have to go and straighten the line of my hedge along the high-road. I shall be back at noon, in time for the second breakfast, and then I will talk with my nephew about his affairs. As for you, Mademoiselle Eugenie, if it is for that dandy you are crying, that’s enough, child. He’s going off like a shot to the Indies. You will never see him again.”

The father took his gloves from the brim of his hat, put them on with his usual composure, pushed them in place by shoving the fingers of both hands together, and went out.

“Mamma, I am suffocating!” cried Eugenie when she was alone with her mother; “I have never suffered like this.”

Madame Grandet, seeing that she turned pale, opened the window and let her breathe fresh air.

“I feel better!” said Eugenie after a moment.

This nervous excitement in a nature hitherto, to all appearance, calm and cold, reacted on Madame Grandet; she looked at her daughter with the sympathetic intuition with which mothers are gifted for the objects of their tenderness, and guessed all. In truth the life of the Hungarian sisters, bound together by a freak of nature, could scarcely have been more intimate than that of Eugenie and her mother,--always together in the embrasure of that window, and sleeping together in the same atmosphere.

“My poor child!” said Madame Grandet, taking Eugenie’s head and laying it upon her bosom.

At these words the young girl raised her head, questioned her mother by a look, and seemed to search out her inmost thought.

“Why send him to the Indies?” she said. “If he is unhappy, ought he not to stay with us? Is he not our nearest relation?”

“Yes, my child, it seems natural; but your father has his reasons: we must respect them.”

The mother and daughter sat down in silence, the former upon her raised seat, the latter in her little armchair, and both took up their work. Swelling with gratitude for the full heart-understanding her mother had given her, Eugenie kissed the dear hand, saying,--

“How good you are, my kind mamma!”

The words sent a glow of light into the motherly face, worn and blighted as it was by many sorrows.

“You like him?” asked Eugenie.

Madame Grandet only smiled in reply. Then, after a moment’s silence, she said in a low voice: “Do you love him already? That is wrong.”

“Wrong?” said Eugenie. “Why is it wrong? You are pleased with him, Nanon is pleased with him; why should he not please me? Come, mamma, let us set the table for his breakfast.”

She threw down her work, and her mother did the same, saying, “Foolish child!” But she sanctioned the child’s folly by sharing it. Eugenie called Nanon.

“What do you want now, mademoiselle?”

“Nanon, can we have cream by midday?”

“Ah! midday, to be sure you can,” answered the old servant.

“Well, let him have his coffee very strong; I heard Monsieur des Grassins say that they make the coffee very strong in Paris. Put in a great deal.”

“Where am I to get it?”

“Buy some.”

“Suppose monsieur meets me?”

“He has gone to his fields.”

“I’ll run, then. But Monsieur Fessard asked me yesterday if the Magi had come to stay with us when I bought the wax candle. All the town will know our goings-on.”

“If your father finds it out,” said Madame Grandet, “he is capable of beating us.”

“Well, let him beat us; we will take his blows on our knees.”

Madame Grandet for all answer raised her eyes to heaven. Nanon put on her hood and went off. Eugenie got out some clean table-linen, and went to fetch a few bunches of grapes which she had amused herself by hanging on a string across the attic; she walked softly along the corridor, so as not to waken her cousin, and she could not help listening at the door to his quiet breathing.

“Sorrow is watching while he sleeps,” she thought.

She took the freshest vine-leaves and arranged her dish of grapes as coquettishly as a practised house-keeper might have done, and placed it triumphantly on the table. She laid hands on the pears counted out by her father, and piled them in a pyramid mixed with leaves. She went and came, and skipped and ran. She would have liked to lay under contribution everything in her father’s house; but the keys were in his pocket. Nanon came back with two fresh eggs. At sight of them Eugenie almost hugged her round the neck.

“The farmer from Lande had them in his basket. I asked him for them, and he gave them to me, the darling, for nothing, as an attention!”

V

After two hours’ thought and care, during which Eugenie jumped up twenty times from her work to see if the coffee were boiling, or to go and listen to the noise her cousin made in dressing, she succeeded in preparing a simple little breakfast, very inexpensive, but which, nevertheless, departed alarmingly from the inveterate customs of the house. The midday breakfast was always taken standing. Each took a slice of bread, a little fruit or some butter, and a glass of wine. As Eugenie looked at the table drawn up near the fire with an arm-chair placed before her cousin’s plate, at the two dishes of fruit, the egg-cup, the bottle of white wine, the bread, and the sugar heaped up in a saucer, she trembled in all her limbs at the mere thought of the look her father would give her if he should come in at that moment. She glanced often at the clock to see if her cousin could breakfast before the master’s return.

“Don’t be troubled, Eugenie; if your father comes in, I will take it all upon myself,” said Madame Grandet.

Eugenie could not repress a tear.

“Oh, my good mother!” she cried, “I have never loved you enough.”

Charles, who had been tramping about his room for some time, singing to himself, now came down. Happily, it was only eleven o’clock. The true Parisian! he had put as much dandyism into his dress as if he were in the chateau of the noble lady then travelling in Scotland. He came into the room with the smiling, courteous manner so becoming to youth, which made Eugenie’s heart beat with mournful joy. He had taken the destruction of his castles in Anjou as a joke, and came up to his aunt gaily.

“Have you slept well, dear aunt? and you, too, my cousin?”

“Very well, monsieur; did you?” said Madame Grandet.

“I? perfectly.”

“You must be hungry, cousin,” said Eugenie; “will you take your seat?”

“I never breakfast before midday; I never get up till then. However, I fared so badly on the journey that I am glad to eat something at once. Besides--” here he pulled out the prettiest watch Breguet ever made. “Dear me! I am early, it is only eleven o’clock!”

“Early?” said Madame Grandet.

“Yes; but I wanted to put my things in order. Well, I shall be glad to have anything to eat,--anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a partridge.”

“Holy Virgin!” exclaimed Nanon, overhearing the words.

“A partridge!” whispered Eugenie to herself; she would gladly have given the whole of her little hoard for a partridge.

“Come and sit down,” said his aunt.

The young dandy let himself drop into an easy-chair, just as a pretty woman falls gracefully upon a sofa. Eugenie and her mother took ordinary chairs and sat beside him, near the fire.

“Do you always live here?” said Charles, thinking the room uglier by daylight than it had seemed the night before.

“Always,” answered Eugenie, looking at him, “except during the vintage. Then we go and help Nanon, and live at the Abbaye des Noyers.”

“Don’t you ever take walks?”

“Sometimes on Sunday after vespers, when the weather is fine,” said Madame Grandet, “we walk on the bridge, or we go and watch the haymakers.”

“Have you a theatre?”

“Go to the theatre!” exclaimed Madame Grandet, “see a play! Why, monsieur, don’t you know it is a mortal sin?”

“See here, monsieur,” said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, “here are your chickens,--in the shell.”

“Oh! fresh eggs,” said Charles, who, like all people accustomed to luxury, had already forgotten about his partridge, “that is delicious: now, if you will give me the butter, my good girl.”

“Butter! then you can’t have the _galette_.”

“Nanon, bring the butter,” cried Eugenie.