It was heavy!
But she soon laid it down on the work-table, between a petticoat and a bundle of shirts. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She dragged Gervaise into the back-room.
“I say, little one,” murmured she rapidly,
“I’ve come to warn you. You’ll never guess who I just met at the corner of the street.
Lantier, my dear! He’s hovering about on the watch; so I hastened here at once.
It frightened me on your account, you know.”
The laundress turned quite pale.
What could the wretched man want with her?
Coming, too, like that, just in the midst of the preparations for the feast.
She had never had any luck; she could not even be allowed to enjoy herself quietly.
But Virginie replied that she was very foolish to put herself out about it like that.
Why!
If Lantier dared to follow her about, all she had to do was to call a policeman and have him locked up.
In the month since her husband had been appointed a policeman, Virginie had assumed rather lordly manners and talked of arresting everybody.
She began to raise her voice, saying that she wished some passer-by would pinch her bottom so that she could take the fresh fellow to the police station herself and turn him over to her husband. Gervaise signaled her to be quiet since the workwomen were listening and led the way back into the shop, reopening the discussion about the dinner.
“Now, don’t we need a vegetable?”
“Why not peas with bacon?” said Virginie.
“I like nothing better.”
“Yes, peas with bacon.” The others approved. Augustine was so enthusiastic that she jabbed the poker into the stove harder than ever.
By three o’clock on the morrow, Sunday, mother Coupeau had lighted their two stoves and also a third one of earthenware which they had borrowed from the Boches.
At half-past three the pot-au-feu was boiling away in an enormous earthenware pot lent by the eating-house keeper next door, the family pot having been found too small.
They had decided to cook the veal and the pig’s back the night before, since both of those dishes are better when reheated.
But the cream sauce for the veal would not be prepared until just before sitting down for the feast.
There was still plenty of work left for Monday: the soup, the peas with bacon, the roast goose.
The inner room was lit by three fires. Butter was sizzling in the pans and emitting a sharp odor of burnt flour.
Mother Coupeau and Gervaise, with white aprons tied on, were bustling all around, cleaning parsley, dashing for salt and pepper, turning the meat.
They had sent Coupeau away so as not to have him underfoot, but they still had plenty of people looking in throughout the afternoon.
The luscious smells from the kitchen had spread through the entire building so that neighboring ladies came into the shop on various pretexts, very curious to see what was being cooked.
Virginie put in an appearance towards five o’clock. She had again seen Lantier; really, it was impossible to go down the street now without meeting him.
Madame Boche also had just caught sight of him standing at the corner of the pavement with his head thrust forward in an uncommonly sly manner.
Then Gervaise who had at that moment intended going for a sou’s worth of burnt onions for the pot-au-feu, began to tremble from head to foot and did not dare leave the house; the more so, as the concierge and the dressmaker put her into a terrible fright by relating horrible stories of men waiting for women with knives and pistols hidden beneath their overcoats.
Well, yes! one reads of such things every day in the newspapers.
When one of those scoundrels gets his monkey up on discovering an old love leading a happy life he becomes capable of everything.
Virginie obligingly offered to run and fetch the burnt onions.
Women should always help one another, they could not let that little thing be murdered.
When she returned she said that Lantier was no longer there; he had probably gone off on finding he was discovered.
In spite of that thought, he was the subject of conversation around the saucepans until night-time.
When Madame Boche advised her to inform Coupeau, Gervaise became really terrified, and implored her not to say a word about it.
Oh, yes, wouldn’t that be a nice situation!
Her husband must have become suspicious already because for the last few days, at night, he would swear to himself and bang the wall with his fists.
The mere thought that the two men might destroy each other because of her made her shudder.
She knew that Coupeau was jealous enough to attack Lantier with his shears.
While the four of them had been deep in contemplating this drama, the saucepans on the banked coals of the stoves had been quietly simmering. When mother Coupeau lifted the lids, the veal and the pig’s back were discreetly bubbling. The pot-au-feu was steadily steaming with snore-like sounds.
Eventually each of them dipped a piece of bread into the soup to taste the bouillon.
At length Monday arrived.
Now that Gervaise was going to have fourteen persons at table, she began to fear that she would not be able to find room for them all. She decided that they should dine in the shop; and the first thing in the morning she took measurements so as to settle which way she should place the table.
After that they had to remove all the clothes and take the ironing-table to pieces; the top of this laid on to some shorter trestles was to be the dining-table.
But just in the midst of all this moving a customer appeared and made a scene because she had been waiting for her washing ever since the Friday; they were humbugging her, she would have her things at once.
Then Gervaise tried to excuse herself and lied boldly; it was not her fault, she was cleaning out her shop, the workmen would not be there till the morrow; and she pacified her customer and got rid of her by promising to busy herself with her things at the earliest possible moment.
Then, as soon as the woman had left, she showed her temper.