Читать книгу Orphans of the Storm - Henry MacMahon - Страница 8

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The Normandy-Paris stage swung into the city as the shades of evening were falling and deposited our heroines at journey’s end in a little square beyond the Pont Neuf where the coach house was situated. As they alighted, cries of “Sedan! Sedan chair!” were heard. Brawling chairmen “mixed it” with pummeling fists and kicking legs to be in the front lines for the passengers’ custom.

’Twas a terrifying scene from which they were glad to escape to a side bench whence they watched the homeward hurrying throngs and looked vainly for Monsieur Martin. As in the country, Henriette tried to pass the time of day with divers and sundry folk, but it was no use. They gave her queer looks or hurried on, as if stone deaf.

“They simply pay no attention to you here!” she complained to Louise, “but never mind! Cousin Martin will come soon, and take us to his home.”

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Presently the city lamplighter was lighting the street lantern above them; he went his way and the Place was deserted.

There was a man lurking in the shadows of a portico nearby, though ’twould somewhat strain credulity to imagine him the elderly tradesman Martin. He was a powerful and burly figure, black habited, of impudent visage quite unlike a gentle relative’s. In the deeper shadows back of him crouched two fellows, one of whom bore in his hand a black cloth.

“Oh, why does not Monsieur Martin come?” said Henriette to herself softly, with a little gesture of half-despair.

“I am your cousin Martin!” said the man, advancing upon them with a smirk that was like a leer.

Henriette involuntarily drew back, withdrawing Louise a few steps with her. Relief and fear of the strange “cousin” struggled within her. The man laid a hand on the elder girl’s arm and at the same time signalled the ruffians. A sudden impulse moved Henriette to wrench herself free.

In a twinkling the three were upon her. While the burly leader tore away her grasp of the blind Louise, the fellow with the 14 cloth threw it over her face and shoulders, stifling her screams.

Not a passer-by in sight!

Fiercely Henriette struggled, twice lifting the cloth from her face, and fiercely Louise sought to twine herself around the body of her lovely guide and protector. But the big man again had thrown the blind girl off, and the fellows, having tied the black cloth, lifted Henriette between them and carried her into a waiting fiacre.

“We’ve got her safe now, La Fleur,” said the kidnappers.

“Drive your hardest to Bel-Air, the Marquis’s fete begins at nine o’clock!” said the villain addressed, who was none other than the famous nobleman’s pander....

What cared the Marquis and La Fleur about the blind one’s misfortunes. As La Fleur had said:

“Never fear––blindness is ever a good stock in trade. She’ll find her career––in the streets of Paris!”

Louise stopped, and listened for the retreating footsteps. The noise of the kidnappers’ melee was quite stilled. Instead, the diminishing sound of hoofbeats and 15 crunching wheels woke the echoes of the silent street; mingled with it––perhaps not even actually, but the memory of an earlier outcry––the muffled cry, “Louise! Louise!”

Louise listened again, but no familiar sound met her ear––only the rushing of the water, or the footsteps of some pedestrian in the distance.

“I hear nothing,” she said, in a terrified whisper. Hoping against hope, and in a voice trembling with fear, she spoke as it were to the empty winds:

“Henriette! Speak to me, speak one word. Answer me, Henriette!” No answer, no reply!

“Louise!” sounded faintly on the far-off wind, or perhaps her poor brain conjured it. The blind girl knew now that her sister was beyond reach, and in the power of cruel men who knew no mercy.

“They have dragged her away to some hiding,” sensed the poor blind brain, “or perhaps that carriage is bearing her away from me forever. Oh, what shall I do?” she cried aloud, in tones that would have thrilled a hearer’s heart with pity. “Alone––alone! Abandoned!”

With the last word the full horror of 16 her situation surged upon her, and she burst into a torrent of tears. Alone in Paris! Blind and alone, without relatives or friends.

You who sit in a cozy home, surrounded by safeguards and comforts, can have no idea of the blind foundling’s utter dependence or the terrible meaning conveyed by the one word “abandoned.”

“What will become of me?” she cried, between the sobs. “Alone in this great city; helpless and blind––my God, what shall I do? Where am I to go? I do not know which way to turn!”

Self-preservation, and the piteous hope that the house fronts might give her some clue to her bearings, caused the girl to stagger from the centre of the square to the sides. Along one of them she picked her way, moaning for help and having not even a stick to guide her. Slowly, painfully she groped around the Place until unwittingly she approached the railing or wall which served as a guard to the steep bank that descended to the river.

Along this she felt her way until suddenly her hands met the empty air. What, now? Should she return as she had come? 17 No, she thought; the flagging beneath her feet was heavy and substantial: ’twas probably the intersection of another street, and a few steps would bring her to house fronts again.

Louise walked down the flags and stepped into nothingness––thirty feet sheer precipice into the river Seine!

In the instant horror of falling to death off the stone pier, she found herself saved by being clasped in a man’s arms.

“Great heavens!” this individual exclaimed as he bore her to the centre of the square. “What were you going to do?”

“Nothing––nothing––what was it?” cried Louise incoherently, realizing only that she had been pulled back from death’s door.

“Another moment,” said the man in horror-stricken accents, “and you would have been drowned in the Seine! I leaped up the steps and just managed to catch you. Lucky that five minutes ago I had to go down to the river to fill my water can. You––”

The tones of the voice, which struck Louise as young-old in its timbre, were soft and kind with a refined and even plaintive 18 quality albeit not cultured. Here was a good soul and a friend, she sensed at once. But could she suddenly have won her sight, Louise would have been astonished at the actual vision.

Pale narrow spirituelle features, lit by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell,––the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no one could ever forget!

Wonder and awe were writ on the pale face as he looked at the lovely angel he had rescued. Pierre shuddered again over the escape. Better that he should have suffered myriad deaths than that a hair of that lovely head were injured. As for himself––poor object of the world’s scorn and his family’s revilings––was he worthy e’en to kiss the hem of her garment?

Pierre looked yet again. The angelic little creature was blind! Wide-open yet sightless orbs whereof the cataracts blackened the view of all Life’s perils, as they 19 had of the imminent river. A surge of self-abnegating, celestial love, mingled with divine pity, filled the hunchback’s soul.

Tenderly he inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette’s kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and her elder son.

Alas, poor Louise! In finding a friend thou hast likewise found the bitter bread of the stranger and the slavery of the Frochard clan! The wretched hunchback is himself in thrall. Little dreams he the woe that shall attend ye both, the while Henriette is the victim of far mightier pomps and powers.

Though Henriette shall not know thy fate for many a day, though she shall search long and frantically and not meet the beloved until within the shadow of the guillotine, it may give the reader what comfort it will that the blind sister still lives––a lost mite in the vast ocean of Paris!

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