Kitabı oku: «Germinie Lacerteux», sayfa 8

XVIII

Jupillon was constantly complaining that he was tired of working for others, that he could not set up for himself, that he could not find fifteen or eighteen hundred francs in his mother's purse. He needed no more than that, he said, to hire a couple of rooms on the ground floor and set up as a glover in a small way. Indeed he was already dreaming of what he might do and laying out his plans: he would open a shop in the quarter, an excellent quarter for his business, as it was full of purchasers, and of makers of wretched gloves at five francs. He would soon add a line of perfumery and cravats to his gloves; and then, when he had made a tidy sum, he would sell out and take a fine shop on Rue de Richelieu.

Whenever he mentioned the subject Germinie asked him innumerable questions. She wanted to know everything that was necessary to start in business. She made him tell her the names of the tools and appurtenances, give her an idea of their prices and where they could be bought. She questioned him as to his trade and the details of his work so inquisitively and persistently that Jupillon lost his patience at last and said to her:

"What's all this to you? The work sickens me enough now; don't mention it to me!"

One Sunday she walked toward Montmartre with him. Instead of taking Rue Frochot she turned into Rue Pigalle.

"Why, this ain't the way, is it?" said Jupillon.

"I know what I'm about," said she, "come on."

She had taken his arm, and she walked on, turning her head slightly away from him so that he could not see what was taking place on her face. Half way along Rue Fontaine Saint-Georges, she halted abruptly in front of two windows on the ground floor of a house, and said to him: "Look!"

She was trembling with joy.

Jupillon looked; he saw between the two windows, on a glistening copper plate:

Magasin de Ganterie

Jupillon

He saw white curtains at the first window. Through the glass in the other he saw pigeon-holes and boxes, and, near the window, the little glover's cutting board, with the great shears, the jar for clippings, and the knife to make holes in the skins in order to stretch them.

"The concierge has your key," she said.

They entered the first room, the shop.

She at once set about showing him everything. She opened the boxes and laughed. Then she pushed open the door into the other room. "There, you won't be stifled there as you are in the loft at your mother's. Do you like it? Oh! it isn't handsome, but it's clean. I'd have liked to give you mahogany. Do you like that little rug by the bed? And the paper – I didn't think of that – " She put a receipt for the rent in his hand. "See! this is for six months. Dame! you must go to work right off and earn some money. The few sous I had laid by are all gone. Oh! let me sit down. You look so pleased – it gives me a turn – it makes my head spin. I haven't any legs."

And she sank into a chair. Jupillon stooped over her to kiss her.

"Ah! yes, they're not there any longer," she said, seeing that he was looking for her earrings. "They've gone like my rings. D'ye see, all gone – "

And she showed him her hands, bare of the paltry gems she had worked so long 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 were trying 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 on that 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 certain of the fact, she was filled with immeasurable joy, a joy that overflowed her heart. Her happiness was so great and so overpowering that it stifled at a single stroke the anguish, the fear, the inward trembling that ordinarily disturb the maternity of unmarried women and poisons their anticipations of childbirth, the divine hope that lives and moves within them. The thought of the scandal caused by the discovery of her liaison, of the outcry in the quarter, the idea of the abominable thing that had always made her think of suicide: dishonor, – even the fear of being detected by mademoiselle and dismissed by her – nothing of all this could cast a shadow on her felicity. The child that she expected allowed her to see nothing but it, as if she had it already in her arms before her; and, hardly attempting to conceal her condition, she bore her woman's shame almost proudly through the streets, exulting and radiant in the thought that she was to be a mother.

She was unhappy only because she had spent all her savings, and was not only without money but had been paid several months' wages in advance by her mistress. She bitterly deplored having to receive her child in a poor way. Often, as she passed through Rue Saint-Lazare, she would stop in front of a linen-draper's, in whose windows were displayed stores of rich baby-linen. She would devour with her eyes the pretty, dainty flowered garments, the piqué bibs, the long short-waisted dresses trimmed with English embroidery, the whole doll-like cherub's costume. A terrible longing, – the longing of a pregnant woman, – to break the glass and steal it all, would come upon her: the clerks standing behind the display framework became accustomed to seeing her take up her station there and would laughingly point her out to one another.

Again, at intervals, amid the happiness that overflowed her heart, amid the ecstasy that exalted her being, another disturbing thought passed through her mind. She would ask herself how the father would welcome his child. Two or three times she had attempted to tell him of her condition but had not dared. At last, one day, seeing that his face wore the expression she had awaited so long as a preliminary to telling him everything, an expression in which there was a touch of affection, she confessed to him, blushing hotly and as if asking his forgiveness, what it 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 she was positively five months advanced in pregnancy: "Just my luck!" the young man rejoined. "Thanks!" And he swore. "Would you mind telling me who's going to feed the sparrow?"

