“Do you really think she was an innocent thing when she came here?”
“Why, yes, of course. What makes you ask?”
“Just so.”
She pursued a pleasant thought of her own: Josephine had been the cause of the seduction and Father Pitamont had fallen to her wiles. But at the very moment she thought thus, she realized that it couldn't be so. Pitamont's subsequent actions did not endorse this view. “Why do you ask?” she repeated.
“Her behavior has not been irreproachable of late.” He understated the matter, entering the thin edge of the wedge before he pounded home.
“What has she done?” Mme Didier asked.
He told her in a few words, reducing the case to its minimum and omitting all embellishments likely to cause Mme Didier to worry too much. Mme Didier remained in thought for a while and then decided sagely that Josephine should be put in a room somewhere where she would be safe and watched over and where she would remain until the mayor of her village acted upon her case. “Pull the bell for Françoise and we'll see if she knows of some good house where we can keep the girl.”
Françoise appeared and listened to her mistress' decision. Meanwhile she fidgeted about and cast certain glances at M Galliez, as if to say, There is something else I must tell you about. Until Aymar could not help exclaiming:
“Come right out with it, Françoise!”
Françoise sucked in her breath as if to gather courage; then jerking back her head with self-righteousness (she certainly wasn't to blame for anything), she delivered herself of this: “Josephine is pregnant.”
There was a moment of deep silence, then particulars were demanded. Since when? Françoise couldn't say, but from what Josephine had told her it might be two, three months.
“Why, she has been here only three months!” Mme Didier exclaimed.
“Oui, madame,” said the obedient Françoise.
“It's that damned Fa⦔ A look from his aunt made Aymar cut his sentence short.
“Bring her in, Françoise, I'll talk to her alone,” said Mme Didier.
A moment later Josephine came in. Simply clad, demure, the bloom of rustic innocence still on her cheeks. Only when she happened to look up did her dark, blazing eyes belie her modesty and humility.
“My poor child,” said Mme Didier, and put her hands on Josephine's shoulders. “Do you know that you are going to have a baby?”
“Oui, madame.”
“And you are so young.”
“Oui, madame.”
“You poor thing.”
“Is it because I go with the boys, like Françoise says, madame?”
“Oh, child, why do you do that?”
“I like it so, madame. Must I really stop? I've tried very hard not to do it, but I can't stop myself. At home I saw all the animals do it and no one ever stopped them.”
“But, Josephine, my child, we are not animals. You never saw human beings do such things, did you?”
“No, madame. There was only mamma and myself at home⦔
“Yes, to be sure,” said Mme Didier and bit her lip.
“Don't men and women do it ever?”
“Hush.”
“But Father Pitamont was the first to do it to me.”
“Hush! Hush! Was he really the first?”
“Yes, madame.”
“You unfortunate wretch. What shall we do with you now?”
“Françoise says you will send me away because I am bad. Don't send me away.”
“I shall find a nice home for you.” She was thinking of the Duchess of Angoulême's home for wayward girls. But a second's thought brought her to the decision not to attempt to put the girl in a home. She wanted as little explaining as possible in the case. The best thing to do was to take the matter upon herself completely, give Josephine as good a room to stay in as could be found and let things take their natural course. All wounds heal over in time, and those that are not healed are covered by the grave.
Josephine seemed to have quite resigned herself to her fate. It was only for the first few days that she suffered from lack of her nightly escapades. Here in the room they had found for her there was no running away at night or indeed at any time, but to compensate for that there was nothing to do, and in all the years of her life Josephine had been busy from early morn to night, not only at the little poverty-stricken farm where she had lived with her widowed mother, but also at Mme Didier's where under the stern direction of Françoise there was a constant succession of tasks to keep her actively at work all day long.
This sudden leisure was the first ray of sunlight in her short and bleak existence. She lolled around, doing nothing, and was quite happy at it. She sat by, the window and pretended she was M Galliez. Sat silently thus for hours.
