"Dance to your daddy,My bonny babby;Dance to your daddy,Do, dear, do-o!You'll get a wee bit fishie,In a wee bit dishie,And a whirligigie,And a buttered scone!"
"Dance to your daddy,My bonny babby;Dance to your daddy,Do, dear, do-o!You'll get a wee bit fishie,In a wee bit dishie,And a whirligigie,And a buttered scone!"
Margaret was sitting up at last in the bricklayer's doorway, muffled in shawls, and shuddering nervously at every jarring sound about her.
A chariot was approaching the bricklayer's cottage from the village of Lynthorpe, and on its panel glittered the arms of Castle Brand.
Already the coachman, Symonds, had seen the invalid at the door, and was talking to some one inside, and in the next minute the chariot was drawn up before the door, and the familiar figure of little Dr. Gay was stepping out.
"Found at last, my dear girl!" cried he, radiantly; "and a fine search we have had of it. Bless my soul, though, you aren't too strong yet! Don't be frightened, dear."
The thin, trembling hands were clasped nervously on the swelling breast.
Margaret looked piteously around, as if for succor.
"I need not be, I hope, sir," she said, faintly.
"No, I'm sure not," cried the doctor, pressing her hand; "although you have contrived to hide yourself from us for eight months, just as though you did fear your old friends. But, now that you have failed so signally in your endeavor to work for your own bread, perhaps you will see your duty plain before you, and won't refuse to fulfill the will which has been so long and uselessly withstood. Hey! my dear?"
The pale woman lifted her dark eyes resolutely, her delicate nostril quivered.
"Dr. Gay," said she, "you must see that I am in no state to discuss business matters with you."
"By the lord Harry! I should think not," cried the little doctor, "so we won't discuss 'em at all; we'll just quietly do as we are bid."
"You have sought me when I wished to be lost to you," said Margaret, "but that can't make much difference now. I have long made up my mind what I am to do. Dr. Gay, I tell you I shall not go to Seven-Oak Waaste."
"Miss Margaret," he said, reassuredly, "we sha'n't say another word about these affairs until you are stronger; but you can't stay here, you know, so just come along with me, and Mrs. Gay can take care of you for a while. Does that suit better?"
She calmed herself presently and thought over it with a forlorn feeling of helplessness.
"Thanks, you are very kind," said she, "but why can't I stay here? I hope to repay these kind friends when I am well again."
"Rubbish!" flouted the doctor, good-humoredly. "You don't feel it, perhaps, but for all that you must be an additional burden on the woman's time, which money can never repay. Come home with me, my dear, and get strong, and then talk over your affairs with Davenport and me like a sensible woman."
Her head drooped sadly on her breast, and a scarlet blush tinged her poor cheek. She felt the imputation keenly, although Mrs. Doane had crept close to her chair, and was eagerly whispering how little of a burden she had thought her dear, kind miss!
"I must be a Marplot no more," whispered Margaret to her humble friend, with a weary sigh. "I have done so much harm already to everybody that I must be very careful, dear Mrs. Doane."
The bright tears were dropping fast from her wistful, remorseful eyes, and her sensitive nature urged her hard to part from this faithful heart before she should do it a hurt; so that the little doctor had the satisfaction of gaining his point, after all, and wrapped her up from the autumn mists with a gratified glow.
How she wept as she tottered to the sumptuous close carriage and sank among the velvet cushions! Had she been leaving a prince's palace the tender soul could not have felt it more.
"Doant 'ee cry, dear miss," blurted the honest bricklayer, who had come home to dinner, and was wistfully watching the departure, "yer luck's took a fort'nate turn. Praise be blessed for't, so doant 'ee affront the Lord with them tears. God be wi' ye, dear miss, we woan't forgit ye, nor you us—that I kin bet on."
So she was forced to leave them, though her heart turned sadly toward them in their sordid hut, and fain would have sunned itself in that sweet love which never shone in her own dim path of life.
In the dusk of that November day Margaret Walsingham entered Dr. Gay's neat residence in Regis, ostensibly to be under his immediate care.
She was with him because, poor soul, she had no other home which she would enter. He took her there because he hoped to overcome her half-sick fancies about Castle Brand, and to send her forth to take possession of the fortune which was, to all intents and purposes, her own.
