“Listen, my child,” said Madame Obardi in a trembling voice, “there are some things you don’t yet understand. Well, never forget … never forget … that I forbid you … ever to speak to me … of … of … of those matters.”
But the young girl caught desperately at her role of saviour and went on:
“No, mother, I’m no longer a child, and I have the right to know. I know all sorts of disreputable people, adventurers, come to our house, and that that’s why we are not respected; and I know more than that. Well, it mustn’t be, I won’t endure it. We’ll go away; you can sell your jewels; we’ll work if necessary, and we’ll live like honest women somewhere far away. And if I manage to get married, so much the better.”
Her mother looked at her out of angry black eyes, and answered:
“You’re mad. Be good enough to get up and come out to lunch with the rest of us.”
“No, mother. There’s someone here, you know whom, whom I won’t see again. He must go out of this house, or I will. You must choose between us.”
She was sitting up in bed, and raised her voice, speaking like a character on the stage; at last she had entered upon the drama so long dreamed of, and her grief was almost forgotten in absorption in her mission.
“You must be mad,” repeated the astonished Marquise again, finding nothing else to say.
“No, mother,” the young girl added, with dramatic verve, “that man will leave this house or I shall go; I shall not weaken.”
“And where will you go? … What will you do?”
“I don’t know; it doesn’t matter much … I want us to be honest women.”
The repetition of that phrase “honest women” aroused in the Marquise the fury of a drab.
“Silence!” she shouted. “I won’t be spoken to like that. I’m as good as any other woman, do you hear? I’m a harlot, it’s true, and I’m proud of it; I’m worth a dozen of your honest women.”
Yvette, overwhelmed, looked at her and stammered:
“Oh, mother!”
But the Marquise became frenzied with excitement.
“Yes, I am a harlot. What then? If I weren’t a harlot, you’d be a kitchen-maid today, as I was once, and you’d work for twenty sous a day, and you’d wash the dishes, and your mistress would send you out on errands to the butcher’s, d’you hear, and kick you out if you were idle; whereas here you are, idling all day long, just because I am a harlot. There! When you’re only a poor servant-girl with fifty francs of savings, you must get away from it somehow if you don’t want to rot in the workhouse; and there’s only one way for women, only one way, d’you hear, when you’re a servant! We can’t make fortunes on the stock exchange or at high finance. We’ve nothing but our bodies, nothing but our bodies.”
She beat her breast like a penitent at confession, and advanced towards the bed, flushed and excited:
“So much the worse for a pretty girl; she must live on her looks or grind along in poverty all her life long … all her life. … There’s no alternative.”
Then, returning hastily to her old idea: “And your honest women, do they go without? It’s they who are sluts, because they’re not forced. They’ve money to live on and amuse themselves with; they have their lovers out of pure wantonness. It’s they who are sluts!”
She stood beside Yvette’s bed; Yvette, utterly overcome, wanted to scream for help and run away; she was crying noisily, like a beaten child.
The Marquise was silent, and looked at her daughter; seeing the girl’s utter despair, she was herself overcome by sorrow, remorse, tenderness, and pity; and falling upon the bed with outstretched arms, she too began to sob, murmuring:
“My poor darling, my poor darling, if you only knew how you hurt me.”
And for a long time they both wept.
Then the Marquise, whose grief never lasted very long, rose gently, and said very softly:
“Well, darling, that’s how it is; it can’t be helped. It can’t be altered now. Life must be taken as it comes.”
But Yvette continued to cry; the shock had been too severe and too unexpected for her to be able to reflect upon it calmly and recover herself.
“Come, get up, and come down to breakfast, so that nothing will be noticed,” said her mother.
The young girl shook her head, unable to speak; at last she said very slowly, her voice choked with sobs:
“No, mother, you know what I said; I won’t change my mind. I will not leave my room till they have gone. I won’t see any of those people again, never, never. If they come back, I … I … you won’t see me again.”
The Marquise had dried her eyes and, worn out with her emotion, murmured:
“Come now, think it over, be sensible about it.” Then again, after a minute’s silence: “Yes, you had better rest this morning. I’ll come and see you in the afternoon.”
She kissed her daughter on the forehead and went away to get dressed, quite calm again.
As soon as her mother had disappeared, Yvette ran to the door and bolted it, so as to be alone, quite alone; then she began to reflect.
About eleven o’clock the maid knocked at the door and asked:
“Madame la Marquise wishes to know if you want anything, Mademoiselle, and what will you have for lunch?”
“I’m not hungry,” replied Yvette; “I only want to be left alone.”
She stayed in bed as though she were really ill. About three o’clock there was another knock.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“It’s I, darling,” answered her mother’s voice; “I’ve come to see how you are.”
She hesitated. What should she do? She opened the door and got back into bed. The Marquise came close, speaking softly as though to an invalid.
“Well, are you feeling better? Won’t you eat an egg?”
“No, thank you, nothing.”
Madame Obardi had sat down beside the bed. Neither spoke for some time; then, at last, as her daughter remained
