Faithful Margaret: A Novel
Madame appealed impressively to the icy Margaret.
"General Legrange here declares that you are the widow of a
Plenipotentiary of the French Court!" she said.
"Does he indeed?" cried madame, with the gusto of habitual vanity. "Then
I sha'n't contradict him--don't you, Miss Walsingham. They must always
talk about me wherever I go. I am accustomed to it; I let them say what
they choose. I please myself, and the world gives me my way, I've been
North and South, East and West, and although I have seen trouble, I have
ever trodden over it; no woman has ever got into the wrong box so often
and come out of it to a higher grade; no woman has ever borne so much
scandal, and been popular in spite of it. I survive it all; I eat,
drink, make merry--am feasted, courted, and adored, and all because I
don't let affairs of the heart vex me. I don't mope, and muse, and turn
melancholy as you (a good creature, too), are doing."
The fine, small face of Madame Hesslein shone with wicked animation; her
thin, scarlet lips parted in two beauty curves with a string of pearls
between, with small, glittering head poised on one side, the gorgeous
parakeet studied the plain, tender creature before her, and laughed at
such a contrast.
"Do you know why I am here?" queried Margaret, tremulously.
Madame Hesslein smiled and nodded.
"All New York knows why the sombre English dame is here," she jibed,
"for your stupid lawyer has bored the city for news of your Colonel
Brand."
"Mr. Davenport only does his duty."
Madame grimaced charmingly.
"Duty!" she mocked. "Oh, Juggernaut of good people's lives, what
unwilling victims do ye crush beneath your wheels in your heavenward
march?"
"Have you been crushed?" asked Margaret, smiling.
"Oh, no; Mr. Davenport is too pompous to expect anything of a woman.
Stupid wretch!"
"Had you known St. Udo Brand," cried Margaret, blushing, "you could not
laugh at his destruction. He was bitterly proud, but he was true as
steel."
"Was he so?" breathed madam--and her green eyes grew black--"I should
have liked to meet him, then. I have yet to meet the man who is as true
as steel. Griselda, you are one who should win back a man--but, oh,
you'll never do it! never!"
A wild change swept over her fine face, her wondrous, globular eyes grew
deep and passionate, and her beautiful hands were clasped in covert
anguish.
"I pity your sad life, madame, if you have proved all false," said
Margaret, with feeling, "for there are good men on earth, I doubt not."
"The best die; the fairest, the most loved," said madame, faintly. "Miss
Walsingham, I had one son--ah!"--she shivered and closed her eye--"and
he died miserably. I loved him, I did love him, and he was my only
consolation for many years." She dashed her tears away and looked up
sternly. "You make me talk to you, with your soft, true face," she
exclaimed, bitterly, "and I must not talk. But mind, I have told you
nothing; you can't say that I have narrated any of my history to you."
"I had not thought of saying so," replied Margaret.
"Ah, you are a good soul, and I like you," murmured madame, patting
Margaret's hand with a touch like falling rose-leaves. "So sweet, so
heroic, so humble! You remind me of myself many years ago in old
Austria, when I was in love with--my destroyer!"
Her face hardened, her green eyes glimmered with the deadly light of
hate.
She turned off her momentary remorse with a heartless laugh, and rattled
her _collier_ of golden lockets.
"Each of these lockets," sneered madame, "contains a victim to my power
of fascination, [there were at least a dozen,] and the whole string of
them was presented to me by an old vice admiral who fell in love with me
at Barbadoes last winter, and escorted me to the Bermudas when I went
there. My good lady, that first foolish passion of mine has so destroyed
my powers of mercy that I love to torture mankind and madden them with
false expectations, if only I might be revenged."
The beautiful lips of the lady suddenly compressed with a cruel
expression, and looking up, Margaret beheld the Chevalier de Calembours
hurrying across the room to join them.
"The Chevalier de Calembours wishes to be presented to you," said
Margaret.
Those gleaming, chrysolite orbs flashed a full upward glare in the
chevalier's face. He recoiled, he changed color, and became strangely
silent.
"So glad to meet the chevalier," murmured madame, with an inimitable
elegance of manner.
Monsieur's face relaxed; he drew near her, dazzled as with the eye of a
rattlesnake.
"Incomparable madame, where have we met before?" inquired he, with soft
insinuation.
She honored him with a glance of astonishment and an artless smile.
"Indeed I cannot say, chevalier," she minced, "unless we've met in
dreams."
"Pardon the presumption, madame, _mon amie_," persisted the chevalier,
growing very pale, "but I think we are not strangers."
Another change swept over Madame Hesslein's ever-changeful face; all
resemblance of her late self disappeared, and a bold, brilliant, haughty
creature sat in her place, smiling with supercilious amusement at the
little Bohemian's blunder.
"I should indeed feel honored if monsieur would recall the circumstances
of our acquaintance," she said, blandly; "for I am frequently accosted
by strangers who vow that I am known to them, and who afterward discover
that my resemblance to the person they took me for was owing solely to
the Protean expression of my face. I can't help my face being like
twenty other people's in a breath, can I, Miss Walsingham? But I would
like to think that Chevalier Calembours had known me previously, for I
always have a warm side to Frenchmen for a special reason."
The chevalier was himself again: his doubts had fled, and he was
laughing at himself for his momentary illusion.
"Madame has explained the sweet hallucination," he said, hand on heart.
