ORPHANS OF THE STORM

LILLIAN AND DOROTHY GISH AS THE TWO ORPHANS IN D. W. GRIFFITH’S ORPHANS OF THE STORM. Frontispiece.

ORPHANS OF THE STORM

A COMPLETE NOVEL

FROM D. W. GRIFFITH’S MOTION PICTURE EPIC ON THE IMMORTAL THEME OF

THE TWO ORPHANS

NOVELIZED BY

HENRY MacMAHON

ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES FROM THE PHOTO-PLAY

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright 1922 BY HENRY MacMAHON

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages.

CONTENTS

ORPHANS OF THE STORM

CHAPTER I

TWO GIRLS OF NORMANDY

In all the countryside of Evreux, nay in all the beauteous old-time Normandy of the period of 1789, there were no lovelier filles du peuple than Henriette and Louise Girard.

Their romantic story was often whispered by country gossips. In infancy foundlings on the church steps of Notre Dame, then brought to this quiet Norman backwater by the Girards and raised as sisters, they had lost both their protectors by death. The same visitation of the dread plague had cost poor little Louise her eyesight.

Since the orphaning and especially since the blindness of Louise, Henriette cared for her with a love overwhelming as that of a mother for her helpless baby. She looked forward eagerly to the day when they 2 might leave the kinswoman’s where they were staying and go to Paris.

A local doctor had imparted a precious ray of hope.

“As for me, voila! I can do nothing,” he said. “Mais, is it not that there are learned faculties in Paris––men skilled in chirurgery even to the taking off of cataracts and the restoration of sight? Of a truth, yes! En avant, mes enfants! Let Monsieur Martin, your ancient cousin in Paris, have the care of you whilst the chirurgeons exert their skill––presto! if all goes well, the little one shall yet see!”

Henriette’s heart thumped with joy o’er the cheering prospect. She kissed and fondled Louise and even teased her. Reading or chatting to the blind girl, sewing her frocks or performing a thousand and one kindly services, her sole thought was to distract and enliven the prisoned soul behind the darkened windows.

And so a broad smile crossed the lovely sightless features and even the dulled orbs radiated a little as Henriette excitedly told the details of the proposed trip, and teased:

“––And, oh, yes––I forgot––when Miss Baby’s eyes are quite well, I shall sit down 3 like a lady––and you’ll do all the work!”

They were quite in a fever of delighted ardor over the preparations for the journey.

Elder sister, attending to everything, pronounced it perfect with gay little pats of quaint panniered costumes, fitting of banded sailor hats o’er white coifs, recurling of ringlets, and dainty polishing of slippers. The graceful little figures seemed elfin and fairy-like in the half sleeves and low corsages of tight bodices from which depended enormously full skirts set off by cute pinafores.

Round boxes, baskets or bags on either arm and even the rainy-day umbrella, they waited in delicious expectancy the serving man fetching the brass-studded cowhide trunk, to the very last moment when to Henriette’s surprise the blind girl pouted and drew back!

She groped until her fingers touched a chair, then sat down––kerplump!

“I won’t go!” announced Louise firmly. “Y-you’ll meet somebody or other in Paris––get married––and––and––I’ll be left all alone!”

The little general of the expedition paced hurriedly up and down the floor like a 4 Napoleon at Elba. Shocked surprise at Louise’s awful insinuation struggled with panic fear. At last Henriette faced her sister squarely. She came over and knelt beside her chair, raising a small hand to high Heaven.

“Desert you for a Man!” said Henriette, breathlessly. “Why, the very idea that I could ever think such a thing. Dear, here is my right hand; take it and bear witness: I solemnly swear never to marry till you yourself can see and approve my husband!”

The left hand of Louise traveled up till it met and lay flat on the other’s upraised palm. An expression of happiness overspread the blind girl’s face. She leaned over and kissed her sister. The two girls rose and left the old home of Evreux.

CHAPTER II

THE JOURNEY TO PARIS

Locomotion in those pre-railroad days was by stage coach except for the rich and noble who rode in their chaises. The way of the diligence led past winding streams and bright meadows busy with haymakers; past picturesque water mills and stone chateaux, anon along tree-shaded avenues grateful in their coolness.

