Little Nobody

"No, but she resembles her mother, the beautiful quadroon whom he gave me for a maid when I came to this house a bride the last year of the war. Una was a pretty little infant then, and the young quadroon, in a fit of jealous fury, told me all. Lorraine whipped her cruelly, and in her rage she stabbed herself to death. The world says that I made him jealous and drove him mad, but it is untrue. Remorse over the quadroon's death drove him inside the walls of a lunatic asylum." She paused a moment, then added: "I have told you now the simple truth, the same that I told the girl in Boston. She is the daughter of Monsieur Lorraine and his beautiful slave, and was in infancy a slave herself, until the failure of the Southern Confederacy freed her in common with all the other slaves."

She laughed aloud at the white horror of Eliot Van Zandt's face as he crouched upon a sofa at the further end of the room.

"A slave's child the bride of one of the proud, highly born Van Zandts! I am well avenged!" she exclaimed, fiendishly.

CHAPTER XLV

Carmontelle turned to his friend.

"Poor Una!" he said; "it is no wonder she fled in dismay, after hearing such a tale of horror. Come, let us go. We have heard all that madame's malignity can invent to torture two loving hearts, and the only task that remains to us is to prove it false."

"Which you will never do!" she exclaimed, with triumphant malice.

"Time will prove," he retorted, as he led the agitated Van Zandt out of the house, ignoring the ceremony of adieus to its mistress.

But his face grew very grave once they gained the darkness of the street. To himself he said, in alarm:

"Can her tale be true? It sounded very plausible."

To Eliot he said:

"I shall put this affair in the hands of one who will sift it to the bottom. Then, if Madame Remond has lied to us, she shall suffer for her sin."

"Poor Una! my poor little Una! How she must have suffered, bearing this bitter knowledge alone!" Eliot said, and a bursting sigh heaved his tortured breast.

"She was a wise little girl, at all events," Carmontelle answered, gravely. "Of course, if madame's tale be true, there was no other way proper for either, cruel as it seems to say it."

Eliot had no answer ready, but in his heart he knew that his friend spoke truly. Better, far better, that he and Una should suffer than to throw the blighting disgrace of his wife's parentage upon unborn descendants of the proud name of Van Zandt.

He could hardly share the incredulity of Carmontelle. Madame's story had been so plausible it had shaken his doubts. Now, indeed, it seemed to him that all hope was over. He and Una were indeed parted forever.

He went back to the Magnolias with his friend, and excusing himself from all society, went up to his room alone. He spent some time leaning from the window, his sad gaze roving over the moonlit city, thinking of Una, his lost bride, so near him that an hour's rapid walking would have borne him to her side, but sundered so widely apart from him by sorrow.

There came to him in the stillness a memory of the song he had sung to her so often, and which she had loved so well, "The Two Little Lives." How well it fitted now!

"Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow,Captured the lark was, and life grew dim;There, too, the daisy torn from the way-side,Prisoned and dying wept for himOnce 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."

"Poor little daisy!" Eliot sighed; then, bitterly, "Ah, if we had but died in prison that time, how blessed we should have been—never having this cruel knowledge to break our hearts!"

He flung himself down on the bed and tried to sleep. A disturbed slumber, mixed with frightful dreams, came to him. His head was hot, and his thirst was excessive. He rose several times and groped his way to the ice-pitcher, drinking greedily, until at last he had drained it all. In the morning they found him there delirious.

The old doctor shook his head.

"Brain fever!" he said. "He has had some terrible shock, I think, from the symptoms. I shall send you a trained hospital nurse, Carmontelle, for there must be careful nursing here if we bring the poor fellow out alive."

The nurse came, and was duly installed in his position, aided and abetted by Maud and Edith.

Carmontelle, after a day or two, stole away from the house long enough to consult his family lawyer on the subject of ferreting to the bottom the story the wicked Mme. Remond had told him of Una's birth.

At an early period of the narration of his story the lawyer became visibly excited.

"Go on. Tell me everything," he said, nervously, and Carmontelle obeyed.

When he had finished, Mr. Frayser cried out, eagerly:

"Upon my soul, Carmontelle, I believe the good Lord himself has sent you to me. You know I was Lorraine's lawyer?"

