Story : The Little One

 

The Little  One

Guy de Maupassant

 

After having for a long time sworn that he would never marry, Jacques Bourdillère suddenly changed his mind. It had happened quickly, one summer on the seaside.

One morning, as he was lying stretched out on the sand, quite occupied in watching the women emerge from the sea, a little foot had struck him by its amiability and its cuteness. Raising his eyes higher, he found the whole person most seductive. Of the whole person, moreover, he only saw the ankles and the head emerging from a white-flannel dressing-gown that was quite closed up. He was said to be sensual and dedicated to a life of pleasure. So it was solely by the gracefulness of the form that he was initially captivated; after that he was retained by the charm, the gentleness of the young woman, simple and wholesome, as fresh as her cheeks and her lips.

 

Presented to the family he made a good impression, and he had soon fallen completely in love. When he looked at Berthe Lannis from a distance on the long beach of yellow sand, he shivered up to the roots of his hair. Near her he became mute, incapable of saying and even thinking anything, with his heart beating, a buzzing in his ears and fright in his mind. Is that what love is, finally?

He didn’t know, didn’t understand anything, but in any case remained quite decided to make this child his wife.

The parents hesitated a long time, held back by the young man’s bad reputation. He had a mistress, it was said, an old mistress, a long-standing and strong liaison, one of those chains that one believes to have been broken and that continue to hold fast.

Apart from that he loved, during longer or shorter periods, all the women that passed within reach of his lips.

Then he put his affairs in order, without consenting to see even one single time the woman with whom he had lived for so long. Jacques paid, but didn’t want to hear anything about her, declaring that henceforth he knew nothing whatsoever about her, even her name. Every week he recognized the clumsy handwriting of the woman he had abandoned; and, every week, he was taken by an ever greater anger against her and abruptly tore up both the envelope and the letter without reading a line, a single line, knowing in advance the reproaches and the complains it contained.

As his perseverance was hardly taken seriously, he was obliged to wait in vain all winter, and it was only in the springtime that his marriage demand was accepted.

The wedding took place in Paris in the first days of May.

 

It was decided that they wouldn’t go on the traditional honeymoon trip. After a small reception for some cousins that would be over by eleven in the evening, the young couple planned to pass their first night together in the family home so as not to stretch out the exhausting day of ceremonies, and then to leave together the following morning, alone, for the beach so dear to their hearts where they had first met and fallen in love.

The night had come, there was still dancing in the grand salon. The two of them had gone off to the little adjoining Japanese salon decorated with brilliant silks, only lit that night by the languid rays of a large coloured lantern hanging from the ceiling like an enormous egg. The half-opened window let in gusts of fresh air from time to time, light wafts of air that flowed caressingly over their faces, as the evening was mild and calm, full of the odours of springtime.

They didn’t say anything; they held hands, squeezing them sometimes with all their force. She was a little lost by this great change to her life and had a vague expression in her eyes but was smiling, moved, on the verge of tears and often also on the verge of collapsing with joy, believing the whole world to have changed because of what was happening to her, feeling uneasy without knowing the cause and feeling all her body, all her soul invaded by an undefinable but delicious lassitude.

He was obstinately looking at her, smiling fixedly. He wanted to speak but finding nothing he just stayed there, putting all his ardour into the pressure of his hands. From time to time he murmured: “Berthe!” and each time she lifted her eyes up to him with a soft and tender movement; they contemplated each other a second, then her gaze, penetrated and fascinated by his, fell down again.

They didn’t find a single thought to exchange. They had been left alone but from time to time a couple of dancers threw furtive glances at them passing by, as if they had been discrete and confidential witnesses of a mystery.

 

A side door opened and a servant appeared, holding a tray with a sealed letter that had just been delivered. Jacques took the letter up with a trembling hand, seized by a vague and sudden fear, the mysterious fear of sudden misfortune.

He looked at the writing on the envelope, that he did not recognize, for a long time, not daring to open it, desperately desiring not to open it, to know nothing of it, to put it into his pocket and to say to himself: “Tomorrow! tomorrow I’ll be far away, it means nothing to me!” But in a corner there were the underlined words VERY URGENT that retained and frightened him. He asked: “May I, my dear?”, tore open the sealed page and read it. Reading it he paled frightfully; he read it hastily over again and then seemed to be slowly spelling it out.

When he raised his head up, his whole face was overwhelmed with emotion. He stammered: “My dear little one, it’s… it’s my best friend to whom a great, a terribly great disaster has happened. He needs me right away… at once… for a question of life or death. Will you allow me to be absent for twenty minutes? — I‘ll come back right away!”

She stammered, trembling, terrified: “Go, my dear!”, not yet being his wife long enough to dare to interrogate him, to demand to know. And he disappeared. She remained there alone, listening to the dancing in the salon.

