Faithful Margaret: A Novel

lance-like gleam; her magnificent figure was uplifted with perpetual imperiousness; a Fulvia, a Semiramis, a black browed Nemesis, was Margaret Walsingham in those bitter days of her suspense. Yet she could weep soft, tender tears before St. Udo's portrait, and hug the phantom chains of her supernal love to as love-some a heart as ever man won. But passion and patience will not work in double harness, they wear the life out in their unceasing strife; and though she had lived through terrible scenes, she felt that she could not live through this. But it is a long lane which has no turning; Margaret's turned very suddenly, and ushered her into a fairy land, whose ghost lights dazzled her eyes; whose strange, wild, awful beauty filled her soul with eternal sunshine. Thus it fell out. CHAPTER XXIV. SELLING A SECRET. On a sunny day in January, a traveling coach crunched up the drive to Castle Brand, and produced a visitor for Miss Walsingham. The Waaste, so broad and rolling, looked well in its garb of snow, in which the late New Year had wed it; and along the drive the phinny firs and silver holly-bushes were piled with molded purity, while every creamy nymph in stone or stucco wore a crown of brightness. The turrets even of the hoary castle were fringed with diamond stalactites, from which dropped liquid pearls upon the deep green ivy; and the griffins at the door each upheld a cone of dazzling snow upon his old stone forehead. The visitor glanced about with many a smirk of approbation, and some wise shrugs of the shoulder; but said nothing aloud, preserving his breath for more important speech. Margaret was sitting listlessly over her needle-work when the footman brought her a card, upon which was discernible, amid flourishes of the wildest fantasy, "_Ludovic, Chevalier de Calembours_." She started up with a wild flush mantling her cheek, and a smothered cry of wrath. The elegant little gentleman clad in the Hungarian velvet costume, beribboned, bejeweled, flaunting with many a badge of mystic significance, got upon his crooked little legs, and held out his white hands dramatically to the flashing, palpitating, queen-like creature who swept through the great drawing-room to greet him for the first time. "Chevalier de Calembours! accomplice of Roland Mortlake, I have heard of you before!" she panted, not deigning to touch him. "Mademoiselle Walsingham, champion of Colonel Brand, all the world has heard of you before!" rasped the bland-faced Hun. "Why have you come here, heartless man!" cried Margaret. "To see the dear mademoiselle whose actions so wise, so unselfish, so _heroique_, have won my heart?" "Am I to accept praise from the enemy of St. Udo Brand? Never! You murdered him among you!" "Softly, my heroine! The chevalier was not on the field when the admirable colonel was stabbed! _Ma foi!_ he was lying bleeding on his litter amid his Southern friends, who had captured him for the second time. The first, the dear mademoiselle knows, the chance of fortune wooed me to the South; but the second, _mon Dieu!_ no one asked me my will, but they hacked and hewed over my shackled body, and then the South won me from my captors." "Sir, I desire to hear nothing of your history. You were paid by the murderer to dog the steps of St. Udo Brand; you were both leagued against him. Had he ever harmed you, chevalier? Was he not too brave to fall by treachery?" Quite undaunted by her reproaches, M. le Chevalier listened to her passionate praise of his quondam comrade with sparkling eyes, and threw up his hands in ecstatic assent. "Brave, did mademoiselle say?" he echoed; "_mon Dieu!_ he was gallant, gay, free-hearted, _helas!_ that the ladies should love such an Apollo." "And you betrayed him, knowing him to be all this?" she cried, bitterly. "_Par la messe!_ mademoiselle is not just!" complained the chevalier, with tears in his eyes. "I love _mon_ colonel, admire, believe in him; I spit upon Monsieur Mortlake--laugh at, revile him! Mademoiselle must have found out that I obeyed him--never; that I stuck to my colonel only because I love him; and that I left him not until fortune beckoned me away. If he had given me his dear company when I fled to Richmond, he would not have been to-day where he is; but would he? not though I prayed to him with tears in the eyes, with grief in the heart. No, no, he was doomed; he would stay with the Yankees, and--Thoms!" "Did you not suspect who Thoms was, especially as Mortlake sent him to you?" "Oh! I was blind. I was bewitched; the wretch was too cunning, mademoiselle. But pray, what has all the cunning ended in? Bah! simplicity, honesty for me; I still live, and walk abroad, a free man. But I am a Chevalier of honor. I scorn a crooked policy. When for the second time the South won Calembours, I found that perfidious fortune had changed her mood; from filling my pockets with gold as commissary general, she descended to thrusting me into that unwholesome residence in Richmond, Castle Thunder. All because some head of wood suggested that the Chevalier de Calembours was selling the North to the South, and _vice versa_. But the chevalier is a Knight of Industry as well as of Honor--he ever makes the honey where other bees would but starved carcasses. I make the situation palatable even in Castle Thunder, for there is a blue-coated soldier with me there. He is wounded, I nurse him; he is hungry, I feed him from my wretched pittance; we mingle our tears over the moldy crust and the muddy water--we console each other. "When he is able to crawl, I file off his chains; together we dig our tunnel through the dungeon floor. We have no tools but we use a broken plate and a rusty key, and--patience. Night and day, mademoiselle, night and day that invalid soldier and I gnaw through the baked earth; the nails are torn from the fingers; see, _ma chere!