CHAPTER XXV.
THE STORY OF PAULINE CORSI.
All things went on at the Villa Moraquitos as calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary course had happened. Camillia and her father met constantly and the Spaniard still displayed his absorbing love for his daughter; but, a few days after the scene in the gambling-house, he announced to her his intention of making Pauline Corsi his wife.
The young girl's surprise at this announcement knew no bounds. Nothing could have been more remote from her thoughts than the possibility of her father's marrying a second time.
She knew of his devotion to her mother—knew the anguish that had been caused to him by Olympia's early death, and to hear that he was about to wed the young and frivolous Frenchwoman filled her with bewilderment.
This, then, was the fulfillment of the ambitious hopes to which Pauline Corsi had alluded.
Being utterly without avarice or mercenary feelings of any kind, the announcement of her father's marriage gave no pain to Camillia.
On the contrary, it pleased her to think that he should win a companion for his declining days, and her only prayer was that Pauline might prove worthy of his affection, and might learn to make him happy.
Her innocent mind could little dream of the terrible secret which was involved in this intended marriage.
Again, she remembered that no doubt her fortune would be much reduced by this unlooked-for event; there would be, therefore, less objection to her union with Paul.
This thought filled her with hope, and she seemed to recognize the hand of Providence in the turn which events were taking.
But we must retrace our steps, in order to throw a light upon the timely appearance of Paul Lisimon, Captain Prendergills, and the sailor Joe, in the secret gambling-house in Columbia Street.
It will be remembered that Camillia Moraquitos had recognized the copper-colored visage of the sailor in the pit of the crowded Opera-house.
The beautiful Spanish girl had also been recognized by honest-hearted Joe, whose breast was overflowing with gratitude for the noble handful of dollars which she had only that morning given him.
The Amazon was anchored in the harbor of New Orleans, and Joe had been commissioned by Paul Lisimon to deliver the letter to Camillia, and had at the same time received his Captain's permission to take a night's holiday on shore.
With his pockets full of money the sailor was determined to enjoy himself, and, attracted by the blaze of lights and brilliant crowd, he strolled into the Opera-house.
Here, the entertainment being not very much to his liking, he amused himself by staring at the audience.
It was then he perceived Camillia Moraquitos. From the moment of recognizing her he scarcely ever took his eyes from the box in which she was seated. Was she not the sweetheart of his Captain's particular friend, the new first mate of the Amazon, and was it not therefore his duty to look after her?
He saw Augustus Horton leaning over Camillia's chair, and immediately set him down as an admirer of the lady, and a rival of Paul Lisimon.
By-and-by he saw the planter leave the box to order the carriage at the close of the performance.
Determined to watch to the last, he quitted the pit at the same moment, and reached the portico before the theater in time to see Augustus and Camillia into the carriage that was waiting for them.
He also heard the brief dialogue that passed between them at the door of the vehicle.
But the indignation of the honest sailor was unbounded when he saw Augustus take his seat in the carriage by the side of Camillia.
He thought that his Captain's new friend was betrayed, and immediately resolved to know the truth.
As the carriage drove off, he flung himself into the roadway, almost under the hoofs of the horses of other vehicles, in order to follow that which contained Camillia and the planter.
In this manner he pursued it until it turned out of the principal thoroughfare.
Then, favored by the obscurity of the street and the darkness of the night, he sprang forward, and, clambering like a monkey, contrived to seat himself on the board at the back of the vehicle.
He was sufficiently well acquainted with New Orleans to recognize the quarter through which they drove; and when the carriage stopped, he slipped noiselessly from his position, and, lurking in the shadow, watched Camillia and Augustus as they entered the gambling-house.
He saw enough to convince him that some description of treachery was on foot, and that, in any case, Paul Lisimon's happiness was in danger.
The carriage drove off without the black coachman having noticed Joe; and the sailor had ample time to examine the exterior of the house, and the street in which it was situated.
He recognized the locality as Columbia Street.
Then, without a moment's hesitation, he ran to the quay, and got a boat to convey him on board the Amazon.
Late as it was, neither Paul nor the Captain had retired to rest.
They were both seated in the cabin, with a pile of charts before them, and the young lawyer was taking a lesson in navigation.
Joe lost no time in relating what he had witnessed; and ten minutes afterward Paul Lisimon and Captain Prendergills were on shore.
The Captain knew the house on Columbia Street.
