Mated from the Morgue Part 3

'Ha! you want to get home, my pretty one; we'll take you,' said the rough yet good-natured stranger, popping in his head at the window.

'What's the neighbourhood?'

'Place du Pantheon,' whispered the girl.

'All right, catch your coat and I'll follow it,' flinging the purchase on O'Hara's lap, then turning to the coachman to give him his directions before entering, he exclaimed, 'Hallo! What's the row?'

The coachman either didn't hear him or was so busy with some object at the other side of the carriage, which he was endeavouring to reach with the lash of his whip, that he didn't mind him.

'I'll put a flea in your ear,' and with the expression of this benevolent intention, he jumped on the box, doubled his fist, and was about to apply it to the side of the unconscious Jehu's head, when he suddenly arrested it in its progress, s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip out of the uplifted hand before him instead, and broke into a hearty laugh.

O'Hara felt more and more puzzled at the extraordinary conduct of this extraordinary person, and couldn't help looking out after him, when he heard the unexpected merriment. The stranger was descending and encountered his bewildered stare.

'Look out of the other window,' cried he; 'blessed if it ain't that inquisitive dog!'

O'Hara complied, and discovered the cause of all the commotion.

It was Pat, the foundling dog, who was panting on the pavement, the threadbare coat of the man who had befriended him held between his teeth![9]

The faithful creature was at once, of course, received into the carriage, and the driver was ordered to proceed rapidly to the Place du Pantheon, taking the Boulevard St. Michel on his way.

'We shall call into _la Jeune France_ on the route,' said the stranger, 'and get this poor little wench something to revive her.'

The girl caught the words and made signs of dissent at the mention of _la Jeune France_, which is a famous coffee-house much affected by roystering students and the frail partners of their revels. As soon as she could find language, she uttered a feeble but emphatic 'No.'

'What! You turn up your nose at _la Jeune France_. Well, we'll cut it.

Driver, straight to the Pantheon. Nevertheless, my child, it was there I met your dead friend first!'

'No, never,' cried the girl with gathering energy. 'Poor Caroline!' and she burst into a comforting flood of tears.

'Poor Caroline, indeed! How many aliases had she? When I knew her last she was called Marguerite _la modiste_,[10] and that was no later than last night.'

'You met her last night?' inquired the girl in excited tones.

'I danced with her at the Closerie des Lilas!'

'Oh no! Say you didn't. Caroline never frequented such a place,' pleaded the poor girl in the beseeching tone of one praying for mercy from a threatened weapon.

'It was there I made her acquaintance, too,' remarked O'Hara.

'There must be some mystery here,' said the stranger, pausing; 'you call your friend Caroline. I call her Marguerite, and she's known to the entire quarter by that name. We shan't speak about her reputation.' With a wink at O'Hara, '_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_, with Swift's translation. Not meaning any compliment, she was more beloved than respected.'

'I don't understand you, monsieur, but I'm grateful to you both for your kindness. I'll thank you to let me alight as we arrive at the Place du Pantheon.'

The girl arose, but the effort was too much for her strength, and she tottered back helpless to the seat, crying:

'Oh, I am so weak! My head is on fire!'

'Rest where you are; we'll see you to your own door, and I'll have a doctor by your bedside in five minutes,' insisted the stranger with gentle violence. 'What's your street and number?'

'Rue de la Vieille Estrapade, thirty.'

The carriage was quickly driven to the street indicated, which runs quite near, in close parallel with the temple of St. Genevieve on its southern side, and the Jehu, with a crack of his whip, drew up before number thirty--a tall, substantial, square-built house.

'Now, my child, take my arm,' said the stranger in the frieze coat, rising and a.s.sisting his wearied charge to the door.

No sooner had the faltering creature reached the steps of the carriage, than a blithe female voice rang out from a window on the third story:

'Welcome, Berthe--welcome, our little song-bird.'

The girl raised her eyes in a stupefied daze, her frame quivered, the blood fled from her cheeks, and for the second time she sank into the arms of our friend, who stood luckily behind her, in a profound swoon; but this time it was a swoon of joy.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SONG-BIRD'S NEST.

Joy seldom kills. Before the female figure, whose apparition at the window had thrown the girl, so strangely fallen under O'Hara's protection, into her second swoon, had time to trip down the stairs, the attack had spent itself, even without the intervention of the brandy-flask of him whose name was not Beelzebub. The sensitive creature was smothered with kisses by her friend, the while the two male observers of the situation looked on and at each other with a comical stare of envy. The newcomer was a slender, willowy woman, of a meridional cast of countenance--hair rich and dark in hue, features proud and delicately chiselled, and complexion swarthy. She was tall in stature and gracefully built, but rather inclined to the meagre, and seemed as if she had aged before her time. She might not have been more than twenty-three, but she looked as if verging on thirty, and yet there was quite a youthful impetuosity in her manner, and springiness in her movements, as she literally devoured her little friend in her embraces.

In the middle of this tantalizing greeting, he whom we shall call Friezecoat, for want of an introduction, called out in his rough and ready voice:

'Ho, ho, my pets! I protest against this, unless we lords of creation are admitted into the arrangement.'

The brunette turned a look of chilling surprise at him, as if questioning who was this intruder who spoke so familiarly. Then, holding the little girl of the chestnut hair, whom she saluted as Song-bird, at arm's-length, as if to examine the Song-bird's plumage, she exclaimed:

'Berthe, you little fool, why did you faint? How do you account for coming home thus?'

The only answer Berthe made was to lean her head forward on her friend's breast and burst into tears.

'How like that woman is to Marguerite _la modiste_!' whispered O'Hara to Friezecoat. 'I'm not astonished at her she calls Berthe having mistaken the body in the Morgue.'

'Oh, Caroline dear, then you are alive!' said little Berthe, at length finding words amid her sobs.

'Alive!--yes, really alive, _ma mignonne_, and I shall be chastising you presently to prove it, if you don't dry those tears. Why do you weep?'

'I went into the Morgue to see the body of a girl who had drowned herself, and, oh! it was so like you; and then, you know, Caroline, you've been away those three days.'

'And have I never been at Choisy-le-Roi for three days before?

Giddy--giddy girl, you've been to the Morgue. Don't tell this to the grand-pere.'

'Yes, and I have had such a fright. Don't frown, Caroline. I thought 'twas you I saw laid out, and when I awoke I was in a carriage with those gentlemen, who have been very kind to me and brought me home.'

The brunette bowed graciously to Friezecoat and O'Hara, and said:

'I thank you infinitely, messieurs, for your kindness to my young friend; and if you'll have the goodness to wait a little, I'll call my grandfather, and he will thank you too, and pay for this vehicle.'

'Madame, you offend me,' said Friezecoat gruffly.