That his father was dead he was sure; but had his mother told him a falsehood now, or on the previous occasion? Was he a De Bulac or a L’Epau?
“You are looking ill, child,” said Charlotte, interrupting herself in the midst of a long romance she was telling, “your hands are like ice.”
“Never mind, I shall get warm with exercise,” answered Jack, with difficulty.
“Are you going so soon? Well, it is best that you should get back before it is late.” She kissed him tenderly, tied a handkerchief around his throat, and slipped some money into his pocket. She fancied that his silence and sadness came from seeing all the preparations for a fête in which he was to have no share, and when her maid summoned her for the waiting coiffeur, she said good-bye hurriedly.
“You see I must leave you; write often, and take good care of yourself.”
He went slowly down the steps, with his face turned toward his mother all the time. He was sad at heart, but not by reason of this fête from which he was excluded, but at the thought of all the happiness in life from which he had been always shut out. He thought of the children who could love and respect their parents, who had a name, a fireside, and a family. He remembered, too, that his unhappy fate would prevent him from asking any woman to share his life. He was wretched without realizing that to regret these joys was in fact to be worthy of them, and that it was only the fall perception of the sad truths of his destiny that would impart the strength to cope with them.
Wrapped in these dismal meditations, he had reached the Lyons station, a spot where the mud seems deeper, and the fog thicker, than elsewhere. It was just the hour that the manufactories closed. A tired crowd, overwhelmed by discouragement and distress, hurried through the streets, going at once to the wine-shops, some of which had as a sign the one word Consolation, as if drunkenness and forgetfulness were the sole refuge for the wretched. Jack, feeling that darkness had settled down on his life as absolutely as it had on this cold autumnal night, uttered an exclamation of despair.
“They are right; what is there left to do but to drink?” and entering one of those miserable drinking-shops, Jack called for a double measure of brandy. Just as he lifted his glass, amid the din of coarse voices, and through the thick smoke, he heard a flute-like voice,—
“Do you drink brandy, Jack?”
No, he did not drink it, nor would he ever touch it again. He left the shop abruptly, leaving his glass untouched and the money on the counter.