Jack (37 page)

“Well, my boy, you had a pretty bad time last night. The poor fellow in the next bed had convulsions and fell over on you. I suppose you were terribly frightened. Now raise yourself a little that we may see you. But you are very weak.”

The man who spoke was about forty years of age, wearing a velvet coat and a white apron. His beard was fair and his eyes bright. He feels the sick man’s pulse and asks him some questions.

“What is your trade?”

“A machinist.”

“Do you drink?”

“Not now; I did at one time.”

Then a long silence.

“What sort of a life have you led, my poor boy?”

Jack saw in the physician’s face the same sympathetic interest that he had perceived the previous day. The students surrounded the bed, and the doctor explained to them various symptoms that he observed. They were at once interesting and alarming, he said; and Jack listened with some curiosity to the words “inspiration,” “expiration,” “phthisis,” &c., and at last understood that his was looked upon as a most critical case,—so critical that, after the physician had left the room, the good sister approached, and with gentle discretion asked if his family were in Paris, and if he could send to them.

His family! Who were they? ΐ man and a woman who were already there at the foot of the bed. They belonged to the lower classes; but he had no other friends than these, no other relatives.

“And how are we to-day?” said Bιlisaire, cheerily, though he kept his tears back with difficulty. Madame Bιlisaire lays on the table two fine oranges she has brought, and then, after a kind remark or two, sits in silence.

Jack does not speak; his eyes are wide open and fixed. Of what is he thinking?

“Jack,” said the good woman, suddenly, “I am going to find your mother;” and she smiled encouragingly.

Yes, that is what he wants; now that he knows that he must die, he forgets all the wrongs his mother has been guilty of toward him.

But Bιlisaire does not wish his wife to go. He knows that she holds in utter contempt “the fine lady,” as she calls Jack’s mother, that she detests the man with the moustache, and that she will make a scene, and perhaps—who knows but the police may be called in?

“No,” she said, “that is all nonsense;” but finally yielded to the persuasions of her husband, and allowed him to go in her stead.

“I will bring her this time, never fear!” he said, with an air of confidence.

“Where are you going?” asked the concierge, stopping him at the foot of the staircase.

“To M. D’Argenton’s.”

“Are you the man who was here last night?”

“Precisely,” answered Bιlisaire, innocently.

“Then you need not go up, for there is no one there; they have gone to the country, and will not return for some time.”

In the country, in all this cold and snow! It seemed impossible. In vain did he insist, in vain did he say that the lady’s son was very ill—dying in the hospital. The concierge held to his statement, and would not permit Bιlisaire to go one step further.

The poor man retreated to the street again. Suddenly a brilliant idea struck him. Jack had never told him any of the particulars of what had taken place between the Rivals and himself; he had merely stated the fact that the marriage was broken off. But at Indret and in Paris he had often spoken of the goodness and charity of the kind doctor. If he could only be induced to come to Jack’s bedside, so that the poor boy could have some familiar face about him! Without further hesitation he started for Etiolles. Alas, we saw him at the end of this long walk!

During all this time, his wife sat at their friend’s side, and knew not what to think of this prolonged absence, nor how to calm the agitation into which the sick youth was thrown by the expectation of seeing his mother. His excitement was unfortunately increased by the crowd that always appeared on Sundays at the hospital. Each moment some one of the doors was thrown open, and each time Jack expected to see his mother. The visitors were clean and neatly dressed who gathered about the patients they had come to see, telling them family news and encouraging them. Sometimes the voices were choked with tears, though the eyes were dry, Jack heard a constant murmur of voices, and the perfume of oranges filled the room. But what a disappointment it was, after being lifted by the aid of a little stick hung by cords, when he saw that his mother had not come! He fell back more exhausted, more despairing than ever.

With him, as with all others who are on the threshold of death, the slender thread of life that remained to him was too fragile to attach itself to the robust years of his manhood, and took him beyond them into the far away days when he was little Jack, the velvet-clad darling of Ida de Barancy.

The crowd still came, women and little children, who stood in displeased surprise at their father’s emaciation and at his nightcap, and uttered exclamations of delight at the sight of the beautifully dressed altar. But Jack’s mother did not appear. Madame Bιlisaire knows not what to say. She has hinted that M. D’Argenton may be ill, or that his mother is driving in the Bois, and now she spreads a colored handkerchief on her knees and pares an orange.

“She will not come!” said Jack. These very words he had spoken in that little home at Charonne which he had prepared with so much tender care. But his voice was now weaker, and had even a little anger in its accents. “She will not come!” he repeated; and the poor boy closed his eyes, but not in sleep. He thought of Cιcile. The sister heard his sighs, and said to Madame Bιlisaire, whose large face was shining with tears,—

“What is the matter with him? I am afraid he is suffering more.”

“It is on account of his mother, whom he expects, and he is troubled that she does not come.”

“But she must be sent for.”

“My husband went long ago. But she is a fine lady; she won’t come to a hospital and run the risk of soiling her silk skirts.”

Suddenly the woman rose in a fit of anger.

“Don’t cry, dear,” said she to Jack, as she would have spoken to her little child; “I am going for your mother.”

