Faithful Margaret: A Novel
in the pretty bark raised a feeble "huzzah!" in return, which however,
sank into hopeless silence ere it was half expressed; and they melted
from the straining eyes which followed them, and went their way.
The boatman rowed into a wharf of the deserted town, secured his craft,
and lifted Margaret out.
"D'ye see that great house among them trees?" he asked, pointing to a
large mansion on the brow of the hill, perhaps a quarter of a mile
distant.
"Them's the officers' quarters, miss, and we'll go there first. There
were a score or more of sick soldiers there for their health. I came
here myself after the battle, where they most killed the colonel."
"Were you with the colonel the night he was stabbed?" asked Davenport.
"Yes, sir. I never left him when I could manage to be with him. Maybe
you've heard of Reed, who served the colonel for a while?"
"Yes," sighed Margaret, "he mentioned you in a letter to Dr. Gay.
Hasten, kind friend, and bring us to him."
They sped through the deserted streets, where every window was barred
and every door jealously locked, and a few famished dogs broke the
silence by long, wild, and ominous howls.
A cart, covered with a white canvas cloth, rumbled heavily by, and then
Reed took the lady's hand, and dragged her to the opposite pavement,
whispering:
"Muffle your face in your handkerchief, miss, for Heaven's sake!"
And with bated breath they let the dead cart rumble by with its ghastly
burden.
A funeral emerged from a court hard by--a funeral which was composed of
the clergyman, an old man weeping over his dead, and tottering feebly
after, and four negroes carrying the bier. They flitted by like
phantoms, casting apathetic glances after the old man, the boatman, and
the young lady who were mounting the hill to that lonely house on its
brow.
They entered the grove, and with one accord paused and gazed toward the
house, and listened, and looked in each others faces for encouragement.
The door was ajar, the windows all open, and the fair white curtains,
fluttering low adown among the climbing grapes and budding roses, were
limp and yellow with nights of dew and days of rust, but not a living
face looked out through the silent panes, not a sound broke the deep and
breathless silence.
These men were brave men, but which of them would venture within these
desolate walls where death triumphant reigned.
Suddenly Margaret slipped her hand from the lawyer's clasp, and fled
like a spirit into the silent house--fear, hope, and love giving her the
courage which these others could not summon.
She traversed the passages, where all was wild confusion, she looked
into every room, but the drivers of the dead carts had been there before
her--each bed was vacant, each chamber that used to echo to the careless
jests of the soldiers was dull and lifeless as they.
She fled up the staircase, she opened another chamber-door--it was the
last.
It was a wide, dim chamber, whose close-drawn curtains banished all the
light, and between her and the window loomed a great white object--a bed
with the hangings drawn close about it.
No breath, no sound--oh, Heaven! is he not here? Is he dead and gone
forever?
A long sigh breaks the blank silence: a moan steals helplessly from the
great white mausoleum which entombs the man.
She glides forward and draws back the shroud-like folds from window,
then from bed, and the yellow light falls upon a flushed and
foam-flecked face, and upon two toiling, twitching hands.
And, blessed be Heaven! this is surely St. Udo Brand, and there is life
in him yet!
The lawyer enters and tries to drag her back, and fills the room with
his beseeching clamor; but she breaks wildly from him, and returns to
St. Udo Brand.
And, Heaven be praised! she thinks that she is in time, and that this
dear soul may yet be held on earth.
So she lifts the hot head to her arm, and lays her loving hand upon the
heart that is almost still, and she kisses tenderly the shrunken
forehead where death fain would print his seal.
And she whispers from her noble heart:
"Oh, God! give me back his life! oh, God! give me back his life!"
And the old lawyer weeps, and repeats after her the half-articulate
prayer.
One glance of anguish she casts at her poor old friend, and past him, up
into Heaven, it says:
"Man cannot help us, but God will!" and then she turns again to the
beloved one.
He has wronged her, hated her, maligned her; no single throb has his
hushed heart ever beat for her; but she has forgiven him long ago, if
she has anything to forgive. She is warming that chilling heart against
her own; she is watching that disfigured face which can never be
disfigured to her; she loves him faithfully.
When Reed comes back from his search for a doctor, they find the old
lawyer sitting by the window, with his wet eyes covered by his hands,
and the woman kneeling by the bed, with the sick man's head on her
breast.
"You must leave this place," says the doctor, in affright.
"No, I will nurse him best," she smiles.
So she has her way, good, faithful Margaret.
CHAPTER XXX.
A REVELATION.
Madame Hesslein, standing on the deck where Margaret had bidden her
adieu--weeping in her lace handkerchief until it was wet, and waving it
after her until it was dry, seemed so well worth losing a thousand
pounds for, that the Chevalier Calembours quickly overcame his sincere
regrets at the mad Margaret's departure into the jaws of death, and,
flinging all uncomfortable emotions into the limbo of forgetfulness, he
abandoned himself to the care of this fair creature who was left upon
his hands.
"There they go, these doomed ones!" sobbed madame, with a great gush of
tears. "Farewell, farewell, poor devoted Griselda."
"Be content, dear madame, I do not forsake thee--take comfort of thy
slave!"
"Oh, chevalier, is there ever a man on this stale old globe who can show
a heart like faithful Margaret's?"