Hard as the leathern seats were and however wearisome the ride, the girls forgot discomfort in Henriette’s description of the sights and scenes and Louise’s just as eager listening. Then at the stops the young women would get out and stretch their weary limbs whereof they suddenly became aware as the motion ceased. They were the only passengers, with unlimited time for the naive confidences which girlhood loves.

“Are you sure that Cousin Martin will really meet us at the Paris coach house?” asked the blind sister anxiously.

“I wrote him that we were coming,” replied 6 Henriette simply. “Of course he will be there and awaiting our arrival.”

“But if he should not––”

“Then, we have his address and will go to his house. Never fear, little sister, it will be all right....”

The lumbering coach-and-six did its hundred miles a day, bad roads or good roads. But within a few miles of Paris a whiffletree broke, the ungainly vehicle stopped, and the men jumped off to hold the horses and repair the damage. Henriette and Louise soon left the hard seats for a few minutes too.

Down the other side of the narrow turn of the road where the accident had occurred, thundered the beautiful carved and gilded chaise of a famous nobleman, Marquis de Praille, accompanied by gallant outriders and backed by liveried footmen on the high rear seats. Inside the equipage were the Marquis and his commissionaire La Fleur.

The black and dusty old stage coach blocked the way.

As the aristocrat’s journey rudely stopped, with the chaise horses thrown back on their haunches, a bewigged and 7 powdered head was thrust out of the window, roaring:

“What is the meaning of this?”

Descending presently with his follower to survey the scene, the noble Marquis enraged at the blocking of his day’s pleasuring belabored the chief ostler with his cane. Smartly the blows rained down on the cowering sufferer, alternate right and left in rhythmic strokes that touched each and several part of the canaille anatomy.

This gentle exercise finished, the Marquis espied around the corner of the coach the two young passengers. Another side of the Grand Seigneur’s nature disclosed itself.

Mon Dieu, what a vision! Blue eyes, yellow ringlets framing most kissable features, dainty form, twinkling feet, flower-like elegance––a rustic Psyche far more to be desired than the ladies of the Court! The Marquis hardly looked twice at the blind girl. All his glances were for Henriette.

Self-conscious, the noble gentleman plumed and preened. Patting down his somewhat ruffled apparel, adjusting his fashionable wig and peruke, and touching 8 up his mouth with the lipstick that the dandies of that age carried, he advanced elegantly upon the young women, cane in one hand and the other toying delicately with a hand muff.

Henriette curtsied and smiled, and bade Louise do the same. They knew not the ways of Courts, but native courtesy and naive simplicity were theirs. Presently the elder girl found herself telling the distinguished personage all the details of their trip, the appointment with M. Martin, and the hope of curing Louise by a visit to the Faculty.

The gallant de Praille, all bows and smirks, was offering them the hospitality of the chaise. What a grand stranger, truly! A regal caress of Henriette’s fingers in the handclasp. Most patronizing (or was it odious familiarity?) his dainty touch of her bare arms; the jeweled hand that toyed with her ringlets; the dexterous move as if to encircle her waist; the playing––in the airiest, most fluttering manner imaginable––with the lace that draped her adorable little bosom!

Quietly Henriette replied to his overtures:

“No, monsieur, I think it is best that we go in our own coach!”

The chastiser of canaille and charmer of ladies did not seem a whit abashed. Paying them ceremonious farewell, he withdrew and repaired to his equipage, the road for which was now clear. The girls stood a minute giggling at his mannerisms, as Henriette described his finery and imitated his peacock airs.

The girls would not have smiled had they understood. La Fleur, whom they had scarcely noticed, was the pander of the Marquis’s vices. The two were deep in plot. ’Twas whispered talk, but a chance bystander might at least have overheard the words:

“... At my fete of Bel-Air––make no mistake, La Fleur––I rely on you. One hundred louis, the reward....”

Or another scene that marked de Praille’s entry into Paris, might have interested them. Driving recklessly to make up time lost in the blockade, the nobleman’s equipage knocked down and ran over a luckless denizen of the faubourgs. Carelessly flinging out gold to the relatives of the dead woman who were sobbing or cursing him, 10 he leaned forward and inquired most solicitously of the driver:

“But––are the horses hurt?”

Indeed the nobles of that time regarded the masses as little if any superior to cattle or any other of their possessions.

