Orphans of the Storm Part 4

"Never!" cried Louise. "You may kill me if you will, but I'll not be a street beggar. Why, the very first person we meet, I'll ask to save me and inform the police!"

"I'll fix you, my fine lady!" screamed La Frochard, throwing her from her. "Come, Jacques," she said to her ruffian son, "we'll trying a means of making her mind!" Together they seized and started dragging her to the steps of a sub-cellar. Tremblingly Pierre urged them to desist, but they cast him aside.

Louise was thrust into the dungeon and the trap closed. Black bread and a cup of water was to be her prison fare. Still moaning "Henriette! Henriette!" she groped along the slimy walls and tried the footing of the mingled mud and straw.

Horrors! What were the creeping things she sensed, though sightless?

Two raced under her petticoat, one nibbled at her shoe. She jumped high in air and screamed outright.

Rats! They were upon her again, almost swarming. She fled to a corner, leaped on a pile of rags, literally fought them off with both hands!

Her screams echoed through the upper den, to the anguish of Pierre and the mocking laughter of La Frochard and Jacques....

Pitiably broken, Louise was pulled out of the vile sink a few hours later, pledging wildly to obey the least of the hag's commands.

La Frochard knew that her conquest was complete.

Henceforth the girl would be but as a clay figure in her hands--a decoy to lure the golden charity of the rich and sympathetic.

As for Jacques, that ruffian was now eyeing the blind la.s.s closely, and muttering:

"Not bad-looking--I'll see to it no other man gets her!"

He slapped his knife villainously.

CHAPTER VII

TANGLED SKEINS

Henriette Girard had not only been saved from dishonor by Chevalier de Vaudrey, but she had won a devoted friend. Through his connections, the Chevalier knew much that was pa.s.sing in the half-world. The mystery of the happenings at the coach house was cleared by him.

"Your cousin M. Martin," he said, "was found drugged in a wineshop to which presumably the man La Fleur had enticed him. It was easy then for La Fleur to pose as Martin and kidnap you.

"I grieve to say it, abductions of the poor and friendless are common with the roues of fashion. Their families are of such influence that the police rarely interfere.

"But there will be an end of this--if I mistake not," said the Chevalier, "the people mean to put an end to these seignorial 'privileges'!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MARQUIS DE PRAILLE IS ENRAPTURED BY THE LITTLE VISION FROM THE STAGE COACH (HENRIETTE PLAYED BY LILLIAN GISH.)]

It was in one of his frequent talks at the simple lodgings to which he had conducted her the night of Bel-Air. Swiftly they had retraced the steps of the stricken Louise even to the pier edge over the darkling Seine. Horrified and trembling, Henriette feared the worst.

"It is not likely she was drowned," said the Chevalier gravely.

"Someone must have been about, to save her. Do not be discouraged, Mademoiselle, if our search for Louise takes several days. We are without a clew--groping, like her, in the dark. But we shall find her, never fear!"

The confident words gave tiny comfort to the elder girl as he bade his adieux in the parlor of the respectable lodging house he had found for her--the same caravansary (had they but known it) that housed the then obscure Maximilien Robespierre.

She strove to thank him for his kindness when he interrupted her: "Don't thank _me_, Mademoiselle, I owe _you_ a debt of grat.i.tude, for you have restored to me ideals sweet as childhood!"

Unconsciously the young people standing there, drew closer to one another until their lips met. Each was almost too astonished for words. Fine breeding came to de Vaudrey's aid. He apologized--and promised not to let it happen again!

Sincerity spoke in the young man's earnest eyes and his respectful kiss of her small hand at parting.

Was indeed this youthful cynic transformed by the flower-like influence of the girl?

He went away all eagerness to pursue the lost sister's quest, promising that no stone--police or other--should be left unturned in the search.

And here--where the orphans' eventful epoch becomes entwined with the lives of the great and with the darkening storm and impending pa.s.sion of the Revolution--it is well to acquaint our readers further with the de Vaudreys.

Count de Linieres of Touraine had been married--many years before the date of this story--to Mlle. de Vaudrey, the heiress of a great fortune. A skeleton ('twas rumored) rattled in the Vaudrey closet.

Certainly there was heritage of hates as well as gold.

A tenant Jean Setain, who came to the Paris mansion to pay his rent, made a scene. He told of the cruelties long ago inflicted on his father by the Countess' father--for some trifling trespa.s.s on seigniorage, _boiling lead in the unfortunate's veins_--and the angry Count, after a stern rebuke, had him ejected. Jacques-Forget-Not (such was his queer nickname) departed, vowing vengeance.

Having ample wealth, the Count desired preferment. The post of Minister of Police was a steppingstone. He accepted it whilst visions of a grand alliance for his nephew, Chevalier de Vaudrey, pointed to dukedom or even princely rank as the family's goal. It thus vexed Linieres exceedingly that the Chevalier should have been mixed up in a duel about an unknown girl. He believed it a clever stroke to hire Picard, the Chevalier's own valet, to spy upon him.

"How is your master's conduct?" asked the Count.

"Scandalous, perfectly scandalous!" replied Picard in a tone of deep dejection. "Once indeed he had a few gentleman a.s.sociates and went to gay parties, but now he is quite moral, and just as studious as a lawyer's clerk. Really I must leave the Chevalier," continued Picard, "his principles are such as I cannot accept!"

"Then I will re-engage you--on one condition. That is, that you remain a while with my nephew and tell me everything he does. I have heard, on the contrary, that--"

Picard almost danced a pas seul. "Oh, that is the way the wind lies!

The sly dog!--And I thought of leaving him. She must be a saucy and jaunty little minx, whoever she is! Oh, yes, I will find out everything that you require."

With eye to keyhole the valet reporter saw the frequent innocent parleys of Maurice and Henriette, which he construed as an intrigue.

He was quite ecstatic with happiness now. The police Prefect, finding his suspicions privately confirmed, bluntly refused police aid to the Chevalier's hunt for Louise. He spoke pointedly and (as he hoped) with effect:

"Monsieur, you must give up your a.s.sociation with these common people.

I have other plans for you that will shortly mature."

The angry Count could not be crossed. De Vaudrey's sole hope lay in his Aunt.

Ceaselessly Henriette spent her days in trying to trace Louise. Her quest became the neighborhood gossip. Strangers interested themselves and offered clues to herself and the Chevalier--clues that proved quite futile.

To her doorstep a great pock-marked man, bushy-browed and of k.n.o.b-like visage, was walking one day with her finicky dandified neighbor M.

Robespierre. As he pa.s.sed, the t.i.tan turned and inquired kindly:

"Are you the little girl who lost her sister?"

He spoke with a gentle sympathy that touched her and even his cursing reference to the abductions: "d.a.m.ned aristocrats! The people are going to stop that sort of thing!" did not phase her, for she looked up into his face and trustfully replied:

"You are such a big man I should think you could do almost anything!"