“Well?” faltered Jeanne.
“Well,” answered Rosalie, “she died
last night. They were married and here is the
little girl.” And she held out the child,
who could not be seen under her wraps.
Jeanne took it mechanically and they left the station
and got into the carriage.
“M. Paul will come as soon as the funeral
is over—to-morrow about this time, I believe,”
resumed Rosalie.
Jeanne murmured “Paul” and then was silent.
The wagon drove along rapidly, the peasant clacking
his tongue to urge on the horse. Jeanne looked
straight ahead of her into the clear sky through which
the swallows darted in curves. Suddenly she felt
a gentle warmth striking through to her skin; it was
the warmth of the little being who was asleep on her
lap.
Then she was overcome with an intense emotion, and
uncovering gently the face of the sleeping infant,
she raised it to her lips and kissed it passionately.
But Rosalie, happy though grumpy, stopped her; “Come,
come, Madame Jeanne, stop that; you will make it cry.”
And then she added, probably in answer to her own
thoughts: “Life, after all, is not as good
or as bad as we believe it to be.”
* * * *
*
He was a journeyman carpenter, a good workman and
a steady fellow, twenty-seven years old, but, although
the eldest son, Jacques Randel had been forced to
live on his family for two months, owing to the general
lack of work. He had walked about seeking work
for over a month and had left his native town, Ville-Avary,
in La Manche, because he could find nothing to do
and would no longer deprive his family of the bread
they needed themselves, when he was the strongest of
them all. His two sisters earned but little as
charwomen. He went and inquired at the town hall,
and the mayor’s secretary told him that he would
find work at the Labor Agency, and so he started, well
provided with papers and certificates, and carrying
another pair of shoes, a pair of trousers and a shirt
in a blue handkerchief at the end of his stick.
And he had walked almost without stopping, day and
night, along interminable roads, in sun and rain,
without ever reaching that mysterious country where
workmen find work. At first he had the fixed
idea that he must only work as a carpenter, but at
every carpenter’s shop where he applied he was
told that they had just dismissed men on account of
work being so slack, and, finding himself at the end
of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake
any job that he might come across on the road.
And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stonecutter;
he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells,
mixed mortar, tied up fagots, tended goats on a mountain,
and all for a few pence, for he only obtained two
or three days’ work occasionally by offering
himself at a shamefully low price, in order to tempt
the avarice of employers and peasants.
