The Child
After swearing for a long time that he would never marry, Jacques Bourdillère suddenly changed his mind. It happened one summer at the seaside, quite unexpectedly.
One morning, as he was stretched on the sand, watching the women come out of the water, a little foot caught his attention, because of its slimness and delicacy. As he raised his eyes higher, the entire person seemed attractive. Of this entire person he had, however, seen only the ankles and the head emerging from a white flannel bathrobe, fastened with care. He was called sensual and dissipated, and it was by grace of form alone that he was first captured. Afterwards he was held by the charm and sweet spirit of the young girl, who was simple and good and fresh, like her cheeks and her lips.
When he was introduced to the family, they liked him and soon he was head over heels in love. When he saw Berthe Lannis at a distance, on the long stretch of yellow sand, he trembled from head to foot. Near her he was dumb, incapable of saying anything or even of thinking, with a kind of bubbling in his heart, a humming in his ears, and a frightened feeling in his mind. Was this love?
He did not know, he did not understand it, but he was fully decided to make this child his wife.
Her parents hesitated a long time, deterred by the bad reputation of the young man. He had a mistress, it was said—an old mistress, an old and strong entanglement, one of those chains which is believed to be broken, but which continues to hold, nevertheless. In addition, he had loved, for longer or shorter periods, every woman who had come within reach of his lips.
But he turned over a new leaf, and would not even consent to see once more the woman with whom he had lived so long. A friend arranged her pension, assuring her a livelihood. Jacques paid, but he did not wish to hear her name mentioned, pretending henceforth that he did not even know who she was. She wrote letters which he would not open. Every week he recognized the clumsy handwriting of the woman he had abandoned, and every week a greater anger arose in him against her, and he would tear the envelope in two, without opening it, without reading a line, knowing beforehand the reproaches and complaints it would contain.
As there was but little belief in his perseverance, he was put to the test during the whole winter, and it was not until the spring that his suit was accepted.
The marriage took place in Paris during the early part of May. It was decided that they should not go on the usual honeymoon. After a little ball, a dance for her young cousins, which would not last beyond eleven o’clock, and would not prolong forever the fatigue of that day of ceremonies, the young couple intended to pass their first night at the family home and to set out the next morning for the seaside, where they had met and loved.
The night came, and people were dancing in the big drawing room. The newly-married pair had withdrawn into a little Japanese boudoir with bright silk hangings, and scarcely lighted this evening, except by the dim rays from a coloured lantern in the shape of an enormous egg, which hung from the ceiling. The long window was open, allowing at times a fresh breath of air from without to blow upon their faces, for the evening was soft and warm, full of the odour of springtime.
They said nothing, but held each other’s hands, pressing them from time to time with all their force. She was a little dazed by this great change in her life; her eyes were dreaming. She was smiling, deeply moved, ready to weep, often ready to swoon from joy, believing the entire world changed because of what had come to her, a little disturbed without knowing the reason why, and feeling all her body, all her soul, enveloped in an indefinable, delightful lassitude.
He watched her all the time, smiling with a fixed smile. He wished to talk but found nothing to say, and remained quiet, expressing all his ardour in the pressing of her hand. From time to time he murmured “Berthe!” and each time she raised her eyes to his with a sweet and tender look. They would look at each other a moment, then his eyes, fascinated by hers, would fall.
They discovered no ideas to exchange. But they were left alone, except that sometimes a dancing couple would cast a glance at them in passing, a furtive glance, as if it were the discreet and confidential witness of a mystery.
A side door opened, a domestic entered, bearing upon a tray an urgent letter which a messenger had brought. Jacques trembled as he took it, seized with a vague and sudden fear, the mysterious fear of sudden misfortune.
He looked for a long time at the envelope, not knowing the handwriting, nor daring to open it, wishing not to read, not to know the contents, desiring to put it in his pocket and to say to himself: “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I shall be far away and it will not matter!” But upon the corner were two words underlined: very urgent, which frightened him. “Allow me, my dear,” said he, and he tore off the wrapper. He read the letter, growing frightfully pale, running over it at a glance, and then seeming slowly to spell it out.
When he raised his head his whole countenance was changed. He stammered: “My dear little girl, a great misfortune has happened to my best friend. He needs me immediately, in a matter of—of life and death. Allow me to go for twenty minutes. I will return immediately.”
She, trembling and frightened, murmured: “Go, dear!” not yet being enough of a wife to dare to ask or demand to know anything. And he disappeared. She remained alone, listening to the dance music in the next room.
