Jack (25 page)

“Here is your man,” said Blanchet to the head workman.

“All right, sir,” said the other without turning round.

“Farewell,” said Rondic. “Take care of yourself, my boy!” and he was gone.

Jack was soon set to work; his task was to carry the cinders from the furnace to the deck, and there throw them into the sea. It was very hard work: the baskets were heavy, the ladders narrow, and the change from the pure air above to the stifling atmosphere below absolutely suffocating. On the third trip Jack felt his legs giving way under him. He found it impossible to even lift his basket, and sank into a corner half fainting. One of the stokers, seeing his condition, brought him a large flask of brandy.

“Thank you; I never drink anything,” said Jack.

The other laughed. “You will drink here,” he answered.

“Never,” murmured Jack; and lifting the heavy basket, more by an effort of will than by muscular force, he ascended the ladder.

From the deck an animated spectacle was to be seen. The little steamer ran to and fro from the wharf to the ship, laden with passengers who came hurriedly on board. The passengers were representatives of all nations. Some were gay, and others were weeping, but in the faces of all was to be read an anxiety or a hope; for these displacements, these movings, are almost invariably the result of some great disturbance, and are, in general, the last quiver of the shock that throws you from one continent to the other.

This same feverish element pervaded everything, even the vessel that strained at its anchor. It animated the curious crowd on the jetty who had come, some of them, to catch a last look of some dear face. It animated the fishing-boats, whose sails were spread for a night of toil.

Jack, with his empty basket at his feet, stood looking down at the passengers,—those belonging to the cabins comfortably established, those of the steerage seated on their slender luggage. Where were they going? What wild fancy took them away? What cold and stern reality awaited them on their landing? One couple interested him especially: it was a mother and a child who recalled to him the memory of Ida and little Jack. The lady was young and in black, with a heavy wrap thrown about her, a Mexican sarape with wide stripes. She had a certain air of independence characteristic of the wives of military or naval officers, who, from the frequent absence of their husbands, are thrown on their own resources. The child, dressed in the English fashion, looked as if he might have belonged to Lord Pembroke. When they passed Jack they both turned aside, and the long silk skirts were lifted that they might not touch his blackened garments. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but Jack understood it. A rough oath and a slap on the shoulder interrupted his sad thoughts.

“What the deuce are you up here for, sir? Go down to your post!” It was the engineer making his rounds. Jack went down without a word, humiliated at the reproof.

As he put his foot on the last ladder, a shudder was felt throughout the ship: she had started.

“Stand there!” said the head stoker.

Jack took his place before one of those gaping mouths; it was his duty to fill it, and to rake it, and to keep the fire clear. This was not such an easy matter, as, being unaccustomed to the sea, the pitching of the vessel came near throwing him into the flames. He nevertheless toiled on courageously, but at the end of an hour he was blind and deaf, stifled by the blood that rushed to his head. He did as the others did, and ran to the outer air. Ah, how good it was! Almost immediately, however, an icy blast struck him between the shoulders.

“Quick, give me the brandy!” he cried with a choked voice, to the man who had previously offered it to him.

“Here it is, comrade; I knew very well that you would want it before long.”

He swallowed an enormous draught; it was almost pure alcohol, but he was so cold that it seemed like water. After a moment a comfortable warmth spread over his whole system, and then began a burning sensation in his stomach. To extinguish this fire he drank again. Fire within, and fire without,—flame upon flame,—was this the way that he was to live in future?

Then began a life of toil, hardship, and drunkenness that lasted three years:—three years whose seasons were all alike in that heated room down in the bowels of that big ship.

He sailed from country to country; he heard their names, Italian, French, and Spanish, but of them all he saw nothing. The fairer the climes they visited, the hotter was his chamber of torment. When he had emptied his cinders, broken his coal, and filled his furnaces, he slept the sleep of exhaustion and intoxication; for a stoker must drink if he lives. In the darkness of his life there was but one bright spot, his mother. She was like the Madonna in a chapel where all the lights are extinguished save the one that burns before her shrine. Now that he had become a man, much of the mystery of her life had become clear to him. His respect for Charlotte was changed to tender pity, and he loved her as we love those for whom we suffer. Even in his most despairing moments he remembered the end for which he toiled, and a mechanical instinct made him carefully preserve almost every sou of his wages.

