The broken Chevalier started slowly for the door. He turned slightlyand caught the sound of sobs.
Wheeling around, he saw her arms half stretched towards him. Hebounded back.
He was now kissing the hem of her garments, her gloves, her roses, herfingertips, and crying extravagantly, almost shouting the words: "YouDO love me!"
Gently Henriette imparted a maiden's delicate kiss on his cheek."When Louise is found--" she was half sobbing in his arms,"--dreams--yes--perhaps you might find a way to bring them true!"
But the gallant gentleman jumps forward to the end of the dream.Youthfully swearing that Louise will soon be found, he visions theirexquisite happiness as of tomorrow or the day after. He holds herdelightedly, then draws her closer. The kindred magnets are one.
Lips meet lips in soul-kiss that cause the maidenly head to hide underelbow in confusion. Kissing almost every part and furnishing of thatdear second self--vowing never to rest till he brings Louise and takesHenriette--the ecstatic cavalier is gone!
Alas for the quickly visioned dream-facts of twenty-four! Full longshall be the interval betwixt the bright Utopia and the heavenlyreality:--the dungeon, the Storm, the death chamber and e'en theshining axe shall intervene.
A great Nation shall have thrown off its old tyrants and weltered inthe blood of new tyranny. What matter? The souls of the girl and theman are one, they shall be faithful unto the End!
CHAPTER XIII
THE RECOGNITION
The Chevalier de Vaudrey sought his Aunt and begged her to see hisbeloved before finally siding with the Count against him. The incidentof the chance encounter with the blind girl had stirred the Countess,awakened renewed pity for hapless love such as she herself had onceexperienced. She decided to visit Henriette, if only to divert herfrom the seemingly mad project of a union with the Chevalier.
Meantime Count Linieres had decided to exercise the power of the dreadlettres de cachet. In the France of that day, personal rights wereunknown. Subject only to the King's will, no other warrant than thePrefect's signature was required to send anyone into exile or to lifeimprisonment. The means that Linieres now had in mind were often usedto quell rebellious lovers.
He would brand this inconvenient, presumptuous Henriette Girard as afallen woman, imprison her at La Salpetriere, and then ship her as aconvict to Louisiana. That would get rid of her, truly!
In the meanwhile the Chevalier, if disobedient, could cool his heelsin the prison tower of the royal fortress at Caen. After a while, hemight indeed see reason and think better of marrying the Princesse deAcquitaine!
He summoned the Chevalier. The autocratic Count brooked no words; hecommanded marriage with the State heiress--or exile!
His nephew refusing, the guards were summoned, the young man gave uphis sword, and under their escort he was presently on his way to Caenprison.
Then, summoning a detail of military police, the Count moved to carryout the other part of his plan.
* * * * *
"You are Mademoiselle Henriette Girard?" inquired the Countess kindlyon entering the girl's lodgings.
Henriette greeted the distinguished and aristocratic lady with duerespect. Making her comfortable in a guest chair, she resumed hersewing and listened.
"I am the aunt of the Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey." The girl,startled, looked up from her work. "Marriage between you and theChevalier is impossible."
"I love him, Madame," replied Henriette, simply.
"Then it is your duty to give him up, since it is the will of the Kingthat he marry Princesse de Acquitaine--"
Henriette paled. For an instant the blue eyes looked near-tigerish,with green and yellow lights. Yet she must save Maurice from theKing's wrath.
"If you will make this sacrifice," continued the Countess, "I shallnot prove ungrateful with any reward that is in my power."
"Oh, yes, there is!" replied Henriette earnestly. She showed theCountess her sampler, on which she was working the word--
LOUISE
"Louise--that name is very dear to me," replied the Lady softly. Shevisioned a scene of long ago when an infant Louise had been snatchedfrom her young arms--the arms of a mother deprived of her offspring.
"She is my sister," resumed Henriette--"lost, wandering and alone, onthe streets of Paris. Oh, help me find her, and I--I will do anythingyou say!" The poor creature sobbed in her double misery.
