He never forgot the glare of rage the angry woman fixed upon him for a moment.
Her eyes fairly blazed as she hissed, vindictively:
"You have made your choice, and mine is the last human face you will look upon. A few days of isolation in this dreary chamber, without food or drink, and you will go mad with horror and die of starvation. Adieu, monsieur. I wish youbon voyageto Hades!"
She made him a mocking courtesy, and swept to the door, tearing it open with such impetuous haste that the listener outside had no time to step aside, only to spring up wildly and confront the angry woman, who immediately uttered a shriek of horror and fled up the narrow stair-way, disappearing through the secret door in an incredibly short space of time.
In the darkness of the narrow passage she had taken the pale-faced, wild-eyed girl for a visitant from the other world, and had fled in fear and terror from the supposed ghostly presence.
In her terror she had forgotten to shut the door upon Van Zandt, and with starting eyes he witnessed the strange scene. For an instant he fancied, like Mme. Lorraine, that it was a spirit standing there in the gloom of the narrow passage, with face and form like that of the dead little Mlle. Nobody. Then reason came to his aid. He sprungfrom the sofa, and just as the secret door shut behind the frightened madame, he caught the girl's cold hand and drew her into the room.
"Oh, my little ma'amselle! So that wicked woman lied when she told me that you were dead!" he exclaimed.
She answered, vivaciously:
"No; for I have been dead and buried since I saw you, Monsieur Van Zandt. Don't you see that Madame Lorraine took me for a ghost? It was very fortunate for me, was it not?" and soft, sweet trills of laughter bubbled over her lips.
In her joy at finding him again, she forgot hunger, fear, and weariness.
And in her excitement and exhilaration she rapidly poured out all that had happened to her since that night, nearly two weeks ago, when he and Carmontelle had so ably prevented her abduction by Remond.
He listened in deepest interest; and if Mme. Lorraine could have seen the joy that sparkled in his expressive eyes, she would have felt like plunging a dagger into the white breast of the girl who had brought that joy there by her return, as it were, from the dead.
He laughed with her at the idea of Mme. Lorraine having fooled herself so cleverly in imagining Little Nobody a ghost.
"But you must not call me Little Nobody any longer. I am Marie now," she said, brightly.
"It is a sweet, pretty name," he replied; "but I wish I had been permitted to choose your name. It should have been something else—something unique, like yourself."
She did not know what the word unique meant. She looked at him curiously.
"What would you have called me?" she queried.
"Perhaps I will tell you some day," he replied, with an odd little sigh; and then he changed the subject by tellingher how glad he was that she had been saved from death, and how thankful that she had come to save him from the tortures of death by starvation.
The dark eyes sparkled with eager joy.
"Ah, how pleasant it is to have a friend!" she said, naïvely. "First you saved me, now I am going to save you. I heard everything she said to you. Oh, how cruel and wicked she is! And it must be dreadful," shuddering, "to starve! I can fancy some of its horrors, for, do you know, Monsieur Van Zandt, I am very hungry now? I have had no supper nor breakfast."
"Poor child!" he exclaimed, and glanced at a covered waiter on a stand that contained the remains of his late breakfast. He drew off the dainty napkin, and she saw delicate rolls, broiled chicken, cold ham, preserves, fresh strawberries, chocolate and coffee, the whole flanked by a bottle of sherry.
"I had no appetite for my breakfast, and Mima did not come back to remove the tray," he said. "Dare I offer you the remains of the repast? The chocolate is cold, but I drank none of it; I preferred coffee. Likewise, the broiled chicken is untouched—in fact, I eat nothing but a roll."
"You shall see that I will do more justice to the fare than that," she laughed; and sitting down by the tray, she made a substantial meal, after which she declared herself much strengthened.
It was very pleasant to have this bright, hopeful young creature with him, in lieu of the loneliness and the cruel fate to which Mme. Lorraine had doomed him. He listened with interest to her pretty plans for his release. She told him how, in her drugged sleep, she had beheld him in this very room, attended by the big, ugly, but skillful Mima.
"Heaven must have sent you that vision," he said, with fervent gratitude. "Oh, how glad I am that I shall gofree again into the world! I have sweet, young sisters little older than you, my child, who would grieve for me were I to die like this. Are you sure, quite sure, that you possess the secret of the opening of the hidden door?"
Marie started.
"It must be the same as that of the outside—must it not, monsieur?" she queried, with a confident air.
"I am not sure, but I hope it is," he replied, with a sudden dawning anxiety.
"I will go and see at once," she exclaimed, starting toward the door.
"No, no," he said, and held her back.
"But why?" she asked, turning on him her pretty, puzzled face.
With a smile, he answered:
"Do you not see that it would not be safe to venture to open the door while our enemies remain in the house? We must wait patiently here until night—until they are gone away. Then we shall be able to effect our escape unmolested."
He spoke more cheerfully than he felt. A strange dread was upon him. What if they should not be able to open the door at the head of the cellar stair-way?
What if he were indeed hopelessly immured within this prison, the life of the girl forfeited to the bravery and daring that had led her to seek and save him?
"Oh, I could bear it like a man, alone, but for her to perish under the slow agony of starvation—Heaven forbid it!" he groaned, but breathed not a word of his fears to the girl who was full of hope and eager expectancy, looking eagerly forward to the hour of their release.
In spite of his anxiety, he spent a not unpleasant day in the society of Marie. She was so lovely and so unique, in her total ignorance of the world, that she had a subtle charm for the man inured to the conventionalities of society. Then, too, she was constantly exciting his wonderby the general correctness of her language, although he knew that she was totally uneducated. But he easily accounted for this by recalling the fact that she had been brought up in constant contact with Mme. Lorraine and her visitors, and so unconsciously acquired the habit of correct speaking.