Meanwhile, distance and time weakened the intercourse between mother and son. Jack’s letters became more and more rare. Those of Charlotte were frequent, but they spoke of things so foreign to his new life, that he read them only to hear their music, the far off echo of a living tenderness.

Letters from Etiolles told him of D’Argenton; later, some from Paris spoke of their having again taken up their residence there, and of the poet having founded a Review, in consequence of the solicitations of friends. This would be a way of bringing his works prominently before the public, as well as to increase his income. At Havana Jack found a large package addressed to him. It was the first number of the magazine. The stoker mechanically turned its leaves, leaving on them the traces of his blackened fingers; and suddenly, as he saw the well-known names of D’Argenton, Moronval, and Hirsch on the smooth pages, he was seized with wild rage and indignation, and he cried aloud, as he shook his fist impatiently in the air, “Wretches, wretches! what have you made of me?”

This emotion was but brief; day by day his intellect weakened, and, strangely enough, he gained in physical health; he was stronger, and better able to support the fatigues of his daily labor; he seemed hardly to recognize any difference between bis days when the ship tossed and groaned, and his nights when he slept a drunken sleep, disturbed only by an occasional nightmare.

Was that frightful shock and crash of the Cydnus one of these dreams? That rushing of water, those cries of frightened women,—was all that a dream? His comrades called him, shook him. “Jack, Jack!” they cried; he staggered out, half naked. The engine-room was already half under water, the compass broken, the fires extinguished. The men ran against each other in the darkness. “What is it?” they cried.

An American ship had run them down. The men struggled up the narrow ladder; at the head stood the chief engineer with a revolver in his hand.

“The first man that attempts to pass me I will shoot! Go to your furnaces! Land is not far off; we shall reach it yet if my orders are obeyed.” Each one turned, with rage and despair in his heart. They charged the furnaces with wet coal, and volumes of gas and smoke poured out; while the water still ascending, in spite of the constant work at the pumps, was as cold as ice. The pumps refuse to work, the furnaces will not burn. The stokers are in water up to their shoulders before the voice of the chief engineer is heard: “Save yourselves, my men, if you can!”

CHAPTER XVIII.~~D’ARGENTON’S MAGAZINE.

In a narrow street, quiet and orderly, in one of those houses belonging to the last century, D’Argenton had established himself as editor of the new magazine; while Jack, our friend Jack, was its proprietor. Do not smile: this was really the case; his money had been used to establish it Charlotte had some little scruple at first in so employing these funds, which she wished to preserve intact for the boy on his attaining his majority; but she yielded to the poet’s persuasions.

“Come, my dear, listen! Figures are figures, you’ know. Can there be a better investment than this Review? It is far safer than any railroad, at least Have I not placed my own funds in it?”

Within six months D’Argenton had sacrificed thirty thousand francs, and the receipts had been nothing, while the expenses were enormous. Besides the offices of the magazine, D’Argenton had hired in the same house a large apartment, from which he had a superb view. The city, the Seine, Nτtre Dame, numberless spires and domes, were all spread before his eyes. He saw the carriages pass over the bridges, and the boats glide through the arches. “Here I can live and breathe,” he said to himself. “It was impossible for me to accomplish anything in that dull little hole of Aulnettes! How could one work in such a lethargic atmosphere?”

Charlotte was still young and gay; she managed the house and the kitchen, which was no small matter with the number of persons who daily assembled around her table. The poet, too, had recently acquired the habit of dictating instead of writing, and as Charlotte wrote a graceful English hand, he employed her as secretary. Every evening, when they were alone, he walked up and down the large room and dictated for an hour. In the silent old house, his solemn voice, and another sweeter and fresher, awakened singular echoes. “Our author is composing,” said the concierge with respect.

