Faithful Margaret: A Novel
The maid who was replenishing the colonel's fire, against his return
from his ride, heard a savage oath behind her, and, favored by the
darkness, slipped behind the door in a fright and stared with all her
eyes at the colonel lighting his lamp, and banging down his desk upon
the table.
He cursed everything he touched with the most blasphemous imprecations
all the time he was removing papers and letters to his private
pocket-book--all the time he was cramming his purse with gold and bank
notes--all the time he was tossing his rich wardrobe into a valise.
Then he strode to the door, and turning on the threshold, sent a
terrible scowl over the magnificent chamber, glittering with the flash
of rich ornaments and the sheen of satin curtains. The veins swelled out
on his forehead, and his pale lips twitched convulsively.
"All lost--all lost!" groaned the man in a despairing voice, and closed
the door with a bang that shook the walls, and echoed through the vast
halls like the report of a cannon.
Then he went into the drawing-room where the housekeeper had taken
refuge. When she saw him coming along the passage, and with a diabolical
sneer of his face, he went to the marble-topped tables, mantel slabs,
chiffoniers, and tiny tea-poys all laden with articles of _bijouterie_,
and swept off the most costly of the ornaments into his rapacious
valise; packing in paperweights of solid amethyst, vases of cut
cornelian, ruby-spar, and frosted silver; pitching above them priceless
gems of art in miniature, statuettes cut from topaz and chrysolites,
(each cost a little fortune,) and then locking up his valise and making
off with it "for all the world as if he was a traveling packman or a
thief," as Mrs. Chetwode gasped out to Sally the cook, when she could
seek the safety of the kitchen, for fright.
Then this eccentric colonel strode down stairs and took his ample
Spanish riding-cloak off the pin and wrapping himself in it, with the
startled John's help, he stepped to the dining-room door and drew a
lowering glance around the majestic chamber.
There was a fine portrait of St. Udo Brand in his best days, painted
upon the panel over the fire-place, and the ruddy light of the great
astral lamp shone richly over the bold eyes and frank brow of the true
heir of Castle Brand.
The skulking, demonized face in the doorway glared with frantic fury at
the proud, high countenance on the wall, and a malediction burst from
the writhing lips in a hissing whisper.
"Fool! you deserved your fate," said that strange whisper--"You had
everything and I had nothing--I, the elder, the first born. Yet you
threw your luck away with infernal pride, and beguiled me on to my ruin!
Devil! even in your grave you put out your hand to give me the fatal
push."
He turned on his heel after that and fled from the Castle as if the
Avenger of Blood was at his back, and ordering out the best blood-horse
in the stables, he mounted and galloped down the drive.
Between the castle and the lodge he looked behind and spied his
blood-hound Argus, tearing from the kennel after him.
The old lodge-keeper, who had hobbled out to open the gate, seeing that
the colonel was in such a hurry, was amazed to hear his hoarse tones
raised like a madman's, while he ordered the dog home again, and
threatened him in shocking language.
The dog crouched among the withered leaves until his master was riding
on again, and then he slunk after him as before.
For the second time the colonel looked round at him, and catching him
creeping after, he threw himself from the saddle, and seizing the hound
by the collar, beat him with his weighted whip until the poor animal
yelled with pain, and then he rode on again.
Still the dog dragged his bleeding limbs after his brutal master, and
sought to keep him company, for he was his only friend, and had he not
followed him many a weary mile?
For the third time the colonel looked behind, and caught the faithful
brute following him. He drew a pistol from his breast, and leveled it
full at the cowering hound, which nevertheless crawled close up to him,
and whined, and licked his master's foot; he shot him through the head
and rode on.
So his last friend fell dead by his merciless hand, his faithful serving
had not availed to save him, his obedience had not helped him; when he
was no longer of use to Roland Mortlake, and might be in his way, he
crushed the creature that had loved him, and fled without him.
At the lodge-gate he turned for the last time in his saddle, and looked
at the grand old castle standing in the midst of its rich domain, and
looking like a Druid rock out of the chill moonlight.
A gleam of wicked envy broke from his basilisk eyes; he shook his
clenched hand frantically at the stately pile, and the howl of a hungry
tiger burst hoarsely from his throat.
"It's mine by rights!" he cried in a frenzy, "and yet I've lost it
forever! I might have been made for life, and now there's nothing left
me but the chains or the gallows."
He finished with a vehement volley of oaths, his wolfish face grew black
with passion, his tall frame bowed upon his horse's mane in an access of
abject fear, and plunging his spurs in his startled steed's flanks, he
bounded away like the wind, but not on the road to Regis.
Mrs. Chetwode was ringing her hands over the despoiled drawing-room, and
maids were crying and whispering that the colonel had gone mad, and the
men were winking shrewdly to each other in token of their belief that
the colonel wasn't just what he should be, when a posse of the queen's
officers appeared on the scene, demanding the person of Roland Mortlake,
_alias_ St. Udo Brand.
Too much disgusted with the colonel's low conduct that evening to care
what scrape he had got into, the housekeeper went down to the
constables, and described his proceedings with a plaintive regard to
truth which met with but small favor from those functionaries.