"Many a dollar have I lost within its accursed walls," he said, as the three men hurried through the deserted city; "but that's in our favor now, for the keepers of the house know me, and I know the trick of the door, which is a secret only confided to the habitual visitors of the house; so we shall get into the infernal den without any difficulty, and once in we'll find out what all this means, and whether Don Juan's daughter is deceiving you."
"She deceive me!" exclaimed Paul indignantly; "she is all truth, all purity; but if the man who was with her is he whom I imagine, she is the victim of treachery as vile as that from which I am a sufferer."
Thanks to Captain Prendergills, they had no difficulty in penetrating the mysterious building.
A man, seated in a little ante-room on the stairs took their hats from them, and told them which way to go to the gambling-saloons; but at the very moment they reached the top of the principal staircase the thrilling shriek of Camillia Moraquitos echoed through the house.
The ear of Paul Lisimon, sharpened by anxiety, told him whence this shriek proceeded. It came from a long corridor to their left.
They rushed down this corridor, and burst open the door at the end as a second shriek pealed through the building.
The result is already known to the reader.
The letter written by Silas Craig, which summoned Don Juan Moraquitos from the opera-box, was a part of the planter's base plot, and had been planned between him and the lawyer.
The business relations between Silas and Don Juan were so complicated that it was easy for the artful attorney to occupy the Spaniard in discussing them till long after midnight.
The two men sat talking till nearly three o'clock in that very apartment ornamented with the map of the United States, and communicating with the gambling-house in Columbia Street.
But the two houses were separated by a passage of considerable length, and Don Juan was too far from his beloved daughter to hear that terrible shriek of distress which alarmed every player at the gaming table.
Upon the day on which Silas Craig, accompanied by the limbs of the law, entered the house of Gerald Leslie, taking with him desolation and anguish, Pauline Corsi and Camillia Moraquitos were once more seated in the boudoir of the Spanish girl.
The Amazon had sailed from New Orleans, carrying Paul Lisimon away from danger of apprehension—away also from her he loved.
Matters were rapidly drawing toward a crisis—within a few days the French governess was to become the bride of Juan Moraquitos.
But the wealthy Spaniard had little of the aspect of a happy bridegroom.
He rarely entered the apartments of either his daughter or Pauline Corsi, but he spent his hours in gloomy meditation in his study, and admitted no one to his presence.
Camillia was cruelly distressed by this change, yet she dared not interrogate the haughty Spaniard.
Sometimes she imagined that he reproached himself for contracting a second alliance which might lessen his daughter's wealth.
"If he knew how little I care for the gold which others so value," she thought; "if he knew how happy I could be in the humblest home shared with those I love, he would not fear to rob me of a few thousand."
The confidence commenced between Camillia and Pauline upon the day of Augustus Horton's plotted defeat had never been discontinued, and it was to the Frenchwoman alone that Camillia looked for hope and comfort.
Strange anomaly of human nature! The ambitious and unscrupulous being who could stoop to purchase a wealthy husband by means of a vile and guilty secret, had yet some better feelings left.
Pauline loved her pupil—loved her with the light love of a selfish nature it is true, but it is something that one spark of affection remained in her perverted nature.
"You are sad, Camillia?" she said, as she looked up from her embroidery frame to watch the thoughtful face of the Spanish girl.
Camillia was seated with her hands lying idle in her lap, her eyes fixed vacantly upon the river, shining through the open window.
"You are sad, Camillia?" repeated Pauline.
Camillia aroused herself as if with an effort.
"Can I be otherwise," she said, "when I think of him? When I remember that he is away—I know not where—his name branded with disgrace, a wanderer and an outcast."
"Silly child! Have I not already told you that the day which crowns my ambition shall also crown your love?"
"Ah, Pauline! If I could but believe you!" sighed Camillia.
"And can you not believe me? Do I look like one who has no will to accomplish her wish? Look in my face, and see if there is one line that tells of weakness there."
Camillia raised her eyes to the face of her late governess with an earnest and wondering gaze.
Youthful as was that countenance, delicate as were the features and complexion, brilliant though the azure of the eyes, there was a look of decision, a glance of determination rarely seen in the faces of strong men.
There was a power for good or evil—terrible, incalculable, if employed for the latter—the power of a great intellect and an unyielding will.
"Pauline!" exclaimed Camillia, "You are an enigma."
"Not so," answered the governess, her clear blue eyes dilating, her lip quivering with suppressed emotion. "Not so, Camillia; I am an injured woman."
