"Strangers walk as friends,And friends as strangers;Where whispers overheard betray false hearts,And through the mazes of the crowd we chaseSome form of loveliness that smiles and beckons,And cheats us with fair words, only to leave usA mockery and a jest; maddened—confused—Not knowing friend from foe!"
"Strangers walk as friends,And friends as strangers;Where whispers overheard betray false hearts,And through the mazes of the crowd we chaseSome form of loveliness that smiles and beckons,And cheats us with fair words, only to leave usA mockery and a jest; maddened—confused—Not knowing friend from foe!"
The mother superior gazed with dilated eyes as he poured out the moving story, clasped her long, white hands excitedly, and shuddered with horror.
"Ah,mon Dieu! the wicked man! the cruel, heartless woman!" she exclaimed. "Shall they not answer for this crime?"
"Ay, before Heaven, they shall!" Pierre Carmontelle vowed passionately, with his warm, living hand pressed upon the chill, pulseless one of the nameless dead girl; and in the years to come he kept that impulsive vow made there in the presence of the living and the dead.
To return to Mme. Lorraine the night when Eliot Van Zandt lay like one dead before her door in a pool of his own blood, deserted by the brutal Remond, who had left him for dead upon the pavement.
She had peeped from the window as Carmontelle had charged her with doing, although she had denied the accusation, and she had beheld all that passed. If she had not conceived a passion for Van Zandt, he might have perished, for all she would have cared; but something of womanly softness stole into her heart as she gazed, and she murmured:
"Can he be dead, or only in a deadly swoon? What if I go and find out?"
Glancing up and down the street to make sure that no one was in sight, she slipped out and knelt down by theprostrate form. Pushing back his coat and vest, she laid her hand over his heart.
"There is some faint pulse. He lives, he lives!" she murmured, joyfully. "Now, now is my chance to act the good Samaritan. I will take him into my house, nurse him, tend him, and gratitude may win for me that which beauty and fascination failed to conquer."
She hastily summoned a confidential servant, a woman who had been in her employ many years, and the repository of many strange secrets. Together they managed to convey the wounded, unconscious man into the house, although the domestic expostulated with every breath.
"Hold your tongue, Mima. It is none of your business. You have only to obey my orders," madame returned, coolly. "The underground chamber, please. His presence is to be kept a secret. You and I will have the care of him—you are quite skillful enough, after your experience as a hospital nurse during the war, to attend his wound. He will be hidden here, while to the world he will have mysteriously disappeared."
They laid him down on a couch in the wide hall, and Mima took a lamp and went out.
Soon she returned, and stood before her mistress, huge, and tall, and dark, with a malignant scowl on her homely foreign face.
"Madame, your strange guest-chamber is ready," she said, with curt sarcasm. "But this heavy body—how shall we convey it down the stairs?"
"You are big and strong enough," Mme. Lorraine replied, coolly. "You may go in front and carry his body; I will follow with his pretty head in my arms."
And so, as if the fate that had stricken him down into seeming death had not been dark enough, he was borne, an unconscious prisoner, into an underground chamber beneath Mme. Lorraine's house—a luxurious chamber, richly furnished, but of whose presence no one was awaresave herself and this servant, for it was entered by a door cleverly concealed among the oak panelings of the hall. The light of day never entered this secret chamber. It was illumined by a swinging-lamp, and the odor of dried rose leaves from a jar ofpot-pourriin one corner pleasantly pervaded the air, dispelling some of the mustiness and closeness inseparable from its underground situation.
They laid Van Zandt down upon a soft white bed, and Mme. Lorraine said, coolly:
"Now, Mima, you may examine into the extent of his wound."
The large, masculine-looking woman went to work in quite a professional way on her unconscious patient, and in a short time she looked around and said, to the great relief of her mistress:
"It is an ugly wound, very near his heart, but not necessarily a dangerous one, unless a fever sets in. He has fainted from loss of blood, and I will dress the wound before I attempt to revive him. You may go upstairs, for I see you growing pale already at the sight of blood, and I don't want you here fainting on my hands."
"Thank you, Mima," said Mme. Lorraine, almost meekly; for one of her weaknesses, which she shared in common with most women, was that the sight of blood always made her very sick and faint.
She staggered out of the close room, toiled feebly up the stairs, and drank two glasses of wine to steady her trembling nerves; then she extinguished the lights in the house, and retired to her bed. She was still awake when Carmontelle returned in quest of Eliot Van Zandt, and she laughed in her sleeve at his furious, ineffectual peals at the bell.
Stealing to the window, she drew back a fold of the curtain and peered down at him, chuckling softly when she saw him take his angry departure. Then she returned to her silken couch, and slept soundly for hours.
The sun was high in the heavens when Mima's rough, impatient hand shook her broad awake without ceremony.
"Are you going to sleep all day?" she demanded. "You wouldn't if you knew what had happened. The little one's gone. I can't find her in the house or the grounds, and her bed ain't been slept in all night."
She gazed suspiciously into madame's startled face, which was not so handsome now with the cosmetics washed from it, and that frown wrinkling her brow. She repeated Mima's word in apparently stupid amaze:
"Gone!"
"Yes, gone! Don't you know anything about it? Ain't you had a hand in it?"
Mme. Lorraine, sitting up in bed in her night-robe of soft white linen, burst out, indignantly:
"Look here, Mima, don't make a fool of yourself. If the girl's gone, it's none of my work. She threatened, the last time I beat her, that she would run away, and I suppose she's kept her word. I've noticed that some of the men that come here were sweet on her, and she's gone with one of them, no doubt."
Mima stood like one petrified, looking at her, when she suddenly burst out again:
"Oh, dear! perhaps she has taken Selim! Run, Mima, to the stables. Oh, the little wretch!—if she dared—"
Mima interrupted, harshly:
"She has not taken your idol. I knew she was in the habit of stealing him out for a wild canter sometimes, and I ran to the stables when I missed her. Selim was there all right, and the ponies, too."