She pointed to her own eyes in gesture to portray Louise's misfortune:"Blind--so helpless--it was just like taking care of a baby." She toldthe story of her abduction and the loss of her sister, then ofChevalier de Vaudrey's vain efforts and hers to trace her.
The Countess de Linieres leaned forward in intense sympathy conjoinedwith a certain weird premonition.
"She isn't really my sister," went on Henriette, "but I owe her thelove of a mother and sister combined. She saved us from want anddeath. My father found her on the steps of Notre Dame--"
A low cry escaped the Countess.
"--where he was about to put me as a foundling, there not being amorsel of food in our wretched home. This other baby was half buriedunder the snow. He warmed the little bundle against his body andmine--and, rather than let us perish there of the cold, returnedhomeward with both infants in his arms. Suspended from the otherbaby's neck were a bag of gold and this locket--"
The Countess gasped. She put a hand to her heart and seemed about tofaint before recovering strength to examine the locket that Henriettehanded to her.
It was a miniature that the Prefect's wife recognized as her own!
Opened, it disclosed an aged and yellowed bit of paper, on which thewriting was still visible:
HER NAME IS LOUISE SAVE HER
"My child! My own Louise!" she cried, "--lost, wandering and blind inParis. Tell me, tell me--" She had almost fainted. The floodgate oftears relieved her pent heart.
Henriette was bending over her now, her arm around her shoulders,trying to comfort.
But the girl herself was near the breaking point. The voice of theloved and absent one seemed to sound in her ears.
Was it an hallucination?
"Singing,--don't you hear?" said Henriette, softly, to the Mother.
The girl brushed a hand across her eyes and tapped her temple.
"In my dreams oft I hear it, my sister's voice. I must be losing myreason!"
Again swelled the notes of the Norman melody, and this time the Motherheard too.
The two sprang to their feet.
Henriette dashed to balcony window. At the end of the street she saw afigure clad in beggar's rags that she thought she knew.
"LOUISE!"
Henriette's cry echoed down the street and impinged on the blindbeggar's brain. The outcast ran groping and stumbling forward, nolonger singing, but calling "Henriette!" Her keeper, Widow Frochard,was not in sight.
The blind girl came nearer. Frochard emerged from a ginshop and triedto head her off. The Mother followed Henriette to the window. Thelatter encouraged Louise with little cries:
"Don't get excited!"
"It's all right!"
"Wait there!"
"I'll be down in one instant!"
She rushed past the Countess across the room and flung wide the door,on the very brink of happiness.
But a troop of guards stood there to her astonished gaze. The Count deLinieres, standing at their head, pronounced her name as if reading awarrant: "Henrietta Girard!"
The girl drew back, then charged like a little fury on the gunstocksand bosoms of the troopers, pounding them with her fists.
Unable to move this granite-like wall, she dashed back to the balconyeyrie, imploring Louise with both hands.
"Arrest her!" said de Linieres to the soldiers.
Brawny troopers pulled her back as she would have jumped out of thewindow to the flagging below--and her Louise. Vainly the Countess deLinieres e
ntreated for mercy. They dragged the girl downstairs.
Here again she made a frantic appeal and wild effort to join her blindcharge, who was being hurried away in the vise-like grip of LaFrochard.
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, have pity--let me go to my sister, or I shalllose her again!"
Deaf to her entreaties, they took her to La Salpetriere, thisloveliest of virgins, to be immured among the foul characters there!
END OF PART ONE
PART II
CHAPTER XIV
DOWN IN THE DEPTHS
With Henrietta condemned to the cruel fate of immurement in a prisonfor the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his auntthe Countess prostrated by the hag's recapture of and disappearancewith the noblewoman's long-lost daughter, blind Louise, 'twould seemas if our characters faced indeed blank walls of ruin, misery anddespair, from which no power could rescue them.
