Little Nobody

Madame grew pale beneath her rouge, and twisted the angry note nervously in her jeweled fingers.

"A frank enemy!" she muttered. "He gives me fair warning. Like the deadly serpent, he gives forth his venomous hiss before he stings. He is very kind. Forewarned is forearmed, they say."

She reread it with a nervous contraction of her brows.

"So the little one is dead! I did not intend it, but—it is better so. Fate has removed an incumbrance from my path. Now for a call upon my guest, to electrify him with my news. Mima says he is fast recovering, and that I may venture upon a visit."

She went to her dressing-room and donned a street costume of olive cashmere and silk, with bonnet and gloves and all the paraphernalia of walking costume. Then, with a choice bunch of flowers culled from her garden, she let herself through the secret entrance to the cellar chamber, and preceded by the frowning servant, was ushered into the presence of Eliot Van Zandt.

He lay, pale and handsome and restless, among the white pillows in the luxurious room. The lamp that burned night and day shed a soft, roseate glow over everything, and brightened somewhat the pallid cast of his countenance.

"Ah, Monsieur Van Zandt, my poor, dear Yankee friend, the cruel doctors and nurses have permitted me to call on you at last! And how do you find yourself this evening, mon ami?" she cried, fluttering up to his bedside, all smiles and sweet solicitude.

His dark-gray eyes opened wide with surprise and displeasure.

"Madame Lorraine!" he ejaculated, angrily, but she pretended not to understand the surprise and anger.

"Yes, it is I," she said, sweetly. "Did you think you were deserted by all your friends? But it was the cruel doctors in the hospital; they would admit no one until you were out of danger. I came every day and begged until they gave me leave to see you. Ah, mon ami, I have suffered such anxiety for your sake!" with uplifted eyes and pensive air. "But, thank the good God, you are restored to me."

The dark-gray eyes flashed with resentment, and a warm flush crept up to the young man's pale brow. He waved her away indignantly.

"Madame Lorraine, your hypocrisy is intolerable!" he exclaimed, hotly. "Leave me. Your call is in the worst of taste, and most undesirable."

With impetuous grace, she flung herself down on her knees beside him, surprise, dismay, and wounded love expressed eloquently on her mobile face.

"Ah, mon ami, what have I done to receive this repulse? I come to you in friendship and regard, and you order me away! Good nurse"—turning her head around for a moment to scornful Mima—"is it that your patient is delirious yet, that he thus upbraids his truest friend?"

"Get up from your knees, Madame Lorraine; you can not deceive me by your artful professions," Van Zandt cried, sternly; and looking wondrously grand and handsome in his anger, although he could scarcely lift his blonde head from the pillow. "I am not delirious; my mind is perfectly clear, and, in proof of it, listen: I was in your garden that night, and heard your nefarious plotting with Remond for the ruin of that poor young girl. She heard, too, and, distracted with terror, begged me to save her. It was I who brought Carmontelle to the rescue, while I held at bay the villain Remond. Now you understand why I loathe the sight of you—why I wish you to go out from my presence, never to enter it again."

She wept and protested, as she had done with Carmontelle, that it was all a cruel mistake. She had but made a match, French-fashion, for her ward. Remond was pledged to marry her that night. She did not find him credulous, as she had hoped. He smiled in scorn, and reiterated his wish that she should leave the room.

"Very well," she said, bitterly, "I am going, but not before I tell the news I brought; your officious intermeddling was fatal to the girl you pretended to save—it was the cause of her death."

"Death!" he echoed; and the fair, stately head fell back among the pillows, the lids drooped over his eyes. Mima believed he was about to swoon, and hastily brought restoratives.

"You should have held your cursed tongue!" she muttered, in an audible aside to her mistress; but Mme. Lorraine did not reply. She was watching that deathly pale face that looked up at her so eagerly as Van Zandt whispered, faintly:

"Dead! Oh, you do but jest! It can not be!"

"It is no jest. It is the truth. Do you want to hear how it came about? Remond had two subtle Eastern drugs, the one to induce heavy sleep, the other to awaken her at his will. Well, you and Carmontelle interfered, and so Remond ran away with the second drug, and—she died in her sleep."

"No, no!" he cried, almost imploringly.