"Then she has gone off with some of the men; she has eloped, the little vixen, and may joy go with her! It is a good riddance of bad rubbish," madame cried, in such violent indignation that the servant's suspicions were disarmed. Seeing the impression she had made, the wily ex-actress went on: "I dare say that was the cause of theshooting last night. I was awakened by the report of a pistol, and jumped out of bed and ran to the window. I saw a carriage in front of my door, and two men scuffling on the pavement. Suddenly one fell to the ground; the other jumped into the carriage and drove rapidly away. No doubt the wicked little baggage was in the vehicle, and the fight was over her. Let her go, the little nobody. I shall make no effort to find her. But aren't you going to give me my chocolate, when I'm so weak I can scarcely speak?" pausing in her voluble tirade, and fixing a glance of reproach on the servant's dark, stolid face.
Mima shrugged her broad shoulders sarcastically and retired, and madame sprung out of bed, thrust her feet into satin slippers, and huddled on an elaboraterobe de chambre.
"I suppose I shall have to dress myself now, having deprived myself of my little maid's services to gratify my desire for revenge," she muttered, half regretfully. "Ciel! but she had deft fingers and a correct taste. I can not replace her services by another, for the secrets of this old house are not to be trusted to a stranger. Well, I am a thousand dollars the richer, although Remond let the prize slip through his fingers after he had paid the price. And what a fortune it was that cast Van Zandt into my hands! I have fallen in love with the beautiful boy. It is really love, not thepenchantI have entertained for a score of others. Ah!" She paused in her soliloquy, for Mima entered with a tray on which glistened the gold and silver of a costly breakfast service, spread with delicate edibles. "Your patient, Mima, how is he?" she queried, anxiously.
"He is doing well, and thinks he is in a hospital," said the woman. "It is best to humor him in that delusion for several days; for if he were to find out the truth now, he would fret and chafe, and perhaps bring on the fever I am anxious to avoid. So, madame, you would do well tostay out of the sick-room until he is well enough to bear the news that he is a prisoner of love," sarcastically.
Carmontelle stood for many minutes gazing like one dazed at the still and lovely features of the nameless dead girl. He was stunned, as it were, by the magnitude of this misfortune, and could only murmur over and over in accents of pity and despair combined:
"Too late, too late, too late!"
At length he too flung himself down before the altar with bowed head, although no prayers escaped his lips, for the stupor of despair was upon him. She was dead, poor unfortunate Little Nobody, and there was naught to pray for now.
There the detective found him, two hours later, when he came with news—news at once good and bad.
"I found Remond," he said. "He was about leaving the city by the steamer 'Ellen Bayne.' As he was about crossing the plank, I collared him and demanded the antidote. He was startled at first, and glared at me fiercely, then suddenly assumed a calmness that looked so much like acquiescence that I was completely deceived. He put his hand into his breast-pocket, and drew out a small vial of colorless liquid. I thought he was going to give it to me, and, thrown off my guard by his apparent coolness, released him and stretched out my hand. The cunning villain took instant advantage of my belief; he sprung away from me across the gang-plank, which was instantly drawn in, as the steamer was leaving the wharf. Standing on the deck, he looked at me with the leer of a fiend and immediately flung the vial into the river."
"The fiend!" Carmontelle said, hoarsely. "But it matters not. She is already dead."
And he led the dismayed and disappointed detective tothe chapel, and showed him the silent sleeper there, with the cool white lilies on her breast.
"How beautiful, how unfortunate!" murmured the kind-hearted detective, in reverential awe. His profession had made him familiar with all sorts of tragedies and sorrows, but this one seemed to him as sad and pathetic as any he had ever encountered. He looked with deep sympathy upon the man beside him to whom the girl's death was such a crushing blow, but words failed him. He could only look his silent and sincere sympathy.
Suddenly there recurred to Carmontelle the remembrance of Eliot Van Zandt, whose fate was still wrapped in mystery.
"Come, we can do no good here now," he said, mournfully. "The fiends have done their work too well. We must try to get at the bottom of the mystery that enshrouds the fate of my poor friend."
After promising the mother superior to return and attend to the funeral obsequies of the dead girl, he went away, taking the detective with him to assist in the inquiry for the young journalist.
It did not seem possible that they could fail in this search, but though the anxious quest was kept up for many days and nights, not a single clew rewarded their efforts. Eliot Van Zandt had disappeared as completely as though an earthquake had opened and swallowed him into the bosom of old mother earth.
The detective could form but one conclusion, which he reluctantly imparted to his employer.
"The young man was most probably murdered that night, and his corpse flung into the river, but no proofs will ever be found implicating Remond as the murderer. Nor is it likely that the Frenchman will ever turn up again in New Orleans. Fearful of detection, he will go abroad and plunge into new crimes befitting his evil nature, and the disappearance of poor Van Zandt will most likely remainforever upon the terrible list of unexplained disappearance of human beings."
Days came and went, and it seemed as if he had uttered a true prophecy.
In the meantime, a tomb in the convent cemetery had received to its cold embrace the shrouded form of Mme. Lorraine's beautiful victim, and the madame herself had been apprised of the fact by a brief and bitter note from Pierre Carmontelle.
"The victim of your malice is dead and in her untimely grave," he wrote. "Remond has fled the city, and the Jockey Club has been told the secret of your guilt and his. They are wild with rage, but they spare you yet until they can make sure of your guilt, and bring your crime home to you. In the meantime, I tell you frankly that you are under constant espionage, and the task of my life is to avenge the death of poor little ma'amselle upon you and that cowardly Frenchman. Look well to yourself, for enemies encompass you and punishment awaits you."
Madame grew pale beneath her rouge, and twisted the angry note nervously in her jeweled fingers.
"A frank enemy!" she muttered. "He gives me fair warning. Like the deadly serpent, he gives forth his venomous hiss before he stings. He is very kind. Forewarned is forearmed, they say."
She reread it with a nervous contraction of her brows.
"So the little one is dead! I did not intend it, but—it is better so. Fate has removed an incumbrance from my path. Now for a call upon my guest, to electrify him with my news. Mima says he is fast recovering, and that I may venture upon a visit."
She went to her dressing-room and donned a street costume of olive cashmere and silk, with bonnet and gloves and all the paraphernalia of walking costume. Then, with a choice bunch of flowers culled from her garden, she let herself through the secret entrance to the cellar chamber,and preceded by the frowning servant, was ushered into the presence of Eliot Van Zandt.
He lay, pale and handsome and restless, among the white pillows in the luxurious room. The lamp that burned night and day shed a soft, roseate glow over everything, and brightened somewhat the pallid cast of his countenance.