"Oh! never you fear! it sha'n't suffer, I'll look out for that. And then it'll be so pretty! Don't be afraid, no one shall know anything about it. I'll fix myself up. See! the last part of the time I'll walk like this, with my head back – I won't wear any petticoats, and I'll pull myself in – you'll see! Nobody shall notice anything, I tell you. Just think 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 your mother?"

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

XX

Twelfth Night arrived. It was the day on which Mademoiselle de Varandeuil gave a grand dinner-party regularly every year. She invited all the children of her own family or her old friends' families, great and small. The small suite would hardly hold them all. They were obliged to put part of the furniture on the landing, and a table was set in each of the two rooms which formed mademoiselle's whole suite. For the children, that day was a great festival to which they looked forward for a 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 were unwilling to go to bed, they climbed on the chairs and made a racket that always gave Mademoiselle de Varandeuil a sick headache the next day; but she bore them no grudge therefor: she had had the full enjoyment of a genuine grandmother's fête, in listening to them, looking at them, tying around their necks the white napkins that made them look so rosy. And not for anything in the world would she have failed to give this dinner-party, which filled her old maid's apartments with the fair-haired little imps of Satan, and brought thither, in a single day, an atmosphere of activity and youth and laughter that lasted a whole year.

Germinie was preparing the dinner. She was whipping cream in an earthen bowl on her knees, when suddenly she felt the first pains. She looked at her face in the bit of a broken mirror that she had above her kitchen dresser, and saw that she was pale. She went down to Adèle: "Give me your mistress's rouge," she said. And she put some on her cheeks. Then she went up again, and, refusing to listen to the voice of her suffering, finished cooking the dinner. It had to be served, and she served it. At dessert, she leaned against the furniture and grasped the backs of chairs as she passed the plates, hiding her torture with the ghastly 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 hot kitchen."

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

She went down to Adèle once more.

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

And she sat down to write a line to her mistress. She told her that she was too ill to work, that she had gone to the hospital, but would not tell her where, because she would fatigue herself coming to see her; that she would come back within a week.

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

"I can stay there," said Germinie; "not a word to mademoiselle. That's all. 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 great dinner-party here – Oh! but it was hard work! Why do you come here? I told you never to come; I don't want you to!"

"Because – I'll tell you – because just now I absolutely must have forty 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 offered his arm to assist her. "Cristi! I'm going to have hard work to get 'em all 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 his hand.

"No, no," said Jupillon.

"Oh! nonsense – there or somewhere else! Besides, I have seven francs left."

The cab started away.

Jupillon stood for a moment motionless on the sidewalk, looking at the two napoleons in his hand. Then he ran after the cab, stopped it, and said 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, writhing on the cushions of the cab.

After an endless half hour, the cab stopped on Rue de Port-Royal, in front of a black door surmounted by a violet lantern, which announced to such medical students as happened to pass through the street that there was that night, and at that moment, the curious and interesting spectacle of a difficult labor in progress at La Maternité.

The driver descended from his box and rang. The concierge, assisted by a female attendant, took Germinie's arms and led her up-stairs to one of the four beds in the salle d'accouchement. Once in bed, her pains became somewhat less excruciating. She looked about her, saw the other beds, all empty, and, at the end of the immense room, a huge country-house fireplace in which a bright fire was blazing, and in front of which, hanging upon iron bars, sheets and cloths and bandages were drying.

Half an hour later, Germinie gave birth to a little girl. Her bed was moved into another room. She had been there several hours, lost in the blissful after-delivery weakness which follows the frightful agony of childbirth, happy and amazed to find that she was still alive, swimming in a sea of blessed relief and deeply penetrated with the joy of having created. Suddenly a loud cry: "I am dying!" caused her to turn her eyes in the direction from which it came: she saw one of her neighbors throw her arms around the neck of one of the assistant nurses, fall back almost instantly, move a moment under the clothes, then lie perfectly still. Almost at the same instant, another shriek arose from a bed on the other side, a horrible, piercing, terrified shriek, as of one who sees death approaching: it was a woman calling the young assistant, with desperate gestures; the assistant ran to her, leaned over her, and fell in a dead faint upon the floor.

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

Thereafter La Maternité was the scene of one of those terrible puerperal epidemics which breathe death upon human fecundity, of one of those cases of atmospheric poisoning which empty, in a twinkling and by whole rows, the beds of women lately delivered, and which once caused the closing of La Clinique. They believed that it was a visitation of the plague, a plague that turns the face black in a few hours, carries all before it and snatches up the youngest and the strongest, a plague that issues from the cradle – the Black Plague of mothers! All about Germinie, at all hours, especially at night, women were dying such deaths as the milk-fever causes, deaths that seemed to violate all nature's laws, agonizing deaths, accompanied by wild shrieks and troubled by hallucinations and delirium, death agonies that compelled the application of the strait-waistcoat, death agonies that caused the victims to leap suddenly from their beds, carrying the clothes with them, and causing the whole room to shudder at the thought that they were dead bodies from the amphitheatre! Life departed as if it were torn from the body. The very disease assumed a ghastly shape and monstrous aspect. The bedclothes were lifted in the centre by the swelling caused by peritonitis, producing a vague, horrifying effect in the lamplight.

