Kitabı oku: «Germinie Lacerteux», sayfa 9

XXII

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

This letter produced upon Germinie the effect of a push from behind. She went out and instinctively walked toward the railroad that would take her to her little one. Her hair was uncombed and she was in her slippers, but she did not think of that. She must see her child, she must see her instantly. Then she would come back. She thought of mademoiselle's breakfast for a moment, then forgot it. Suddenly, half-way to the station, she saw a clock at a cab office and noticed the hour: she remembered that there was no train at that time. She retraced her steps, saying to herself that she would hurry the breakfast and then make some excuse to be given her liberty for the rest of the day. But when the breakfast was served she could find none: her mind was so full of her child that she could not invent a falsehood; her imagination was benumbed. And then, if she had spoken, if she had made the request, she would have betrayed herself; she could feel the words upon her lips: "I want to go and see my child!" At night she dared not make her escape; mademoiselle had been a little indisposed the night before; she was afraid that she might need her.

The next morning when she entered mademoiselle's room with a fable she had invented during the night, all ready to ask for leave of absence, mademoiselle said to her, looking up from a letter that had just been sent up to her from the lodge: "Ah! my old friend De Belleuse wants you for the whole day to-day, to help her with her preserves. Come, give me my two eggs, post-haste, and off with you. Eh? what! doesn't that suit you? What's the matter?"

"With me? why nothing at all!" Germinie found strength to say.

All that endless day she passed standing over hot stewpans and sealing up jars, in the torture known only to those whom the chances of life detain at a distance from the sick bed of those dear to them. She suffered such heart-rending agony as those unhappy creatures suffer who cannot go where their anxiety calls them, and who, in the extremity of despair caused by separation and uncertainty, constantly imagine that death will come in their absence.

As she received no letter Thursday evening and none Friday morning, she took courage. If the little one were growing worse the nurse would have written her. The little one was better: she imagined her saved, cured. Children are forever coming near dying, and they get well so quickly! And then hers was strong. She decided to wait, to be patient until Sunday, which was only forty-eight hours away, deceiving the remainder of her fears with the superstitions that say yes to hope, persuading herself that her daughter had "escaped," because the first person she met in the morning was a man, because she had seen a red horse in the street, because she had guessed that a certain person would turn into a certain street, because she had ascended a flight of stairs in so many strides.

On Saturday, in the morning, when she entered Mère Jupillon's shop, she found her weeping hot tears over a lump of butter that she was covering with a moist cloth.

"Ah! it's you, is it?" said Mère Jupillon. "That poor charcoal woman! See, I'm actually crying over her! She just went away from here. You don't know – they can't get their faces clean in their trade with anything but butter. And here's her love of a daughter – she's at death's door, you know, the dear child. That's the way it is with us! Ah! mon Dieu, yes! – Well, as I was saying, she said to her just now like this: 'Mamma, I want you to wash my face in butter right away – for the good God.'"

And Mère Jupillon began to sob.

Germinie had fled. All that day she was unable to keep still. Again and again she went up to her chamber to prepare the few things she proposed to take to her little one the next day, to dress her cleanly, to make a little special toilet for her in honor of her recovery. As she went down in the evening to put Mademoiselle to bed, Adèle handed her a letter that she had found for her below.

XXIII

Mademoiselle had begun to undress, when Germinie entered her bedroom, walked a few steps, dropped upon a chair, and almost immediately, after two or three long-drawn, deep, heart-breaking sighs, mademoiselle saw her throw herself backward, wringing her hands, and at last roll from the chair to the floor. She tried to lift her up, but Germinie was shaken by such violent convulsions that the old woman was obliged to let the frantic body fall again upon the floor; for all the limbs, which were for a moment contracted and rigid, lashed out to right and left, at random, with the sharp report of the trigger of a rifle, and threw down whatever they came in contact with. At mademoiselle's shrieks on the landing, a maid ran to a doctor's office near by but did not find him; four other women employed in the house assisted mademoiselle to lift Germinie up and carry her to the bed in her mistress's room, on which they laid her after cutting her corset lacings.