"Ah, Monsieur Van Zandt, my poor, dear Yankee friend, the cruel doctors and nurses have permitted me to call on you at last! And how do you find yourself this evening,mon ami?" she cried, fluttering up to his bedside, all smiles and sweet solicitude.
His dark-gray eyes opened wide with surprise and displeasure.
"Madame Lorraine!" he ejaculated, angrily, but she pretended not to understand the surprise and anger.
"Yes, it is I," she said, sweetly. "Did you think you were deserted by all your friends? But it was the cruel doctors in the hospital; they would admit no one until you were out of danger. I came every day and begged until they gave me leave to see you. Ah,mon ami, I have suffered such anxiety for your sake!" with uplifted eyes and pensive air. "But, thank the good God, you are restored to me."
The dark-gray eyes flashed with resentment, and a warm flush crept up to the young man's pale brow. He waved her away indignantly.
"Madame Lorraine, your hypocrisy is intolerable!" he exclaimed, hotly. "Leave me. Your call is in the worst of taste, and most undesirable."
With impetuous grace, she flung herself down on her knees beside him, surprise, dismay, and wounded love expressed eloquently on her mobile face.
"Ah,mon ami, what have I done to receive this repulse? I come to you in friendship and regard, and you order me away! Good nurse"—turning her head aroundfor a moment to scornful Mima—"is it that your patient is delirious yet, that he thus upbraids his truest friend?"
"Get up from your knees, Madame Lorraine; you can not deceive me by your artful professions," Van Zandt cried, sternly; and looking wondrously grand and handsome in his anger, although he could scarcely lift his blonde head from the pillow. "I am not delirious; my mind is perfectly clear, and, in proof of it, listen: I was in your garden that night, and heard your nefarious plotting with Remond for the ruin of that poor young girl. She heard, too, and, distracted with terror, begged me to save her. It was I who brought Carmontelle to the rescue, while I held at bay the villain Remond. Now you understand why I loathe the sight of you—why I wish you to go out from my presence, never to enter it again."
She wept and protested, as she had done with Carmontelle, that it was all a cruel mistake. She had but made a match, French-fashion, for her ward. Remond was pledged to marry her that night. She did not find him credulous, as she had hoped. He smiled in scorn, and reiterated his wish that she should leave the room.
"Very well," she said, bitterly, "I am going, but not before I tell the news I brought; your officious intermeddling was fatal to the girl you pretended to save—it was the cause of her death."
"Death!" he echoed; and the fair, stately head fell back among the pillows, the lids drooped over his eyes. Mima believed he was about to swoon, and hastily brought restoratives.
"You should have held your cursed tongue!" she muttered, in an audible aside to her mistress; but Mme. Lorraine did not reply. She was watching that deathly pale face that looked up at her so eagerly as Van Zandt whispered, faintly:
"Dead! Oh, you do but jest! It can not be!"
"It is no jest. It is the truth. Do you want to hearhow it came about? Remond had two subtle Eastern drugs, the one to induce heavy sleep, the other to awaken her at his will. Well, you and Carmontelle interfered, and so Remond ran away with the second drug, and—she died in her sleep."
"No, no!" he cried, almost imploringly.
"Ah, you regret your work when too late!" madame cried, triumphantly. "It is sad, is it not? But it is true as Heaven. Barely an hour ago I received a note from him, to say that she was dead and buried, the poor little wretch!"
"It is your fiendish work!" he said, bitterly. "May Heaven punish you! Ah, the poor innocent little ma'amselle, it was hard for her to go like that. But—better death than dishonor!"
He put his white hand up before his face, and a long, deep, shuddering sigh shook him from head to foot. Mima shook her mistress roughly by the shoulder and pointed to the door that led up the stairs to the hidden entrance.
"Go!" she whispered, harshly. "I don't know what prompted you to this devil's work. You must have wanted to kill him. I don't know how this will result now. Go, and take your hateful face out of his sight!"
Madame flung down her roses with a whimper, and trailed her rich robes from the room in a passion of disappointed love and hope.
"He loved her—like the rest!" she muttered, fiercely. "I wish she had died before he ever saw her. But I swear I will win him yet, or—he shall never see the light of day again!"
Van Zandt lay for a long time with his face hidden in his hands, long, labored sighs shaking his manly form,feeling as if a nightmare of horror had fastened itself upon him. It had been bad enough to lie here, bound hand and foot by the pain of his severe wound, and chafing fiercely against his misfortune, but with the inward comfort of the knowledge that by his bravery he had saved a girl, Little Nobody though she was, from a cruel fate; but—now!
Now, at the sudden and cruel news Mme. Lorraine had maliciously brought, his heart almost ceased its beating, so awful was the shock.
Dead, gone out of life in her maiden bloom, so beautiful, so innocent and ignorant, wronged irretrievably by a woman without a heart—a handsome creature, wicked enough to sell a young, immortal soul to ruin for a handful of sordid gold! Bitter, sorrowful, indignant were his meditations while he lay there, with his hand before his face, watched furtively by the big, ugly Mima, who, with all her rough ways, was a skillful and tender nurse, having spent four years of her life caring for wounded soldiers in an army hospital.
She moved nearer to him at last, and said, uneasily:
"Best not to take it so hard, sir. The girl's gone to a better place than this wicked world, where she never saw one happy day. You'll make yourself worse, taking on like this, and it can't do any good to the dead, so cheer up and think of getting well as fast as you can, and out of this lonesome place."
He looked curiously at the hard, homely face as she spoke, for she had been shy and taciturn heretofore, wasting few words upon her patient. She had told him that he was in a private hospital, and he had not doubted the assertion, although, as days passed by, it seemed strange to him that he saw no face but hers about him. Another thing that puzzled him was, that it seemed always night in his room—the curtains drawn and the lamp burning. When he spoke of this to Mima, she answered abruptly that he slept all day and lay awake all night.
"And I never see the doctor when he comes to visit me," he added.
"You are always asleep when he pays his midday visit," she replied.
In the languor and pain of his illness he accepted all her statements in good faith, although chafing against his forced detention, and wondering what his publishers and his home folks would think of his strange silence. He had resolved only this morning that he would ask Carmontelle to write to them for him to say that he was sick—not wounded—only sick.
