Fruitfulness Part 23

"Is it my fault?" she angrily exclaimed. "I didn't want to give it to him; you know what my ideas were. And I flew into a pa.s.sion and almost fought Madame Bourdieu when she put him in my arms. But then how could I hold out? He cried so dreadfully with hunger, poor little mite, and seemed to suffer so much, that I was weak enough to let him nurse just a little. I didn't intend to repeat it, but the next day he cried again, and so I had to continue, worse luck for me! There was no pity shown me; I've been made a hundred times more unhappy than I should have been, for, of course, I shall soon have to get rid of him as I got rid of the others."

Tears appeared in her eyes. It was the oft-recurring story of the girl-mother who is prevailed upon to nurse her child for a few days, in the hope that she will grow attached to the babe and be unable to part from it. The chief object in view is to save the child, because its best nurse is its natural nurse, the mother. And Norine, instinctively divining the trap set for her, had struggled to escape it, and repeated, sensibly enough, that one ought not to begin such a task when one meant to throw it up in a few days' time. As soon as she yielded she was certain to be caught; her egotism was bound to be vanquished by the wave of pity, love, and hope that would sweep through her heart. The poor, pale, puny infant had weighed but little the first time he took the breast. But every morning afterwards he had been weighed afresh, and on the wall at the foot of the bed had been hung the diagram indicating the daily difference of weight. At first Norine had taken little interest in the matter, but as the line gradually ascended, plainly indicating how much the child was profiting, she gave it more and more attention. All at once, as the result of an indisposition, the line had dipped down; and since then she had always feverishly awaited the weighing, eager to see if the line would once more ascend. Then, a continuous rise having set in, she laughed with delight. That little line, which ever ascended, told her that her child was saved, and that all the weight and strength he acquired was derived from her--from her milk, her blood, her flesh.

She was completing the appointed work; and motherliness, at last awakened within her, was blossoming in a florescence of love.

"If you want to kill him," continued Mathieu, "you need only take him from your breast. See how eagerly the poor little fellow is nursing!"

This was indeed true. And Norine burst into big sobs: "_Mon Dieu_! you are beginning to torture me again. Do you think that I shall take any pleasure in getting rid of him now? You force me to say things which make me weep at night when I think of them. I shall feel as if my very vitals were being torn out when this child is taken from me! There, are you both pleased that you have made me say it? But what good does it do to put me in such a state, since n.o.body can remedy things, and he must needs go to the foundlings, while I return to the gutter, to wait for the broom that's to sweep me away?"

But Cecile, who likewise was weeping, kissed and kissed the child, and again reverted to her dream, explaining how happy they would be, all three of them, in a nice room, which she pictured full of endless joys, like some Paradise. It was by no means difficult to cut out and paste up the little boxes. As soon as Norine should know the work, she, who was strong, might perhaps earn three francs a day at it. And five francs a day between them, would not that mean fortune, the rearing of the child, and all evil things forgotten, at an end? Norine, more weary than ever, gave way at last, and ceased refusing.

"You daze me," she said. "I don't know. Do as you like--but certainly it will be great happiness to keep this dear little fellow with me."

Cecile, enraptured, clapped her hands; while Mathieu, who was greatly moved, gave utterance to these deeply significant words: "You have saved him, and now he saves you."

Then Norine at last smiled. She felt happy now; a great weight had been lifted from her heart. And carrying her child in her arms she insisted on accompanying her sister and their friend to the first floor.

During the last half-hour Constance and Madame Angelin had been deep in consultation with Madame Bourdieu. The former had not given her name, but had simply played the part of an obliging friend accompanying another on an occasion of some delicacy. Madame Bourdieu, with the keen scent characteristic of her profession, divined a possible customer in that inquisitive lady who put such strange questions to her. However, a rather painful scene took place, for realizing that she could not forever deceive Madame Angelin with false hopes, Madame Bourdieu decided to tell the truth--her case was hopeless. Constance, however, at last made a sign to entreat her to continue deceiving her friend, if only for charity's sake. The other, therefore, while conducting her visitors to the landing, spoke a few hopeful words to Madame Angelin: "After all, dear madame," said she, "one must never despair. I did wrong to speak as I did just now. I may yet be mistaken. Come back to see me again."

At this moment Mathieu and Cecile were still on the landing in conversation with Norine, whose infant had fallen asleep in her arms.

