Marie did not see Van Zandt's eyes looking admiringly at her beautiful
hair.
She was gazing with eager eyes at the narrow door that had shut her in
with him whom she had dared so much to find and save.
She saw with some dismay that its inner surface was just what it had
appeared when she had moved her fingers over it in the dark--perfectly
smooth, without seam, knob, or lock, and no apparent way of moving it
from its place.
Van Zandt gave her the lamp to hold, and put his shoulder to the
immovable door, but his whole strength availed nothing against its grim
solidity.
Then he spent an anxious hour trying the steps and the sides of the
door in an effort to find its mysterious open sesame.
Not an iota of success rewarded his frantic efforts.
But he would not give way to despair.
"I shall have to cut our way out," he said. "But, as I have no hatchet,
it will be slow work with my jack-knife. You may have to hold that lamp
for hours, ma'amselle, while I whittle a hole in the door big enough
for you to creep through."
"That is nothing. I shall not be tired," she replied, bravely.
But she was not called upon for this exhibition of patience.
The first few strokes of the knife revealed to him the appalling fact
that the inside of the door was not of wood, but iron--iron so heavily
coated with thick paint that it had cleverly deceived the superficial
touch.
Then indeed she caught a gleam of trouble in his eyes--trouble that was
almost despair. Her own face paled, and a sigh of dismay escaped her
lips.
When he heard it, he forced a smile.
"Do not be frightened; we will find some other way," he said.
And they went back to the room and searched the walls carefully to
see if there was any weak spot by which they might effect an escape.
Windows there were none, and the ventilation of the room had been
cleverly effected by pipes that were let into the ceiling above. The
walls around were damp and cool, showing that they were built into
the earth; but they were thick and heavy, and Van Zandt's jack-knife
made no impression on the heavy oaken planks beneath the handsome
wall-papering.
Two hours were spent in this vain quest for means of egress from their
prison, and drops of dew beaded the young man's face. He was weak from
his illness and from the fast that had lasted all day, and sat down at
last to rest and to think what he should do next.
"Oh, how tired and weak you must be! I am so sorry I eat your
breakfast! I shouldn't have done so, but I thought we should get out of
here directly!" exclaimed the girl, regretfully.
She brought him the wine and poured out a glass, which she forced him
to taste. It ran warmly through his veins, and courage returned to him
again.
"Now, no more for me," he said, pressing back the little hand that
offered the second glass. "Drink that yourself ma'amselle, and we must
keep the rest for you, for we can not tell how long it may be before we
get out of this."
"I do not need it; I am strong enough without it," she replied, and
replaced the untouched glass on the stand. Then she saw him looking at
her with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.
"I have a new thought," he said. "Perhaps if we could make ourselves
heard from down here, some one might come to our relief. Let us halloo,
ma'amselle, with all our might."
It would have been ludicrous if it had not been so pitiful to hear them
shouting in concert at the top of their voices. Indeed, they paused
now and then to look at each other with laughing eyes, and to pant
with exhaustion from their efforts, but the shouting was kept up at
intervals until Van Zandt's watch recorded the hour of midnight.
Then he said, wearily:
"There is no help for it. We shall have to pass the night here, I
suppose."
He opened the door and began to push his sofa out into the narrow
little passage.
"What are you going to do?" Marie asked him, with large eyes of wonder.
"I am simply converting this passage into a temporary bedroom for
myself," he answered. "Good-night, Ma'amselle Marie; I leave you my
room and bed. Lie down and rest, and in the morning we will try to
devise some new plan for our escape."
He opened and shut the door, and Marie was alone. She threw herself
wearily on the luxurious bed, and in spite of hunger and thirst and
terror, slept heavily for hours.
When she awakened, she felt sure that day must be far advanced. She
found a large pitcher of water and poured out some into a basin and
bathed her face and hands. Then she peeped out into the dark passage
for Van Zandt.
He was sitting up composedly on his sofa, as if he had been awake for
hours.