"What a contrast she is to that wicked woman!" he thought, looking admiringly at the eager, earnest, mobile face, so innocently frank, all the feelings of her pure soul mirrored in her limpid eyes. Recalling madame's story that the girl was low-born, he frowned, and said angrily to himself:
"I do not believe it. She has nothing low about her. There is some mystery about her origin, and Madame Lorraine does not choose to reveal it, that is all."
Certainly, no girl born with the blood of a hundred earls in her veins could have had better instincts or more innate refinement than this Little Nobody. She was innocently frank, but she was also charmingly shy and modest. She was child and woman exquisitely blended:
"Standing with reluctant feetWhere the brook and river meet,Womanhood and childhood flee."
"Standing with reluctant feetWhere the brook and river meet,Womanhood and childhood flee."
Although she had been overjoyed at finding the reported dead man alive, she had been very undemonstrative in her joy. She had not offered him a single caress, such as one so young might have done; she had not even seated herself near him. She contented herself with looking at him across the breadth of the room, not as one afraid, but with a perfectly natural reserve, and she preserved this frank, unembarrassed demeanor throughout the whole day, which did not seem long to either, although dinner and supper were among the things that were not. Neither one remembered it, neither one was conscious of any sensation of hunger.
"But how are we to know when night comes? It is always night down here," he said.
"It was about midday when I followed Madame Lorraine down here. Have you a watch?" she asked.
"Yes; and I have never permitted it to run down since I came here. It is now twenty minutes to four o'clock," he said.
"Then it is now afternoon. By and by, when the watch tells us it is nightfall, I will creep up the steps and listen for sounds in the hall. When I hear them go away, it will be the signal for us to open the secret door and escape," she said.
At eight o'clock, with her ear pressed against the secret paneled door, she heard mistress and maid going through the hall to the front door. It opened and shut. Marie heard distinctly the loud click of the key in the lock outside. They had gone, leaving their victim to perish, as they thought, by the slow pangs of starvation.
Van Zandt was close by her side; she turned to him eagerly.
"I have been feeling the door in the dark for a knob like that on the outside, but I can not find it," she said. "The surface seems perfectly smooth, not carved as on the outside. Will you bring the lamp, monsieur, and let us search for it?"
With a sinking heart, he obeyed her request, detaching the swinging-lamp from its bronze frame and taking it up the dark stair-way in his hand. Even then, in his eager anxiety, his artistic eye took note of the gleam of the light on the girl's picturesque masses of red-gold hair, as it waved in silken luxuriance over her shoulders.
Marie did not see Van Zandt's eyes looking admiringly at her beautiful hair.
She was gazing with eager eyes at the narrow door that had shut her in with him whom she had dared so much to find and save.
She saw with some dismay that its inner surface was just what it had appeared when she had moved her fingers over it in the dark—perfectly smooth, without seam, knob, or lock, and no apparent way of moving it from its place.
Van Zandt gave her the lamp to hold, and put his shoulder to the immovable door, but his whole strength availed nothing against its grim solidity.
Then he spent an anxious hour trying the steps and the sides of the door in an effort to find its mysterious open sesame.
Not an iota of success rewarded his frantic efforts.
But he would not give way to despair.
"I shall have to cut our way out," he said. "But, as I have no hatchet, it will be slow work with my jack-knife. You may have to hold that lamp for hours, ma'amselle, while I whittle a hole in the door big enough for you to creep through."
"That is nothing. I shall not be tired," she replied, bravely.
But she was not called upon for this exhibition of patience.
The first few strokes of the knife revealed to him the appalling fact that the inside of the door was not of wood, but iron—iron so heavily coated with thick paint that it had cleverly deceived the superficial touch.
Then indeed she caught a gleam of trouble in his eyes—trouble that was almost despair. Her own face paled, and a sigh of dismay escaped her lips.
When he heard it, he forced a smile.
"Do not be frightened; we will find some other way," he said.
And they went back to the room and searched the walls carefully to see if there was any weak spot by which theymight effect an escape. Windows there were none, and the ventilation of the room had been cleverly effected by pipes that were let into the ceiling above. The walls around were damp and cool, showing that they were built into the earth; but they were thick and heavy, and Van Zandt's jack-knife made no impression on the heavy oaken planks beneath the handsome wall-papering.
Two hours were spent in this vain quest for means of egress from their prison, and drops of dew beaded the young man's face. He was weak from his illness and from the fast that had lasted all day, and sat down at last to rest and to think what he should do next.
"Oh, how tired and weak you must be! I am so sorry I eat your breakfast! I shouldn't have done so, but I thought we should get out of here directly!" exclaimed the girl, regretfully.
She brought him the wine and poured out a glass, which she forced him to taste. It ran warmly through his veins, and courage returned to him again.
"Now, no more for me," he said, pressing back the little hand that offered the second glass. "Drink that yourself ma'amselle, and we must keep the rest for you, for we can not tell how long it may be before we get out of this."
"I do not need it; I am strong enough without it," she replied, and replaced the untouched glass on the stand. Then she saw him looking at her with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.
"I have a new thought," he said. "Perhaps if we could make ourselves heard from down here, some one might come to our relief. Let us halloo, ma'amselle, with all our might."
It would have been ludicrous if it had not been so pitiful to hear them shouting in concert at the top of their voices. Indeed, they paused now and then to look at each other with laughing eyes, and to pant with exhaustion from theirefforts, but the shouting was kept up at intervals until Van Zandt's watch recorded the hour of midnight.
Then he said, wearily:
"There is no help for it. We shall have to pass the night here, I suppose."
He opened the door and began to push his sofa out into the narrow little passage.
