The handle is still aimlessly rattled. Bélisaire, with the coffee-pot in his hand, impatiently throws it open, and Charlotte rushes in. Bélisaire, stupefied at this inundation of flounces, feathers, and laces, bows again and again, while Jack’s mother, who does not recognize him, excuses herself, and retreats toward the door.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said; “I made a mistake.”
At the sound of her voice Jack rises from his chair in astonishment
“Mother!” he cried.
She ran to him and took refuge in his arms.
“Save me, my child, save me! That man, for whom I have sacrificed everything,—my life and that of my child,—has beaten me cruelly. This morning, when he came in after two days’ absence, I ventured to make some observation; I thought I had a right to speak. He flew into a frightful passion, and—”
The end of her sentence was lost in a torrent of tears and in convulsive sobs. Bélisaire had retired at her first words, and discreetly closed the door after him. Jack looks at his mother, full of terror and pity. How pale and how changed she is! In the clear light of the young day the marks of time are clearly visible on her face, and the gray hairs, that she has not taken the trouble to conceal, shine like silver on her blue-veined temples. Without any attempt at controlling her emotion, she speaks without restraint, pouring forth all her wrongs.
“How I have suffered, Jack! He passes his life now at the cafés and in dissipation. Did you know that, when he went to Indret with that money, I was there in the village, and crazy to see you? He reproaches me with the bread you ate under his roof, and yet—yes, I will tell you what I never meant you to know—I had ten thousand francs of yours that were given to me for you exclusively. Well, D’Argenton put them into his Review; I know that he meant to pay you large interest, but the ten thousand francs have been swallowed up with all the others, and when I asked him if he did not intend to account to you for them, do you know what he did? He drew up a long bill of all that he has paid for you. Your board at Etiolles, that amounts to fifteen thousand francs. But he does not ask you to pay the difference; is not that very generous?” and Charlotte laughed sarcastically. “I tell you I have borne everything,” she continued,—“the rages he has fallen into on your account, and the mean way in which he has talked with his friends of the affair at Indret; as if your innocence had never been fully established!
“And then to leave me in ignorance of his where-abouts, to spend his time with some countess in the Faubourg St. Germaine,—for those women are all crazy about him,—and then to receive my reproaches with such disdain, and finally to strike me! Me, Ida de Barancy! This was too much. I dressed, and put on my hat, and then I went to him. I said, ‘Look at me, M. d’Argenton; look at me well; it is the last time that you will see me; I am going to my child.’ And then I came away.”
Jack had listened in silence to these revelations, growing paler and paler, and so filled with shame for the woman who narrated them that he could not look at her. When she had finished, he took her hand gently, and with much sweetness, but also with much solemnity, he said,—