Now he looked fixedly at his strange, grim nurse, and said, sternly:
"Never admit that woman, that fiend rather, into my presence again. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," Mima replied, soothingly; and he continued, anxiously:
"Now, tell me, has any one called to see me since I was brought to this hospital? I mean, except that woman, Madame Lorraine?"
"Lord, yes, sir; several gentlemen that said they was from the Jockey Club, and friends of yours. But the doctor's orders was strict not to admit anybody."
"How came Madame Lorraine to get admittance, then?" with a very black frown.
"Lord, sir, she wheedled the doctor with her pretty face!"
He frowned again, and said, peremptorily:
"When the doctor comes in again, you must awaken me if I am asleep. I must speak to him."
"Yes, sir," meekly.
"And if the gentlemen from the club come again, say to the doctor that they must be admitted. I am quite well enough to receive my friends, and I must get some one to write home for me. Will you do as I tell you?" looking at her with contracted brows, and a dark-red flushmounting into his cheek that alarmed her, experienced nurse that she was.
"Yes, yes, my dear sir, I will do just as you say," she replied, eager to pacify him, for she saw that what she had been dreading all the time had come to pass, through the imprudence of Mme. Lorraine—her patient had been driven by excitement into a high fever.
In the meantime, a strange event had taken place at the Convent of Le Bon Berger, through the curiosity of the old priest, who, while bending over his book in the chapel, had overheard Carmontelle's story of the mysterious drug and its strange antidote. Although outwardly absorbed in his devotions, he had listened with an excited gleam in his dim old eyes, and once had half started forward to speak, but checked himself quickly, and remained quiescent during the time that elapsed before Carmontelle and the praying nuns took their departure from the chapel.
When all were gone, and there remained only himself and that still form in the black-draped coffin, he started eagerly forward and stood in excited silence gazing at the beautiful face of the dead girl. Once he lifted his old, wrinkled hand and pressed hers tenderly, then withdrew it, shuddering at that mortal coldness.
It was no wonder that the old priest had been excited by the story of Carmontelle, for years ago he had been an enthusiastic traveler in Eastern lands, and an old witch—or sorceress, as she was called there—had given him two drugs to which she ascribed the mysterious properties possessed by those of which Carmontelle had spoken. He had kept them always, certainly with no intention of ever testing the strange power claimed for them, but only because they were part and parcel of the box of curiositieshe had brought with him from that fascinating tour. To-day the two vials lay safely in the box, wrapped in a bit of yellow parchment on which, in a strange tongue, were inscribed the directions for their use.
It flashed over him that the hour had come when the gift of the old hag, at whose strange leer he had shrunk and shuddered, was to be instrumental in saving a human life.
But he was old and wise, and he knew that life is not always a blessing; that often and often it is but the bearing of a heavy cross, with lagging steps and weary heart, to a far Golgotha. In the dim confessional men and women, and even the young and tender, had poured their griefs and their sins into his compassionate hearing, and many had waited for death with infinite yearning, while some—and he trembled and crossed himself at the sad remembrance—had gone mad over wrong and ruth, and in despair had cut the Gordian knot of life. It was of all this he had thought when he had restrained his impulse to speak to Carmontelle; it was of this he was thinking now, as he stood there, old and gray and holy, by the side of that beautiful bud of life in the coffin.
He was, as it were, weighing entity and non-entity in careful, metaphorical scales. He was solemnly asking himself, "Which is better—life or death?"
From the saints and angels in that bright world beyond, where his pious thoughts continually rested, seemed to come a low, eager answer:
"Death!"
He looked again, with agonized doubt, at that fair, lovely face, so innocent in its deep repose.
The mother superior had told him that the girl, had she lived, was destined to be the bride of Carmontelle.
"I know the man—rich, generous, and worldly. As his wife, she will be a society queen. Her idols will be wealth and pleasure. She will be gay and heartless, forgetfulof all holy things, living only for this world. Better, far better, the bride of Heaven."
And crossing himself again, with a muttered prayer he went out of the little chapel, where presently the pale-faced nuns came again, muttering their pious aves for the dead.
That night in his cell, impelled by some irresistible force within himself, he took out the small vial from the curiosity-box, and read the strangely lettered parchment, for he was an earnest student, and versed in Oriental lore.
Great drops of dew beaded his temples as he spelled out the meaning of the parchment; and no wonder, for he read there that, although one lay as dead for three days, a few drops of the antidote poured between the lips would break that deathly sleep and restore life; but after those wondrous three days the drug could be of no avail—death must surely ensue.
In the cold and cheerless cell the old priest shivered as with a chill.
"What an awful responsibility lies upon me!" he muttered. "It is for me to decide whether to give her back to Carmontelle and the world, to be spoiled by its vanities, or leave her soul, now pure and unspotted, free to enter heaven."
After an hour of painful meditation he put away the mysterious drug and spent the night upon his knees on the cold stone floor of the cell, calling on all the saints to uphold him in his pious resolve to save the soul of the lovely girl by the sacrifice of her life.
And the next afternoon, in a shaken voice and a holy resolve written on his ashen features, he read the long Latin prayers for the dead to the assembled nuns and to Carmontelle among them, and saw the form of poor Little Nobody consigned to the grim vault in the convent cemetery.
Two days and a night had thus passed while the girl layin that death-like trance. A few hours more and the prisoned soul would be separated from the body, and the story of her brief life be ended.
But when the shades of night again fell on the convent walls, a revulsion of feeling brought remorse to the soul of the old priest. He was haunted by the thought of the living girl prisoned in the vault among the dead. In the solitude of his cell that night a strange unrest grew upon him, and evil spirits seemed to people the gloom.
He started up in terror from his knees, the great drops of sweat pouring over his face.
"Yes, yes, it is murder!" he uttered, fearfully. "Heaven put the means of saving her in my hands, and I was too blind to understand. But I will atone, I will atone!"
A sudden thought came to him, and he hurriedly sought a brother priest and the mother superior. To them, in deep humility, he confessed his error.
"I was deceived by tempting devils, but I see my mistake in time to correct it," he said, humbly. "Several hours yet remain of the time, and I will restore her to life, by the aid of Heaven and this mysterious drug, and her return to life must be a secret."
