Germinie recovered in a few days. The joy and pride of having given
birth to a tiny creature in whom her flesh was mingled with the flesh of
the man she loved, the bliss of being a mother, saved her from the
natural results of a confinement in which she did not receive proper
care. She was restored to health and had an apparent pleasure in living
that her mistress had never before seen her manifest.
Every Sunday, no matter what the weather might be, she left the house
about eleven o'clock; mademoiselle believed that she went to see a
friend in the country, and was delighted that her maid derived so much
benefit from these days passed in the open air. Germinie would capture
Jupillon, who allowed himself to be taken in tow without too much
resistance, and they would start for Pommeuse where the child was, and
where a good breakfast ordered by the mother awaited them. Once in the
carriage on the Mulhouse railway, Germinie would not speak or reply when
spoken to. She would lean out of the window, and all her thoughts seemed
to be upon what lay before her. She gazed, as if her longing were
striving to outrun the steam. The train would hardly have stopped before
she had leaped out, tossed her ticket to the ticket-taker, and started
at a run on the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. She drew nearer
and nearer, she could see the house, she was there: yes, there was the
child! She would pounce upon her, snatch her from the nurse's arms with
jealous hands--a mother's hands!--hug her, strain her to her heart, kiss
her, devour her with kisses and looks and smiles! She would gaze
admiringly at her for an instant and then, distraught with joy, mad with
love, would cover her with kisses to the tips of her little bare toes.
Breakfast would be served. She would sit at the table with the child on
her knees and eat nothing: she had kissed her so much that she had not
yet looked at her, and she would begin to seek out points of resemblance
to themselves in the little one. One feature was his, another
hers:--"She has your nose and my eyes. Her hair will be like yours in
time. It will curl! Look, those are your hands--she is all you." And for
hours she would continue the inexhaustible and charming prattle of a
woman who is determined to give a man his share of their daughter.
Jupillon submitted to it all with reasonably good grace, thanks to
divers three-sou cigars Germinie always produced from her pocket and
gave to him one by one. Then he had found a means of diversion; the
Morin flowed at the foot of the garden. Jupillon was a true Parisian: he
loved to fish with a pole and line.
And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of the
garden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board resting
on two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in her
skirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. On pleasant
days, the sun poured down upon the broad sparkling current, from which
beams of light arose as from a mirror. It was like a display of
fireworks from the sky and the stream, amid which Germinie would hold
the little girl upon her feet and let her trample upon her with her
little bare pink legs, in her short baby dress, her skin shimmering in
spots in the sunlight, her flesh mottled with sunbeams like the flesh of
angels Germinie had seen in pictures. She had a divinely sweet sensation
when the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk,
touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers
in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving
over her whole face, tickling and tormenting her with the dear little
digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as
if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time
to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little
one's head, and would call to him: "Do look at her!"
Then the child would fall asleep with the open mouth that laughs in
sleep. Germinie would lean over her and listen to her breathing in
repose. And, soothed by the peaceful respiration, she would gradually
forget herself as she gazed dreamily at the poor abode of her happiness,
the rustic garden, the apple-trees with their leaves covered with little
yellow snails and the red-cheeked apples on the southern limbs, the
poles, at whose feet the beanstalks, twisted and parched, were beginning
to climb, the square of cabbages, the four sunflowers in the little
circle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge of
the stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the white
heads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, the
bottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics of
a puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of the
past, having her future on her knees. With the grass and the trees and
the river that were before her eyes, she reconstructed, in memory, the
rustic garden of her rustic childhood. She saw again the two stones
reaching down to the water, from which her mother, when she was a little
child, used to wash her feet before putting her to bed in summertime.
"Look you, Pere Remalard," said Jupillon from his board, on one of the
hottest days in August, to the peasant who was watching him,--"do you
know they won't bite at the red worm worth a sou?"
"You must try the gentle," rejoined the peasant sententiously.
"All right, I'll have my revenge with the gentle! Pere Remalard, you
must get some calf's lights Thursday. You hang 'em up in that tree, and
Sunday we'll see."
On the Sunday Jupillon had miraculous success with his fishing, and
Germinie heard the first syllable issue from her daughter's mouth.