In the country the common man toiled a serf without wages, for his master; while in Paris itself, the centre of gayety and fashion, the fruit of his toil was expended by the aristocrats in prodigal luxury.

The bourgeoisie or middle class bore the brunt of the taxes. A gay parasitic element, the demi-monde, ministered to the nobles’ pleasures. Below, the “submerged tenth” of the thievish and begging classes plied their questionable trades, with a large margin of the city’s population on the very verge of starvation.

It hints eloquently of the terrible conditions that there were no less than thirty thousand professional beggars in Paris at this time. Their wan, pinched faces, gaunt forms and palsied vitality were an outstanding reproach to a flower-like but decadent aristocratic culture founded on the muck of cruelty and oppression.

Nothing had the girls (or the simpleminded 11 country Doctor who sped them) known of the dangers or pitfalls of the city. Vile gallantry or viler underworld was looking for just such prey....

CHAPTER III

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE COACH HOUSE

The Normandy-Paris stage swung into the city as the shades of evening were falling and deposited our heroines at journey’s end in a little square beyond the Pont Neuf where the coach house was situated. As they alighted, cries of “Sedan! Sedan chair!” were heard. Brawling chairmen “mixed it” with pummeling fists and kicking legs to be in the front lines for the passengers’ custom.

’Twas a terrifying scene from which they were glad to escape to a side bench whence they watched the homeward hurrying throngs and looked vainly for Monsieur Martin. As in the country, Henriette tried to pass the time of day with divers and sundry folk, but it was no use. They gave her queer looks or hurried on, as if stone deaf.

“They simply pay no attention to you here!” she complained to Louise, “but never mind! Cousin Martin will come soon, and take us to his home.”

Presently the city lamplighter was lighting the street lantern above them; he went his way and the Place was deserted.

There was a man lurking in the shadows of a portico nearby, though ’twould somewhat strain credulity to imagine him the elderly tradesman Martin. He was a powerful and burly figure, black habited, of impudent visage quite unlike a gentle relative’s. In the deeper shadows back of him crouched two fellows, one of whom bore in his hand a black cloth.

“Oh, why does not Monsieur Martin come?” said Henriette to herself softly, with a little gesture of half-despair.

“I am your cousin Martin!” said the man, advancing upon them with a smirk that was like a leer.

Henriette involuntarily drew back, withdrawing Louise a few steps with her. Relief and fear of the strange “cousin” struggled within her. The man laid a hand on the elder girl’s arm and at the same time signalled the ruffians. A sudden impulse moved Henriette to wrench herself free.

In a twinkling the three were upon her. While the burly leader tore away her grasp of the blind Louise, the fellow with the 14 cloth threw it over her face and shoulders, stifling her screams.

Not a passer-by in sight!

Fiercely Henriette struggled, twice lifting the cloth from her face, and fiercely Louise sought to twine herself around the body of her lovely guide and protector. But the big man again had thrown the blind girl off, and the fellows, having tied the black cloth, lifted Henriette between them and carried her into a waiting fiacre.

“We’ve got her safe now, La Fleur,” said the kidnappers.

“Drive your hardest to Bel-Air, the Marquis’s fete begins at nine o’clock!” said the villain addressed, who was none other than the famous nobleman’s pander....

What cared the Marquis and La Fleur about the blind one’s misfortunes. As La Fleur had said:

“Never fear––blindness is ever a good stock in trade. She’ll find her career––in the streets of Paris!”

Louise stopped, and listened for the retreating footsteps. The noise of the kidnappers’ melee was quite stilled. Instead, the diminishing sound of hoofbeats and 15 crunching wheels woke the echoes of the silent street; mingled with it––perhaps not even actually, but the memory of an earlier outcry––the muffled cry, “Louise! Louise!”

Louise listened again, but no familiar sound met her ear––only the rushing of the water, or the footsteps of some pedestrian in the distance.

“I hear nothing,” she said, in a terrified whisper. Hoping against hope, and in a voice trembling with fear, she spoke as it were to the empty winds:

“Henriette! Speak to me, speak one word. Answer me, Henriette!” No answer, no reply!

“Louise!” sounded faintly on the far-off wind, or perhaps her poor brain conjured it. The blind girl knew now that her sister was beyond reach, and in the power of cruel men who knew no mercy.

