Part
I
They used to go there every evening at about eleven o’clock, just as they went to the café. Six or eight of them used to meet there; they were always the same set, not fast men, but respectable citizens, and young men of the town, and they used to drink their Chartreuse, and tease the girls, or else they would talk seriously with Madame, whom everybody respected, and then they used to go home before twelve o’clock. The younger men would sometimes stay the night.
It was a small, homely kind of house, painted yellow, at the corner of a street behind Saint Étienne’s church, and from the windows one could see the docks, full of ships which were being unloaded, the great salt marsh, called “La Retenue,” and behind, the old, gray chapel, dedicated to the Virgin, on the hill.
Madame, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors in the department of the Eure, had taken up that profession, just as she would have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice against prostitution, which is so violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country places in Normandy. The peasant says:
“It is a paying business,” and he sends his daughter to keep a harem of fast girls, just as he would send her to keep a girls’ school.
She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged. Monsieur and Madame, who had formerly been innkeepers near Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the business at Fécamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning to assume the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account of the absence of the owners. They were good people enough in their way, and soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbours.
Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as his new profession kept him in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout, and his health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the frequenters of the establishment had wanted her; but people said that personally she was quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house could not discover anything against her. She was tall, stout and affable, and her complexion, which had become pale in the dimness of her house, the shutters of which were scarcely ever opened, shone as if it had been varnished. She had a fringe of curly, false hair, which gave her a juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the ripeness of her figure. She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of a joke, but there was a shade of reserve about her, which her new occupation had not quite made her lose. Coarse words always shocked her, and when any young fellow who had been badly brought up called her establishment by its right name, she was angry and disgusted.
In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as friends, yet she very frequently used to say that “she and they were not made of the same stuff.”
Sometimes during the week, she would hire a carriage and take some of her girls into the country, where they used to enjoy themselves on the grass by the side of the little river. They were like a lot of girls let out from a school, and used to run races, and play childish games. They had a cold dinner on the grass, and drank cider, and went home at night with a delicious feeling of fatigue, and in the carriage they kissed Madame as their kind mother, who was full of goodness and complaisance.
The house had two entrances. At the corner there was a sort of low café, which sailors and the lower orders frequented at night, and she had two girls whose special duty it was to attend to that part of the business. With the assistance of the waiter, whose name was Frédéric, and who was a short, light-haired, beardless fellow, as strong as a horse, they set the half bottles of wine and the jugs of beer on the shaky marble tables, and then, sitting astride on the customers’ knees, they urged them to drink.
The three other girls (there were only five of them) formed a kind of aristocracy, and were reserved for the company on the first floor, unless they were wanted downstairs, and there was nobody on the first floor. The Jupiter room, where the better classes used to meet, was papered in blue, and embellished with a large drawing representing Leda stretched out under the swan. That room was reached by a winding staircase, which ended at a narrow door opening on to the street, and above it, all night long a little lamp burned, behind wire bars, such as one still sees in some towns, at the foot of some shrine of a saint.
The house, which was old and damp, rather smelled of mildew. At times there was an odour of Eau de cologne in the passages, or a half open door downstairs admitted the noise of the common men sitting and drinking downstairs, to the first floor, much to the disgust of the gentlemen who were there. Madame, who was familiar with those of her customers with whom she was on friendly terms, never left the drawing room, and took much interest in what was going on in the town, and they regularly told her all the news. Her serious conversation was a change from the ceaseless chatter of the three women; it was a rest from the obscene jokes of those stout individuals who every evening indulged in the commonplace debauchery of drinking a glass of liquor in company with prostitutes.
The names of the girls on the first floor were Fernande, Raphaële, and Rosa la Rosse. As the staff was limited, Madame had endeavoured that each member of it should be a pattern, an epitome of the feminine type, so that every customer might find as nearly as possible the realization of his ideal. Fernande represented the handsome blonde; she was very tall, rather fat, and lazy; a country girl, who could not get rid of her freckles, and whose short, light, almost colourless, tow-like hair, which was like combed-out flax, barely covered her head.
Raphaële, who came from Marseilles, a regular seaport streetwalker, played the indispensable part of the handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheek bones, which were covered with rouge, and her black hair, which was always covered with pomade, fell in curls on her forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad colour of the rest.
Rosa la Rosse was a little roll of fat, nearly all stomach, with very short legs, and from morning till night she sang songs, which were alternately indecent or sentimental, in a harsh voice, told silly, interminable tales, and only stopped talking in order to eat, and left off eating in order to talk; she was never still, and was active as a squirrel, in spite of her fat, and of her short legs; and her laugh, which was a torrent of shrill cries, resounded here and there, ceaselessly, in a bedroom, in the attic, in the café, everywhere, and about nothing.
The two women on the ground floor, Louise, who was nicknamed Cocote, and Flora, whom they called Balançoire, because she limped a little, looked like kitchen-maids dressed up for the carnival. The former always dressed as Liberty, with a tri-coloured sash, and the other as a Spanish woman, with a string of copper coins, which jingled at every step she took, in her carroty hair. They were like all other women of the lower orders, neither uglier nor better looking than they usually are. They looked just like servants at an inn, and they were generally called the two Pumps.
