Lady Juliana Ducie concealed her disappointed love so well that no one would have suspected, not even simple Margaret Walsingham, that she suffered from its pangs.
As the summer season wore on and she began to get over her "awkward affair" with the rail-cars, she plunged into gayety, and a violent flirtation with the Irish duke, which threatened quite to banish any lingering memories of the soldier who was fighting in other scenes, and Hautville Park became thronged with illustrious visitors.
Margaret Walsingham, in her somber black dress, mingled as rarely as possible with the flippant cavaliers who were forever hanging about my lady's drawing-rooms, or dangling after her in her saunters with her companion. She rarely lifted her eyes when they bowed to the carelessly introduced Miss Walsingham; and never by any chance engaged in conversation with them.
Yet a new world of knowledge was opening to her daily, and filling her mind with absorbing speculations.
How often she heard St. Udo Brand, the young guardsman, discussed by these London fashionables, with appropriate jest or story, they laughed at his withering flashes of wit, admired his brilliant follies, and narrated his erratic generosities, with never a sigh for the heart which, to be so reckless now, must once have been so warm and true.
Day by day, the broken image of a primal god was built up in her heart with here and there a flashing glimpse of virtue, or a suggestion of innate chivalry of soul, or high-minded honor which contrasted sadly with the wild deviltry of a rampant friend.
And each day this simple woman carried some bright gem of goodness with which to deck her demi-god, until the vision seemed so kingly, that she took to defending his defects to herself, and covering them from her own eyes.
Morning and noon, and in the midnight hours, when strains of music and the din of revelry stole dimly up to the companion's remote chamber, she dreamed of the possible angel in this man, and her soul yearned for his welfare, and mourned over the frailty of the moth which he had burdened with his trust.
"A true brave woman might reclaim him yet," she sometimes sighed; "but the last chance most probably is past with Lady Juliana."
"You are to dine with us to-day," said my lady, one morning, turning suddenly to Margaret from under the hands of her maid. "My cousin, Harry Falconcourt, has arrived, and insists on being introduced formally to the heroine who saved me; and as I am bored to death with always saying 'she does not go into society,' I have promised him."
"Dear Lady Julie, I hope you will not insist upon this!" exclaimed Margaret, much startled. "I really have nothing to do with society."
"Well, for all that, I am not going to allow you your privilege of seclusion on this occasion. I don't like leaving you alone so much."
So my lady made her way, though this time it was rather roughly carried through the heart of her companion.
The guests of his lordship's dinner party were the resident gentry, with their portly wives and blooming daughters, come to meet the London visitors of Hautville Park; and a great many bright uniforms mingled among the masses of silken drapery, feathers, jewels, black broadcloth, and tulle.
Lady Juliana kept her small territory at her end of the table in a continual ripple of delight by her quips and coquetries. She was in surprising spirits, for was not his Grace the Duke of Piermont on her right hand, and Sir Akerat Breckinridge, who was a slain subject, on her left?
His Grace, who was an ordinary-looking young man, with a bright, wholesome complexion, and pleasantly sparkling eyes, seemed almost bewitched by my lady's rapid flippancies; and watched her face as one might watch the play of the aurora borealis, shooting and dancing in the midnight sky.
"Who is that lady in the black velvet?" asked the duke. "Strange face! Most unlike any I have ever seen before."
"Where? Oh, with Harry Falconcourt? That is Miss Walsingham, my companion, adviser, censurer, and sheep-dog in general."
"I haven't seen such a face in my life before," continued the young duke, with deepening earnestness; "and it is so wholly stripped of animal beauty that the beauty that bursts from every look and tone is so mysterious. That is a countenance graced by goodness, bravery, candor, devotion. There are faces graced by bright eyes, an arched nostril, a small mouth; a row of white teeth, or a waxen complexion. Which is the greater charm, do you think?"
"I did not know you were such a physiognomist," said Lady Juliana. "Pray readme, my lord."
He looked over the arch face with the plausible smile, the graceful features, the peach-like bloom, and a faint shadow crossed his brow.
"You would be sinking in the first storm, Lady Juliana."
"Cousin Julie has suddenly subsided," said Harry Falconcourt, looking up to the head of the table. "A minute since she was sparkling as champagne, now she is tame as lemonade. What do you suppose has occurred, Miss Walsingham? A mutiny between her subjects?"
"Extraordinary disposition of the Brand estates down in Surrey," said a voice opposite. "They all go to a woman as hideous as one of Macbeth's witches, and the only scion of the race must either marry her or lose them."
"Is not that captain St. Udo Brand, of the Guards?" asked a gentleman in uniform.
"The same, major."
"Fine soldier, brave man. Did you see the gallant mention of him in the latestAmerican War Gazette? Cut his way through three thousand of the enemy with his handful of Vermonters."
"A daring deed, major."
"Nothing when you know the vast nature of the man. He needed such scenes as are described in the sickening records of war to stir up the lion in him, and to bring out the gentleness too. He is the darling of his company—many a cheer, and I'll not be afraid to say a blessing also has greeted him in his tender visits to his suffering boys."
"You knew him at home here?"