For a few days the guest kept her room, and her own counsel, but at the end of a week she came out to the parlor, with a grave, firm face, and declared herself quite recovered.
The doctor was sitting in his arm-chair, by a cozy, crackling fire, and was absently trotting a bouncing baby of ten months on his knee, while he anxiously pored over a huge medical book at his elbow; and Mrs. Gay was stitching a cambric frill in her easy chair opposite, and watching the clumsy nurse with a face of long-suffering patience.
And Margaret, gliding into the room in her thread-bare black robes, and, with a gentle yet resolute face, seemed like the apparition of some tragedy queen coming upon the stage where the farce was still enacting.
"Ah! Good-evening, good-evening, my dear Miss Walsingham!" cried the doctor, jumping up and dumping the baby unceremoniously into his wife's lap. "Take this chair and this footstool. Are you better?"
"Thanks. I am well now," said Margaret, quietly seating herself. "And I would like to confer with you and Mr. Davenport upon my future prospects."
"Never mind 'em now, Miss Margaret," said the doctor, kindly. "You are far from strong yet."
"Please summon Mr. Davenport," returned she.
"Stubborn as ever, my dear," grumbled he, laughing. "You're pretty quiet about it, but you will have your way."
"Yes, I must have my way," said Margaret, with a sad smile.
So Dr. Gay bustled off, and brought the lawyer back with him, and presented their ward, sitting alone by the fire; Mrs. Gay having sighed out her regrets that her poor health sent her to bed so early, and retired thither.
"Gad! Miss Walsingham," blurted Mr. Davenport, shaking hands. "Your adventures haven't agreed well with you. Why, you're about as gaunt as my walking stick!"
"I am quite well for all that," said she, somewhat eagerly, "and am, of course, anxious to arrange my future before me."
The executors sat down opposite her, full of expectation.
"It seems that you are aware of Captain Brand's reported death," said the lawyer, briskly: "therefore that obstacle is removed from your way, and you can hesitate no longer in taking possession of Seven-Oak Waaste. Is that what you wish to say?"
"I have decided what I shall do with the property," she said, in a melancholy voice, "and I have summoned you here to announce my wishes to you."
"Are they to be taken down in legal form?" sneered the lawyer.
"Yes," she replied, humbly. "I wish to do some good while I have the power, with money which would only be a curse to me, and would drag my soul down to despair. I am resolved to sell Seven-Oak Waaste, and found a charitable institution with the proceeds."
The executors stared aghast in her face, so cold and hopeless, but they read no faltering there.
"Good heavens!" ejaculated the little doctor, in a fright, "she'll do it, you see."
"Well, madam, of course your will is law," said the old lawyer, grimly, "but you can't have it obeyed immediately for all that. The year mentioned in the will is not finished yet; and that puts obstacle number one in the way of your scheme; and St. Udo Brand's death has not been proved yet, and that puts obstacle number two in the way of your scheme. You must wait four months yet, you see."
Her face fell, and she sank immediately into apathy, which neither of the executors sought to rouse her from, and soon she bade them good-night, and went to her room.
"Obstinate as a mule," muttered Mr. Davenport, as he and his colleague sat nearer the fire, and sipped their mild punch. "By George, I never was so angry at a woman before. What does she expect to end in?"
"I expect her to end in a mad house," returned the doctor, with an uneasy look toward the door. "She has all the symptoms of incipient insanity."
"Incipient tomfoolery!" growled the lawyer, contemptuously. "You don't catch a strong-willed woman like that turning crazy. She always was a mystery to me, you know."
Some weeks passed, the executors professed to be searching for the legal proofs of Colonel Brand's death. Davenport had written to Washington desiring particulars. In reality they were merely amusing their willful ward by these formalities, having not the slightest doubt of the colonel's decease; and impatiently hoping for some change of resolve in Margaret Walsingham.
But that aimless, hopeless period of Margaret's history quickly passed away, and it had fitted her well for the strange, pathetic, wondrous end to which she now was fast approaching with reluctant feet.
She sat with Mrs. Gay and the baby in the doctor's cozy parlor, one blustering evening in the end of November. The green curtains were drawn warmly over the misty panes, the little fire flickered cheerily in the brass-knobbed grate, and the baby crowed lustily in his languid mother's lap, almost forcing a smile from her dejectedly drooping lips in spite of her chronic melancholy, when the doctor's step was heard on the passage, and a shuffling sound, as of another arrival, and the doctor called in a strange voice for his wife.
