Faithful Margaret: A Novel

expression of nervous defiance on her face, as if she fully expected a sound berating from each of them. Dr. Gay looked at her anxiously, and shook his head over his own thoughts. Mr. Davenport coughed sarcastically, and frowned to hide the effect which her blanched cheeks made upon him. "I'm sorry to have called you out too early to begin the search," said Margaret, bitterly. "Too early? by no means, my dear," cried the doctor, seating himself cozily near her; "it's never to early to do what's right. Now we're all ready to hear what you have got to say." "I have told you surely enough in my letter for you to act upon," she answered, "without having to say any more. What do you say of the declaration I have made as to the man's identity?" "Most startling!" said the physician, in a quiet tone, as if it was really not startling at all. "What have you to say of it?" she demanded of the lawyer, with an anxious look at his impenetrable countenance. "Consider the absurdity of your suspicions," broke in Davenport, "the childishness and impossibility of your premises. How could an imposter act out St. Udo Brand's history? How could he know Colonel Brand's most private affairs, and his friends, and write with his hand, and have the same appearance, and cheat everybody--we among the rest, who saw him when he was a boy as often as I have fingers and toes? Oh, Miss Walsingham!" "You wish me to marry Mortlake, do you?" she asked, with scorn. "For Heaven's sake don't call him that!" ejaculated Davenport. "If you call him that and he hears it, the Brand spirit will be very quiet for the first time if he doesn't end the slander in murder." "It began in murder," retorted she, "that would be the fittest end, after all. But do not fear; I shall not alarm your colonel without proper cause. You really expect me to treat him as if he was St. Udo Brand?" "Yes, until you have proofs to the contrary." She sat with folded hands and pondered. An ashy pallor overspread her face. A mental gag was forced between her teeth; a mental rope was placed for her across a yawning chasm, and selfish hands were pushing her toward it, and selfish voices were urging her to cross alone. "Very well," she breathed firmly, "I will bring you proofs that you will not venture to discredit. When I send for you again, come as promptly as you did to-day." The executors were forced to depart with this arrangement, and rode back to Regis deep in discussion relating to their ward's sanity. How long Margaret sat alone in the library she could not tell--an ominous foretaste of the grim future had shrouded her soul, and the dark hours passed unheeded by. When she roused herself, it was to instant action. She sat down before her desk and began to write a letter--her third appeal for help. She wrote but one passionate sentence, then her head sank between her hands. "Who knows whether I shall live until it could be answered?" she moaned. Bethinking herself, she tore the sheet and cast it into the heart of the fire, and took a new sheet; dashed off again but one sentence, signed her name, thrust it into an envelope, hurriedly sealing it, as if she feared her mind might change at any moment. It was a telegram and ran thus: "LADY JULIANA DUCIE:--Come at once to Castle Brand on a matter of life and death. "MARGARET WALSINGHAM." Then she dressed herself and drove down to Regis in the carriage, clutching the dispatch in her hand, and drawing back from view whenever she passed a wayfarer, trembling lest her enemy should detect her in this move against his safety. After an hour of feverish impatience, an answer came which satisfied her. "I will come to-morrow night. "LADY J. DUCIE." She went out to her carriage with a triumphant air: she felt that she was one move ahead of the colonel. "Lady Juliana shall strip him of his disguise," she thought, "and the executors shall be present to see the exposure." She stopped before Mr. Davenport's office, wrote a line on her card requesting that he and Dr. Gay would come to the castle the following evening about seven o'clock, and then she hurried home. The next day passed with the anxious girl slowly enough; as the evening drew on, which she hoped would be the last of her enemy's imposture, her excitement became terrible; she was in that stage of over-strained endurance in which a triviality turns the brain. She told the housekeeper to have a bedchamber prepared for a lady visitor, and heedless of her exclamations of wonder, directed her to send Symonds at a quarter to six to the railway station with the carriage, and to take whatever strangers were for the castle as secretly home as possible, so that no one in the village should know who they were. "Lawk-a-mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Chetwode, "what's Seven Oak a coming to! A body would think you was going to hide away a murderer, Miss Margaret dear." "Not to hide away a murderer, but to discover one!" muttered the girl, turning from the colloquy. She had two hours to wait for the coming of Lady Juliana, and she must live through the dreary time somehow, so, weary of the silence of the castle, she flung a large dark mantle about her, and went out for a walk upon the Waaste. It was nearing the shortest day of the year, and the early twilight was already setting over the distant hill and forest. The dun leaves, heaped high under the oaks of the front park, were white with hoary frost, crackled like paper under her feet, and, starting with every sound, she soon quitted the shadows of the trees, and paced over the sere turf down to the inky mere, where the long, brown flags pricked up in paper-like spikes, and the dank rushes pierced the filmy ices at the margin of the water, and the hazel shrubs clustered close about the slippery banks, and hid them from the Waaste. She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into the mere at her feet. She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a disagreeable start. She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about. Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet. Her heart stood still with horror. She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through the dusk. _The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!_ With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged. And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor. He looked not to right or left, but slouched on after his dog upon the bank, and, as he passed the woman in her hiding place, she saw that in his face, which no Brand of knightly English blood ever wore, since Sir Hildebrand broke his lance at Cressy. That crafty and sinister half smile, that green, scintillating shimmer of the introverted eye, that gathered brow, seamed with the hideous lines of crime and cunning! Could such a face belong to St. Udo, the dare-man and dare-devil? That coward's shuffle, and murderous, nervous hand clutching the empty air, or thrust into his bosom! Could such belong to the gallant soldier who had stormed the Rocky Ridge, and braved the cannon's mouth in the thickest of the fight? Thank Heaven, no! He lay in his hidden grave, and his bravery was glowing in the mouths of a hundred heroes, and his honor should be kept untarnished, if a woman's hand could uphold the proud escutcheon! Closer stole the blood hound to the willow tree, but though she eyed his approach with curling blood, she would not utter a cry which might betray her to the man she hated. For the nervous hand he had thrust into his bosom had brought out something which glittered with a steel-blue flash in the indistinct gloom, and he had come to a dead stand with it, and was looking at it with the glare of a hungry wolf. He was but a few paces from Margaret Walsingham, and the sleuth-hound was gliding on her track, making his last circle round the mere. She knew it by his glaring eyes and watering fangs, and his short, deep groans of eagerness. "I must have recourse to you again, my tiny talisman?" hissed Colonel Brand to his stiletto. "She insists on having you, and I am going to humor her." He hissed these words through his teeth slowly, deliberately, as if it was a sort of joy to utter them aloud, but once, and then he thrust it into his bosom again. And the woman tore off her heavy cloak and dropped it beneath the willow tree, and, rising to her feet, she glided through the hazel copse across the Waaste, and fled for her life, just when the snarling hound sprang upon her garment and tore it into pieces, with many a wolfish bay! CHAPTER XVII. CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. Margaret soon went to her own apartment and changed her damp garments, and then she went down stairs to the echoing reception-room, to wait for Lady Juliana Ducie. At last came the sound of carriage wheels, the great door was opened, and a gentle stir ensued in the lower hall. Margaret rang the bell, and waited in feverish suspense to hear the issue. "Who has arrived?" she asked, as the housekeeper appeared, arrayed in stiff black satin. "The lady you were expecting, miss, I take it, with a lady's maid and groom. She has gone up to her room, and told me to tell Miss Walsingham she would appear in half an hour." It was ten minutes to seven when the visitor, having partaken of a hearty dinner in her own room, and gone through the intricacies of a super-elegant toilet, with the assistance of her maid, came down to the reception-room, and was met with outstretched hands by placable Margaret. "How kind of you to come to me!" she breathed, "and to prove a ready friend." The lissome figure approached--beautiful, radiant as ever--and, tripping quite up to Margaret, she took her pale hand and pressed it graciously. "Are we friends?" she queried, with her head a little drooped on one side, and eyes raised inquiringly. "Are you going to forget my naughty petulance? Papa and I have been so angry at ourselves that we let you go." "All that is forgotten, dear Lady Julie." "You are such a good creature, to be sure! But now tell me, what is this wonderful matter of life and death?" demanded my lady, whose eyes were roving round the massive furniture and lordly size of the old room, as if they were accustomed to take stock. "I could not resist such a tragic invitation; but I was not alarmed, for you always had such a strange way of putting things. Now do tell me, Margaret, dear!--there is nobody half as much interested as I am--are you really going to marry him after all? Such is the report." "Nothing has been settled yet," answered Margaret, quietly. "Take a seat near the fire, Lady Juliana. I expect some visitors in a few minutes, and you may as well be well warmed before you are presented." My lady sat down, with a meaning smile, as directed.