Jack (4 page)

M. Moronval continued. “I hope, and Madame Moronval hopes, that the young king, when on the throne of his ancestors, will remember the good advice and the noble examples afforded him by his teachers in Paris, the happy years spent with them, their indefatigable cares and assiduous efforts on his behalf.”

Here Jack was surprised to see the black boy kneeling before the chimney, turn toward him, and shake his woolly head violently, while his mouth opened wide in silent but furious denial.

Did he wish to say that his royal Highness would never remember the good lessons received at the academy, or did he mean that he would never forget them? But what could this poor black boy know about it?

Madame Constant announced, in pompous terms, that she was willing to pay a quarter in advance. Moronval waved his hand condescendingly, as if to say, “There is no need of that.”

But the old house told a far different tale,—the shabby furniture, the dismantled walls, the worn carpets, as well as the threadbare coat of Moronval himself, and the shiny scant robe of the little woman with the long chin.

But that which proved the fact more than anything else was the eagerness with which the pair went to find in another room the superb register in which they inscribed the ages of the pupils, their names, and the date of their entrance into the academy.

While these important facts were being written, the black boy remained crouched in front of the fire, which seemed quite useless while he absorbed all its heat. The chimney, which at first had refused to consume the least bit of wood, as stomachs after too long fasting reject food, had now revived, and a beautiful red flame was to be seen. The negro, with his head on his hands, his eyes fixed as in a trance, looked like a little black silhouette against a scarlet background. His mouth opened in intense delight, and his eyes were perfectly round. He seemed to be drinking in the heat and the light with the greatest avidity, while outside the snow had begun to fall silently and slowly.

Jack was very sad, for he fancied that Moronval had a wicked look, notwithstanding his honeyed words. And, then, in this strange house the poor child felt himself utterly lost and desolate, discarded by his mother, and rendered still more miserable by the vague idea that these colored pupils, from every corner of the globe, had brought with them an atmosphere of unhappiness and of restlessness. He remembered, too, the Jesuits’ college, so fresh and sweet; the fine trees, the green-houses, the whole appearance of refinement, and the kind hand of the Superior laid for a moment upon his head.

Ah! why had he not remained there? And as this occurred to him, he said to himself, that perhaps they would not have him here either. He looked toward the table. There by the big register the husband and wife were busy whispering with Madame Constant. They looked at him, and he caught a word now and then. The little woman sighed, and twice Jack heard her say, as did the priest,—“Poor child!”

She also pitied him. And why? What was he, then, that they pitied him? Jack asked himself.

This compassion that others felt for him weighed sorely on his little heart. He could have wept with shame, for in his childish mind he attributed this disdainful compassion to some peculiarity of costume, his bare legs, or his long curls.

But he thought of his mother’s despair. Should he meet with another refusal? Suddenly he saw Constant draw her purse and hand to the principal some notes and gold pieces. Yes, they were going to keep him. He was delighted, poor child, for he little knew that the great misfortune of his life was now inaugurated there in that room.

At this moment a tremendous bass voice came up from the garden below, singing the chorus of an old song. The windows of the room had not recovered from the shock, when a stout, short man, in a velvet coat, close-cut hair, and heavy beard, burst into the room.

“Hallo!” he cried, in a tone of comic astonishment, “a fire in the parlor? What a luxury!” and he drew a long breath. In fact, the new-comer was in the habit of drawing long breaths at the end of each sentence, a habit he had acquired in singing; and these breaths were almost like the roaring of a wild beast. Catching sight of the strangers and the pile of money, he stopped short with the words on his lips. Delight and surprise succeeded each other on his countenance, whose muscles seemed habituated to all facial contortions.

Moronval turned gravely toward the waiting woman. “M. Labassandre, of the Imperial Academy of Music, our Professor of Music.” Labassandre bowed once, twice, three times, and then, by way of restoring his self-possession, and putting matters at once on a pleasant footing for all parties, administered a kick to the black boy, who did not seem at all astonished, but picked himself up and disappeared from the room.

