Chapter 24

At another point he turned deadly pale, and almost trembled on his chair, as if he were feeling ill, and were about to fall. Henrietta was telling him at that moment, from Daniel’s recital, the circumstances under which M. de Kergrist had died, and Malgat had disappeared,--that poor cashier who had left such an immense deficit behind; who had been condemned to penal servitude; and whose body the police believed to have found in a wood near Paris. But, as soon as the young girl had finished, he rose all of a sudden, and cried out in a formidable voice,--

“I have them now, the wretches! this time I have them!”

And, breaking down under his excessive excitement, he sank into his chair, covering his face with his hands. Henrietta was dumfounded; she looked aghast at the old man, in whom she now placed all her hopes. Already, the night before, she had had some suspicions that he was not what he seemed to be; now she was quite sure. But who was he? She had nothing to go by to solve that riddle.

This only she thought she saw clearly, that Sarah Brandon, Mrs. Brian, and M. Thomas Elgin, as well as M. de Brevan, had at some time or other come in personal contact with Papa Ravinet, and that he hated them mortally.

“Unless he should try to deceive me,” she thought, not having quite shaken off all doubts yet.

He had in the meantime mastered his emotion, and was regaining all his composure.

“Let no one, henceforth, deny Providence!” he exclaimed. “Ah! fools and idiots alone can do so. M. de Brevan had every reason to think that this house would keep the secret of his crime as safe as the grave, and so brought you here. And here it happens I must chance to live,--of all men, I,--and he remain unaware of it! By a kind of miracle we are brought together under the same roof,--you, the daughter of Count Ville-Handry, and I, one after the other, without knowing each other; and, at the very moment when this Brevan is about to triumph, Providence brings us together, and this meeting ruins him!”

His voice betrayed his fierce joy at approaching vengeance; his sallow cheeks flushed up; and his eyes shone brilliantly.

“For M. de Brevan was triumphing last night. The woman Chevassat, his confederate, had watched you, and noticing your preparations for committing suicide, had said to him, ‘Rejoice! at last we shall get rid of her.’”

Henrietta shuddered, and stammered out,--

“Is it possible?”

Then the old man, looking at her half surprised, said,--

“What! after all you have seen of M. de Brevan, you have never suspected him of meditating your death?”

“Why, yes! I sometimes thought so.”

“Well, this time you were right, madam. Ah! you do not know your enemies yet. But I know them, I; for I have had a chance of measuring the depth of their wickedness. And there your safety would lie, if you would follow my advice.”

“I will, sir.”

Papa Ravinet was evidently a little embarrassed. He said, however,--

“You see, madam, I shall have to ask you to trust me blindly.”

“I will trust you blindly.”

“It is of the utmost importance that you should escape out of reach of M. de Brevan; he must lose every trace of you. You will, consequently, have to leave this house.”

“I will leave it.”

“And in the way I say.”

“I will obey you in every point.”

The last shadow of trouble which had still overclouded the old dealer’s brow vanished as if by magic.

“Then all will go well,” he said, rubbing his hands as if he were taking off the skin; “and I guarantee the rest. Let us make haste to understand each other; for I have been here a long time, and the woman Chevassat must be on needles. Still, it is important she should not suspect that we are acting in concert.”

As if afraid that an indiscreet ear might be listening at the door, he drew his chair quite close to Henrietta’s bed, and whispered in a voice but just audible to her,--

“As soon as I have turned my back that woman will come up, burning with curiosity to know what has happened between us. You must pretend to be very angry with me. Give her to understand that you think me a wicked old man, who wants you to pay the price of infamy for the services I wish to render to you.”

Henrietta had turned crimson. Now she stammered out,--

“But, sir”--

“Perhaps you dislike telling a falsehood?”

“You see--I cannot, I fear. It would not be easy to lie so as to deceive Mrs. Chevassat.”

“Ah, madam, you must! it cannot be helped. If you admit the absolute necessity, you may succeed in misleading her. Remember that we must fight the enemy with his own weapons.”