_ the clothes are worn from the bodies; _mon camerade_ faints often, almost dies; but one day we see the sunny earth come crumbling into our rat-hole. _Mon Dieu!_ we have penetrated beneath the wall--we are free. "I drag him out that night--I drag him into the woods; he says he will die joyfully a free man--he cannot die a captive. But we do not let him die; we aid him day by day through the dismal swamps, cold, wet, famished, but he lives to reach Washington, and he is received in a hospital; while I, _morbleu_, they give me the cold shoulder, they point the finger, they cry, 'Renegade!' My friend whom I have aided, grows worse of his wound, and cannot speak for me; McClellan, Banks, Pope, Stanton, are all down on poor Calembours for past injuries they dream that he has done them with the South. So, mademoiselle must hear that the republican rabble hoot me from their midst with vile names, and hard usage, and ugly threats, just as the graycoats had done in Richmond, because I believe in universal suffrage, and am a mad _cosmopolite_, and see no difference between the greedy North and the hungry South. In vain I confide my need to these dogs, in vain I remind the War Department of past deeds of mine while serving under McClellan. They call my laurels tarnished with treachery, they call my past services canceled by succeeding bribery, they refuse me my little price, and order me to leave their barbaric soil. "So I turn the back upon the dogs who snarl so loudly over their uninviting bone, and, although the tears gush from the eyes at parting from the dear friend whom I aided, I am forced to leave him behind. "What though I have thrown behind me an illustrious life, titles, honors, pleasures, for to give these dogs my nameless services? "Where Colonel Brand, the lion of chivalry raged, was not I, Colonel Calembours, ever at his side, the unwearied partner of the perilous speculation? "But when I fall under the blind displeasure of the stupid bureau at Washington, justice, nay, honesty, is forgotten--they mulct me of my laurels. "I go to New York, and turn into a dealer for horseflesh for the army. In a few weeks I fill my wrinkled purse, and get rid of the last of my consignment; and, before the wretched brutes have time to betray their many infirmities, New York in turn loses Calembours. But ere I leave I have the satisfaction of again greeting my invalid friend, who has been sent North to a better hospital, and who is gradually convalescing. He urges me to stay with him, that we may begin the world together; but I have a sacred duty to perform, a slight to remember, an insult to avenge. I am free, I have money, I have health, and I come here, to this Castle Brand, to see mademoiselle, and (for revenge) to sell to her--_a secret_." The chevalier paused with _empressement_, and remained peering into his listener's face with a gay, encouraging smile for two or three minutes. Whiter Margaret could not be, nor colder. "Proceed, monsieur," she breathed at last; "do not mock my anxiety." "Mademoiselle understands that what follows is for sale?" quoth the chevalier slyly. "Yes, yes, you shall be satisfied. Proceed." "_Mille mercies_, dear mademoiselle. _Eh, bien!_ I will do myself the honor to keep you au courant with my history. History pleases mademoiselle; she is a good listener--_ma foi!_ a very good listener. "_Voila!_ I begin at the end of the volume. I begin, as do the Hebrews, at the last page, and read from right to left, to meet this end of the little tale which you have just heard. "Some months ago--perhaps eighteen--I, the illustrious Chevalier de Calembours, arrived at Canterbury, on business of mine. "In time I meet a very great man there; we play _rouge-et-noir_; _mon Dieu!_ he cheats me at _rouge-et-noir_. Mademoiselle, _rouge-et-noir_ is my own great weapon, _ma foi!_ I must have learned it in my cradle when an infant; with it I have beat the world, with it I have cheated the world--and this greatest of men cheats me! "I stop the game, I contemplate him with exalted emotions, with admiration, with awe; tears start to the eyes, I offer him the hand. "Monsieur," I cry, with much enthusiasm, "tell me your name. You shall be my great model in this noble game; I shall be your pupil." "The great man glares at me through those cavernous eyes; his lips, so thin and evil, smile sourly, and his long fingers make me the gambler's sign. Ah! he is the gambler by profession, then--the sly sharper, the hanger-on upon the young of the military. I marvel no more at his proficiency in the art in which, beside him, I am but an amateur. "'My name is Roland Mortlake,' he says, unwillingly; 'you are welcome to any hints you think I can give you; but I was admiring your play all the time. I've never seen it equalled.' "Mademoiselle, this man had played in Germany, in Italy, in France, and he had never seen my play equalled. "I listen to the delicious praise; the heart swells with generous pride; I rise, I embrace him as a brother. "'You do me too much honor, Monsieur Mortlake,' I cry; 'you do the Count of Santo Spirito, Turin, too much honor.' "We became acquaintances, friends, inseparable brothers--we became necessary to each other. "We combine our forces, we cheat the world, and we reap a golden harvest. "The world is _so_ gullible _chere amie_. Why not glean the benefit then? "'I must go to London,' says my friend, in March; 'better come along. We can always pigeon the subs, and they are always to be found there.' "My friend was a great player, but he spoke ill, even coarsely at times. "So be it, _camerade_!' I cry and we go. "At first we do well; we enter humble circles, and we mount to higher every day; the purse is very full, the heart is very merry, when, _ouais!_ hush! Monsieur Mortlake becomes mysterious, close,