The door again opened, and two persons entered. One was very ugly—a mean face without a beard, huge spectacles with convex glasses, and wearing an overcoat buttoned to the chin, which bore all up and down the front too visible indications of-the awkwardness of a near-sighted man. This was Dr. Hirsch, Professor of Mathematics and of Natural Sciences. He exhaled a strong odor of alkalies, and, thanks to his chemical manipulations, his fingers were every color of the rainbow. The last comer was very different. Imagine a handsome man, dressed with the greatest care, scrupulously gloved and shod, his hair thrown back from a forehead already unnaturally high. He had a haughty, aggressive air; his heavy blonde moustache, much twisted at the ends, and a large, pale face, gave him the look of a sick soldier.

Moronval presented him as “our great poet, Amaury d’Argenton, Professor of Literature.”

He, too, looked as astonished, when he caught sight of the gold pieces, as did Dr. Hirsch and the singer Labassandre. His cold eyes had a gleam of light, but it disappeared as he glanced from the child to his nurse.

Then he approached the other professors standing in front of the fire, and, saluting them, listened in silence. Madame Constant thought this Argenton looked proud; but upon Jack the man made a very strong impression, and the child shrank from him with terror and repugnance.

Jack felt that all these men might make him wretched, but this one more than all others. Instinctively, on seeing him enter, the child felt him to be his future enemy, and that cold, hard glance meeting his own, froze him to the core of his heart. How many times, in days to come, was he to encounter those pale, blue eyes, with half-shut, heavy lids, whose glances were cold as steel! The eyes have been called the windows of the soul, but D’Argenton’s eyes were windows so closely barred and locked, that one had no reason to suppose that there was a soul behind them.

The conversation finished between Moronval and Constant, the principal approached his new pupil, and giving him a little friendly tap on the cheek, he said, “Come, come, my young friend, you must look brighter than this.”

And in fact, Jack, as the moment drew near that he must say farewell to his mother’s maid, felt his eyes swimming in tears. Not that he had any great affection for this woman, but she was a part of his home, she saw his mother daily, and the separation was final when she was gone.

“Constant,” he whispered, catching her dress, “you will tell mamma to come and see me.”

“Certainly. She will come, of course. But don’t cry.”

The child was sorely tempted to burst into tears; but it seemed to him that all these strange eyes were fixed upon him, and that the Professor of Literature examined him with especial severity: and he controlled himself.

The snow fell heavily. Moronval proposed to send for a carriage, but the maid said that Augustin and the coupι were waiting at the end of the lane.

“A coupι!” said the principal to himself, in astonished admiration.

“Speaking of Augustin,” said she: “he charged me with a commission. Have you a pupil named Said?”

“To be sure—certainly—a delightful person,” said Moronval.

“And a superb voice. You must hear him,” interrupted Labassandre, opening the door and calling Said in a voice of thunder.

A frightful howl was heard in reply, followed by the appearance of the delightful person.

An awkward schoolboy appeared, whose tunic, like all tunics, and, indeed, like all the clothing of boys of a certain age, was too short and too tight for him; drawn in, in the fashion of a caftan, it told the story at once of an Egyptian in European clothing. His features were regular and delicate enough, but the yellow skin was stretched so tightly over the bones and muscles that the eyes seemed to close of themselves whenever the mouth opened, and vice versa.

This miserable young man, whose skin was so scanty, inspired you with a strong desire to relieve his sufferings by cutting a slit somewhere. He at once remembered Augustin, who had been his parents’ coachman, and who had given him all his cigar-stumps.

“What shall I say to him from you?” asked Constant, in her most amiable tone.

“Nothing,” answered Said, promptly.

“And your parents, how are they? Have you had any news from them lately?”

“No.”

“Have they returned to Egypt, as they thought of doing?”

“Don’t know: they never write.”

It was evident that this pupil of the Moronval Academy had not been educated in the art of conversation, and Jack listened with many misgivings.

