Germinie Lacerteux

  And she showed him her hands, bare of the paltry gems she had worked solong to buy.

  "They all went for the easy-chair, you see--but it's all horsehair."

  As Jupillon stood in front of her with an embarrassed air, as if he weretrying to find words with which to thank her, she continued:

  "Why, you're a funny fellow. What's the matter with you? Ah! it's onthat account, is it?" And she pointed to the bedroom. "You're a stupid!I love you, don't I? Well then?"

  Germinie said the words simply, as the heart says sublime things.

  XIX

  She became _enceinte_.

  At first she doubted, she dared not believe it. But when she was certainof the fact, she was filled with immeasurable joy, a joy that overflowedher heart. Her happiness was so great and so overpowering that itstifled at a single stroke the anguish, the fear, the inward tremblingthat ordinarily disturb the maternity of unmarried women and poisonstheir anticipations of childbirth, the divine hope that lives and moveswithin them. The thought of the scandal caused by the discovery of her_liaison_, of the outcry in the quarter, the idea of the abominablething that had always made her think of suicide: dishonor,--even thefear of being detected by mademoiselle and dismissed by her--nothing ofall this could cast a shadow on her felicity. The child that sheexpected allowed her to see nothing but it, as if she had it already inher arms before her; and, hardly attempting to conceal her condition,she bore her woman's shame almost proudly through the streets, exultingand radiant in the thought that she was to be a mother.

  She was unhappy only because she had spent all her savings, and was notonly without money but had been paid several months' wages in advance byher mistress. She bitterly deplored having to receive her child in apoor way. Often, as she passed through Rue Saint-Lazare, she would stopin front of a linen-draper's, in whose windows were displayed stores ofrich baby-linen. She would devour with her eyes the pretty, daintyflowered garments, the pique bibs, the long short-waisted dressestrimmed with English embroidery, the whole doll-like cherub's costume. Aterrible longing,--the longing of a pregnant woman,--to break the glassand steal it all, would come upon her: the clerks standing behind thedisplay framework became accustomed to seeing her take up her stationthere and would laughingly point her out to one another.

  Again, at intervals, amid the happiness that overflowed her heart, amidthe ecstasy that exalted her being, another disturbing thought passedthrough her mind. She would ask herself how the father would welcome hischild. Two or three times she had attempted to tell him of her conditionbut had not dared. At last, one day, seeing that his face wore theexpression she had awaited so long as a preliminary to telling himeverything, an expression in which there was a touch of affection, sheconfessed to him, blushing hotly and as if asking his forgiveness, whatit was that made her so happy.

  "That's all imagination!" said Jupillon.

  And when she had assured him that it was not imagination and that shewas positively five months advanced in pregnancy: "Just my luck!" theyoung man rejoined. "Thanks!" And he swore. "Would you mind telling mewho's going to feed the sparrow?"

  "Oh! never you fear! it sha'n't suffer, I'll look out for that. And thenit'll be so pretty! Don't be afraid, no one shall know anything aboutit. I'll fix myself up. See! the last part of the time I'll walk likethis, with my head back--I won't wear any petticoats, and I'll pullmyself in--you'll see! Nobody shall notice anything, I tell you. Justthink of it! a little child of our own!"

  "Well, as long as it's so, it's so, eh?" said the young man.

  "Say," ventured Germinie, timidly, "suppose you should tell yourmother?"

  "Ma? Oh! no, I rather think not. You must lie in first. After that we'lltake the brat to the house. It will give her a start, and perhaps she'llconsent without meaning to."

