"Mademoiselle, I believe you have done a generous thing." The thief winced. "But it was an imprudent thing, a thing that you could not afford to do. I do not speak of your intention to maintain the child—may le bon Dieu aid you in the endeavour! But you did wrong to bring it to Chauville. You should not expose yourself to calumny. I counsel you most earnestly to place the child somewhere else without delay."
"Madame, it is my duty to have him under my own eyes," she urged. "Apart from me, he might be starved, beaten, corrupted—my friend's boy might be reared as an apache. How could I know? I should risk it all. It would be inhuman of me."
"I think you over-estimate the dangers," sighed madame Herbelin. "In fine, if you put the boy away from you, it is possible he may suffer. But if you keep him near you, it is certain you will suffer. I cannot say more."
"I must suffer," answered Marie.
A permanent home for him, not far from the rue Lecomte, was found at a bonneterie, whose humble little window contained Communion caps, and the announcement "Piqures à la Machine."
To have had him in her lodging would have cost her less. But this child that dishonoured her must be covert from the jeunes filles that she hoped would come there; and if she had to give lessons out, she could not leave him there alone.
She did have to give lessons out. It was a descent for her here to go to the pupils' houses, but she was compelled to do it. And something bitterer—she was compelled to accept a lowered fee, and affect to be unconscious why a reduction was proposed. To obtain the services of a "belle musicienne" for a trifle, there were a few mothers who engaged her, and replied to questioning relatives that she was a "slandered woman." But to her they did not say that she was slandered, and their hard eyes were an insult.
She gave a lesson twice a week for twenty francs a month now, mademoiselle Marie Lamande, who had advertised recitals in Paris, and she went short of food, to meet the charges at the bonneterie. The boy seemed to be amply nourished, and the remembrance sustained her on the days when she was dinnerless.
God! for a chance to get away, to be free of this place, where it was an ordeal to tread the streets. When she could afford to buy a postage stamp she applied for salaried work in some distant school. Once it looked as if the child were not to live; and as she sat, obeying orders, through one endless night, she knew, before she fainted from exhaustion, that if he died, her own escape from Chauville would be made by the same road.
But he recovered—thanks partially to her—and her duty still had to be done.