THE STORY OF PAULINE CORSI.
All things went on at the Villa Moraquitos as calmly as if nothing
out of the ordinary course had happened. Camillia and her father met
constantly and the Spaniard still displayed his absorbing love for his
daughter; but, a few days after the scene in the gambling-house, he
announced to her his intention of making Pauline Corsi his wife.
The young girl's surprise at this announcement knew no bounds. Nothing
could have been more remote from her thoughts than the possibility of
her father's marrying a second time.
She knew of his devotion to her mother--knew the anguish that had been
caused to him by Olympia's early death, and to hear that he was about
to wed the young and frivolous Frenchwoman filled her with bewilderment.
This, then, was the fulfillment of the ambitious hopes to which Pauline
Corsi had alluded.
Being utterly without avarice or mercenary feelings of any kind, the
announcement of her father's marriage gave no pain to Camillia.
On the contrary, it pleased her to think that he should win a companion
for his declining days, and her only prayer was that Pauline might
prove worthy of his affection, and might learn to make him happy.
Her innocent mind could little dream of the terrible secret which was
involved in this intended marriage.
Again, she remembered that no doubt her fortune would be much reduced
by this unlooked-for event; there would be, therefore, less objection
to her union with Paul.
This thought filled her with hope, and she seemed to recognize the hand
of Providence in the turn which events were taking.
But we must retrace our steps, in order to throw a light upon the
timely appearance of Paul Lisimon, Captain Prendergills, and the sailor
Joe, in the secret gambling-house in Columbia Street.
It will be remembered that Camillia Moraquitos had recognized the
copper-colored visage of the sailor in the pit of the crowded
Opera-house.
The beautiful Spanish girl had also been recognized by honest-hearted
Joe, whose breast was overflowing with gratitude for the noble handful
of dollars which she had only that morning given him.
The Amazon was anchored in the harbor of New Orleans, and Joe had been
commissioned by Paul Lisimon to deliver the letter to Camillia, and had
at the same time received his Captain's permission to take a night's
holiday on shore.
With his pockets full of money the sailor was determined to enjoy
himself, and, attracted by the blaze of lights and brilliant crowd, he
strolled into the Opera-house.
Here, the entertainment being not very much to his liking, he amused
himself by staring at the audience.
It was then he perceived Camillia Moraquitos. From the moment of
recognizing her he scarcely ever took his eyes from the box in which
she was seated. Was she not the sweetheart of his Captain's particular
friend, the new first mate of the Amazon, and was it not therefore his
duty to look after her?
He saw Augustus Horton leaning over Camillia's chair, and immediately
set him down as an admirer of the lady, and a rival of Paul Lisimon.
By-and-by he saw the planter leave the box to order the carriage at the
close of the performance.
Determined to watch to the last, he quitted the pit at the same moment,
and reached the portico before the theater in time to see Augustus and
Camillia into the carriage that was waiting for them.
He also heard the brief dialogue that passed between them at the door
of the vehicle.
But the indignation of the honest sailor was unbounded when he saw
Augustus take his seat in the carriage by the side of Camillia.
He thought that his Captain's new friend was betrayed, and immediately
resolved to know the truth.
As the carriage drove off, he flung himself into the roadway, almost
under the hoofs of the horses of other vehicles, in order to follow
that which contained Camillia and the planter.
In this manner he pursued it until it turned out of the principal
thoroughfare.
Then, favored by the obscurity of the street and the darkness of the
night, he sprang forward, and, clambering like a monkey, contrived to
seat himself on the board at the back of the vehicle.
He was sufficiently well acquainted with New Orleans to recognize the
quarter through which they drove; and when the carriage stopped, he
slipped noiselessly from his position, and, lurking in the shadow,
watched Camillia and Augustus as they entered the gambling-house.
He saw enough to convince him that some description of treachery was on
foot, and that, in any case, Paul Lisimon's happiness was in danger.
The carriage drove off without the black coachman having noticed Joe;
and the sailor had ample time to examine the exterior of the house, and
the street in which it was situated.
He recognized the locality as Columbia Street.
Then, without a moment's hesitation, he ran to the quay, and got a boat
to convey him on board the Amazon.
Late as it was, neither Paul nor the Captain had retired to rest.
They were both seated in the cabin, with a pile of charts before them,
and the young lawyer was taking a lesson in navigation.
Joe lost no time in relating what he had witnessed; and ten minutes
afterward Paul Lisimon and Captain Prendergills were on shore.
The Captain knew the house on Columbia Street.