"Ah, you regret your work when too late!" madame cried, triumphantly. "It is sad, is it not? But it is true as Heaven. Barely an hour ago I received a note from him, to say that she was dead and buried, the poor little wretch!"

"It is your fiendish work!" he said, bitterly. "May Heaven punish you! Ah, the poor innocent little ma'amselle, it was hard for her to go like that. But—better death than dishonor!"

He put his white hand up before his face, and a long, deep, shuddering sigh shook him from head to foot. Mima shook her mistress roughly by the shoulder and pointed to the door that led up the stairs to the hidden entrance.

"Go!" she whispered, harshly. "I don't know what prompted you to this devil's work. You must have wanted to kill him. I don't know how this will result now. Go, and take your hateful face out of his sight!"

Madame flung down her roses with a whimper, and trailed her rich robes from the room in a passion of disappointed love and hope.

"He loved her—like the rest!" she muttered, fiercely. "I wish she had died before he ever saw her. But I swear I will win him yet, or—he shall never see the light of day again!"

CHAPTER XIII

Van Zandt lay for a long time with his face hidden in his hands, long, labored sighs shaking his manly form, feeling as if a nightmare of horror had fastened itself upon him. It had been bad enough to lie here, bound hand and foot by the pain of his severe wound, and chafing fiercely against his misfortune, but with the inward comfort of the knowledge that by his bravery he had saved a girl, Little Nobody though she was, from a cruel fate; but—now!

Now, at the sudden and cruel news Mme. Lorraine had maliciously brought, his heart almost ceased its beating, so awful was the shock.

Dead, gone out of life in her maiden bloom, so beautiful, so innocent and ignorant, wronged irretrievably by a woman without a heart—a handsome creature, wicked enough to sell a young, immortal soul to ruin for a handful of sordid gold! Bitter, sorrowful, indignant were his meditations while he lay there, with his hand before his face, watched furtively by the big, ugly Mima, who, with all her rough ways, was a skillful and tender nurse, having spent four years of her life caring for wounded soldiers in an army hospital.

She moved nearer to him at last, and said, uneasily:

"Best not to take it so hard, sir. The girl's gone to a better place than this wicked world, where she never saw one happy day. You'll make yourself worse, taking on like this, and it can't do any good to the dead, so cheer up and think of getting well as fast as you can, and out of this lonesome place."

He looked curiously at the hard, homely face as she spoke, for she had been shy and taciturn heretofore, wasting few words upon her patient. She had told him that he was in a private hospital, and he had not doubted the assertion, although, as days passed by, it seemed strange to him that he saw no face but hers about him. Another thing that puzzled him was, that it seemed always night in his room—the curtains drawn and the lamp burning. When he spoke of this to Mima, she answered abruptly that he slept all day and lay awake all night.

"And I never see the doctor when he comes to visit me," he added.

"You are always asleep when he pays his midday visit," she replied.

In the languor and pain of his illness he accepted all her statements in good faith, although chafing against his forced detention, and wondering what his publishers and his home folks would think of his strange silence. He had resolved only this morning that he would ask Carmontelle to write to them for him to say that he was sick—not wounded—only sick.

Now he looked fixedly at his strange, grim nurse, and said, sternly:

"Never admit that woman, that fiend rather, into my presence again. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Mima replied, soothingly; and he continued, anxiously:

"Now, tell me, has any one called to see me since I was brought to this hospital? I mean, except that woman, Madame Lorraine?"

"Lord, yes, sir; several gentlemen that said they was from the Jockey Club, and friends of yours. But the doctor's orders was strict not to admit anybody."

"How came Madame Lorraine to get admittance, then?" with a very black frown.

"Lord, sir, she wheedled the doctor with her pretty face!"

He frowned again, and said, peremptorily:

"When the doctor comes in again, you must awaken me if I am asleep. I must speak to him."

"Yes, sir," meekly.

"And if the gentlemen from the club come again, say to the doctor that they must be admitted. I am quite well enough to receive my friends, and I must get some one to write home for me. Will you do as I tell you?" looking at her with contracted brows, and a dark-red flush mounting into his cheek that alarmed her, experienced nurse that she was.