"Harriet, will you come here?"
She slowly arose and placed the child in Margaret's eager arms, and shaking her head forebodingly, left the room. Margaret was happily unconscious of all save Franky's pretty face.
Presently the lady came back with uplifted eyebrows, and placed some wine upon the side-table, and brought her own vinaigrette and put it beside the decanter.
"The doctor has something to say to you. Miss Walsingham," said she, at last. "I will take Franky up-stairs for awhile, and Dr. Gay says that he is anxious that you should prepare your mind for a very unexpected turn of your affairs."
She took the child and vanished from the room, leaving Margaret gazing after her with a vague feeling of terror.
"What has occurred, I wonder?" thought she. "Something is wrong."
She half rose, intending to seek Dr. Gay, but he appeared at the door, and shutting it close, approached her with a manifest tremor of apprehension.
"My wife has told you that I have something strange to say to you," began the little doctor, seizing her hand and pressing it closely. "I would like you to endeavor to form some conception of it before I startle you with it."
She was watching him with a wondering eye. His perturbation, his anxiety, his eagerness amazed her—she had never seen the mild little man so violently agitated.
"I can form no conception of your meaning," said she; "be so kind as to explain it in a word."
"My dear girl, we've made a queer mistake, that's all," faltered he, smoothing her hand anxiously. "Now, do you think over every possibility, and pick out the most unlikely—I don't want to startle you."
"Nothing can startle me now that St. Udo Brand is——"
She stopped abruptly and gazed fixedly in his face where yet lingered the traces of a serious shock; and her great gray eyes grew black as midnight while her cheeks flashed forth a splendid carmine.
"You don't intend to say that he is not dead?" cried she, sharply.
The doctor continued smoothing her hand; she snatched it away and clasped both in an access of emotion.
"Tell me—tell me!" screamed Margaret wildly.
"St. Udo has come back, sure enough," said the doctor, putting his arm about her and trying to soothe her. "St. Udo Brand came home to-day and walked straight into Davenport's office."
Her great eyes drank in the assurance in his face, her parted lips quivered into almost a wild smile of triumph, and she clung to the little doctor, crying out:
"St. Udo is not dead—not dead! Oh, my heart, he is not dead!"
And then she sank on her chair and lifted her sparkling eyes, as it were, to Heaven, and whispered:
"Thank Heaven! thank Heaven! Oh, I can never grieve again."
"Come, that's a right pleasant way of taking it," cried the doctor, quite charmed. "I was so afraid that you would take up the old hatred as soon as he came back to dispute the will with you, especially as he was thought to be so well out of the way."
"Hush," smiled Margaret, with the same glad radiance. "I can think of nothing just now except my gratitude to Providence for giving him back to us instead of branding me with the mark of Cain. Poor, erring, noble St. Udo! I shall never cross his will again. He shall learn to-night how guiltless Margaret Walsingham was of his disappointment. Now I can sign away the Brand property, although the year is not out, and St. Udo Brand shall have it all."
She rattled on thus like a happy child. Her stern will was melted to tenderness, her timid nature was forgotten in joyful excitement. Had he been the chosen of her heart she could not have welcomed him with wilder rapture than this.
"By the lord Harry! you have a magnanimous soul," exclaimed Dr. Gay, delighted as he watched her. "Who would have expected this happy deliverance out of all our troubles? He can't help loving her in spite of himself," thought the sanguine Gay; "she's so gracious and upright. She will win his heart, I could bet ten pounds, in a week."
"Now I can hear how this wonderful miracle came to pass," said she, composing herself presently; "how did he escape, and how was it that the rumor of his death got abroad?"
"It seems that it was all a mistake about his being engaged in the general engagement on the first of September. He was traveling on a secret embassy from Washington to Virginia, and was set upon by a strong force at midnight. His guard was composed of but twenty men, and they were killed to a man. The colonel was left for dead on the field. In the morning the Southern soldiers came back to strip the dead, and finding some life in this fellow they carried him to Richmond, where his wounds were looked to, and he recovered. He has lain in prison ever since, and was only exchanged three weeks ago; and being disgusted with his adventures, he has come home again to try his luck here."