The terrible convulsions, the nervous contortions of the limbs, the snapping of the tendons had ceased; but her neck and her breast, which was uncovered where her dress was unbuttoned, moved up and down as if waves were rising and falling under the skin, and the rustling of the skirts showed that the movement extended to her feet. Her head thrown back, her face flushed, her eyes full of melancholy tenderness, of the patient agony we see in the eyes of the wounded, the great veins clearly marked under her chin, Germinie, breathing hard and paying no heed to questions, raised her hands to her neck and throat and clawed at them; she seemed to be trying to tear out the sensation of something rising and falling within her. In vain did they make her inhale ether and drink orange-flower water; the waves of grief that flowed through her body did not cease their action; and her face continued to wear the same expression of gentle melancholy and sentimental anxiety, which seemed to place the suffering of the heart above the suffering of the flesh in every feature. For a long time everything seemed to wound her senses and to produce a painful effect upon them – the bright light, the sound of voices, the odor of the things about her. At last, after an hour or more, a deluge of tears suddenly poured from her eyes and put an end to the terrible crisis. After that there was nothing more than an occasional convulsive shudder in the overburdened body, soon quieted by weariness and by general prostration. It was possible to carry Germinie to her own room.

The letter Adèle handed her contained the news of her daughter's death.

XXIV

As a result of this crisis, Germinie fell into a state of dumb, brutish sorrow. For months she was insensible to everything; for months, completely possessed and absorbed by the thought of the little creature that was no more, she carried her child's death in her entrails as she had carried her life. Every evening, when she went up to her chamber, she took the poor darling's little cap and dress from the trunk at the foot of her bed. She would gaze at them and touch them; she would lay them out on the bed; she would sit for hours weeping over them, kissing them, talking to them, saying the things that a mother's bitter sorrow is wont to say to a little daughter's ghost.

While weeping for her daughter the unhappy creature wept for herself as well. A voice whispered to her that she was saved had the child lived; that to have that child to love was her Providence; that all that she dreaded in herself would be expended upon that dear head and be sanctified there – her affections, her unreasoning impulses, her ardor, all the passions of her nature. It seemed to her that she had felt her mother's heart soothing and purifying her woman's heart. In her daughter she saw a sort of celestial vision that would redeem her and make her whole, a little angel of deliverance as it were, issuing from her errors to fight for her and rescue her from the evil influences which pursued her and by which she sometimes thought that she was possessed.

When she began to recover from the first prostration of despair, when, as the consciousness of life and the perception of objects returned to her, she looked about her with eyes that saw, she was aroused from her grief by a more poignant cause of bitterness of spirit.

Madame Jupillon, who had become too stout and too heavy to do what it was necessary for her to do at the creamery, notwithstanding all the assistance rendered by Germinie, had sent to her province for a niece of hers. She was the embodiment of the blooming youth of the country, a woman in whom there was still something of the child, active and vivacious, with black eyes full of sunlight, lips as round and red as cherries, the summer heat of her province in her complexion, the warmth of perfect health in her blood. Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, the girl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally, obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. She had met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artless effrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy folly of a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignorant hardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against which her cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presence deprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, she wounded her every minute in the day by her presence, her touch, her caresses, everything in her amorous body that spoke of love. Her preoccupation with Jupillon, the work that kept them constantly together, the provincial wonderment that she constantly exhibited, the half-confidences she allowed to come to her lips when the young man had gone, her gayety, her jests, her healthy good-humor – everything helped to exasperate Germinie and to arouse a sullen wrath within her; everything wounded that jealous heart, so jealous that the very animals caused it a bitter pang by seeming to love someone whom it loved.

She dared not speak to Mère Jupillon and denounce the little one to her, for fear of betraying herself; but whenever she found herself alone with Jupillon she vented her feelings in recriminations, complaints and quarrels. She would remind him of an incident, a word, something he had done or said, some answer he had made, a trifle forgotten by him but still bleeding in her heart.

