Jack by Alphonse Daudet (web ebook reader txt) 📖

apprentice girls, as they passed him, say to each other, "What a handsome man!" The great Faubourg was alive and seemed to encourage him with its gayety.
"What a pleasure it is to live!" said Jack; "and how hard I mean to work!" Suddenly he stumbled against a great square basket filled with fur hats and caps; this basket stood at the door of a shoemaker's stall. Jack looked in and saw Belisaire, as ugly as ever, but cleaner and better clothed. Jack was delighted to see him, and entered at once; but Belisaire was too deeply absorbed in the examination of a pair of shoes that the cobbler was showing him, to look up. These shoes were not for himself, but for a tiny child of four or five years of age, pale and thin, with a head much too large for his body. Belisaire was talking to the child.
"And they are nice and thick, my dear, and will keep those poor little feet warm."
Jack's appearance did not seem to surprise him.
"Where did you come from?" he asked, as calmly as if he had seen him the night before.
"How are you, Belisaire? Is this your child?"
"O, no; it belongs to Madame Weber," said the pedler, with a sigh; and when he had ascertained that the little thing was well fitted, Belisaire drew from his pocket a long purse of red wool, and took out some silver pieces that he placed in the cobbler's hand with that air of importance assumed by working people when they pay away money.
"Where are you going, comrade?" said the pedler to Jack, as they stood on the pavement, in a tone so expressive that it seemed to say, If you take this side, I shall go the other.
Jack, who felt this without being able to understand it, said, "I hardly know where I am going. I am a journeyman at Eyssendeck's, and I want to find a room not too far away."
"At Eyssendeck's?" said the pedler. "It is not easy to get in there; one must bring the best of recommendations."
The expression of his eyes enlightened Jack. Belisaire believed him guilty of the robbery,--so true it is that accusations, however unfounded and however explained away, yet leave spots and tarnishes. When Belisaire saw the letters of the superintendent at Indret, and heard the whole story, his whole face lighted up with his old smile. "Listen, Jack, it is too late to seek a lodging to-night; come with me, for I have a room where you can sleep tonight, and perhaps can suggest something that will suit you. But we will talk about that as we sup. Come now."
Behold the three--Jack, the pedler, and Madame Weber's little one, whose new shoes clattered on the sidewalk famously--were soon hurrying along the streets. Belisaire informed Jack that his sister was now a widow, and that he had gone into business with her. Occasionally, in the full tide of 'his history, he stopped to shout his old cry of "Hats! hats! Hats to sell!" But before he reached his home, he was obliged to lift into his arms Madame Weber's little boy, who had begun to weep despairingly.
"Poor little fellow!" said Belisaire, "he is not in the habit of walking. He rarely goes out, and it is merely that I may take him out with me sometimes that I have had him measured for these new shoes. His mother is away from home at work all day; she is a good, hard-working woman, and has to leave her child to the care of a neighbor. Here we are!"
They entered one of those large houses whose numerous windows are like narrow slits in the walls. The doors open on the long corridors, which serve as ante-rooms, where the poor people place their stoves and their boxes. At this hour they were at dinner. Jack, as he passed, looked in at the doors, which stood wide open.
"Good evening," said the pedler.
"Good evening," said the friendly voices from within.
In some rooms it was different: there was no fire, no light--a woman and children watching for the father, who was at the wine-shop round the corner.
The pedler's room was at the top of the house, and he seemed very proud of it. "I am going to show you how well I am established, but you must wait until I have taken this child to its mother." He looked under the door of a room opposite his own, pulled out a key and unlocked it, went directly to the stove where had simmered all day the soup for the evening meal. He lighted a candle and fastened the child into a high chair at the table, gave it a spoon and a saucepan to play with, and then said, "Come away quickly; Madame Weber will be here in a minute, and I wish to hear what she will say when she sees the child's new shoes." He smiled as he opened his room--a long attic divided in two. A pile of hats told his business, and the bare walls his poverty.
Belisaire lighted his lamp and arranged his dinner, which consisted of a fine salad of potatoes and salt herring. He took from a closet two plates, bread and wine, and placed them on a little table. "Now," he said, with an air of triumph, "all is ready, though it is not much like that famous ham you gave me in the country." The potato salad was excellent, however, and Jack did justice to it. Belisaire was delighted with the appetite of his guest, and did his duty as host with great delight, rising every two or three minutes to see if the water was boiling for the coffee.
"You have a taste for housekeeping, Belisaire," said Jack, "and have things nicely arranged."
"Not yet," answered the pedler; "I need very many articles,--in fact, these are only lent to me by Madame Weber while we are waiting."