"Many a dollar have I lost within its accursed walls," he said, as the
three men hurried through the deserted city; "but that's in our favor
now, for the keepers of the house know me, and I know the trick of the
door, which is a secret only confided to the habitual visitors of the
house; so we shall get into the infernal den without any difficulty,
and once in we'll find out what all this means, and whether Don Juan's
daughter is deceiving you."
"She deceive me!" exclaimed Paul indignantly; "she is all truth, all
purity; but if the man who was with her is he whom I imagine, she is
the victim of treachery as vile as that from which I am a sufferer."
Thanks to Captain Prendergills, they had no difficulty in penetrating
the mysterious building.
A man, seated in a little ante-room on the stairs took their hats from
them, and told them which way to go to the gambling-saloons; but at
the very moment they reached the top of the principal staircase the
thrilling shriek of Camillia Moraquitos echoed through the house.
The ear of Paul Lisimon, sharpened by anxiety, told him whence this
shriek proceeded. It came from a long corridor to their left.
They rushed down this corridor, and burst open the door at the end as a
second shriek pealed through the building.
The result is already known to the reader.
The letter written by Silas Craig, which summoned Don Juan Moraquitos
from the opera-box, was a part of the planter's base plot, and had been
planned between him and the lawyer.
The business relations between Silas and Don Juan were so complicated
that it was easy for the artful attorney to occupy the Spaniard in
discussing them till long after midnight.
The two men sat talking till nearly three o'clock in that very
apartment ornamented with the map of the United States, and
communicating with the gambling-house in Columbia Street.
But the two houses were separated by a passage of considerable length,
and Don Juan was too far from his beloved daughter to hear that
terrible shriek of distress which alarmed every player at the gaming
table.
* * * * *
Upon the day on which Silas Craig, accompanied by the limbs of the law,
entered the house of Gerald Leslie, taking with him desolation and
anguish, Pauline Corsi and Camillia Moraquitos were once more seated in
the boudoir of the Spanish girl.
The Amazon had sailed from New Orleans, carrying Paul Lisimon away from
danger of apprehension--away also from her he loved.
Matters were rapidly drawing toward a crisis--within a few days the
French governess was to become the bride of Juan Moraquitos.
But the wealthy Spaniard had little of the aspect of a happy bridegroom.
He rarely entered the apartments of either his daughter or Pauline
Corsi, but he spent his hours in gloomy meditation in his study, and
admitted no one to his presence.
Camillia was cruelly distressed by this change, yet she dared not
interrogate the haughty Spaniard.
Sometimes she imagined that he reproached himself for contracting a
second alliance which might lessen his daughter's wealth.
"If he knew how little I care for the gold which others so value," she
thought; "if he knew how happy I could be in the humblest home shared
with those I love, he would not fear to rob me of a few thousand."
The confidence commenced between Camillia and Pauline upon the day of
Augustus Horton's plotted defeat had never been discontinued, and it
was to the Frenchwoman alone that Camillia looked for hope and comfort.
Strange anomaly of human nature! The ambitious and unscrupulous being
who could stoop to purchase a wealthy husband by means of a vile and
guilty secret, had yet some better feelings left.
Pauline loved her pupil--loved her with the light love of a selfish
nature it is true, but it is something that one spark of affection
remained in her perverted nature.
"You are sad, Camillia?" she said, as she looked up from her embroidery
frame to watch the thoughtful face of the Spanish girl.
Camillia was seated with her hands lying idle in her lap, her eyes
fixed vacantly upon the river, shining through the open window.
"You are sad, Camillia?" repeated Pauline.
Camillia aroused herself as if with an effort.
"Can I be otherwise," she said, "when I think of him? When I remember
that he is away--I know not where--his name branded with disgrace, a
wanderer and an outcast."
"Silly child! Have I not already told you that the day which crowns my
ambition shall also crown your love?"
"Ah, Pauline! If I could but believe you!" sighed Camillia.
"And can you not believe me? Do I look like one who has no will to
accomplish her wish? Look in my face, and see if there is one line that
tells of weakness there."
Camillia raised her eyes to the face of her late governess with an
earnest and wondering gaze.
Youthful as was that countenance, delicate as were the features and
complexion, brilliant though the azure of the eyes, there was a look of
decision, a glance of determination rarely seen in the faces of strong
men.
There was a power for good or evil--terrible, incalculable, if employed
for the latter--the power of a great intellect and an unyielding will.
"Pauline!" exclaimed Camillia, "You are an enigma."
"Not so," answered the governess, her clear blue eyes dilating, her lip
quivering with suppressed emotion. "Not so, Camillia; I am an injured
woman."