"_Mon Dieu!_ I know such a man."
"I do not. I have yet to meet the man who is content to love without one
hope of recompense; who counts it joy to lay his all at the feet of the
one who has scorned him--who rushes with a willing soul to brave death
in the service of his enemy."
"Madame is skeptical, madame is cruel. Ah--could she read the heart of
Calembours----"
"Ha, ha, ha!" mocked madame, wildly, "perhaps I can. Perhaps I have met
with such before, and sifting it well, found it the heart of a fiend.
But enough, 'tis a long time since I have believed in love, and
faithfulness, and such mawkish sentimentality; now, do you know what I
believe in, monsieur?"
"_Pardieu_, no--cruel that thou art."
"Ambition is my god," breathed madame, tauntingly. "I will climb to the
highest step of the social ladder, and there I'll feel content."
The chevalier grew pale with envy.
"If madame would accept my poor help to raise her to her throne," sighed
he.
"_Yours!_" she interrupted, scornfully.
"Madame, I am not what I seem."
"Faith, I don't think you are."
"Madame, on the honor of a chevalier, I possess some fine titles and
estates."
"Foolish man, to cloak your royalty with this disguise!"
"I am Count de S. S. Turin."
"I salute you, count."
"I am Knight of the Three Sicilies."
"Receive my obeisance, knight."
"I possess fine vineyards in Hungary, and a jewel-mine."
"My congratulations, illustrious sir."
"And I am your devoted slave, Madame Hesslein." The luring, mocking,
maddening face of the lady lit up with fierce joy. She averted it
quickly. "I will resume these titles so dignified," cried the chevalier,
"I will return to my fatherland; ver' good, _mon ange_, you shall
accompany, you shall be my wife. You shall rule over nine hundred
vinedressers, and seven vineyards, _ma chere_; they are worth seventy
thousand florins in the year; and you shall wear the gems of agate, of
jasper--of diamonds as you wear this leetel ribbon--madame, all I have
shall be yours."
She heard with a cool smile, but a bitter pulse beat in her throat.
"You are flattering, chevalier," she remarked, "and I shall think of
it."
He seized her fair hands, and pressed them to his lips, but she snatched
them away with a flash from the smoldering fire in her eyes.
"But first," said madame, with a keen glance, "you must assure me that
the station you offer me is not gilded by imagination unassisted by
gold."
Monsieur sighed in heart-rending despondency.
"Incomparable woman, you doubt what is to the Hungarian noblesse dearer
than life--my honor. But come, I will give you my proofs."
He escorted her to her state-room where waited the two maids of the
charming lady, who always traveled with a complete retinue of servants,
and going to his own cabin, presently he returned holding solemnly in
his hands an elegantly silver-mounted coffer which he placed upon the
table.
Unlocking it, he drew from thence various parchments of official aspect,
with huge seals appended, and displayed them to the smiling inamorata.
"These are the rewards with which my country has honored my poor
services," he said, with humility. "These papers attest to my right to
wear these titles you have just heard, madame. _Voila!_ 'To the Count of
Santo Spirito, Turin,' and 'To the Knight of the Order of Three
Sicilys.' _Mon ange_, what more can I say?"
A wicked smile was playing around her mouth.
"I accept your statements, chevalier--and yourself!" she murmured, with
an exquisite side glance.
The little chevalier beamed with triumph, and bowed low over the lovely
hand which she extended, and then she snatched it quickly from him, made
a queenly obeisance, and vanished like a spirit from his sight.
Madame Hesslein was seen no more until the steamer entered New York; she
was either ill or coy; in reply to the chevalier's tender reproaches she
declared for the first named, although her flashing eyes and healthy
appearance emphatically contradicted the assertion.
What a dream of joy tinctured with horrible doubts the succeeding month
was for poor little Calembours! To-day she was amiable, gay, bewitching;
to-morrow she would be locked in her room, and would send down a frantic
entreaty to the good _fiance_ to leave her in peace; presently she would
reward his importunities by flitting into his presence, white, vengeful,
and torturing him with covert taunts and maddening allusions to his
forgotten past.
And yet she was so beautiful, and so changeful, and so reckless that the
wild Bohemian fire blazed up in the poor little man's soul, and he could
not help loving her with a devotion worthy of a better object.
He expended his hoarded gains in loading her with costly gifts; and with
mad prodigality assumed a splendor of estate which drained his finances
to the lowest ebb; anxious only to win her for his own and calmly
leaving the _denouement_ until after the happy day, when madame could
not help herself.
How he hoped to obtain her forgiveness when she discovered all, Heaven
knows; but love not seldom infatuates men and goads them on to their
complete ruin.
Not true love, though of a worthy object; 'tis ofttimes the only savior
of a sinking man.
Presently the illustrious foreigner, loaded with his titles, penetrated
to the upper circle of society where Madame Hesslein moved, a solitary
queen among shrinking ladies of _haut ton_, who with one accord admired,
and hated, and courted her because she was the attraction, and it was
"the thing" to say, "we had little Madame Hesslein here last night."
What her beauty and refinement did for her, the chevalier's _applomb_
and versatility of genius did for him. Every one talked of the clever,
polished Frenchman--in good society monsieur spoke only French, and wore