"Are you mad?" Jupillon would say to her; "a slip of a girl!" – "A slip of a girl, eh? nonsense! – when she has such eyes that all the men stare at her in the street! I went out with her the other day – I was ashamed – I don't know how she did it, but we were followed by a gentleman all the time." – "Well, what if you were? She's a pretty girl, you know!" – "Pretty! pretty!" And at that word Germinie would hurl herself, figuratively speaking, at the girl's face, and claw it to pieces with frantic words.

Often she would end by saying to Jupillon: "Look here! you love her!" – "Well! what then?" he would retort, highly entertained by these disputes, by the opportunity to watch the antics of this fierce wrath which he fanned with pretended sulkiness, and by the excitement of trifling with the woman, whom he saw to be half insane under his sarcasms and his indifference, stumbling wildly about and running her head against stone walls in the first paroxysms of madness.

As a result of these scenes, repeated almost every day, a revolution took place in that excitable, extreme character, which knew no middle course, in that heart in which the most violent passions were constantly clashing. Love, in which poison had long been at work, became decomposed and changed to hate. Germinie began to detest her lover and to seek out every possible pretext for hating him more. And her thoughts recurred to her daughter, to the loss of her child, to the cause of her death, and she persuaded herself that he had killed her. She looked upon him as an assassin. She conceived a horror of him, she avoided him, fled from him as from the evil genius of her life, with the terror that one has of a person who is one's Bane!

XXV

One morning, after a night passed by her in turning over and over in her mind all her despairing, hate-ridden thoughts, Germinie went to the creamery for her four sous' worth of milk and found in the back-shop three or four maids from the neighborhood engaged in "taking an eye-opener." They were seated at a table, gossiping and sipping liqueurs.

"Aha!" said Adèle, striking the table with her glass; "you here already, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil?"

"What's this?" said Germinie, taking Adèle's glass; "I'd like some myself."

"Are you so thirsty as all that this morning? Brandy and absinthe, that's all! – my soldier boy's tap, you know, – he never drank anything else. It's a little stiff, eh?"

"Ah! yes," said Germinie, contracting her lips and winking like a child who is given a glass of liqueur with the dessert at a grand dinner-party.

"It's good, all the same." Her spirits rose. "Madame Jupillon, let's have the bottle – I'll pay."

And she tossed money on the table. After the third glass, she cried: "I am tight!" And she roared with laughter.

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had gone out that morning to collect her half-yearly income. When she returned at eleven o'clock, she rang once, twice! no one came. "Ah!" she said to herself, "she must have gone down." She opened the door with her key, went to her bedroom and looked in: the mattress and bedclothes lay in a heap on two chairs, and Germinie was stretched out across the straw under-mattress, sleeping heavily, like a log, in the utterly relaxed condition following a sudden attack of lethargy.

At the noise made by mademoiselle, Germinie sprang to her feet and passed her hand over her eyes. – "Yes?" she said, as if some one had called her; her eyes were wandering.

"What's happened?" said Mademoiselle de Varandeuil in alarm; "did you fall? Is anything the matter with you?"

"With me? no," Germinie replied; "I fell asleep. What time is it? Nothing's the matter. Ah! what a fool!"

And she began to shake the mattress, turning her back to her mistress to hide the flush of intoxication on her face.

XXVI

One Sunday morning Jupillon was dressing in the room Germinie had furnished for him. His mother was sitting by, gazing at him with the wondering pride expressed in the eyes of mothers among the common people in presence of a son who dresses like a monsieur.

"You're dressed up like the young man on the first floor!" she said. "I should think it was his coat. I don't mean to say fine things don't look well on you, too – "

Jupillon, intent upon tying his cravat, made no reply.

"You'll play the deuce with the poor girls to-day!" continued Mère Jupillon, giving to her voice an accent of insinuating sweetness: "Look you, bibi, let me tell you this, you great bad boy: if a young woman goes wrong, so much the worse for her! that's their look-out. You're a man, aren't you? you've got the age and the figure and everything. I can't always keep you in leading-strings. So, I said to myself, as well one as another. That one will do. And I fixed her so that she wouldn't see anything. Yes, Germinie would do, as you seemed to like her. That prevented you from wasting your money on bad women – and then I didn't see anything out of the way in the girl till now. But now it won't do at all. They're telling stories in the quarter – a heap of horrible things about us. A pack of vipers! We're above all that, I know. When one has been an honest woman all her life, thank God! But you never know what will happen – mademoiselle would only have to put the end of her nose into her maid's affairs. Why there's the law – the bare idea gives me a turn. What do you say to that, bibi, eh?"

