Faithful Margaret: A Novel
general and set scouts on his track."
St. Udo hastened to the general's tent as speedily as his reeling head
would permit him.
A pursuit was immediately made of the fugitive, and precautions taken to
foil his intended treachery; but the pursuit was fruitless--Calembours
had dodged misfortune successfully this time.
Lying face down in his tent, St. Udo Brand mused over the fleeting
incidents of his late existence, and owned himself at fault.
He looked back upon the friends he had expected fidelity from--which of
them had not betrayed his trust? Upon the humble worm he had crushed
with scorning heel--his life-preserver--his only friend now.
The deserted man scanned his reckless life, and in its shapeless
fragments began to find a plan, and wonderingly, as a child fits
together the scattered sections of his little puzzle, St. Udo linked the
parted sections of his existence into their possible plan--and lo! he
discovered that Providence held the key!
The remorseful man rose, and found Thoms studying him with his uncanny
stare.
"My kind fellow," said St. Udo, gently, "Since your master has left you
on my hands, and since I can't forget the noble service you have done
me, perhaps you had better enter my service and see me through the war?"
"That will I, colonel," answered Thoms, with a keen smile.
"You have been a good friend to me, and Heaven knows I have need of
friends," said St. Udo, gratefully.
The glittering eyes watched him as intently as if the old man were
learning a lesson.
"If there's anything I could do for you, Thoms, to mark my gratitude, I
would like to hear of it," said St. Udo.
"Nothing, colonel, except to let me stay by you."
"You may get shot in battle, my man."
"So may you, colonel, and more likely."
"Well, we won't dispute about that," said St. Udo, sunnily. "But
wouldn't you rather go North, out of the scrape?"
"I'll never leave you!"
St. Udo, glancing up gratefully, saw that in his eye, which chilled as
with the finger of death, the warm words crowding to his lips; a thrill
of mortal dread, a sure premonition of evil seized his soul, and he
waited, with the words frozen, regarding the man with stony stare until
he turned on his heel and shuffled out of sight.
That night, when Thoms ventured back to sate his gloating eyes again
upon St. Udo Brand, he sought for him in vain--his sub-officer occupied
his tent.
"Where is the colonel?" asked Thoms, turning sharply on the nearest
soldier.
"Gone, two hours ago."
"Gone!"
How white the sallow face blanched. How the tones quavered.
"By Heaven, I have lost him," cried Thoms, vehemently. "Where did he
go?"
"On a secret embassy somewhere."
"Without me!" groaned Thoms, with a wild flash of the wolfish eyes. "He
has stolen away from me--_he has found me out_!"
CHAPTER VIII.
MARGARET'S VISION.
Lady Juliana Ducie concealed her disappointed love so well that no one
would have suspected, not even simple Margaret Walsingham, that she
suffered from its pangs.
As the summer season wore on and she began to get over her "awkward
affair" with the rail-cars, she plunged into gayety, and a violent
flirtation with the Irish duke, which threatened quite to banish any
lingering memories of the soldier who was fighting in other scenes, and
Hautville Park became thronged with illustrious visitors.
Margaret Walsingham, in her somber black dress, mingled as rarely as
possible with the flippant cavaliers who were forever hanging about my
lady's drawing-rooms, or dangling after her in her saunters with her
companion. She rarely lifted her eyes when they bowed to the carelessly
introduced Miss Walsingham; and never by any chance engaged in
conversation with them.
Yet a new world of knowledge was opening to her daily, and filling her
mind with absorbing speculations.
How often she heard St. Udo Brand, the young guardsman, discussed by
these London fashionables, with appropriate jest or story, they laughed
at his withering flashes of wit, admired his brilliant follies, and
narrated his erratic generosities, with never a sigh for the heart
which, to be so reckless now, must once have been so warm and true.
Day by day, the broken image of a primal god was built up in her heart
with here and there a flashing glimpse of virtue, or a suggestion of
innate chivalry of soul, or high-minded honor which contrasted sadly
with the wild deviltry of a rampant friend.
And each day this simple woman carried some bright gem of goodness with
which to deck her demi-god, until the vision seemed so kingly, that she
took to defending his defects to herself, and covering them from her own
eyes.
Morning and noon, and in the midnight hours, when strains of music and
the din of revelry stole dimly up to the companion's remote chamber, she
dreamed of the possible angel in this man, and her soul yearned for his
welfare, and mourned over the frailty of the moth which he had burdened
with his trust.
"A true brave woman might reclaim him yet," she sometimes sighed; "but
the last chance most probably is past with Lady Juliana."
"You are to dine with us to-day," said my lady, one morning, turning
suddenly to Margaret from under the hands of her maid. "My cousin, Harry
Falconcourt, has arrived, and insists on being introduced formally to
the heroine who saved me; and as I am bored to death with always saying
'she does not go into society,' I have promised him."
"Dear Lady Julie, I hope you will not insist upon this!" exclaimed
Margaret, much startled. "I really have nothing to do with society."
"Well, for all that, I am not going to allow you your privilege of
seclusion on this occasion. I don't like leaving you alone so much."
So my lady made her way, though this time it was rather roughly carried
through the heart of her companion.