In those times, the utter vanishing of persons who incurred policedisfavor was no uncommon incident. Often no public charge was made;merely the gossiped whisper that So-and-So lay in Bastille or LaSalpetriere "at the royal pleasure," kept the unfortunate faintly inmemory till the lapse of years caused him or her to be forgotten. And,sometimes, even, at the prison gate, identity vanished. Did not thecelebrated and mysterious Man in the Iron Mask carry his bafflingsecret through decades of dungeon death-in-life to the prisoner's darkgrave?
Others were silently transported to exile overseas. As England had herBotany Bay, so France had Louisiana. Let us take a glance at LaSalpetriere (as Henriette is being dragged there by Count de Linieres'troopers) to look at the sights and scenes of the famous femaleprison, and contemplate what the inmates had in store.
There was no interesting toil to relieve their unhappy lot, and nodistinction was made of the insane, the law-breaking criminal, and thewretched streetwalker or demimondaine. In the courtyard, during theexercise periods, the only talk was of the terms of imprisonment andof the chances of Louisiana. In that gray monotony the ministrationsof the charitable Sisters, headed by the saintly Sister Genevieve (whohad been born within the walls of the prison), furnished the onebright spot.
"Do not grieve so!" said one of the older inmates who had begged alittle needlework, to a novice who was seated on a bench, weepingconvulsively with her head in her arms.
"Oh, I can never live such a life as this!" replied the poor girl,giving way to new grief.
"Try to do something or other, 'twill make you forget your troubles."
"I've never done anything in my life--except amuse myself!" repliedthe ex-grisette.
"That would be precious hard work in this place," said a thirdspeaker, who had passed several years of the dreary inactions ofprison life.
"Well, anyhow, I've had my fling!" remarked the newcomer, drying hereyes. "Scores of admirers crowded around me, willing to ruinthemselves for my amusement--" she said in a vivacious manner, as sherecalled her past triumphs.
"And it all peters down to prison, eating gruel with a wooden spoon,"said the cynical old-timer; "then, some day, we shall be treated asthose poor creatures were yesterday--hurried off with a guard ofsoldiers to see us safe on our weary exile--"
"Does the idea of exile frighten you?"
ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF THE GARDEN FETE OF BEL-AIR.]
"Who would not be frightened at the idea of being led off amidinsults and jeers--condemned to a two months' voyage in the vilestcompany--and at the end of it be landed in a wild country to facethe alternatives of slavery or a runaway into the savage swamps?"
"Plenty of work to relieve monotony--"
"They say women are scarce out there in Louisiana. Perhaps I shall geta husband, and revenge myself on the male creation that way--"
Their speculations were cut short by the entry of a squad of troopersliterally dragging tiny Henriette Girard within the prison walls. Coldand unfeeling at best, these men had no sympathy with their youngcharge whom they naturally believed to be one of the harpies orhalf-wits caught in the police dragnet. They thrust her mid the crowdin the courtyard and departed. The great iron doors clanged shut. Thegatekeeper turned the massive key. Henriette--without a friend in theworld to appeal to--was an inmate of dread La Salpetriere!
Like a flock of magpies the imprisoned demi-mondaines, petty thieves,and grosser criminals for love or for hate, crowded around the girl,inquiring what offence had brought her amongst them.
"I am innocent!"
Her little sobbing cry of self-justification was received with jibesand winks. Was not such the formula of every prisoner? They pressedher for her story. Looking at these ignoble spirits, the girl couldnot bear to acquaint them with her pure and holy romance.
As she turned away, a new shock met her gaze.
Faugh! What was this physical weakness, this nausea-like repulsion,but the bodily reaction from the tense spiritual agony she hadsuffered?
Courage! She must look again. That wild woman--hair down, breathgasping, arms weaving threateningly--was coming at her like amurderess. Momentarily Henriette expected the long arms to seize her,the steel-like hands and wrists to choke her.
She looked yet a third time. The crazy "murderess" had veered hercourse, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for herown and the world's sorrows! Or this one over here--a shrieking maniaccalling on all Hell's legions for vengeance on fancied enemies!Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired idiots, wastedsufferers from senile dementia.