“Well, then, I will try, sir.”

“So be it. The rest, you will see, is a small matter. As soon as night falls, you will dress, and watch for the moment when the concierge, as usually, goes about the house lighting the gas. As soon as you see him on the great staircase; you will make haste and run down. I shall take measures to have the woman Chevassat either kept engaged, or out of the house; and you will thus find it easy to slip out without being perceived. Once in the street, you will turn to the right. At the corner of the street, in front of the great Auction-Mart, you will see a cab standing, with a plaid handkerchief like this hanging out of the window. Get into it boldly; I’ll be inside. I do not know if I have made it all clear to you?”

“Oh, perfectly, sir!”

“Then we understand each other. Do you feel strong enough?”

“Yes, sir. You may rely on me.”

Every thing passed off just as the old dealer had foreseen; and Henrietta played her part so well, that at night, when her disappearance was discovered, Mrs. Chevassat was neither much surprised nor troubled.

“She was tired of life, the girl!” she said to her husband. “I saw it when I was up there. We’ll see her again at the Morgue. As the charcoal did not do the work, she has tried the water.”

XXI.

Dear woman! She would not have gone to bed so quietly, nor have fallen asleep so comfortably, if she had suspected the truth.

What gave her such perfect peace was the certainty she had, that Henrietta had left the house bareheaded, with wretched, worn-out shoes on her feet, with nothing but one petticoat, and her thin alpaca dress on her body. Now, she was quite sure, that in such a state of destitution, and in this cold December night, the poor young girl would soon be weary wandering through the streets of Paris, and would be irresistibly drawn to the waters of the Seine.

But it was by no means so. When Henrietta was alone, after the departure of Papa Ravinet, she had only become confirmed in her determination to trust in him blindly: she had even forborne to think it over, as she had, humanly speaking, no other choice on earth. Thus, after having received Mrs. Chevassat’s visit, and after having played the part assigned to her by the old dealer, she rose, and, although quite exhausted yet, took her place at the window to watch for the proper time. Four o’clock struck; and, as it was growing dark, the concierge came out, with a light in his hand, and went up the big staircase to light the lamps.

“Now is the time!” she said to herself.

And casting a last look at this wretched room, where she had suffered so much, and wept so much, and where she had expected to die, she slipped out. The back stairs were quite dark, and thus she was not recognized by two persons whom she met. The court was deserted, and the concierge’s room locked. She crossed the hall, and at one bound was in the street. Some forty paces to the left she could see the place where Papa Ravinet was waiting for her in his cab. She ran there, got in; and the driver, who had received his instructions, whipped his horses as soon as he heard the door shut.

“And now, sir,” she began, “where do you take me?”

By the light of the gas in the stores, which from time to time lighted up the interior of the carriage, she could see the features of her neighbor. He looked at her with manifest satisfaction; and a smile of friendly malice played upon his lips.

“Ah!” he replied, “that is a great secret. But you will know soon, for the man drives well.”

The poor horses went, indeed, as fast as if the dollar which the driver had received had infused the noble blood of the fastest racer into their veins. They drove down the whole long street at a furious rate, turned to the right, and, after many more turns, stopped at last before a house of modest appearance. Lightly and promptly, like a sheriff’s clerk, Papa Ravinet jumped out; and, having aided Henrietta to alight, he offered her his arm, and drew her into the house, saying,--

“You will see what a surprise I have in store for you.”

In the third story the old man stopped; and, drawing a key from his pocket, he opened the door which faced the staircase. And, before she had time to consider, Henrietta found herself gently pushed into a small sitting-room, where a middle-aged lady was embroidering at a frame by the light of a large copper lamp.

“Dear sister,” said Papa Ravinet, still in the door, “here is the young lady of whom I spoke to you, and who does us the honor to accept our hospitality.”

Slowly the elderly lady put her needle into the canvas, pushed back the frame, and rose.