Mealtimes she enjoyed the fullest. Not that she was a glutton, but being waited upon was to her such a novel experience that she could never have enough of it. And being called Madame by the girl who brought in her tray, a young girl much like what she herself had been but a few days before! Josephine did her best to act like Mme Didier.
Being thus, by turns, Mme Didier and then M Galliez, Josephine had really quite a nice time of it. And when every second day or so Françoise came to see her, she could not prevent herself from putting on little airs before Françoise, who was still Françoise, whereas she, Josephine, was now Madame, and feeling herself thoroughly in her rôle, it annoyed her considerably that once in front of the servant-girl, Françoise should speak quite openly of “our mistress.” Josephine felt she had been humbled.
Occasionally (but rarely, being a woman of great weight) Mère Kardec ascended to the top floor of her Maison d'Accouchement to visit her most curious patient, a young girl who was not to give birth for some five months. Mère Kardec was a stern-visaged person, square hewn as if a stone carver had left her unfinished. She asked no questions. Her fortune had been acquired by her absolute lack of curiosity. The women who came to her house could be sure of being well taken care of. Mère Kardec sent a constant stream of children out to her relations in Brittany, and the mothers who left her place need never concern themselves about the matter again, beyond paying the required sums. A countess with a name known all over Europe might come to Mère Kardec's and register as whatever she pleased and have twins if nature so ordained, and Mère Kardec would make it right with the authorities, and never a word of it would go beyond her doors. A thousand romances on the brink of scandal or tragedy had come for salvation here behind the inconspicuous exterior of her house. Even the
Almanach de Gotha
must have its cesspool or sewerage system.
When Mère Kardec entered Josephine's room, she unloosened her dour visage and emitted a greeting to which she expected no answer. If one came, as in the present case, when polite words came tripping from Josephine's tongue, Mère Kardec paid no attention. She passed her hand over the furniture to see if the servants were cleaning properly, she jabbed at the bed to see if the feather mattress had been well shaken up, and looked under the bed for those fluffy accumulations of feathers, hair and dust that tend to gather there. Having satisfied herself as to this, she asked curtly about the satisfactoriness of the food, and without waiting for more than a sentence of the answer, she excused herself and walked out.
To make up for these cold visits, there was the weekly call by Mme Didier herself, accompanied by M Galliez. Aymar sat down at once by the window. Sometimes he was much shaken by the arduous walk up the many flights of stairs, and this not only because the climb was difficult, but because the hall was often full of the horrible moans of women in labor. He sat by the open window and wiped his brow with his kerchief. Josephine could not take her eyes off his pale, thin face, his long delicate fingers, his silken handkerchief moistened with perspiration.
Once he came alone. Then she was so shy that he could not get a single clear response from her. Finally he arose to go. But she threw herself toward the door as if to bar his way, and taking his hand in hers she begged: “Don't go! Don't go yet!”
She slung her arms around his body and cuddled up close. He put his hands on her shoulders and said gently: “Why, Josephine, pull yourself together.”
She did not answer but continued to cling to him. Then still holding her by the shoulders he sought to push her away. Only her head went back and her eyes looked up into his. Without knowing why, he bent and kissed her chastely on the lips.
Kiss me again, her eyes begged. He obeyed. Then her tongue darted out of her mouth and pushed itself between his lips. Her hot moist tongue stirred him to the depths of his bowels. Weak with sudden lust, he subsided on the bed with her.
Downstairs before her office stood Mère Kardec like the threat of doom, arms akimbo, glaring straight ahead. Aymar shrank within himself as he came in sight of her. He thought she was about to say something to him, but not a sound came from her firm lips. She had no intention of saying anything, as a matter of fact, but he, conscious of his guilt, slunk away like a whipped cur.
On his way home he came to the decision that there was only one way out for him and that was never to go to see Josephine again. Having so determined, his conscience was soothed and his ego revived from the chilling shower Mère Kardec had administered.
At home, across the table, Mme Didier said: “You look exhausted, my poor Aymar. You shall not go there again.”