He had taken a hat, the first one he could lay his hands on, any overcoat whatever, and ran down the stairs. On reaching the street he stopped under the gaslight to read the letter again. This is what it said:

 

“Sir,

A certain woman Ravet, your former mistress it would appear, has just given birth to a child that she declares to be yours. The mother is going to die and implores you to visit her. I am taking the liberty of writing to you to ask you to grant this last visit to this woman, who seems very unhappy and worthy of pity.

Your servant,

Dr. Bonnard”

 

When he entered the room of the dying woman she was already on the verge of death. He didn’t recognize her at first. The doctor and two assistants were taking care of her and everywhere on the floor there were buckets full of ice and towels soaked in blood.

There was water all over the floor; two candles were burning on a console; behind the bed the infant was crying in a little wicker cradle, and at each of its wails the anguished mother tried to move, shivering under the frozen compresses.

She was bleeding; bleeding profusely, fatally wounded by this birth. Her whole life was draining away from her; and, in spite of the ice, in spite of the ministrations, the invincible haemorrhage continued, precipitating her final hour.

She recognized Jacques and wanted to raise her arms in greeting, but was unable to, they were so weak, and tears began to slide down her livid cheeks.

He went down on his knees beside the bed, took hold of her hand that was hanging down and kissed it frantically; then little by little he approached his face closer, right up to the thin face that quivered at the contact. One of the assistants, standing with a candle in his hand, cast light on them and the doctor, having stepped back, looked on from the far side of the room.

Then in a voice that was already distant she said to him in gasps: “I am going to die, my beloved; promise me that you will stay to the end. Oh, don’t leave me now, don’t leave me at my last moment!”

He tearfully kissed her on the forehead and in her hair, and murmured: “Be calm, I’ll stay.”

It was several minutes before she could speak again, she was so weak and oppressed. She continued: “He is yours, the little one. I swear to it before God, I swear to it on my soul, I swear to it on my deathbed. I have loved no one else but you… promise me that you will not abandon him!”

He tried to gather the slight, torn body emptied of its blood up in his arms again. He stammered, crazed with remorse and chagrin: “I swear it to you, I shall raise him up and love him. He will not leave me.” Then she tried to embrace Jacques. Unable to raise up her exhausted head, she proffered her white lips in an appeal for a kiss. He approached his lips to receive this lamentable, supplicating caress.

Somewhat calmed, she murmured in a low voice: “Bring him to me, so that I can see if you love him!”

And he fetched the infant.

He set it delicately down on the bed between them, and the little being stopped crying. She murmured: “Don’t move!” and he stayed there, holding in his hand that burning hand that was shaken by anguished tremors, as he had held a short while before another hand seized by tremors of love. From time to time he looked at the clock with a furtive glance, watching the needle hand that passed midnight, then one o’clock, then two o’clock.

The doctor had left and the two assistants, after having paced to and fro for some time in light steps were now dozing on the chairs. The baby was sleeping and the mother, with closed eyes, seemed to be resting too.

All at once, as the pale light of day filtered between the closed curtains, she held her arms out in an abrupt movement so violent that she almost ejected the child from the bed. There was a kind of raucous complaint in her throat, then she was immobile there on her back, dead.

The assistants ran over declaring: “It’s over.”

He looked one last time at this woman he had loved, then at the clock that showed four o’clock, and fled in his black suit, leaving his overcoat behind, with the child in his arms.

 

After he had left her alone, his young wife had waited in the little Japanese salon, quite calm at first. Then, as she didn’t see him coming back, she went back into the salon with an air of indifference and tranquility, but terribly worried. Her mother, on seeing her alone, had immediately asked: “Where’s your husband?” She had replied: “He’s gone to his room, he’ll be coming back.”

After an hour, as everyone was questioning her, she told them about the letter and the overwhelmed expression of Jacques, and about her fears of a disaster.

They waited longer. The guests left and only her closest relatives remained. At midnight they put the bride, shaking with sobs, to bed. Her mother and two aunts, sitting around the bed, listened to her crying, mute and desolated… The father had gone to see the police commissioner for information.

At five o’clock in the morning a light noise was heard in the corridor; a door was softly opened and closed; then suddenly a little cry, like a cat’s meowing, was heard in the silent house.

All of the women were on their feet in an instant, and Berthe ran forward in her nightgown in spite of the restraining gestures of her mother and aunts.

Jacques stood there in the middle of the room, livid, panting, holding an infant in his arms.

The four women looked at him, frightened; but Berthe, suddenly become audacious, her heart seized with anguish, ran up to him: “What’s happened? Tell me, what is it?”

He looked like a madman; he replied in a shaken voice: “It’s… it’s… that I have a child, whose mother has just died…” And he showed her the baby howling in his clumsy hands.

 

Berthe, without saying a word, took the baby in her arms, kissed it and held it against her body; then, lifting her eyes full of tears up to her husband: “The mother is dead, you say?” He replied: “Yes, just now… in my arms… I had broken with her in the summer… I knew nothing of it… it was the doctor who summoned me.”

Then Berthe murmured: “Well, we’ll bring him up, this little one!”

With affection,

Ruben