Jack (17 page)

Doctor Rivals soon discovered that Jack was by no means wanting in intelligence, and determined, with his natural kindness of heart, to himself supply the great deficiencies in education by giving him an hour’s instruction daily. Those of my readers who are in the habit of enjoying a siesta after dinner, will appreciate the sacrifice made by the old man, when I add that it was this precise time that he now freely gave to the little boy, who, in his turn, gratefully applied himself with his whole heart to his lessons. Cιcile was almost always present, and was as pleased as Jack himself when her grandfather, examining the copy-book, said, “Well done!” To his mother, Jack said nothing of his labors; he determined to prove to her at some future day that the diagnosis of the poet had been incorrect. This concealment was rendered very easy, as the mother grew hourly more and more indifferent to her child, and more completely absorbed in D’Argenton. The boy’s comings and goings were almost unnoticed. His seat at the table was often vacant, but no one asked where he had been. New guests filled the board, for D’Argenton kept open house; yet the poet was by no means generous in his hospitality, and when Charlotte would say to him, timidly, “I am out of money, my friend,” he would reply by a wry face and the word, “Already?” But vanity was stronger than avarice, and the pleasure of patronizing his old friends, the Bohemians, with whom he had formerly lived, carried the day. They all knew that he had a pleasant home, that the air was good and the table better; consequently, one would say to another, “Who wants to go to Etiolles tonight?” They came in droves.

Poor Charlotte was in despair. “Madame Archambauld, are there eggs?—is there any game? Company has come, and what shall we give them?”

“Anything will suit, madame, I fancy, for they look half starved,” said the old woman, astonished at the unkempt, unshorn, and hungry aspect of her master’s friends.

D’Argenton delighted in showing them over the house; and then they dispersed to the fields, to the river-side, and into the forest, as happy and frolicsome as old horses turned out to grass. In the fresh country, in the full sunlight, those rusty coats and worn faces seemed more rusty and more worn than when seen in Paris; but they were happy, and D’Argenton radiant. No one ventured to dispute his eternal “I think,” and “I know.” Was he not the master of the house, and had he not the key of the wine cellar?

Charlotte, too, was well pleased. It was to her inconsequent nature and Bohemian instincts a renewal of the excitement of her old life. She was flattered and admired, and, while remaining true to her poet, was pleased to show him that she had not lost her power of charming.

Months passed on. The little house was enveloped in the melancholy mists of autumn; then winter snows whitened the roof, followed by the fierce winds of March; and finally a new spring, with its lilacs and violets, gladdened the hearts of the inmates of the cottage. Nothing was changed there. D’Argenton, perhaps, had two or three new symptoms, dignified by Doctor Hirsch with singular names. Charlotte was as totally without salient characteristics, as pretty and sentimental, as she had always been. Jack had grown and developed amazingly, and having studied industriously, knew quite as much as other boys of his age.

“Send him to school now,” said Doctor Rivals to his mother, “and I answer for his making a figure.”

“Ah, doctor, how good you are!” cried Charlotte, a little ashamed, and feeling the indirect reproach conveyed in the interest expressed by a stranger, as contrasted with her own indifference.

D’Argenton answered coldly that he would reflect upon the matter, that he had grave objections to a school, &c., and when alone with Charlotte, expressed his indignation at the doctor’s interference, but from that time took more interest in the movements of the boy.

“Come here, sir,” said Labassandre, one day, to Jack. The child obeyed somewhat anxiously. “Who made that net in the chestnut-tree at the foot of the garden?”

“It was I, sir.”

Cιcile had expressed a wish for a living squirrel, and Jack had manufactured a most ingenious snare of steel wire.

“Did you make it yourself, without any aid?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the child.

“It is wonderful, very wonderful,” continued the singer, turning to the others. “The child has a positive genius for mechanics.”

In the evening there was a grand discussion. “Yes, madame/,” said Labassandre, addressing Charlotte; “the man of the future, the coming man, is the mechanic. Rank has had its day, the middle classes theirs, and now it is the workman’s turn. You may to-day despise his horny hands, in twenty years he will lead the world.”

