“But why—why?” demanded the baroness.
“I will tell you. Do you know what Napoleon brought home with him from the bloody battle of Eilau?”
“I have not heard.”
“The ‘influenza.’ I dare say you have never even heard the name; but you will very soon hear it often enough! It is a pestilential disease that is rather harmless where it originated, but when it takes hold of a strange region it becomes a deadly pestilence—as in Paris, where a special hospital has been established for patients with the disease. It was in this hospital I found your daughter as a nurse.”
“Jesu Maria!” shrieked the mother, in a tone of agony. “A nurse in that pest-house?”
“Yes,” nodded the marquis. Then he took from his pocket a letter, and added: “She wrote this to you from there.”
The baroness eagerly extended her hand to take the letter.
“Would it not be better to fumigate it first?” said the marquis.
“No, no; I am not afraid! Give it to me, I beg of you!”
She caught the letter from his hand, tore it open, and read:
“DEAR LITTLE MAMA: What sort of a life are you leading out yonder in that strange land? Do you never get weary or feel bored? Have you anything to amuse you? I have become satiated with my life—lying, cheating, deceiving every day in order to live! While I was a little girl I was proud of the praises heaped upon me for my cleverness. But a day came when everything disgusted me. It is an infamous trade, this of ours, little mama, and I have given it up. I have begun to lead a different life—one with which I am satisfied; and if you will take the advice of one who wishes you well, you, too, will quit the old ways. You can embroider beautifully and play the piano like a master. You could earn a livelihood giving lessons in either. Do not trouble any further about me, for I can take care of myself. If only you knew how much happier I am now, you would rejoice, I know! Let me beg you to become honest and truthful, and think often of your old friend and little daughter,
Katharina’s nerveless hands dropped to her lap. This sharp rebuke from her only child was deserved.
Then she sprang suddenly toward her visitor, grasped his arm, and cried:
“Tell me—tell me about my daughter, my little Amélie! How does she look now? Is she much changed? Has she grown? Oh, M. Cambray! in pity tell me—tell me about her!”
“I have brought you a portrait of her as she looked when I saw her last.”
He drew from his pocket a small case, and, opening it, disclosed a pallid face with closed eyes. A wreath of myrtle encircled the head, which rested on the pillow of a coffin.
“She is dead!” screamed the horror-stricken mother, staring with wild eyes at the sorrowful picture.
“Yes, madame, she is dead,” assented the marquis. “This portrait is sent by your daughter as a remembrance to the mother who exposed her on the streets, one stormy winter night, in order that she might spy upon another little child—a persecuted and homeless little child.”
The baroness cowered beneath the merciless words as beneath a stinging lash: but the man knew no pity; he would not spare the heartbroken woman.
“And now, madame,” he continued in a sharp tone, “you can go back to your home and take possession of your reward. You have worked hard to earn the blood-money.”
Here the baroness sat suddenly upright, tore from her bosom a small gold note-case, in which was the order for the five millions of francs. She opened the case, took out the order, and tore it into tiny bits. Then she flung them from her, crying savagely:
“Curse him who brought me to this! God’s curse be upon him who brought this on me!”
“Madame,” calmly interposed the marquis, “you have not yet completed the task you were set to do.”
“No, no; I have not—I have not,” was the excited response, “and I never will. Come—come with me! The maid and what belongs to her are here—safe, unharmed. Take her—fly with her and hers whithersoever you choose to go; I shall not hinder you.”
“That I cannot do, madame. I am a stranger in a strange land. I know not who is my friend or who is my foe. You must save the maid. If atonement is possible for you, that is the way you may win it. You know best where the maid will be safe from her persecutors. Save her, and atone for your transgression against her. Ludwig Vavel gave you his love and, more than that, his respect. Would you retain both, or will you tear them to tatters, as you have the order for the five million francs? Will you let me advise you?” he asked, suddenly.
“Advise me, and I will follow it to the letter!”
“Then disguise yourself as a peasant, hide the steel casket in a hamper, and take it to Ludwig Vavel, wherever he may be.”
“And Marie?”
“You cannot with safety take her with you. The maid and the casket must not remain together. You must conceal Marie somewhere until you return from the camp.”
“Will you not stay here and keep watch over her until I return?”
“I thank you, madame, for your hospitality, but I must not accept it. I come direct from the influenza hospital. I feel that the disease has laid hold of me. I have comfortable quarters at the Nameless Castle, where my old friend Lisette will take care of me. Don’t let Marie come to see me; and if I should not recover from this illness, which I feel will be a severe one, let me be buried down yonder on the shore of the lake.”
When the Marquis d’Avoncourt left the pavilion he was shaking with a violent chill, and as he took his way with tottering steps toward the Nameless Castle, Katharina, broken-hearted and filled with anguish, wept out her heart in bitter tears.
CHAPTER II
Marie had finished practising her lesson, and hastened to join Katharina in the park. She found her in the pavilion, and was filled with alarm when she saw her “little mama” kneeling among the fragments of her fortune. Katharina’s tear-stained eyes, swollen face, and drawn lips betrayed how terribly she was suffering.
“My dearest little mama!” exclaimed Marie, hastening toward the kneeling woman, and trying to lift her from the floor, “what is the matter? What has happened?”
“Don’t touch me,” moaned the baroness. “Don’t come near me. I am a murderess. I murdered her who called me mother.”
She held the ivory locket toward Marie, and added: “See, this is what she was like when I deserted her—my little daughter Amélie!”
“Your daughter?” repeated Marie, wonderingly. “You have been married? Are you a widow?”
“I am.”
Katharina now held toward the young girl the portrait M. Cambray had given her. “And this,” she explained in a hollow tone, “is what she is like now—now, when I wanted her to come to me.”
“Good heaven!” ejaculated Marie, gazing in terror at the miniature, “she is dead?”
“Yes—murdered—as you, too, will be if you stay with me! You must fly—fly at once!”
“Katharina!” interposed the young girl, “why do you speak so?”
“I say that you must leave me. Go—go at once! Go down to the parsonage, and ask Herr Mercatoris to give you shelter. Tell him to clothe you in rags; and when you hear the tramp of horses, hide yourself, and don’t venture from your concealment until they are gone. I, too, am going away from here.”
“But why may not I come with you?” asked Marie, in a troubled tone.
“Where I go you cannot accompany me. I am going to steal through the lines of Ludwig’s camp.”
“You are going to Ludwig?” interrupted the young girl.