Orphans of the Storm Part 11

The Doctor gazed at her compa.s.sionately before answering:

"That is impossible. To release you from this place requires a far greater power than mine."

"This place?" asked the young girl in surprise. "Why, what is it? Is it not a hospital?"

"A hospital and a prison," replied the physician gravely.

"A prison!" exclaimed Henriette in terror, striving to remember how she came to be in such a place.

At last the events that preceded her illness gradually came back to her mind, until she understood all.

"Ah, I remember," she said at length. "Yes, I remember the soldiers who dragged me here, and him who commanded.... And Maurice--was he too condemned? Alas, poor Louise--my last sight of her showed her in the power of vile, unscrupulous wretches! Oh, dear G.o.d, what have I done to be crushed like this!"

She dropped, weeping and wailing, to the floor.

"Sister," said the Doctor, turning away to hide his tears, "this is not a case for my care. You must be the physician here."

"I know virtue and innocence when I see it, surely this child has done nothing worthy of a term at Salpetriere!" replied the kind Genevieve softly, lifting up the stricken girl and embracing her.

"Come, dear, you must rest yet a little longer in order to acquire the full strength so as to be able to tell me everything. a.s.suredly we will help you!"

In the course of convalescence Henriette told her complete story to Sister Genevieve. The narrative included the girls' journey to Paris, her kidnapping and rescue, the disappearance of Louise, de Vaudrey's suit and the objections of his family, the recognition of her sister as the Countess's long-lost daughter, Louise's recapture by the beggars, and the peremptory act of the Police Prefect whereby mother and daughter, and beloved foster-sisters, were cruelly parted, and Henriette branded with the mark of the fallen woman by incarceration in La Salpetriere.

Sister Genevieve was strangely moved by it, as was the Doctor to whom she repeated it.

"Against the will of the Police Prefect we can do nothing!" said the Doctor, soberly. "If only his wrath has cooled, we may possibly get her term shortened--"

"What monstrous wickedness!" interrupted the Sister, ordinarily mild and loyal, but worked up to near-democracy by these and other injustices. "To imprison a pure girl--her only offence a n.o.bleman's honorable suit and her own ceaseless search for her blind sister, lost in the streets of Paris!"

"This girl Henriette was her blind sister's sole support," suggested a nurse.

"I had found her--Louise--at the moment when they arrested me,"

exclaimed Henriette sorrowfully. "I heard her voice. I saw her. She was covered with rags. Her beautiful golden hair fell in disorder on her shoulders. She was being dragged along by a horrible old woman, who I know ill-treats her--beats her, perhaps, and they would not let me go to her. Now I have lost her forever--forever!"

"Wait a minute, my child," exclaimed the physician, as a sudden thought flashed over him. "I believe I have met that very same girl."

"You, monsieur?" exclaimed Henriette in surprise.

"Yes--yes, a young girl led by an old woman who calls her Louise--"

"Yes--yes, that's her name," and the young girl became breathless with excitement.

"I know the old woman, too," continued the Doctor. "She is called La Frochard--an old hag who goes about whining for alms in the name of Heaven and seven small children.

"Where did I last see them?" he mused. Suddenly he recollected a little scene on the steps of Notre Dame one morning before ma.s.s. "Oh, yes," he continued, "they were begging for charity of the churchgoers at Notre Dame. I noticed that the young girl was blind--professionally interested, I examined her pupils and discovered she was merely suffering from cataracts which could be readily removed. I told the old woman so, asked her to bring the girl for treatment to La Force, but they have never shown up--"

"Quick! Quick!" cried Henriette. "Tell me, Doctor, where Mere Frochard lives?"

"Oh, they inhabit an old boathouse at the end of the Rue de Brissac down on the banks of the river Seine. There's a cellar entrance to their hovel near the Paris-Normandy coach house. But what would you do?" he inquired solicitously.

"Oh, Sir," said Henriette piteously, "if you could use your influence to get me out of here some way, I would--would run there and recover my little lost sister! You don't know how I love her, nor my fears that they will kill her. Please, please--" The little voice broke off in sobs.

Patting the girl's shoulder and smiling at her as if to try to impart confidence in a very difficult matter, the good Doctor drew apart with Sister Genevieve and conferred earnestly for a few moments. On their return, the physician spoke again:

"'Twould be of no use to invoke the police, as the Count has probably instructed them not to hunt for Louise. Nor is it in our power to release you from here. But we shall get up a pet.i.tion signed by all of us for your reprieve, very likely Count de Linieres will not venture to refuse it--"

Henriette was overjoyed even with this slender resource, and warmly thanked them. At once her busy little brain laid plans for invading the lair of the Frochards. And then--a most unexpected ray in the darkness--arrived at Salpetriere the quaint valet Picard and brought her comfort too.

No longer a spy for the Count, he had been converted from base suspicion by the Chevalier's honorable suit and the exile the latter had suffered. He now delivered this little message from his master at Caen:

Dearest, never will I marry anyone but you, my heart's desire!

Should I escape, it will be to your arms. Picard knows my secret plan and will tell you--until then, courage! A thousand kisses from your Maurice.

Henriette kissed the little paper fervently.

Countess de Linieres decided to make a clean breast of her wretched past to her husband. "It was not that I--I sinned," she sobbed, kneeling at his feet, "In the sight of G.o.d I am innocent, though erring!

"In early girlhood," she continued, "I loved and was loved by a Commoner, a man of the people. The good Cure married us secretly. We were blessed by an infant daughter.

"The family pride of the de Vaudreys was outraged by the so-called dishonor. Two of the clan found our hiding-place and slew my husband, then took my baby Louise from my helpless arms. I was brought back to the chateau and given in marriage to you, after threats of death if I should ever divulge the secret! Twenty years after, I saw my daughter as Louise the blind singer--the girl Henriette, whom you sent to Salpetriere, is her foster-sister. Oh, forgive, forgive--put me away if you wish, but consider what I have suffered!..."

The strong man, whom neither the fate of Maurice nor of Henriette had melted, was crying. Gently he lifted up the Countess and clasped her sobbing in his arms.

"If you had only told me before--" was the only word to which he could give utterance.

The h.e.l.lish aspect of his persecutions now stood revealed. Count de Linieres, in the act of divine forgiveness, resolved to undo wrongs.

But History struck faster.

The avenger Jacques-Forget-Not annihilated pardons. The Linieres and the other aristocrats were soon to flee for their lives.

CHAPTER XVI

REVOLUTION IS HERE!

The ex-retainer nicknamed "Forget-Not" bore a baleful grudge because of the cruelties inflicted on his own father many years before by the Countess's father--the cruel punishment of pouring boiling lead into the unfortunate tenant's veins: a procedure on which the boy Chevalier had been taught to look approvingly.

In fact ever since the elder Jean Setain displeased the then Seigneur of the de Vaudrey estate, the affairs of the tenant family had gone to wrack and ruin until the middle-aged son was little more than a landless beggar and an embodied voice calling for vengeance.

The original parties of the quarrel were dead. But the feud (on the part of Jacques-Forget-Not) had taken on a more personal aspect, because his own sufferings were involved as well as the memory of his father's. He had determined to kill the Chevalier, the Countess and the Count.

In normal times the monomaniac's designs would never have reached fruition. Now the vast public discontents converted the cringing ex-tenant or shrieking beggar into a gaunt, long-haired, ferocious agitator--one of the outstanding crazy figures of Great Crises!