She seemed to be about fifty years old, and must have been beautiful formerly. But age and sorrow had blanched her hair, and furrowed her face; and the habit of silence and meditation seemed to have sealed her lips forever. Her stern countenance, nevertheless, expressed kindliness. She was dressed in black; and her costume betrayed a lady from a provincial town.

“You are welcome, madam,” she said in a grave voice. “You will find in our modest home that peace and that sympathy which you need.”

In the meantime, Papa Ravinet had come forward; and, bowing to Henrietta, he said,--

“I beg to present to you Mrs. Bertolle, my dearly beloved sister Mary, a widow, and a saint, who has devoted herself to her brother, and who has sacrificed to him every thing,--her fortune, her peace, and her life.”

Ah! there was no mistaking the look with which the old man caressed the old lady: he worshipped her. But she interrupted him, as if embarrassed by his praise, saying,--

“You have told me so late, Anthony, that I have not been able to attend to all of your orders. But the young lady’s room is ready, and if you choose”--

“Yes, we must show her the way.”

The old lady having taken the lamp, after removing the screen, opened a door which led from the parlor directly into a small, modestly furnished room, which shone with exquisite tidiness, and which exhaled that fresh odor of lavender so dear to all housekeepers from the country. The mirrors and the furniture all glistened alike in the bright fire on the hearth; and the curtains were as white as snow.

At one glance the old dealer had taken in every thing; and, after a smile of gratitude addressed to his sister, he said to Henrietta,--

“This is your room, madam.”

The poor girl, all overcome, sought in vain for words to express her gratitude. The old lady did not give her time. She showed her, spread out on the bed, petticoats, white linen, stockings, a warm dressing- wrapper of gray flannel with blue flowers, and at the foot a pair of slippers.

“This will answer for a change to-night, madam,” she said. “I have provided what was most pressing; to-morrow we will see about the rest.”

Big tears, tears of happiness and gratitude, this time, rolled down Henrietta’s pale cheeks. Oh, indeed! this was a surprise, and a delicious one, which the ingenious foresight of her new friend had prepared for her.

“Ah, you are so kind!” she said, giving her hands to brother and sister--“you are so kind! How can I ever repay what you are doing for me?”

Then overcoming her emotion, and turning to Papa Ravinet, she added,--

“But pray, who are you, sir,--you who thus come to succor, a poor young girl who is an utter stranger to you, doubling the value of your assistance by your great delicacy?”

The old lady replied in his place,--“My brother, madam, is an unfortunate man, who has paid for a moment’s forgetfulness of duty, with his happiness, his prospects, and _his_ very life. Do not question him. Let him be for you what he is for all of us,--Anthony Ravinet, dealer in curiosities.”

The voice of the old lady betrayed such great sorrow, silently endured, that Henrietta looked ashamed, regretting her indiscretion. But the old man at once said,--

“What I may say to you madam, is, that you owe me no gratitude,--no, none whatever. What I do, my own interest commands me to do; and I deserve no credit for it. Why do you speak of gratitude? It is I who shall forever be under obligations to you for the immense service which you render me.”

He seemed to be inspired by his own words; his figure straightened up; his eyes flashed fire; and he was on the point of letting, perhaps, some secret escape him, when his sister interrupted him, saying reproachfully,--

“Anthony, Anthony!”

He stopped at once. Then he resumed,--

“You are right; you are right! I forget myself here; and I ought to be already back in Water Street. It is of the utmost importance that that woman Chevassat should not miss me a moment to-night.”

He was about to leave them, when the old lady held him back, and said,--

“You ought to go back, I know; only be careful! It is a miracle that M. de Brevan has never met you and recognized you, during the year he has been coming to the house in which you live. If such a misfortune should happen now, our enemies might once more escape us. After the young lady’s desperate act, he would not fail to recognize the man who has saved her. What can you do to avoid meeting him?”

“I have thought of that danger,” he replied. “When I go back, I shall tell the two Chevassats a little story, which will frighten them, so that they will advise Brevan never to appear there, except at night, as he formerly did.”

