Faithful Margaret: A Novel

glory are beginning to gild the long slumbering west. I leave the ancient world, and sinking my illustrious personality, I forget that I am Count of the Order of Santo Spirito, Turin; that I wear the ribbon of Legion of Honor, and am to throw myself among these Republican hordes, and to fight knee by knee with the mob. Enough!" he concluded; "to you I shall be but Ludovic, _mon ami_. Come--do you play?" "I play, chevalier. I am at your service," answered the captain. The chevalier preceded his new friend to his state-room, and ushered him in with "effusion." A man rose stiffly from the table, where he had been reading, and made way for the chevalier and his guest. A tall, elderly man, in servant's livery, who stooped and slunk softly about, whose sallow, brown face grew white when the captain scanned it curiously, whose thin, gray hair and immense overhanging gray mustache showed traces of cares rather than of years, and whose shifting, shrinking eyeballs ever sought the ground, as if their depths held emotions which the man must hide on peril of his life. A sudden shudder seized Captain Brand; a thrill ran sickening through his heart, which had never so thrilled before. He turned his back--he knew not why--in hatred upon the chevalier's valet. Was it a perception of evil, slow creeping toward him from the gloomy future--slow, but sure to come as death himself? Pshaw! what necromancer's dream was this? The captain, scoffing, threw it from him, and forgot the haggard old servant. "Thoms, we play _ecarte_," aspirated the chevalier, in his rough English (he invariably spoke French to the captain). "Bring wine and cards, and wait upon us." They plunged with zest into the game, and passed many hours in its intricacies. The chevalier protested that he had found an adversary worthy of him, and Captain Brand swore that for want of more piquant sauce a game of euchre every night with Calembours might answer to flavor the insipidity of the voyage out to New York. But the careless captain might have noted, too, had he considered such a worm worthy of notice, that whatever he did--talk, sing, drink wine, or muse--the secret, shifting eyes of Thoms, the valet, never lost a movement, but hour after hour watched him with the unearthly intentness of a blood-hound. While the captain slept that night in unconscious security, the Chevalier de Calembours, with a complacent chuckle and a flowing pen, wrote down in his diary, these famous words: "'_I came. I saw, I conquered!_' Monsieur Brand promises to be excellent sport though little hope of pigeoning him, _en passant_. Yes, he has keener scent than monsieur, my patron, gave him credit for--he won't be led altogether by the nose. But pouf! who is it that will not be gulled by Ludovic de Calembours?" Thoms, too, in secret, and with wary ear pricked for possible interruption, bent, in the seclusion of his own state-room, over a tiny green note-book, jotted down some things he wished to remember, then thrusting away his little book in a secret pocket, he rubbed his long, lean hands together in stealthy triumph, and laughed long and wickedly. Five days passed; the airy chevalier held his own in the sour captain's esteem, and they mutually approved of each other. They leaned over the taffrail together, Thoms a step behind, and watched the glittering city of New York, glowing in their eyes, as the steamer plowed its way between green and pleasant shores to gain it. Crowds waited on the pier--sailors, civilians, and soldiers mixed in frantic confusion. The chevalier examined them through his glass with smiling nonchalance; but Captain Brand looked over the scene with thoughtful brow. "What is monsieur's programme?" chirped the chevalier. "Does he dally with Fortune's train, or does he brush by her robes and seize the treasure which she guards? Shall _mon ami_ live the short and merry life of conviviality with me in New York, or shall he choose the short and beastly bad career of a soldier?" St. Udo Brand laughed bitterly. "What is my life worth to me without fame to gild it?" growled he. "I have no gold to make it shine." "_Bravissima!_" shouted the chevalier, clapping his hands; then, with a smile which just showed his long teeth in a hungry arch, "I, too, will go southward, because, that to me my life is very much worth, and I will do bravely to gild it with--gold. We will be brother colonels, _mon ami_, and Thoms--what shall you do?" Thoms' evil face beamed with intelligence. "I'll follow you masters as long as you _live_," uttered the smooth voice, humbly. "We shall fight, by gar, for glory!" cried the chevalier. "At least, we shall say so. But each has his motive pardieu, and a sensible motive is mine. Ah, life is nothing without illusions, as Mendelssohn says." "Nothing indeed," smiled the silent lips of Thoms, "nothing indeed." Thus these three chose to walk together the road which had been apportioned them by that secret Power behind the scene, bound close together by Circumstance's chain, yet sundered in soul by walls as deep as dungeon walls, and the dusty banners, and golden rewards, and whistling balls of the battle-field beckoned to each with a separate welcome. "Here you will win glory," they cried to St. Udo Brand. "Here you will win gold," they whispered to Calembours. "We promise you _death_!" they sighed to Thoms. So the three men followed the beckoning hand, and entered the contest. Some weeks passed. It was their last evening in New York. On the morrow they would be en route for the army. Captain Brand and the Chevalier de Calembours had staid at the same hotel, and were, of course, tolerably confidential with each other. Thoms divided his attentions, with marked impartiality, between his master and his master's friend, and lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with the cynical captain. This evening Captain Brand was writing letters; the chevalier was serenely smoking on the balcony. Thoms silently plodded through the packing of their traveling-bags in a corner. "One, two--there are three letters," said the captain, throwing down his pen. "Thoms, you dog, post these." A scornful smile was on his lip. He picked up a photograph from his desk and pored over it eagerly. The cold, superior smile melted from his scornful mouth; the keen raillery vanished from his eyes; he regarded the pictured face almost in despair. Thoms, creeping behind his chair to reach for the letters, took a keen survey of the card he held. It was the face of a young and lovely girl which returned St. Udo's yearning, questioning gaze with a sweet, free smile. Thoms took the letters, and standing for a moment in the hall, greedily scrutinized the envelopes. "Andrew Davenport, Esq.," "Rufus Gay, M.D.," and "Lady Juliana Ducie," whispered the spy. He passed into his own room, locked the door, and did not emerge for at least ten minutes; and when he did, he stole out with the letters in his hand, casting startled looks around, as if he fancied he had some cause to fear. The next morning the two new colonels left New York at the head of their men, and halted not until some three days subsequently they found themselves within one day's march of the grand army. The way lay through forests of hickory, planer, and tulip trees, between tobacco and cotton plantations, and over deep, yielding morasses, where the giant gourd sprang up to catch the bending cypress branch, and the wild vine barred the way. St. Udo, chatting carelessly to his inferior officer, turned suddenly in his saddle to look for Thoms, and met his quailing eyes scarce two yards behind. His head was bent to catch every word uttered by St. Udo; his eyes gleamed like glow worms in the dusk; he was the picture of a man with some dread watch to keep. "Back, fellow!" cried St. Udo, sternly. "What do you want here?" Thoms fell back with humility. "Beg pardon, colonel--I was listening to some sounds ahead," muttered he. His coolness was manifestly forced--his excuse was manifestly a lie--yet the haughty Englishman only swore at him and turned from him as one avoids the worm in the path. He resumed his idle conversation with his officer, and passed the time away in light jests and piquant anecdotes of a life neither tame nor simple, and quite ignored the inquisitive Thoms behind him. But Thoms did not forget to strain every faculty of hearing and seeing while he had the chance. Never did lover drink in love vows of his beautiful betrothed, as did the gray-faced valet his colonel's stories; never did the worshipers of that star of song, Jenny Lind, analyse each tone, each delicate inflection of her voice in the day of her most glorious effulgence, as did Thoms the tones of St. Udo Brand; and when the soldier, weary of speech, sank into mute reverie, the old man's glowing eyes stole over his stately figure, measuring its height, its contour, its carriage, with anxious care, as if but one man lived upon the earth for him, and that night he might be slain. At midnight the little detachment paused to rest. The place they chose as favorable to their purpose was the wide-spread grounds of a ruined mansion-house. Merrily the camp-fires blazed up, paling the shimmer of a myriad of soaring fire-flies, and sparkling through the murk like a broken lava stream. The chevalier left his company to visit his friend's tent, and the brothers-in-arms exchanged cordial jests and friendly converse, while Thoms, hovering over the camp-fires and boiling the coffee, peered inquisitively at the pocket album which St. Udo was showing his friend. "How that old wretch listens to our conversation," exclaimed St. Udo, laughing, as the valet retreated for a moment beyond earshot, for another armful of fagots. "He is like Diggory behind his master's chair--every story moves him to laugh or cry." "Pardieu! he will play eavesdropper, will he?" hissed the chevalier. "We shall see." "Here he comes, hurrying back to the charmed circle," said St. Udo, "with straining ears and a face which looks 'just like a stratagem,' as Madam Noblet says. Where did you get the sorry rascal, Calembours?" "A friend sent him to me on the morning we parted for New York," muttered the chevalier. "Peace--he is here." His nervous tremor did not escape the vigilant eye of Thoms, who grimly took his post near the pair, and handed them their viands with obsequious celerity. St. Udo amused the chevalier by more anecdotes, and presently in their hilarious enjoyment they forgot the haunting demon in the shadow of the tent, till St. Udo, happening to glance that way over his shoulder, stopped short and stared in speechless amazement. There sat Thoms, leaning against the tent, as St. Udo leaned against the mossy rock by the fire, throwing back his shaggy head as St. Udo threw back his, gesticulating with his long, brown hand as St. Udo waved his, his lurid eyes fixed in a hound-like gaze upon St. Udo Brand, aping every motion like a haggard shadow of himself. The Chevalier de Calembours, following St. Udo's stare of astonishment, caught the man's antics mid-air, and burst into a volley of oaths in every known language. "The man's possessed! My life on it, he is a lunatic!" cried St. Udo, laughing till the tears stood in his eyes. "To see him roll his head, and wave his hand, and mouth after me my very words. Ha! ha! ha!" shouted St. Udo. "Thoms, you dog! are you rehearsing a part? What part?" Thoms was scrambling to his feet, and standing like a scared hare in act to fly. His cheeks were white, his lips withered, his very hand trembled so that he slipped it into his bosom to hide its shaking.