Faithful Margaret: A Novel
"What was it, my darling?"
"Your promise, Perdita."
"What promise, dear love?"
"That you would never leave me. Don't you remember saying that?"
"What would you care for me when you were strong and well?" falters the
nurse, with quivering lips.
The sick man tries to set his poor paralyzed brain in thinking order at
this contingency, but the effort is far beyond him, and he relapses with
an anxious sigh.
"I do not want to drift away and be pushed back into the cruel world I
have left," he murmurs, earnestly, "and it lies with you to keep me in
this pure place. I lost you ages ago, you know--ages ago, when I was
pure and loving as yourself; and see what I am now for want of you,
Perdita?"
"You will soon enough be glad to part from me again," answers the nurse,
turning aside her swimming eyes.
"Must you go, Perdita, after your promise?"
"I must go when I have ceased to make one moment lighter for you. I
promised that I would stay until then."
"Promise it again--you will stay until you cease to be desired by me."
"Until I cease to be required by you," she amends, straining him to her
yearning and foreboding heart.
"I shall always require you," said the sick man, with exultation; "I
could not take one step in this pure atmosphere without you. Oh, you
don't know how I shall hold to you, my lost Perdita."
So wandering on--dreaming on, he fancies she is his lost good, which was
dropped out of life long ago; that she personates the faith, the hope,
the innocence of his early years, ere sin set the searing mark of death
upon his heart, and bitter wrongs stole from him his primal purity, and
fused in the alembic of his burning hatred, all noble tendencies into
bitter infidelity.
And wandering on--dreaming on, day by day, drifting on from riotous
fancy to feeble reason, he comes to know that there is a puzzle in the
kindness of this woman, who morning, noon, and night cares for him as
woman never cared for him before; and, grasping the puzzle at last, he
looks at it with comprehending eyes.
He will ask this tender, holy-faced watcher by his bedside why this
heavenly care for him. Perchance she is repaying some former service of
his, done in the days of health; for St. Udo Brand has done his deeds of
generous kindness to the widows and orphans of his brave Vermont boys,
and forgotten the acts by scores.
"Lady, why have you been so kind to me?"
"Not kind--only just."
"The service which you thus repay must have been a great one. You have
risked your life nursing me through this infectious plague; what have I
ever done to you that could merit such repayment?"
She has been fearing these questions for some days, and she has been
clinging all the more fondly and passionately to the sweet dream which
she has never once in all her passion of unselfish devotion dreamed
could last. Again and again she has put aside the cruel end; for, oh!
she cannot give him up yet--her king!
By the couch of deadly peril and pain, when his manhood is low beneath
the scowl of death--when the divinity of his intellect is swallowed up
in frenzy--in his weakness and despondency--the most royal days of
Margaret's life have come to her, gold-tinged, and crowned with joy--the
days of her love.
"You are not strong enough for this," she answers, wistfully. "Wait
until you are a great deal stronger before you ask questions."
"But"--a bewildered line is knotting the sick man's brow like the faint
ripple on the glassy waters of a stream--"I have seen you before in such
different circumstances, and I would like to know where."
"I am Perdita, you know," with an anxious smile. "You met me in your
delirium often enough, don't you remember?"
"Yes, yes--was that it? When did you find me?"
"Three weeks ago. You were in the first stages of yellow fever. You
would have died if God had not providentially sent me here in time."
"So strange that you should risk your life for me--a tender lady."
"It was a pleasure to me, sir. I was not afraid of the risk."
"The very physicians fled from the smitten wretches by scores, for fear
of sharing their fate. We had but few doctors in the city for a
fortnight who were brave enough to stay, and we had to take turns and do
what we could for each other. The very negroes could not be bought with
money to stay with us, but fled, panic-stricken, and left us to die
unattended. Nineteen bodies were carried out of this house in one day,
and the last I can remember before I crawled into this room away from
the groans to die, were the ghastly bodies of poor Major Hilton and the
commandant of the forces lying waiting for removal. I held out longest,
but had to succumb at last. It is so strange to wake up from death, and
to find a lovely lady at my bedside, breathing my poisoned breath, and
wooing me from my companions' fate with such devotion."
"A lovely lady!" How she glows over with surprised blushes and smiles!
How she stoops again to catch the feeble accents and to read the
upraised orbs.
"Lovely! Yes, yes; more than lovely--better than beautiful. When I
looked up from my dream of death I thought yours the face of an angel. I
think so still."
"Hush! hush! If you talk so wildly, dear, I shall think you are
wandering again."
"I am not wandering, my Perdita. If ever I do, your beloved hand has but
to touch mine and I will come back. Sometimes I have thought of
late----"
"Go on, darling. You have thought of late----"
"That you were getting weary of your invalid, and regretting your
promise."
"How could you ever think that of me?"
"There. I love to see those gray eyes deepen and flash through generous
tears. I will take that back, for I see it is not true."
"Have I ever been forgetful of you?"