"Knew Captain Brand? Like a brother, sir. Sad dog, but a noble man—a noble man."
What bright intelligence was in the deep gray eyes which watched the officer's face. But he did not see them, he was so absorbed by his subject.
A pause occurred in the gossip, for the band was having a rest of forty bars, and the flageolet was weak.
At the request of Lady Juliana, Margaret carried her careladen face to the piano and played a long time, what—she knew not, but gradually, from mechanical measure, the chords grew into solemn pulsations, and a vision rose up before her introverted eyes of a darkened battle-field, where the cannon belched forth its fiery death, the bugle sounded the retreat, the soldiers shouted, and cheered, and fell.
She saw the smoke and dust, the red blood pouring, the brave falling fast; and a shrouded moon, with three black stripes across its disk, was shining weirdly over a man lying on his broken sword, his head upon the mane of his pulseless horse, his dark, dim eyes raised supplicatingly.
And a skulker among the dead was bending over him with demoniac eagerness, and the dastardly dagger was plunged hilt-deep, and the man who had been called a "hero" sank beneath the feet of the dead—and the vision passed away.
"Miss Walsingham." She turned her electric face—her hands fell from the ivory keys.
The gentlemen had entered the drawing-room, and the Duke of Piermont stood beside Lieutenant Falconcourt, waiting to be introduced.
"I have much pleasure in this introduction," said his grace, offering her an arm the instant that their hands met. "I would like much to talk with you, so honor me by promenading with me in the conservatory. In the first place, what was that extraordinary piece which you played?"
"I do not know—was I playing?"
His grace gazed at his companion in amazement. Doubt and terror still struggled for the mastery on her pallid features; the large, mystic eyes were fixed sadly upon vacancy. Miss Walsingham was quite unconscious that she was walking through the centre of the long suite with a man who was coveted from her by half the ladies there. "Is it possible that it was an impromptu?"
"I—pardon me, your grace—I was playing without thinking."
"Do you know what it suggested to me? A battle-field—the retreat of the conquered—darkness—treachery, andmurder."
"My lord duke, what day of the month is this?"
She stopped in her sudden waking up to horror, and in her sudden eagerness she trembled as she stood.
"The first of September."
"The first of September.I shall not forget."
"You are certainly distressed by something, Miss Walsingham. Let me be of service to you?"
"You can be of service to me, your grace. You can allow me to retire, and make some apology for me to Lady Julie which will not alarm her."
The young duke bit his lip.
"You will return to me?" he asked.
"Not to-night."
She vanished through a dimly-lighted rotunda, leaving his grace gazing eagerly after her.
Crouching upon her knees by her chamber window, in the cold stream of moonlight, with clasping hands and yearning eyes, Margaret Walsingham questioned the silent heavens through the long hours for the meaning of the vision.
And yet the man had been her enemy!
Through the dark fens, and the yielding morass, and the spicy sycamore grove, and the mossy walnut woods of Virginia, stole a gray-faced man; panting, hunger-smitten, weary; starting at every crash of the rotten underbrush, stopping ever with dilating eye to peer from the top of every hill into the valley beneath.
And a thin, tawny shadow glided before him with his nose upon the ground, and his eyes flaming ferociously—a blood-hound upon the trail.
Thoms had deserted from the army, and was out in search of Colonel Brand, and this dog which he held in chains was guiding him foot by foot along the secret path which St. Udo had traversed to perform his embassy.
How the old man brightened when a blue curl of distant smoke promised him a speedy sight of St. Udo's watch-fire! How his limbs trembled and his haggard face blackened when the blood-hound wavered in his steady run, and sniffed about uneasily for a lost scent! How the wicked, tigerish eyes gleamed when the creature ran on again with eager haste and dripping fangs!
And the long brown fingers were ever straying toward the dagger in the bosom; and the cruel lips ever were sneering out their fell design; and the march seemed only a summer holiday to Thoms hastening to his colonel.
St. Udo Brand had been sent to Washington with dispatches, and was on his way South again to join his command.
Thus much had Thoms discovered, and he was sure of coming up with him in these pathless forests, if he trusted to the unerring instinct of his hideous guide.
It was a lovely day that first of September—so warm, and lambent, and sunny-hued that St. Udo, weary with nights and days of ceaseless exertion, ordered a halt in a cedar grove, and threw himself from his jaded horse to rest a while.
His twenty followers, who were struggling after him on foot, were overjoyed to throw themselves beside him, and soon most of the poor fellows were fast asleep on their arms.
The following day there was a slight skirmish, in which but one, a mere youth, was injured.
St. Udo was talking kindly to this youth, who lay quite still in a corner listening to the whispered words of cheer with a faint and hopeless smile, when a shadow fell across the sweet, dying face, and a woman's gasp of terror fell upon St. Udo's ear. He turned to look upon her, and started involuntarily.
There she drooped, with wild, grief-darkened eyes fastened on the boy, her fair cheeks white with horror, her shapely hands clasped in anguish; her snaky tresses lying low upon her sloping shoulders—a vision of surpassing grace and dumb sorrow—Madam Estvan.
How came she there? Where came she from, who had lain entombed in a holocaust of flame?
