Faithful Margaret: A Novel
nothing.
But when she came to the portrait of St. Udo Brand, in the long crimson
dining-room, the fierce flicker softened in her yearning eyes, and a
sacred, tender smile dawned on her lips.
She studied the grand, passionate-speaking countenance, whose features
were cast in a mold fitted to express the noblest emotions, till the
soulful eyes seemed to seek hers with a living beam of gratitude; till
the fine lips seemed to thrill with a gentle smile, and the souls of St.
Udo Brand and Margaret Walsingham appeared to have met face to face for
the first time, and to hold sweet communion together.
Great tears slowly dropped from Margaret's passionate eyes and washed
her cheeks, her tender lip quivered with the thoughts that were swaying
her heart; for a quick wild pang of grief smote her to think that he was
in his grave.
He had scorned her, he had trampled her under foot, and she forgave him
all, and wept that he was dead.
For oh, the heart of such a woman is capable of a love, which, to love
of softer women, is as glowing wine to water, as the towering, scorching
flame of the red volcano to the chill pale ray of the winter morn.
In the afternoon of the same day, Mrs. Chetwode came into Margaret's
room with the news that Mr. Davenport was below, inquiring for an
immediate interview.
"He do look raised, Miss Margaret," said Mrs. Chetwode; "he snaps round
like an angry watch-dog."
He came up to Miss Walsingham's parlor and burst in, hot, red, loud, and
angry.
"Ha! you have seen fit to return to your post, sir," cried Margaret,
woman-like anticipating the fray.
"Return, madam!" fired the lawyer. "Am I here too soon for you,
madam--how long did you want me to stay?"
"I did not want you to go, sir," said Margaret.
"Hear her, oh, hear her!" screamed the lawyer, appealing to the cornice,
"if that is not upright and downright insanity, show me a maniac in
Bedlam. Madam," with grim pleasantry, "shall you banish me to the top of
Mont Blanc in your next letter about a mythological Colonel Brand?"
She maintained a dignified silence.
"Madam, since your little scheme to get both your guardians out of the
way has succeeded so well, will you do me the favor of confessing what
you have done with the colonel?"
"I have unmasked him, Mr. Davenport, and shown the world a murderer."
"What the duse do you mean, young lady?"
"He is proved an impostor, Mr. Davenport, believe me for once."
"Pig-headed as ever, I see," groaned the lawyer. "Come tell me why you
sent me to Bala?" in a wheedling tone. "Be calm and give your reasons
frankly."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I did not send you to Bala."
"Confound the woman!" shouted Davenport, "she denies everything. She is
mad! she'll deny the work of her own hand next, I do believe. Why did
you write me this letter, Miss Margaret Walsingham?" (snatching it from
his pocket and waving it like a banner of victory before her eyes.)
"Your own handwriting--your own signature, madam. Please do not shock me
by denying it."
She looked at the letter--her own familiar chirography started her out
of countenance.
Truly, Roland Mortlake's was an accommodating genius.
Thus it ran:
"DEAR MR. DAVENPORT:--I have just receive an extraordinary
telegram from some Dr. Lythwaite in Bala, Merioneth. I inclose
it to you. Does it not convince you that my suspicions have a
just foundation? If you can withstand the evidence of this
stranger, who has never heard of my suspicions, you are
willfully shutting your eyes to a plain fact.
"St. Udo Brand lies ill at Bala--send Davenport to receive his
instructions to Gelert's Hotel, Coventry street.'
"That is what the telegram says; now I request that for once
you will obey my wish, and fly thither by the first train.
"Tell no one, not even Gay, for he is in the confidence of this
wretch here. Heaven knows whether you are not the same.
"Yours, anxiously,
"MARGARET WALSINGHAM."
In the envelope was the bogus telegram; no wonder that the lawyer,
suspicious though he was, had been completely deceived this time.
"I can show you as strange an epistle, which I received," cried
Margaret, going to her desk for Dr. Gay's purported letter, and handing
it to Mr. Davenport.
He read it and turned it over in blank surprise.
"Extraordinary!" muttered the lawyer. "Could Gay have got another
telegram! Then you didn't send the doctor off, did you?"
"No, indeed, Mr. Davenport, nor you, either. Your untimely absence
almost cost me my life, as you would have heard had you made any
inquiries as to the state of affairs at Emersham's law office, before
you came over here. We have all been infamously duped, sir, by a wretch
unworthy of the name of man--but he shall soon expiate his crimes on the
scaffold. All these communications have been cleverly forged by no other
than Roland Mortlake, who is now flying for his life from the officers
of justice."
"Extraordinary! most extraordinary!" aspirated Mr. Davenport.
He was getting very quiet, his purple face was fading into a frightened
gray, his rousing tones were sinking into a soft dejection; he began to
scent a mistake from afar, and to shoulder the humiliation.
And at this auspicious moment, Mrs. Chetwode opened the door and
announced Dr. Gay, just arrived, to demand his explanation.
The lawyer stepped to the door to warn Dr. Gay of his error, and shook
hands with the solemnity of a sexton greeting the chief mourner at a
funeral.
"There's been a terrible blunder here," said he, spiritlessly; "we've
both allowed ourselves to be made confounded fools of by a rascal. Have
you heard anything in the town?"