"Waiting for what?" asked Jack.
"Until we can be married!" answered the pedler, boldly, indifferent to Jack's gay laugh. "Madame Weber is a good woman, and you will see her soon. We are not rich enough to start alone in housekeeping, but if we could find some one to share the expenses, we would lodge and feed him, do his washing and all, and it would not be a bad thing for him, any more than for us. Where there is enough for two there is always enough for three, you know! The difficulty is to find some one who is orderly and sober, and won't make too much trouble in the house."
"How should I do, Belisaire?"
"Would you like it, Jack? I have been thinking about it for an hour, but did not dare speak of it. Perhaps our table would be too simple for you."
"No, Belisaire, nothing would be too simple. I wish to be very economical, for I, too, am thinking of marrying."
"Really! But in that case we can't make our arrangements."
Jack laughed, and explained that his marriage was an affair of four years later.
"Well, then, it is all settled. What a happy chance it was that we met. Hark! I hear Madame Weber."
A heavy step mounted the stairs; the child heard it too, for it began a melancholy wail. "I am coming," cried the woman from the end of the corridor, to console the little one.
"Listen," said Belisaire. The door opened; an exclamation, followed by a laugh, was heard, and presently Madame Weber, with her child on her arm, entered Belisaire's room. She was a tall, good-looking woman, of about thirty, and she laughed as she showed him the little one's feet, but there was a tear in her eye as she said, "You are the person who has done this."
"Now," said Belisaire, with simplicity, "how could she guess so well?"
Madame Weber took a seat at the table, and a cup of coffee, and Jack was presented to her as their future associate. I must acknowledge that she received him with a certain reserve, but when she had examined the aspirant for this distinction, and learned that the two men had known each other for ten years, and that she had before her the hero of the story of the ham that she had heard so many times, her face lost its expression of distrust, and she held out her hand to Jack.
"This time Belisaire is right. He has brought me a half dozen of his comrades who were not worth the cord to hang them with. He is very innocent, because he is so good."
Then came a discussion as to arrangements. It was decided that until the marriage he should share Belisaire's room and buy himself a bed; they would share the expenses, and Jack would pay his proportion every Saturday. After the marriage, they would establish themselves more commodiously, and nearer the Eyssendeck Works. This establishment recalled to him Indret on a smaller scale. Owing to lack of space, there were in the same room three rows, one above the other, of machines. Jack was on the upper floor, where all the noise and dust of the place ascended. When he leaned over the railing of the gallery, he beheld a constant whirl of human arms, and a regular and monotonous beat of machinery.
The heat was intense, worse than at Indret, because there was less ventilation; but Jack bore up bravely under it, for his inner life supported him through all the trials of the day. His companions saw intuitively that he lived apart from them, indifferent to their petty quarrels and rivalries. Jack shared neither their pleasures nor their hatreds. He never listened to their sullen complaints, nor the muttered thunder of this great Faubourg, concealed like a Ghetto in this magnificent city. He paid no attention to the socialistic theories, the natural growth in the minds of those who live poor and suffering so near the wealthier classes.
I am not disposed to assert that Jack's companions liked him especially, but they respected him at all events. As to the workwomen, they looked upon him much as a Prince Rodolphe,--for they had all read "The Mysteries of Paris,"--and admired his tall, slender figure and his careful dress. But the poor girls threw away their smiles, for he passed their corner of the establishment with scarcely a glance. This corner was never without its excitement and drama, for most of the workwomen had a lover among the men, and this led to all sorts of jealousies and scenes.
Jack went to and fro from the manufactory alone. He was in haste to reach his lodgings, to throw aside his workman's blouse, and to bury himself in his books. Surrounded with these, many of them those he had used at school, he commenced the labors of the evening, and was astonished to find with what facility he regained all that he thought he had forever lost. Sometimes, however, he encountered an unexpected difficulty, and it was touching to see the young man, whose hands were distorted and clumsy from handling heavy weights, sometimes throw aside his pen in despair. At his side Belisaire sat sewing the straw of his summer hats, in respectful silence, the stupefaction of a savage assistant at a magician's incantations. He frowned when Jack frowned, grew impatient, and when his comrade came to the end of some difficult passage, nodded his head with an air of triumph. The noise of the pedler's big needle passing through the stiff straw, the student's pen scratching upon the paper, the gigantic dictionaries hastily taken up and thrown down, filled the attic with a quiet and healthy atmosphere; and when Jack raised his eyes he saw from the windows the light of other lamps, and other shadows courageously prolonging their labors into