"We have not met except in dreams. Ah! that we had been friends in those
days of glory when I was the favorite of the Hungarian court, the Count
of Calembours, owner of diamond mines! _Mon Dieu!_ my homage was worthy
of its object then!"
Monsieur launched into his loftiest braggadocio, and madame listened
well, and drew him out with skill.
"So monsieur was born in Hungary?"
"In Hungary, madame."
"Have you seen the pretty river Theiss?"
"Hem! Yes, madame. I lived in Irzegedin."
"Ah!"--with a mocking smile--"the residences of the counts are
particularly magnificent in that city, are they not?"
"Madame is right. Madame must have been there."
"Oh, no, my dear chevalier, else I should have heard of Count
Calembours, without doubt. And Chevalier de Calembours left his princely
fortune behind when he came here to fight?"
"Madame is a good listener."
"Brave chevalier! but you will return to your estates?"
"Without doubt, madame, when I am weary of glory."
"Admirable man!" cried madame, with a silvery laugh. "What an enviable
lady your wife is."
"Dear friend, I have no wife," complacently.
"Is that credible? A young and handsome man without a wife? Oh,
chevalier!"
"My wife,"--with a frown--"my wife is gone long since."
"Alas! how sad. You must have been adored by her," breathed Madame
Hesslein.
"Ah, _pauvrette_, yes. She wearied me with that grand passion of hers."
Madame's smiling face hardened into a stone-mask, but her eyes seemed to
pulsate with smothered fire.
"Wearied monsieur, did she?" (with a threatening smile into his eyes).
"Silly, clumsy wretch!"
"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier; "she was a pretty Venus, but
unsophisticated, unformed, somewhat vulgar."
"And your indifference broke her heart--she died for love of you?"
questioned madame, wickedly.
"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier again. "She consoled herself.
She ran away with a cotton lord from Manchester, and I heard of her no
more."
"She was mad--she was a fool!" cried madame, blandly mischievous. "She
should have polished her dull luster, and recaptured the errant heart of
her noble chevalier. I should have done so."
"You, exquisite madame?" sighed the chevalier, _con amore_. "Ah, but my
wife was not clever like you, nor beautiful."
"She was only affectionate?" whispered madame.
"Only affectionate," and monsieur bowed.
Again their eyes met, hers streaming forth a bewildering fire, his
wistful and adoring, and though her words stung the Chevalier de
Calembours, the victim could not choose but hover close, and closer to
admire the serpentine grace of his tormentor.
Presently, becoming weary of the amusement, the siren sent him for a
chess-board, promising him a game of backgammon for reward, and turning
to Margaret, with a laugh of derision, her excitement burst forth.
"See how that man throws himself down to be trampled over by me," she
whispered, exultingly. "See how he licks the dust from my feet. Ah, if I
could only spurn him into ruin I would do it."
She thrust her lovely foot of Andalusian grace from out of its velvet
folds, and contemplated it with a smile.
"I am more beautiful than that creature who loved him long ago on the
banks of the Theiss, am I? Then by virtue of my beauty, I shall avenge
her cause, and my own. I shall humiliate our noble count."
She whispered it gayly to her sumptuous bracelets, turning and clanking
the golden shackle on her shapely wrist; but her fine, small face was
wild with malice.
"You hate my friend, the chevalier, with a strange perversity," remarked
the disapproving Margaret. "Doubtless that hapless woman was as much to
blame as he."
"Ah, was she?" breathed madame, turning pale. "I think he said that her
only fault was her passionate love, which his shallow soul wearied of.
Oh, Heaven! how cruel you can be! Her case, Miss Walsingham, is like my
own--how keenly I can understand such wrongs. Pshaw! I shall moralize no
more. I have long, long ago left these stormy waves behind, and now
float on a glassy sea, lit by rays of golden ambition. I have buried the
god of luckless youth, poor Cupid, and set upon his grave the god of the
Thirties--yellow-faced Pluto. My motto is, 'No heart and a good
digestion,' and taking heed to its warning, I expect to live, handsome
as a picture, to the age of old Madame Bellair, who
"'Lived to the age of one hundred and ten;
And died from a fall from a cherry-tree then.'"
The chevalier returning with the chess-board, madame and he enjoyed
several hours of their game, she played more games than that of
backgammon, although all her faculties seemed to be concentrated in
winning the chevalier's golden dollars from him, which she did with
marvelous relish, and keeping her accounts, which she did with marvelous
precision.
She ended her game of backgammon by transferring the last piece in the
charmed chevalier's purse to her own, and she ended the game of hearts
by dropping the net of bewilderment completely over poor Calembours, and
then she thought of tightening the cord.
"Poor Miss Walsingham!" said madame, with a rippling laugh of wicked
glee; "I shall chase away that look of stern dislike which has settled
upon your face ever since you discovered that I added gambling to my
other sins--I shall make you like me in spite of yourself. Come,
chevalier, turn my music."
She strolled gracefully down the long drawing-room, attended by the
elated chevalier, who had never been so happy in his life, and, followed
by the wondering and admiring eyes of a score of both sexes, took her
seat at the piano.
But Margaret turned her back, and shut her heart against the bold and
erring creature, whose beauty was but the fatal bewitchment of clever
wickedness, whose spasms of grief were the last expiring gleams of a
better nature which she sedulously quenched.