"Injured!"
"Yes. You, whose life has been smooth as yonder river, sleeping beneath
the sunshine that gilds its breast--you have never known what it is to
writhe beneath a sense of injury--to feel that your whole existence
has been blighted by the crimes of others. There are wrongs that can
transform an angel to a fiend; so do not wonder when you see me cold,
heartless, ambitious, designing. My nature was poisoned by the events
of my youth. I said that I would one day tell you my story. Shall I
tell it you now?"
"Yes, Pauline, yes; if it is not painful to you."
"It is painful; but I feel a savage pleasure in the pain. I gnash my
teeth at the remembrance of the old and bitter wrongs; but I love to
recall them, for the thought of them makes me strong. Have you ever
wondered at my past history, Camillia?"
"Never."
"I was born beneath a princely roof, cradled in the luxury of a palace;
the man I called my father was a duke--the woman, whose gorgeous beauty
smiled upon my infancy, was a duchess!"
"They were your parents?" exclaimed Camillia.
"I was taught to think so. They were of the Italian race, and sprang
from one of the most powerful families of the South--a family whose
pride had become a proverb throughout Italy.
"They had been married for some years, and had grown weary of
hoping for an heir to the ancient name which, if they had died
without posterity, would have become extinct. Disappointed in his
hope of perpetuating his noble race, the duke had grown indifferent
to his beautiful wife; nay, something worse than indifference had
arisen--something bordering on dislike, which, in spite of his efforts,
he was unable to conceal. The duchess came of a house almost as noble
as that of her husband. She was a haughty and imperious woman, and
she was not slow to perceive this change in the manner of the duke.
She discovered that in the very prime of her youth and beauty she was
despised by her husband. The bitterness of this discovery changed her
very nature. Every day she grew more haughty, more exacting, more
capricious. She shut herself from the gay world in which she had been
admired, and abandoned herself to a mute but terrible despair."
"Poor woman, she suffered!" murmured Camillia.
"She did. She was wronged, but it did not make her more pitiful to
others when their time of suffering came. It hardened her nature, and
made her merciless, as all injustice must ever do. The duke observed
this gloomy silence--this dumb despair. He could not restore to her an
affection which he no longer felt; but he sought to revive her spirits
by change of scene, and by those hollow pleasures which are the sole
resource of the idle."
"Vain solace! Poor lady, she was indeed to be pitied."
"Ay, but her haughty soul would have rejected pity as the direst wrong.
The duke left Italy, and took her to Paris, where, in the midst of the
gay and frivolous, she might forget her domestic griefs; but in France,
as in Italy, she refused to share in the pleasures of the world of rank
and fashion, and obstinately shut herself in her own chamber."
"Yet she did not die! Strange that such sorrow could not kill!"
"Sorrow does not kill. Even her beauty suffered no diminution. It was
still in the full splendor of its luxuriance, dark, proud, commanding,
queen-like. Have you ever heard, Camillia Moraquitos, of the secrets of
Paris? Have you ever heard of the mysteries of that wonderful city, in
which almost every street has its secret known only to the initiated
in the winding ways of civilized life? Three months after the arrival
of the duke and duchess in Paris, an event occurred which changed the
whole current of their lives."
"And that event was--"
"Apparently a very simple one; the lady's-maid of the duchess was
a frivolous girl, who had herself been educated in France, but who
had never before tasted the delights of the brilliant capital. She
was intoxicated with rapture, and she ventured even to express her
admiration for Paris in the presence of the young duchess. Amongst
the other wonders of this marvelous city, Jeannette, as the girl was
called, spoke of a fortune-teller who had related to her some of
the events of her past life, and whom she looked upon as a powerful
magician."
"But surely the duchess did not listen to this peasant girl's foolish
babble."
"She did! Despair is, perhaps, terribly near akin to madness. She
listened at first from pure abstraction, scarce heeding what she
heard; but afterward eagerly. She asked the girl a thousand questions
about this fortune-teller, and finally it was agreed upon between the
mistress and maid that the woman should visit the duchess late on the
following night, when the duke was absent at a political assembly, and
all the servants of the establishment had retired to rest."
"Strange caprice!" exclaimed Camillia.
"Grief is sometimes capricious. The duchess doubtless, was ashamed of
her own folly, but she wished to hear what this woman would say of
the future, which seemed so dark. What if she were to prophesy the
coming of an heir to that haughty house--an heir whose coming would
restore all the power of the now neglected wife? The duchess passed the
following day in a state of restless excitement, eager for the coming
hour which would bring the fortune-teller.