A jealous peace, which was, however, very rarely disturbed, reigned among these five women, thanks to Madame’s conciliatory wisdom, and to her constant good humour, and the establishment, which was the only one of the kind in the little town, was very much frequented. Madame had succeeded in giving it such a respectable appearance, she was so amiable and obliging to everybody, her good heart was so well known, that she was treated with a certain amount of consideration. The regular customers went out of their way to be nice to her, and were delighted when she was especially friendly towards them, and when they met during the day, they would say: “Until this evening, you know where,” just as men say: “At the café, after dinner.” In a word, Madame Tellier’s house was somewhere to go to, and they very rarely missed their daily meetings there.
One evening, towards the end of May, the first arrival, Monsieur Poulin, who was a timber merchant, and had been mayor, found the door shut. The little lantern behind the grating was not alight; there was not a sound in the house; everything seemed dead. He knocked, gently at first, but then more loudly, but nobody answered the door. Then he went slowly up the street, and when he got to the market place, he met Monsieur Duvert, the shipbuilder, who was going to the same place, so they went back together, but did not meet with any better success. But suddenly they heard a loud noise close to them, and on going round the house, they saw a number of English and French sailors, who were hammering at the closed shutters of the café with their fists.
The two gentlemen immediately made their escape, for fear of being compromised, but a low Pst stopped them; it was Monsieur Tournevau, the fish curer, who had recognized them, and was trying to attract their attention. They told him what had happened, and he was all the more vexed at it, as he, a married man, and father of a family, only went there on Saturdays, securitatis causa, as he said, alluding to a measure of sanitary policy, which his friend Doctor Borde had advised him to observe. That was his regular evening, and now he should be deprived of it for the whole week.
The three men went as far as the quay together, and on the way they met young Monsieur Philippe, the banker’s son, who frequented the place regularly, and Monsieur Pinipesse, the Collector of Taxes, and they all returned together by the street known as “the Ghetto,” to make a last attempt. But the exasperated sailors were besieging the house, throwing stones at the shutters, and shouting, and the five first-floor customers went away as quickly as possible, and walked aimlessly about the streets.
Presently they met Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, and then Monsieur Vasse, the Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and they took a long walk, going to the pier first of all, where they sat down in a row on the granite parapet, and watched the waves breaking. The foam on the crest of the waves gleamed a luminous white in the shadows, disappearing almost immediately, and the monotonous noise of the sea breaking on the rocks was prolonged through the darkness along the rocky shore. When the sad promenaders had sat there for some time, Monsieur Tournevau said:
“This is not very amusing!”
“Decidedly not,” Monsieur Pinipesse replied, and they started off again slowly.
After going through the street, which is called Sous-le-Bois, at the foot of the hill, they returned over the wooden bridge which crosses the Retenue, passed close to the railway, and came out again on to the market place, when suddenly a quarrel arose between Monsieur Pinipesse, the Collector of Taxes, and Monsieur Tournevau, about an edible fungus which one of them declared he had found in the neighbourhood.
As they were out of temper already from sheer boredom, they would very probably have come to blows, if the others had not interfered. Monsieur Pinipesse went off furious, and soon another altercation arose between the ex-mayor, Monsieur Poulin, and Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, on the subject of the tax collector’s salary, and the profits which he might make. Insulting remarks were freely passing between them, when a torrent of formidable cries was heard, and the body of sailors, who were tired of waiting so long outside a closed house, came into the square. They were walking arm-in-arm, two and two, and formed a long procession, and were shouting furiously. The landsmen went and hid themselves under a gateway, and the yelling crew disappeared in the direction of the abbey. For a long time they still heard the noise, which diminished like a storm in the distance, and then silence was restored, and Monsieur Poulin and Monsieur Dupuis, who were enraged with each other, went in different directions, without wishing each other goodbye.
The other four set off again, and instinctively went in the direction of Madame Tellier’s establishment, which was still closed, silent, impenetrable. A quiet, but obstinate, drunken man was knocking at the door of the café, and then stopped and called Frédéric, the waiter, in a low voice, but finding that he got no answer, he sat down on the doorstep, and waited the course of events.
The others were just going to retire, when the noisy band of sailors reappeared at the end of the street. The French sailors were shouting the “Marseillaise,” and the Englishmen, “Rule Britannia.” There was a general lurching against the wall, and then the drunken brutes went on their way towards the quay, where a fight broke out between the two nations, in the course of which an Englishman had his arm broken, and a Frenchman his nose split.
The drunken man, who had stopped outside the door, was crying by that time, as drunken men and children cry, when they are vexed, and the others went away. By degrees, calm was restored in the noisy town; here and there, at moments, the distant sound of voices could be heard, and then died away in the distance.
One man, only, was still wandering about, Monsieur Tournevau, the fish curer, who was vexed at having to wait until the next Saturday, and he hoped for something to turn up, he did not know what; but he was exasperated at the police for thus allowing an establishment of such public utility, which they had under their control, to be closed.
He went back to it, examining the walls, and trying to find out the reason, and on the shutter he saw a notice stuck up, so he struck a wax vesta, and read the following in a large, uneven hand: “Closed on account of Confirmation.”
Then he went away, as he saw it was useless to remain, and left the drunken man lying on the pavement fast asleep, outside that inhospitable door.
The next day, all the regular customers, one after the other, found some reason for going through the street with a bundle of papers under their arm, to keep them in countenance, and with a furtive glance they all read that mysterious notice:
Closed on account of Confirmation.