"I did not know it," was the answer.

"Yes," said Mr. Frayser; "and my client died a few months ago, in an insane asylum."

"So I was told by Madame Lorraine—or, as I should perhaps say, Remond."

"Yes, she married that wretch some time ago, and they came on here after Lorraine's death, to look after his property."

"Yes," said Carmontelle, rather indifferently. He was not much interested in the dead man's property.

"Lorraine was immensely rich, you know," continued Frayser. "Madame thought she would step into the money without let or hinderance. She wanted to sell all the property in New Orleans and get away with the spoils."

"Yes," absently.

The little lawyer smiled.

"Monsieur, you don't look much interested," he said; "but listen: Monsieur Lorraine left a box of private papers in my safe when he first employed me as his lawyer, at the time of his marriage to the actress. When I examined these papers, after his death, I found that the greater part of his wealth did not belong to him, but was held in trust for another person."

"Another person!" Carmontelle echoed, brightening up with sudden curiosity.

"A little child," continued Frayser, his little black eyes twinkling with fun at Carmontelle's eagerness.

"Go on, go on."

"It seems that Lorraine had an only sister who was married during the war to a very wealthy man, a colonel—mon Dieu! Carmontelle, what a coincidence! it was your own name—he was a Colonel Carmontelle!"

"And lived in Alabama—and was killed in battle just before the close of the war. He was my cousin!" exclaimed Carmontelle, excitedly.

"The same," replied the lawyer. "Well, his death was such a shock to his young wife that, when her little one was born, a month later, she died—of heart-break, or, at least, so say the letters of her friends, that were written from Alabama to summon him to come for the little orphan heiress."

"Una!" exclaimed Carmontelle, radiantly.

"Most likely," said the lawyer, smiling. "But permit me to go on with my prosaic story. According to these private papers, some of which are in the form of memorandums, Lorraine brought the babe to New Orleans with its negro nurse, and very soon afterward married, more for the child's sake than his own, and went to housekeeping on Esplanade Street."

"All is clear as day. Thank the good God, Una's stainless parentage is established, and I will go this day and bring her to the side of her suffering husband," Carmontelle exclaimed, joyously.

"I think you may safely do so," smiled the delighted lawyer. "But I have still more to tell you. The physician in charge at the asylum where Lorraine died wrote to me to come and make preparations for his burial. I went and heard a strange story. Lorraine, in his last illness, had recovered his reason and memory. He had dictated and signed a paper to be given to me. You shall read it yourself."

He brought out from his desk the paper, and Carmontelle eagerly ran over the contents.

Briefly, it was to the effect that Lorraine, just previous to the insanity that had overtaken him, had found out that his wife was false to him, and that she had married him only for the money which she believed to be his own. Realizing suddenly that he had made no arrangements by which his little niece would receive her inheritance, should he be suddenly stricken by death, and fearful of Mme. Lorraine's treachery in the matter, he had executed a will in which he left to the little Mary Carmontelle the whole of his own small patrimony, together with the wealth of her dead father. He had hidden the will in the library, intending to place it in Frayser's care, but his mind had suddenly gone wrong with the stress of trouble, and his removal by his wife to an insane asylum had put a sudden end to everything.

"Madame knows all this?" Carmontelle queried, looking up from the paper.

"Yes; for I confronted her with it when she came to me to settle up the property. She was as bold as brass, and declared that the child had died in infancy. I made a search in the library, all the same, for the missing will, but it could not be found. Doubtless that wicked woman has destroyed it. I would not take her word that the little heiress was dead, as she could offer no proof at all except the word of that grim maid-servant of hers, so I have been advertising in a number of papers for the child or young lady, as she is now, if living. You will see from that paper that I am appointed her guardian until her marriage."

"She has been married nearly six years. Dear little Una! she is my cousin, and the name I gave her when I adopted her as my daughter was really her own. It is the oddest thing, too, that the nuns at the convent baptized her Marie, her own name, but in the French form. Fact is certainly stranger than fiction!" exclaimed Maud's husband, in wonder and delight.