No sooner had they wrung from her a description of the clothes he
departed in and from the lodge-keeper, the road he had taken, then they
galloped off in chase, leaving Mrs. Chetwode in the very middle of her
succinct account of the caskets and ornaments "costing no end of money,
which the rogue had took off with him."
Further disgusted with the unmannerly conduct of "them low-lived
police," the prim housekeeper received Mr. Purcell and his news that
Miss Margaret was safe home again, with elation, that she could fairly
cry with joy to hear that the dear young miss was coming back, for she
had feared many a time since she has gone away, that the colonel meant
that she should never come back.
In truth her life had not been very genial those two days, with the
colonel tramping his rooms like a caged hyena, and pouncing out upon her
whenever a strange rap came to the door, as if he was looking every
minute for some dreadful message from Regis.
"Pretending to want my blessed miss back so bad," cried Mrs. Chetwode,
with a snort of disbelief. "Him as always snarled like a sick dog if
ever her name was spoke by the servants. Where was he all that night
after she went off, I'd like to hear? Out he goes, sir, ten minutes
after you left this house to join Miss Margaret, and he never came back
till daylight; and he wasn't at his own hotel, for his own man came here
and said so. He was after mischief, I tell you, Mr. Purcell," concluded
the worthy lady.
"That he was, the rascal," assented Purcell, wrathfully. "He was
telegraphing his orders to his low accomplice, whom he had sent off to
keep Miss Margaret in fear of her life all the way. Well, well, his
day's done, Mrs. Chetwode, and I pray to goodness that he may be caught
before the morning. You are to go down to the town and stay with Miss
Margaret at the office till she sets the case in Mr. Emersham's hands.
She's afraid to come to the castle till the colonel is safely locked
up."
Margaret was sitting by Mr. Emersham's smoking fire, pale and exhausted,
but with eyes that shone with undiminished animation.
The venerable vicar sat beside her, softly pressing her hand between his
own two; and the dashing young lawyer was just finishing the reading of
the case he had made out of the contents of Margaret's toilfully written
document.
Mrs. Chetwode came to the travel-weary girl, and burst into a fond gush
of tears.
"La sakes! Miss Margaret, I can't help it," sobbed the old lady, "to see
you so white and worried is enough to break one's heart."
"The would-be-colonel, where is he?" clipped in the ready lawyer.
"Gone, sir, without e'er a good-by!"
"Oh, Mrs. Chetwode, have you let him escape?" cried Margaret, springing
up wildly.
"I couldn't stop him, Miss Margaret, dear. He ramped through the castle
like a madman, and then went off at full speed on Roanoke."
"Oh, me--he has escaped! Oh, Mrs. Chetwode!" moaned Margaret, sinking
back in her chair and bursting into a violent fit of weeping.
Incessant anxiety, apprehension, and suspense had begun to tell upon
her, she could not bear up a moment longer; and this disappointment was
too much for her; so she fell into a passion of tears, and sobbed, and
cried out hysterically that St. Udo's enemy had got away, and that St.
Udo would never be avenged now!--until the compassionate vicar supported
her to her carriage and got her driven to the castle.
So Mrs. Chetwode put her to bed, and nursed her, and wept over her, and
got her to sleep at last; and she did not awake for at least twelve
hours.
Next day Mr. Emersham sent up his card to Miss Walsingham, desiring an
interview.
Willingly she hastened down stairs to see him, burning with impatience
to hear his errand.
"Is the man found?" was her first eager question.
The bustling young lawyer subsided instantly.
"Haw, no, not quite caught yet," he admitted, "but he's almost as good
as ours now, my dear madam. I visited O'Grady this morning, and caused
him to turn queen's evidence against his accomplice in this business,
and--aw, I may say the prisoner, I mean the culprit--is done for."
He did not explain that O'Grady had been bribed by the magnificent
promises of the quick-witted Emersham to leak out a little of the truth,
just enough to give the detectives a fresh clue to his probable
hiding-place; and that poor O'Grady was just then imprecating the
dashing young lawyer from earth to a hotter place as a cheat, a liar,
and a traitor, when he found out that he had used him as a tool.
Mr. Emersham also showed his client a telegram which the detectives had
sent him, stating that they had got on the criminal's track, and
expected to come up with him very soon now.
On the whole his visit did much to heighten Margaret's feverish
impatience, and filled her with some of his own sanguine hopes.
When the young gentleman had gone, Margaret wandered through the wide,
echoing rooms with a sense of freedom which she had never experienced
before; a feeling of affection for these familiar chambers, for the sake
of her who had owned them, and of him who should have now possessed
them.
How she had loved the tender-hearted and freakish Madam Brand, no soul
save herself and that dead woman had known; and loving her as she did,
could she do else than lay a like sentiment at the feet of her only
kinsman, the hapless St. Udo.
Pacing through these lofty rooms the lonely girl thought over her
checkered past; she breathed a sigh over the pathetic memory of her fond
and foolish patroness; she gave a smile of scorn to the man who had come
like a curse in the noble St. Udo's stead; the hateful impostor, whose
last abject depredation had been but the type of his crawling,
insatiable nature, which, sleuth-hound like, held on to the prey to the
very last, and made off with a miserable mouthful of it rather than