Margaret could only clasp her hands again and raise her thankful eyes to heaven, while a sweet smile quivered on her lips.
"How does he look?" whispered she, at last; "is he not very weak and ill?"
"Y—es," hesitated Dr. Gay; "he's almost as lank as a grayhound, I must confess, and tolerably bronzed. But he is a fine looking man for all that, Miss Margaret, and you must let old sores drop and be kind to him."
"I will be just to him," said she gleefully.
"Not too generous though, my dear," said Gay, anxiously. "However, Davenport will take care of that. He has your interest very much at heart, although he is so rough-and-tumble in his manners."
She turned away her calm, happy face. His warnings fell on deaf ears, for, as ever, she had chosen her own path and would not depart from it.
"Now," said Gay, "perhaps we had best get through with this affair at once; you have borne it thus far with far more fortitude than I had expected. Will you see the colonel to-night?"
She started, and flashed a quick look in his face.
"Is he here, Dr. Gay?" breathed she, with emotion.
"He came in with me," said the doctor; "He asked for you, and is waiting in the drawing-room."
The thin face of Margaret flushed hotly. One cannot doubt that a flicker of memory's lamp shone out in that moment, revealing the bitter past to her shrinking soul, but she dropped the curtain over that picture quickly, and bade the doctor bring him in.
So Dr. Gay went out with a satisfied smile, and brought the soldier in.
She rose to greet him, tall, majestic as a daughter of the gods, with her scarlet shawl draping her shoulders regally; and her quivering, spirited countenance seemed to glow with a new and beautiful effulgence, as if the glad soul illuminated each plain feature with rose lights. Her dark-fringed eyelids hid the beaming eyes for a moment of timid hesitancy, and she drooped before the stranger like a conquered empress; and then she flashed a full, sweet face upon him whom she had mourned as dead.
And the gaze grew fixed and troubled, the outstretched hand fell slowly to her side—she stood speechless. How often had her faithful memory held up to her the portrait of St. Udo Brand—grand, bold, fearless as she had beheld him in that hour of his fury; when the white lights of scorn were flashing from his straightly-leveled eyes, and the wrath of a king sat on his regal brow.
How was it that he cringed in the doorway there and with a forced stare met her gaze of bewilderment? Why did his lurid eyeballs shift and shrink, and grow small and hare-like, when they had ever met hers, with the full glare of an eagle? How had these thin lines of patient waiting, and anxiety, and craft, escaped her intent scrutiny when last she had lifted her outraged eyes to that face.
Was this the hero of her dreams, this evil-faced man who looked at her so insolently?
The roses faded out of her cheeks, the rich light fled from her eyes, her heart swelled wildly in her bosom and then turned to a heavier weight than lead.
She averted a white, cold face from Colonel Brand and sank upon her chair like one whose blood has oozed to the last drop through the secret wound.
"Good heaven! she has fainted!" cried Dr. Gay.
It was about noon the next morning when, for the second time, Colonel Brand presented himself at Dr. Gay's door, requesting the honor of an interview with Margaret Walsingham.
"Shall you see him to-day?" asked the languid voice of Mrs. Gay, at the lady's bedroom door, when she had delivered the colonel's message.
Margaret opened the door and looked out. Her great troubled eyes were circled with violet shadows; she had not slept, and, if those wan cheeks did not belie her she had wept many hours of the preceeding night.
"I must meet him, I suppose; I may as well have it over to-day. I want to get rid of the whole business as fast as I can."
Colonel Brand rose as the tall, proud figure glided in, and with a quiet bow passed to a distant sofa.
"We meet, I hope, more amicably than we parted," observed he, with an intent watch on her countenance.
"On my part, yes," answered she, with a deep blush.
"I have heard how you refused to possess my fortune, feeling how you would defraud me," said he. "I feel, of course, grateful to you for your honorable conduct."
The measured tones fell harshly on the woman's high soul; she shrank from the ignoble praise,
"Sir, I could not honestly take what was by right yours," she said, looking proudly at the man, "I never meant to defraud you, or to stand in your way. I only wish to get out of your way, now that you have returned safely home. I am glad that you have come back, Colonel Brand, for I regretted your death most bitterly."
Tears came to her eyes, and through them the thin visage of the soldier seemed to narrow into a travesty of his old self, and she dashed them away, ashamed of her weakness.