Thereupon he bowed to Henrietta, and went away with the words,--

“To-morrow we will consult with each other.”

The shipwrecked man who is saved at the last moment, when, strength and spirits being alike exhausted, he feels himself sinking into the abyss, cannot, upon feeling once more firm ground under his feet, experience a sense of greater happiness than Henrietta did that night. For the delicious sensation had become deeper and intenser by the evening spent in company with Papa Ravinet’s sister.

The widow, free from embarrassment as from affectation, possessed a quiet dignity which appeared in certain words and ways she had, and which made Henrietta guess the principal events of her life. Ruined all of a sudden,--she did not say how,--some months after the death of her husband, she, who had been accustomed to all the comforts of opulence had seen herself reduced to poverty, and all its privations. This had happened about five years ago. Since then she had imposed upon herself the strictest economy, although she never neglected her appearance. She had but one servant, who came every morning to clean up the house; she herself did all the other work, washing and ironing her own linen, cooking only twice a week, and eating cold meat on the other days, as much to save money as to save time.

For her time had its value. She worked on her frame patterns for embroideries, for which a fashionable store paid her very good prices. There were days in summer when she earned three francs.

The blow had been a severe one; she did not conceal it. Gradually, however, she had become reconciled to it, and taken up this habit of economizing with unflinching severity, and down to the smallest details. At present, she felt in these very privations a kind of secret satisfaction which results from the sense of having accomplished a duty,--a satisfaction all the greater, the harder the duty is.

What duty, she did not say.

“That lady is a noble creature among many!” said Henrietta to herself that night, when she retired after a modest repast.

Still she could not get over the mystery which surrounded the lives of these two personages, whom fate, relenting at last, had placed in her way. What was the mystery in the past of this brother and sister? For there was one; and, so far from trying to conceal it, they had begged Henrietta not to inquire into it. And how was their past connected with her own past? How could their future depend in any way on her own future?

But fatigue soon made an end to her meditations, and confused her ideas; and, for the first time in two years, she fell asleep with a sense of perfect security; she slept peacefully, without starting at the slightest noise, without being troubled by silence, without wondering whether her enemies were watching her, without suspecting the very walls of her room.

When she awoke next morning, calm and refreshed, it was broad daylight, nearly ten o’clock; and a pale ray of the sun was playing over the polished furniture. When she opened her eyes, she saw the dealer’s sister standing at the foot of her bed, like a good genius who had been watching over her slumbers.

“Oh, how lazy I am!” she exclaimed with the hearty laugh of a child; for she felt quite at home in this little bedroom, where she had only spent a night; she felt as much at home here as in her father’s palace when her mother was still alive; and it seemed to her as if she had lived here many a year.

“My brother was here about half an hour ago to talk with you,” said the old lady; “but we did not like to wake you. You needed repose so much! He will be back in the evening, and dine with us.”

The bright smile which had lighted up Henrietta’s face went out instantly. Absorbed in the happiness of the moment, she had forgotten every thing; and these few words brought her back to the reality of her position, and recalled to her the sufferings of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

The good widow in the meantime assisted her in getting up; and they spent the day together in the little parlor, busily cutting out and making up a black silk dress for which Papa Ravinet had brought the material in the morning, and which was to take the place of Henrietta’s miserable, worn-out, alpaca dress. When the young girl had first seen the silk, she had remembered all the kind widow had told her of their excessive economy, and with difficulty only succeeded in checking her tears.

“Why should you go to such an expense?” she had said very sadly. “Would not a woollen dress have done quite as well? The hospitality which you offer me must in itself be quite a heavy charge upon you. I should never forgive myself for becoming a source of still greater privations to such very kind friends.”

But the old lady shook her head, and replied,--

“Don’t be afraid, child. We have money enough.”

They had just lighted the lamp, when they heard a key in the outer door; and a moment later Papa Ravinet appeared. He was very red; and, although it was freezing outdoors, he was streaming with perspiration.