They went with him secretly to the dark vault. They took from the coffin that unconscious form and bore it in their arms to a secluded chamber. There they poured between the pale, sealed lips a few drops of the mysterious drug, and kept anxious vigil all night over her bedside.
In a few hours they began to reap the reward of their solicitude. The appearance of the girl's face grew less death-like, a delicate moisture appeared on her skin, a faint color in her lips, and gradually a barely perceptible respiration became apparent. The drug had done its restorative work perfectly.
Down on his knees went the anxious old priest, and he thanked Heaven for the life he had saved.
When the morning light began to gild the convent spire, the dark eyes opened slowly upon the face of the mother superior, who was watching intently for this sign of life. The priests had retired, and they were quite alone. Tears of relief sparkled into the eyes of the good nun.
"Dear child, you are awake at last!" she exclaimed, gladly; but the girl made no reply. Her lids had closed again, and she had fallen into a quiet, natural sleep that lasted until the chiming of the vesper bells.
She awoke to find her slumber guarded by another nun, who had taken the place of the good mother. When the dark, puzzled eyes wandered around the room, she chirped sweetly:
"Oh, my dear, you have slept so long, you must be very, very hungry. I will bring you some food."
She came back presently with some light, nutritious broth in a bowl, and fed the girl gently from a tea-spoon. She swallowed languidly, and a few mouthfuls sufficed her appetite. Then she looked at the pleasant-faced nun, and said, languidly:
"Good sister, I do not understand. Just now I was with Monsieur Van Zandt. He was wounded. Oh, how pale he was!" shivering. "Another minute, and I am here. How is it, and where is he?"
The old priest had entered noiselessly, and the low voice was distinctly audible to his ears. He shuddered.
He had just read in a paper of the mysterious disappearance of Eliot Van Zandt, who was supposed to have been murdered, and his body flung into the lake or the river. Hence the girl's strange words struck coldly on his senses. He thought:
"Her soul has been parted from the body in that strange trance, and has taken cognizance of the man vainly sought for by friends and detectives. What if she could tell where he is hidden!"
Muttering a prayer for the girl, he came up to the bedside.
"Bless you, my daughter," he said, soothingly. "And so you have seen Eliot Van Zandt? Does he yet live?"
She looked at him gently and with surprise. Perhaps, in the strange experiences of her trance, she was inured to surprises.
"Holy father," she murmured, reverentially, then, gently. "I have seen him. He is not dead. He is not going to die. But he is very ill; he is dangerously wounded."
The little nun chirped an "oh!" of vivacious wonder, but the priest silenced her by a warning glance.
"Where is he? Where is Monsieur Van Zandt, my daughter?" he questioned, eagerly.
"Where?" echoed Little Nobody. "Why, in the next room, doubtless, good father, for a minute ago I was with him, and then I found myself here so suddenly that it seemed a little strange to me."
"Yes, it is strange," said the old priest, growing pale and hurriedly crossing himself. "But you are mistaken. He is not in this house. If you know where he is, tell me, daughter."
She shut her eyes reflectively, opened them again, and answered, dreamily:
"He was lying on a bed in a pretty room, where a lamp was burning all day. There was a red wound on his breast, and he was pale and ill. I do not know the house, but Madame Lorraine can tell you, for it was her servant, Mima, that I saw giving him a glass of water."
The nun looked at the old priest with round eyes of wonder.
"Father Quentin, what strange thing is this?" she uttered, fearfully.
"Ask me not to explain it, my good daughter; it is a manifestation of psychic power beyond human explanation," he replied, hastily quitting the room to seek the mother superior.
As a result of his interview with her, he was soon on his way toward Esplanade Street and Mme. Lorraine.
Seldom had the footsteps of such a holy man crossed the threshold of the gay and volatile French woman. She grew pale through her rouge and her powder when she read the name upon his card, and sent word that she was not at home.
He told the little page that he would wait until madame returned, and took a seat in the quiet salon.
Angry and baffled, Mme. Lorraine came down to him.
"Bénedicité, daughter," said Father Quentin; but she looked at him inquiringly, without bending her lovely head.
"I have come to see Eliot Van Zandt, who lies wounded in your house," he said, boldly.
She gave a quick, nervous start, perfectly perceptible to his eyes, and her glance sought his, full of frightened inquiry.
"The girl was right; he is hidden here," he thought, with fluttering pulses; but aloud he said, with pretended authority and outward calmness:
"Lead me to his presence; I must see the young man at once."
She had recovered her calmness as quickly as she had lost it.
"Holy father, you amaze me!" she exclaimed, haughtily. "The man is not here. I read in my paper only this morning that he had most mysteriously disappeared. But come, I see you do not believe me. You shall search my house."
He was a little staggered by her assurance.
"I do not wish to seem intrusive," he said; "but my informant was very positive."
Then he mentally shook himself. After all, he had no authority for his assertion, except the strange words of a girl who had just come out of a trance-like sleep—a girl who might simply have dreamed it all.
But he followed her all over the pretty, elegantly appointed house, the little page carrying the keys and unlocking door after door until he was sure that not an apartment in the house remained unvisited.
"You have a servant-woman, Mima," he said to her, as they descended the stairs.
"Yes," she replied; "Mima is in the kitchen, preparing luncheon. You shall see her, too, holy father."
Mima, at work over a dainty luncheon, bowed her head grimly to receive his blessing.
"You have been nursing a sick, a wounded man, Monsieur Van Zandt," he said, trying to take her by surprise; but she did not betray as much self-consciousness as her mistress.
"The holy father mistakes; I am a cook, not a nurse," she replied, coolly.
And so he came away baffled, after all.
Mme. Lorraine pressed a gold piece excitedly into the hand of the little page.
"Follow the good priest, and come back and tell me where he lives," she exclaimed.
Father Quentin went his way immediately back to the convent, with the story of his disappointment, and concluded that Little Nobody's dream had been simply a dream, with nothing supernatural about it. The light that had seemed to shine momentarily on the mystery of Eliot Van Zandt's fate went out in rayless darkness.
For the girl, she grew better and stronger daily, andsubmitted, with child-like patience, to the innumerable questions the good sisters asked her of her past life. They were shocked when she told them the story of her life with Mme. Lorraine, the life that she had counted of so little value that she had never even given her little white slave a name.