"I thank you for the kindness," said the soft, wary voice. "I did not believe I had one friend in England who would mourn my death; perhaps, had I known this, I should never have left it."
She glanced incredulously at him. How could he stoop to such insincerity, who used to glory in his haughty plain speaking?
The words of kindness died upon her lips, and she turned away with a heart-sick sigh.
"I see that I can hardly get Miss Walsingham to believe that I am not the brutal scoffer who insulted her at Castle Brand, seven months ago," said he, with an ingratiating gentleness; "but I for one have lived to see my mistake, and perhaps you may soon see yours. I have come back in many respects a changed man."
"Changed?" faltered she, raising her wistful eyes to his. "Yes, you are. I should not have known you."
And the shifting, contracting eyeballs answered her by dropping to the carpet, while the olive face whitened to a deathly pallor, and the thin, secret lips twitched suddenly.
Changed? Oh, Heaven! yes; had she been blind to read such nobility in yon ill-favored face?
Changed? By all that was generous, brave, and true, this Colonel Brand had belied her mad belief; no foolish devotee had ever bowed before a more unworthy shrine than had poor Margaret Walsingham.
"One summer in the South, under such disagreeable circumstances, would alter any man's appearance," quoth he, twisting his black mustache with his long, brown fingers, and furtively reading her disdainful face. "What between exposure, wounds, swamp fever, famine, and imprisonment, personal beauty stands but a poor chance at the seat of war. But I hope that what I have lost in personal appearance I have gained in the qualities which a good woman admires most. I believe my heart is bettered, my dear Miss Walsingham."
Hypocrite!
She vowed that she would rather hear that insolent laugh and the brutal exclamation:
"Ye gods! what a Medusa!" than this silly sentimentality from St. Udo Brand.
It was not like him to crouch at her feet, the hero whom she had forgiven long ago for his roughness, exalting that roughness to the pedestal of just contempt for a successful adventuress.
Why could he not, out of that nobility of heart which she had credited him with, see that she had forgotten the old grudge long ago, and that she was ready to do him full justice?
What did he take her for? a dissembling schemer, who had not been sincere in her rejection of the Brand estate, and whom he must fawn upon in order to win his own from her greedy clutch?
"I have nothing to do with your reformation, Colonel Brand," she said, with cold formality. "My duty is plain to me, whatever you are. I shall require no prompting to do it."
His eyes sparkled.
For the first time he looked frankly at her, and seemed at ease.
"I am relieved to hear you say so, Miss Walsingham," he said, with something of the old free air; "for I was not inclined to quarrel with you about my grandmother's disposition of the property. I should be sorry to return to the angry feelings which I at first was fool enough to indulge in against you; for I must admit that I am very much more agreeably impressed with you to-day than I was that morning in the library in Castle Brand. So, suppose we let by-gones drop, and begin on a friendly footing."
"I repeat that your changed feelings have nothing to do with my duty," said Margaret, coldly. "It can make no difference whether you regard me with toleration or indifference, I shall do you justice."
He stared suspiciously at her, and one or two wary wrinkles lined his forehead.
"You don't mean to say that you are going to offer me some paltry compensation instead of submitting quietly to the terms of the will?" demanded he.
She turned a look of splendid scorn upon him.
Could he not find it in his soul to conceive of strict justice? Did he not know the meaning of generosity? How mean, then, was his heart, which ascribed such abject meanness to her?
"No; I did not think of that," said she. "You shall have every shilling of your property, Colonel Brand."
"By Jove, you amaze me!" cried he, rising to approach near her. "Then you have decided to marry me, after all, and let us both have the lands?"
His exultation shone out in his evil countenance, and sent him hastily across the room to take her hand.
But Margaret shrank back, and with a strong frown waved him away.
What had frozen the generous words on her lips?
Why did she let him rush to every conclusion but the right one?
She had come into his presence to say:
"I freely give up my claim upon your property, and place the deeds entirely in your hands, wishing no further connection with it, or with you; and so—farewell!"
But here she sat, chilled, bitter at heart, coolly asking herself:
"Is it well for me to be too hasty? Since I have been so utterly mistaken in the character of this man, may I not be mistaken in rashly following out my first impulse regarding his grandmother's property? Yes, I am rash. I will wait a while before I make my intention known."
