________________________________________________
_ Madame Foucault came into Sophia's room one afternoon with a
peculiar guilty expression on her large face, and she held her
peignoir close to her exuberant body in folds consciously
majestic, as though endeavouring to prove to Sophia by her
carriage that despite her shifting eyes she was the most righteous
and sincere woman that ever lived.
It was Saturday, the third of September, a beautiful day. Sophia,
suffering from an unimportant relapse, had remained in a state of
inactivity, and had scarcely gone out at all. She loathed the
flat, but lacked the energy to leave it every day. There was no
sufficiently definite object in leaving it. She could not go out
and look for health as she might have looked for flowers. So she
remained in the flat, and stared at the courtyard and the
continual mystery of lives hidden behind curtains that
occasionally moved. And the painted yellow walls of the house, and
the papered walls of her room pressed upon her and crushed her.
For a few days Chirac had called daily, animated by the most
adorable solicitude. Then he had ceased to call. She had tired of
reading the journals; they lay unopened. The relations between
Madame Foucault and herself, and her status in the flat of which
she now legally owned the furniture,--these things were left
unsettled. But the question of her board was arranged on the terms
that she halved the cost of food and service with Madame Foucault;
her expenses were thus reduced to the lowest possible--about
eighteen francs a week. An idea hung in the air--like a scientific
discovery on the point of being made by several independent
investigators simultaneously--that she and Madame Foucault should
co-operate in order to let furnished rooms at a remunerative
profit. Sophia felt the nearness of the idea and she wanted to be
shocked at the notion of any avowed association between herself
and Madame Foucault; but she could not be.
"Here are a lady and a gentleman who want a bedroom," began Madame
Foucault, "a nice large bedroom, furnished."
"Oh!" said Sophia; "who are they?"
"They will pay a hundred and thirty francs a month, in advance,
for the middle bedroom."
"You've shown it to them already?" said Sophia. And her tone
implied that somehow she was conscious of a right to overlook the
affair of Madame Foucault.
"No," said the other. "I said to myself that first I would ask you
for a counsel."
"Then will they pay all that for a room they haven't seen?"
"The fact is," said Madame Foucault, sheepishly. "The lady has
seen the room before. I know her a little. It is a former tenant.
She lived here some weeks."
"In that room?"
"Oh no! She was poor enough then."
"Where are they?"
"In the corridor. She is very well, the lady. Naturally one must
live, she like all the world; but she is veritably well. Quite
respectable! One would never say ... Then there would be the
meals. We could demand one franc for the cafe au lait, two and a
half francs for the lunch, and three francs for the dinner.
Without counting other things. That would mean over five hundred
francs a month, at least. And what would they cost us? Almost
nothing! By what appears, he is a plutocrat ... I could thus
quickly repay you."
"Is it a married couple?"
"Ah! You know, one cannot demand the marriage certificate." Madame
Foucault indicated by a gesture that the Rue Breda was not the
paradise of saints.
"When she came before, this lady, was it with the same man?"
Sophia asked coldly.
"Ah, my faith, no!" exclaimed Madame Foucault, bridling. "It was a
bad sort, the other, a ...! Ah, no."
"Why do you ask my advice?" Sophia abruptly questioned, in a hard,
inimical voice. "Is it that it concerns me?"
Tears came at once into the eyes of Madame Foucault. "Do not be
unkind," she implored.
"I'm not unkind," said Sophia, in the same tone.
"Shall you leave me if I accept this offer?"
There was a pause.
"Yes," said Sophia, bluntly. She tried to be large-hearted, large-
minded, and sympathetic; but there was no sign of these qualities
in her speech.
"And if you take with you the furniture which is yours ...!"
Sophia kept silence.
"How am I to live, I demand of you?" Madame Foucault asked weakly.
"By being respectable and dealing with respectable people!" said
Sophia, uncompromisingly, in tones of steel.
"I am unhappy!" murmured the elder woman. "However, you are more
strong than I!"
She brusquely dabbed her eyes, gave a little sob, and ran out of
the room. Sophia listened at the door, and heard her dismiss the
would-be tenants of the best bedroom. She wondered that she should
possess such moral ascendancy over the woman, she so young and
ingenuous! For, of course, she had not meant to remove the
furniture. She could hear Madame Foucault sobbing quietly in one
of the other rooms; and her lips curled.
Before evening a truly astonishing event happened. Perceiving that
Madame Foucault showed no signs of bestirring herself, Sophia,
with good nature in her heart but not on her tongue, went to her,
and said:
"Shall I occupy myself with the dinner?"
Madame Foucault sobbed more loudly.
"That would be very amiable on your part," Madame Foucault managed
at last to reply, not very articulately.
Sophia put a hat on and went to the grocer's. The grocer, who kept
a busy establishment at the corner of the Rue Clausel, was a
middle-aged and wealthy man. He had sent his young wife and two
children to Normandy until victory over the Prussians should be
more assured, and he asked Sophia whether it was true that there
was a good bedroom to let in the flat where she lived. His servant
was ill of smallpox; he was attacked by anxieties and fears on all
sides; he would not enter his own flat on account of possible
infection; he liked Sophia, and Madame Foucault had been a
customer of his, with intervals, for twenty years. Within an hour
he had arranged to rent the middle bedroom at eighty francs a
month, and to take his meals there. The terms were modest, but the
respectability was prodigious. All the glory of this tenancy fell
upon Sophia.
