Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [123]
“Damnation! I’ve had enough of it all!” swore she, striking the furniture with her clenched fists. “Ah, well! I who took so much care to keep faithful. Why, my fine fellow! I could be as rich as ever to-morrow, if I only said a word.”
He raised his head in surprise. He had never given the money question a thought. If she would express a desire, he would gratify it at once. His whole fortune was hers.
“No, it’s too late,” replied she, furiously. “I like the men who give without being asked. No, were you to offer me a million for one embrace, I would refuse you. It’s all over, I have something better there. Be off, or I will no longer answer for myself. I shall do something dreadful.”
And she advanced towards him, menacingly; but in the midst of this exasperation of a kind-hearted girl pushed to extremes, and convinced of her right and of her superiority over the worthy people who pestered her, the door suddenly opened and Steiner appeared. This was the last straw. She uttered a terrible cry.
“Hallo! here’s the other one now!”
Steiner, bewildered by the noise of her voice, stood still. Muffat’s unexpected presence annoyed him, for he was afraid of an explanation, from which he had kept aloof for three months past. Blinking his eyes, he twisted himself about in an uneasy sort of way, and avoided looking at the count; and he breathed hard, with the red and distorted features of a man who has rushed about Paris to bring some good news, and who finds he has fallen into a catastrophe.
“What do you want—you, eh?” asked Nana, roughly, speaking familiarly to him, in spite of the count’s presence.
“I—I—,” he stammered, “I have brought you—you know what.”
“What’s that?”
He hesitated. Two days before she had told him not to show himself there again without bringing a thousand francs, which she required to pay a bill. For two days he had been seeking the money, and he had just succeeded in completing the sum that very morning.
“The thousand francs,” he ended by saying, as he withdrew an envelope from his pocket.
Nana had forgotten all about them.
“The thousand francs!” cried she. “Do I ask for charity? Look! see what I do with your thousand francs!”
And seizing the envelope, she threw it in his face. Like a prudent Jew he picked it up, though painfully. He glanced at the young woman in a stupefied fashion. Muffat exchanged a look of despair with him, whilst Nana placed her hands on her hips in order to shout the louder.
“I say now, have you nearly finished insulting me? As for you, my boy, I’m glad you’ve also come; for now, look here, I can have a clean sweep. Now then! out you go!” Then, as they did not seem to hurry themselves, but stood as though paralysed, she went on: “What! you say I’m foolish? That’s possible! but you’ve plagued me too much; and, drat it all! I’ve had enough of a fashionable existence! If I bust up, it’s my lookout.
“One—two—you refuse to go? Well! look here then, I’ve got a friend.”
With a sudden movement she threw the bedroom door wide open. Then the two men beheld Fontan in the middle of the tumbled bed. He had not expected to be exhibited thus, with his dusky person spread out like a goat in the midst of the crumpled lace, his legs showing under the flying tail of his night shirt. He was not, however, by any means embarrassed, used as he was to the surprises of the stage. After the first shock was over, he was able to make a face which insured him the honours of war. He did the rabbit, as he called it, thrusting out his mouth, curling his nose, and moving all the muscles of his face at the same time. His head, resembling that of a libidinous faun, exuded vice through every pore. It was Fontan whom Nana, seized by that mad infatuation of women for the hideous grimaces of ugly comic actors,