Faithful Margaret: A Novel
under the naked trees, and the long tan sleuth-hound glided after him
with dropped nose and stealthy tread, as if he, too, were tracking game;
and a malicious fancy might have suggested that the man was followed by
a moral shadow of himself.
"There he lurks," spoke Margaret, with loathing scorn, as they left the
lodge behind; "patient, lean sleuth-hound upon the scent, and watching
for the moment to spring. Is that the gay and reckless St. Udo
Brand--the brave soldier and the idol of women--the man who scorned a
presumed fortune-hunter, and left all for love? Does the blood of good
Ethel Brand flow in the veins of such a hound as yonder schemer? He
would lick the dust of my feet for money--he whom you insult the memory
of the Brands by believing in!"
"Assuredly the girl is touched," thought Gay.
They almost drove upon the colonel before he was aware of them, and so
noiseless had been their approach that he appeared utterly bewildered
with consternation when Gay addressed him.
"A bleak day, colonel."
"Yes, a bleak day, a very bleak day," said the wily voice, while the
twitching face slowly got into company order.
"Having a walk about the oaks, sir? Rather desolate-looking at this time
of the year."
"Particularly desolate up at the castle, doctor. I was glad to turn out
and bear Argus company. Is Miss Walsingham sufficiently wrapped for this
cold wind?"
"Oh, I hope so," answered Gay, looking in vain for a reply in Margaret's
stern face.
"She has been taking a little drive with me, I picked her up on the road
there."
"Little drive," repeated Colonel Brand, with a slightly sarcastic
emphasis, "preceded by a little walk. Did you find our friend Davenport
at his post my dear lady?"
Margaret started, and turned her flashing eyes upon the smiling
interrogator.
"By what unworthy means have you ascertained my movements?" she
demanded.
"Why, dear Miss Walsingham, your housekeeper informed me, when I asked
her the cause of your abrupt departure from me, that you had gone to see
Mr. Davenport."
The girl sat staring at him in dumb indignation. She had communicated
her design to no one in the house and the colonel was telling her a lie
to her very face. It was perfectly patent to her that he had dogged her
footsteps.
"Are you coming up to Castle Brand?" asked Gay, nervously staving off an
expected explosion.
"I--think not," answered the colonel, with a glance baleful as dead
lights on a grave; "Miss Walsingham evidently is indifferent to my
society. Why, do you know, doctor, I came here to-day expecting a
delightful afternoon with her in the library, where first we met, and,
like the lonely Marguerite of wicked Faust, she melted from my view, and
I found but Mephistopheles taunting me at my elbow in the shape of old
memories of years which might have been better spent--called up by the
associations of the room."
"She's shy yet--she's shy," said the doctor, in a prompting tone.
"Ar'n't you, dear?"
It was utterly out of Margaret's power to do anything but look at St.
Udo Brand, as represented by the man among the withered leaves, with a
cold stare of scorn.
"The bleak wind is injuring Miss Walsingham's complexion," said the
sneering voice again. "I will release her from the freezing process, and
myself from Paradise. Good-evening."
Dr. Gay drove his impassive ward up to the steps of Castle Brand, and
set her down between the griffiths couchant, and she stood forlornly
there clinging to his hand.
"I am afraid to stay here alone," she whispered. "Do come and stay with
me, dear doctor, until that terrible man is taken away."
"I--I'm afraid Mrs. Gay might object to such an arrangement, dear; she
is a person who--who generally objects--who is opposed to leaving her
own home under any circumstances."
"I did not think of Mrs. Gay. Well will you please ask Mr. Davenport to
come? Will you implore him to come? He has nothing to keep him, and I am
so defenseless here."
"I will mention your request, but I think he will say what I feel
without saying--it is a pity you left my house the way you did."
With that parting shot, the little doctor bade his adieu, stepped into
his gig, and cheerfully drove away.
Oh, this horrible Waaste! Listen how the harsh wind moans over it, and
rises into savage shrieks.
The old trees creak and sigh like the surge of an angry sea; the ancient
windows rattle in their stone sockets; the ghostly Brands all down the
gallery seem to shudder in their massive frames, as if an ominous
Present were casting its shadows back to their centuried Past: the face
of Ethel, the beautiful, looks down upon the companion she once loved
and cherished as if she would say, in the limitless pride of her heart:
"I trust to you, Margaret Walsingham; keep my name pure, or let it die."
The candles flicker and wave in phantom gusts of wind; long shadows flit
about with wide-spreading wings; the brain of the lonely girl is peopled
with visions of horror.
Let her double-lock her chamber door, or pace in restlessness the
echoing halls, Ethel Brand's bequest has come like a curse to poor
Margaret.
A note arrived at the castle next morning from Dr. Gay, which stirred
her up to feverish excitement, and showed her a speedy crisis.
"MY DEAR WARD:--I write more for the purpose of giving you time
to prepare your answer, and (may I presume it?) to give you a
little timely advice as to the nature of your answer, than for
the sake of the communication itself.
