“Well,” said the laundress, her voice trembling slightly, “what can it matter to me?”
She looked straight into Virginie’s eyes.
Did this woman still have it in for her?
Virginie replied with an air of innocence:
“It can’t matter to you, of course. Only, you ought to advise him to break off with that girl, who is sure to cause him some unpleasantness.”
The worst of it was that Lantier, feeling himself supported by public opinion, changed altogether in his behavior towards Gervaise.
Now, whenever he shook hands with her, he held her fingers for a minute between his own. He tried her with his glance, fixing a bold look upon her, in which she clearly read that he wanted her.
If he passed behind her, he dug his knees into her skirt, or breathed upon her neck.
Yet he waited a while before being rough and openly declaring himself.
But one evening, finding himself alone with her, he pushed her before him without a word, and viewed her all trembling against the wall at the back of the shop, and tried to kiss her.
It so chanced that Goujet entered just at that moment.
Then she struggled and escaped.
And all three exchanged a few words, as though nothing had happened.
Goujet, his face deadly pale, looked on the ground, fancying that he had disturbed them, and that she had merely struggled so as not to be kissed before a third party.
The next day Gervaise moved restlessly about the shop. She was miserable and unable to iron even a single handkerchief.
She only wanted to see Goujet and explain to him how Lantier happened to have pinned her against the wall.
But since Etienne had gone to Lille, she had hesitated to visit Goujet’s forge where she felt she would be greeted by his fellow workers with secret laughter.
This afternoon, however, she yielded to the impulse. She took an empty basket and went out under the pretext of going for the petticoats of her customer on Rue des Portes-Blanches.
Then, when she reached Rue Marcadet, she walked very slowly in front of the bolt factory, hoping for a lucky meeting.
Goujet must have been hoping to see her, too, for within five minutes he came out as if by chance.
“You have been on an errand,” he said, smiling.
“And now you are on your way home.”
Actually Gervaise had her back toward Rue des Poissonniers. He only said that for something to say.
They walked together up toward Montmartre, but without her taking his arm.
They wanted to get a bit away from the factory so as not to seem to be having a rendezvous in front of it.
They turned into a vacant lot between a sawmill and a button factory.
It was like a small green meadow. There was even a goat tied to a stake.
“It’s strange,” remarked Gervaise. “You’d think you were in the country.”
The went to sit under a dead tree.
Gervaise placed the laundry basket by her feet.
“Yes,” Gervaise said, “I had an errand to do, and so I came out.”
She felt deeply ashamed and was afraid to try to explain.
Yet she realized that they had come here to discuss it.
It remained a troublesome burden.
Then, all in a rush, with tears in her eyes, she told him of the death that morning of Madame Bijard, her washerwoman. She had suffered horrible agonies.
“Her husband caused it by kicking her in the stomach,” she said in a monotone.
“He must have damaged her insides.
Mon Dieu! She was in agony for three days with her stomach all swelled up.
Plenty of scoundrels have been sent to the galleys for less than that, but the courts won’t concern themselves with a wife-beater. Especially since the woman said she had hurt herself falling. She wanted to save him from the scaffold, but she screamed all night long before she died.”
Goujet clenched his hands and remained silent.
“She weaned her youngest only two weeks ago, little Jules,” Gervaise went on.
“That’s lucky for the baby, he won’t have to suffer. Still, there’s the child Lalie and she has two babies to look after. She isn’t eight yet, but she’s already sensible. Her father will beat her now even more than before.”
Goujet gazed at her silently. Then, his lips trembling: “You hurt me yesterday, yes, you hurt me badly.”
Gervaise turned pale and clasped her hands as he continued.
“I thought it would happen. You should have told me, you should have trusted me enough to confess what was happening, so as not to leave me thinking that — “
Goujet could not finish the sentence.
Gervaise stood up, realizing that he thought she had gone back with Lantier as the neighbors asserted. Stretching her arms toward him, she cried:
“No, no, I swear to you.
He was pushing against me, trying to kiss me, but his face never even touched mine.
It’s true, and that was the first time he tried. Oh, I swear on my life, on the life of my children, oh, believe me!”