"What are you going to do?" Marie asked him, with large eyes of wonder.
"I am simply converting this passage into a temporary bedroom for myself," he answered. "Good-night, Ma'amselle Marie; I leave you my room and bed. Lie down and rest, and in the morning we will try to devise some new plan for our escape."
He opened and shut the door, and Marie was alone. She threw herself wearily on the luxurious bed, and in spite of hunger and thirst and terror, slept heavily for hours.
When she awakened, she felt sure that day must be far advanced. She found a large pitcher of water and poured out some into a basin and bathed her face and hands. Then she peeped out into the dark passage for Van Zandt.
He was sitting up composedly on his sofa, as if he had been awake for hours.
"Oh, dear, monsieur, I have kept you out in the dark for hours! Come in," she exclaimed; and he accepted the invitation with alacrity, pushing in his convenient sofa before him.
Laughingly, he said:
"I began to think you were a second Rip Van Winkle, Ma'amselle Marie;" and, holding out his watch to her, she saw that it was near the middle of the day.
"Oh, how lazy I have been! Forgive me!" she cried, vexed with herself. "You must have been very tired waiting out there in the dark?"
"No, for I was at work trying to find the secret springof the iron door, but I only wasted my time and strength," he replied, sadly.
"Oh, what are we going to do?" she burst out, in sudden terror.
"That is what I was asking myself at intervals all through the night," said Eliot Van Zandt. "Oh, my child—my brave little girl! what would I not give if only you had not followed Madame Lorraine into this fatal prison! I could suffer alone with a man's fortitude, but for you to share my fate is too dreadful!"
His voice broke and his eyes grew strangely dim. She answered, with pretty gravity:
"It was through your goodness to me that you were first betrayed into her power; and if you have to suffer for it, I want to suffer, too. We are friends, you know. But we must not give up hope yet. I am more sorry than ever that I eat your breakfast; but take a little of the wine, and it will strengthen you."
"After you," he replied, seeing that she would not be satisfied without seeing him take some. He held the glass to her lips, and she swallowed a few drops under protest. He went through the same form, saying to himself that he must save it all for her, for there was nothing else between her and utter starvation.
"What shall we do next? Halloo again?" she asked, with a smile.
"I do not believe my lungs are strong enough to go over that ordeal again. The wound in my breast is not quite healed over yet," he said. "But suppose we sing instead?"
"I do not know how to sing," she answered.
"Very well; I shall have to do all the singing," he replied, good-humoredly. "And, do you know, I think it is a rather good idea to sing, for who knows but it may penetrate to the street, and if it be known that Madame Lorraine be gone away, curiosity may lead some one to investigateinto the cause of the mysterious noise, and then we may be found."
"Oh, how clever you are! Do begin at once!" she exclaimed, with a hopeful light in her dark eyes.
"I will," he replied; and somehow the first song that came to his mind was a sweet, sad love song he had been used to sing with his fair young sisters in the far-off Northern home he loved so well:
"In days of old, when knights were bold,And barons held their sway,A warrior bold, with spurs of gold,Sung merrily his lay:'My love is young and fair,My love hath golden hair,And eyes so bright and heart so trueThat none with her compare;So what care I, tho' death be nigh,I'll live for love or die!'"So this brave knight, in armor bright,Went gayly to the fray;He fought the fight, but ere the nightHis soul had passed away.The plighted ring he woreWas crushed and wet with gore;Yet ere he died he bravely cried:'I've kept the vow I swore;So what care I, tho' death be nigh,I've fought for love, and die—For love I die!'"
"In days of old, when knights were bold,And barons held their sway,A warrior bold, with spurs of gold,Sung merrily his lay:'My love is young and fair,My love hath golden hair,And eyes so bright and heart so trueThat none with her compare;So what care I, tho' death be nigh,I'll live for love or die!'
"So this brave knight, in armor bright,Went gayly to the fray;He fought the fight, but ere the nightHis soul had passed away.The plighted ring he woreWas crushed and wet with gore;Yet ere he died he bravely cried:'I've kept the vow I swore;So what care I, tho' death be nigh,I've fought for love, and die—For love I die!'"
The girl's beautiful eyes looked at the singer, dark and grave with the strange emotions swelling at her heart. She had heard Mme. Lorraine and the men from the Jockey Club sing their best, but it had not affected her like this. A strange, sweet awe stole over her, mixed with a buoyancy and lightness that was thrilling and yet solemn. With the strange, new sensation there came to her a sudden memory of the chapel at Le Bon Berger, and the soft,murmuring voices of the nuns at prayer. She felt like praying.
He looked at her curiously, and she said, with child-like directness:
"I can not sing, but the nuns at the convent taught me how to pray. I will pray to the good God, and perhaps He will hear me and save us."
The next minute she had thrown herself down by a chair, bowed her golden head on her hands, and a low, soft murmur of prayer filled the room. He hesitated a moment, then went and knelt down by her side, and his deeper, stronger voice filled the room with a strong, manly petition for help and pity.
Then he did not feel like singing again for awhile, so sweet and deep an awe pervaded his mind. Marie sat opposite, her tiny hands folded in her lap, a lovely seriousness on her piquant face.
By and by he sung again, but this time it was one of the solemn chants, such as might be heard in the choirs of the old cathedrals.
The day wore on like this, and the night fell again, with no sign that the persistent singing had attracted any attention from the outer world.
Sadly enough, and with many grim forebodings, Van Zandt wheeled his sofa again into the narrow passage for his night's rest. As he bid her good-night, Marie said, sadly:
"The oil is getting low in the lamp. I will extinguish it to-night if you have a match to light it in the morning."