  XX

  Twelfth Night arrived. It was the day on which Mademoiselle deVarandeuil gave a grand dinner-party regularly every year. She invitedall the children of her own family or her old friends' families, greatand small. The small suite would hardly hold them all. They were obligedto put part of the furniture on the landing, and a table was set in eachof the two rooms which formed mademoiselle's whole suite. For thechildren, that day was a great festival to which they looked forward fora week. They came running up the stairway behind the pastry-cook's men.At table they ate too much without being scolded. At night, they wereunwilling to go to bed, they climbed on the chairs and made a racketthat always gave Mademoiselle de Varandeuil a sick headache the nextday; but she bore them no grudge therefor: she had had the fullenjoyment of a genuine grandmother's fete, in listening to them, lookingat them, tying around their necks the white napkins that made them lookso rosy. And not for anything in the world would she have failed to givethis dinner-party, which filled her old maid's apartments with thefair-haired little imps of Satan, and brought thither, in a single day,an atmosphere of activity and youth and laughter that lasted a wholeyear.

  Germinie was preparing the dinner. She was whipping cream in an earthenbowl on her knees, when suddenly she felt the first pains. She looked ather face in the bit of a broken mirror that she had above her kitchendresser, and saw that she was pale. She went down to Adele: "Give meyour mistress's rouge," she said. And she put some on her cheeks. Thenshe went up again, and, refusing to listen to the voice of hersuffering, finished cooking the dinner. It had to be served, and sheserved it. At dessert, she leaned against the furniture and grasped thebacks of chairs as she passed the plates, hiding her torture with theghastly set smile of people whose entrails are writhing.

  "How's this, are you sick?" said her mistress, looking sharply at her.

  "Yes, mademoiselle, a little--it may be the charcoal or the hotkitchen."

  "Go to bed--we don't need you any more, and you can clean up to-morrow."

  She went down to Adele once more.

  "It's come," she said; "call a cab quick. It was Rue de la Huchettewhere you said your midwife lives, wasn't it? opposite a copperplaner's? Haven't you a pen and paper?"

  And she sat down to write a line to her mistress. She told her that shewas too ill to work, that she had gone to the hospital, but would nottell her where, because she would fatigue herself coming to see her;that she would come back within a week.

  "There you are!" said Adele, all out of breath, giving her the number ofthe cab.

  "I can stay there," said Germinie; "not a word to mademoiselle. That'sall. Swear you won't say a word to her!"

  She was descending the stairs when she met Jupillon.

  "Hallo!" said he, "where are you going? going out?"

  "I am going to lie in----It took me during the day. There was a greatdinner-party here----Oh! but it was hard work! Why do you come here? Itold you never to come; I don't want you to!"

  "Because----I'll tell you----because just now I absolutely must haveforty francs. 'Pon my word, I must."

  "Forty francs! Why I have just that for the midwife!"

  "That's hard luck----look out! What do you want to do?" And he offeredhis arm to assist her. "_Cristi!_ I'm going to have hard work to get 'emall the same."

  He had opened the carriage door.

  "Where do you want him to take you?"

  "To La Bourbe," said Germinie. And she slipped the forty francs into hishand.

  "No, no," said Jupillon.

  "Oh! nonsense----there or somewhere else! Besides, I have seven francsleft."

  The cab started away.

  Jupillon stood for a moment motionless on the sidewalk, looking at thetwo napoleons in his hand. Then he ran after the cab, stopped it, andsaid to Germinie through the window:

  "At least, I can go with you?"

  "No, I am in too much pain, I'd rather be alone," she replied, writhingon the cushions of the cab.

  After an endless half hour, the cab stopped on Rue de Port-Royal, infront of a black door surmounted by a violet lantern, which announced tosuch medical students as happened to pass through the street that therewas that night, and at that moment,
the curious and interestingspectacle of a difficult labor in progress at La Maternite.

  The driver descended from his box and rang. The concierge, assisted by afemale attendant, took Germinie's arms and led her up-stairs to one ofthe four beds in the _salle d'accouchement_. Once in bed, her painsbecame somewhat less excruciating. She looked about her, saw the otherbeds, all empty, and, at the end of the immense room, a hugecountry-house fireplace in which a bright fire was blazing, and in frontof which, hanging upon iron bars, sheets and cloths and bandages weredrying.