“They have dragged her away to some hiding,” sensed the poor blind brain, “or perhaps that carriage is bearing her away from me forever. Oh, what shall I do?” she cried aloud, in tones that would have thrilled a hearer’s heart with pity. “Alone––alone! Abandoned!”

With the last word the full horror of 16 her situation surged upon her, and she burst into a torrent of tears. Alone in Paris! Blind and alone, without relatives or friends.

You who sit in a cozy home, surrounded by safeguards and comforts, can have no idea of the blind foundling’s utter dependence or the terrible meaning conveyed by the one word “abandoned.”

“What will become of me?” she cried, between the sobs. “Alone in this great city; helpless and blind––my God, what shall I do? Where am I to go? I do not know which way to turn!”

Self-preservation, and the piteous hope that the house fronts might give her some clue to her bearings, caused the girl to stagger from the centre of the square to the sides. Along one of them she picked her way, moaning for help and having not even a stick to guide her. Slowly, painfully she groped around the Place until unwittingly she approached the railing or wall which served as a guard to the steep bank that descended to the river.

Along this she felt her way until suddenly her hands met the empty air. What, now? Should she return as she had come? 17 No, she thought; the flagging beneath her feet was heavy and substantial: ’twas probably the intersection of another street, and a few steps would bring her to house fronts again.

Louise walked down the flags and stepped into nothingness––thirty feet sheer precipice into the river Seine!

In the instant horror of falling to death off the stone pier, she found herself saved by being clasped in a man’s arms.

“Great heavens!” this individual exclaimed as he bore her to the centre of the square. “What were you going to do?”

“Nothing––nothing––what was it?” cried Louise incoherently, realizing only that she had been pulled back from death’s door.

“Another moment,” said the man in horror-stricken accents, “and you would have been drowned in the Seine! I leaped up the steps and just managed to catch you. Lucky that five minutes ago I had to go down to the river to fill my water can. You––”

The tones of the voice, which struck Louise as young-old in its timbre, were soft and kind with a refined and even plaintive 18 quality albeit not cultured. Here was a good soul and a friend, she sensed at once. But could she suddenly have won her sight, Louise would have been astonished at the actual vision.

Pale narrow spirituelle features, lit by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell,––the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no one could ever forget!

Wonder and awe were writ on the pale face as he looked at the lovely angel he had rescued. Pierre shuddered again over the escape. Better that he should have suffered myriad deaths than that a hair of that lovely head were injured. As for himself––poor object of the world’s scorn and his family’s revilings––was he worthy e’en to kiss the hem of her garment?

Pierre looked yet again. The angelic little creature was blind! Wide-open yet sightless orbs whereof the cataracts blackened the view of all Life’s perils, as they 19 had of the imminent river. A surge of self-abnegating, celestial love, mingled with divine pity, filled the hunchback’s soul.

Tenderly he inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette’s kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and her elder son.

Alas, poor Louise! In finding a friend thou hast likewise found the bitter bread of the stranger and the slavery of the Frochard clan! The wretched hunchback is himself in thrall. Little dreams he the woe that shall attend ye both, the while Henriette is the victim of far mightier pomps and powers.

Though Henriette shall not know thy fate for many a day, though she shall search long and frantically and not meet the beloved until within the shadow of the guillotine, it may give the reader what comfort it will that the blind sister still lives––a lost mite in the vast ocean of Paris!

CHAPTER IV

THE FETE OF BEL-AIR

Henrietta had swooned in the vehicle which was being rapidly driven into open country.

Gradually color came back into wan cheeks. The blue orbs and Cupid lips fluttered and half opened; the dazed little brain tried vainly to sense what had happened.

Quickly the man La Fleur took out a small phial and poured some few drops of a dark liquid on the girl’s tongue. Half consciously swallowing it, she sank back again––this time, into a deeper nirvana.

They were coming now to a large estate, the grounds of which were brightly illuminated. Outside the iron palings a crowd of beggars shrieked and gesticulated. Within, all was gayety. La Fleur and his fellows dismounted with their burden. They laid the inanimate form of the Norman girl on a litter and covered it with a white canopy. As this strange pallet awaits the Master’s wishes in anteroom, let us take a peep at the celebrated Sunken Gardens.