He was fortunate enough to find a little match-case in his pocket filled with matches that he carried for lighting his cigars; so Marie extinguished the lamp until morning, and they turned on a very dim light that day, for they feared that they should soon be left in total darkness. To-day, also, the last of the wine was used, Marie insisting that they should share alike, for both began to feel the deathly weakness of hunger paralyzing their energies.The singing at intervals was still persevered in, although Van Zandt's voice began to fail strangely from the weakness of hunger and illness. Hope failed him, too, as this, the third day of their mutual imprisonment waned to a close, and he regretted bitterly that he had allowed Marie to force him to take a share of the precious sherry.
Faint and fainter waxed the light, and the two victims of Mme. Lorraine's malignity began to realize that the horrors of Cimmerian darkness were about to be added to those of starvation and isolation.
"Sing something," said Marie, from the depths of the arm-chair where she was resting.
He fancied that her voice sounded strange and faint, and his heart sunk heavily. He wished again that the poor child had never ventured into this horrible trap from which there seemed to be no release but death. But he had already wished it a hundred times before—alas, to no avail!
"Sing," she murmured again, sadly. "See, the light is almost gone, but it will not seem so dreary when you sing."
He said to himself that he would be willing to sing until the last breath left his lips, could he but lighten one pang of the suffering girl whose devotion to him had brought down such a cruel fate upon her head.
So, although his throat was sore, his head dizzy, and his heart like lead in his breast, he sung feebly, but bravely, a song that yesterday she had said she liked. It was sweet; but sad. He had no heart for gay ones now:
"Out in the country, close to the road-side,One little daisy there chanced to grow;It was so happy there in the sunshine—No one the daisy's joy could know;Watching the white clouds, hearing a song there,List'ning in wonder all day long.'Oh,' said the daisy, 'had I a song-voice,Yonder forever I'd send my song.'"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,While all the world stood still to hear,Many a maiden looked from her knitting,And in her heart there crept a tear.Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,Sung to it only songs of love;Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,Turning its sweet face to heaven above."Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow,Captured the lark, and life grew dim,There, too, the daisy, torn from the way-side,Prisoned and dying, wept for him.Once more the lark sung; fainter his voice grew;Her little song was hushed and o'er;Two little lives gone out of the sunshine,Out of this bright world for evermore."
"Out in the country, close to the road-side,One little daisy there chanced to grow;It was so happy there in the sunshine—No one the daisy's joy could know;Watching the white clouds, hearing a song there,List'ning in wonder all day long.'Oh,' said the daisy, 'had I a song-voice,Yonder forever I'd send my song.'
"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,While all the world stood still to hear,Many a maiden looked from her knitting,And in her heart there crept a tear.Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,Sung to it only songs of love;Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,Turning its sweet face to heaven above.
"Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow,Captured the lark, and life grew dim,There, too, the daisy, torn from the way-side,Prisoned and dying, wept for him.Once more the lark sung; fainter his voice grew;Her little song was hushed and o'er;Two little lives gone out of the sunshine,Out of this bright world for evermore."
He paused and looked at her in the dim light. The young face was very pale, the dark eyes hollow with purple rings around them.
"I would give the world, were it mine, for food for this dying child!" he thought, in bitter anguish.
With a languid smile and in childish innocence, she said:
"I like your little song, Monsieur Van Zandt. Do you know, I think it suits us two? You are the lark, and I the little daisy. And—and—we need not hope any longer, I am afraid. We will soon be gone out of life, like the lark and the little daisy."
The last words were so faint as to be scarcely audible. Her eyes had closed while she uttered them, and now the golden head fell languidly against the back of her chair.
With a cry of alarm, Eliot Van Zandt sprung to her side, and discovered, to his dismay, that she was quite unconscious.
"Unconscious, and not a drop of wine or water with which to revive her—not even a breath of fresh air, though the whole world is so full of it!" he murmured, in despair.
He flew to the water-pitcher in a wild hope, and found there a few spoonfuls which he had begged her to drink in the morning. She had pretended to do so, but here it was untouched. So terrible was his own thirst that his heart leaped at sight of it, but not for worlds would he have appropriated even one small drop from his companion in misery.
Hastily pouring it into a glass, he pressed it against her lips, moistening them gently until they parted, and a few drops of the precious fluid passed between them and down her parched throat. A sigh heaved her breast, and her eyes unclosed.
Eliot Van Zandt cried out in joy and relief, and laying her head back against his arm, he gently forced her to swallow the remainder of the water. It acted like a charm, for withdrawing her head from his arm, she sat upright, and said, in a weak voice:
"I kept the water for you; I did not want to drink it."
"Nonsense, child; I am strong, and did not need it," lightly. "But do you feel better now?"
"Much better; but I think I will lie down, monsieur, I feel so tired. Is it bed-time yet?" trying to smile.
He looked at his watch by the light that was so feeble now that he could scarcely see the hands moving across its face.
"Yes, it is bed-time. It is past ten o'clock," he said; then, with hesitation: "Are you not too sick for me to leave you, child? I can sit here and watch you while you sleep."
Within himself he thought sadly that the conventionalities of the world were out of place now, when both were hovering on the border of the Unknown Land. Why not sit beside the dying girl and soothe her last sad hours?
But with a pensive smile she answered:
"No; go to your rest, dear friend. I shall do very well alone, but if I feel ill again I will call you."
Thus dismissed, he wheeled his sofa, as usual, into the dark and gloomy little passage outside the door. Then, lingering to press the little hand and say good-night more tenderly than ever in the presentiment that weighed upon him, she startled him by a shrill, frightened cry:
"Oh!"
The light had given one expiring flare and gone out, leaving them in darkness.
"Are you afraid? Shall I leave my door ajar?" he asked, gently.
"No, no," she answered, quickly.