  Half an hour later, Germinie gave birth to a little girl. Her bed wasmoved into another room. She had been there several hours, lost in theblissful after-delivery weakness which follows the frightful agony ofchildbirth, happy and amazed to find that she was still alive, swimmingin a sea of blessed relief and deeply penetrated with the joy of havingcreated. Suddenly a loud cry: "I am dying!" caused her to turn her eyesin the direction from which it came: she saw one of her neighbors throwher arms around the neck of one of the assistant nurses, fall backalmost instantly, move a moment under the clothes, then lie perfectlystill. Almost at the same instant, another shriek arose from a bed onthe other side, a horrible, piercing, terrified shriek, as of one whosees death approaching: it was a woman calling the young assistant, withdesperate gestures; the assistant ran to her, leaned over her, and fellin a dead faint upon the floor.

  Thereupon silence reigned once more; but between the two dead bodies andthe half-dead assistant, whom the cold floor did not restore toconsciousness for more than an hour, Germinie and the other women whowere still alive in the room lay quiet, not daring even to ring the bellthat hung beside each bed to call for help.

  Thereafter La Maternite was the scene of one of those terrible puerperalepidemics which breathe death upon human fecundity, of one of thosecases of atmospheric poisoning which empty, in a twinkling and by wholerows, the beds of women lately delivered, and which once caused theclosing of La Clinique. They believed that it was a visitation of theplague, a plague that turns the face black in a few hours, carries allbefore it and snatches up the youngest and the strongest, a plague thatissues from the cradle--the Black Plague of mothers! All about Germinie,at all hours, especially at night, women were dying such deaths as themilk-fever causes, deaths that seemed to violate all nature's laws,agonizing deaths, accompanied by wild shrieks and troubled byhallucinations and delirium, death agonies that compelled theapplication of the strait-waistcoat, death agonies that caused thevictims to leap suddenly from their beds, carrying the clothes withthem, and causing the whole room to shudder at the thought that theywere dead bodies from the amphitheatre! Life departed as if it were tornfrom the body. The very disease assumed a ghastly shape and monstrousaspect. The bedclothes were lifted in the centre by the swelling causedby peritonitis, producing a vague, horrifying effect in the lamplight.

  For five days Germinie, lying swathed and bandaged in her bed, closingher eyes and ears as best she could, had the strength to combat allthese horrors, and yielded to them only at long intervals. She wasdetermined to live, and she clung to her strength by thinking of herchild and of mademoiselle. But, on the sixth day, her energy wasexhausted, her courage forsook her. A cold wave flowed into her heart.She said to herself that it was all over. The hand that death lays uponone's shoulder, the presentiment of death, was already touching her. Shefelt the first breath of the epidemic, the belief that she was itsdestined victim, and the impression that she was already half-possessedby it. Although unresigned, she succumbed. Her life, vanquishedbeforehand, hardly made an effort to struggle. At that crisis a headbent over her pillow, like a ray of light.

  It was the head of the youngest of the pupil-assistants, a fair head,with long golden locks and blue eyes so soft and sweet that the dyingsaw heaven opening its gates therein. When they saw her, delirious womensaid: "Look! the Blessed Virgin!"

  "My child," she said to Germinie, "you must ask for your discharge atonce. You must go away from here. You must dress warmly. You must wrapup well. As soon as you're at home and in bed, you must take a hotdraught of something or other. You must try to take a sweat. Then, itwon't do you any harm. But go away from here. It wouldn't be healthy foryou here to-night," she said, glancing around at the beds. "Don't saythat I told you to go: you would get me discharged if you should."

  XXI

  Germinie recovered in a few days. The joy and pride of having givenbirth to a tiny creature in whom her flesh was mingled with the flesh ofthe man she loved, the bliss of being a mother, saved her from thenatural results of a confinement in which she did not receive propercare. She was restored to health and had an apparent pleasure in livingthat her mistress had never before seen her manifest.