"Oh, dear, monsieur, I have kept you out in the dark for hours! Come
in," she exclaimed; and he accepted the invitation with alacrity,
pushing in his convenient sofa before him.
Laughingly, he said:
"I began to think you were a second Rip Van Winkle, Ma'amselle Marie;"
and, holding out his watch to her, she saw that it was near the middle
of the day.
"Oh, how lazy I have been! Forgive me!" she cried, vexed with herself.
"You must have been very tired waiting out there in the dark?"
"No, for I was at work trying to find the secret spring of the iron
door, but I only wasted my time and strength," he replied, sadly.
"Oh, what are we going to do?" she burst out, in sudden terror.
"That is what I was asking myself at intervals all through the night,"
said Eliot Van Zandt. "Oh, my child--my brave little girl! what would I
not give if only you had not followed Madame Lorraine into this fatal
prison! I could suffer alone with a man's fortitude, but for you to
share my fate is too dreadful!"
His voice broke and his eyes grew strangely dim. She answered, with
pretty gravity:
"It was through your goodness to me that you were first betrayed into
her power; and if you have to suffer for it, I want to suffer, too.
We are friends, you know. But we must not give up hope yet. I am more
sorry than ever that I eat your breakfast; but take a little of the
wine, and it will strengthen you."
"After you," he replied, seeing that she would not be satisfied without
seeing him take some. He held the glass to her lips, and she swallowed
a few drops under protest. He went through the same form, saying to
himself that he must save it all for her, for there was nothing else
between her and utter starvation.
"What shall we do next? Halloo again?" she asked, with a smile.
"I do not believe my lungs are strong enough to go over that ordeal
again. The wound in my breast is not quite healed over yet," he said.
"But suppose we sing instead?"
"I do not know how to sing," she answered.
"Very well; I shall have to do all the singing," he replied,
good-humoredly. "And, do you know, I think it is a rather good idea to
sing, for who knows but it may penetrate to the street, and if it be
known that Madame Lorraine be gone away, curiosity may lead some one to
investigate into the cause of the mysterious noise, and then we may be
found."
"Oh, how clever you are! Do begin at once!" she exclaimed, with a
hopeful light in her dark eyes.
"I will," he replied; and somehow the first song that came to his mind
was a sweet, sad love song he had been used to sing with his fair young
sisters in the far-off Northern home he loved so well:
"In days of old, when knights were bold,
And barons held their sway,
A warrior bold, with spurs of gold,
Sung merrily his lay:
'My love is young and fair,
My love hath golden hair,
And eyes so bright and heart so true
That none with her compare;
So what care I, tho' death be nigh,
I'll live for love or die!'
"So this brave knight, in armor bright,
Went gayly to the fray;
He fought the fight, but ere the night
His soul had passed away.
The plighted ring he wore
Was crushed and wet with gore;
Yet ere he died he bravely cried:
'I've kept the vow I swore;
So what care I, tho' death be nigh,
I've fought for love, and die--
For love I die!'"
The girl's beautiful eyes looked at the singer, dark and grave with the
strange emotions swelling at her heart. She had heard Mme. Lorraine
and the men from the Jockey Club sing their best, but it had not
affected her like this. A strange, sweet awe stole over her, mixed
with a buoyancy and lightness that was thrilling and yet solemn. With
the strange, new sensation there came to her a sudden memory of the
chapel at Le Bon Berger, and the soft, murmuring voices of the nuns at
prayer. She felt like praying.
He looked at her curiously, and she said, with child-like directness:
"I can not sing, but the nuns at the convent taught me how to pray. I
will pray to the good God, and perhaps He will hear me and save us."
The next minute she had thrown herself down by a chair, bowed her
golden head on her hands, and a low, soft murmur of prayer filled the
room. He hesitated a moment, then went and knelt down by her side,
and his deeper, stronger voice filled the room with a strong, manly
petition for help and pity.
