Kitabı oku: «Little Nobody», sayfa 14
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.
But when they rushed into the room, a tragic scene greeted their eyes.
Una, in the center of the floor, was struggling heroically with a man, who was holding a pillow over her face and head, and on the floor lay a gray wig and beard and goggle glasses. Una's assailant was Louis Remond. One fierce blow from Carmontelle's fist knocked the villain down, and before he could rise, an emphatic kick temporarily relieved him of consciousness. Two men-servants, comprehending the scene with uncommon rapidity, dragged the wretch out into the corridor and speedily bound him hand and foot. In the meantime, Una, from the bedside to which she had instantly flown, was explaining, through hushed sobs:
"I peeped in at the door, and Johnson was holding a pillow down over Eliot's face. I screamed, and he rushed at me with the pillow, and would have smothered me in another instant but for your entrance."
"The hound!" Carmontelle said, fiercely; then, kicking the disguises into view, he said: "These must have been knocked off in the scuffle. Johnson was Louis Remond in disguise."
Una shuddered, then turned toward the bed. She stifled a cry of unutterable joy.
Eliot was unharmed, for at that instant he opened his eyes naturally, like one awaking from a long sleep, and their calm, steady gaze rested on that lovely, agitated face with its dark, loving eyes and the golden hair shadowing the wan temples.
"Una, darling!" he said, not as one surprised or excited, but gently and quietly, as one who has been very sick always accepts even the strangest things as a matter of course.
The crisis had passed, and Eliot and Una had escaped the malignancy of the two enemies who sought their lives, for a plot was unearthed that night that led to the conviction of Mme. Remond as well as her husband.
She was found in the house, in the guise of a female servant, and had arranged to take Una's life that night, by means of poison in her drinking-water, while Remond, who had bribed the hospital nurse, and so usurped his place, was to smother Eliot with a pillow.
Fortunately, the cruel conspiracy was discovered and averted, and the two conspirators were soon tried, convicted, and sentenced to a long term in the penitentiary. Madame died before her term expired, but Remond escaped from prison and made his way out of the country, never returning to it, through fear of apprehension.
At Mme. Remond's trial, when she found that everything was going against her, she sullenly confessed that she lied when she tried to palm off upon Una the story that she was of shameful parentage.
"I thought, when I married Lorraine, that all the money was his, and I hated him and the heiress, too, when I found out the real truth. I only wish I had killed her when she was a baby, then all this trouble had been avoided," she said, with vindictive frankness.
Eliot convalesced very fast, to the great delight of Una and the family, and one day, when the little lawyer had fretted over the missing will of M. Lorraine, she said to her husband:
"Tell me what a legal document looks like?"
He described it to her, and her eyes grew bright with excitement.
"Eliot, you remember the great dictionary in which you showed me the definition of Friend, that first night we met? Well, there was just such a paper in that book, and if it has escaped madame's search, is there yet, and may prove to be the missing will."
Her surmise was correct, and the lawyer was very happy when he got the legal document into his hands. It proved Una, beyond a doubt, Colonel Carmontelle's daughter, and the richest heiress in New Orleans.
"But you loved me, Eliot, when I was only Little Nobody. I shall always be prouder of that, darling, than of my wealth," said happy Una.
