CHAPTER III.

LE VRAI N'EST PAS TOUJOURS VRAISEMBLABLE.

The crowd immediately gathered round the fainting grisette as she lay in the arms of our friend, forgetting, in their eagerness for this fresh excitement, the morbid spectacle on the slab. With the same idle gaze of curiosity which they had bestowed on the dead girl they turned to the inanimate form of the living. O'Hara gently permitted the body to lapse on the ground, and quickly divesting himself of his coat, folded it in the shape of a bolster under her head--and then looked at her and felt embarrassed how further to act. Above all things he abhorred a 'scene' and here he was fairly constrained to sit for one of the leading figures in the picture. He lost his presence of mind amid the multifarious inquiries and suggestions and proffers of help of the craning spectators who pressed upon him and his breathless charge; and, to complete his humiliation, he awoke to the fact that he had a piece of canvas sewed on where the back ought to have been in the waistcoat he exposed, just as a well-dressed lady put a bottle of eau de Cologne into his hand, telling him to apply it to the lips of the sufferer. How soon he might himself be in a condition to require a restorative we might have to tell, had not an imperious voice commanded the crowd to make way, and a man, following it into the centre of the group, proceeded to put his orders into force by a vigorous and skilful application of his elbows.

'Stand back,' he cried; 'all the creature wants is air, and ye're getting up a competition to smother her.'

Turning to one of the busiest on-lookers, he urged him towards the door of the greffier's office, directing him, as he was a smart fellow, to fetch a carafe of cold water in a hurry; and then, leaning over O'Hara, as he held the pungent bottle to the girl's nostrils, he said in English, accompanying his words with an impatient gesture, 'Drat that stuff; here's what'll revive her!' at the same time producing a brandy-flask.

O'Hara looked up and recognised the sturdy stranger of the frieze coat.

'Well, how long will you keep staring at me? Ay, boy, that's right with the water--see, she opens her eyes. Now to slip a little of the water of life down her throat. Keep her mouth open with your penknife. Ho, ho! she'll come round in a jiffy. See here, mister, you with your coat off, will you help me to trundle my sister out of this infernal hole? Catch up her legs, man. Hang it! one would think you were handling glass marked "This side uppermost."'

Partly in obedience to this torrent of words, and partly because he had, for the time being, no will of his own, his self-possession completely gone, O'Hara obeyed the stranger, and between them the girl, still pale and prostrate, was lifted to the door. The stranger hailed a hackney carriage which was passing, and, helping the grisette in and pushing O'Hara after her, he mounted beside the coachman, and drove in the direction of the Place before the gate of Notre Dame.

When they had arrived opposite the Hôtel Dieu, he stopped the carriage, dismounted, looked in at the window, and burst into a roar of laughter.

O'Hara turned from the girl, who was leaning back in a corner, her eyes open in a wide, wondering way, and confronted the stranger with a fierce yet perplexed look. But he only renewed his laughter.

'Is it at me or your sister you're laughing, sir?' O'Hara found words at length to say.

'My sister! Ha, ha! never saw her in my life before,' and he resumed his guffaw.

'Open the door,' cried O'Hara, at last thoroughly roused.

'Who's your tailor?' said the irrepressible man in the frieze coat.

The pride of the poverty-stricken Irish gentleman was touched; his shame overcame his anger, and, foolish fellow! he blushed for that of which he had no need to be ashamed.

'That's the loudest thing in vestings I know; you've got the falls of Niagara on your back, man.'

O'Hara, removing his waistcoat in a flurry of confusion, discovered that the painted side of the old canvas, the remains of some artist friend, had been, indeed, turned outwards when he had put it for a patch to his waistcoat a few days before in his blundering amateur tailor fashion.[8] Looking at it, he could not help laughing himself.

'When a man wears that pattern of waistcoat, he shouldn't forget his coat after him.'

To heighten his difficulties, O'Hara now discovered for the first time that he had left his coat behind him at the Morgue.

'Can't go back,' said the stranger. 'Here, coachman, to _la Belle Jardinière_.' (This was the name of a famous clothing warehouse in the quarter.)

'But I've no money, sir, to buy a coat, if that be what you mean by going there,' said O'Hara.

'Tell me something I don't know; you're a poor devil!'

'Ah! you've discovered that,' exclaimed O'Hara, nettled.

'Knew it by intuition--been one myself.'

'But I am not a mendicant.'

'Who said you were?'

'I have money coming to me--I'll have it--in a few days.'

'I know it, and I'll lend you the price of a coat in the meanwhile.'

'Thanks,' cried O'Hara, with effusion, for he couldn't help feeling the terrible awkwardness of his loss, and he began to see that his new acquaintance was a humorist. 'What might your name be, sir?'

'What might it be! It might be Beelzebub, but it isn't.'

'What is it, then, if that pleases you better?'

'What's in a name?'

O'Hara paused a moment. 'Right!' he answered at last; 'a name is nothing without money behind it.'

'Ay, ay, my lad; "what's in a name?" as the divine Williams says: it's nothing, as you remark--just about as much as your purse holds at present. Don't be angry with me; been that way myself. Know Goldsmith?--

'"Ill fares the cove, to hastening duns a prey, Whose bills accumulate and bobs decay."

'Ha, ha!--see the point--Bills and Bobs. But look to the lassie; she's going off again, I fear;' and the queer stranger handed him the brandy-flask in which he had such faith.

'Caroline,' the grisette again murmured, and dropped off with glassy eyes into a tranced sleep, irregularly punctuated with sighs.

'Here you are, sir,' cried the coachman--'_la Belle Jardinière_.'

'Stay where you are,' said the stranger. 'I'll fetch you out a fifty-franc coat; can size you at a glance. Shake up that girl;' and he disappeared rapidly.

The girl, fully roused by the sudden stoppage of the vehicle, gazed round her with a lost look, as if to collect her scattered senses, and vainly endeavoured to realize how and why she found herself in a state of exhaustion in a carriage with a strange man. At last, under the influence of O'Hara's kindly reassuring face, she began to recall what had happened. The slab in the Morgue, with its burden, which had robbed her of her senses and strength, rose before her eyes, and she shuddered.

'Courage, my dear,' cried O'Hara firmly; 'drink,' pressing the flask of brandy to her lips; 'you are with friends!'

The girl did as desired, and looked her thanks. O'Hara commenced chafing her hands. She smiled faintly, uttered a few gracious words, in which the magic syllable 'home,' a spell in every land, alone could be distinguished.

'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 Panthéon,' 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, snatched 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 Panthéon, 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 Panthéon. 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 Panthéon.'

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. Geneviève 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 assisting 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.