Let us look in upon the D’Argenton mιnage. We find them installed in a charming little room, filled with the aroma of green tea and of Havana cigars. Charlotte is preparing her writing-table, arranging her pens, and straightening the ream of thick paper. D’Argenton is in excellent vein; he is in the humor to dictate all night, and twists his moustache, where glitter many silvery hairs. He waits to be inspired. Charlotte, however, as is often the case in a household, is very differently disposed: a cloud is on her face, which is pale and anxious; but notwithstanding her evident fatigue, she dips her pen in the inkstand.

“Let us see—we are at chapter first. Have you written that?”

“Chapter first,” repeated Charlotte, in a low, sad voice.

The poet looked at her with annoyance; then, with an evident determination not to question her, he continued,—

“In a valley among the Pyrenees, those Pyrenees so rich in legendary lore—”

He repeated these words several times, then turning to Charlotte, he said, “Have you written this?”

She made an effort to repeat the words, but stopped, her voice strangled with sobs. In vain did she try to restrain herself, her tears flowed in torrents.

“What on earth is the matter?” said D’Argenton. “Is it this news of the Cydnus? It is a mere flying report, I am sure, and I attach no importance to it. Dr. Hirsch was to call at the office of the Company to-day, and he will be here directly.”

He spoke in a satirical tone, slightly disdainful, as the weak, children, fools, and invalids are often addressed. Was she not something of all these?

“Where were we?” he continued, when she was calmer. “You have made me lose the thread. Read me all you have written.”

Charlotte wiped her tears away.

“In a valley among the Pyrenees, those Pyrenees so rich in legendary lore—”

“Go on.”

“It is all,” she answered.

The poet was very much surprised; it seemed to him that he had dictated much more. The terrible advantage thought has over expression bewildered him. All that he dreamed, all that was in embryo within his brain, he fancied was already in form and on the page, and he was aghast at the disproportion between the dream and the reality. His delusion was like that of Don Quixote,—he believed himself in the Empyrean, and took the vapors from the kitchen for the breath of heaven, and, seated on his wooden horse, felt all the shock of an imaginary fall.. Had he been in such a state of mental exaltation merely to produce those two lines? Were these the only result of that frantic rubbing of his dishevelled hair, of that weary pacing to and fro?’

He was furious, for he felt that he was ridiculous. “It is your fault,” he said to Charlotte. “How can a man work in the face of a crying woman? It is always the same thing—nothing is accomplished. Years pass away and the places are filled. Do you not know how small a thing disturbs literary composition? I ought to live in a tower a thousand feet above all the futilities of life, instead of being surrounded by caprices, disorder, and childishness.” As he speaks he strikes a furious blow upon the table, and poor Charlotte, with the tears pouring from her eyes, gathers up the pens and papers that have flown about the room in wild confusion.

The arrival of Dr. Hirsch ends this deplorable scene, and after a while tranquillity is restored. The doctor is not alone; Labassandre comes with him, and both are grave and mysterious in their manner.

Charlotte turns hastily. “What-news, doctor?” she asks.

“None, madame; no news whatever.”

But Charlotte detected a covert glance at D’Argenton, and knew that the physician’s words were false.

“And what do the officers of the Company say?” continued the mother, determined to learn the truth.

Labassandre undertook to answer, and while he spoke, the doctor contrived to convey to D’Argenton that the Cydnus had gone to the bottom»,—“a collision at sea—every soul was lost.”

D’Argenton’s face never changed, and it would have been difficult to form any idea of his feelings.

“I have been at work,” he said. “Excuse me, I need the fresh air.”

“You are right,” said Charlotte; “go out for a walk;” and the poor woman, who usually detained her poet in the house lest the high-born ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain should entrap him, is this evening delighted to see him leave her, that she may weep in peace—that she may yield to all the wild terror and mournful presentiments that assail her. This is why even the presence of the servant annoys her, and she sends her to her attic.

“Madame wishes to be alone! Is not madame afraid? The noise of the wind is very dismal on the balcony.”