Suddenly a voice exclaimed:
“Here’s master coming for his hot water!”
And windows were quickly closed, and doors slammed. The silence of death ensued, yet Berthe did not at first dare to move. When she at length went down, the thought came to her that Rachel was probably in the kitchen, waiting for her. This caused her fresh anguish. She now dreaded to enter, she would have preferred to reach the street and fly away in the distance forever. She nevertheless pushed the door ajar, and felt relieved on beholding that the servant was not there. Then, seized with a childish joy on finding herself at home again and safe, she hurried to her room. But there was Rachel standing before the bed, which had not even been opened. She looked at the bed, and then at her mistress with her expressionless face. In her first moment of fright, the young woman lost her head to the point of trying to excuse herself, and talked of an illness of her sister’s. She stammered out the words, and then, frightened at the poorness of her lie, understanding that denial was utterly useless, she suddenly burst into tears. Dropping onto a chair, she continued crying.
This lasted a good while. Not a word was exchanged, sobs alone disturbed the perfect quiet of the room. Rachel, exaggerating her habitual discretion, maintaining her cold manner of a girl who knows everything, but who says nothing, had turned her back, and was making a pretence of beating up the pillows, as though she was just finishing arranging the bed. At length, when madame, more and more upset by this silence, was giving too loud a vent to her despair, the maid, who was then dusting, said simply, in a respectful tone of voice:
“Madame is wrong to take on so, master is not so very pleasant.”
Berthe left off crying. She would pay the girl, that was all Without waiting further she gave her twenty francs. Then, not thinking that sufficient, and already feeling uneasy, having fancied she saw her curl her lips disdainfully, she rejoined her in the kitchen, and brought her back to make her a present of an almost new dress.
At the same moment, Octave, on his part, was again in a state of alarm, on account of Monsieur Gourd. On leaving the Pichons’, he had found him standing immovable, the same as the night before, listening behind the door communicating with the servants’ staircase. He followed him without even daring to speak to him. The doorkeeper gravely went back again down the grand staircase. On the floor below he took a key from his pocket and entered the room which was let to the distinguished individual, who came there to work one night every week. And through the door, which remained open for a moment, Octave obtained a clear view of that room which was always kept as closely shut as a tomb. It was in a terrible state of disorder that morning, the gentleman having no doubt worked there the night before. A huge bed, with the sheets stripped off, a wardrobe with a glass door, empty, save for the remnants of a lobster and two partly filled bottles, two dirty hand-basins lying about, one beside the bed and the other on a chair. Monsieur Gourd, with his calm air of a retired judge, at once occupied himself with emptying and rinsing out the basins.
As he hurried to the Passage de la Madeleine to pay for the bonnet, the young man was tormented by a painful uncertainty. Finally, he determined to engage the doorkeepers in conversation on his return. Madame Gourd, reclining in her commodious armchair, was getting a breath of fresh air between the two pots of flowers, at the open window of their room. Standing up beside the door, old mother Pérou was waiting in a humble and frightened manner.
“Have you a letter for me?” asked Octave, as a commencement.