He had taken the first hat he could find, and an overcoat, and had run down the stairs. As he was going out into the street he stopped under a gaslight in the hall and reread the letter. It said:
“Sir: A girl called Ravet, who appears to be your ex-mistress, has given birth to a child which she asserts is yours. The mother is dying and implores you to visit her. I take the liberty of writing to you to ask whether you will grant the last wish of this woman, who seems to be very unhappy and worthy of pity.
When he entered the room of the dying woman she was already in the last agony. He did not know her at first. The doctor and two nurses were looking after her, and all over the floor were pails full of ice and linen stained with blood.
Water covered the floor, two candles were burning on a table; behind the bed, in a little wicker cradle, a child was crying, and, at each of its cries, the tortured mother would try to move, shivering under the icy compresses.
She was bleeding, wounded to death, killed by this birth. Her life was slipping away; and, in spite of the ice, in spite of all care, the haemorrhage continued, hastening her last hour.
She recognized Jacques, and tried to raise her hand. She was too weak for that, but the warm tears began to glide down her cheeks.
He fell on his knees beside the bed, seized one of her hands and kissed it frantically; then, little by little, he approached nearer to the wan face, which quivered at his touch. One of the nurses, standing with a candle in her hand, threw the light upon them, and the doctor, who had stepped into the background, looked at them from the end of the room.
With a far-off voice, breathing hard, she said: “I am going to die, dearest; promise me you will remain till the end. Oh! do not leave me now, not at the last moment!”
He kissed her brow, her hair, with a groan. “Do not be uneasy,” he murmured, “I will stay.”
It was some minutes before she was able to speak again, she was so weak and overcome. Then she continued: “It is yours, the little one. I swear it before God, I swear it to you upon my soul, I swear it at the moment of death. I have never loved any man but you—promise me not to abandon it—” He tried to take in his arms the poor, weak body, emptied of its life blood. He stammered, moved by remorse and grief: “I swear to you I will bring it up and love it. It shall never be separated from me.” Then she held Jacques in an embrace. Powerless to raise her head, she held up her blanched lips in an appeal for a kiss. He bent his mouth to receive this poor, suppliant caress.
Calmed a little, she murmured in a low tone: “Take it, that I may see that you love it.”
He went to the cradle and took up the child.
He placed it gently on the bed between them. The little creature ceased to cry. She whispered: “Do not stir!” And he remained motionless. There he stayed, holding in his burning palms a hand that shook with the tremor of death, as he had held, an hour before, another hand that had trembled with the tremor of love. From time to time he looked at the hour, with a furtive glance of the eye, watching the hand as it passed midnight, then one o’clock, then two.
The doctor had retired. The two nurses, after roaming around for some time with light step, slept now in their chairs. The child slept, and the mother, whose eyes were closed, seemed to be resting also.
Suddenly, as the pale daylight began to filter through the torn curtains, she extended her arms with so startling and violent a motion that she almost threw the child upon the floor. There was a rattling in her throat; then she lay on her back motionless, dead.
The nurses, who had hastened to her side, said: “It is over.”
He looked once at this woman he had loved, then at the hand that marked four o’clock, and, forgetting his overcoat, fled in his evening clothes with the child in his arms.
After she had been left alone, his young bride had waited calmly at first, in the Japanese boudoir. Then, seeing that he did not return, she went back to the drawing room, indifferent and quiet in appearance, but frightfully disturbed. Her mother, perceiving her alone, asked where her husband was. She replied: “In his room; he will return presently.”
After an hour, as everybody asked about him, she told of the letter, of the change in Jacques’ face, and her fears of some misfortune.
They still waited. The guests gone; only the parents and near relatives remained. At midnight, they put the bride in her bed, shaking with sobs. Her mother and two aunts were seated on the bed listening to her weeping. Her father had gone to the police headquarters to make inquiries. At five o’clock a light sound was heard in the corridor. The door opened and closed softly. Then suddenly a cry, like the mewing of a cat, went through the house, breaking the silence.
All the women of the house were up with one bound, and Berthe was the first to spring forward, in spite of her mother and her aunts, clothed only in her night-robe.
Jacques was standing in the middle of the room, livid, breathing hard, holding a child in his arms.
The four frightened women looked at him, but Berthe suddenly took courage, her heart wrung with anguish, and ran to him saying: “What is it? Tell me! What is it?”
He looked as if he had lost his senses and answered in a husky voice: “It is—it is—I have a child, and its mother has just died.” And he put into her arms the howling little baby.
Berthe, without saying a word, seized the child and embraced it, straining it to her heart. Then, turning toward her husband with her eyes full of tears, she said: “The mother is dead, you say?” He answered: “Yes, just died—in my arms—I had broken with her since last summer—I knew nothing about it—only the doctor sent for me and—”
Then Berthe murmured: “Well, we will bring up this little one.”