"It is wonderful, certainly," agreed Frayser, "and your visit to me to-day is one of the most wonderful things about it. I was beginning to give up all hope of finding the missing heiress, and Mme. Remond and her rascally husband were pressing me so furiously that I was beginning to fear I must make some concessions to them. But now all is made plain, and I can lay my hand on Lorraine's niece and heiress and oust her enemy from the place she has usurped so long. But I must tell you one thing, unless that missing will can be found, the ex-actress will make us trouble yet over Mrs. Van Zandt's inheritance."

"Never mind about the will now. What is money when it lies in our power to reunite the crushed hearts of that long-parted husband and wife. Let us get into my carriage and go and fetch Una away from her convent to the side of her sick husband!" cried Carmontelle.

"Agreed with all my heart!" answered Frayser.

CHAPTER XLVI

Carmontelle found, as once before, his old acquaintance with the mother superior at the convent of good avail in securing admittance. The good woman met him in some wonder, and bowed stiffly to the little lawyer, who was looking about him in a good deal of curiosity.

"What is the meaning of this visit?" she inquired, with calm dignity, although perfectly certain that it related to Una.

She was not mistaken, for he immediately asked for her, and was told that Una would receive no one.

"She is constantly engaged in devotion, fitting herself to retire forever from the world."

"She will have to let the devotions go, and return to the world," Carmontelle answered, bluntly.

"Monsieur!" reproachfully.

"I mean what I say," he replied, earnestly. "I have to-day made discoveries that prove her the daughter of honorable parents—also heiress to a large fortune. There is nothing now to prevent her return to the world and to her husband, who has suffered so much from their separation."

Madame, the superior, was unaffectedly happy at hearing this news.

"Thank le bon Dieu that it is so!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, how the poor little one has suffered, believing the falsehood of wicked Madame Lorraine."

She went hurriedly to seek Una with the joyful tidings, but it was some time before she returned.

In truth, Una had been almost overcome by the shock of joy after the long night of sorrow and despair.

"I am not the child of infamy! The blood that flows through my veins is noble and untainted! Heaven, I thank Thee!" cried the tortured girl, falling down upon her knees and hiding her face in her hands as she leaned forward upon her low cot bed.

To the good nun's announcement that she was an heiress, she had paid no attention, everything else being swallowed up in the glad news that her birth was honorable.

After the sorrow and despair she had experienced such a revulsion of feeling, such intense happiness rushed over her that her senses for a moment succumbed to the shock, and the nun, bending forward to look at her, presently found she had quietly fainted.

The application of a little cold water soon revived her, and the mother superior exclaimed, cheerfully:

"Oh, fy! my dear, I did not know that you would take my good news so ill, or I would have broken it to you more carefully."

"Tell me more. What is my name? Who are my kinspeople, and why was I left so long to the cruel mercy of Madame Lorraine?" exclaimed Una, eagerly.

"Come with me. Our old friend, Pierre Carmontelle, is down-stairs. He will tell you all."

"Monsieur Carmontelle! He has always been my friend," cried the girl, thinking remorsefully of the way she had snubbed him that day in Boston when he had followed her to the banker's gate, frightened because she feared he would betray her to Eliot.

Now she ran joyfully to his presence, and he started in surprise at her wondrous beauty that shone star-like from its setting of simple convent black.

"Heavens, Una! how lovely you have grown!" he exclaimed, gayly. "I may take the privilege of praising you, although you are a married woman, since you are my kinswoman by two distinct ties."

"Your kinswoman!" the girl echoed, amazedly, and he explained, laughingly:

"You are my cousin's daughter for one thing, and for the other you are my sister-in-law."

"What can you mean?"

"I married Maud Van Zandt two weeks ago," he replied.

The warm color came rushing into Una's pale cheeks.

"Oh!" she cried, "how happy you make me. And dear Maud—is she here?"

"She is at my home, the Magnolias. Have you any one else to ask about, belle cousine?" chaffingly.

"E—dith?" falteringly, and blushing up to her eyes.

"Edith is at the Magnolias, too. Ah, I see your eyes asking me about some one else. No wonder you are ashamed to speak his name after the shameful way you have treated him. Well, I will be generous, Mrs. Van Zandt. Eliot—ah! now I see how you can blush—is also at my home, and presently I am going to take another guest to the Magnolias—even yourself."