The indifferent fashion with which this youth spoke of his parents, added to what M. Moronval had previously said of the family influences of which most of his pupils had been deprived since infancy, impressed him unfavorably.

It seemed to the child that he was to live among orphans or cast-off children, and would be himself as much cast off as if he had come from Timbuctoo or Otaheite.

Again he caught the dress of his mother’s servant. “Tell her to come and see me,” he whispered; “O, tell her to come.”

And when the door closed behind her, he understood that one chapter in his life was finished; that his existence as a spoiled child, as a petted baby, had vanished into the past, and those dear and happy days would never again return.

While he stood silently weeping, with his face pressed against a window that led into the garden, a hand was extended over his shoulder containing something black.

It was Said, who, as a consolation, offered him the stump of a cigar.

“Take this: I have a trunk full,” said the interesting young man, shutting his eyes so as to be able to speak.

Jack, smiling through his tears, made a sign that he did not dare to accept this singular gift; and Said, whose eloquence was very limited, stood silently planted by his side until M. Moronval returned.

He had escorted Madame Constant to her carriage, and came back inspired with respectful indulgence for the grief of his new pupil.

The coachman, Augustin, had such fine furs, the coupι was so well appointed, that the little fellow, Jack, profited by the magnificence of the equipage.

“That is well,” he said, benevolently, to the Egyptian. “Play together; but go to the other room, where it is warmer than here, I shall permit the boys to have a holiday in honor of the new pupil.”

Poor little fellow! He was soon surrounded by a noisy crowd, who questioned him without mercy. With his blonde curls, his plaid suit, and bare legs, he sat motionless and timid, wondering at the frantic gestipulations of these little boys of foreign birth, and among them all, looked much like an elegant little Parisian shut up in the great monkey cage in the Jardin des Plantes.

This was the idea that occurred to Moronval, but he was aroused from his silent hilarity by the noise of a discussion too animated to be altogether amiable. He heard the puffs and sighs of Labassandre and the solemn little voice of madame. Easily divining the bone of contention, he hastened to the assistance of his wife, whom he found heroically defending the money paid by Madame Constant against the demands of the professors, whose salaries were greatly in arrear.

Evariste Moronval, lawyer, politician, and littιrateur, had been sent from Pointe-ΰ-Petre in 1848 as secretary to a deputy from Guadaloupe. At that time he was just twenty-five, energetic and ambitious, with considerable ability and cultivation. Being poor, however, he accepted a dependent position which insured his expenses paid to Paris, that marvellous city, the heat of whose lurid flames extends so far over the world that it attracts even the moths from the colonies.

On landing, he left his deputy in the lurch, easily made a few acquaintances, and attempted a political career, in which path he had obtained a certain success in Guadaloupe; but he had not taken into account his horrible colonial accent, of which, notwithstanding every effort, he was never able to rid himself. The first time he spoke in public, the shouts of laughter that greeted him proved conclusively that he could never make a name, for himself in Paris as a public speaker. He then resolved to write, but he was clever enough to understand that it was far easier to win a reputation at Pointe-ΰ-Petre than in Paris. Haughty and tenacious, and spoiled by small successes, he passed from journal to journal, without being retained for any length of time on the staff of any one. Then began those hard experiences of life which either crush a man to the earth or harden him to iron. He joined the army of the ten thousand men who live by their wits in Paris, who rise each morning dizzy with hunger and ambitious dreams, make their breakfast from off a penny-roll, black the seams of their coats with ink, whiten their shirt-collars with billiard-chalk, and warm themselves in the churches and libraries.

He became familiar with all these degradations and miseries,—to credit refused at the low eating-house, to the non-admittance to his garret at eleven o’clock at night, and to the scanty bit of candle, and to shoes in holes.

He was one of those professors of—it matters not what, who write articles for the encyclopaedias at a half centime a line, a history of the Middle Ages in two volumes, at twenty-five francs per volume, compile catalogues, and copy plays for the theatres.

He was dismissed from one institution, where he taught English, for having struck one of the pupils in his passionate, Creole fashion.