Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [35]
“Here you are at last! well, it’s fortunate!” said Madame Lerat, with a nasty look about her mouth, and still put out by Madame Maloir’s double bezique. “You can flatter yourself that you know how to keep people waiting!”
“Madame is really very foolish!” added Zoé.
Nana, already out of temper, became exasperated by these reproaches. Was that the way to receive her after all the unpleasantness she had gone through?
“Mind your own business, can’t you?” she cried.
“Hush! madame, there are some people here,” said the maid.
So, lowering her voice, the young woman faltered, all out of breath, “Do you think I’ve been amusing myself? I thought I should never have been able to get away. I should have liked to have seen you in my place. I was boiling. I was on the point of using my fists. And then, not a cab to be got to come back in. Fortunately it’s close by. All the same, I ran as fast as I could.”
“Have you the money?” asked the aunt.
“What a question!” replied Nana.
She had seated herself in a chair close to the grate, her legs almost too tired to bear her, and, before she had even recovered her breath, she felt inside the body of her dress and drew forth an envelope, in which were four bank-notes of one hundred francs each. One could see the notes by a large tear she had made in the envelope with her finger so as to make sure of what it contained. The three women around her looked fixedly at the envelope of common paper, all crumpled and dirtied, in her little gloved hands. It was too late; Madame Lerat should not go to Rambouillet till the next day. Nana began to give her various instructions.
“Madame, there are some people waiting,” repeated the maid.
But she again flew into a passion. The people could wait. She would attend to them by-and-by, when she had settled what she was about. Then, as her aunt put out her hand to take the money, “Oh! no, not all,” said she. “Three hundred francs for the nurse, fifty francs for your journey and expenses, that makes three hundred and fifty. I shall keep fifty francs.”
The great difficulty was to get change. There were not ten francs in the place. They did not ask Madame Maloir, who was listening with an uninterested look, for she never had with her more than the six sous necessary for an omnibus. At length Zoé left them, saying that she would go and look in her trunk, and she shortly returned with a hundred francs, all in five franc pieces. They counted them on the corner of the table. Madame Lerat went off at once, promising to fetch little Louis on the morrow.
“You say there are some people waiting?” resumed Nana, still sitting down, resting.
“Yes, madame, three persons.”
And Zoé named the banker first. Nana pouted her lip. Did that Steiner think she was going to stand any of his nonsense, just because he had had a bouquet thrown to her on the previous evening?
“Besides,” she declared, “I’ve had enough for to-day. I shall not receive any one. Go and say that you no longer expect me.”
“Madame will reflect—madame will receive M. Steiner,” murmured Zoé, without stirring, looking very grave and annoyed to find her mistress on the point of behaving very foolishly. Then she spoke of the Wallachian, who must be beginning to find time hang very heavily on his hands all alone in the bedroom. But Nana got into a rage and became more obstinate. No, she would see no one! Why was she ever bothered with a fellow who would stick to her to that extent?
“Kick ’em all out! I’m going to have a game at bezique with Madame Maloir. I like that much better.”
The ringing of the bell interrupted her. This was too much! How many more of them would come to bother her? She forbade Zoé to open the door. The latter, without listening to what she said, left the kitchen. When she returned, she stated in a peremptory tone of voice, as she handed two cards to her mistress: “I told the gentlemen that madame would