"Not—not until you tell me all!" the girl faltered, trembling with such happiness that she could scarcely speak.

So, then and there he told her all the story of Mme. Lorraine's treachery and cupidity—told her everything, except the story of Eliot's illness that might possibly terminate fatally, and so wreck the happy ending of their checkered love story.

When he had finished the story, with the aid of the little lawyer, who was charmed with the beauty of the young heiress, he said, kindly:

"Will you come with me to the Magnolias, now, Una?"

She looked radiantly at the nun, who answered, with genuine happiness:

"Of course she will, monsieur, as soon as she retires to her room and assumes her worldly garb. I am sorry to lose our sweet Una, but not selfish enough to regret her good fortune that has made it possible for her to be happy once more in the world. I see plainly that Heaven did not intend for her to be a nun."

Father Quentin began to believe this, too, when she withdrew to acquaint him with the startling news, and when Una came down, after laying off her convent dress forever, in hat and cloak, to depart from Le Bon Berger, the old priest's aged hands were laid solemnly on her golden head a moment, and his quavering old voice tenderly blessed her and commended her to the care of Heaven.

All the nuns and convent pupils were assembled to bid her adieu, and followed by their tears and blessings, Una went away with Carmontelle, her new-found kinsman, to the Magnolias.

CHAPTER XLVII

No one met them in the library, to which he conducted Una. Maud and Edith were upstairs in close attendance upon Eliot. Carmontelle saw that the girl was trembling with nervous excitement, and brought her a sedative to drink.

"No one knows anything yet?" she asked him.

"No; and I am going to let you rest and recover yourself first, before I bring Maud and Edith to you; and Eliot you shall see last of all."

He left her waiting there, and went upstairs to break the news to his young wife and Edith. Eliot was still delirious, and carefully watched by his attentive nurse. He beckoned the girls into another room, and told them everything, then stood smiling at their tears of joy.

"Eliot will get well now with his wife come home to him," he said. "So run down to the library like good girls now, and kiss your sister Una, and break the news of Eliot's illness to her as gently as you can."

They needed no second bidding, but flew softly to the library, and Una soon found herself in danger of being smothered in the energetic clasp of four round white arms, while dual tears and kisses fell on her golden head and lovely face.

Una was glad, more glad than words could tell, at this happy meeting, but when the first joy was past, her dark eyes wandered eagerly toward the door. The two sisters understood.

"You are looking for Eliot, dear," said Maud. "He can not come to you now, dear. You see, the poor boy is sick—he has had such trouble over losing you, Una—but now he will get well. You shall help us to nurse him back to health."

And so, in gentle tones, they broke to her the news of Eliot's illness, and presently carried her off with them to look at him where he lay, with burning eyes and crimson face, among his pillows. But he did not recognize the fair young wife who looked at him with eyes full of love and grief, and pressed passionate lips on his hot brow. He only smiled vacantly, and turning from her, began to talk in his restless delirium, strange, disconnected, meaningless phrases that struck dismay to Una's heart, and chilled the blood in her young veins.

"He will never get well; he will die, my love, my darling, my husband!" she cried out, shrilly, in sudden terror and despair.

And Eliot turned his heavy head toward her, as if some chord of memory had been struck by her voice, and began to babble of other things—of the dark days of imprisonment in the cellar-room of the house on Esplanade Street, of the beloved little companion who had shared those horrors, and whose life he had saved by that desperate deed of self-sacrifice.

She stood listening with dark, dilated eyes, hearing for the first time how her life had been saved that night.

Carmontelle was standing close by her side.

She turned her dark, amazed, tear-wet eyes on his face, and murmured hoarsely:

"Is it truth, or the ravings of fever and delirium?"

"It is truth," he answered; and, with a wild, remorseful cry, Una ran out of the room.

He followed her into the next apartment. She had thrown herself into a chair, and was sobbing wildly.

"Una, why do you take it so hard?" he expostulated. "Surely, no wife could object to such devoted love!"

She looked up at him with agonized entreaty in her eyes.