They went to Father Quentin with the shocking story—that the girl had no name, and that that heartless woman had called her Vixen, Savage, Baggage, Nobody, by turns. She must be baptized immediately.
The good priest was as heartily scandalized as one could wish. He chose a name at once for their charge. It was the sweet, simple one, Marie.
And that same day, in the little chapel, surrounded by the tearful nuns, Little Nobody stood before the altar and received the baptismal name, Marie.
The next day she was formally introduced into the convent school, which consisted of twenty young ladies, all boarders. She was cautioned to say nothing of her past life to her schoolmates. The priest said that she was a ward of his, and he wished the pupils to be very kind to Mlle. Marie, who, through the peculiar circumstances of her life, had not received necessary mental culture, and must now begin the rudiments of her education.
For downright, honest, uncompromising curiosity and rudeness, no class of human beings transcends the modern school-girl. The pupils of Le Bon Berger immediately set themselves to work to torture the new scholar—the little ignoramus, as they dubbed her. Such ignorance as this they had never encountered before. They teased and chaffed her in their audacious fashion, and speedily made her understand her humiliation—a great girl of fifteen or sixteen beginning to learn her alphabet like a child of five years!
She was used to being chaffed and despised, poor Little Nobody! It was the life at Mme. Loraine's over again,and the great dark eyes flashed in sullen scorn as they did then, and the small hands clinched themselves at her sides in impotent pain.
"I shall run away from here!" she thought, bitterly.
They had one habit with which they daily demonstrated to her their superior wisdom. At recess they would assemble in a great group and read aloud from the daily newspaper. Sitting apart under the great trees of the convent garden, the new pupil listened, against her will, to every word, and so there came to her one day, through this strange means, the news of Eliot Van Zandt's strange disappearance from the ranks of the living.
With dilated eyes, parted lips and wildly throbbing heart she listened, and when the reader's voice came to an end, the group was electrified by a spring and a rush and a vision of golden hair flying on the wind, as the new pupil flew, with the speed of an Atalanta, into the presence of the mother superior.
"What is the matter with Mademoiselle Marie? has she got a fit?" exclaimed the merry, mischievous school-girls.
Little Nobody had flung down the spelling-book that had become her constant companion, and rushed impetuously to the presence of the good mother superior.
In a few minutes more she had wrested from the gentle nun her whole story, from the hour when Carmontelle had brought her to the convent until now, when, through the fanaticism of Father Quentin, she was as one dead to the world outside, her young life solemnly devoted to Heaven.
The dark eyes flashed indignantly, the pale cheeks crimsoned with anger.
"How dared he?" she exclaimed.
"Daughter!"
The gently remonstrating tone had no effect on the excited girl. She continued, angrily:
"Do you not see that it was wicked to shut me up for life? I do not want to be a nun. I will not be a nun! I tell you frankly their pale faces and black dresses give me the horrors! I shall leave here at once to find the poor Yankee that was wounded in defending me. He is in the power of Madame Lorraine, I am sure. I dreamed of him, and he was wounded, and in the care of Mima, her servant."
The nun assured her that Father Quentin had been already to Esplanade Street, and that Mme. Lorraine and her servant had declared their ignorance of the journalist's whereabouts.
Mlle. Marie's lip curled in unmitigated scorn.
"As if their words could be taken for truth," she uttered, bitterly. "Ah, I know her falsehoods too well."
The nun knew not what to do. The demand of the girl to leave the convent frightened her. She was compelled to falter a refusal.
Then Marie flatly rebelled. Some of the spirit that had made Remond call her a little savage flashed into her eyes, and she vowed that she would not be detained.
The mother went hastily to call Father Quentin. He firmly refused to grant the girl's wish. He was persuaded that to do so would be to insure her own eternal ruin.
The passionate heart, the undisciplined temper, took fire at his flat refusal.
To the poor girl it seemed that the whole world was arrayed against her.
Why had the old priest saved her from death if she was to be immured forever, as in a living tomb, in this grim old convent? The sanguine youth and hope within her rose up in passionate protest.
She pleaded, and when entreaty failed, she flung down a passionate defiance. Go she would! Eliot Van Zandtneeded her to deliver him from Mme. Lorraine's baneful power. Should she torture him, destroy him, while she who owed him so much forsook him? Ah, no, no!
The result was that the defiant, contumacious pupil was consigned to solitary confinement in a cell for the remainder of the day, until she should come to her senses and ask pardon of the priest and the good mother superior.
She flung herself down, sobbing, on the cold stone floor, too angry to repeat the prayers Father Quentin had recommended her to address to the saints. Her thoughts centered around Eliot Van Zandt in agonizing solicitude.
"He was my friend; he fought Remond to save me," she murmured; "and shall I desert him in the danger he incurred for my sake? Never, never! not if to find him I have to venture back into the spider's den, into madame's presence again."
Day waned and faded, and the soft chiming of the vesper bells rang out the hour of her release. Pale and watchful, she knelt among the nuns and the pupils in the chapel, but ere the Aves and the Pater Nosters were over, she had flitted like a shadow from the cloister, and in "the dim, religious light" made her way into the garden, having first secured her hat and cloak from a convenient rack. Breathless she made her hurried way through the thick, dark shrubberies, praying now that Heaven would aid her to escape from the half-insane old priest.
"Where there's a will there's a way." Desperation had made her bold and reckless. But one means of escape presented itself, and that was to scale the high stone wall with the bristling spikes on top. By the aid of convenient shrubberies she accomplished the feat, and, with bleeding hands and torn garments, dropped down upon the other side into the street.
Fortunately, no one was passing, so her escape remained unnoticed. Panting for breath, in her eagerness she ran the length of a square and turned down a corner, losingherself in a labyrinth of streets. She knew not where she was; but that did not matter yet. She was only intent on putting the greatest possible distance between herself and the convent where she had been so nearly immured for life.
After an hour's rapid walking through a locality of which she was totally ignorant, she came suddenly into a street with which she was familiar. From this she knew that she could make her way without difficulty to Mme. Lorraine's house.
A sudden terror and reluctance seized upon her at thought of entering that house of danger, and unconsciously her footsteps slackened their headlong speed.
"To go back into the lion's den—it is hard!" she thought; then, bravely, "But my friend risked his life for me. I can not do less for him."