He controlled his great fright. “On the contrary,” he assured her, “I feel exceedingly well. And if the long walk there and back has exhausted me I shall sleep all the better.”
And after a moment, he added. “It is you who are looking peaked, my aunt. Why don't you run away to the country for a while? You should not have given up your plans for a vacation this year.” She objected that with conditions as they were and what with Josephine and the fact that in any case she would not return to her village where she had usually spent her summers, all this made a vacation in the country impossible. He argued with her persuasively, and so well, as a trained pamphleteer like himself could do, that she capitulated.
Two days later he had the pleasure of seeing his aunt and Françoise off to the South. A moment after the train had pulled out he was in a fiacre and on his way to Josephine.
This time there were no preliminaries. They clutched at each other like two struggling in dark water and about to be engulfed.
He could not suppress a feeling of joy when he learned that Mme Didier was feeling very poorly and had been advised by the doctor to extend her stay in the Midi as long as possible. What kind of a monster am I? he asked himself and gazed at himself in horror. He shut himself up in his room, determined to write, to work on that great opus of his, to which he had not put a hand for weeks. He looked out of his window, down on the hot August boulevard. Men and women, horses and cabs, drenched in the sun, hastened by in both directions. What was the meaning of all this? His mind was empty of any thoughts. The whole world had no meaning. Nothing but hot dust, eye-searing colors, people who did not know what they were about.
He changed his mind about not going, and at once the world took on order and meaning. When he was out on the street, hastening like everyone else, then he found that the streets were not so hot as he had feared. A cool breeze was blowing. It was a balmy day with a climate such as one imagines is eternal in Paradise.
“Why do you never say a word about Josephine in your letters?” his aunt reproached him. “Don't you ever go to see her? You know I wanted you to watch out for her.”
He saw that he had made a big mistake. She must not be suspicious. And there was Mère Kardec who could have told her that he had been there every day and sometimes twice.
“I remembered your injunction concerning Josephine,” he wrote, slyly. “I have been to see her often. When I go to see my friend Le Pelletier as I do now and then, or when I go to see the group at the Café Palissot, then since I am passing by there anyhow, I usually drop in to see how she is faring. Indeed she has been quite well up until now.”
The facts were true enough. The implication was a clever lie. He detested himself for stooping to such procedure. No longer could he have shouted “That damn Father Pitamont, that devil in priest's garb!” He felt himself to be as low, as rascally, nay, even lower than Pitamont. At the club it was noticed that he no longer inveighed so fiercely against priest and capitalist. He had come to the consoling thought that “we are all sinners together.” That was the only excuse he could find for himself.
As for Josephine, now that she had him, she would not let him go. She could not bear his absence, and when he had to go she would make him swear to return at such and such a definite time, insisting that she would throw herself out of the window if he were but a minute late.
The child she carried troubled her much by its liveliness and prevented her from sleeping at night. But when Aymar was around she forgot completely about it. The small pleasure which she had had at first on finding herself treated as Madame and with no work to do had palled on her. There was for her only one satisfaction in life and that was being with Aymar.
Late in October, Mme Didier returned. Aymar promptly settled into a melancholia from which nothing could arouse him. Apathetically he listened to Mme Didier's tales of her experiences in the South. Twice he ventured to make a visit to Josephine, but his nerves were so jumpy from fear of exposing the whole sordid connection that he stopped completely thereafter. The last time, indeed, he saw Françoise mounting the stairs as he was coming down. Fortunately, she had not seen him yet and he had time to step into a dark recess, which she passed unsuspectingly. Shattered by this experience, he took to bed for a whole day.
Josephine, realizing that now everything was over, and unable to deceive herself long with the pleasant thought that after the birth of the child she would be able to return to the old conditions, demeaned herself like one gone insane and threatened so often to commit suicide that at last Mère Kardec transferred her to a room where the window was barred and took the additional precaution of leaving a nurse in the room both day and night.