Then he did not feel like singing again for awhile, so sweet and deep
an awe pervaded his mind. Marie sat opposite, her tiny hands folded in
her lap, a lovely seriousness on her piquant face.
By and by he sung again, but this time it was one of the solemn chants,
such as might be heard in the choirs of the old cathedrals.
The day wore on like this, and the night fell again, with no sign that
the persistent singing had attracted any attention from the outer world.
Sadly enough, and with many grim forebodings, Van Zandt wheeled his
sofa again into the narrow passage for his night's rest. As he bid her
good-night, Marie said, sadly:
"The oil is getting low in the lamp. I will extinguish it to-night if
you have a match to light it in the morning."
He was fortunate enough to find a little match-case in his pocket
filled with matches that he carried for lighting his cigars; so Marie
extinguished the lamp until morning, and they turned on a very dim
light that day, for they feared that they should soon be left in total
darkness. To-day, also, the last of the wine was used, Marie insisting
that they should share alike, for both began to feel the deathly
weakness of hunger paralyzing their energies. The singing at intervals
was still persevered in, although Van Zandt's voice began to fail
strangely from the weakness of hunger and illness. Hope failed him,
too, as this, the third day of their mutual imprisonment waned to a
close, and he regretted bitterly that he had allowed Marie to force him
to take a share of the precious sherry.
Faint and fainter waxed the light, and the two victims of Mme.
Lorraine's malignity began to realize that the horrors of Cimmerian
darkness were about to be added to those of starvation and isolation.
"Sing something," said Marie, from the depths of the arm-chair where
she was resting.
He fancied that her voice sounded strange and faint, and his heart sunk
heavily. He wished again that the poor child had never ventured into
this horrible trap from which there seemed to be no release but death.
But he had already wished it a hundred times before--alas, to no avail!
"Sing," she murmured again, sadly. "See, the light is almost gone, but
it will not seem so dreary when you sing."
He said to himself that he would be willing to sing until the last
breath left his lips, could he but lighten one pang of the suffering
girl whose devotion to him had brought down such a cruel fate upon her
head.
So, although his throat was sore, his head dizzy, and his heart like
lead in his breast, he sung feebly, but bravely, a song that yesterday
she had said she liked. It was sweet; but sad. He had no heart for gay
ones now:
"Out in the country, close to the road-side,
One little daisy there chanced to grow;
It was so happy there in the sunshine--
No one the daisy's joy could know;
Watching the white clouds, hearing a song there,
List'ning in wonder all day long.
'Oh,' said the daisy, 'had I a song-voice,
Yonder forever I'd send my song.'
"It was a lark that sung in the heaven,
While all the world stood still to hear,
Many a maiden looked from her knitting,
And in her heart there crept a tear.
Down came the lark and sung to the daisy,
Sung to it only songs of love;
Till in the twilight slumbered the daisy,
Turning its sweet face to heaven above.
"Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow,
Captured the lark, and life grew dim,
There, too, the daisy, torn from the way-side,
Prisoned and dying, wept for him.
Once more the lark sung; fainter his voice grew;
Her little song was hushed and o'er;
Two little lives gone out of the sunshine,
Out of this bright world for evermore."
He paused and looked at her in the dim light. The young face was very
pale, the dark eyes hollow with purple rings around them.
"I would give the world, were it mine, for food for this dying child!"
he thought, in bitter anguish.
With a languid smile and in childish innocence, she said:
"I like your little song, Monsieur Van Zandt. Do you know, I think it
suits us two? You are the lark, and I the little daisy. And--and--we
need not hope any longer, I am afraid. We will soon be gone out of
life, like the lark and the little daisy."
The last words were so faint as to be scarcely audible. Her eyes had
closed while she uttered them, and now the golden head fell languidly
against the back of her chair.
With a cry of alarm, Eliot Van Zandt sprung to her side, and
discovered, to his dismay, that she was quite unconscious.