"Injured!"
"Yes. You, whose life has been smooth as yonder river, sleeping beneath the sunshine that gilds its breast—you have never known what it is to writhe beneath a sense of injury—to feel that your whole existence has been blighted by the crimes of others. There are wrongs that can transform an angel to a fiend; so do not wonder when you see me cold, heartless, ambitious, designing. My nature was poisoned by the events of my youth. I said that I would one day tell you my story. Shall I tell it you now?"
"Yes, Pauline, yes; if it is not painful to you."
"It is painful; but I feel a savage pleasure in the pain. I gnash my teeth at the remembrance of the old and bitter wrongs; but I love to recall them, for the thought of them makes me strong. Have you ever wondered at my past history, Camillia?"
"Never."
"I was born beneath a princely roof, cradled in the luxury of a palace; the man I called my father was a duke—the woman, whose gorgeous beauty smiled upon my infancy, was a duchess!"
"They were your parents?" exclaimed Camillia.
"I was taught to think so. They were of the Italian race, and sprang from one of the most powerful families of the South—a family whose pride had become a proverb throughout Italy.
"They had been married for some years, and had grown weary of hoping for an heir to the ancient name which, if they had died without posterity, would have become extinct. Disappointed in his hope of perpetuating his noble race, the duke had grown indifferent to his beautiful wife; nay, something worse than indifference had arisen—something bordering on dislike, which, in spite of his efforts, he was unable to conceal. The duchess came of a house almost as noble as that of her husband. She was a haughty and imperious woman, and she was not slow to perceive this change in the manner of the duke. She discovered that in the very prime of her youth and beauty she was despised by her husband. The bitterness of this discovery changed her very nature. Every day she grew more haughty, more exacting, more capricious. She shut herself from the gay world in which she had been admired, and abandoned herself to a mute but terrible despair."
"Poor woman, she suffered!" murmured Camillia.
"She did. She was wronged, but it did not make her more pitiful to others when their time of suffering came. It hardened her nature, and made her merciless, as all injustice must ever do. The duke observed this gloomy silence—this dumb despair. He could not restore to her an affection which he no longer felt; but he sought to revive her spirits by change of scene, and by those hollow pleasures which are the sole resource of the idle."
"Vain solace! Poor lady, she was indeed to be pitied."
"Ay, but her haughty soul would have rejected pity as the direst wrong. The duke left Italy, and took her to Paris, where, in the midst of the gay and frivolous, she might forget her domestic griefs; but in France, as in Italy, she refused to share in the pleasures of the world of rank and fashion, and obstinately shut herself in her own chamber."
"Yet she did not die! Strange that such sorrow could not kill!"
"Sorrow does not kill. Even her beauty suffered no diminution. It was still in the full splendor of its luxuriance, dark, proud, commanding, queen-like. Have you ever heard, Camillia Moraquitos, of the secrets of Paris? Have you ever heard of the mysteries of that wonderful city, in which almost every street has its secret known only to the initiated in the winding ways of civilized life? Three months after the arrival of the duke and duchess in Paris, an event occurred which changed the whole current of their lives."
"And that event was—"
"Apparently a very simple one; the lady's-maid of the duchess was a frivolous girl, who had herself been educated in France, but who had never before tasted the delights of the brilliant capital. She was intoxicated with rapture, and she ventured even to express her admiration for Paris in the presence of the young duchess. Amongst the other wonders of this marvelous city, Jeannette, as the girl was called, spoke of a fortune-teller who had related to her some of the events of her past life, and whom she looked upon as a powerful magician."
"But surely the duchess did not listen to this peasant girl's foolish babble."
"She did! Despair is, perhaps, terribly near akin to madness. She listened at first from pure abstraction, scarce heeding what she heard; but afterward eagerly. She asked the girl a thousand questions about this fortune-teller, and finally it was agreed upon between the mistress and maid that the woman should visit the duchess late on the following night, when the duke was absent at a political assembly, and all the servants of the establishment had retired to rest."
"Strange caprice!" exclaimed Camillia.
"Grief is sometimes capricious. The duchess doubtless, was ashamed of her own folly, but she wished to hear what this woman would say of the future, which seemed so dark. What if she were to prophesy the coming of an heir to that haughty house—an heir whose coming would restore all the power of the now neglected wife? The duchess passed the following day in a state of restless excitement, eager for the coming hour which would bring the fortune-teller.
