Faithful Margaret: A Novel
It was chalk-white, a deadly perspiration bathed lip and brow; the
half-closed eyelids showed the eyeballs glazed and sightless, and his
breast heaved painfully, as if a ton-weight lay upon it.
Margaret Walsingham came to herself in an instant--she grew cool and
calm.
She knew now that the man who sat opposite to her had been hired by
Mortlake to murder her.
No more tremors of fear, no more hurried plans for escape, no more
hoping for some fortunate circumstance to save her. She felt that her
time had come; and she knew that she must succumb to her fate. She saw
how well her destruction was planned; she traced out the tragedy with
terrific distinctness, she saw herself seized by these great, cruel
hands in the first tunnel whose resounding roar could drown her
death-shriek, and the pistol fired off at her ear, or the silent knife
plunged into her bosom; and she knew how easy it would be for her
murderer to leave the car at the next station and escape forever.
Before she raised herself from her speechless examination of her drugged
servant, she had foreseen her death, and accepted it with a stony
despair.
She mechanically turned to pull down the window at her own side, but the
rough hand of the murderer met hers and arrested the act; his steel-blue
eyes gleamed into hers, and drove her back to her corner, where she sat
gazing like a dumb animal into the man's face, with her arms folded over
her breast, a frail shield which he laughed at.
Some minutes passed, the servant partially recovered consciousness, and
was plied with a handkerchief saturated with chloroform and pressed to
his nostrils; and, when he was swaying to and fro in his seat like a
dead man, with every lurch of the car, the ruffian turned to the unhappy
woman beside him with a mischievous, fatal look in his coarse face.
CHAPTER XXII.
PURSUIT OF A FELON.
One by one Margaret's faculties deserted her; her power of speech first
of all, then her power of motion, her power of resistance, even her
power of fear. All save the seeing sense left poor Margaret, and she
watched with distended eyeballs and a dull, ghastly feeling of interest
the movements of the man who was to murder her.
What had he done to her that had thrown her into this helpless lethargy?
A faint, sweet odor pervaded the car.
It was the insidious chloroform stealing her consciousness from her and
deadening every nerve. She saw him take a tiny vial from his pocket, fit
a perforated top upon it, and direct a spurt of deadly perfume, fine as
a hair, into her face.
She tried to move, but could not. The breath was cut off from her
nostrils by that fatal jet; she could only gaze with a sad, anguished
look into those flaming eyes opposite her.
Something in the harrowing intensity of that silent look troubled the
man.
He missed his aim, and the death-giving essence streamed harmlessly upon
the bosom of her dress.
Again and again he adjusted the cunning little tube so as to force her
to breathe its fatal contents; but his hand trembled, his face waxed
white--he quailed before the ghostly appeal of those fixed orbs.
Minutes passed. Why did not the man finish his victim.
Was ever yet a woman more completely in a murderer's power?
Her attendant drugged into a senseless clod beside her, her faculties
all benumbed, no eye to watch the tragedy, no hand to seize the
villain--why did he not act out his instructions?
She held him by that mesmeric gaze, where the soul stood plainly forth
pleading for mercy. She was so young, so gentle, so sorrowful.
Oh! he cowered away from his fell purpose; he dallied with his chance,
and that chance slipped by.
The tram glided into a station shed; the red lights glowed in at the
window, palling the flickering tin lamp hanging from the roof. Strangers
rushed pell-mell across the platform; and at last the door of this car
was opened, and a young man looked in.
Margaret vehemently sought to cry out to him, to stretch out her hands,
to moan, even, but in vain. She seemed petrified.
The young man's eyes passed aimlessly over the white-faced woman in
black and her sleeping escort, and fastened doubtfully upon the
disconcerted ruffian.
"Is Richard O'Grady in this car?" shouted he.
"I am the chap you want," returned the man in the fur coat.
The other handed him a telegram and vanished instantly, and the car
moved on.
She saw him hold out a slip of paper to the dim flame and master its
message, and the sickly pallor crept out of his cheeks and the coarse
red came back.
He looked hard in her face with a sinister light on his visage, and
smiled at her with a certain kind of grim admiration.
"You've overcrowded him, have you, my clever wench?" mattered he. "You
must be a sharp 'un to do _him_. Curse your haunting eyes! you've all
but overcrowded _me_, in spite of my leather hide. Confound you! I'll
never get rid of them great eyes."
He broke out into a volley of fearful maledictions upon her, himself,
and the "beast" who had given him the job, tearing up the telegram into
inch pieces and tossing them insolently into Margaret's lap.
It was evident that he considered her blind and deaf, as well as
paralyzed, else he never would have exposed his principal as he did in
these violent imprecations.
So the train glided on upon its midnight journey, and the man turned his
back to his intended victim. But she was adoring God in her heart of
hearts for her dear life's preservation.
Her cold stoicism melted, the bitter fortitude with which she had looked
for death fled. How _could_ she have cast that reproachful thought at
Heaven and believed herself forsaken?
Her heart swelled with gratitude and remorse now that she saw her
mistake; and, although she could not move an eye-lash, her emotion
surged higher and higher until it burst through the barriers of the
spell which bound her, and great tears gushed from her eyes.