"Not I," returned the little doctor, who looked as if he had not slept
for a week. "I've just come home, and rushed over here as fast as a
horse's legs could carry me. How are you now, Miss Margaret?"
"Well, thank you, and overjoyed to see you back again. I feel safe now,"
murmured Margaret, looking up in her counselor's face with a gentle
glance. "There will be an end to all misunderstanding now, and we shall
be friends as we used to be."
Mr. Davenport was wiping his forehead with his enormous bandanna, and
looking very foolish; and Dr. Gay stared from one to the other, and got
more mystified every minute.
"Have you made anything of this queer business?" asked he.
"Gad! sir, I think we have," returned the lawyer; "and more than we
bargained for. We've caught a rascal in it!"
"Rascal enough!" sighed the little doctor, wearily. "He led me a fine
dance of it. I suppose you want to hear what induced me to fly off at a
tangent to the other side of England, don't you? A Welsh gentleman,
calling himself Mr. Grayly, a tall, red-faced blue-eyed chap in a fur
coat, called on me at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, with the strange
tidings that he had come from New Radnor in Wales--fancy that--and got
me to believe it, too, the rogue--where the true Colonel Brand was lying
sick at the country house of a brother officer in the Guards. I was
struck dumb, and didn't know what to think, till a dispatch came per
telegraph from the colonel himself, begging me to come and see him, and
assuring me that Grayly would tell me all about him. So Grayly hustled
me off on the half-past nine train, before I had time to think of
anything. At ---- in Berks my friend the Welshman got out, saying that
he had an hour's business to transact there, but that I could go on, and
he would overtake me in Cirencester; so off I went alone, thinking no
evil. But I've never seen him since, the dog."
"Miss Margaret received this letter, posted in the same village,"
interposed Mr. Davenport, exhibiting it grimly.
Dr. Gay read it with stupefied wonder.
"St. George and the Dragon!" muttered he, "this is a cruel hoax. Who
could have written that so like me. Grayly did it, I suppose, though."
"Grayly, _alias_ O'Grady, posted it," said Margaret; "but he was
employed to do so. Another than he wrote it, a cleverer forger. Well,
how did your adventure end?"
"Oh, as might have been expected. I posted on, mad with excitement, to
New Radnor in search of the sick man, and Grayly's instructions brought
me to the door of a ladies' private boarding-school, where I was well
stared at, and no doubt laughed at for my stupidity. So, finding that I
had been cheated by a rogue who probably wanted to play off a practical
joke upon my credulity--(I suppose everybody is laughing at Miss
Margaret's suspicions of the colonel here, she must have mentioned them
somewhere)--I came back quicker than I went, determined to sift the
matter well."
"I need prepare your minds no better for the disclosures you must now
hear," said Margaret, "for you will not discredit my story, after the
mortifying experiences which you have had. I will not reproach you for
your past injustice to me, for your desertion of my cause to the side of
my enemy, or for your unfounded suspicion of my sanity. I only regret
that your past inactivity has forced me to put this desperate case in
the hands of a stranger who could not feel the interest in it which you
should have felt. But no more of this. I shall explain all to you."
She faithfully narrated all that had happened since the night on which
she had obtained possession of Roland Mortlake's pocket-book.
The two executors heard the recital; Dr. Gay with groans of horror, Mr.
Davenport in meek and abject silence.
It was almost pathetic to observe the humility with which the
overbearing lawyer received the intelligence of his egregious credulity
and wanton obstinacy, but he did not say a word until the narration was
completed, and then he dejectedly begged Miss Margaret to give him
something to do for her.
They took counsel together, and at last parted with mutual good will and
cordiality; Dr. Gay going back to his wife in such a maze of stupid
preoccupation as submerged him in conjugal hot water for many a day;
while Mr. Davenport pugnaciously burst into young Emersham's office and
electrified him like a torpedo, on the subject of O'Grady's proper
handling.
The days passed by--Andrew Davenport and Seamore Emersham, counsels for
the plaintiff, announced their case complete; the chain of evidence
which was to strangle Roland Mortlake, wanted not a link of the judicial
measure required; his own confessions were there, his accomplice O'Grady
was there with his secret disclosures; the witnesses were on the
ground--all was complete, and nothing wanting except the criminal.
It was to no purpose, the doubling and twisting of secret detectives,
many a day might pass away before they could overtake the game on that
road, for he was perfect in such a part, his life had been one long race
through tortuous paths, with the sword of justice pursuing him.
The hue and cry of outraged law rang wrathfully through the land; the
public papers teemed with accounts of the great Castle Brand plot; the
public mind execrated Roland Mortlake as a revolting rogue to murder so
much better a man than himself, that he might steal his station; but the
hero of the universal tongue kept discreet obscurity, and ventured not
within the radius of his evil popularity.
Still O'Grady kept whispering his strange disclosures, and, under the
upper stratum of wordy clamor, the sly detectives, led by Davenport, dug
away at the secret lead, with hopes of coming treasure.
The dark-faced mistress of Castle Brand wore her soul out in pining for
the end; and day by day she saw the wintry sun go down with a cry
against the slow moving arm of justice; mingled with a piteous
self-reproach when she noted the fierce spirit which had been born in
her.
Her thin cheek seldom lost its feverish carmine, nor her eyes their