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"What will become of us?" he repeated again and again. "Oh! these women " One day Mademoiselle Planus sat by the fire with her knitting, waiting for her brother. The table had been laid for half an hour, and the old lady was beginning to be worried by such unheard-of tardiness, when Sigismond entered with a most distressed face, and without a word, which was contrary to all his habits.
Pere Planus never raised his nose from his desk; one could see him from the little garden, leaning over his great ledgers, jotting down in magnificently molded figures the profits of the Risler press. Risler still worked as before, without change or rest.
Thanks to him, the factory bell, notwithstanding the quavering of its old, cracked voice, had very soon resumed its authority; and the man who guided the whole establishment denied himself the slightest recreation. Sober as an apprentice, he left three-fourths of his salary with Planus for the Chebes' allowance, but he never asked any questions about them.
Not till then did Mademoiselle Planus recognize Risler Aine, whom she had not seen since the days of the New Year's calls, that is to say, some time before the dramas at the factory. She could hardly restrain an exclamation of pity; but the grave taciturnity of the two men told her that she must be silent. "Mademoiselle Planus, my sister, you will put clean sheets on my bed.
"Why, you're greatly mistaken, Pere Planus it's at least three months since we have seen your master." The cashier did not pursue the conversation; but a terrible thought took up its abode in his mind, and he turned it over and over all day long. If Georges did not go to the club, where did he pass his evenings? Where did he spend so much money?
M. Chebe, for his part, adopted a very lofty tone, with significant phrases and motions of the head, taking everything to himself as was his custom. How could any one suppose that his child, a Chebe, the daughter of an honorable business man known for thirty years on the street, was capable of Nonsense! Mademoiselle Planus insisted.
Sigismond had tried several times to speak to Fromont Jeune, but he seemed to shun the burdensome responsibility of business, and when he walked through the offices was always in a hurry, feverishly excited, and seemed neither to see nor hear anything about him. He answered the old cashier's anxious questions, gnawing his moustache: "All right, all right, my old Planus.
Decidedly, that was an excellent idea of Pere Planus. "Come to bed," he said triumphantly. "We'll go and show you your room." Sigismond Planus's bedroom was on the ground floor, a large room simply but neatly furnished; with muslin curtains at the windows and the bed, and little squares of carpet on the polished floor, in front of the chairs.
"Mademoiselle Planus, my sister," to whose physical structure he alluded, had a magnificent opportunity to exclaim, "Oh! the men, the men!" but she was silent. It was a very delicate question, and perhaps, if Risler had chosen in time, he might have been the only one. Old Sigismond continued: "And this is what we have come to.
For, I repeat, I am nothing but a clerk from this time on. A useful clerk, by the way, faithful and courageous, of whom you will have no occasion to complain, I promise you." Georges, who was going over the books with Planus, was so affected at hearing the poor fellow talk in that strain that he left his seat precipitately. He was suffocated by his sobs.
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