suspicious glance. Mme Hugon continued to go into details: the
country place was called La Mignotte. In order to get there one had
to go up the bank of the Choue as far as Gumieres in order to cross
the bridge; otherwise one got one's feet wet and ran the risk of a
ducking.
"And what is the actress's name?" asked the countess.
"Oh, I wasn't told," murmured the old lady. "Georges, you were
there the morning the gardener spoke to us about it."
Georges appeared to rack his brains. Muffat waited, twirling a
teaspoon between his fingers. Then the countess addressed her
husband:
"Isn't Monsieur Steiner with that singer at the Varietes, that
Nana?"
"Nana, that's the name! A horrible woman!" cried Mme Hugon with
growing annoyance. "And they are expecting her at La Mignotte.
I've heard all about it from the gardener. Didn't the gardener say
they were expecting her this evening, Georges?"
The count gave a little start of astonishment, but Georges replied
with much vivacity:
"Oh, Mother, the gardener spoke without knowing anything about it.
Directly afterward the coachman said just the opposite. Nobody's
expected at La Mignotte before the day after tomorrow."
He tried hard to assume a natural expression while he slyly watched
the effect of his remarks on the count. The latter was twirling his
spoon again as though reassured. The countess, her eyes fixed
dreamily on the blue distances of the park, seemed to have lost all
interest in the conversation. The shadow of a smile on her lips,
she seemed to be following up a secret thought which had been
suddenly awakened within her. Estelle, on the other hand, sitting
stiffly on her chair, had heard all that had been said about Nana,
but her white, virginal face had not betrayed a trace of emotion.
"Dear me, dear me! I've got no right to grow angry," murmured Mme
Hugon after a pause, and with a return to her old good humor she
added:
"Everybody's got a right to live. If we meet this said lady on the
road we shall not bow to her--that's all!"
And as they got up from table she once more gently upbraided the
Countess Sabine for having been so long in coming to her that year.
But the countess defended herself and threw the blame of the delays
upon her husband's shoulders. Twice on the eve of departure, when
all the trunks were locked, he counterordered their journey on the
plea of urgent business. Then he had suddenly decided to start just
when the trip seemed shelved. Thereupon the old lady told them how
Georges in the same way had twice announced his arrival without
arriving and had finally cropped up at Les Fondettes the day before
yesterday, when she was no longer expecting him. They had come down
into the garden, and the two men, walking beside the ladies, were
listening to them in consequential silence.
"Never mind," said Mme Hugon, kissing her son's sunny locks, "Zizi
is a very good boy to come and bury himself in the country with his
mother. He's a dear Zizi not to forget me!"
In the afternoon she expressed some anxiety, for Georges, directly
after leaving the table, had complained of a heavy feeling in his
head and now seemed in for an atrocious sick headache. Toward four
o'clock he said he would go upstairs to bed: it was the only remedy.
After sleeping till tomorrow morning he would be perfectly himself
again. His mother was bent on putting him to bed herself, but as
she left the room he ran and locked the door, explaining that he was
shutting himself in so that no one should come and disturb him.
Then caressingly he shouted, "Good night till tomorrow, little
Mother!" and promised to take a nap. But he did not go to bed again
and with flushed cheeks and bright eyes noiselessly put on his
clothes. Then he sat on a chair and waited. When the dinner bell
rang he listened for Count Muffat, who was on his way to the dining
room, and ten minutes later, when he was certain that no one would
see him, he slipped from the window to the ground with the
assistance of a rain pipe. His bedroom was situated on the first
floor and looked out upon the rear of the house. He threw himself
among some bushes and got out of the park and then galloped across
the fields with empty stomach and heart beating with excitement.
Night was closing in, and a small fine rain was beginning to fall.
It was the very evening that Nana was due at La Mignotte. Ever
since in the preceding May Steiner had bought her this country place
she had from time to time been so filled with the desire of taking
possession that she had wept hot tears about, but on each of these
occasions Bordenave had refused to give her even the shortest leave
and had deferred her holiday till September on the plea that he did
not intend putting an understudy in her place, even for one evening,
now that the exhibition was on. Toward the close of August he spoke
of October. Nana was furious and declared that she would be at La
Mignotte in the middle of September. Nay, in order to dare
Bordenave, she even invited a crowd of guests in his very presence.
One afternoon in her rooms, as Muffat, whose advances she still
adroitly resisted, was beseeching her with tremulous emotion to
yield to his entreaties, she at length promised to be kind, but not
in Paris, and to him, too, she named the middle of September. Then
on the twelfth she was seized by a desire to be off forthwith with
Zoe as her sole companion. It might be that Bordenave had got wind
of her intentions and was about to discover some means of detaining
her. She was delighted at the notion of putting him in a fix, and
she sent him a doctor's certificate. When once the idea had entered
her head of being the first to get to La Mignotte and of living
there two days without anybody knowing anything about it, she rushed
Zoe through the operation of packing and finally pushed her into a
cab, where in a sudden burst of extreme contrition she kissed her
and begged her pardon. It was only when they got to the station
refreshment room that she thought of writing Steiner of her
movements. She begged him to wait till the day after tomorrow
before rejoining her if he wanted to find her quite bright and
fresh. And then, suddenly conceiving another project, she wrote a
second letter, in which she besought her aunt to bring little Louis
to her at once. It would do Baby so much good! And how happy they
would be together in the shade of the trees! In the railway
carriage between Paris and Orleans she spoke of nothing else; her
eyes were full of tears; she had an unexpected attack of maternal
tenderness and mingled together flowers, birds and child in her
every sentence.
