Faithful Margaret: A Novel
"Here's a pretty to do!" cried Davenport, bustling into the invalid's
room with the little double sheet of note paper fluttering in his hand.
"Of all queer dodges, this is the last. She's gone, sir, this morning to
her situation at the Stanhopes', and here's the note that she's obliging
enough to write by way of good-by to you."
St. Udo took the note and scanned each pretty character, while his
cheeks became bloodless as snow. It was blistered with tears, and it
seemed to breathe in every line its quiet and patient sorrow, and to
have become resigned to it, as if there was no remedy.
What the colonel's emotions were, to read this little note of his
Perdita's, no one may know. He sat up in bed, and looked wildly round
him, while the lawyer glared, and dumbly bit his nails.
"Let us drive instantly to the Stanhopes'."
"You? Humph! You look like a man going driving!"
"I tell you I shall drive there if I should faint every mile of the
way."
He sprang from the bed, and signified the sincerity of his intention by
fainting on the spot.
* * * * *
Three days afterwards, Colonel Brand was lying quite alone on his
sofa--his first day up--reading, or rather telling himself that he was
reading. Every sound startled him, causing him to relinquish his book
and listen with deepening eyes; and sometimes a fancied voice in the
street below would send flames of excitement shooting across his pallid
face.
Three days since the lawyer had left him; three days of doubt, and hope,
and despair.
Had she loved him? Was that calm good-by to him from a heart
indifferent? or did it hide beneath its cold exterior the smoldering
passion which sometimes her eyes had seemed to express?
Dear Margaret! Generous girl!
And memory took up her virtues one by one, and fondly turned them over,
while fancy told him what his life might be with such a wife as she.
And even while he mourned with fading hopes over the memory of her whom
he had passionately loved as his Perdita, his chamber-door was briskly
opened, and in walked Lawyer Davenport.
"Good-morning, sir! Glad to see you up! In honor of the day, eh?"
"Have you seen her?"
"Ha! first question. Nothing about how I enjoyed my trip, or stood it
after my illness; only 'Have you seen her?' No thanks to you for your
polite inquiries after me--I _have_ seen her."
"And--what have you to tell me?"
"Come, now--what do you expect? You, who have such a poor opinion of the
fair sex, shouldn't look for much from 'em."
"Little enough would I expect from any other woman under the sun, but
from Margaret Walsingham, all that makes a woman pure, right in heart,
grand in spirit."
"I found her at Mr. Stanhope's, ill and sorrowful----"
"My poor child!"
"Quite prostrated, and unfit for her duties--Mrs. Stanhope full of
concern, the children out on the beach with their black nurse. You
should have seen her, when they sent her down from her room to me."
"I wish I had."
"Her eyes couldn't have been fuller of love and pleasure if it had been
you, instead of me; I never received such a beauty-glance in all my
days! And her first words were twice as polite as yours, sir--they
expressed her delight in seeing _me_, not inquiries about a third party.
'Oh, Mr. Davenport, I never thought of this kindness. Have you come to
bid me good-by?' Not a word you see, about you, colonel; nor a thought
either, I'll be bound. Ten to one if she would have brought you in at
all to the conversation, if I hadn't asked her plump and plain, if she
didn't mean to give the colonel his property, after all?
"'Why,' says she, flashing a glance at me, to see if I meant it, and
then turning her face away, 'have I not intrusted you with it, to give
over to him? What obstacle can there be?'
"'You don't do his fine character much justice in this transaction,
though you always vaunted it up to Gay and me,' I said. 'If he had been
a paltry money-hunter, you couldn't have served him much worse.'
"'He is satisfied, is he not?' cried she.
"Then I drew a horrible picture of your despair upon finding that she
had gone, and how you fainted in trying to prepare to follow her,
and--trust, me for making up a case! The last of it was her hanging on
my shoulder, and crying over my broadcloth, and sobbing:
"'Take me back to him, Mr. Davenport; how could I have been so cruel as
to leave him in his weakness, uncared for! Take me back again.'"
"And so----"
"Well, now, I rather enjoy the mighty interest with which you survey me!
And so Mrs. Stanhope granted me an interview, in which I told her to
look out for another governess, as Miss Walsingham had been sent for on
very particular business, to go home to England, and Miss Margaret and I
had a very nice little trip back. I have, you may be sure, spared no
eloquence in keeping Miss Margaret's alarms up about you, and she is
waiting below, doubtless with her heart in her mouth, to know whether
you're dead or alive."
"What! Is she here? Let me go for my fair girl this----"
"Fair and softly, my young sir. I have a proposition to make, before I
let you out of my power. What day of the month is this?"
"Twenty-fifth."
"And what must be done before the twenty-eighth? Eh? Don't you know?
Miss Margaret must be wooed and won before the twenty-eighth. And why?
Because Madam Brand's will was written on the twenty-eighth of last
March, and the year in which you were to marry your co-heir passes in
three days, and after that, according to the will, you can't have one
inch of Seven-Oak Waaste. What does that necessitate, then? (Oh, young
people, what would you do without me!) Why, you must marry her,
colonel--by Heaven! you must--before the twenty-eighth! What do you
think of that for a little romance?"
"Too much of Heaven's brightness--too little of earth's shadows. You see
I don't deserve that she should love me."