"It was nearly midnight when Jeannette admitted the woman by a private door at the bottom of the grand staircase.
"There was something terrible in the look of the woman who crept with stealthy and silent tread over the luxurious carpets of that palace-like abode. She was old and haggard; her yellow skin disfigured by innumerable wrinkles; her gray hair falling in elf locks about her low and narrow forehead. Her small eyes were surrounded by red and inflamed circles, and almost hidden by the bushy eyebrows which projected over them. Her chin was fringed with terrible gray bristles; her mouth disfigured by two enormous teeth, which resembled the fangs of a wild beast. She was a creature calculated to inspire disgust and terror, and she seemed still more horrible by contrast with the elegance around her, as she entered the superb apartments of the duchess.
"There is little doubt that the maid, Jeannette, had told this woman all the secrets of her mistress. Her task, therefore, was an easy one. She described the troubles of the past, and foretold that, before the year had elapsed, a child would be born to the duke and duchess. On hearing this prophecy from the lips of a miserable impostor, the haughty Italian fell at her feet, and burst into an hysterical flood of tears.
"The woman saw in that moment the first foreshadowing of a future crime. A week afterward she came again at the same hour. This time she saw the duchess alone, and remained with her for so long a period that Jeannette's curiosity was excited. She contrived to overhear the interview.
"Once more the duchess seemed a transformed being. She no longer shut herself from the world. Gay and radiant she re-entered society; and in a few months the duke was informed that he would ere long become a father.
"On hearing this he was eager for an immediate return to Italy, in order that the infant might be born upon the soil which it was by and by to inherit; but the duchess had a strange caprice upon this point. She was determined not to leave Paris, and her husband could not bring himself to oppose her wishes at such a time.
"Within a twelvemonth from the first visit of the fortune-teller, a child was born and reared in the ducal mansion. I was that child. Caressed and indulged from my earliest infancy, nursed in luxury and elegance, I was happy, for I had much of the frivolous nature of my native Paris; but, child as I was, I knew that I was not beloved.
"I saw the looks of other women as they hung over their children, and I knew that such glances of affection never rested upon me. The duke loaded me with presents, but he never embraced me as I had seen other fathers embrace their children, and I felt that some gem was wanting in the diadem of happiness. Years passed; I grew to early girlhood, and for the first time I knew what it was to love. A young artist, who had been engaged to paint my portrait, fell in love with me, and his passion was returned. For the first and only time I too loved; devotedly, enduringly. The painter, though handsome, honorable, high-minded, distinguished, was driven from that ducal mansion with scorn and contumely. What greater sin could he have committed? He had dared to love the daughter of one of Italy's proudest noblemen.
"This was the first bitter wrong of my life. The pride of others trampled on my hopes of happiness, and at sixteen years of age my breast was imbittered by a blighted affection. My lover wrote me a letter of despairing farewell and left the country for America. To this day I know not to what part of the mighty continent he went."
"Poor Pauline!"
"A twelvemonth after this, Jeannette, the servant of the duchess, died; and on her death-bed she sent for the duke and confided to him a terrible secret. I was not the daughter of the duchess, but a spurious child, born of low parents, and introduced into the ducal mansion by the old Parisian fortune-teller."
"Oh Heaven, how terrible!"
"It was indeed terrible. The fury of the duke knew no bounds. He was a proud man, and for seventeen years he had been duped, fooled, imposed upon by the child of some wretched Frenchwoman—the child he had introduced into the society of the noblest in the land, and whose beauty and accomplishments had been his boast. He had never loved me; there was no link of affection between us to stay the torrent of his rage. That rage was more terrific against me, the innocent! than even toward the guilty duchess. He drove me from his doors with loathing, and, I, the pampered heiress, wandered forth into the streets of Genoa, a beggar and an outcast. Before I reached the gates of the town I was overtaken by the steward of the duke, who brought me a pocket-book from his master. It contained notes to the amount of three thousand pounds. My first impulse was to cast it in the dirt beneath my feet, and to bid the steward go back and tell his lord how I had treated his generous donation; but a sudden idea took possession of me. This sum of money would enable me to go where I pleased. I might go to America—I might find him I loved. Two months after this I landed in New York. I traveled from city to city, but nowhere could I obtain tidings of him I sought; and at last, wearied by my ineffectual search, my funds nearly exhausted with the extravagant outlay of my travels, I found myself in New Orleans. You know the rest."