Weary and footsore, she toiled on toward Esplanade Street, that was still far away.
She was but little used to walking, for Mme. Lorraine had never permitted her to leave the house, and her only excursions had been her stolen rides on the back of Selim, Mme. Lorraine's petted Arab. Her headlong pace at first began to tell on her now, and her steps grew slower and slower, while her slight figure and fair face attracted much attention from passers-by on the brightly lighted street, although her shy, frightened air protected her from insult from even the evil disposed. Her purity, so sweetly imaged on her young face, was a potent shield.
At length she emerged into Esplanade Street. She had been several hours making her way from the convent to this point.
It was nearing midnight, and the girl was vaguely frightened, although, in her almost infantile innocence and ignorance, she knew nothing of the "danger thatwalks forth with the night" in the streets of a great city. She had been more fortunate than she knew in escaping molestation and pursuit. Her chief fear had been of pursuit by the fanatical old priest, but her hurried glances behind her, from time to time, failed to discover any pursuer; and in a short while more she stood trembling before the dark, silent front of the house where her young life had been spent in semi-slavery as the plaything of giddy Mme. Lorraine.
A strange impulse seized her to turn and fly away; a stronger instinct rooted her to the ground.
"He is here! he must be here!" she murmured; "and I can not desert him, my good friend."
She stood there a few moments gazing at the closed door, then walked rapidly to the garden gate by which she had let Van Zandt through that memorable night. By a strange chance of fortune she had the key in her pocket.
Unlocking it softly, she let herself into the garden, and sunk down wearily on the rustic seat where she had fallen into such heavy sleep the night of her attempted abduction. Against her will her eyelids drooped, and slumber stole over her weary senses. The soft air coolly fanned her hot face, and the April dew fell heavily on her floating hair and thin summer dress; but, unconscious of the chill and dampness, she dreamed on until the first faint gray streak of dawn appeared in the east.
Then she woke suddenly, lifted her crouching figure, and looked about her. Memory rushed over her in a bewildering flood.
"I have been asleep when I ought to have been planning how to get into that house unperceived to search for him!" she thought, self-reproachfully.
She knew that there would be no great difficulty about the matter, because Mima was always very careless about fastening up the back part of the house. Being slight and agile, she made an easy entrance into the house by theunited opportunities of a step-ladder and an unbolted back window.
With a throbbing heart and shining eyes, she found herself inside the house, and, as she believed, near to the kind Yankee friend in whom she took such an earnest interest.
Every one was asleep at this uncanny hour of the dawn, she knew. Lightly and fearlessly she went from room to room until she had explored the whole house in a fruitless quest for Eliot Van Zandt.
To her dismay and disappointment, her careful search was utterly unavailing, although from her knowledge of the house she was certain that she had left not a room unvisited. She had even peeped, by the aid of a hall-chair, into the transom over madame's door, and then into Mima's, too; but the sight of the latter placidly snoring among her pillows, and of madame slumbering sweetly, as if no unrepented sins lay heavy on her conscience, was all that rewarded her for her pains.
Disappointed and dismayed, she crept into an unused closet in the hall, and crouching in the cobwebby corner, gave herself up to such intense cogitation that the tired young brain succumbed again to weariness, and she drooped forward upon the hard floor fast asleep.
Day was far advanced when she roused herself, with a start, and again realized her situation. She heard steps and voices, and knew that the small family was awake and astir. Presently the hall clock chimed the hour of noon.
"I have been very lazy," she said to herself, "and—oh, dear, I am very hungry!"
She remembered then that the nuns had not given her any supper, because she had flatly refused to beg Father Quentin's pardon for her wilfulness.
"Never mind," she said valiantly to herself, "I must not remember that I am tired and hungry until I find my friend."
But hot tears came into the dark eyes, all the same. Itwas not pleasant to be tired and hungry and disappointed, and even in hiding like a dreadful criminal fearing to be captured.
Suddenly the swish of a silken robe trailed through the hall met her ears—Mme. Lorraine!
The fugitive could not resist the temptation to push the door ajar ever so little, and peep through the tiny aperture at her fair enemy.
And then something very strange happened.
Little Nobody, or Marie, as the nuns had called her, saw Mme. Lorraine stop abruptly at the end of the hall and press her white and jeweled hand upon a curious little ornate knob that appeared to form the center-piece of the carvings and panelings of the wainscoted wall. Instantly a section of the broad paneling glided backward through the solid wall, like a narrow door. Mme. Lorraine stepped lightly through the opening, and disappeared as the concealed door sprung quickly back into its place.
Like one stunned, the girl fell back into her place of hiding.
She had spent all her life in this strange house without a suspicion of the hidden room and the secret door, and its sudden discovery almost paralyzed her in the first moment.
But presently her reason returned to her, and she murmured with instant conviction:
"He is down there."
Following a sudden reckless impulse, and thinking nothing of consequences, she bounded from the closet and pressed her little hand upon the knob in the wall. At first it remained stationary, but when she pushed harder it yielded so suddenly as almost to precipitate her down a short flight of steps on which it opened. Recovering her balance, she stepped softly downward, and the narrow door slipped soundlessly into its place again, and as if impelled by a ghostly hand. But the fact was, that by some cleverarrangement of springs beneath the first step, the slight pressure of her foot on the boards was sufficient to close it.
She found herself now on the narrow flight of steps, in thick darkness; but the momentary light that had glimmered through the open door had shown her a narrow passage and another door at the foot of the stairs.
Thrilling with curiosity, and without fear, the girl groped her way softly downward to the passage, starting as the murmur of voices came to her from the other side of the door.
"I was right. He is here!" she thought, and flung herself down on the floor in the darkness and listened with her ear against the door.
It was Mme. Lorraine's clear, bell-like voice that was speaking. It ceased its impassioned utterances at last, and a deep, rich, manly voice replied to her—a familiar voice that made Marie's heart beat tumultuously and a sweet, warm color glow in her cheeks.
"It is he," she whispered, forgetting hunger, weariness, everything unpleasant in exquisite relief and joy.
Almost a week had elapsed since the last visit of Mme. Lorraine to Eliot Van Zandt.
During that time he had been very ill from the fever brought on by his agitation at her indiscreet announcement of the death of the girl in whom he had been so warmly interested.