“I am exhausted,” he said, sinking into, an armchair, and wiping his forehead with his broad checkered handkerchief. “You cannot imagine how I have been running about to-day! I wanted to take an omnibus to come home, but they were all full.”

Henrietta jumped up, and exclaimed,--

“You have been to see my father?”

“No, madam. A week ago already, Count Ville-Handry left his palace.”

A mad thought, the hope that her father might have separated from his wife, crossed Henrietta’s mind.

“And the countess,” she asked,--“the Countess Sarah?”

“She has gone with her husband. They live in Peletier Street, in a modest apartment just above the office of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company. Sir Thorn and Mrs. Brian are there also. They have only kept two servants,--Ernest, the count’s valet, and a certain Clarissa.”

The name of the vile creature whose treachery had been one of the principal causes of Henrietta’s misfortunes did not strike her ear.

“How could my father ever be induced to leave his home?” she asked.

“He sold it, madam, ten days ago.”

“Great God! My father must be ruined!”

The old man bowed his head.

“Yes!”

Thus were the sad presentiments realized which she had felt when first she had heard Count Ville-Handry speak of the Pennsylvania Petroleum Company. But never, oh, never! would she have imagined so sudden a downfall.

“My father ruined!” she repeated, as if she were unable to realize the precise meaning of these words.

“And only a year ago he had more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Six millions swallowed up in twelve months!--six millions!”

And as the enormous amount seemed to be out of all proportion to the shortness of time, she said,--

“It cannot be. You must be mistaken, sir; they have misled you.”

A smile of bitter irony passed over the old dealer’s lips. He replied, as if much puzzled by Henrietta’s doubts,--

“What, madam, you do not see yet? Alas! what I tell you is but too true; and, if you want proofs”--

He drew a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Henrietta, pointing out to her on the first page an article marked with a red pencil.

“There!” he said.

It was one of those financial sheets which arise every now and then, and which profess to teach the art of becoming rich in a very short time, without running any risk. This paper bore a title calculated to reassure its readers. It was called “Prudence.” Henrietta read aloud,--

“We shall never tire repeating to our subscribers the words which form our motto and our heading, ‘Prudence, prudence! Do not trust new enterprises!’

“Out of a hundred enterprises which appear in the market, it may safely be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly. Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last fifteen even, a careful choice must be made before we find out the few that present safe guarantees.”

The young girl paused, not understanding a word of all this stuff. But the old man said,--

“That is only the honey of the preface, the sweet syrup intended to conceal the bitterness of the medicine that is to follow. Go on, and you will understand.”

She continued to read,--

“A recent event, we ought to say a recent disaster, has just confirmed our doctrines, and justifies but too clearly our admonition to be careful.

“A company which started into existence last year with amazing suddenness, which filled the whole world with its flaming advertisements, crowding the newspapers, and decorating the street-corners,--a company which was most surely to enrich its stockholders, is already no longer able to pay the interest on its paid-up capital.

“As to the capital itself--but we will not anticipate events.

“All of our readers will have understood that we are speaking of the Franco-American Society of Pennsylvania Oil-Wells, which for the last eight days has been the subject of universal excitement.

“On ‘Change the shares of a hundred dollars are quoted at 4-to-5.”

Blinding tears prevented Henrietta from going on. “Great God!” she exclaimed. “O God!” Then, mastering her weakness, she began once more to read,--

“And yet if ever any company seemed to offer all the material and moral guarantees which we can desire before risking our carefully saved earnings, this company presented them.

“It had at its head a man who in his day was looked up to as a statesman endowed with rare administrative talents, and whose reputation as a man of sterling integrity seemed to lie above all suspicion.

“Need we say that this was the ‘high and mighty Count Ville-Handry’?

“Hence they did not spare this great and noble name, but proclaimed it aloud on the housetops. It was the Count Ville-Handry here, and the Count Ville-Handry there. He was to bestow upon the country a new branch of industry. He was to change vile petroleum into precious gold.