Faithful Margaret: A Novel
The diary in the note-book had come to an end. Mortlake's secrets were
hers now. Mortlake's course of crime was run, if she could live to give
them to the world.
Margaret once more trimmed her candles, replenished the drowsy fire,
paced up and down her room, and then sat down and commenced to copy such
parts of the entries as bore directly upon the conspiracy.
Hour followed hour; the candles burned down; the fire wasted to white
ashes; the wintry wind moaned without, carrying sleet on its wings.
Still the girl's strength held out; she wrote with energy the dark
record which was to ruin the murderer of St. Udo Brand. Long past
midnight found her at the last page, and at the last sentence:
"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey,
and drop that hatch."
The hoarse baying of the dogs roused her to things present. She rose
from her cramped position, cold and trembling with terror.
Who was lurking about so late? Her enemy?
The candles dropped into their little wells of boiling wax and expired.
She stood in the pitchy darkness, listening.
The angry babel of howling dogs filled her ears again. A sudden pause;
they, too, were listening. Then a yelp of canine rage and eagerness.
Margaret groped in the box for another candle and a match; fitted the
candle into the tall silver candlestick, lit it, and gathered up her
papers, while the flame was as yet small and sickly as a far-off star.
She hid them all in a compartment of her desk, carried the desk to a
closet, locked it, and hid the key beneath a loose edge of the carpet.
"I may pay the forfeit of my life for these proofs," she thought; "but
Davenport and Gay shall see them, whatever the risk, and my work shall
descend to their hands if I am removed."
She was calm, but a curious pulse was beating in her ears and deadening
her sense of hearing. Through it she could swear that strange noises
were in the air, which were entirely foreign to any that could be caused
within the house.
The bounding pulse still beat in her ears, and she stood intently
waiting.
What it was she knew not, which smote her whole being into
intensity--her hair bristled.
There it was again--through the thick shutter and massive window--the
deep breathing of a man who has been hard at work, and stops his
operations to listen.
Could it be that her enemy was at the window?
Margaret shrank back; she had been standing in profile, not two feet
from the window, and her ear had caught the indistinct sounds so clearly
that she was able to trace them immediately to their cause.
A man was in the balcony outside her window, and he was listening to
know whether she was sleeping or waking. Perhaps a burglar? No.
Mortlake was there to retrace his false step before the morning light
should place his secret in other hands.
"He's going to force an entrance and murder me," thought Margaret, who
could reason distinctly in this moment of peril; "and, knowing that I
only share the knowledge of his guilt, he hopes to escape suspicion. He
will arrange it like a burglary--likely take away my few jewels and
articles of value, and drop them in the mere. I am afraid I am lost."
These thoughts just glanced through her mind as lightning glimmers
through the thunderous clouds, and, with the sudden instinct of
self-preservation, she ran to the door, determined to rush into safety.
Before she had reached it, or her hand could touch the lock, a slow and
gentle scratching on the window-pane arrested her, and she paused,
fascinated, to understand it. Scratch--scratch--scratch--cr-ick! the
tiny tinkle of falling glass.
Scratch--scratch--scratch--scratch--scratch--scratch! cr-ick--cr-ick!
More glass falling, a crunching footstep, a soft tremor of the mahogany
shutter!
Margaret essayed to wrench round the heavy lock of her door.
Her hand had no more strength than an infant's. She shuddered from head
to foot.
One more desperate wrench!
A low snarl reached her ear! Eager paws beat at the bottom of her door!
She stood transfixed as the devil's cunning of her adversary dawned upon
her mind.
The terrible sleuth-hound had been stationed outside her door, ready to
tear her limb from limb when she should issue.
CHAPTER XIX.
A PRAYER TO HEAVEN.
The game had passed out of her hands. Should she trust to the
blood-thirsty brute, or to the blood-thirsty man?
I think she would have thrown herself upon such mercy as the hound would
show her, rather than trust to Roland Mortlake. But the time had passed
even while she stood in sore doubt.
That mysterious tremor of the shutter had ceased, and now, in the
ominous stillness, she saw--oh horror! what was that?
A small circular hole had been cut in the panel, and through it she
caught the glitter of a _human eye_ watching her.
The blood curdled in her veins, her hands fell, clasped, before her, she
stood, with her head bent forward, and dilated eyes returning that awful
stare.
No horror, caused by death in any form, could have equaled that caused
by the mere stealthy glare of a human eye watching her, gleaming upon
her, unaccompanied by the visible face.
Suddenly the eye was removed, a sharp click broke the supreme silence, a
long, slender tube was thrust half-length through the aperture, and
pointed with deliberate aim at her heart.
A blind haze came between her and the hideous vision. Quicker than
thought she darted to one side, and sank to the floor, almost
insensible.
Her sight cleared, and she looked for the pointed pistol.
It was slowly veering round, to bring her again within range.
Her eyes measured the room wildly. The windows commanded every part of
it except the two upper corners. She must fly across the room or be shot
like a dog.
She sprang up and flitted swiftly along the wall, and out of range.