"Yes, yes, my dear sir, I will do just as you say," she replied, eager to pacify him, for she saw that what she had been dreading all the time had come to pass, through the imprudence of Mme. Lorraine—her patient had been driven by excitement into a high fever.

CHAPTER XIV

In the meantime, a strange event had taken place at the Convent of Le Bon Berger, through the curiosity of the old priest, who, while bending over his book in the chapel, had overheard Carmontelle's story of the mysterious drug and its strange antidote. Although outwardly absorbed in his devotions, he had listened with an excited gleam in his dim old eyes, and once had half started forward to speak, but checked himself quickly, and remained quiescent during the time that elapsed before Carmontelle and the praying nuns took their departure from the chapel.

When all were gone, and there remained only himself and that still form in the black-draped coffin, he started eagerly forward and stood in excited silence gazing at the beautiful face of the dead girl. Once he lifted his old, wrinkled hand and pressed hers tenderly, then withdrew it, shuddering at that mortal coldness.

It was no wonder that the old priest had been excited by the story of Carmontelle, for years ago he had been an enthusiastic traveler in Eastern lands, and an old witch—or sorceress, as she was called there—had given him two drugs to which she ascribed the mysterious properties possessed by those of which Carmontelle had spoken. He had kept them always, certainly with no intention of ever testing the strange power claimed for them, but only because they were part and parcel of the box of curiosities he had brought with him from that fascinating tour. To-day the two vials lay safely in the box, wrapped in a bit of yellow parchment on which, in a strange tongue, were inscribed the directions for their use.

It flashed over him that the hour had come when the gift of the old hag, at whose strange leer he had shrunk and shuddered, was to be instrumental in saving a human life.

But he was old and wise, and he knew that life is not always a blessing; that often and often it is but the bearing of a heavy cross, with lagging steps and weary heart, to a far Golgotha. In the dim confessional men and women, and even the young and tender, had poured their griefs and their sins into his compassionate hearing, and many had waited for death with infinite yearning, while some—and he trembled and crossed himself at the sad remembrance—had gone mad over wrong and ruth, and in despair had cut the Gordian knot of life. It was of all this he had thought when he had restrained his impulse to speak to Carmontelle; it was of this he was thinking now, as he stood there, old and gray and holy, by the side of that beautiful bud of life in the coffin.

He was, as it were, weighing entity and non-entity in careful, metaphorical scales. He was solemnly asking himself, "Which is better—life or death?"

From the saints and angels in that bright world beyond, where his pious thoughts continually rested, seemed to come a low, eager answer:

"Death!"

He looked again, with agonized doubt, at that fair, lovely face, so innocent in its deep repose.

The mother superior had told him that the girl, had she lived, was destined to be the bride of Carmontelle.

"I know the man—rich, generous, and worldly. As his wife, she will be a society queen. Her idols will be wealth and pleasure. She will be gay and heartless, forgetful of all holy things, living only for this world. Better, far better, the bride of Heaven."

And crossing himself again, with a muttered prayer he went out of the little chapel, where presently the pale-faced nuns came again, muttering their pious aves for the dead.

That night in his cell, impelled by some irresistible force within himself, he took out the small vial from the curiosity-box, and read the strangely lettered parchment, for he was an earnest student, and versed in Oriental lore.

Great drops of dew beaded his temples as he spelled out the meaning of the parchment; and no wonder, for he read there that, although one lay as dead for three days, a few drops of the antidote poured between the lips would break that deathly sleep and restore life; but after those wondrous three days the drug could be of no avail—death must surely ensue.

In the cold and cheerless cell the old priest shivered as with a chill.

"What an awful responsibility lies upon me!" he muttered. "It is for me to decide whether to give her back to Carmontelle and the world, to be spoiled by its vanities, or leave her soul, now pure and unspotted, free to enter heaven."

After an hour of painful meditation he put away the mysterious drug and spent the night upon his knees on the cold stone floor of the cell, calling on all the saints to uphold him in his pious resolve to save the soul of the lovely girl by the sacrifice of her life.

And the next afternoon, in a shaken voice and a holy resolve written on his ashen features, he read the long Latin prayers for the dead to the assembled nuns and to Carmontelle among them, and saw the form of poor Little Nobody consigned to the grim vault in the convent cemetery.