Constance and Madame Angelin were so surprised at finding the farmer of Chantebled in the company of the two young women that they pretended they did not see him. All at once, however, Constance, with the help of memory, recognized Norine, the more readily perhaps as she was now aware that Mathieu had, ten years previously, acted as her husband's intermediary. And a feeling of revolt and the wildest fancies instantly arose within her. What was Mathieu doing in that house? whose child was it that the young woman carried in her arms? At that moment the other child seemed to peer forth from the past; she saw it in swaddling clothes, like the infant there; indeed, she almost confounded one with the other, and imagined that it was indeed her husband's illegitimate son that was sleeping in his mother's arms before her. Then all the satisfaction she had derived from what she had heard Madame Bourdieu say departed, and she went off furious and ashamed, as if soiled and threatened by all the vague abominations which she had for some time felt around her, without knowing, however, whence came the little chill which made her shudder as with dread.

As for Mathieu, he saw that neither Norine nor Cecile had recognized Madame Beauchene under her veil, and so he quietly continued explaining to the former that he would take steps to secure for her from the a.s.sistance Publique--the official organization for the relief of the poor--a cradle and a supply of baby linen, as well as immediate pecuniary succor, since she undertook to keep and nurse her child.

Afterwards he would obtain for her an allowance of thirty francs a month for at least one year. This would greatly help the sisters, particularly in the earlier stages of their life together in the room which they had settled to rent. When Mathieu added that he would take upon himself the preliminary outlay of a little furniture and so forth, Norine insisted upon kissing him.

"Oh! it is with a good heart," said she. "It does one good to meet a man like you. And come, kiss my poor little fellow, too; it will bring him good luck."

On reaching the Rue La Boetie it occurred to Mathieu, who was bound for the Beauchene works, to take a cab and let Cecile alight near her parents' home, since it was in the neighborhood of the factory. But she explained to him that she wished, first of all, to call upon her sister Euphrasie in the Rue Caroline. This street was in the same direction, and so Mathieu made her get into the cab, telling her that he would set her down at her sister's door.

She was so amazed, so happy at seeing her dream at last on the point of realization, that as she sat in the cab by the side of Mathieu she did not know how to thank him. Her eyes were quite moist, all smiles and tears.

"You must not think me a bad daughter, monsieur," said she, "because I'm so pleased to leave home. Papa still works as much as he is able, though he does not get much reward for it at the factory. And mamma does all she can at home, though she hasn't much strength left her nowadays.

Since Victor came back from the army, he has married and has children of his own, and I'm even afraid that he'll have more than he can provide for, as, while he was in the army, he seems to have lost all taste for work. But the sharpest of the family is that lazy-bones Irma, my younger sister, who's so pretty and so delicate-looking, perhaps because she's always ill. As you may remember, mamma used to fear that Irma might turn out badly like Norine. Well, not at all! Indeed, she's the only one of us who is likely to do well, for she's going to marry a clerk in the post-office. And so the only ones left at home are myself and Alfred.

Oh! he is a perfect bandit! That is the plain truth. He committed a theft the other day, and one had no end of trouble to get him out of the hands of the police commissary. But all the same, mamma has a weakness for him, and lets him take all my earnings. Yes, indeed, I've had quite enough of him, especially as he is always terrifying me out of my wits, threatening to beat and even kill me, though he well knows that ever since my illness the slightest noise throws me into a faint. And as, all considered, neither papa nor mamma needs me, it's quite excusable, isn't it, that I should prefer living quietly alone. It is my right, is it not, monsieur?"

She went on to speak of her sister Euphrasie, who had fallen into a most wretched condition, said she, ever since pa.s.sing through Dr. Gaude's hands. Her home had virtually been broken up, she had become decrepit, a mere bundle of rags, unable even to handle a broom. It made one tremble to see her. Then, after a pause, just as the cab was reaching the Rue Caroline, the girl continued: "Will you come up to see her? You might say a few kind words to her. It would please me, for I'm going on a rather unpleasant errand. I thought that she would have strength enough to make some little boxes like me, and thus earn a few pence for herself; but she has kept the work I gave her more than a month now, and if she really cannot do it I must take it back."