A spirit, was she? Ay, truly, a spirit of pity and grief, weeping over a brave boy-soldier's end.
"God bless you, madam!" burst from St. Udo's lips.
She turned her tranced eye from its shocked scrutiny of the boy, and lifted it in mute anguish to the colonel's. She did not recognize him in that supreme moment of her woe.
"Is he dying, do you think?" whispered she, pressing close.
The sweet face turned with a smile of anguish at her voice, the dark eyes opened on her lovely countenance with a far away look already in their depths.
"Yes, yes, madam, I am dying," murmured the boy.
"Oh, Edgar! Edgar!" moaned the woman, in harrowing tones, "must you go? I loved you so dearly, too—my last, my only hope on earth or in Heaven—myson!"
"Ah, madam, you did not treat me as your son."
"Hush!" whispered she, in anguish. "I was not to blame for that. Your father was to blame when he deserted us both, my poor boy. How could I fight against fate? In self-defence I parted from you, but I have loved you truly, Edgar."
"May God, to whom I go, forgive your cold rejection of me many times when I have besought you on my knees to let me call you mother. From place to place you have led me, keeping me at a distance all the while, and now my sad, lonely life must end here. Oh, madam, you have been cruel!"
She wept wildly, she raised him in her arms and kissed him many times, but her lips framed no excuse.
"To think that I should find you here, my boy," moaned she, "when I sent you North expressly for safety's sake. Why—why did you enter the army, Edgar?"
"To find death," said the calm, dying voice.
She laid him down upon the straw, and raised her streaming eyes to St. Udo Brand. They recognized him now, and grew hard and fierce. She rose, and clutched him by the arm.
"Where is that fiend in human shape who calls himself Colonel Calembours?" cried she, vehemently.
"I cannot tell," replied St. Udo. "He has played the traitor to the North; he must be with Lee's army."
"He has played the traitor tome, and to that boy,his son!" she exclaimed, vengefully. "He has deserted us for eighteen years, and now my boy is dying. He threw me back among the flames three months ago in Colonel Estvan's house as soon as he recognized in mehis wife. Oh! can such a monster escape justice?"
"Did you come here to-day expecting to find Colonel Calembours?" inquired St. Udo, compassionately.
"I did. I have just come from a sickroom, which my terror drove me to after my servants had rescued me from being consumed in the flames which destroyed my only home. I hear that Monsieur Estvan was killed, and I searched in every hospital in Richmond, and every jail, for some tidings of the monster in case he might have been captured. Now, alas! I find my son in the agonies of death."
She knelt again by the boy and kissed his cold lips, smiling so stilly.
St. Udo left the hapless pair together, and strode to the doorway of the shed for a breath of Heaven's pure air; the despair, the misery behind him were wringing his heart, adamantine as he was wont to call it.
St. Udo suddenly heard the beat of hoofs, and in a moment a Confederate officer dashed in front of the tent and reined up.
"Eh bien! Monsieur, mon ami," chirped a familiar voice. "Well met, my colonel.Par ma foi.I like this extravagantly—yes."
And the Chevalier de Calembours, dismounting from a magnificent war-horse, performed a profound obeisance.
"You unhanged villain!" shouted St. Udo, scornfully.
A white face peered out from behind Colonel Brand. Madam Estvan glided out, and put a nervous hand upon the chevalier's arm.
"Come here," whispered the wan lips, sadly.
He went with her into the tent, and looked at the sweet young face, sealed with the smile of death, of a noble soldier lad.
"Colonel Calembours, look at your son," whispered madam.
The chevalier grew ghastly white. Truly this fair, smiling dead bore his own sin-coarsened lineaments; but the woman! Who was she?
Just then there were heard shouts mingled with firing, and, ere the chevalier's eyes had time to light upon that beautiful face, a random ball struck him down at her feet. Like a bolt of retribution from Heaven, it laid him across the senseless clay of his deserted son.
And, with a shriek that tingled in the shocked St. Udo's ears, the lovely woman sank beside her dead, and the dark blood of her perfidious husband oozed onto her dainty robes, and washed her trembling hands; and, turning to the battle, he saw no more.
In half an hour St. Udo led back his soldiers, and found her still there, with the senseless man's head in her lap, and her soft hands deftly dressing his gaping wound.
"He will live," said she, quite calmly. "I have snatched him back from death; he will live for me."
"Can you forgive such perfidy as his?" asked the wondering St. Udo.
"Yes, if he will take me to his heart again," she said, with a flash of ineffable yearning. "I will forget his indifference to me, his injustice to this dead boy. I will be happy to be his bond slave, if he will own me as his wife evermore, for—I love him."
How passionately she breathed the sublime words, "I love him!" How God-like was the forgiveness of such sins as his for such a plea!
St. Udo forced some drops of brandy into his unfortunate comrade's lips, and in time had the satisfaction to hear a deep sigh escape him.
"Calembours," exclaimed St. Udo, "look up and speak to this noble woman."
The chevalier opened his eyes, and strove to see her through the dim gloom, but vainly.
"My husband!" breathed the lady, with bitter tears, "will you cast me off for the third time? Ah, don't break my heart! My poor Edgar is dead, and I have not a soul but you, and after all these years of separation. Oh, Ladislaus!"