At the first station they came to, the man rose to leave the car. He
glanced sharply at Margaret's wet face, and jerked down the window that
she might have some air, then, with an oath, stumbled over Purcell's
feet and got out.
Then the long night crept by, and gradually the lady and her servant
recovered, and spoke to each other.
"Purcell, do you know me?"
She was chafing the old man's temples, and applying her smelling-salts
to his nose.
"Eh? ha? My conscience! Is that you, miss?" mumbled the steward, with a
thick tongue and a vacant look at her.
"Are you better?"
"Humph! not much. Tush! What's in my mouth? Fever?"
"No, no, Purcell. You've been asleep--that's all."
"I've been dead, I think--dead for years and years. I think I was in
another world. Dear bless me! My legs are as heavy as lead. I say, Miss
Margaret, what took me--a fit?" whispered the steward, in a fright.
"No. You were put to sleep with chloroform by that man who sat opposite.
He stupefied you with poisoned snuff, and then used chloroform. You need
not feel alarmed, though--you have recovered."
"Faith, miss, you look but poorly yourself," said Purcell, struck by her
extreme pallor. "Was--was he a thief, miss, and did he rob us?"
"He was a murderer, Purcell, and intended to kill me," said Margaret,
with tears in her eyes. "But God would not permit him to succeed."
She related the circumstances to the old man, who rose from terror into
fury when he realized how completely he had been taken in through his
favorite refreshment, snuff, and laid out like a corpse beside his
helpless young mistress.
She soothed his wounded feelings, and directed him to use caution during
the rest of his fateful journey.
At daybreak they came to Cirencester, and rested there for some hours,
and at nine o'clock took a coach for Llandaff.
They had not traveled a dozen miles, when a horseman galloped past the
great, lumbering coach, flashing a keen glance in at Margaret
Walsingham, and then disappeared upon the winding road ahead.
She gasped and grew white.
He wore a horseman's cloak and a slouched hat. But she was not deceived
in the brutal gleam of those steel-blue eyes. He was the ruffian who was
hired to kill her.
Almost fainting, she communicated her fears to her servant, who grew
very purple, and swore to be even with the varlet before long, and
stopped the coach to tell the driver that the chap who had just passed
was a villain, who ought to be arrested for attempted murder in a
railway car; and the driver grew hot and excited, and leagued with three
gentlemen on the outside to knock the fellow down and secure him the
first minute they set eyes on him.
So Margaret and her attendant continued their journey with some sense of
security; and, having the inside of the coach to themselves, could
encourage each other to meet future dangers, when anything cheerful
occurred to them to say.
But all through that afternoon they traveled safely, unmolested by even
a glimpse of Mortlake's accomplice; and at noon they rattled into
Llandaff, and stopped before Caerlyon's Hotel.
The groom was leading a smoking black horse round to the stables.
Margaret whispered to Purcell, and pointed the animal out to him.
"_His_ horse," she said. "Now, Purcell, see that you have him arrested.
Fly! There's no time to lose. You must get a constable to go with you, I
suppose."
Purcell disappeared in the bar to make inquiries, and Margaret at once
took refuge in her room, and sent for the proprietor himself.
The Welsh landlord bustled in, full of politeness and good humor.
"Has Dr. Gay, from Regis, Surrey, been here, yesterday or to-day?"
demanded the lady.
"No, matam, he has not."
"Is there no letter lying here for Miss Walsingham, of Regis, Surrey?"
"No, inteet, matam, nothing of te sort."
She turned suddenly, with a groan, from him, and her dark face grew
darker.
"Tricked--drawn into a trap! I might have known it--oh, I might have
known it!" she murmured, bitterly.
"Anyting I can to for you, my tear laty?" asked Mr. Caerlyon,
attentively.
"Yes; you can send a servant to keep watch at my door until my man
returns. And there is a person whom I want arrested upon the charge of
attempted murder--the man whose horse your hostler was attending to when
the coach arrived. Where is he?"
"My Got! _murterer!_" screamed the landlord. "You ton't say that, matam?
Oh, the peast! He must pe caught, of course. Put he took fery coot care
not to come to _me_, tear laty. He went somewhere into the town, and
sent his nak here to pait. I'll keep a coot lookout for him, I promise
him, the sneaking scoundrel!"
Muttering vituperations, he backed out of the room, and sent a woman to
attend the lady, and a great, hulking pot-boy to guard her door.
"Now, what am I to think?" mused Margaret, who had thrown herself upon a
sofa, and was feverishly watching the Welshwoman setting the table for
her dinner. "How am I to follow out the intricacies of that wretch's
plot? It is clear that he has amply provided against my escaping from
him. True enough, he is too clever to leave any door open for his
victim. I fondly thought that I had taken him by surprise when I escaped
the castle and threw myself on Emersham's protection; but he meets me on
the flight, and turns my purpose into another channel. I leave him
foiled at the castle; I fly to the executors; he has foreseen the move,
and meets me with the news of their disappearance. I turn to Mr.
Emersham for help. He has foreseen that, also, and meets me with a
forged letter, which turns my wishes all toward taking this journey. For
a moment he is taken back when he receives my letter, showing him the
precautions I have taken to expose him, and allows me to go on the
journey which he has already provided for, only because he has not time