Mathieu consented, and in the room upstairs he beheld one of the most frightful, poignant spectacles that he had ever witnessed. In the centre of that one room where the family slept and ate, Euphrasie sat on a straw-bottomed chair; and although she was barely thirty years of age, one might have taken her for a little old woman of fifty; so thin and so withered did she look that she resembled one of those fruits, suddenly deprived of sap, that dry up on the tree. Her teeth had fallen, and of her hair she only retained a few white locks. But the more characteristic mark of this mature senility was a wonderful loss of muscular strength, an almost complete disappearance of will, energy, and power of action, so that she now spent whole days, idle, stupefied, without courage even to raise a finger.

When Cecile told her that her visitor was M. Froment, the former chief designer at the Beauchene works, she did not even seem to recognize him; she no longer took interest in anything. And when her sister spoke of the object of her visit, asking for the work with which she had entrusted her, she answered with a gesture of utter weariness: "Oh! what can you expect! It takes me too long to stick all those little bits of cardboard together. I can't do it; it throws me into a perspiration."

Then a stout woman, who was cutting some bread and b.u.t.ter for the three children, intervened with an air of quiet authority: "You ought to take those materials away, Mademoiselle Cecile. She's incapable of doing anything with them. They will end by getting dirty, and then your people won't take them back."

This stout woman was a certain Madame Joseph, a widow of forty and a charwoman by calling, whom Benard, the husband, had at first engaged to come two hours every morning to attend to the housework, his wife not having strength enough to put on a child's shoes or to set a pot on the fire. At first Euphrasie had offered furious resistance to this intrusion of a stranger, but, her physical decline progressing, she had been obliged to yield. And then things had gone from bad to worse, till Madame Joseph became supreme in the household. Between times there had been terrible scenes over it all; but the wretched Euphrasie, stammering and shivering, had at last resigned herself to the position, like some little old woman sunk into second childhood and already cut off from the world. That Benard and Madame Joseph were not bad-hearted in reality was shown by the fact that although Euphrasie was now but an useless enc.u.mbrance, they kept her with them, instead of flinging her into the streets as others would have done.

"Why, there you are again in the middle of the room!" suddenly exclaimed the fat woman, who each time that she went hither and thither found it necessary to avoid the other's chair. "How funny it is that you can never put yourself in a corner! Auguste will be coming in for his four o'clock snack in a moment, and he won't be at all pleased if he doesn't find his cheese and his gla.s.s of wine on the table."

Without replying, Euphrasie nervously staggered to her feet, and with the greatest trouble dragged her chair towards the table. Then she sat down again limp and very weary.

Just as Madame Joseph was bringing the cheese, Benard, whose workshop was near by, made his appearance. He was still a full-bodied, jovial fellow, and began to jest with his sister-in-law while showing great politeness towards Mathieu, whom he thanked for taking interest in his unhappy wife's condition. "_Mon Dieu_, monsieur," said he, "it isn't her fault; it is all due to those rascally doctors at the hospital. For a year or so one might have thought her cured, but you see what has now become of her. Ah! it ought not to be allowed! You are no doubt aware that they treated Cecile just the same. And there was another, too, a baroness, whom you must know. She called here the other day to see Euphrasie, and, upon my word, I didn't recognize her. She used to be such a fine woman, and now she looks a hundred years old. Yes, yes, I say that the doctors ought to be sent to prison."

He was about to sit down to table when he stumbled against Euphrasie's chair. She sat watching him with an anxious, semi-stupefied expression.

"There you are, in my way as usual!" said he; "one is always tumbling up against you. Come, make a little room, do."

He did not seem to be a very terrible customer, but at the sound of his voice she began to tremble, full of childish fear, as if she were threatened with a thrashing. And this time she found strength enough to drag her chair as far as a dark closet, the door of which was open. She there sought refuge, ensconcing herself in the gloom, amid which one could vaguely espy her shrunken, wrinkled face, which suggested that of some very old great-grandmother, who was taking years and years to die.

Mathieu's heart contracted as he observed that senile terror, that shivering obedience on the part of a woman whose harsh, dry, aggressively quarrelsome disposition he so well remembered. Industrious, self-willed, full of life as she had once been, she was now but a limp human rag. And yet her case was recorded in medical annals as one of the renowned Gaude's great miracles of cure. Ah! how truly had Boutan spoken in saying that people ought to wait to see the real results of those victorious operations which were sapping the vitality of France.