Her face sank on his breast, she clung to him with both eager hands.
He glared about him like some savage animal. He forgot his pain and his capture, in rage at such a proposition, and answered with an insulting laugh.
"Oh—ha, ha!" screamed he, with the enjoyment of a hyena. "This maniac mistakes the Chevalier de Calembours for her husband Ladislaus. Excellent!nom de Dieu!most excellent. Sweet madam, your troubles have crazed your brain. A chance resemblance has deceived you—mon coeur! You have mistaken your man."
She heard him with a gasp of horror.
She extricated herself and stood off, a dark shadow in the gray night.
"You repudiate me once more?" she cried, in a thrilling voice. "Traitor, renegade—spy! You are not worthy of a woman's love; but you shall feel a woman's vengeance!"
She snatched a stiletto from her bosom, and threw herself upon the prostrate rascal, but was caught by St. Udo and disarmed.
"Enough, madam," said he, icily; "the miscreant shall expiate his villainies by death, but not at your hands."
She submitted in silence, and without one backward look upon the man who had been her life's curse, she galloped back with her attendants, to watch over her dead boy, and to keep him from the dews of Heaven and the birds of prey for many a dread day.
There is yet another scene to paint in this series of life-pictures, gentle reader.
It is the last.
On through dim night sped the little force, under a rising moon eclipsed by drifting clouds, and met face to face a regiment in full march.
The leaders anxiously gazed at each other, hoping to encounter friends, but in the gloom their uniforms were undistinguishable.
"What regiment is yours?" demanded St. Udo, at last.
There was a pause, brief and ominous.
"What is yours?" cautiously returned the officer in command.
"The—Vermont," said Udo Brand.
"Then, in heaven's name, take it! Fire!" commanded the other.
A simultaneous flash along; each line distinctly revealed every face, and then the front ranks fell in the windrows under the murderous volley.
"Again!" shouted the Confederate leader.
Again his men stepped forward, aimed at St. Udo's handful, and again the brave Vermonters melted away like smoke before the wind.
Then Colonel Brand gave the orders for retreat, and sullenly took the rear of his diminished band. But the foe pressed close, and a chance shot killed his horse, and a flying pursuer dealt the rider a stunning blow, and left him for dead; and the battle-storm rolled away, and was lost in the distant woods.
And when the shrouded moon was shining (three black stripes across its disk) upon the man lying on his broken sword, with his head upon the neck of his pulseless horse, he heard a rustle in the dewy leaves, and footsteps soft and sure approaching, and he raised his dark, dim eyes supplicatingly, for he thought of faithful friends who might be seeking him.
But a long, lean hound was baying hoarsely, and its red eyes gleamed like chysolites, and it led, step by step, the shuffling feet of a haggard man who long had sought St. Udo.
And the skulker came to his side, and looked in his face with demoniac eagerness, and plunged the dastardly dagger hilt-deep into his breast, and stood erect with a long, wild, triumphant laugh.
So the moon rode on in clearer majesty, and the night-dews dripped upon the slain—for "the dearest tears which heaven sheds are her dews upon the dead hero's face."
Heavily passed the days of Margaret Walsingham, having, as we know, that secret apprehension on her mind which the vision of the battle-field had cast, and waiting with sick anxiety for news from the war, which might explain to her what that vision might mean.
Heavily pass the days, and October's brown era came sighing down to strip the trees.
Lady Juliana was having her last ball at Hautville Park before her visitors should throng back to the city for the opening season, and for the second time she insisted upon her companion being present. She was so determined to have her way that Margaret had perforce to obey, all unconscious of the trap which was making ready for her. The mighty rooms of the chateau glittered with a thousand wax tapers; garlands of richest flowers festooned the walls; bewildering strains of music intoxicated the senses.
My lady, the loveliest being there, shimmered about here and there, the beauty of the ball, the adored of half the gentlemen.
Miss Walsingham, seeing no reason why she should be among the revelers, when her heart was so heavy with cares for the last of the Brands, soon glided into a small Saracenic cloister, which was lighted dimly by a single iron lamp, and from it watched with wistful and still tender interest the fairy-like figure of her Lady Julie.
She had not been there a quarter of an hour, when the Duke of Piermont, passing through hurriedly, as if late for some engagement, caught sight of her, and stopped short before her.
"My dear Miss Walsingham! To see you among us is a pleasure indeed. You'll waltz with me?"
"I am strictly a spectator, your grace—thanks."
"What! Not even walk through the Polonaise with me? Well, I shall forswear the mazes also. Will you come to the conservatory? I think there is some amazing flower of Lady Juliana's out—blooms once in a hundred years or so. Come and see it."
"I think that your presence is expected in the ball-room. Lieutenant Falconcourt has been dispatched to seek for you."
His grace glanced at his tablets and frowned.
"Too late to keep my promise now," he muttered, "so I may as well follow my own inclinations. I shall remain conveniently invisible, with your permission, Miss Walsingham."
"Your grace must not count upon my permission."
"Hulloa!" cried a voice "Cousin Julie is on the tenterhooks of impatience for you, Piermont. You are too late to open the ball with her. Oh, do I see Miss Walsingham?"