"Yesterday, upon leaving you, I had a very momentous interview
with Colonel Brand (he returned to Regis with me in the gig),
in which he placed himself in the most candid and open manner
upon my friendship, and explained to me what he wished to be
his future course.
"After commenting with a great deal of proper feeling upon his
former extravagances of life, he said that it was little wonder
that a highly organized young lady like Miss Walsingham should
feel a distrust of him, and that he was quite conscious of a
revulsion of feeling on Miss Walsingham's part which his most
heartfelt apologies for his former rudeness could not remove.
He then implored me to put him upon a way to do away with the
bad impression he had created, so that he might win your
affection.
"'For,' he declared, with tears in his eyes, 'I have learned to
love her to distraction: and if I am ever to be anything, her
hand must beckon me on.'
"His sincerity so invited my sympathy that I was within an ace
of disclosing to him your ridiculous suspicion, but upon second
thoughts concluded that it would wound him too much. However, I
proposed to stand his friend with you; so henceforth look upon
me in that light.
"He then informed me that he desired to win your consent to
marry him purely from personal affection, and that if you would
only be his wife, he should insist upon having the whole of the
Brand estates settled upon you, in case any one might accuse
him of mercenary motives. And, in short, he concluded by
disclosing to me his determination to end his suspense by
proposing to you this evening. I urged upon him that it would
be too premature, but he answered, with deep emotion:
"'She hates me more and more every day. Let me touch her noble
heart by my great love, and she will pity, and in time endure
me.'
"I don't know whether the course he has marked out will have
that effect or not, but this I hope--that you will not turn
away your co-heir without due reason.
"And now for my bit of advice.
"Weigh well before the evening the possibility of your having
been unjust in your suspicions of the man who is going to offer
you his hand; if you do conscientiously, you will come to the
conclusion that you _have_ been unjust.
"Then ask yourself if it will be right, or generous, or
honorable to dismiss St. Udo Brand from his rightful home and
fortune, now that he is willing to bestow it upon you, and only
for your love.
"Hoping that the next occasion of our meeting will be more
pleasing than the last, I remain your obedient servant,
"R. GAY.
"P.S.--I mentioned last night to Davenport your desire to have
him move into the castle for a while, and he utterly refuses to
do anything so absurd and extraordinary.
"R. G."
Thus plainly showing that they washed their hands of their ward's
vagaries, the executors not only refused her their countenance, but
seemed inclined to go over to the enemy.
With what indignant scorn Margaret read the account of his presumed love
for herself!
"He has taken his measures," she mused, "to force me into showing my
hand, before I have taken one move against him. He is too clever for me.
What shall I do?"
Pondering hour after hour, at length she made up her little plan with
doubt and misgiving.
"Colonel Brand is coming here this evening, Mrs. Chetwode," she said, as
the dusk slowly deepened on stone parapet and spiked rail, "and I wish
you to bear me company in the library. You know I do not like the
colonel, so you must be my chaperon."
When the suitor came to his lady's bower, on a horse which smoked with
hard and furious riding, and when he followed the servant to the
library, he found the lady of his heart standing with a demeanor in
every way proper for the occasion, while the old housekeeper, in her
best black satin, sat behind the statue of St. George, sedately
knitting.
"May I entreat the honor of a private interview?" asked the smooth
voice.
"We can be as private here as you wish," was the polite reply. "My
housekeeper cannot hear anything unless you specially address her."
The colonel bowed and expressed himself satisfied, but if the angry
glance which he cast among the murky shadows, where the bright needles
clicked, meant anything, the colonel lied.
He took the chair assigned him, but evidently his proposed form of
declaration was routed by this unexpected arrangement.
His fingers plucked at his dark mustache in a nervous and undecided
manner, and he took a long time to deliberate before he could trust
himself to launch upon the momentous subject.
"I am aware," at length began the lover, in a constrained voice, "that
Miss Walsingham has conceived very unfriendly feelings toward me--an
enmity, I might almost call it--for has she not expressed as much? And I
have come here this evening with the hope of making a successful effort
to come to an amicable understanding with her, and it will be my last
trial."
Always sinking his tones a little lower, and bending to his listener, a
little nearer, and casting watchful glances toward the corner where the
bright needles clicked, the last word came to sound like a muttered
threat, far more than the appeal of a lovesick adorer.
"If," continued he, "Miss Walsingham thinks better of these unfriendly
feelings, and expresses herself willing to listen to reason, I will most
gladly offer her my hand, if she will deign to accept it as the hand of
her husband, and will do all in my power to make her not repent her
choice; and if she acts faithfully by me, I will act faithfully by her.
Does she consider it possible to say 'yes' to this proposal?"
Coldly avoiding the chance of coming to that mutual understanding which
his dropped tones and significant looks insisted upon, Margaret answered
in measured accents thus, decorously:
"I am not sufficiently acquainted with Colonel Brand to feel able to
give him a decided answer with due appreciation of his virtues. If he
will be kind enough to wait four weeks, by that time I shall have made