The guests of his lordship's dinner party were the resident gentry, with
their portly wives and blooming daughters, come to meet the London
visitors of Hautville Park; and a great many bright uniforms mingled
among the masses of silken drapery, feathers, jewels, black broadcloth,
and tulle.
Lady Juliana kept her small territory at her end of the table in a
continual ripple of delight by her quips and coquetries. She was in
surprising spirits, for was not his Grace the Duke of Piermont on her
right hand, and Sir Akerat Breckinridge, who was a slain subject, on her
left?
His Grace, who was an ordinary-looking young man, with a bright,
wholesome complexion, and pleasantly sparkling eyes, seemed almost
bewitched by my lady's rapid flippancies; and watched her face as one
might watch the play of the aurora borealis, shooting and dancing in the
midnight sky.
"Who is that lady in the black velvet?" asked the duke. "Strange face!
Most unlike any I have ever seen before."
"Where? Oh, with Harry Falconcourt? That is Miss Walsingham, my
companion, adviser, censurer, and sheep-dog in general."
"I haven't seen such a face in my life before," continued the young
duke, with deepening earnestness; "and it is so wholly stripped of
animal beauty that the beauty that bursts from every look and tone is so
mysterious. That is a countenance graced by goodness, bravery, candor,
devotion. There are faces graced by bright eyes, an arched nostril, a
small mouth; a row of white teeth, or a waxen complexion. Which is the
greater charm, do you think?"
"I did not know you were such a physiognomist," said Lady Juliana. "Pray
read _me_, my lord."
He looked over the arch face with the plausible smile, the graceful
features, the peach-like bloom, and a faint shadow crossed his brow.
"You would be sinking in the first storm, Lady Juliana."
"Cousin Julie has suddenly subsided," said Harry Falconcourt, looking up
to the head of the table. "A minute since she was sparkling as
champagne, now she is tame as lemonade. What do you suppose has
occurred, Miss Walsingham? A mutiny between her subjects?"
"Extraordinary disposition of the Brand estates down in Surrey," said a
voice opposite. "They all go to a woman as hideous as one of Macbeth's
witches, and the only scion of the race must either marry her or lose
them."
"Is not that captain St. Udo Brand, of the Guards?" asked a gentleman in
uniform.
"The same, major."
"Fine soldier, brave man. Did you see the gallant mention of him in the
latest _American War Gazette_? Cut his way through three thousand of the
enemy with his handful of Vermonters."
"A daring deed, major."
"Nothing when you know the vast nature of the man. He needed such scenes
as are described in the sickening records of war to stir up the lion in
him, and to bring out the gentleness too. He is the darling of his
company--many a cheer, and I'll not be afraid to say a blessing also has
greeted him in his tender visits to his suffering boys."
"You knew him at home here?"
"Knew Captain Brand? Like a brother, sir. Sad dog, but a noble man--a
noble man."
What bright intelligence was in the deep gray eyes which watched the
officer's face. But he did not see them, he was so absorbed by his
subject.
A pause occurred in the gossip, for the band was having a rest of forty
bars, and the flageolet was weak.
At the request of Lady Juliana, Margaret carried her careladen face to
the piano and played a long time, what--she knew not, but gradually,
from mechanical measure, the chords grew into solemn pulsations, and a
vision rose up before her introverted eyes of a darkened battle-field,
where the cannon belched forth its fiery death, the bugle sounded the
retreat, the soldiers shouted, and cheered, and fell.
She saw the smoke and dust, the red blood pouring, the brave falling
fast; and a shrouded moon, with three black stripes across its disk, was
shining weirdly over a man lying on his broken sword, his head upon the
mane of his pulseless horse, his dark, dim eyes raised supplicatingly.
And a skulker among the dead was bending over him with demoniac
eagerness, and the dastardly dagger was plunged hilt-deep, and the man
who had been called a "hero" sank beneath the feet of the dead--and the
vision passed away.
"Miss Walsingham." She turned her electric face--her hands fell from the
ivory keys.
The gentlemen had entered the drawing-room, and the Duke of Piermont
stood beside Lieutenant Falconcourt, waiting to be introduced.
"I have much pleasure in this introduction," said his grace, offering
her an arm the instant that their hands met. "I would like much to talk
with you, so honor me by promenading with me in the conservatory. In the
first place, what was that extraordinary piece which you played?"
"I do not know--was I playing?"
His grace gazed at his companion in amazement. Doubt and terror still
struggled for the mastery on her pallid features; the large, mystic eyes
were fixed sadly upon vacancy. Miss Walsingham was quite unconscious
that she was walking through the centre of the long suite with a man who
was coveted from her by half the ladies there. "Is it possible that it
was an impromptu?"
"I--pardon me, your grace--I was playing without thinking."
"Do you know what it suggested to me? A battle-field--the retreat of the
conquered--darkness--treachery, and _murder_."
"My lord duke, what day of the month is this?"
She stopped in her sudden waking up to horror, and in her sudden
eagerness she trembled as she stood.
"The first of September."
"_The first of September._ I shall not forget."
"You are certainly distressed by something, Miss Walsingham. Let me be
of service to you?"
"You can be of service to me, your grace. You can allow me to retire,
and make some apology for me to Lady Julie which will not alarm her."
The young duke bit his lip.
"You will return to me?" he asked.
"Not to-night."