Lieutenant Falconcourt joined the pair with looks of curiosity, and rendered his respects to my lady's companion.
"Remain here a few moments, while I see Lady Juliana," said the young duke, hurriedly pressing her hand.
In a moment he was gone, and Harry Falconcourt was in his place by her side.
"My dear Miss Walsingham," he said, half gayly, but with a slight appearance of anxiety in his manner, which did not escape her notice, "do you know that you have cast a spell over our duke, which he seems inclined to wear under the very eyes of my Cousin Julie?"
"You cannot surely mean——"
"He is perfectly bewitched; and as I know you are quite unconscious of it, I fore warn you."
Margaret sat silent for some time, plunged in an uneasy reverie. This thing gave her a disagreeable shock for which she was not prepared. She inwardly reviewed her position at Hautville Park, and a cold chill of disappointment crept into her heart.
Must she leave her giddy darling, Lady Julie?
"I cannot believe it—I will not!" she exclaimed, with momentary fire. "His grace is not so foolish as to intend this thing. You exaggerate his emotions in regard to me."
The fairy-like form of my lady floated past the draperied door on the arm of Piermont, and as she passed, her eyes sought the pair in the cloister with visible triumph; then she turned to his grace again.
"You see," said Margaret, eagerly clinging to the first straw of hope, "they perfectly understand each other, and your warning is superfluous."
Falconcourt smiled, but dropped the subject, and applied himself with considerable relish to the task of entertaining my lady's companion.
As long as she could see his grace, the duke, and Lady Juliana amicably promenading, or revolving in each other's arms, she spoke well and admirably, but the instant that they parted, she became quitedistrait, and nervously dreaded the appearance of the duke.
So agitated did she become with this threatened return before her eyes, that her face became white as chalk and her tones husky and indistinct.
"Excuse me if I leave you," she said, at last, desperately.
"I may return, if I overcome this faintness."
She had just sufficient strength to slip through the outer door, of the cloister into the cool hall, and to make her way to a balcony, where night breezes swept crisply over her, and the upper edge of the round, red moon smote her face with the glow of one of Raphael's angels.
There she stood, gazing down upon the dark trees, her heart a chaos of troubled reverie.
"On the first of September, at the battle of Chantilly, it is feared."
Voices of men in eager colloquy; two figures lounging on the terrace steps beneath.
"Where did you see it?"
"In the lastWar Gazette—Colonel Brand's company almost cut to pieces, and the colonel killed.
"Poor fellow! Do they know it here?"
Margaret turned and walked with a steady step to her own room, stabbed through the heart with this sudden dagger.
On the first of September!
The tidal swell of memory broke over her reeling senses with a dull admonition of something more dreadful than death.
It was not a gallant death in the midst of battle she had to mourn; it was not a brave end to a brilliant day of heroism. No—by the murk of that ghastly vision, by the shadow of the skulker among the dead, it was murder!
Late at night she was disturbed in her chamber by a visit from her Lady Julie.
"I want to say a few words to you, Miss Walsingham."
Margaret looked at the flushed face, the unsmiling lips, with wonder.
"I have been listening to an extraordinary list of your perfections from the Duke of Piermont," she commenced, trembling, "and I find from the intimate terms in which he mentions you, that you are no strangers to each other. As I never anticipated the possibility of being rivaled by my companion, I wish you distinctly to understand that I intend to brook no intermeddling of any one of that class. You came between me and my betrothed before, and drove him to his death; you shall not mar my prospects again for want of a distinct understanding on the subject. If I had known that Miss Blair was the woman who had come into possession of St. Udo Brand's property, no inducement would have betrayed me into taking her as my companion, and thus laying myself open to her machinations a second time."
"Lady Julie," said Margaret, whose face had grown terribly pale, "I am not worthy of these ungenerous imputations. Reconsider what you have said and treat me more justly."
"Did I bring you here to be my mentor?" cried my lady. "Did I ever suppose that you could meddle with my destiny? Here is the Duke of Piermont, who was ready to kiss my foot-prints, openly setting me aside and searching for a woman who acts as my private attendant or companion, and raving over her perfections. Have I employed you here to be my rival, Miss Walsingham? Have I set you over myself?"
She stood confessed at last; her grudging and jealous soul looked forth from her sapphire eyes, and recognized Margaret Walsingham as her mental superior, and consequently her enemy.
No twinges of gratitude deterred her from her jealous rage; no love, begot by her patient Margaret's goodness and devotion, stirred her small, chill heart.
The spiteful blow was struck upon the woman who had saved her life.
"As long as I could be a solace or a help to you, Lady Julie," faltered Margaret, pale as death, "I wished for no greater happiness than to be with you, and to serve you faithfully,faithfully, my lady, whatever you may in your anger say; but now, I see that my influence has passed away, and my duty is to leave you."
"You leave too late," cried my lady, tauntingly. "You have caught your fish and can afford to leave the fish-pond now, I suppose. Really, I think it no bad thing for a sea-captain's daughter to become the Duchess of Piermont and the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste."