Madame Foucault was deeply impressed. Characteristically she began
at once to construct a theory that Sophia had only to walk out of
the house in order to discover ideal tenants for the rooms. Also
she regarded the advent of the grocer as a reward from Providence
for her self-denial in refusing the profits of sinfulness. Sophia
felt personally responsible to the grocer for his comfort, and so
she herself undertook the preparation of the room. Madame Foucault
was amazed at the thoroughness of her housewifery, and at the
ingenuity of her ideas for the arrangement of furniture. She sat
and watched with admiration sycophantic but real.
That night, when Sophia was in bed, Madame Foucault came into the
room, and dropped down by the side of the bed, and begged Sophia
to be her moral support for ever. She confessed herself generally.
She explained how she had always hated the negation of
respectability; how respectability was the one thing that she had
all her life passionately desired. She said that if Sophia would
be her partner in the letting of furnished rooms to respectable
persons, she would obey her in everything. She gave Sophia a list
of all the traits in Sophia's character which she admired. She
asked Sophia to influence her, to stand by her. She insisted that
she would sleep on the sixth floor in the servant's tiny room; and
she had a vision of three bedrooms let to successful tradesmen.
She was in an ecstasy of repentance and good intentions.
Sophia consented to the business proposition; for she had nothing
else whatever in prospect, and she shared Madame Foucault's rosy
view about the remunerativeness of the bedrooms. With three
tenants who took meals the two women would be able to feed
themselves for nothing and still make a profit on the food; and
the rents would be clear gain.
And she felt very sorry for the ageing, feckless Madame Foucault,
whose sincerity was obvious. The association between them would be
strange; it would have been impossible to explain it to St. Luke's
Square. ... And yet, if there was anything at all in the virtue of
Christian charity, what could properly be urged against the
association?
"Ah!" murmured Madame Foucault, kissing Sophia's hands, "it is to-
day, then, that I recommence my life. You will see--you will see!
You have saved me!"
It was a strange sight, the time-worn, disfigured courtesan, half
prostrate before the beautiful young creature proud and
unassailable in the instinctive force of her own character. It was
almost a didactic tableau, fraught with lessons for the vicious.
Sophia was happier than she had been for years. She had a purpose
in existence; she had a fluid soul to mould to her will according
to her wisdom; and there was a large compassion to her credit.
Public opinion could not intimidate her, for in her case there was
no public opinion; she knew nobody; nobody had the right to
question her doings.
The next day, Sunday, they both worked hard at the bedrooms from
early morning. The grocer was installed in his chamber, and the
two other rooms were cleansed as they had never been cleansed. At
four o'clock, the weather being more magnificent than ever, Madame
Foucault said:
"If we took a promenade on the boulevard?"
Sophia reflected. They were partners. "Very well," she agreed.
The boulevard was crammed with gay, laughing crowds. All the cafes
were full. None, who did not know, could have guessed that the
news of Sedan was scarcely a day old in the capital. Delirious joy
reigned in the glittering sunshine. As the two women strolled
along, content with their industry and their resolves, they came
to a National Guard, who, perched on a ladder, was chipping away
the "N" from the official sign of a court-tradesman. He was
exchanging jokes with a circle of open mouths. It was in this way
that Madame Foucault and Sophia learnt of the establishment of a
republic.
"Vive la republique!" cried Madame Foucault, incontinently, and
then apologized to Sophia for the lapse.
They listened a long while to a man who was telling strange
histories of the Empress.
Suddenly Sophia noticed that Madame Foucault was no longer at her
elbow. She glanced about, and saw her in earnest conversation with
a young man whose face seemed familiar. She remembered it was the
young man with whom Madame Foucault had quarrelled on the night
when Sophia found her prone in the corridor; the last remaining
worshipper of the courtesan.
The woman's face was quite changed by her agitation. Sophia drew
away, offended. She watched the pair from a distance for a few
moments, and then, furious in disillusion, she escaped from the
fever of the boulevards and walked quietly home. Madame Foucault
did not return. Apparently Madame Foucault was doomed to be the
toy of chance. Two days later Sophia received a scrawled letter
from her, with the information that her lover had required that
she should accompany him to Brussels, as Paris would soon be
getting dangerous. "He adores me always. He is the most delicious
boy. As I have always said, this is the grand passion of my life.
I am happy. He would not permit me to come to you. He has spent
two thousand francs on clothes for me, since naturally I had
nothing." And so on. No word of apology. Sophia, in reading the
letter, allowed for a certain exaggeration and twisting of the
truth.
"Young fool! Fool!" she burst out angrily. She did not mean
herself; she meant the fatuous adorer of that dilapidated,
horrible woman. She never saw her again. Doubtless Madame Foucault
fulfilled her own prediction as to her ultimate destiny, but in
Brussels. _
Read next: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VI - THE SIEGE: PART II
Read previous: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER V - FEVER: PART V
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