Jack understood what she said, understood that she had gone, but still continued to repeat, in a harsh voice, the words, “She will not come! she will not come!”

The sister tried to soothe him. “Calm yourself, my child.”

Then Jack rose in a sort of delirium. “I tell you she will not come. You do not know her, she is a heartless mother; all the misery of my miserable life has come from her! My heart is one huge wound, from the gashes she has cut in it. When he pretended to be ill, she went to him on wings, and would never again leave him; and I am dying, and she refuses to come to me. What a cruel mother! it is she who has killed me, and she does not wish to see me die!”

Exhausted by this effort, Jack let his head fall back on the pillow, and the sister bent over him in gentle pity, while the brief winter’s day ended in a yellow twilight and occasional gusts of snow.

Charlotte and D’Argenton descended from their carriage. They had just returned from a fashionable concert, and were carefully dressed in velvet and furs, light gloves and laces. She was in the best of spirits. Remember that she had just shown herself in public with her poet, and had shown herself, too, to be as pretty as she was ten years before. The complexion was heightened by the sharp wintry air, and the soft wraps in which she was enveloped added to her beauty as does the satin and quilted lining of a casket enhance the brilliancy of the gems within. Β woman of the people stood on the sidewalk, and rushed forward on seeing her.

“Madame, madame! come at once!”

“Madame Bιlisaire!” cried Charlotte, turning pale.

“Your child is very ill; he asks for you!”

“But this is a persecution,” said D’Argenton. “Let us pass. If the gentleman is ill, we will send him a physician.”

“He has physicians, and more than he wants, for he is at the hospital.”

“At the hospital!”

“Yes, he is there just now, but not for very long. I warn you, if you wish to see him you must hurry.”

“Come on, Charlotte, come on! It is a frightful lie. It is some trap laid ready for you;” and the poet drew Charlotte to the stairs.

“Madame, your son is dying! Ah, God, is it possible that a mother can have a heart like this!”

Charlotte turned toward her. “Show me where he is,” she said; and the two women hurried through the streets, leaving D’Argenton in a state of rage, convinced that it was a mere device of his enemies.

Just as Madame Bιlisaire left the hospital, two persons hurried in,—a young girl and an old man.

A divine face bent over Jack. “It is I, my love, it is Cιcile.”

It was indeed she. It was her fair pale face, paler than usual by reason of her tears and her watchings; and the hand that held his was the slender one that had already brought the youth such happiness, and yet did its part in bringing him where we now see him; for fate is often cruel enough to strike you through your dearest and best. The sick youth opens his weary eyes to see that he is not dreaming. Cιcile is really there; she implores his pardon, and explains why she gave him such pain. Ah, if she had but known that their destinies were so similar!

As she spoke, a great calm came to Jack, following all the bitterness and anger of the past weeks.

“Then you love me?” he whispered.

“Yes, Jack; I have always loved you.”

Whispered in this alcove, that had heard so many dying groans, this word love had a most extraordinary sweetness, as if some wandering bird had taken refuge there.

“How good you are to come, Cιcile! Now I shall not utter another murmur. I am ready to die, with you at my side.”

“Die! Who is talking of dying?” said the old doctor in his heartiest voice. “Have no fear, my boy, we will pull you through. You do not look like the same person you were when we came.”

This was true enough. He was transfigured with happiness. He pressed Cιcile’s hand to his cheek, and whispered an occasional word of tenderness.

“All that was lacking to me in life, you have given me, dear. You have been friend and sister, wife and mother.”

But his excitement soon gave place to exhaustion, his feverish color to frightful pallor. The ravages made by disease were only too plainly visible. Cιcile looked at her grandfather in fright; the room was full of shadows, and it seemed to her that she recognized a Presence more sombre, more mysterious than Night.

Suddenly Jack half lifted himself: “I hear her,” he whispered; “she is coming!”

But the watchers at his side heard only the wintry wind in the corridors, the steps of the retreating crowd in the court below, and the distant noises in the street. He listened a moment, said a few unintelligible words, then his head fell back and his eyes closed. But he was right. Two women were running up the stairs. They had been allowed to enter, though the hour for the admittance of visitors had long since passed. But it was one of those occasions where rules may be broken and set aside.

When they arrived at the outer door, Charlotte stopped. “I cannot go on,” she said, “I am frightened.”

“Come on,” the other answered, roughly; “you must. Ah, to such women as you, God should never give children!”

And she pushed Charlotte toward the staircase. The large room, the shaded lamps, the kneeling forms, the mother saw at one glance; and farther on, at the end of the apartment, were two men bending over a bed, and Cιcile Rivals, pale as death, supporting a head on her breast.

“Jack, my child!”

M. Rivals turned. “Hush,” he said, sternly.

Then came a sigh—a long, shivering sigh.

Charlotte crept nearer, with failing limbs and sinking heart. It was Jack indeed, with arms stiffly falling at his side, and eyes fixed on vacancy.

The doctor bent over him. “Jack, my friend; it is your mother, she is here!”

And she, unhappy woman, stretched out her arms toward him. “Jack, it is I! I am here!”

Not a movement.

The mother cried in a tone of horror, “Dead?”

“No,” said old Rivals; “no,—Delivered.”

THE END.