"Lady Julie! Lady Julie!" cried Margaret, turning away with an unutterable heart-pang, "I have loved you well, and should not be treated thus. I desire to be neither the wife of the Duke of Piermont nor the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste."
She opened her wardrobe and began, with trembling hands, to array herself in her bonnet and cloak, and to arrange a few things in her small travelling-bag, tears dripping slowly all the time.
"What are you going to do?" sneered my lady, watching her movements with incredulity.
"To go away—to find another home, Lady Julie."
"What! so suddenly? Without bidding his grace farewell? How cruel of Miss Walsingham to treat her enamored admirer so."
Margaret took no further notice of my lady, but hastened her movements toward departure.
"Had you not better wait till the morning?" said Lady Juliana, fretfully, "and see my father before you go? Or are you anxious to go in this absurd manner so that you may blason to the whole world how badly I have treated you?"
"This interview is safe with me," said Margaret, turning on the stairs; "and you may smooth over my departure as you please."
"And where is Bignetta to send your boxes, and where is my father to send your salary?"
"To the Lambeth express office until I send for them. Farewell, my lady."
With a sigh in which there was no bitter resentment, though her injuries had not been slight, poor Margaret Walsingham flitted down the silent staircase, and, heedless of the servants, who were putting out the lights, and who stared curiously at her, she went out into the park.
The night wind moaned drearily among the stately trees; a Brazilian bird in my lord's aviary uttered a piercing shriek of warning, as a hoarse baying of a hound broke from the kennels.
Down by the gray stone fountain, where a laughing naiad flung jets of water from her golden comb, Margaret turned back and looked upon my lady's lighted windows as Eve looked upon guarded Paradise.
How she had filled her whole heart and fed her boundless love with this girl.
Was it Heaven's will that all whom she loved should sting her thus? She was a waif sent wandering through a world which shrank from her as if Cain's mark burned upon her brow?
So Margaret Walsingham turned again and drifted down into the world which had never a beating pulse for her, and went to find—she knew not where—a place to work in, a sphere to fill, a duty to perform.
She was friendless, and heart-hungered, and despitefully wronged; but God was her keeper.
Poor Margaret had been travelling about from place to place for the past fortnight, in the vain hope of finding a situation.
Her money had leaked away somewhere—there were plenty who were quite willing to rid her of the scant burden, and now, as she looked into her purse, she found but one silver-piece upon which to exist through as much of the murky future as her anxious eyes could pierce.
The Marquis of Ducie, with the prodigality of a great mind, had been pleased to send the sum of five pounds to the Lambeth express office for Miss Walsingham, with the promise of a payment at some future time of what salary was still due.
The five pounds had weathered fourteen days of traveling, extortion, and inexperience, but it had come to its last shilling now, and Margaret was desperately in earnest as she held the lean purse in her hand and asked herself the question, "What shall I do now?"
She looked about the smoky houses, and down at the broad river, where the forest of masts bristled between her and the dappled horizon.
She wandered down to one of the docks, and seating herself upon a coil of rope, gazed absently at the green-tinged water below. Poor Margaret's heart was so absorbed in her musings, that she did not notice that the man who was stumbling over a length of tarry chain, in his eagerness to reach her, was his grace, the Duke of Piermont.
"Good gracious, Miss Walsingham! Is it possible that this can be you?"
He seized her hand with a pressure which told of his delight; his tones were thrilling with glad excitement; his face was beaming with joy at this queer meeting.
He drew her up from her rough seat, and, still retaining her hand, made her walk with him, as if he was determined not to lose her again, and he feasted his eyes upon her face, utterly heedless of the group of gayly-dressed people he had left, and rattled on with a storm of inquiries.
"Where did you disappear to? No one could give me any satisfaction about you, and I sought you in every direction. Come away from this confounded dock. What are you doing here alone? Will you walk with me, and let me have a conversation with you? Don't deny me this time, Miss Walsingham. We're not at Hautville Park."
They walked through the crooked lanes of the town, and took a road which led anon to mown fields, and to furze commons, and to holts of scrawny hazel, where the red clouds of evening could gaze upon their deeper reflections, unbroken by toiling barge, or floating timber, or stationary ships; and where pleasant willows made flickering shadows, and dipped into the rippling current.
"Now," said the young duke, when nothing but the bleating of lambs or the lowing of oxen was likely to interrupt them, "tell me why you left Hautville Park, and what you are doing here?"
"Why do you put me through such an inquisition?" asked Margaret. "When I left Hautville Park I wished to be dropped by Lady Juliana's friends. Your grace will confer an obligation by remembering this."
"I do not aspire to the honor of being Lady Juliana Ducie's friend, therefore beg to be considered exempt from your prohibition."
"On your own behalf, then, your grace, I am compelled to forbid any further interest in my movements. My sphere in life utterly removes me from your attention, and my path will probably never cross yours after to-day."
"Miss Walsingham," cried the young duke, fervently, "I will not let you away this time without hearing me. I want to tell you that I formed an opinion concerning you when my eyes first picked you out at the marquis' dinner-table, which each hurried interview since has only strengthened, and I have wished to tell you ever since that evening what a profound impression your graces of mind have made upon me. Whatever wrongs the world may accuse you of, I have the utmost confidence in you. I know that you will pursue none but a noble, unselfish course—that you are the purest, ay, and the bravest woman whom I ever met."