Cecile, however, with eager affection, kissed the three children, who somehow continued to grow up in that wrecked household. Tears came to her eyes, and directly Madame Joseph had given her back the work-materials entrusted to Euphrasie she hurried Mathieu away. And, as they reached the street, she said: "Thank you, Monsieur Froment; I can go home on foot now--. How frightful, eh? Ah! as I told you, we shall be in Paradise, Norine and I, in the quiet room which you have so kindly promised to rent for us."

On reaching Beauchene's establishment Mathieu immediately repaired to the workshops, but he could obtain no precise information respecting his threshing-machine, though he had ordered it several months previously.

He was told that the master's son, Monsieur Maurice, had gone out on business, and that n.o.body could give him an answer, particularly as the master himself had not put in an appearance at the works that week. He learnt, however, that Beauchene had returned from a journey that very day, and must be indoors with his wife. Accordingly, he resolved to call at the house, less on account of the threshing-machine than to decide a matter of great interest to him, that of the entry of one of his twin sons, Blaise, into the establishment.

This big fellow had lately left college, and although he had only completed his nineteenth year, he was on the point of marrying a portionless young girl, Charlotte Desvignes, for whom he had conceived a romantic attachment ever since childhood. His parents, seeing in this match a renewal of their own former loving improvidence, had felt moved, and unwilling to drive the lad to despair. But, if he was to marry, some employment must first be found for him. Fortunately this could be managed. While Denis, the other of the twins, entered a technical school, Beauchene, by way of showing his esteem for the increasing fortune of his good cousins, as he now called the Froments, cordially offered to give Blaise a situation at his establishment.

On being ushered into Constance's little yellow salon, Mathieu found her taking a cup of tea with Madame Angelin, who had come back with her from the Rue de Miromesnil. Beauchene's unexpected arrival on the scene had disagreeably interrupted their private converse. He had returned from one of the debauches in which he so frequently indulged under the pretext of making a short business journey, and, still slightly intoxicated, with feverish, sunken eyes and clammy tongue, he was wearying the two women with his impudent, noisy falsehoods.

"Ah! my dear fellow!" he exclaimed on seeing Mathieu, "I was just telling the ladies of my return from Amiens--. What wonderful duck pates they have there!"

Then, on Mathieu speaking to him of Blaise, he launched out into protestations of friendship. It was understood, the young fellow need only present himself at the works, and in the first instance he should be put with Morange, in order that he might learn something of the business mechanism of the establishment. Thus talking, Beauchene puffed and coughed and spat, exhaling meantime the odor of tobacco, alcohol, and musk, which he always brought back from his "sprees," while his wife smiled affectionately before the others as was her wont, but directed at him glances full of despair and disgust whenever Madame Angelin turned her head.

As Beauchene continued talking too much, owning for instance that he did not know how far the thresher might be from completion, Mathieu noticed Constance listening anxiously. The idea of Blaise entering the establishment had already rendered her grave, and now her husband's apparent ignorance of important business matters distressed her.

Besides, the thought of Norine was reviving in her mind; she remembered the girl's child, and almost feared some fresh understanding between Beauchene and Mathieu. All at once, however, she gave a cry of great relief: "Ah! here is Maurice."

Her son was entering the room--her son, the one and only G.o.d on whom she now set her affection and pride, the crown-prince who to-morrow would become king, who would save the kingdom from perdition, and who would exalt her on his right hand in a blaze of glory. She deemed him handsome, tall, strong, and as invincible in his nineteenth year as all the knights of the old legends. When he explained that he had just profitably compromised a worrying transaction in which his father had rashly embarked, she pictured him repairing disasters and achieving victories. And she triumphed more than ever on hearing him promise that the threshing-machine should be ready before the end of that same week.

"You must take a cup of tea, my dear," she exclaimed. "It would do you good; you worry your mind too much."

Maurice accepted the offer, and gayly replied: "Oh! do you know, an omnibus almost crushed me just now in the Rue de Rivoli!"

At this his mother turned livid, and the cup which she held escaped from her hand. Ah! G.o.d, was her happiness at the mercy of an accident? Then once again the fearful threat sped by, that icy gust which came she knew not whence, but which ever chilled her to her bones.

"Why, you stupid," said Beauchene, laughing, "it was he who crushed the omnibus, since here he is, telling you the tale. Ah! my poor Maurice, your mother is really ridiculous. I know how strong you are, and I'm quite at ease about you."