Now she was safe for a few seconds. She might crouch upon the carpet and
pray a few wild words for safety.
The pistol returned to the door and covered it, in case of attempted
escape.
As long as her enemy could get nothing larger than the tube of a pistol
in, she was safe in her corner; but if he enlarged the hole enough to
introduce his hand with the pistol, she was lost; for there was no large
piece of furniture near which she could hide behind.
"If I could but circumvent him until daylight," she thought, "this
night's danger would be past."
She looked at her watch. It was two of the night.
"Three hours to wait," she pondered, with a despairing heart. "Can I
possibly defy him for three hours? He is crafty and desperate; he is
here to put an end to my life, and will not go away unsuccessful. I am
terrified, helpless, and without resource. Which of us is likely to
triumph?"
Her eyes went longingly to the old-fashioned bell-pulls hanging at each
side of the fire-place.
"If I dare to rush across the room and ring a peal to awake the
household, I would be shot before my hand left the bell-rope," she told
herself.
Why had she lit the tell-tale candle? There it burned, white and faintly
tremulous in the current of air caused by the hole in the shutter,
slowly wasting away, but distinctly revealing her every movement to the
watchful assassin without.
Was there no way by which she could extinguish it and leave herself in
the friendly darkness?
If the thought occurred to him of enlarging the aperture and shooting
her in her place of refuge, the candle would too surely guide his
murderous hand.
Even while thus she reasoned, the pistol was removed, and the grating of
a tiny saw against the shutter recommenced.
Horror paralyzed the terrified girl for an instant; the next, with rare
presence of mind, she snatched the cloak off her shoulders in which she
had been wrapped, and hurled it with all her strength across the room.
Like a huge, ugly bat, it made for the candle, swept it off the table,
and she was surrounded in a moment by darkness.
The grating sound came to an abrupt stop, and a smothered oath came
through the auger-hole.
"Give up that book, Margaret Walsingham," said the hoarse voice of her
foe, "for as sure as you live and breathe your life will go for it if
you don't."
Margaret remained still as a statue, not daring to breathe.
"I'll make terms with you even now, if you hand me the book," said the
wily voice again.
She bowed her face in her hands, and smiled even in the midst of her
terror at such a proposition.
A long silence followed, then the steady sawing of the wooden panel went
on.
It was done. A wintry star glimmered in through a gap large enough to
admit a man's arm; then the star was blotted out, and a metallic click
was heard.
She felt, with a muffled and sickening heart-throb, that her enemy was
holding the pistol at full cock toward her, only waiting for the least
betrayal to fire.
She raised her head and watched, in fascinated horror, for the flash
which was to herald her death.
"Do you surrender?" demanded the assassin, in a voice quick and
imperative.
Had Margaret possessed an atom less presence of mind, she would have
answered involuntarily "No," in her scorn of the cowardly villain, but
she bit her lip in time, and held her peace.
Full well she knew that her first word would be the signal of her death.
"There are two hours and a half before daylight," said the enemy. "Are
you willing to have that pistol pointed at you for two hours and a half,
waiting to shoot you with the first gleam of daylight, or will you give
up the note-book and come to terms with me, for our mutual safety?"
Margaret would not peril her safety by a whisper.
"I don't object, even after all that has passed, to marry you, and let
you be mistress of the property, if you will only say yes."
"Heaven grant me patience to keep quiet," prayed Margaret, in her soul.
"Are you there, girl, or am I talking to an empty room?" called the man,
with a bitter oath. "Have you slipped, with your confounded cleverness,
out by some side door?"
Not a breath answered him; his own breathing almost filled the room as
he applied his ear to the hole.
A protracted silence ensued. The man at the window waited with murder in
his black soul for the faintest sound within; the hound at the door
sniffed with dripping fangs, and waited too, demon-like in his imitation
of his master; the lonely woman crouched in the corner, defenseless,
weak, affrighted, and prayed that Heaven would keep her safe.
The hours crept slowly on, but oh! how leaden were their wings. The
death-watch of these three was drawing to an end.
Margaret kept her dizzy eyes still fastened upon the black line that
began to be discernible at the window, and saw a crisis approaching.
"Are you dead or living in there?" said Roland Mortlake, at the
auger-hole, "If you are, you're a brave girl, and I want you for my
wife. Say 'yes.'"
No answer from within, save the whine of the sleuth-hound at the door.
A distant bugle call from without, from some early huntsman.
An angry hand shook the heavy shutters. Thank heaven! the bolts were the
massive bars of the sixteenth century, made for feudal defense and not
for beauty.
"If I break in the window, it won't be good for you, Margaret
Walsingham," was the boastful threat, as a second shaking was
administered to the shutters.
The clear, joyous notes of the bugle sounded nearer; the lusty holloa of
the sportsman to his dogs came over the Waaste and into the hole to the
ear of Margaret Walsingham, and a rush of joy swept over her and gave
her hopes of life.
This early huntsman was no doubt Squire Clanridge, who, she now
remembered having heard from Purcell, the steward, was to take the
Seven-Oak dogs out this morning to have a run with his own.