Margaret was quite silenced by this outburst, and walked on almost frightened by the novelty of her position.
It struck her that the man walking by her side and gazing so eagerly into her face was the only stanch friend she had on earth.
For a brief moment she had a glimpse of the sweetness which gladdens the life of a woman beloved, and then she woke to calmer reality, and put the vision from her firmly.
"I am afraid that you think all this very premature," resumed his grace, again taking up the tale, "and so I suppose it is, to you. But it is not so to me. I could not have a deeper devotion and admiration for you years hence than I have now. Dear Miss Walsingham, will you make me immeasurably happy by bestowing your hand upon me?"
"I am compelled to reject your grace's proposal."
The pair walked mechanically on for some minutes, the young man whirling his cane furiously, Margaret eyeing with tear-laden eyes the dusty turnpike before her.
"I think you had better take a rest for a few minutes," said his grace, when he had whirled the gold top of his cane and had nothing else to do; "we have been walking quite fast, and are at least a mile and a quarter from the village."
He spread his perfumed handkerchief on a flat stone, and Margaret, obeying an impulse the very opposite of that which she intended, sank down wearily upon it.
"I am not surprised that you have refused my offer so decidedly," said the young duke, returning to the attack as he paced restlessly back and forth in front of her "when I remember how utterly unknown my temper and disposition are to you, and how recent our acquaintanceship still is. I am ready to admit my own presumption in addressing you. But Miss Walsingham dear Miss Walsingham, may I hope that when you know me better, when you have studied me long enough, and have completely made up your mind about all that is bad or good in me, you will then permit me to address you as I have done to-night, and say yes or no, with more justice to me."
"Why do you come to me with this request? Have you not been paying court to the Marquis of Ducie's daughter all summer? I ask you this before I can assure myself that your avowal is an honor to me. Your answer cannot influence in the slightest my decision."
"I give you my word of honor, Miss Walsingham, that I have not been paying court to Lady Juliana Ducie; if you wish to know why, I found that her heartless desertion of St. Udo Brand, after he lost his property, outweighed with me her fascination; and, having accidentally become acquainted with the whole story, I naturally preferred to shun the fawning lip and clasping hand, and the craven heart of a Judas in woman's lovely seeming, that I might find her contrast in Margaret Walsingham."
"Do not mention the dead," said Margaret, deeply moved. "I can never, never forget that I was the unwilling cause of his early death."
She was weak and exhausted, though as yet she did not know it, and she bowed her head to weep in an abandonment of grief, which came upon her unawares and would not be set aside.
His grace stopped with folded arms to look at her. Here was the woman who was enriched by the death of a man who had insulted her, mourning his untimely end with bitter tears. A vision of the woman who had plighted him her troth rose up to confront this grief-shaken figure with decorous sighs, and shallow regrets, and heartless unconcern, and he put away the red-lipped siren from his thoughts with an execration of scorn, and clung anew to faithful Margaret.
"Should it be ten years hence that you relent, let me try my fate a second time," he cried, grasping her hand in his increased fervor of admiration.
"Leave me," murmured Margaret. "I have given you my answer—crown your acts of kindness by leaving me."
The wind swept over the flat moors with a bleaker sound; she gathered her mantle closer, and rose to face the east—sad-colored as her own future.
"And where are you going?" asked the Duke of Piermont. "Surely you are not going to hide yourself from all your friends? You will let me know where you purpose residing until you procure the situation you are in search of?"
I wonder what his grace would have said, had he known how utterly destitute she was—that she had but one shilling at that moment in her pocket—that the only friend to whom she could or would apply was her Father in Heaven?
"I cannot answer your questions," said Margaret, holding out her hand to him; "but since you are so generous with your interest, I shall let you into the secret of my future movements, always with the understanding that the Marquis of Ducie and his friends shall not know. Now, my lord, I have nothing more to say to you, except to thank you for the intended honor which it would be ridiculous in me to accept. See, there is a shower coming up, and you will get wet before you can return to the village. Good-by."
"But you—Good Heaven! Miss Walsingham, where are you to go?"
She waved her hand toward a farm-house, and walked swiftly away as if she would seek shelter there.
And the last that he saw of her, was her black garments like a speck on the murky road, seeming to walk in between two great thunderous clouds, and to be swallowed up.
Margaret kept hurrying on, so absorbed in her musings that she passed the farm-house, where she might have found a hospitable shelter for the night, and hurried down the lonely road away from the river, where the rising wind waited for her at sudden corners, and the black clouds descended nearer with the darkening night.
And she hurried on faster, and her eyes pierced the gathering blackness, with the sad and weary gaze of one whose heart carries a secret sorrow, and tears fell slowly from them, which blurred the way, and blotted out the lowering sky.
Where had she wandered to?
There was no friendly light from any cottage window to guide her, no sheep-bell or halloo of herd-boy. Her clothes were heavy with moisture, and she was very tired and very desolate.
How her head ached, and her arms!
Oh! if she could just be so blessed as to sink upon some kind woman's bed this very moment, and sleep!