"Dame, mamma, – whatever you please."

"Ah! I knew you loved your dear darling mamma!" exclaimed the monstrous creature embracing him. "Well! invite her to dinner to-night. You can get up two bottles of our Lunel – at two francs – the heady kind. And be sure she comes. Make eyes at her, so that she'll think to-day's the great day. Put on your fine gloves: they'll make you look more dignified."

Germinie arrived at seven o'clock, happy and bright and hopeful, her head filled with blissful dreams by the mysterious air with which Jupillon delivered his mother's invitation. They dined and drank and made merry. Mère Jupillon began to cast glances expressive of deep emotion, drowned in tears, upon the couple sitting opposite her. When the coffee was served, she said, as if for the purpose of being left alone with Germinie: "Bibi, you know you have an errand to do this evening."

Jupillon went out. Madame Jupillon, as she sipped her coffee, turned to Germinie the face of a mother seeking to learn her daughter's secret, and, in her indulgence, forgiving her in advance of her confession. For a moment the two women sat thus, silent, one waiting for the other to speak, the other with the cry of her heart on her lips. Suddenly Germinie rushed from her chair into the stout woman's arms.

"If you knew, Madame Jupillon!"

She talked and wept and embraced her all at once. "Oh! you won't be angry with me! Well! yes, I love him – I've had a child by him. It's true, I love him. Three years ago – "

At every word Madame Jupillon's face became sterner and more icy. She coldly pushed Germinie away, and in her most doleful voice, with an accent of lamentation and hopeless desolation, she began, like a person who is suffocating: "Oh! my God – you! – tell me such things as that! – me! – his mother! – to my face! My God, must it be? My son – a child – an innocent child! You've had the face to ruin him for me! And now you tell me that you did it! No, it ain't possible, my God! And I had such confidence. There's nothing worth living for. There's no trusting anybody in this world! All the same, mademoiselle, I wouldn't ever 'a' believed it of you. Dame! such things give me a turn. Ah! this upsets me completely. I know myself, and I'm quite likely to be sick after this – "

"Madame Jupillon! Madame Jupillon!" Germinie murmured in an imploring tone, half dead with shame and grief on the chair on which she had fallen. "I beg you to forgive me. It was stronger than I was. And then I thought – I believed – "

"You believed! Oh! my God; you believed! What did you believe? That you'd be my son's wife, eh? Ah! Lord God! is it possible, my poor child?"

And adopting a more and more plaintive and lamentable tone as the words she hurled at Germinie cut deeper and deeper, Mère Jupillon continued: "But, my poor girl, you must have a reason, let's hear it. What did I always tell you? That it would be all right if you'd been born ten years earlier. Let's see, your date was 1820, you told me, and now it's '49. You're getting on toward thirty, you see, my dear child. I say! it makes me feel bad to say that to you – I'd so much rather not hurt you. But a body only has to look at you, my poor young lady. What can I do? It's your age – your hair – I can lay my finger in the place where you part it."

"But," said Germinie, in whose heart black wrath was beginning to rumble, "what about what your son owes me? My money? The money I took out of the savings bank, the money I borrowed for him, the money I – "

"Money? he owes you money? Oh! yes, what you lent him to begin business with. Well! what about it? Do you think we're thieves? Does anyone want to cheat you out of your old money, although there wasn't any paper – I know it because the other day – it just occurs to me – that honest man of a child of mine wanted to write it down for fear he might die. But the next minute we're pickpockets, as glib as you please! Oh! my God, it's hardly worth while living in such times as these! Ah! I'm well paid for getting attached to you! But I see through it now. You're a politician, you are! You wanted to pay yourself with my son, for his whole life! Excuse me! No, thank you! It costs less to give back your money! A café waiter's leavings! my poor dear boy! God preserve him from it!"

Germinie had snatched her shawl and hat from the hook and was out of doors.