Two days and a night had thus passed while the girl lay in that death-like trance. A few hours more and the prisoned soul would be separated from the body, and the story of her brief life be ended.

But when the shades of night again fell on the convent walls, a revulsion of feeling brought remorse to the soul of the old priest. He was haunted by the thought of the living girl prisoned in the vault among the dead. In the solitude of his cell that night a strange unrest grew upon him, and evil spirits seemed to people the gloom.

He started up in terror from his knees, the great drops of sweat pouring over his face.

"Yes, yes, it is murder!" he uttered, fearfully. "Heaven put the means of saving her in my hands, and I was too blind to understand. But I will atone, I will atone!"

A sudden thought came to him, and he hurriedly sought a brother priest and the mother superior. To them, in deep humility, he confessed his error.

"I was deceived by tempting devils, but I see my mistake in time to correct it," he said, humbly. "Several hours yet remain of the time, and I will restore her to life, by the aid of Heaven and this mysterious drug, and her return to life must be a secret."

They went with him secretly to the dark vault. They took from the coffin that unconscious form and bore it in their arms to a secluded chamber. There they poured between the pale, sealed lips a few drops of the mysterious drug, and kept anxious vigil all night over her bedside.

In a few hours they began to reap the reward of their solicitude. The appearance of the girl's face grew less death-like, a delicate moisture appeared on her skin, a faint color in her lips, and gradually a barely perceptible respiration became apparent. The drug had done its restorative work perfectly.

Down on his knees went the anxious old priest, and he thanked Heaven for the life he had saved.

When the morning light began to gild the convent spire, the dark eyes opened slowly upon the face of the mother superior, who was watching intently for this sign of life. The priests had retired, and they were quite alone. Tears of relief sparkled into the eyes of the good nun.

"Dear child, you are awake at last!" she exclaimed, gladly; but the girl made no reply. Her lids had closed again, and she had fallen into a quiet, natural sleep that lasted until the chiming of the vesper bells.

She awoke to find her slumber guarded by another nun, who had taken the place of the good mother. When the dark, puzzled eyes wandered around the room, she chirped sweetly:

"Oh, my dear, you have slept so long, you must be very, very hungry. I will bring you some food."

She came back presently with some light, nutritious broth in a bowl, and fed the girl gently from a tea-spoon. She swallowed languidly, and a few mouthfuls sufficed her appetite. Then she looked at the pleasant-faced nun, and said, languidly:

"Good sister, I do not understand. Just now I was with Monsieur Van Zandt. He was wounded. Oh, how pale he was!" shivering. "Another minute, and I am here. How is it, and where is he?"

The old priest had entered noiselessly, and the low voice was distinctly audible to his ears. He shuddered.

He had just read in a paper of the mysterious disappearance of Eliot Van Zandt, who was supposed to have been murdered, and his body flung into the lake or the river. Hence the girl's strange words struck coldly on his senses. He thought:

"Her soul has been parted from the body in that strange trance, and has taken cognizance of the man vainly sought for by friends and detectives. What if she could tell where he is hidden!"

Muttering a prayer for the girl, he came up to the bedside.

"Bless you, my daughter," he said, soothingly. "And so you have seen Eliot Van Zandt? Does he yet live?"

She looked at him gently and with surprise. Perhaps, in the strange experiences of her trance, she was inured to surprises.

"Holy father," she murmured, reverentially, then, gently. "I have seen him. He is not dead. He is not going to die. But he is very ill; he is dangerously wounded."

The little nun chirped an "oh!" of vivacious wonder, but the priest silenced her by a warning glance.

"Where is he? Where is Monsieur Van Zandt, my daughter?" he questioned, eagerly.

"Where?" echoed Little Nobody. "Why, in the next room, doubtless, good father, for a minute ago I was with him, and then I found myself here so suddenly that it seemed a little strange to me."

"Yes, it is strange," said the old priest, growing pale and hurriedly crossing himself. "But you are mistaken. He is not in this house. If you know where he is, tell me, daughter."

She shut her eyes reflectively, opened them again, and answered, dreamily:

"He was lying on a bed in a pretty room, where a lamp was burning all day. There was a red wound on his breast, and he was pale and ill. I do not know the house, but Madame Lorraine can tell you, for it was her servant, Mima, that I saw giving him a glass of water."