Perhaps she would fall in some lime-pit, or ditch, or into the slimy lock of some canal, and die miserably.
Who would weep for her if she died? Who cared for Margaret Walsingham?
And the thought of her utter desolation overcome her, as weariness, hunger, and storm had failed to do.
She crouched down beneath a furze-bush, and, resting her hot and beating head upon her hands, wept, poor soul!
And then came unconsciousness and utter oblivion.
"I declare, John, she knows me! Here, take a sup o' this barley-water, my lamb. Dear heart! she's sensible once more. Ain't there another drop than this, John? Mayhap it's plenty." Margaret looked with languid eyes upon the rugged figure of a man, clad in dingy red-dust habiliments, who was standing between her and a small window, with his head sunk in a curious way between his hands.
His brawny shoulders were heaving, and his rough shock of hair trembled like sea-grass in a hurricane, while a gurgling sort of noise issued from him.
Had a fit of laughter seized him, or was the man crying?
Whose bed was she lying in, hung with red calico curtains?
Where had she seen that figure in the clay-colored smock before?
And then Margaret saw a sallow-faced woman of spare figure bending over her, with a tin cup in her hand, and a glistening channel down each cheek.
"Mrs. Doane!" she breathed, in wonder.
"There I knowed it! Hark to that, John!" cried the woman, with an exultant chuckle, which threatened to be strangled by a sob.
"Didn't she call me by name, the blessed lamb?"
She raised the blessed lamb in her arms, who, truth to say, scarcely recognized herself by such an unwonted title, and held the tin cup to her lips.
Sweeter to Margaret than Lusitanian nectar such as Chianti yields was her drink of barley water.
Margaret without working out the queer problem of how she came there, fell into a deep and quiet sleep.
And between sleeping profoundly, eating morsels of food with ravenous enjoyment, lying placidly wakeful and watching without curiosity the movements of her two nurses, Margaret saw the young moon grow into a full, round orb, which glimmered in a halo through the bottle-green glass of the cracked window, and silvered her from head to foot, each long, still night; and at last strength came to her, and with it recollection.
"Did I come to you, Mr. Doane?" she asked, one evening, when that person was sitting by her bedside peacefully smoking his pipe, and listening with pride to the voice of Johnnie in the kitchen chanting his spelling lesson.
"Come to us? No, miss, you didn't but we come to you," replied the bricklayer, stuffing down the ashes further into his pipe.
"I want to know about it, please; I do not understand at all how I am at Lynthorpe."
"Where was you when you was took bad?"
Margaret pondered a long time.
"The last I distinctly remember is of being a mile and a half from Rotherhithe."
"Lor-a-musy! and didn't nobody give ye a seat in their wagon down here? Did you walk all the way, and so light of head like?" She put her thin hand to her forehead again.
"I remember of being lost on a common outside of Rotherhithe," she answered, "and I do not know what became of me after that. I sat down to rest, and I suppose I must have been there all night. Is it long ago?"
"What date was it, dear miss, that you was lost on the moor? Can ye mind that?"
"It was the seventh of October."
"Just think o' that now! It was two days after that when I found you sitting at the foot of a hay-rick in Farmer Bracon's land, a mile from here. You was a sorry sight, but I know'd yer again, and came close to yer. You was neither sleeping nor not sleeping, but whispering to yourself; so I brought you home to the wife, and she and me we've nursed ye through, thank heaven! And here's the papers as was found on ye, miss, by the wife," rising and producing them from a carefully-locked little box in the cupboard; "and here's the purse with a shilling in it, which was all that we saw with ye, and you a sending me a guinea reg'lar every quarter for Johnnie's schooling, for a kind miss, as ye are."
Margaret lay quiet for a while; her deep gray eyes were full of tears, her bleached face tremulous with smiles.
"Heaven is taking great care of me, and I have much to be thankful for. Kind John Doane and his wife, for instance."
The bricklayer puffed hard, and slowly spelled out her meaning, and arrived at it with a snort of surprised pleasure.
"Is it Betsy and me that you want to be thankful for? You as is our guarding angel, what made a man of Johnnie as can read most as well as the curate himself. And haven't every one of the nine of us, down to the babby, felt as if we had a angel under the roof for the last three weeks?"
"Have I been three weeks ill?"
"Three weeks, dear miss; seven days of 'em you wasn't in your head at all, and Dr. Ramsey weren't easy about you—weren't easy at all. It were inflammation of the brain."
"And you out of your pittance—you have nursed me through all this?"
"And proud to do it, miss."
"But if I had died, who would make up to you the doctor's bill, or your own ease?"
"Dear miss, don't!" His hard hand went up to wipe the starting tears. "If you had died, it's not us as would stop our mourning to think of the mite you cost us. You ain't like the rest of the Peerage—you comes down to we; you had a heart, so you had, and felt for we, and we never forgets that."
"Kind John Doane, how shall I repay you?"
She buried her face and wept.
The cheerful crackle of a fagot fire came from the kitchen grate, long spurts of yellow light outlined upon the wall Mrs. Doane's figure as she danced the youngest toddler on her knee, and Margaret fell asleep to the words: