Faithful Margaret: A Novel
his Legion of Honor flauntingly--every one raved about the dazzling
witch he paid such faithful court to; every one vowed that such a pair
were expressly created for each other, none else.
On the last evening of this intoxicating dream the chevalier attended a
brilliant assembly which madame held at her hotel.
Magnates of the highest rank were there to give homage to their
resistless hostess; and belles of tried skill were there, to waste their
ammunition upon the enthralled chevalier; but Romeo and Juliet had no
eyes for any but themselves, although their smiles were showered on all.
Madame Hesslein, gorgeous as an Eastern houri, convened her little court
about her ottoman, singled the happy Calembours out from all his vexed
competitors, and threw him into raptures by addressing her next remarks
more particularly to him.
Fascinated, the gay throng watched that set, cruel face, its glimmering,
chrysolite eyes, its wreathing, quivering lips, and its wild mischief as
the fair dame told her little story to the Chevalier de Calembours:
"Dear Monsieur, your latest anecdote puts this good company in your
debt, so I shall do myself the honor of paying that debt with a
narrative which is new, true, and pertinent.
"There was living in the town of Raleigh, some twenty years ago, a
remarkable girl called--shall we say for the present--Dolores? for that
indeed was her fate.
"She was very pretty, they said, but execrably poor. Her father was a
blacksmith, you see, and her mother was glad to obtain laundry work from
her richer neighbors; so that poor Dolores started in life with the
disadvantages of an undeniable beauty and a penniless purse.
"When sixteen, she considered it quite a lift in life to be promoted to
the position of waiting-maid to the wealthy Mrs. Maltravers, instead of
trudging round the town with her mother's baskets of clear-starched
garments to the various houses which patronized her labor.
"Mrs. Maltravers was old, and fanciful, and she good-naturedly taught
the girl how to speak well, and how to dress neatly, and gave her that
perception of the true value of elegance which only the rich can give.
"Dolores liked to be well dressed, and to sway her humble court by the
cleverness of her conversation, and Mrs. Maltravers was surprised and
amused at her aptness in such branches, and taught her with pleasure.
"So Dolores thankfully made the most of her position, and became much
too fine a lady for the rough home she had left, and was flouted at by
her rude brothers and awkward sisters, until she cut herself adrift from
them all.
"Mr. and Mrs. Maltravers went to Europe to travel for two years, and the
waiting-maid went with them.
"Dolores liked the strange life, and learned more and more every day.
"At last the travelers came to Austria, and pleased with the rich, warm
summer of the plain they stopped in Hungary for six months.
"The name of the town was--Szegedin; you have some acquaintance with it,
count; you will take especial interest in a narrative that unfolds its
climax in your birthplace.
"Our pretty Dolores had here the fortune to fall in love with a man of
the barbarous name of Ladislaus Schmolnitz; and when you learn that,
added to his shocking name, he followed the profession of a tailor, you
will only wonder at little Dolores' infatuation.
"But this little man, so handsome, clever, and bland, met her often on
the banks of the Theiss, and talked sentiment, and poetry and other
pretty nonsense in the shocking language of Hungary to simple Dolores,
and made her forget that he was a wretched little tailor.
"And he taught her to prattle in Hungarian, and then he asked her to
love him, and she did love him--ah, friends! so passionately, so
heroically, that I only wonder that her splendid love did not ennoble
his.
"Ladislaus Schmolnitz, the Szegedin tailor, ran off with Dolores, the
waiting-maid, and laughed at the pursuit of the shocked Maltravers, who
grudged the girl to a little rascal of a Hun.
"But Madame and Monsieur Schmolnitz lived together for two years and
were very happy.
"Very happy, dear friends, notwithstanding the poverty-stricken shifts
which they were at to keep the wolf from the door.
"So happy, dear friend, that foolish Dolores wished for no other heaven
than the heaven of the little tailor's love, and toiled, my heart how
she toiled, to keep the treasure safe.
"At last, Monsieur Schmolnitz saw a chance to rise in the world, and
took his wife and baby-boy to Paris, where he energetically began to
teach languages, having a clever turn that way.
"He began also to neglect his Dolores, and to prove an indifferent
spouse; even to accuse her of unfaithfulness, alas! she loved him far
too wildly for such madness.
"But he disappeared from little Dolores one day, and never came back to
her, and the silly girl's heart broke, she despaired.
"Homeless, nameless, incumbered with a boy twelve months old, what could
the poor wretch do?
"She went away with the man who had roused the perfidious tailor's
jealousy, a cotton manufacturer from Manchester, and became a wealthy
woman, and quite forgot what cold and hunger were, although, good luck!
she could not forget what true love had been to her.
"She loved the boy, she nurtured him with care, and he was her only
consolation when her heart was crushed with pain and what she then
called--guilt.
"When her protector died, she married an American who took her out to
Washington; but by this time her heart was so old, and cold, and weary
of beating that it could hold no love for any man, and she devoted
herself to the pretty boy, and brought him up a little gentleman,
although she never dared treat him as her son for fear she should hate
him some day for his wicked father's sake.
"She sent the boy to the North to gain a finished education, and lived
very wearily with her jealous husband, finding her only amusement in
attracting the homage of the men she met, and repaying it with scorn.
"At last she grew too restive under the yoke, and having had experience
before of the evils of jealousy in a husband, she declined rehearsing
her part a second time, and forestalled the humiliation by eloping with
a Virginian planter.
"Hapless wretch! Can you blame her, dear count? no, no, we shall blame
it all on that perfidious little tailor who broke her heart at first.
"She liked the sumptuous life on the fine plantation passably well, her
mansion was admirably arranged, her _menage_ was fine, her slaves
numerous and docile; Dolores reigned royally.
"But her malevolent destiny could not leave her long in comfort, poor
soul; it swooped upon her when she was almost contented, and with
inflexible hand pushed her into misery once more.
"The war broke out, the slaves fled, monsieur, her kind friend went to
Richmond and got a company, and Dolores was left in the great house with
only one quadroon girl and a couple of old negroes to protect her from
danger.
"In the second year of the war, her fate was sealed.
"One day a detachment of Federal soldiers encamped in the plantation,
and two colonels came to the mansion to demand shelter for their
wounded.
"The terrified Dolores was hastening down stairs to see them, when a
voice which she had not heard for eighteen years sang a gay French
_chanson_, which she last had heard from Ladislaus Schmolnitz, on the
pretty banks of Theiss.
"Friends, this wretched woman recognized that voice as belonging to her
once loved little tailor.
"Ah! her heart was not dead after all, it stirred in its long
death-sleep, and thrilled with joy. Oh, Heaven! why is love so deathless
in a woman's breast when it is ever her curse, her ruin?
"Well, she fled to her room again, and disguised herself as well as she
could, for she yearned to meet her renegade husband, and to converse
with him unsuspected. She did so. She concealed her pretty figure with
clumsy padding, she browned her white face, she covered her yellow hair
with a wig, and entering, she bowed low to her renegade husband and
spoke only French, which he had never before heard her speak.
"But he could not feel at ease, he gazed suspiciously again and again at
her, her eyes recalled the old love story by the banks of the Theiss--he
feared the French madame of middle age.
"What her emotions were, it is scarce worth telling. She was happy to
know that he was alive, she exulted that she had seen him, but she was
bound to the kind planter and feared to betray herself to Schmolnitz,
she let him go, not intending to reveal herself.
"But, at the moment of parting, a volley of shot was fired at the front
of the mansion by some Confederate troops, who had surprised the
encampment, and a cannon ball crashed in the doorway, almost in the
midst of the little group in the hall.
"Dolores was startled out of her disguise and clung madly to the little
tailor, crying out that she was his Dolores, and that she loved him
still.
"Simple idiot! when she could live in palaces if she chose!
"Dear friends, that abject little tailor had the brutality to shake her
off, to swear at her; to protest that he had suspected as much, and to
fling her from him in a dead faint in the hall and escape with his
comrade.
"Ah! count, could you believe that a fiend in man's form could be so
dastardly?
"But Dolores did not fall a victim to the cruelty of the small
Mephistopheles; her servants carried her out of the house, which was in
flames, and she soon escaped to Richmond, where she fell ill, and on
recovering learned that her friend, the planter, was killed in battle.
"Some months had passed, but this insane creature was so enslaved by her
passion for that unworthy man that no sooner was she recovered from her
illness than she determined to search out the little tailor, and display
her true beauty, which was singularly heightened by the years which had
passed since they parted.
"She seriously hoped to win back his worthless heart, and dreamed of
nothing but of endowing him with the wreck of her fortune, which was
still quite a handsome possession.
"So she took to visiting the hospitals and prisons, fancying that he
might have been wounded or captured; but without success.
"No wonder, for the ineffable rascal had long since deserted from the
North to the South, and was plying the profession of spy, under the
ostensible one of commissary-general for the stores for the wounded.
"At last, Dolores chanced to ride out to a station where she had heard
there were some Northern soldiers lying wounded; and there she came upon
her own son, the dear consolation of her wretched life, lying starving
on a handful of straw, and the place surrounded by Northern soldiers,
who had just come to rescue their comrades.
"The unfortunate woman was just in time to see her brave boy die, and
then, indeed, she thought that her cup of misery was full--but no,
Heaven is prodigal of its punishments to such as she.
"While mourning over her boy, the renegade commissary rode up with his
staff, intending to remove the invalids to Richmond, and was instantly
attacked by the Federals; Dolores filled with mad grief, drew her
old-time husband into the shed and bade him look upon his son, and the
next moment beheld him struck down by a ball at her feet.
"She thought him dead, poor wretch, and lifted his head to her lap, and
told him that she loved him with a love that could never die, and swore
that she would water the graves of her husband and her son with her own
heart-blood.
"When the skirmish was over the Northerners moved on with the wounded
man as their prisoner, and this woman rode beside him, leaving her dear
son dead in the shanty.
"At midnight, when the party stopped to rest, it was found that