"Very well, then; but I shall not go to sleep. I shall lie awake to guard you from any fancied danger," he said; and sighed, knowing that there was nothing to fear save the grim, gaunt hunger-wolf.
He struck a match that he might smile once more, sadly but tenderly, into the pale, patient face. She smiled bravely in return.
"My good friend, good-night," she said gently; and with a sigh he left her to hold a patient, wakeful vigil outside her door.
Hours passed without a sound from the dark, inner chamber, where Marie lay huddled among the pillows in feverish sleep. At last, dizziness and weariness fairly conquered him; his head drooped to the arm of the sofa, and he, too, slept.
It seemed scarce a minute since his heavy eyes had shut before he started up with a confused cry. Had some one called his name?
Some sort of a sound certainly echoed in his ears; it resolved itself intohervoice.
Marie's voice calling out loud and strange and incessant, with incoherent words. He tore open the door wildly and struck one of his precious matches.
She lay there among the pillows, with vacant, wide-open eyes fixed on the ceiling, babbling in wild delirium of cool springs and fountains, of summer showers, of falling dew, her parched lips panting with fever.
"Oh, my God! if the world were mine, I would give it for one draught of water for my suffering little darling!" he cried aloud, with the agony of a man's heart driven to bay.
The dim flame of the match died into darkness again, and he stood by the bed, holding her hot little hand in his, listening in agony to her delirious ravings.
"This is the cruelest hour of my life!" he muttered. "Death, when it comes, will not be half so bitter."
By the aid of another match he looked at his watch. It was five o'clock, and outside he knew that the day was near its dawn; but within the chamber where he watched by the side of the dying girl all was thick darkness and gloom, and his stock of matches was running so low that he dared not light one as often as he wished.
Agonized thoughts kept him grim company while he stood listening to her ravings for water to cool her poor parched tongue and lips.
Soon she would be dead, and her harrowing sufferings all over. Then he would be alone with the dead girl until death mercifully came to his release. Here they would lie, uncoffined and unburied for years, moldering into dust, their cruel fate forever hidden from men. In his far-off home his sisters would grieve for him awhile, then he would be forgotten.
The tiny flame of another match flared into the air atsix o'clock. Her ravings had ceased, the hot flush had left her face, the little palms were cool again. She lay with wide-open eyes upon the pillow, breathing faintly—so faintly that he looked for every breath to be her last.
In the anguish of that thought, a wild temptation came to him. Somewhere he had read that debilitated invalids were strengthened and restored to health by drinking the fresh, warm blood of newly slaughtered beeves.
He tore open the blade of his knife and desperately punctured a vein in his arm. The hot, red blood spurted like a fountain, and he caught it in the wine-glass until it was full.
A handkerchief bound tightly about his arm stopped the bleeding of the wound, and, with some difficulty in the darkness, and shuddering with weakness and emotion, he lifted Marie's head on his arm and pressed the glass to her lips.
He scarcely dared hope that she would have enough strength to swallow his strange medicine, but, to his joy, the dry lips parted and clung to the glass until every drop of the liquid had been drained, then, with a long sigh of relief, her head fell back, and he laid it gently on the pillow.
"Have I revived her, or—killed her?" he muttered, in a fright.
Another match. If it had been the last one, he must have one glimpse of her face now.
It lay pale, with shut eyes, and apparently lifeless, on the white pillow. He felt her pulse hurriedly. A feeble, thread-like pulsation assured him that life still lingered. He sat down sorrowfully in a chair by the bed, holding the pulse beneath his finger, waiting sadly for the last.
Seven o'clock by the light of the last match, and thepulse still throbbed softly, and, he almost dared to hope, more strongly.
"What does it mean? Has my experiment indeed given her a few more hours of life?" he wondered, gladly.
It seemed so, for the thread-like pulse gradually grew stronger, and bending down his head, he caught a faint but regular breathing.
"Marie," he said, softly, and a quickened breath that was almost a gasp assured him that she heard. "I am here by your side," he went on. "It is dark, and I have used all the matches, so I can not watch your face to see if you are better. Can you speak to me, dear?"
"Monsieur," she uttered, faintly, and his heart leaped with joy at the sound.
"You are better," he exclaimed, and she murmured a faint:
"Yes."
Then she seemed to fall asleep. He fought bravely against the deathly weakness that was stealing over him. A passionate prayer was in his heart:
"Lord, send us help before it is too late!"
Hours seemed to pass while he sat there in a strange half-stupor that most likely would merge into delirium, as hers had done. Oh, the gnawings of hunger, the pangs of thirst, how terrible they were!
"Yet, thank Heaven, I have lightened hers for a little while by the life-fluid I freely gave!" he muttered.
Suddenly, in the darkness, a little groping hand fell on his face.
"Are you there still?" asked Marie's voice, weak but clear.
"I am here still," he answered, taking the hand again in his own. The pulse was much better now. She continued, softly: "I feel stronger, but I was surely dying when you gave me the sweet, warm milk to drink. It putnew life in my veins, but—" she paused as if a new thought had struck her mind.
"Well?" he said, gently, and she answered:
"I can not imagine where you found the milk. I hope you had some, too. It is so reviving. Did you?"
"Yes, plenty," he replied, with a shudder, and she said:
"I am so glad. But how dreary it is all in the dark! Sing again, please."
It had seemed to him a minute ago that he was almost too weak to speak, but he made a great effort to please her, although he knew that it would exhaust his strength all the sooner. He sung with all the power that remained in his weak lungs. In the darkness and the gloom, the dear old hymn, learned at his mother's knee in childhood, sounded sweetly solemn:
"Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;When other helpers fail and comforts flee,Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!"Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes,Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain—"
"Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide,The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;When other helpers fail and comforts flee,Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!
"Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes,Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain—"
There was a sudden, swift break in the voice that soared upward to the pitying heavens—his strength had not given out, but something wonderful had happened.
From over their heads, and seeming to come through the small pipe provided to ventilate their darksome prison, had come the distinct sound of a human voice.
"Halloo!"
In almost the last hour, when hope had deserted them, and they hourly expected death, succor had arrived. Van Zandt's singing had attracted attention at last, and now help was at hand.
When that ringing halloo came down the ventilating pipe, he almost swooned with the suddenness of his joy and relief; and it was Marie, who, with a sudden accession of frantic joy, screamed shrilly back:
"Halloo!"
A voice came quickly back—a familiar voice:
"Who is down there?"
This time Van Zandt answered:
"Two prisoners—Eliot Van Zandt and a lady. We are starving, dying! For God's sake, cut a hole quickly through the floor, and come to our aid!"
"Ay, ay!" said a hearty voice that belonged to none other than Pierre Carmontelle; and then the iron will that had sustained Van Zandt through those four dreadful days gave way, and he fell in a heavy swoon to the floor.
Marie could only moan helplessly:
"Hurry, hurry! he has fallen down. I fear he is dead!"
With all the haste that several eager men could make, it was almost half an hour before a square opening appeared in the ceiling large enough to admit a man's body. Then a faint light streamed into the dark underground chamber, fairly dazzling Marie's weak eyes.
Several eager pairs of eyes looked down, but they could detect nothing yet, so intense was the gloom below.
"It is dark as Erebus," said a voice—Markham's, Marie thought. "Van Zandt, where are you?"
Marie answered, with a sob:
"He is down on the floor, but he is very still, and I fear he is dead from starvation."
A lantern at the end of a rope came quickly down the aperture. A man's body followed it quickly—Carmontelle!
He came up to the bedside and looked with amazement into the wan, sweet face of the girl.
"Mon Dieu, it is Little Nobody! But what does it mean? I thought you dead. I saw you entombed!"
But he had to wait for his answer, for Marie very provokingly fainted dead away, and he had to halloo to Markham above for water and wine.
"I think fresh air would do better than either just now," was the reply. "Peste! what a hot, musty smell comes up that hole! Take her in your arms, Carmontelle, stand on a chair, and hand her up to me."
As the ceiling was low, this plan was effected without much difficulty; and Markham took the slight figure in his arms and carried her out to the cool, green garden, where the last beams of sunset were glinting on the shining leaves of the orange-trees and the tinkling waters of the fountains. The cool air and the refreshing water soon brought her back to life and hope again.
But Van Zandt was longer in recovering. He had kept up the longer, but his collapse, when it came, had been more complete. They found that the wound on his breast was still unhealed, and that there was a mysterious fresh wound upon his arm. The bandage had been knocked off in his fall, and the blood was pouring out in a crimson tide.
They stanched the wound, and at last brought him around so that, with the aid of three men, he could be hoisted through the hole in the wall. He was too weak to answer questions at first, and it was not until the next day that they learned the particulars of his imprisonment by Mme. Lorraine.
They were inclined to chaff him considerably over the madame's fatalpenchantfor his handsome face, and he bore it with all the equanimity he could. Indeed, their mirth seemed pleasant, although directed against himself, after those four solemn days in that dark, underground prison.
But interesting as they found his romantic story, it wastame beside that of Little Nobody, who, having had a good night's sleep, nourishing food, and a good woman to watch and soothe her restless slumbers, was so much refreshed by the next morning that she could tell her strange story with far more vivacity than could Van Zandt, whose lungs, from his constant singing and hallooing without food for four days, had terribly taxed his strength and endurance.
"If you had come even one hour later, I fear it would have been too late for me," he said, with a somber look in his gray eyes.
But it was owing to his persistent singing that he had been rescued at last, for, although Carmontelle had never given up the search for him, he had not dreamed that the wounded man was concealed in madame's house, although it was believed that she was cognizant of his fate.
"And this is how we chanced to find you," he said. "It was determined to arrest Madame Lorraine upon suspicion of complicity with Remond in making away with you. Markham and I volunteered to come with the officers to serve the warrant. As repeated ringings elicited no response, we thought something was wrong, and forced an entrance."
"And then?" Van Zandt queried, curiously.
"Oh, then we found not a living soul in the house, and were in a little, stuffy back room, like a servants' bedroom, debating what to do next, when the sound of your unearthly singing made the hair rise upon our heads in terror. We thought at first that it was something supernatural, it sounded so sweet and strange, coming, as it seemed, from the bowels of the earth, but presently Markham said that Van Zandt was a fine singer, and a wild suspicion came to me. I looked about and found a pipe fixed cleverly into the wall to secure ventilation, as it seemed to me, to some cellar-like apartment. I put my mouth to the hole and hallooed down it as loud as I could."
"And thereby saved two lives that were almost ended. How can I ever thank you and bless you enough, Carmontelle!" Van Zandt exclaimed, with emotion.
Mme. Lorraine would have been chagrined indeed could she but have known what was transpiring in the house she had quitted so precipitately upon finding out that she was in danger of arrest upon suspicion of knowing the whereabouts of Eliot Van Zandt.
The despised Little Nobody was installed in madame's own luxurious chamber, with a capable elderly woman in attendance. Eliot Van Zandt occupied another room, equally elegant, and Carmontelle and Markham had also installed themselves temporarily in a guest-chamber. In the kitchen a temporary cook held sway until such time as the young journalist could be moved to his hotel. Just now he was prostrated on a bed of sickness, having suffered a relapse from the reopening of his wound through his exertions in hallooing and singing.