CHAPTER XV

The nun looked at the old priest with round eyes of wonder.

"Father Quentin, what strange thing is this?" she uttered, fearfully.

"Ask me not to explain it, my good daughter; it is a manifestation of psychic power beyond human explanation," he replied, hastily quitting the room to seek the mother superior.

As a result of his interview with her, he was soon on his way toward Esplanade Street and Mme. Lorraine.

Seldom had the footsteps of such a holy man crossed the threshold of the gay and volatile French woman. She grew pale through her rouge and her powder when she read the name upon his card, and sent word that she was not at home.

He told the little page that he would wait until madame returned, and took a seat in the quiet salon.

Angry and baffled, Mme. Lorraine came down to him.

"Bénedicité, daughter," said Father Quentin; but she looked at him inquiringly, without bending her lovely head.

"I have come to see Eliot Van Zandt, who lies wounded in your house," he said, boldly.

She gave a quick, nervous start, perfectly perceptible to his eyes, and her glance sought his, full of frightened inquiry.

"The girl was right; he is hidden here," he thought, with fluttering pulses; but aloud he said, with pretended authority and outward calmness:

"Lead me to his presence; I must see the young man at once."

She had recovered her calmness as quickly as she had lost it.

"Holy father, you amaze me!" she exclaimed, haughtily. "The man is not here. I read in my paper only this morning that he had most mysteriously disappeared. But come, I see you do not believe me. You shall search my house."

He was a little staggered by her assurance.

"I do not wish to seem intrusive," he said; "but my informant was very positive."

Then he mentally shook himself. After all, he had no authority for his assertion, except the strange words of a girl who had just come out of a trance-like sleep—a girl who might simply have dreamed it all.

But he followed her all over the pretty, elegantly appointed house, the little page carrying the keys and unlocking door after door until he was sure that not an apartment in the house remained unvisited.

"You have a servant-woman, Mima," he said to her, as they descended the stairs.

"Yes," she replied; "Mima is in the kitchen, preparing luncheon. You shall see her, too, holy father."

Mima, at work over a dainty luncheon, bowed her head grimly to receive his blessing.

"You have been nursing a sick, a wounded man, Monsieur Van Zandt," he said, trying to take her by surprise; but she did not betray as much self-consciousness as her mistress.

"The holy father mistakes; I am a cook, not a nurse," she replied, coolly.

And so he came away baffled, after all.

Mme. Lorraine pressed a gold piece excitedly into the hand of the little page.

"Follow the good priest, and come back and tell me where he lives," she exclaimed.

Father Quentin went his way immediately back to the convent, with the story of his disappointment, and concluded that Little Nobody's dream had been simply a dream, with nothing supernatural about it. The light that had seemed to shine momentarily on the mystery of Eliot Van Zandt's fate went out in rayless darkness.

For the girl, she grew better and stronger daily, and submitted, with child-like patience, to the innumerable questions the good sisters asked her of her past life. They were shocked when she told them the story of her life with Mme. Lorraine, the life that she had counted of so little value that she had never even given her little white slave a name.

They went to Father Quentin with the shocking story—that the girl had no name, and that that heartless woman had called her Vixen, Savage, Baggage, Nobody, by turns. She must be baptized immediately.

The good priest was as heartily scandalized as one could wish. He chose a name at once for their charge. It was the sweet, simple one, Marie.

And that same day, in the little chapel, surrounded by the tearful nuns, Little Nobody stood before the altar and received the baptismal name, Marie.

The next day she was formally introduced into the convent school, which consisted of twenty young ladies, all boarders. She was cautioned to say nothing of her past life to her schoolmates. The priest said that she was a ward of his, and he wished the pupils to be very kind to Mlle. Marie, who, through the peculiar circumstances of her life, had not received necessary mental culture, and must now begin the rudiments of her education.

For downright, honest, uncompromising curiosity and rudeness, no class of human beings transcends the modern school-girl. The pupils of Le Bon Berger immediately set themselves to work to torture the new scholar—the little ignoramus, as they dubbed her. Such ignorance as this they had never encountered before. They teased and chaffed her in their audacious fashion, and speedily made her understand her humiliation—a great girl of fifteen or sixteen beginning to learn her alphabet like a child of five years!