  Every Sunday, no matter what the weather might be, she left the houseabout eleven o'clock; mademoiselle believed that she went to see afriend in the country, and was delighted that her maid derived so muchbenefit from these days passed in the open air. Germinie would captureJupillon, who allowed himself to be taken in tow without too muchresistance, and they would start for Pommeuse where the child was, andwhere a good breakfast ordered by the mother awaited them. Once in thecarriage on the Mulhouse railway, Germinie would not speak or reply whenspoken to. She would lean out of the window, and all her thoughts seemedto be upon what lay before her. She gazed, as if her longing werestriving to outrun the steam. The train would hardly have stopped beforeshe had leaped out, tossed her ticket to the ticket-taker, and startedat a run on the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. She drew nearerand nearer, she could see the house, she was there: yes, there was thechild! She would pounce upon her, snatch her from the nurse's arms withjealous hands--a mother's hands!--hug her, strain her to her heart, kissher, devour her with kisses and looks and smiles! She would gazeadmiringly at her for an instant and then, distraught with joy, mad withlove, would cover her with kisses to the tips of her little bare toes.Breakfast would be served. She would sit at the table with the child onher knees and eat nothing: she had kissed her so much that she had notyet looked at her, and she would begin to seek out points of resemblanceto themselves in the little one. One feature was his, anotherhers:--"She has your nose and my eyes. Her hair will be like yours intime. It will curl! Look, those are your hands--she is all you." And forhours she would continue the inexhaustible and charming prattle of awoman who is determined to give a man his share of their daughter.Jupillon submitted to it all with reasonably good grace, thanks todivers three-sou cigars Germinie always produced from her pocket andgave to him one by one. Then he had found a means of diversion; theMorin flowed at the foot of the garden. Jupillon was a true Parisian: heloved to fish with a pole and line.

  And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of thegarden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board restingon two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in herskirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. On pleasantdays, the sun poured down upon the broad sparkling current, from whichbeams of light arose as from a mirror. It was like a display offireworks from the sky and the stream, amid which Germinie would holdthe little girl upon her feet and let her trample upon her with herlittle bare pink legs, in her short baby dress, her skin shimmering inspots in the sunlight, her flesh mottled with sunbeams like the flesh ofangels Germinie had seen in pictures. She had a divinely sweet sensationwhen the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk,touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingersin her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them movingover her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear littledigits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was asif her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From timeto time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the littleone's head, and would call to him: "Do look at her!"

  Then the child would fall asleep with the open mouth that laughs insleep. Germinie would lean over her and listen to her breathing inrepose. And, soothed by the peac
eful respiration, she would graduallyforget herself as she gazed dreamily at the poor abode of her happiness,the rustic garden, the apple-trees with their leaves covered with littleyellow snails and the red-cheeked apples on the southern limbs, thepoles, at whose feet the beanstalks, twisted and parched, were beginningto climb, the square of cabbages, the four sunflowers in the littlecircle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge ofthe stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the whiteheads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, thebottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics ofa puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of thepast, having her future on her knees. With the grass and the trees andthe river that were before her eyes, she reconstructed, in memory, therustic garden of her rustic childhood. She saw again the two stonesreaching down to the water, from which her mother, when she was a littlechild, used to wash her feet before putting her to bed in summertime.

  "Look you, Pere Remalard," said Jupillon from his board, on one of thehottest days in August, to the peasant who was watching him,--"do youknow they won't bite at the red worm worth a sou?"

  "You must try the gentle," rejoined the peasant sententiously.

  "All right, I'll have my revenge with the gentle! Pere Remalard, youmust get some calf's lights Thursday. You hang 'em up in that tree, andSunday we'll see."

  On the Sunday Jupillon had miraculous success with his fishing, andGerminie heard the first syllable issue from her daughter's mouth.

  XXII

  On Wednesday morning, when she came downstairs, Germinie found a letterfor herself. In that letter, written on the back of a laundry receipt,the Remalard woman informed her that her child had fallen sick almostimmediately after her departure; that she had grown steadily worse; thatshe had consulted the doctor; that he said some insect had stung thechild; that she had been to him a second time; that she did not knowwhat more to do; that she had had pilgrimages made for her. The letterconcluded thus: "If you could see how troubled I am for your littleone--if you could see how good she is when she isn't suffering!"