“Oh, I certainly love him!” answered Nana, briskly getting out of his clutches. “But you come popping in without warning. You know, my little man, I’m not my own mistress; you must be good!”
Georges, when he got out of his cab, had been so dizzy with the feeling that his long desire was at last about to be satisfied that he had not even noticed what sort of house he was entering. But now he became conscious of a change in the things around him. He examined the sumptuous dining room with its lofty decorated ceiling, its Gobelin hangings, its buffet blazing with plate.
“Yes, yes!” he remarked sadly.
And with that she made him understand that he was never to come in the mornings but between four and six in the afternoon, if he cared to. That was her reception time. Then as he looked at her with suppliant, questioning eyes and craved no boon at all, she, in her turn, kissed him on the forehead in the most amiable way.
“Be very good,” she whispered. “I’ll do all I can.”
But the truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o’clock he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to pick up the crumbs from Beauty’s table. He hardly ever left the house now and became as much one of its inmates as the little dog Bijou. Together they nestled among Mistress’s skirts and enjoyed a little of her at a time, even when she was with another man, while doles of sugar and stray caresses not seldom fell to their share in her hours of loneliness and boredom.
Doubtless Mme Hugon found out that the lad had again returned to that wicked woman’s arms, for she hurried up to Paris and came and sought aid from her other son, the Lieutenant Philippe, who was then in garrison at Vincennes. Georges, who was hiding from his elder brother, was seized with despairing apprehension, for he feared the latter might adopt violent tactics, and as his tenderness for Nana was so nervously expansive that he could not keep anything from her, he soon began talking of nothing but his big brother, a great, strong fellow, who was capable of all kinds of things.
“You know,” he explained, “Mamma won’t come to you while she can send my brother. Oh, she’ll certainly send Philippe to fetch me.”
The first time he said this Nana was deeply wounded. She said frigidly:
“Gracious me, I should like to see him come! For all that he’s a lieutenant in the army, Francois will chuck him out in double-quick time!”