Just then, Valérie herself brought Steinbock a cup of tea. This was more than a mark of attention; it was a special favour. There is a whole language in the way a woman performs that office, and women are well aware of this. And so it is interesting to study their movements, their gestures, their looks, and the pitch and intonation of their voices, when they perform this apparently simple act of courtesy.
From the question, ‘Do you drink tea?’ ‘Would you like some tea?’ ‘A cup of tea?’ asked coldly, and the order to the nymph presiding over the tea-urn to bring it, to the eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table, cup in hand, and offering it submissively to her heart’s pasha, in a caressing voice and with a look full of voluptuous promise, a physiologist can observe the whole range of feminine feelings, from aversion or indifference to Phèdre’s declaration to Hippolyte.* In this situation a woman can, at will, make herself disdainful to the point of insult, or as humble as an oriental slave.
Valérie was more than a woman; she was the serpent in female form. She completed her devil’s work by coming up in Steinbock with a cup of tea in her hand.
‘I’ll take as many cups of tea as you’d like to give me, for the sake of having them offered to me like this,’ the artist whispered to Valérie, getting up and lightly touching her fingers with his.
‘What’s that you were saying about posing?’ she asked, giving no indication that his outburst of feeling, so ardently awaited, had gone straight to her heart.
‘Père Crevel is going to buy a copy of your group for a thousand crowns.’
‘Ha! A thousand crowns for a group?’
‘Yes, if you’ll pose for Delilah,’ said Steinbock.
‘He won’t be present, I hope,’ she rejoined. ‘Then the group would be worth more than all his money, for Delilah should be a little décolleté.’
Just as Crevel would strike an attitude, so all women have a victorious demeanour, a studied pose which makes them irresistibly admired. You can see them in a drawing-room, spending their time looking at the lace of their bodices or adjusting the shoulders of their dresses, or else making play with the brilliance of their eyes by gazing up at the cornices.
Madame Marneffe, however, did not triumph face to face as other women do. She turned away abruptly to go back to Lisbeth at the tea-table. This dancer’s movement with the swing of her dress, which had conquered Hulot, charmed Steinbock.
‘Your vengeance is complete,’ Valérie whispered to Lisbeth. ‘Hortense will cry her eyes out and curse the day she took Wenceslas from you.’
‘Until I am Madame la Maréchale, I’ll have accomplished nothing,’ replied the Lorraine peasant. ‘But they are all beginning to want it. This morning I went to see Victorin. I forgot to tell you that. The young Hulots have bought back the Baron’s notes of hand from Vauvinet. Tomorrow they’ll sign a bond for seventy-two thousand francs with interest at 5 per cent, repayable in three years, with a mortgage on their house as security. So the young Hulots will be hard up for the next three years, and it will be impossible for them to raise any more money on that property. Victorin is terribly depressed. He now fully realizes his father’s character. And Crevel is quite capable of refusing to see his children again, he will be so angry at this act of devotion.’
‘The Baron must have nothing left now,’ Valérie whispered to Lisbeth as she smiled at Hulot.
‘He has nothing more, as far as I can see, but he’ll be able to get his salary again in September.’
‘And he has his insurance policy; he’s renewed it. Well, I think it’s time he made Marneffe an office-manager. I’ll get at him this evening.’
‘My dear cousin,’ said Lisbeth, going over to Wenceslas. ‘Do go home, please. You’re making yourself ridiculous; you’re looking at Valérie in a way that compromises her, and her husband is madly jealous. Don’t imitate your father-in-law, but go back home. I’m sure Hortense is waiting up for you.’
‘Madame Marneffe told me to stay on after the others so that, between the three of us, we could arrange our little matter of business,’ replied Wenceslas.
‘No,’ said Lisbeth, ‘I’ll hand the ten thousand francs over to you, for her husband has his eye on you. It would be unwise for you to stay. Bring the note of hand tomorrow at nine o’clock. At that time, that troublesome Marneffe is in his office, and Valérie is left in peace. I hear you’ve asked her to pose for a group. Come to my room first. Oh yes, I knew you had the making of a libertine. Valérie is very beautiful, but try not to make Hortense unhappy.’
Nothing irritates a married man more than to find his wife at every turn, standing between him and a desire, however fleeting.