"No, no, no. If ever woman had the heart of an angel of mercy, you have
one, my Perdita. It was not that you missed one atom of your wonderful
care for me, but lately you have been reserved. You have denied me your
hand so often to help me back to myself, or your bosom when my head
ached; and the sweet words of endearment rarely come from you, except
when once or twice you have thought I was sleeping."
"You are getting so well and strong that you do not require such
excessive tenderness. It was only while you were helpless as a child
that I felt for you as if you were one."
"You are but a child yourself, my poor, fragile darling; and yet, child
as you are, I _do_ require your motherly care, your motherly words of
love. I have had them once, and they were so heavenly sweet that I
cannot do without them."
"I will be your mother, then, until you can do without me. I shall take
care of my child until he is able to take care of himself."
"Little mother, why do you weep?"
"Hush! hush! we have talked long enough; go to sleep."
"In yours arms, then Perdita."
She gathers him to her heart. Recklessly she strains him close while yet
she may, heedless of the lonely days when heart and soul will hunger
gnawingly for this blessed moment.
And so time fares on with this Brand which has been plucked from the
burning.
Little by little he takes back to him life and strength; little by
little he spells out this strange, sweet, new life, and analyzes it, and
basks in the lambent sunshine. Not little by little grows his love for
the Perdita of his fever dreams; she has taken the tide at its lowest
ebb, and it has swept her into his deep, strong heart, which nevermore
can shut her out.
He watches her beaming eyes with wistful constancy; he clings to her
garments; he kisses her light hands, which touch him in gentle
ministrations. The hard man is conquered, and by a woman.
But when he grows fearful that, after all, she may be wearying of this
toil and care for him; when, with anxious eyes, he looks into the
future, and pictures life without this gentle comforter, he almost
wishes that health would turn her back on him forever, so that he might
ever have Perdita; and he worries himself into continual fevers, which
prove a great drawback to his convalescence.
She, also, has her secret load of anxiety. A crisis is approaching which
she may not longer stave off. She must make herself known anon, and
finish her duty with regard to him, and go away; and oh! heaven knows
how she is to turn her back upon this great passion of her life, and
him!
In her perfection of humility, she never hopes for reward for these
great services of hers; she counts them but a feeble recompense for the
evil she--his Marplot and ruin--has wrought him, which no recompense can
atone for. She has not had the vanity to probe into his heart and weigh
his gratitude toward her, or to count upon it for a moment. His daily
evidences of love are to her but the wayward fancy of an invalid, which
time and strength will sweep away, as surely as the ripple would blot
her reflection from yonder smooth lagoon.
And at last the burden grows so heavy on the heart of each, that he, the
least patient, breaks silence, and recklessly put his hand to the wheel
which may revolve and crush him.
"You have always put me off when I was at all inquisitive about you," he
says to her, one day; "but since I am getting well so rapidly, I think
it time that I should assume a little of the responsibility of my own
affairs. I have an appallingly heavy debt of gratitude to pay a kind
lady, whose only name to me is Perdita, and I wish to be more
particularly acquainted with my deliveress."
"If you would only wait until you were strong enough to travel," answers
Margaret, becoming very pale, "it would be for the best."
"Why, where are we to travel, my Perdita?"
"You must prepare your mind for a journey, sir--a journey which will be
for your good and happiness."
"With you?"
"Without me."
The desolate tones come quietly enough, but the invalid gives a great
start, and clutches at his thin hands, and turns away his face.
Lying so still and so long that she almost thinks him sleeping, she
bends timidly over him, and meets his dark eyes full of mournful tears.
"I feared it would come to this," he says, turning almost passionately
to her; "and yet I have foolishly and selfishly clung to the hope that
you would never seek to leave me. Have I been meddling much with your
family duties by this long monopoly of you?"
"I have no family duties to attend to."
"No family ties to break, should I wish, if it were possible, for you to
stay with me always?"
"Oh, sir, you would not speak so if you--if I could be honest and brave
with you."
"My child--oh! my child; I cannot bear to see those tears. If you knew
how dear you are to me, you would think well before you cast anything
between us."
She buries her face in her hands; for a sacred space her heart throbs in
its joy, and she feels that it were well worth the coming years of
hunger to taste the sweet bliss as she tastes it now; and then she
meekly looks her situation in the face.
"There are no family ties keeping me from you," she murmurs, as firmly
as she may; "but it would not be honorable for me to accept any
gratitude from you, or to accede to any such request as you have made,
because--I did not come here and find you out with any craven hope of
reward. I have barely done my duty toward you, and have had no thought
of buying your love."
"I do not understand. I love you, Heaven knows, most fervently, Perdita;
but whether you have bought it or not, I cannot say. It is yours, and
cannot be recalled."
"And I cannot take it under such circumstances as those in which I won
it. When you understand fully your affairs, you will then see how
mercenary I would be to accept your love now."
"Mercenary? My poor child? I offer you this poor, wasted hand, and a
broken constitution, and penniless prospects wherewith to be happy; and