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 Bélisaire. The door opened; an exclamation, followed by a laugh, was heard, and presently Madame Weber, with her child on her arm, entered Bélisaire’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 Bélisaire, 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 Bélisaire 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 Bélisaire’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 Bélisaire 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 the middle of the night.
After her child was asleep, Madame Weber, to economize coal and oil, brought her work to the room of her friend; she sowed in silence. It had been decided that they should not marry until spring, the winter to the poor being always a season of anxiety and privation. Jack, as he wrote, thought, “How happy they are.” His own happiness came on Sundays. Never did any coquette take such pains with her toilette as did Jack on those days, for he was determined that nothing about him should remind Cécile of his daily toil; well might he have been taken for Prince Rodolphe had he been seen as he started off.