La Mignotte was more than three leagues away from the station, and
Nana lost a good hour over the hire of a carriage, a huge,
dilapidated calash, which rumbled slowly along to an accompaniment
of rattling old iron. She had at once taken possession of the
coachman, a little taciturn old man whom she overwhelmed with
questions. Had he often passed by La Mignotte? It was behind this
hill then? There ought to be lots of trees there, eh? And the
house could one see it at a distance? The little old man answered
with a succession of grunts. Down in the calash Nana was almost
dancing with impatience, while Zoe, in her annoyance at having left
Paris in such a hurry, sat stiffly sulking beside her. The horse
suddenly stopped short, and the young woman thought they had reached
their destination. She put her head out of the carriage door and
asked:
"Are we there, eh?"
By way of answer the driver whipped up his horse, which was in the
act of painfully climbing a hill. Nana gazed ecstatically at the
vast plain beneath the gray sky where great clouds were banked up.
"Oh, do look, Zoe! There's greenery! Now, is that all wheat? Good
lord, how pretty it is!"
"One can quite see that Madame doesn't come from the country," was
the servant's prim and tardy rejoinder. "As for me, I knew the
country only too well when I was with my dentist. He had a house at
Bougival. No, it's cold, too, this evening. It's damp in these
parts."
They were driving under the shadow of a wood, and Nana sniffed up
the scent of the leaves as a young dog might. All of a sudden at a
turn of the road she caught sight of the corner of a house among the
trees. Perhaps it was there! And with that she began a
conversation with the driver, who continued shaking his head by way
of saying no. Then as they drove down the other side of the hill he
contented himself by holding out his whip and muttering, "'Tis down
there."
She got up and stretched herself almost bodily out of the carriage
door.
"Where is it? Where is it?" she cried with pale cheeks, but as yet
she saw nothing.
At last she caught sight of a bit of wall. And then followed a
succession of little cries and jumps, the ecstatic behavior of a
woman overcome by a new and vivid sensation.
"I see it! I see it, Zoe! Look out at the other side. Oh, there's
a terrace with brick ornaments on the roof! And there's a hothouse
down there! But the place is immense. Oh, how happy I am! Do
look, Zoe! Now, do look!"
The carriage had bthin a wall. Then the view
of the kitchen garden entirely engrossed her attention. She darted
back, jostling the lady's maid at the top of the stairs and bursting
out:
"It's full of cabbages! Oh, such woppers! And lettuces and sorrel
and onions and everything! Come along, make haste!"
The rain was falling more heavily now, and she opened her white silk
sunshade and ran down the garden walks.
"Madame will catch cold," cried Zoe, who had stayed quietly behind
under the awning over the garden door.
But Madame wanted to see things, and at each new discovery there was
a burst of wonderment.
"Zoe, here's spinach! Do come. Oh, look at the artichokes! They
are funny. So they grow in the ground, do they? Now, what can that
be? I don't know it. Do come, Zoe, perhaps you know."
The lady's maid never budged an inch. Madame must really be raving
mad. For now the rain was coming down in torrents, and the little
white silk sunshade was aly this time pulled up before the park gates. A
side door was opened, and the gardener, a tall, dry fellow, made his
appearance, cap in hand. Nana made an effort to regain her dignity,
for the driver seemed now to be suppressing a laugh behind his dry,
speechless lips. She refrained from setting off at a run and
listened to the gardener, who was a very talkative fellow. He
begged Madame to excuse the disorder in which she found everything,
seeing that he had only received Madame's letter that very morning.
But despite all his efforts, she flew off at a tangent and walked so
quickly that Zoe could scarcely follow her. At the end of the
avenue she paused for a moment in order to take the house in at a
glance. It was a great pavilionlike building in the Italian manner,
and it was flanked by a smaller construction, which a rich
Englishman, after two years' residence in Naples, had caused to be
erected and had forthwith become disgusted with.
"I'll take Madame over the house," said the gardener.
But she had outrun him entirely, and she shouted back that he was
not to put himself out and that she would go over the house by
herself. She preferred doing that, she said. And without removing
her hat she dashed into the different rooms, calling to Zoe as she
did so, shouting her impressions from one end of each corridor to
the other and filling the empty house, which for long months had
been uninhabited, with exclamations and bursts of laughter. In the
first place, there was the hall. It was a little damp, but that
didn't matter; one wasn't going to sleep in it. Then came the
drawing room, quite the thing, the drawing room, with its windows
opening on the lawn. Only the red upholsteries there were hideous;
she would alter all that. As to the dining room-well, it was a
lovely dining room, eh? What big blowouts you might give in Paris
if you had a dining room as large as that! As she was going
upstairs to the first floor it occurred to her that she had not seen
the kitchen, and she went down again and indulged in ecstatic
exclamations. Zoe ought to admire the beautiful dimensions of the
sink and the width of the hearth, where you might have roasted a
sheep! When she had gone upstairs again her bedroom especially
enchanted her. It had been hung with delicate rose-colored Louis
XVI cretonne by an Orleans upholsterer. Dear me, yes! One ought to
sleep jolly sound in such a room as that; why, it was a real best
bedroom! Then came four or five guest chambers and then some
splendid garrets, which would be extremely convenient for trunks and
boxes. Zoe looked very gruff and cast a frigid glance into each of
the rooms as she lingered in Madame's wake. She saw Nana
disappearing up the steep garret ladder and said, "Thanks, I haven't
the least wish to break my legs." But the sound of a voice reached
her from far away; indeed, it seemed to come whistling down a
chimney.
"Zoe, Zoe, where are you? Come up, do! You've no idea! It's like
fairyland!"
Zoe went up, grumbling. On the roof she found her mistress leaning
against the brickwork balustrade and gazing at the valley which
spread out into the silence. The horizon was immeasurably wide, but
it was now covered by masses of gray vapor, and a fierce wind was
driving fine rain before it. Nana had to hold her hat on with both
