The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗
- Author: Emile Gaboriau
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And then, changing her tone, she began scolding her beautiful young lady for having concealed her troubles from her. That was wrong; that hurt her feelings. Why had she given her money last night? Did she ask for money? Did she look like such a terrible creditor? She knew, God be thanked! what life was here below, and that we are bound to help one another. To be sure, there was that furniture dealer, who must be paid; but she would have been quite willing to make him wait; and why should he not? She had got very different people to wait! Why, only last week, she had sent one of those men away, and a dressmaker into the bargain, who came to levy upon one of her tenants in the back building,—the very nicest, and prettiest, and best of them all.
Thus she discoursed and discoursed with amazing volubility, till at last, when she thought she had made a sufficiently strong impression on her “poor little pussy-cat,” she said,—
“But one can easily see, my dear young lady, that you are a mere child. Sell your poor little jewels! Why, that is murder, as long as there is some one at hand quite ready to do any thing for you.”
At this sudden, but not altogether unexpected attack, Henrietta trembled.
“For I am sure,” continued Mrs. Chevassat, “if it were only to be agreeable to you, he would give one of his arms, this poor M. Maxime.”
Henrietta looked so peremptorily at her, that the worthy lady seemed to be quite disconcerted.
“I forbid you,” cried the young lady, with a voice trembling with indignation,—“I forbid you positively ever to mention his name!”
The woman shrugged her shoulders.
“As you like it,” she answered.
And then, ready to change the conversation, she added,—
“Well, then, let us return to your ring. What do you propose to do?”
“That is exactly why I came to you,” replied Henrietta. “I do not know what is to be done in such a case.”
Mrs. Chevassat smiled, very much pleased.
“And you did very well to come to us,” she said.
“Chevassat will go, take the charcoal-dealer and the grocer next door with him; and before going to bed you will have your money, I promise you! You see he understands pretty well how to make the clerks do their duty, my Chevassat.”
That evening the excellent man really condescended to go up stairs, and to bring Henrietta himself eight hundred and ninety-five francs.
He did not bring the whole nine hundred francs, he said; for, having put his two neighbors to some inconvenience, he was bound, according to established usage, to invite them to take something. For himself, he had, of course, kept nothing,—oh, nothing at all! He could take his oath upon that; for he preferred by far leaving that little matter to the beautiful young lady’s liberality.
“Here are ten francs,” said Henrietta curtly, in order to make an end to his endless talk.
Thus, with the few gold-pieces which she had found in her purse, the poor girl had a capital of about a thousand francs in hand. How many days, how many months, this sum would have secured to her, if the furniture-dealer had not been there with his bill! He did not fail to present himself next day, accompanied by Mrs. Chevassat. He asked for five hundred and seventy-nine francs. Such a sum for a few second-hand pieces of furniture which adorned that wretched garret! It was a clear swindle, and the impudence so great, that Henrietta was overwhelmed. But still she paid.
When he was gone, she sadly counted from one hand into the other the twenty-three gold-pieces that were left, when suddenly a thought occurred to her, that might have saved her, if she had followed it out.
It was the thought of leaving the house by stealth, of going to the station of the Orleans Railway, and of taking the first train for the home of Daniel’s aunt. Alas! she was content with writing to her, and remained.
XIX.
This inspiration was, moreover, to be the last favor which Providence vouchsafed to Henrietta,—an opportunity which, once allowed to pass, never returns. From that moment she found herself irrevocably insnared in a net which tightened day by day more around her, and held her a helpless captive. She had vowed to herself, the unfortunate girl, that she would economize her little hoard like the blood in her veins. But how could she economize?
She was without every thing. When M. de Brevan had gone to engage this garret-room, he had thought of nothing; or rather (and such a calculation was quite in keeping with his cold-blooded rascality) he had taken his measures so that his victim must soon be in utter destitution. Without any other clothes than those she wore on the night of her flight, she had no linen, no shoes, not a towel even to wipe her hands, unless she borrowed them from her friend down stairs.
Accustomed as she was to all the comforts of boundless wealth, and to all the refinements of cleanliness, these privations became to her a genuine martyrdom. Thus she spent in a variety of small purchases more than a hundred and fifty francs. The sum was enormous at a time when she could already count the days to the hour when she would be without bread. In addition to that she had to pay Mrs. Chevassat five francs a day for her board. Five francs were another enormous sum which troubled her grievously; for she would have been quite willing to live on bread and water. But in that direction she thought no economizing was possible.
One evening she had hinted at the necessity of retrenching, when Mrs. Chevassat had shot at her a venomous glance, which pierced her to the very marrow of her bones.
“It must be done,” she said to herself.
In her mind she felt as if the five francs were a kind of daily ransom which she paid the estimable concierge’s wife for her good-will. It is true, that, for such a consideration, the terrible woman was all attention for her “poor little pussy-cat;” for thus she had definitely dubbed Henrietta, becoming daily more familiar, and adding this odious and irritating presumption to all the other tortures of the poor girl. Many a time poor Henrietta had been made so indignant and furious, that she had been on the point of rebelling; but she had never dared, submitting to this familiarity for the same reason for which she paid her five francs every day. The old woman, taking her silence for consent, put no longer any restraint upon herself. She declared she could not comprehend how her “little pussy-cat,” young and pretty as she was, could consent to live as she did. Was that a life?
Then she always came back to M. Maxime, who continued to call regularly twice a day, the poor young man!
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