"Was it love, or—pity?" she cried. "I—I thought—Sylvie Van Zandt told me so—that he loved Ida Hayes before he ever met me, and would have married her but for that—trouble—that forced him to make me his wife."

"It was a fiendish falsehood!" declared Carmontelle, emphatically. "Eliot never thought of Ida Hayes. He loved you from the first moment he saw you."

"Ignorant Little Nobody as I was?" she exclaimed, in wonder.

"Yes; ignorant Little Nobody that you were!" he replied, smiling. "He told me before he married you how glad he was that a strange fate had given you to his keeping. You were destined for my bride, you know, and Van Zandt, being poor, would not tell his love until that happy accident gave you to his arms."

She exclaimed remorsefully:

"Oh, what a wretch I was to believe Sylvie and doubt my noble husband! I thought, when I ran away, that he would get a divorce and marry Ida. But he loved me all the time, my noble darling! Oh, if I had known before that it was his precious life-current he gave me to drink, that time when we both believed I was dying, all would have been so different. I could not then have doubted his fidelity. No wonder I could not keep from loving him all the time, when it was his own life flowing in my veins and keeping me faithful to my husband."

"Do not blame yourself for doubting him; it was but natural, my dear," said her cousin. "Mrs. Bryant Van Zandt is the only one to blame. She hated you because you spoiled her match-making. But now you will have your revenge on that treacherous doll. You will be much richer than she is, and can queen it over Sylvie and Ida in royal fashion."

She smiled through her tears, but answered:

"I do not care for the money, only to make dear Eliot rich. Oh, cousin, do you think he will get well? Heaven would not be so cruel as to take him from me now!"

"I trust, indeed, that he will be spared to us," Carmontelle answered, evasively, for he was secretly alarmed at Eliot's condition.

But he would not communicate his fears to the alarmed wife and sisters, only enjoined them to be careful and watchful over Eliot. Indeed, he himself often shared the vigils of the nurse, who was a rather old-looking man, and inclined to resent the aid he received from the family, declaring that he could care for his patient better alone.

Una had taken a distaste to the nurse from the first, and her unaccountable aversion increased as Eliot grew no better with the lapse of days, and showed no sign of recognition of the dear ones who surrounded him.

Carmontelle spoke to the doctor about the cross nurse, but he only laughed, and said that nurses were always jealous of interference with their patients, and that the man was splendid in his vocation; so Una tried to dismiss her antipathy to him as unjust and unfounded.

But one night the physician declared that he saw a change in his patient—a crisis was approaching, and he hoped the change would be for the better. He left, promising to return at midnight, and enjoining the utmost quiet and care in the sick-room, so that Eliot might not be aroused from the deep slumber into which he had fallen.

When he had gone, Johnson, the nurse, declared that he must have the sick-room alone with his patient.

"The crisis is all-important," he said. "When he awakens it will be to life or death, and in spite of Doctor Pomeroy's flattering words, I fear it will be death. When he wakes, I must be alone with him that he may not be excited and frightened by your anxious faces. I hope you will all go to your rooms and rest. I will call each one immediately upon the slightest change in the patient."

They all promised, but Una's pledge was most reluctant. She looked pleadingly at Johnson, and he returned her gaze sullenly, as it seemed to her, through the goggle glasses he wore.

She went to her own room, just a little lower down the hall, and sat down at the window, consumed with suspense and restlessness. The hours passed slowly, drearily, and at last she could bear the torture of her thoughts no longer.

"I will go to the room next to Eliot's and wait. No one will see or hear me, and it can do no harm," she thought.

Wrapping a dark shawl about her shoulders, for the midnight hour was chilly, Una glided like a spirit along the dark corridor until she gained the little ante-chamber next to the sick-room. The outer door was ajar, and also the one that opened into Eliot's room. The anxious young wife moved softly across the soundless carpet and peered around the door.

Then her shriek of terror, fear, and agony rang shrilly through the house.

CHAPTER XLVIII

That agonized shriek brought Pierre Carmontelle rushing from his room, followed by Maud, while Edith came from another direction, and men-servants and maid-servants came flying up the stairs, all with one thought in their minds. The sufferer was dead, and that bitter cry had come from the lips of the bereaved young wife.