"I must know you better, sir, before I can form a just opinion of you," said she. "Perhaps we had better defer this matter until we have each had time to decide upon the wisest course?"
"We have scarcely four months," said he, with a frown.
"They are ample for the purpose," she retorted, and rose to terminate the interview.
"When am I to see you again, Miss Walsingham?" asked the softly-pitched tones.
Without analyzing the strong impulse which prompted her, she replied:
"You are welcome to come here every evening, if you choose to make an associate of your grandmother's companion."
And the satire checked the exaggerated deference with which he was making his adieus, and sent him away with a touch of St. Udo's lofty style.
She stood long at the window, following that tall, fine figure with darkened eyes, and biting her lips fiercely.
"Oh, what a fool I have been," she groaned, when he had disappeared, "to credit that small, chill heart with noble qualities! To invest that suspicious soul with high impulses, and then to fall down and worship him for a fallen god! Does not his quailing eye speak of a vile history, of which he is such a coward as to fear the exposure? He, the gallant soldier and invincible hero! Oh, blind world, to wear such a bandage of credulity! He is incapable of bravery. I protest that a man with such a downward eye could not look peril in the face. He fears me—me, Margaret Walsingham, who trembled at his voice. How can this paradox be explained? Is it possible that I have been so insanely mistaken in the man as this?"
Colonel Brand forthwith began to visit Margaret Walsingham, with a view to winning her for his wife, and at every interview her aversion increased.
She soon came to shudder if she but heard his voice, and in her heart violently contradicted every word he uttered, as if she saw the lie on his face, when she detected his petty subterfuges to trap her interest, and wily schemes to catch her love as regularly as he had recourse to them. And she knew in her soul that the man was false in all except his intention to win back his fortune.
"Where is that St. Udo Brand I mourned for?" wailed she, one evening, after a stormy interview, when he had unwittingly disclosed the foul distortion of his soul to her abhorring eyes. "Where has that great spirit fled which cried for help to save itself from ruin at the hands of Juliana Ducie? Must I accept the detestable truth that the gold which I thought I had discovered behind the vail of sin was but tinsel all the time, and tarnished with many an indelible stain of crime? Oh, St. Udo, come back to me as you used to come in my grief, and reveal your sad, heroic history once more, that I may believe in human nature again! But for that secret, wily nature, I loathe it—oh, I loathethat man!" she hissed, passionately. "Something rises up in my heart against him every hour I see him, and whispers: 'Crush that serpent!'"
"How could he have concealed his real nature from everybody so successfully? This wretch is not clever enough to conceal his nature from me, and I am not particularly penetrating.Can this be St. Udo Brand? Good Heaven! What an idea!"
Margaret suddenly relapsed into utter silence; the half-whispered thoughts died on her lips, and she grew fearfully pale. The idea had shot through her brain like a blinding flash of light; it dazzled, it distracted her. She struggled against the fast-growing conviction as the unconscious wretch from his half-fatal bath in the ocean struggles against returning life, preferring the stupor to the throes of the new life.
But it grew to her; she could not shake it off. She wondered, aghast at herself for wondering, why she had not known it in the first stunned, incredulous gaze, when all her joy at his return froze into cold repulsion, and she recognized a worm instead of St. Udo, the hero.
Then she fell into a dreadful state of excitement; she paced her room for hours, clasping her hands frantically, as if she felt her need of a tight hold on some human being, and had no friend but herself; and every dread possibility sailed slowly and with ruthless pertinacity before her shrinking eye. She never had passed such a forlorn night yet.
When her strength gave out she lay on her bed, with her sleepless gaze fastened upon the wintry sky, and thought out the ugly problem, with the winking stars for counselors.
"That man has come here, determined to marry me for the sake of the fortune I hold; and he has every hope that I will consent. He has traded upon hisextraordinary resemblance to St. Udo Brand, and, trusting to our slight knowledge of St. Udo Brand, expects to pass without difficulty for him.
