“Do you drink brandy?” she asked.
“Does he drink brandy?” said the doctor, with a laugh, “and he in an engine-room for three years? Don’t you know—ignorant little puss that you are—that that is the only way the poor fellows can live? On board a vessel where I was, one fellow drank a bottle of pure spirit at a draught. Make Jack’s strong, my dear.”
She looked at her old friend sadly and seriously.
“Will you have some?”
“No, mademoiselle,” he answered, in a low, ashamed voice; and he withdrew his glass,—for which effort of self-denial he was rewarded by one of those eloquent looks of gratitude which some women can give, and which are only understood by those whom they address.
“Upon my word, a conversion!” said the doctor, laughing. But Jack was converted only after the fashion of savages, who consent to believe in God only to please the missionaries. The peasants of Etiolles, at work in the fields, who saw Jack on his way home that night, might have had every reason to suppose that he was crazy or intoxicated. He was talking to himself, and gesticulating wildly. “Yes,” he exclaimed, “M. d’Argenton was right: I am a mere artisan and must live and die with my equals; it is useless for me to try and rise above them.” It was a very long time since the young man had felt any such energy. New thoughts and ideas crowded into his mind; among them was Cécile’s image. What a marvel of grace and purity she was! He sighed as he thought that had he been differently educated, he might have ventured to ask her to become his wife. At this moment, as he turned a sharp angle in the road, he found himself face to face with Mother Salé, who was dragging a fagot of wood. The old woman looked at him with a wicked smile, that in his present mood exasperated him to such a degree that his look of anger so terrified the old creature that she dropped her fagot and ran into the wood.
That evening he spent in darkness, and lighted neither fire nor lamp. Seated in a corner of the dining-room, with his eyes fixed on the glass doors that led to the garden, through which the soft mist of a superb autumnal night was visible, he thought of his childhood, and of the last years of his life.
No, Cécile would not marry him. In the first place, he was a mechanic; secondly, his birth was illegitimate. It was the first time in his life that this thought had weighed upon him, for Jack had not lived among very scrupulous people. He had never heard his father’s name mentioned, and therefore rarely thought of him, being as unable to measure the extent of his loss as a deaf mute is unable to realize the blessing of the senses he lacks.
But now the question of his birth occupied him to the exclusion of all others.
He had listened calmly to the name of his father when Charlotte told it; but now he would like to learn from her every detail. Was he really a marquis? Was he certainly dead? Had not his mother said this merely to avoid the disclosure of a mortifying desertion? And if this father were still alive, would he not be willing to give his name to his son? The poor fellow was ignorant of the fact that a true woman’s heart is more moved by compassion than by all the vain distinctions of the world.