The cause of the slight wound upon his arm, which they had found freshly bleeding, he steadily declined to explain.
"It is a mere nothing—the scratch of a pen," he said, carelessly, and indeed it very soon healed. The wound on his breast was doing nicely, too, and he began to talk of leaving for home very soon—as soon as he was able to travel.
Carmontelle had written to his anxious sisters to calm their uneasy minds, and one day—it was a week after that tragic evening when he had rescued the prisoners—he held a very serious conversation with his friend over the subject of Little Nobody's future.
Van Zandt had sat up in an easy-chair that day for the first time, and Marie had come in to see him. She looked bright and well again, and the young man shuddered as hethought how near she had been to death that night in the underground prison.
"But for my timely thought, my terrible experiment, she must have been dead ere rescue came," he said to himself. "But she must never know. Perhaps she would shrink from me in horror did she but know the truth."
Carmontelle had been very quiet while she remained in the room. He had watched both narrowly. When she had gone, he said, gravely:
"Van Zandt, let us speak together as good men and true. Have you taken any thought for the little ma'amselle's future?"
Van Zandt started and grew a shade paler. He scarcely understood this abruptness, this seriousness.
"Her future?" he echoed, a little blankly. "I thought—I understood—that it was all planned out that night when we saved her. You were to educate her—afterward to make her your wife."
Carmontelle frowned, and said, sternly:
"Yes—but of course you understand that the plan is untenable now?"
He looked straight into Van Zandt's beautiful blue-gray eyes with such a meaning expression that in a moment there rushed over the young man's mind a comprehension of the truth. Flushing darkly, he exclaimed:
"Say no more. I understand you now," hoarsely; "you mean that—that noble child is—is compromised by her imprisonment with me those four long days?"
Carmontelle, with a fierce throb of jealousy at his heart, answered:
"Yes."
Then, after a moment's blank silence on both sides, he added, sighing heavily:
"Such is the cruel way of the world. For myself, Van Zandt, I know you are the soul of honor, chivalrous as themen of the South; and I can pay you no higher compliment than this. For her, I know she is pure as an angel. But—there is the cruel, carping world ready to point the finger of scorn always, and I—warmly as I love the girl—I could not have a bride of whom gossip could whisper even one blighting suspicion. The Carmontelles are very proud of their unblemished honor. I must not be the first to smirch it. I could have passed over her birth, her namelessness, for I could have given her my own proud name, and lifted her to my own station; but—this shadow from her misfortune in having shared your imprisonment is too dark for me to bear. My hopes are in ashes. Instead of being her husband, I must now claim the place of a father or a brother."
It was a long speech for Carmontelle, who did not ordinarily deal in long sentences. When it was finished he wiped the great drops of moisture from his brow and waited for Van Zandt to speak.
He did not have to wait long.
"I understand you," the young man said, with apparent quietude. "The generous child, by her nobility in coming to seek and to save me, sacrificed her own future. I must—marry her—to appease the proprieties."
With a quiver of pain and regret in his voice, Carmontelle said, gravely:
"Yes."
"I am ready to make her that poor reparation for all that she sacrificed for me," Van Zandt answered, instantly, and for a moment their hands met in a firm, close grip. Then the Southerner said sadly:
"My God, there is no other way, or I could not give up the sweet hopes that for a few hours delighted my soul. But we have talked it over at the club—my friends and hers—and have all agreed that since the whole affair was so widely known, there could be no other way out of it in honor for that poor child than by marriage with you. VanZandt, you look strange! Do you take it so hard, then? Great Heaven! can it be that you have some prior engagement?"
"I am free—except from the claims of two young sisters, and the trammels of poverty," Van Zandt answered, quietly.
"Poverty, yes, I had thought of that; but she shall not be a burden to you. I am rich, very rich. I will pay the poor child's dowry. I will make it forty thousand dollars, and when I die she shall be my heiress."
"Stop!" Eliot Van Zandt said, with the first sternness he had shown. "You mistake me, Carmontelle; I will take no dowry with my young bride, save her own innocence and beauty."
"But I claim the right—"
"And I refuse to admit it."
And they looked stubbornly into each other's eyes.
Then Van Zandt said, sternly:
"I will have no one say that I was paid to take the girl of my choice. I am not rich, as you know, but I will toil harder now that I have such an object in life. She shall not go shabby or hungry, I promise you."
His voice was so full of feeling, despite its sternness, that Carmontelle was puzzled. He exclaimed:
"Your pride does you honor, Van Zandt. But—you said—the girl of your choice. I do not understand!"
Van Zandt hesitated, then said reluctantly:
"Believe me, I do not want to make you feel your loss more keenly by what I must now admit; but, Carmontelle, the reparation I must make to Ma'amselle Marie is not such that I need money to condone the sacrifice. I—I love her, although I have never dared own the truth to my own heart until this hour."
Through the breast of the elder man there went a pang of jealous pain, as he repeated, hoarsely:
"You love her?"
"Yes, since the first night I met her. But I scarcely dared own the truth to my own heart. What had I, the poor journalist, to do with that fair creature, whose beauty in itself was a rich dower? But now, when fate itself has given her to me, I can only rejoice."
"Rejoice, yes, that is best—much best," Carmontelle said, after a long, constrained pause. "It is best," he repeated again, more firmly.
"It was fate itself that gave her to me," Van Zandt said, solemnly; and in a burst of emotion he made clear the mystery of the wounded arm that had so puzzled his friend.
"She was dying, and I gave my own blood to save her life. It is my own life that leaps through her veins, that sends the light to her eyes, the color to her cheek. But it is my secret. She must never know."