That day Madame Angelin returned to Janville with Mathieu. They found themselves alone in the railway carriage, and all at once, without any apparent cause, tears started from the young woman's eyes. At this she apologized, and murmured as if in a dream: "To have a child, to rear him, and then lose him--ah! certainly one's grief must then be poignant.

Yet one has had him with one; he has grown up, and one has known for years all the joy of having him at one's side. But when one never has a child--never, never--ah! come rather suffering and mourning than such a void as that!"

And meantime, at Chantebled, Mathieu and Marianne founded, created, increased, and multiplied, again proving victorious in the eternal battle which life wages against death, thanks to that continual increase both of offspring and of fertile land, which was like their very existence, their joy and their strength. Desire pa.s.sed like a gust of flame, desire divine and fruitful, since they possessed the power of love, of kindliness, and health. And their energy did the rest--that will of action, that quiet bravery in the presence of the labor that is necessary, the labor that has made and that regulates the world. Yet even during those two years it was not without constant struggling that they achieved victory. True, victory was becoming more and more certain as the estate expanded. The petty worries of earlier days had disappeared, and the chief question was now one of ruling sensibly and equitably. All the land had been purchased northward on the plateau, from the farm of Mareuil to the farm of Lillebonne; there was not a copse that did not belong to the Froments, and thus beside the surging sea of corn there rose a royal park of centenarian trees. Apart from the question of felling portions of the wood for timber, Mathieu was not disposed to retain the remainder for mere beauty's sake; and accordingly avenues were devised connecting the broad clearings, and cattle were then turned into this part of the property. The ark of life, increased by hundreds of animals, expanded, burst through the great trees. There was a fresh growth of fruitfulness: more and more cattle-sheds had to be built, sheepcotes had to be created, and manure came in loads and loads to endow the land with wondrous fertility. And now yet other children might come, for floods of milk poured forth, and there were herds and flocks to clothe and nourish them. Beside the ripening crops the woods waved their greenery, quivering with the eternal seeds that germinated in their shade, under the dazzling sun. And only one more stretch of land, the sandy slopes on the east, remained to be conquered in order that the kingdom might be complete. a.s.suredly this compensated one for all former tears, for all the bitter anxiety of the first years of toil.

Then, while Mathieu completed his conquest, there came to Marianne during those two years the joy of marrying one of her children even while she was again _enceinte_, for, like our good mother the earth, she also remained fruitful. 'Twas a delightful fete, full of infinite hope, that wedding of Blaise and Charlotte; he a strong young fellow of nineteen, she an adorable girl of eighteen summers, each loving the other with a love of nosegay freshness that had budded, even in childhood's hour, along the flowery paths of Chantebled. The eight other children were all there: first the big brothers, Denis, Ambroise, and Gervais, who were now finishing their studies; next Rose, the eldest girl, now fourteen, who promised to become a woman of healthy beauty and happy gayety of disposition; then Claire, who was still a child, and Gregoire, who was only just going to college; without counting the very little ones, Louise and Madeleine.

Folks came out of curiosity from the surrounding villages to see the gay troop conduct their big brother to the munic.i.p.al offices. It was a marvellous cortege, flowery like springtide, full of felicity, which moved every heart. Often, moreover, on ordinary holidays, when for the sake of an outing the family repaired in a band to some village market, there was such a gallop in traps, on horseback, and on bicycles, while the girls' hair streamed in the wind and loud laughter rang out from one and all, that people would stop to watch the charming cavalcade. "Here are the troops pa.s.sing!" folks would jestingly exclaim, implying that nothing could resist those Froments, that the whole countryside was theirs by right of conquest, since every two years their number increased. And this time, at the expiration of those last two years it was again to a daughter, Marguerite, that Marianne gave birth. For a while she remained in a feverish condition, and there were fears, too, that she might be unable to nurse her infant as she had done all the others. Thus, when Mathieu saw her erect once more and smiling, with her dear little Marguerite at her breast, he embraced her pa.s.sionately, and triumphed once again over every sorrow and every pang. Yet another child, yet more wealth and power, yet an additional force born into the world, another field ready for to-morrow's harvest!

And 'twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of fruitfulness spreading, thanks to the earth and thanks to woman, both victorious over destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a fresh child was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling, even amid suffering, and ever tending to increase of life and increase of hope.

XIV