“He is right,” interrupted D’Argenton, and Doctor Hirsch nodded approvingly. Singularly enough, Jack, who generally heard the conversation going on about him without heeding it, on this occasion felt a keen interest, as if he had a presentiment of the future.

Labassandre described his former life as a blacksmith at the village forge. “You know, my friends,” he said, “whether I have been successful. You know that I have had plenty of applause, and of medals. You may believe me or not, as you please, but I assure you I would part with all sooner than with this;” and the man rolled up his shirt-sleeve and displayed an enormous arm tattooed in red and blue. Two blacksmith’s hammers were crossed within a circle of oak-leaves; an inscription was above these emblems in small letters: Work and Liberty. Labassandre proceeded to deplore the unhappy hour when the manager of the opera at Nantes had heard him sing. Had he been let alone, he would by this time have been the proprietor of a large machine shop, with a provision laid up for his old age.

“Yes,” said Charlotte, “but you were very strong, and I have heard you say that the life was a hard one.”

“Precisely; but I am inclined to believe that the individual in question is sufficiently robust.”

“I will answer for that,” said Dr. Hirsch.

Charlotte made other objections. She hinted that some natures were more refined than others—“that certain aristocratic instincts—”

Here D’Argenton interrupted her in a rage. “What nonsense! My friends occupy themselves in your behalf, and then you find fault, and utter absurdities.”

Charlotte burst into tears. Jack ran away, for he felt a strong desire to fly at the throat of the tyrant who had spoken so roughly to his pretty mother.

Nothing more was said for some days; but the child noticed a change in his mother’s manner toward him: she kissed him often, and kissed him with that lingering tenderness we show to those we love and from whom we are about to part. Jack was the more troubled as he heard D’Argenton say to Dr. Rivals, with a satirical smile, “We are all busy, sir, in your pupil’s interest. You will hear some news in a few days that will astonish you.”

The old man was delighted, and said to his wife, “You see, my dear, that I did well to make them open their eyes.”

“Who knows? I distrust that man, and do not believe he intends any good to the child. It is better sometimes that your enemy should sit with folded arms than trouble himself about you.”

CHAPTER XII.~~LIFE IS NOT A ROMANCE.

One Sunday morning, just after the arrival of the train that had brought Labassandre and a noisy band of friends, Jack, who was in the garden busy with his squirrel-net, heard his mother call him. Her voice came from the window of the poet’s room. Something in its tone, or a certain instinct so marked in some persons, told the child that the crisis had come, and he tremblingly ascended the stairs. On the Henri Deux chair D’Argenton sat, throned as it were, while Labassandre and Dr. Hirsch stood on either side. Jack saw at once that there were the tribunal, the judge, and the witnesses, while his mother sat a little apart at an open window.

“Come here!” said the poet, sternly, and with such an assumption of dignity that one was tempted to believe that the Henry Deux chair itself had spoken. “I have often told you that life is not a romance; you have seen me crushed, worn and weary with my literary labors; your turn has now come to enter the arena. You are a man,”—the child was but twelve,—“you are a man now, and must prove yourself to be one. For a year,—the year that I have been supposed to neglect you,—I have permitted you to run free, and, thanks to my peculiar talents of observation, I have been able to decide on your path in life. I have watched the development of your instincts, tastes, and habits, and, with your mother’s consent, have taken a step of importance.” Jack was frightened, and turned to his mother for sympathy. Charlotte still sat gazing from the window, shading her eyes from the sun. D’Argenton called on Labassandre to produce the letter he had received. The singer pulled out a large, ill-folded peasant’s letter, and read it aloud:—

“FOUNDRY D’INDRET.

“My Dear Brother: I have spoken to the master in regard to

the young man, your friend’s son, and he is willing, in

spite of his youth, to accept him as an apprentice. He may

live under our roof, and in four years I promise you that he

shall know his trade. Everybody is well here. My wife and

Zιnaοde send messages.

“Rondic.”

“You hear, Jack,” interrupted D’Argenton; “in four years you will hold a position second to none in the world,—you will be a good workman.”