"No, never; but by that noble sacrifice her life belongs to you, and I can be unselfish enough, Van Zandt, in my own disappointment, to wish that you may win her whole young heart!" Carmontelle exclaimed, lifted out of all selfish regrets by this strange revelation.
And then they planned it all out before Van Zandt lay down to rest, taking Marie's consent for granted—Marie, the simple, ignorant girl who could not have told you to save her life what those two words, love and marriage, meant.
She was as innocent as a babe over many things, poor Little Nobody!
And, to do Van Zandt justice, he revolted at the thought of taking her, as it seemed, willy-nilly; but the world, the great wicked world, left him, as Carmontelle said, no other way.
"I should have liked to woo and win my bride in thesweet old fashion," he thought, regretfully; then, with a new idea: "And what is there to hinder? The words of the marriage service will be almost meaningless terms to her untutored mind. I will take no advantage of the claims it will give me. I will hold her as sacred as an angel until I shall win her heart as well as her hand. At home I will place her in the school-room with my sisters. She shall have culture equal to her beauty, and I will work for her and worship her in silence until the child becomes a woman and her heart awakes from sleep."
The very next day he said to her gently:
"Ma'amselle Marie, I shall be going home to Boston in two more days."
She cried out regretfully:
"Oh, I am sorry; I am afraid I shall never see you any more!"
"Will you go with me, dear, and be my little wife?"
"I will go with you, yes; but—your wife—I do not understand," she said, in a puzzled tone, just as he had expected she would.
"You would live with me always," he began. "You would belong to me, you would bear my name, you would do as I wished you, perhaps, and—"
"Ah, your slave?" she interrupted, intelligently.
Serious as he felt, he could not forbear a laugh; but he said, gently:
"Not my slave, but my love, my darling, my treasure. I would never beat you, nor scold you, nor make your life sad, as Madame Lorraine did. I would be very kind to you always. Now, will you be my wife?"
She replied, with childish frankness:
"Yes, I will be your wife and go with you to your home. Then, perhaps, I will understand better your word, 'wife.'"
He smiled and stooped to kiss her, but she drew backquickly, her innate shyness taking alarm. He did not press her, only said to himself:
"My shy little wild bird, her heart is yet to win."
It seemed to him the strangest thing he had ever heard of, this taking for a wife a young, untutored creature who actually did not understand what the words love, marriage, and wife meant.
He told Carmontelle later of his thought. The Southerner was amused at the ignorance of the lovely girl—amused and sorry in one breath, and with a sigh of regret, he said:
"Happy is he who shall have the pleasure of teaching her the meaning of those tender words."
It was arranged that the marriage should take place just prior to Van Zandt's departure from New Orleans. Van Zandt himself undertook to make Marie understand the necessity for the marriage service that would make her his wife. She acquiesced readily, and asked that Father Quentin, the old priest at Le Bon Berger, be permitted to perform the ceremony.
Her romantic fancy immediately invested the affair with a halo of romance.
"I shall be a bride," she said, naïvely. "In madame's fashion books there are brides all in white, with veils on their heads. I shall be dressed like that, and the marriage shall be out in madame's garden by moonlight. All the Jockey Club shall come to see, and the nuns from the convent, too, if they choose."
Van Zandt said it should be just as she liked. He employed Marie's good nurse to buy the simple white India muslin dress and tulle veil. Also a pretty gray serge dress and straw hat for traveling.
Carmontelle presented her with a full set of large, lustrous pearls to be worn at the ceremony, and the rest of the Jockey Club, who had, since the day of Marie's splendid riding, felt almost a proud proprietorship in her, contributeda great box full of costly wedding-gifts—jewels, costly dressing-cases, perfume sets, glove-boxes full of tiny kid gloves—everything, in short, that they could think of on the spur of the moment, even adding a big photograph-album in ivory and silver containing fac-similes of their familiar faces.
Father Quentin, only too glad to be forgiven for his treachery to Carmontelle, came to perform the ceremony and bless the wedded pair. But before this auspicious event a difficulty had arisen.
A marriage license must be procured; but what name should be written in it for the nameless girl, Mme. Lorraine's Little Nobody?
Pierre Carmontelle came quickly to the rescue.
"I adopt Marie as my daughter. I am quite old enough to be her father. Let the name be written Marie Carmontelle," he said.
And so as Marie Carmontelle she was given into the keeping of her handsome young husband.
Everything was arranged as she wished. The priest grumbled at the oddity of the whole thing, but she was married, all the same, out in the beautiful garden, by moonlight, with the sweet scent of flowers all about her, and her young face pale with excitement and strange emotion. The Jockey Club came in a body to witness the wedding, and some brought sisters and friends, who were all agog over the romance of the affair, and said that the bride was as lovely as a dream, and that that wicked Mme. Lorraine ought to have been ashamed of herself for her cruel treatment of one so beautiful and innocent. The girl who but a little while ago had been friendless and nameless had suddenly come into a heritage of hosts of friends and one of the proudest names of New England.
There was no wedding banquet. When the bride had been congratulated by everybody, and even kissed by some of the beautiful, warm-hearted ladies who had come towitness her strange marriage, her female attendant whisked her off upstairs to change her white dress for a traveling one; then, in a few more minutes, and with the sound of kind adieus in her ears, she was in a carriage riding away from all that her old life had ever known, except Eliot Van Zandt, who sat by her side, her shy little hand in his, and called her his wife.
Soon they were on board the steamer that rocked at the wharf, soon they were sailing away on the breast of the broad Mississippi, leaving behind the glimmering lights and busy life of the quaint Crescent City, homeward bound, and Eliot Van Zandt, who little more than two months since had entered the harbor of New Orleans, careless, gay, and fancy-free, was taking home a bride to his ancestral home. He had asked himself rather nervously several times what his brother and sisters would say.