"Now, then, forward. It"s the first time I have ever seen a crush at the Morgue;" and they perseveringly made their way to the front.
On a black slab lay extended the nude limbs of a woman who had been taken from life before she had reached its noon, whilst she might have been full of strength and l.u.s.ty joy. They were bloodless to the view, but round and beautiful of proportion, and clean of colour as a statue of purest marble by a master hand. The head was pillowed on a luxuriant ma.s.s of wet, matted raven hair. There was a smile on the face (which was wickedly handsome, as the soldier had described it), even in death, and a proud, disdainful curl had left its unchangeable impress on the mouth.
"By Jove, it _is_ Marguerite!" cried O"Hara involuntarily.
At the same instant the little grisette, whom he had helped to a place, turned pale and trembled, and falling back in a faint, sank into his arms as she murmured from between her white lips, "Merciful G.o.d!
Caroline, poor Caroline!"
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 embarra.s.sed 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 compet.i.tion 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 st.u.r.dy 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing, 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 Hotel 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 Jardiniere_." (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 acc.u.mulate and bobs decay."
"Ha, ha!--see the point--Bills and Bobs. But look to the la.s.sie; 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 gla.s.sy eyes into a tranced sleep, irregularly punctuated with sighs.
"Here you are, sir," cried the coachman--"_la Belle Jardiniere_."
"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 rea.s.suring 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.