“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 tomorrow.”
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 upstairs 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
