Faithful Margaret: A Novel
it is a part of my native selfishness to imagine that my great love
could compensate for all drawbacks, but there is not the smallest room
for suspecting you of mercenary motives--not the smallest."
"I have heard it said"--this with piteous hesitation--"that Colonel
Brand was to be reinstated in his rights--that a great estate in England
was going to be offered to him."
The invalid half raises himself on his elbow, and laughs heartily.
"Dismiss that rumor from your mind," he says, in a relieved tone; "for,
if that is all the basis you have upon which to found mercenary
expectations, it is as slight as the mirage in air. I would not go back
to England to meddle with that property if I begged my bread for want of
it. I will toady round no woman's shoes."
"But if she didn't wish it?" trembled Margaret; "if she insisted on
giving it up to you, and rejecting all claim to it?"
"Not she."
"But if she did?"
"I hope she never may, darling. If she did, and if I were ever base
enough to accept it, I should have in honor to propose to her by way of
gratitude, and because my grandmother's will said so; and I would rather
be an organ-grinder, with a monkey tied to my girdle, than be the heir
of Castle Brand with Margaret Walsingham for my wife."
"Perhaps you misjudge her. Perhaps she was as unwilling to be the
obstacle between you and your property as you were that she should be
so."
"You are generous, my little mother, to defend one of the greediest
_kestrels_ who ever struck claw into carrion; but you are not just. I
have no doubt that if she ever brought herself to try such an experiment
as offering her booty to me, it would be with the assurance that I would
refuse it, or with the hope that common decency would urge me to marry
her."
"She would never marry you," is the quiet and sad rejoinder.
"Well, we sha'n't give her the chance. Let us turn from a very groveling
subject (to my mind), and get over your next objection to me. We have
sent the mercenary one a-flying--now for the next."
"That is the only one. Let us leave the subject altogether. You will
know more fully what I meant to-morrow."
She leaves him hastily--never without a sweet backward glance
before--and he is left alone for hours.
When she returns it is evening, and the long shadows lie athwart the
room, and she flits across the ladders of gloom to him as if innumerable
bars were holding them apart.
But when they are all passed, and she is close by his side, he scans his
Perdita's countenance with a conviction growing within him that bars are
yet between them which she cannot pass, and he seizes her hand in sudden
foreboding.
"What is this, dear child? Why are you so pale and troubled? Have you
been weeping?"
"Oh, nothing of consequence. Have you been comfortable?"
"Everything is of consequence which brings these marks of sorrow to my
Perdita's face. Who has been vexing you, child?"
"No one--no one, sir."
"Who has been grieving you, then?"
"I--it is no one's fault. I have only been a little foolish--that is
all."
She averts her pallid face, and will not be questioned more, but leads
him utterly from personal subjects.
She has been dear and kind before, but never precisely with the
yearning, smothered passion of this last evening; she almost seems to
cling to him, as if invisible hands were driving her away, and her
pathetic face grows tremulous at every word of tenderness from him.
And St. Udo has an indistinct memory of burning tears flashing somewhere
while he sleeps, and of soft lips touching his in one meek kiss, and of
tender words of blessing and of prayer; and then a shadow falls upon him
gray and sad, for the door had shut him in, and the girl is gone.
CHAPTER XXXII.
SWEET RECOMPENSE.
The next morning St. Udo Brand lay impatiently waiting for his dear
young nurse, and scowling at the stupid negress, who was putting his
room to rights, when a visitor entered, and made his way up to the sick
man.
A haggard-looking old gentleman, with pale, yellow cheeks, pendulous and
flaccid--eyebrows which bristled like furze on the brow of a beetling
crag, and lack-luster eyes, which glistened like the dull waters at the
foot of it.
"My service to you, sir," said he, with an old-fashioned bow; "I am
Andrew Davenport, if you remember."
"I do remember Andrew Davenport, if you are he; you are so changed that
I need scarcely beg pardon for not recollecting you sooner."
"Same to you, sir. Gad, sir, yellow fever is no joke, and you took it
worse than me by a long chalk."
"How comes it that you have had yellow fever? When did you come here?"
"About a month ago. Came here with a face as red as a lobster, and as
broad as that. Look at it now. I don't begrudge it though, when I see
you looking so much better than ever I thought to see you when first I
looked at you in this bed. We have much to be thankful for, Colonel
Brand."
"I fail to understand. What brought you to Key West, and what have you
to do with me?"
"A good deal, my young sir. I have to escort you home to your castle,
for one thing."
"I am astonished that you should come all this way to waste words upon
such a subject. I thought that by this time Miss Walsingham would be
married, and that I could go on my way rejoicing."
"Married to that impostor, who hoped to fill your shoes? Pho! what do
you take us all for? Well, after all, I needn't take any share of the
glory. It was Miss Margaret herself, who found out the whole conspiracy,
and set off like a brave young woman as she is, taking me for company,
to find you, sir."
"Heavens! What did she want of me?"
"Gad! sir, if you really don't know, all I can say is that she's the
first woman I ever saw who could hold her tongue! It was to find you out
and give you the property of Seven-Oak Waaste, the lands, houses, etc.,
attached, that she came while the plague was literally raging, to this
confounded rat-trap, where, if one gets in they can't get out."