Not a friendly face, not a kind look nor an understanding eye! Crime,passion, foulness, insanity. The sheer horror of her situationmercifully blotted out consciousness. She sank, a crumpled heap to thefloor.
"The girl is sick," said Sister Genevieve, who had entered at thismoment and was presently bending over her. "Here, two of you lift herand carry her into the hospital--we shall have the good Doctor from LaForce attend her!" Two of the sturdier prisoners bore her away....
Beautiful, pitiful Henriette!
The horrors of the madwomen thou facest in Salpetriere; the obsceneshouts and curses of the fallen; the fury of the female criminal; themisery of the poor distracted half-wits, where mad and sane are giventhe same cell:--these shall be but confused phantasmagoria projectedon thy sick brain during this prison time before the awful Stormbreaks--the lightning strikes--the thunder crashes, and the sharpfemale called La Guillotine holds thee in its embrace.
From the tumbril shalt thou find and kiss the blind girl, and Mauricede Vaudrey shall accompany thee into the Valley of the Shadow!
CHAPTER XV
LIGHT RAYS IN THE DARKNESS
Henriette was nursed through a severe mental and bodily illness bySister Genevieve directed by the visiting prison Doctor, none otherthan him who had examined the eyes of Louise before Notre Dame.
During this period it was quite impossible for the attendants to gether story. She herself in lucid moments could hardly realize hersituation, nor in any wise remember how she had come to it.
But one day new strength seemed to be hers. Feverish and with hairunbound and a wild light in her eyes, she sprang out of her cot,sought Genevieve in the main prison, and knelt before her.
"Oh, Madame!" cried Henriette in imploring accents, "if you are themistress here, have pity on me, and order them to set me free. I askyou on my knees!"
"You are still ill, my child," said Sister Genevieve tenderly,stroking Henriette's, long hair with a gentle, loving touch.
"Certainly you are," confirmed the Doctor, who was just then on hisway to the hospital ward. "Why have you left your bed without mypermission?"
"Oh, monsieur!" said the poor girl, turning to the gentle-voiced,pleasant-faced man who spoke so kindly, "have you attended me in myillness? Look--thanks to your care--I have recovered!" she affirmedconfidently, though her hectic features and weak motions belied it.
"They left me alone for a few moments, and I arose and dressed myself.Now that you see I am quite well, you will tell them to let me go,will you not?"
The Doctor ga
zed at her compassionately before answering:
"That is impossible. To release you from this place requires a fargreater power than mine."
"This place?" asked the young girl in surprise. "Why, what is it? Isit not a hospital?"
"A hospital and a prison," replied the physician gravely.
"A prison!" exclaimed Henriette in terror, striving to remember howshe came to be in such a place.
At last the events that preceded her illness gradually came back toher mind, until she understood all.
"Ah, I remember," she said at length. "Yes, I remember the soldierswho dragged me here, and him who commanded.... And Maurice--was he toocondemned? Alas, poor Louise--my last sight of her showed her in thepower of vile, unscrupulous wretches! Oh, dear God, what have I doneto be crushed like this!"
She dropped, weeping and wailing, to the floor.
"Sister," said the Doctor, turning away to hide his tears, "this isnot a case for my care. You must be the physician here."
"I know virtue and innocence when I see it, surely this child has donenothing worthy of a term at Salpetriere!" replied the kind Genevievesoftly, lifting up the stricken girl and embracing her.
"Come, dear, you must rest yet a little longer in order to acquire thefull strength so as to be able to tell me everything. Assuredly wewill help you!"
* * * * *
In the course of convalescence Henriette told her complete story toSister Genevieve. The narrative included the girls' journey to Paris,her kidnapping and rescue, the disappearance of Louise, de Vaudrey'ssuit and the objections of his family, the recognition of her sisteras the Countess's long-lost daughter, Louise's recapture by thebeggars, and the peremptory act of the Police Prefect whereby motherand daughter, and beloved foster-sisters, were cruelly parted, andHenriette branded with the mark of the fallen woman by incarcerationin La Salpetriere.
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