All Mima's skill and care had been required to ward off a fatal consequence to this relapse, and the woman had sternly forbidden any more calls from her mistress during this critical state. Mme. Lorraine was so frightened that she was very obedient to the mandate; but now the embargo had been removed, and she was free to visit the fascinating patient.
He was better. Indeed, he was rapidly convalescing, owing to Mima's good nursing, aided by his youth and a strong constitution.
So, on this lovely April morning, madame had made herself beautiful by every device of art at her command, and hurried through the secret door to visit the wounded captive whom she held in durance vile.
Pale and wan, but exceedingly handsome still, Eliot Van Zandt lay upon a velvet lounge, his fair Saxon beauty thrown into strong relief by the dressing-gown of dark-blue silk that madame's care had supplied.
At the entrance of the superbly dressed and handsome woman, his dark brows met with a heavy frown.
"I gave orders, Madame Lorraine, that you should not be admitted again!" he exclaimed, with the frank petulance of convalescence.
Madame gave her graceful head an airy toss.
"No one can debar me from the privilege of entering any room in my own house," she replied, coolly.
"Your own house?" starting.
"Precisely," with a maddening smile; and for at least two minutes a dead silence reigned in the room that, with its swinging-lamp burning brightly, presented the appearance of night, although it was midday outside.
Then he exclaimed, angrily:
"I had already become convinced that there was something mysterious in my sojourn here. I have found out that I am in an underground apartment from which there is no apparent egress. I know that no living soul but yourself and your servant has been near me since I was ill. Am I, then, your prisoner?"
Smilingly, she replied:
"Do not call it by so harsh a word. It is true that you are in my house, hidden in an underground apartment; but it was for your own good that I brought you here. You had fatally wounded Remond, and the authoritieswere after you. I—I love you," falteringly. "I could not give you up to justice. So you are here—a prisoner, if you will, but a beloved and well cared-for one."
"Yes, I have received skillful care and attention from your servant. I thank you," very stiffly; "but now I am well, I desire to go."
"I am suspected of harboring you. My house is watched by officers of the law. Should you go out, you would be instantly arrested.Mon Dieu! that must not be!"
She looked at him with tender, pleading eyes.
He answered, curtly:
"If I have hurt Remond, I am willing to answer to the law for my crime committed in the defense of the weak and the helpless. I have no wish to shirk my punishment. You understand me now, and you will let me go. I demand my release!"
Clasping her jeweled hands together in pretended despair, she exclaimed:
"But, good Heaven!mon ami, I can not let you be so reckless. Think a moment what will happen if they take you into custody. If the man dies, you may be—hung!"
"I take all the risk; only show me the way out of my hated prison!" he exclaimed, impatiently; and, with sudden passion, Mme. Lorraine answered, boldly:
"Then, by Heaven, I will not! There is but one way by which you can ever leave this room, whose existence is known to no human being but Mima, myself, and you."
She saw him grow deathly pale to the roots of his hair, as he asked, with pretended coolness:
"And that way, my darling jailer?"
With something like a blush struggling through the cosmetics that covered her face, she replied firmly, although in a low voice:
"As my husband."
There was an awkward silence; the man was blushing for her; the dark-red flush went up to the roots of hishair; she saw it, and bit her lips. At last he said, with cool disdain:
"You have already a husband in an insane asylum."
She interrupted, eagerly:
"No, no—not my husband. I am free—that is, I was divorced by law from him years ago."
She came nearer; she flung herself, with a rustle of silk and heavy waft of patchouli, down by his side on the sofa. Looking up into his face with burning eyes, she exclaimed, wildly:
"Do not look so coldly and scornfully upon me! Since you came to New Orleans, you have changed all my life. I never loved before. I married Monsieur Lorraine for wealth and position, without a single heart-throb for the man. But you I love, you I have sworn to win. What is there unreasonable about it, that your eyes flash so proudly? You are handsome, it is true, but I also am beautiful. You are gifted, but you are poor, while I am rolling in wealth. I can take you from your drudging life and make your existence a dream of luxury and ease. That is generous, is it not? But you have bewitched me; you have changed all my nature; you have taught me to love."
"I never tried to do so," he replied, with unmoved coldness.
"Cold-hearted Yankee! have you no feeling, no pity?" she demanded, reproachfully. "Look at me fairly," plucking impatiently at his sleeve. "Am I not fair enough to teach you to love me?"
"No," he answered, curtly, shrinking from her touch, but looking straight into her impassioned eyes with cold, unmoved gray orbs.
"Perhaps you already love some one else?" she burst forth, jealously.
"No," in a cold, incisive voice.
A low laugh of triumph broke from her, and she exclaimed:
"Then I will not give you up. You shall be my husband."
He gave her an angry stare, but she continued, unheeding:
"To-night I leave New Orleans with my servant Mima. I have my reasons for this step.N'importe; they concern not you. I have made up my mind to be your wife, to bear your name, to go home with you to Boston. If you say the word, a priest shall be brought within the hour to make us one. Then we can escape together to-night and fly this fatal city which now holds imminent danger for you. Do you consent?"
He looked with his cold, disconcerting gaze full into her eyes.
"What if I refuse?" he queried.
"You are a Yankee all over—you answer one question with another," she said, with a faint, mirthless laugh. "But my alternative is so bitter I shrink from naming it. Tell me, are you going to make me your loving wife?"
"I would die first!" he responded, with passionate emphasis.
She looked up at him, pale with wrath and mortification, and hissed, angrily:
"You have chosen well, for it will come to that—to—to death!"
"You would murder me?" he exclaimed, with a start; and she answered, defiantly:
"If you can not be mine, no one else shall ever have your love or your name. If you persist in refusing my generous offer, I shall go away from here with Mima to-night; but I shall leave you in this cellar to starve and to die, and to molder into dust until the story of your mysterious disappearance that night has been forgotten of men."
"You could not be so inhuman!" he uttered, with paling lips.
"I can, and I will," laughing mockingly. "Take your choice now, monsieur—my time is limited. Shall it be love—or—death?"
With ineffable scorn, although his handsome features had waned to a marble pallor, he replied, in a voice of proud disdain:
"Such love—the love of a guilty, wicked woman like you, Madame Lorraine—leaves one no choice but death!"