The child had seen the working classes in Paris; above all, he had seen a noisy crowd of men in dirty blouses leaving a shop at six o’clock in the Passage des Douze Maisons. The idea of wearing a blouse was the first that struck him. He remembered his mother’s tone of contempt,—“Those are workmen, those men in blouses!”—he remembered the care with which she avoided touching them in the street as she passed. But he was more moved at the thought of leaving the beautiful forest, the summits of whose waving trees he even now caught a glimpse of from the window, the Rivals, and above all his mother, whom he loved so much and had found again after so much difficulty.

Charlotte, at the open window, shivered from head to foot, and her hand dashed away a tear. Was she watching in that western sky the fading away of all her dreams, her illusions, and her hopes?

“Then must I go away?” asked the child, faintly.

The men smiled pityingly, and from the window came a great sob.

“In a week we will go, my boy,” said Labassandre, cheeringly. But D’Argenton, with a frown directed to the window, said, “You can leave the room now, and be ready for your journey in a week.”

Jack ran down the stairs, and out into the village street, and did not stop to take breath until he reached the house of Dr. Rivals, who listened to his story with indignation.

“It is preposterous!” he cried. “The very idea of making a mechanic of you is absurd. I will see your father at once.”

The persons who saw the two pass through the street—the doctor gesticulating, and little Jack without a hat—concluded that some one must be ill at Aulnettes. This was not the case, however; for Dr. Rivals heard loud talking and laughing as he entered the house, and Charlotte, as she descended the stairs, was singing a bar from the last opera.

“I wish to say a few words in private to you, sir,” said Mr. Rivals.

“We are among friends,” answered D’Argenton, “and have no secrets. You have something to say, I suppose, in regard to Jack. These gentlemen know all that I have done for him, my motives, and the peculiar circumstances of the case.”

“But, my friend “—Charlotte said, timidly, fearing the explanation that was forthcoming.

“Go on, doctor,” interrupted the poet, sternly.

“Jack has just told me that you have apprenticed him to the Forge at Indret. This, of course, is a mistake on his part.”

“Not in the least, sir.”

“But you can have no conception of the child’s nature, nor of his constitution. It is his health, his very existence, with which you are trifling. I assure you, madame,” he continued, turning toward Charlotte, “that your child could not endure such a life. I am speaking now simply of his physique. Mentally and spiritually, he is equally unfitted for it.”

“You are mistaken, doctor,” interrupted D’Argenton; “I know the boy better than you possibly can. He is only fit for manual labor, and now that I offer him the opportunity of earning his daily bread in this way, of exercising the one talent he may have, he goes to you and makes complaints of me.”

Jack tried to excuse himself. His friend bade him be silent, and continued,—

“He did not complain to me. He simply informed me of your decision. I told him to come at once to his mother, and to you, and entreat you to reconsider your determination, and not degrade him in this way.”

“I deny the degradation,” shouted Labassandre. “Manual labor does not degrade a man. The Saviour of the world was a carpenter.”

“That is true,” murmured Charlotte, before whose eyes at once floated a vision of her boy as the infant Jesus in a procession on some feast-day.

“Do not listen to such utter nonsense, dear ma-dame,” cried the doctor, exasperated out of all patience. “To make your boy a mechanic is to separate from him forever. You might send him to the other end of the world, and yet he would not be so far from you. You will see when it is too late; the day will come that you will blush for him, when he will appear before you, not as the loving, tender son, but humble and servile, as holding a social position far inferior to your own.”

Jack, who had not yet said a word, dismayed at this vivid picture of the future, started up from his seat in the corner.

“I will not be a mechanic!” he said, in a firm voice.

“O, Jack!” cried his mother, in consternation.

But D’Argenton thundered out, “You will not be a mechanic, you say? But you will eat, and sleep, and be clothed at my expense! No, sir; I have had enough of you, and I never cared much for parasites.” Then, suddenly cooling down, he concluded in a lower tone by a command to the boy to retire to his bedroom. There the child heard a loud and angry discussion going on below, but the words were not to be understood. Suddenly the hall-door opened, and Mr. Rivals was heard to say,—

“May I be hanged if I ever cross this threshold again!”