"Humph! no. I can't say that you do. But that's nobody's business if the
lady's pleased. Now, having given your memory a jog about the flight of
time, I'll send her up to you."
"Let me go to her."
"Stay where you are, sir; don't stir, I beg. I don't profess to know
much about woman's curious little idiosyncrasies, but I'll bet a dozen
of claret, that this humdrum chamber of yours where she nursed you day
after day for four weeks, is the dearest place to her of all the world,
and I'll go farther and say that so long as she lives the memory of this
same room, sir, will have power to send the rush of fond tears up to her
eyes, be she happy or miserable. You see she found you here, and got
your life from Heaven, as it were, by dint of unwearied prayer, and its
hallowed to her like a little sanctuary. Women are strange creatures,
sir and I advise you, if you want to sway her heart to your wishes, to
see her here."
Lying face downward and alone, with his hands clasped in grateful
thanksgiving, all the wicked recklessness and the unbelief and the
cynical fatalism slipped forever from St. Udo's soul, and he turned
after long years to the idol of his youth--hope crowned with Heavenly
faith; and in that sweet hour of supreme humility the sheath dropped
from the fruit, and the noble works of Heaven's hand turned to adore its
Creator.
So it came to pass that when Margaret Walsingham, standing at the
doorway, too timid to approach--too womanly soft to go away, now that
the man was dying for her--heard the low entreaty,
"Bless me with her love--ennoble me with her love, O Heaven!"
Her whole face became transfigured with joy, and she stood there a
breathless and a lovely vision, listening to what she dared not believe
before.
"Is that my darling, standing on the threshold? Come."
Folded heart to heart, her head upon its place for the first time, his
arms about her in a band of love--her hour of sweet recompense has come
at last, and with unutterable thrills shooting through her tremulous
frame, she whispers, smiling:
"I have won my own dear lord of Castle Brand."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
MARGARET'S HAPPY DESTINY.
"By gar! _mon camarade_, and do you call yourself a man, prying into
Madam Fortune's good graces? Why, she has starved you, the jade, she has
given you the prison fare, she has been a vampire to you, _mon_ colonel.
What for you wear that face of parchment when I come to preside over the
hand-grip, and to bless, and to be the good fairy? Ah, bah! Your future
may be very good, but your past has been execrably bad. I drop the tear
of friendship to your _mal-de-grain_."
Monsieur, the chevalier, had just arrived from New York per steamer,
breezy, brisk, jocund as a stage harlequin, and rushed in upon our
colonel to congratulate him after having hunted up all particulars
connected with him in the little town, and had the gratification of
finding affairs so much better than he feared.
"Ah, Calembours, it's some time since we met. You look so flourishing
that I need scarcely express a hope that you are well. Thanks for your
sympathy. Don't waste it, though. I'll soon be all right, if I'm not
done brown in Fortune's frying-pan. But what brings you to Key West? A
consignment of tough beef?"
"_Ma foi!_ you take a man up sharp, _mon ami_. I have not the affliction
to see the last of the Brand spirit, gone out of you, for all the sugars
and panadas of this illness. Do you suppose a consignment of anything
could bring me to this _inferno_ of yellow fever and negroes? Why not
sooner suggest pleasure, duty, or what say you to friendship for you,
_mon camarade_?"
"Pshaw! Calembours, you and I know that your capabilities of friendship
could be bought at a ransom of five shillings."
"_Mon Dieu!_ but you are hard on your Ludovic. Did I not squander all my
little gains for to get your rights in England? Did I not give up the
grand demoiselle. Marguerite, to you, when she might have been the
countess, when she might have loved me? Ah, _mon_ colonel, you have me
to thank for all your good fortune, and yet you will not lift the eyes
to thank me."
"Brag was an impudent dog; still, there's my hand, comrade, and in
virtue of my present happiness, which you helped to bring about, take a
hearty squeeze."
The chevalier squeezed it, and declared, with tears in his eyes, that he
was the luckiest dog out of Paris in possessing such a fine _camarade_.
"You shall now hear my little plan in having ventured to this infectious
place," he cried. "Your glorious mademoiselle had struck such frenzy of
admiration into my soul that the instant Madame Hesslein released me
from attending upon her--curse Madame Hesslein"--his visage grew pale
with uncontrollable rage--"I determined to follow Mademoiselle
Walsingham here, and to find if the plague had spared her, and if she
was left without protection, (for I must tell you, _mon ami_, that I had
no hope of seeing you alive again), to offer her my poor help and escort
back to her home and friends in Surrey, and to be the friend in need to
her until she turned me away.
"I come full of these glorious plans of benevolence which might well
ennoble any man, and find--hey, presto! the romance has turned the other
way! My colonel still lives, being conjured back to life by undiluted
fidelity; the lawyer with the knotty head has argued the plague out of
conceit of him, and the glorious mademoiselle is a _fiancee_; so I bury
my too fond plans for mademoiselle's welfare, and I crucify the flesh,
and say to myself:
"'I will be the good fairy for these two people; will be the mason to
build the steps to their summit of bliss; I will be the porter to carry
them thence.'
"So I fly to you--behold me--I am here to act as manager--I glow with
the eagerness of friendship."
"And in return, what do you expect?"
Calembours shrugged his shoulders and grinned.