“You only have these two?” asked Madame Grégoire, in order to break the silence.
“Oh, madame! I have seven.”
M. Grégoire, who had gone back to his newspaper, sat up indignantly.
“Seven children! But why? good God!”
“It is imprudent,” murmured the old lady.
Maheude made a vague gesture of apology. What would you have? One doesn’t think about it at all, they come quite naturally. And then, when they grow up they bring something in, and that makes the household go. Take their case, they could get on, if it was not for the grandfather who was getting quite stiff, and if it was not that among the lot only two of her sons and her eldest daughter were old enough to go down into the pit. It was necessary, all the same, to feed the little ones who brought nothing in.
“Then,” said Madame Grégoire, “you have worked for a long time at the mines?”
A silent laugh lit up Maheude’s pale face.
“Ah, yes! ah, yes! I went down till I was twenty. The doctor said that I should stay down for good after I had been confined the second time, because it seems that made something go wrong in my inside. Besides, then I got married, and I had enough to do in the house. But on my husband’s side, you see, they have been down there for ages. It goes up from grandfather to grandfather, one doesn’t know how far back, quite to the beginning when they first took the pick down there at Réquillart.”
M. Grégoire thoughtfully contemplated this woman and these pitiful children, with their waxy flesh, their discoloured hair, the degeneration which stunted them, gnawed by anaemia, and with the melancholy ugliness of starvelings. There was silence again, and one only heard the burning coal as it gave out a jet of gas. The moist room had that heavy air of comfort in which our middle-class nooks of happiness slumber.
“What is she doing, then?” exclaimed Cécile impatiently. “Mélanie, go up and tell her that the parcel is at the bottom of the cupboard, on the left.”
In the meanwhile, M. Grégoire repeated aloud the reflections inspired by the sight of these starving ones.
“There is evil in this world, it is quite true; but, my good woman, it must also be said that workpeople are never prudent. Thus, instead of putting aside a few sous like our peasants, miners drink, get into debt, and end by not having enough to support their families.”
“Monsieur is right,” replied Maheude sturdily. “They don’t always keep to the right path. That’s what I’m always saying to the ne’er-do-wells when they complain. Now, I have been lucky; my husband doesn’t drink. All the same, on feast Sundays he sometimes takes a drop too much; but it never goes farther. It is all the nicer of him, since before our marriage he drank like a hog, begging your pardon. And yet, you know, it doesn’t help us much that he is so sensible. There are days like today when you might turn out all the drawers in the house and not find a farthing.”
She wished to suggest to them the idea of the five-franc piece, and went on in her low voice, explaining the fatal debt, small at first, then large and overwhelming. They paid regularly for many fortnights. But one day they got behind, and then it was all up. They could never catch up again. The gulf widened, and the men became disgusted with work which did not even allow them to pay their way. Do what they could, there was nothing but difficulties until death. Besides, it must be understood that a collier needed a glass to wash away the dust. It began there, and then he was always in the inn when worries came. Without complaining of anyone it might be that the workmen did not earn as much as they ought to.
“I thought,” said Madame Grégoire, “that the Company gave you lodging and firing?”
Maheude glanced sideways at the flaming coal in the fireplace.
“Yes, yes, they give us coal, not very grand, but it burns. As to lodging, it only costs six francs a month; that sounds like nothing, but it is often pretty hard to pay. Today they might cut me up into bits without getting two sous out of me. Where there’s nothing, there’s nothing.”
The lady and gentleman were silent, softly stretched out, and gradually wearied and disquieted by the exhibition of this wretchedness. She feared she had wounded them, and added, with the stolid and just air of a practical woman:
“Oh! I didn’t want to complain. Things are like this, and one has to put up with them; all the more that it’s no good struggling, perhaps we shouldn’t change anything. The best is, is it not, to try and live honestly in the place in which the good God has put us?”
M. Grégoire approved this emphatically.
“With such sentiments, my good woman, one is above misfortune.”
Honorine and Mélanie at last brought the parcel.
Cécile unfastened it and took out the two dresses. She added comforters, even stockings and mittens. They would all fit beautifully; she hastened and made the servants wrap up the chosen garments; for her music mistress had just arrived; and she pushed the mother and children towards the door.
“We are very short,” stammered Maheude; “if we only had a five-franc piece—”
The phrase was stifled, for the Maheus were proud and never begged. Cécile looked uneasily at her father; but the latter refused decisively, with an air of duty.
“No, it is not our custom. We cannot do it.”
Then the young girl, moved by the mother’s overwhelmed face, wished to do all she could for the children.