For five days Germinie, lying swathed and bandaged in her bed, closing her eyes and ears as best she could, had the strength to combat all these horrors, and yielded to them only at long intervals. She was determined to live, and she clung to her strength by thinking of her child and of mademoiselle. But, on the sixth day, her energy was exhausted, 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 upon one's shoulder, the presentiment of death, was already touching her. She felt the first breath of the epidemic, the belief that she was its destined victim, and the impression that she was already half-possessed by it. Although unresigned, she succumbed. Her life, vanquished beforehand, hardly made an effort to struggle. At that crisis a head bent 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 dying saw heaven opening its gates therein. When they saw her, delirious women said: "Look! the Blessed Virgin!"

"My child," she said to Germinie, "you must ask for your discharge at once. You must go away from here. You must dress warmly. You must wrap up well. As soon as you're at home and in bed, you must take a hot draught of something or other. You must try to take a sweat. Then, it won't do you any harm. But go away from here. It wouldn't be healthy for you here to-night," she said, glancing around at the beds. "Don't say that 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 given birth to a tiny creature in whom her flesh was mingled with the flesh of the man she loved, the bliss of being a mother, saved her from the natural results of a confinement in which she did not receive proper care. She was restored to health and had an apparent pleasure in living that her mistress had never before seen her manifest.

Every Sunday, no matter what the weather might be, she left the house about eleven o'clock; mademoiselle believed that she went to see a friend in the country, and was delighted that her maid derived so much benefit from these days passed in the open air. Germinie would capture Jupillon, who allowed himself to be taken in tow without too much resistance, and they would start for Pommeuse where the child was, and where a good breakfast ordered by the mother awaited them. Once in the carriage on the Mulhouse railway, Germinie would not speak or reply when spoken to. She would lean out of the window, and all her thoughts seemed to be upon what lay before her. She gazed, as if her longing were striving to outrun the steam. The train would hardly have stopped before she had leaped out, tossed her ticket to the ticket-taker, and started at a run on the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. She drew nearer and nearer, she could see the house, she was there: yes, there was the child! She would pounce upon her, snatch her from the nurse's arms with jealous hands – a mother's hands! – hug her, strain her to her heart, kiss her, devour her with kisses and looks and smiles! She would gaze admiringly at her for an instant and then, distraught with joy, mad with love, 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 on her knees and eat nothing: she had kissed her so much that she had not yet looked at her, and she would begin to seek out points of resemblance to themselves in the little one. One feature was his, another hers: – "She has your nose and my eyes. Her hair will be like yours in time. It will curl! Look, those are your hands – she is all you." And for hours she would continue the inexhaustible and charming prattle of a woman who is determined to give a man his share of their daughter. Jupillon submitted to it all with reasonably good grace, thanks to divers three-sou cigars Germinie always produced from her pocket and gave to him one by one. Then he had found a means of diversion; the Morin flowed at the foot of the garden. Jupillon was a true Parisian: he loved to fish with a pole and line.

And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of the garden, on the bank of the stream – Jupillon on a laundry board resting on two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in her skirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. On pleasant days, the sun poured down upon the broad sparkling current, from which beams of light arose as from a mirror. It was like a display of fireworks from the sky and the stream, amid which Germinie would hold the little girl upon her feet and let her trample upon her with her little bare pink legs, in her short baby dress, her skin shimmering in spots in the sunlight, her flesh mottled with sunbeams like the flesh of angels Germinie had seen in pictures. She had a divinely sweet sensation when the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk, touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little one's head, and would call to him: "Do look at her!"

Then the child would fall asleep with the open mouth that laughs in sleep. Germinie would lean over her and listen to her breathing in repose. And, soothed by the peaceful respiration, she would gradually forget herself as she gazed dreamily at the poor abode of her happiness, the rustic garden, the apple-trees with their leaves covered with little yellow snails and the red-cheeked apples on the southern limbs, the poles, at whose feet the beanstalks, twisted and parched, were beginning to climb, the square of cabbages, the four sunflowers in the little circle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge of the stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the white heads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, the bottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics of a puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of the past, having her future on her knees. With the grass and the trees and the river that were before her eyes, she reconstructed, in memory, the rustic garden of her rustic childhood. She saw again the two stones reaching down to the water, from which her mother, when she was a little child, used to wash her feet before putting her to bed in summertime.

"Look you, Père Remalard," said Jupillon from his board, on one of the hottest days in August, to the peasant who was watching him, – "do you know 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! Père Remalard, you must get some calf's lights Thursday. You hang 'em up in that tree, and Sunday we'll see."

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