"It was nearly midnight when Jeannette admitted the woman by a private
door at the bottom of the grand staircase.
"There was something terrible in the look of the woman who crept
with stealthy and silent tread over the luxurious carpets of that
palace-like abode. She was old and haggard; her yellow skin disfigured
by innumerable wrinkles; her gray hair falling in elf locks about
her low and narrow forehead. Her small eyes were surrounded by red
and inflamed circles, and almost hidden by the bushy eyebrows which
projected over them. Her chin was fringed with terrible gray bristles;
her mouth disfigured by two enormous teeth, which resembled the fangs
of a wild beast. She was a creature calculated to inspire disgust
and terror, and she seemed still more horrible by contrast with the
elegance around her, as she entered the superb apartments of the
duchess.
"There is little doubt that the maid, Jeannette, had told this woman
all the secrets of her mistress. Her task, therefore, was an easy one.
She described the troubles of the past, and foretold that, before
the year had elapsed, a child would be born to the duke and duchess.
On hearing this prophecy from the lips of a miserable impostor, the
haughty Italian fell at her feet, and burst into an hysterical flood of
tears.
"The woman saw in that moment the first foreshadowing of a future
crime. A week afterward she came again at the same hour. This time
she saw the duchess alone, and remained with her for so long a period
that Jeannette's curiosity was excited. She contrived to overhear the
interview.
"Once more the duchess seemed a transformed being. She no longer shut
herself from the world. Gay and radiant she re-entered society; and
in a few months the duke was informed that he would ere long become a
father.
"On hearing this he was eager for an immediate return to Italy, in
order that the infant might be born upon the soil which it was by and
by to inherit; but the duchess had a strange caprice upon this point.
She was determined not to leave Paris, and her husband could not bring
himself to oppose her wishes at such a time.
"Within a twelvemonth from the first visit of the fortune-teller, a
child was born and reared in the ducal mansion. I was that child.
Caressed and indulged from my earliest infancy, nursed in luxury and
elegance, I was happy, for I had much of the frivolous nature of my
native Paris; but, child as I was, I knew that I was not beloved.
"I saw the looks of other women as they hung over their children,
and I knew that such glances of affection never rested upon me. The
duke loaded me with presents, but he never embraced me as I had seen
other fathers embrace their children, and I felt that some gem was
wanting in the diadem of happiness. Years passed; I grew to early
girlhood, and for the first time I knew what it was to love. A young
artist, who had been engaged to paint my portrait, fell in love with
me, and his passion was returned. For the first and only time I too
loved; devotedly, enduringly. The painter, though handsome, honorable,
high-minded, distinguished, was driven from that ducal mansion with
scorn and contumely. What greater sin could he have committed? He had
dared to love the daughter of one of Italy's proudest noblemen.
"This was the first bitter wrong of my life. The pride of others
trampled on my hopes of happiness, and at sixteen years of age my
breast was imbittered by a blighted affection. My lover wrote me a
letter of despairing farewell and left the country for America. To this
day I know not to what part of the mighty continent he went."
"Poor Pauline!"
"A twelvemonth after this, Jeannette, the servant of the duchess,
died; and on her death-bed she sent for the duke and confided to him a
terrible secret. I was not the daughter of the duchess, but a spurious
child, born of low parents, and introduced into the ducal mansion by
the old Parisian fortune-teller."
"Oh Heaven, how terrible!"
"It was indeed terrible. The fury of the duke knew no bounds. He
was a proud man, and for seventeen years he had been duped, fooled,
imposed upon by the child of some wretched Frenchwoman--the child he
had introduced into the society of the noblest in the land, and whose
beauty and accomplishments had been his boast. He had never loved me;
there was no link of affection between us to stay the torrent of his
rage. That rage was more terrific against me, the innocent! than even
toward the guilty duchess. He drove me from his doors with loathing,
and, I, the pampered heiress, wandered forth into the streets of Genoa,
a beggar and an outcast. Before I reached the gates of the town I was
overtaken by the steward of the duke, who brought me a pocket-book
from his master. It contained notes to the amount of three thousand
pounds. My first impulse was to cast it in the dirt beneath my feet,
and to bid the steward go back and tell his lord how I had treated his
generous donation; but a sudden idea took possession of me. This sum of
money would enable me to go where I pleased. I might go to America--I
might find him I loved. Two months after this I landed in New York. I
traveled from city to city, but nowhere could I obtain tidings of him I
sought; and at last, wearied by my ineffectual search, my funds nearly
exhausted with the extravagant outlay of my travels, I found myself in
New Orleans. You know the rest."