"Is Margaret Walsingham in Key West?"
"She is."
"Then it is she who has been troubling my poor darling with this
wretched story."
"In Key West, and I leave you to judge whether she makes a good sick
nurse or no."
"Has she been my nurse?"
"To be sure? Nice place you've got here, sir! Everything as dainty as a
lady's boudoir; and what a magnificent bunch of flowers! Think of that
in March!"
"Miss Walsingham--my Perdita! The girl who risked her life for me!"
"Even so. Precious short were her visits to my bedside, for watching at
yours; and between us she's had a wearing time of it, the dear, kindly
girl!"
"Good Heaven--is my own darling, that Miss Walsingham?"
"Yes, and I thank Heaven to hear that from you. You love her, so it's
all right."
The lawyer here dropped his jocund air, pressed the hand which had
nervously clutched his, and retired to the window for a while.
A silence fell upon the pair; the rescued man was turned face downward
to his pillow, with his hands clasped tightly.
Her bravery, her generosity, her devotion came up to gild her gentle
worth; and he could well judge now how great had been that bravery, that
generosity, that devotion.
Taking in by slow degrees, the greatness of this woman's soul, whom
falsely and bitterly he had maligned; comprehending the grandeur of
humility in one whose garments he in his high-handed pride felt unworthy
to touch, the time had come when St. Udo Brand could pray; when he could
plead that Heaven would bless him with Margaret Walsingham's love, and
bestow on him her hand, as the richest gift of earth.
Presently Davenport resumed the conference by recounting all the
particulars of the Castle Brand plot, and you may be sure he lost no
opportunity of adding luster to his admired Miss Margaret's laurels, by
unstinted praise, which brought tears, one by one, into the eyes of
young Brand.
"And here's the formal relinquishing of every rood of Seven-Oak Waaste,
drawn up and signed," said the lawyer, unfolding a parchment and
spreading it out triumphantly on his knee; "and she has even made
provision against your refusing to accept it. In that case, it is all to
go, on the 28th of March (one year from the date of the will), toward
building a Charitable Institution for sick seamen, (I suppose from her
father having been a sea-captain), and she is going as governess into
Mr. Stanhope's family here. What do you think of all this, eh?" chuckled
the old gentleman, with the air of being vastly amused.
"She will do it," said St. Udo, gazing with consternation at the
parchment.
"But will you allow her to do it?"
A keen pang struck to the heart of St. Udo; his merciless scorn of her
came back to him as expressed only the day before; her mournful words;
"She will never marry you," recurred like a death-knell to his memory.
Now he understood the cause of her gentle tears--of her clinging
wistfulness, of her sweet and humble timidity; he comprehended all, and
covered his eyes with a remorseful moan.
"I have ruined all, and lost her!" he thought. "Where is the noble
girl?"
"Gad! I thought you'd soon be asking that! It's likely she's taking a
rest, poor dear; but I'll send her to you."
"No--let her have her rest; I would never be so selfish as to disturb
her, while I can wait. But, Davenport, I will be candid with you, and
say that I have no hope of winning her. I have insulted her too deeply."
"Did she think of your former insults when she came here at the risk of
her life to find you, and to nurse you out of the fever?"
"No, bless her--all that was forgiven!"
"And will she think of your former insults when you say, 'Margaret, I
won't accept one penny piece of the Brand property unless you be my
wife?'"
"Her own words--that, in that contingency, Margaret Walsingham would
never marry me--her own words."
"You believe in your Perdita's love?" cried the lawyer, throwing his
last ball with triumph straight at the bull's eye.
"If noble tenderness, and devotion such as hers, is love, I do, most
solemnly."
"Then she'll do as your Perdita, what she wouldn't do as your enemy,
Margaret Walsingham. She'll even lower her pride to marry you, if she
thinks it necessary to your happiness."
But Mr. Davenport was forced to modify his satisfaction, when, on
seeking an audience with his ward, the old negress who had that morning
taken Margaret's place in the colonel's sick room, brought from her
chamber a note from the young lady.
"She's been and gone," said the woman; "and this is for Massa
Davenport." It said to the staring lawyer:
"DEAR MR. DAVENPORT:--I have thought it best at once to proceed
to the Stanhopes', as the situation might become filled up, and
all danger of infection has passed from me by this time.
"You will see that the colonel is taken excellent care of until
the English steamer arrives, when I am sure he will be able to
travel; and you will accompany him to Seven-Oak Waaste, and be
as useful to him and as faithful as you have been to me.
"I am going without bidding you good-by. Perhaps you will be a
little angry; but, dear Mr. Davenport, it was far better than
if I had. I have been a great bother to you from first to last,
haven't I? But you will forgive me, now that our ways lie so
widely apart.
"Tell Colonel Brand that I wish him to forgive the deception I
have practiced upon him; but that I shall never regret the four
weeks in which I watched him from the brink of the grave, and
that if he can accept a message from Margaret Walsingham, it is
that he may always think kindly of his Perdita, and try to keep
her apart from his remembrance of a presumed adventuress.
"Your affectionate ward, M. W."