"So St. Udo Brandisdead, after all. Brave heart, forgive me for the wrong I did you in believing this reptile to be you. Now, am I to suffer an impostor to personate Colonel Brand, because I am a woman and feel a natural terror of the villain? No, I swear that I will not suffer the imposture. If all the world should believe in this man's identity with Colonel Brand if I did not believe it, I would try to prove his falseness. Mrs. Brand left her fortune to me, because she trusted to my honor that I would do my best to save her grandson from destruction through its agency; and, since he has perished, I will not permit any other to get it upon false pretenses. Why should I? It would be wrong for this man to get it, and, if he were my own brother, I would not give it to him when it was wrong; how much less would I relinquish it at the snarling of this hound? You wretch! I would far rather crush you than enrich you," she hissed through her set teeth, while her eyes gleamed like the stars she was gazing at.
"Thus far my mind is made up, that I will withstand the man whocalls himselfColonel Brand. But how am I to do it? I will take possession of Castle Brand at once, that he may not get it before me. I will hold it against all his machinations. And when I am settled there I will try my best to unmask him, and ruin his infamous scheme. I need hope for no assistance from Mr. Davenport or Dr. Gay; as usual, they will call me half mad and disregard my convictions. Unaided, uncounseled, I must enter this strange conflict—where it may lead me, Heaven knows. But I dare not shrink from it; whatever befalls me. I must and shall prove this wretch an impostor."
Dr. Gay was startled at his breakfast by the apparition of his guest coming into the breakfast-room with a grave, weary face.
"You have slept ill, my dear," said he, paternally offering her a seat beside him.
"Doctor, I am going to Castle Brand to-day."
"Eh, bless me, what for?"
"To live there. Will you drive me over after breakfast, if you please?"
"But—how—what is your reason, my dear?"
"Please, do not ask it. I do not wish to reveal it as yet."
"Have we—has Mrs. Gay displeased you?" demanded the little man, growing very red.
"No, she has not," said Margaret, sweetly; "you have both been most kind."
"This is very extraordinary, after your last expressed decision that you would never enter Castle Brand—is not that what you said?"
"I have changed my mind," she said, obstinately, "and you must not feel displeased with me. I must go to Castle Brand immediately."
The doctor got up, and scurried through the room in great perturbation; he knitted his brows, he pshawed, he stumbled against things in the most provoking manner, and his wife looked after him with an air of Christian resignation.
"Strange—unaccountable!" ejaculated the doctor, turning a suspicious gaze upon Margaret Walsingham. "Pray, madam, has Colonel Brand anything to do with your change of purpose?"
Then, indeed, her grave sweetness vanished, and a hard, bitter expression crossed her face.
"I will answer nothing," she said, with a chilling reserve; "and you will be good enough to allow me my own way, unquestioned, for once."
"Oh, certainly, Miss Walsingham," returned the doctor, with satiric courtesy, and rushed from the room to order out his gig.
She was waiting for him in the little parlor when he came in, with her bonnet and shawl on, and the sight of her white, desperate face added fuel to the flame of the doctor's ire.
"My vehicle awaits your pleasure, madam," said he, stiffly; and with a start she rose and bade her hostess good-by, and followed the doctor out.
Not a word was spoken during the short drive. The chill winds met them at every turn, whirling the dun crisp leaves high overhead, and stinging the pale woman with their icy breath; but she did not seem to heed either the bitter wind or Dr. Gay's bitter silence, but sat tranced in her own mysterious thoughts, which she never asked the angry little man to share.
Once only she roused herself; it was when they were passing through the lodge-gates, when, for the first time, a fine view of the grand old castle opened before them.
She bent forward, and regarded the hoary pile from turreted roof to huge foundation stone, and a flash of scorn and hatred broke from her eyes, and wreathed her lips with the unwonted sneer.
"It is something to plot for, I suppose," she murmured to herself. "It has its fascination for such a cur."
"Beg pardon, Miss Walsingham, did you speak?" asked the doctor, sulkily.
"Yes, my friend; I was assuring myself that yonder fine building was enough to rouse the envy of a covetous nature," she returned. "But we shan't permit any foul play, shall we?"
She looked up with a strange smile; it was cruel and derisive, and the little doctor subsided into uneasy silence, and stared hard at her all the rest of the way.
When they came to the door, Mr. Purcell, the steward, and Mrs. Chetwode, the housekeeper, bustled out to welcome the heiress home, and conducted her in with the greatest deference.
She turned on the threshold and looked down at the doctor, who was sullenly mounting his gig again.
"Tell Colonel Brand that his next visit to me must take place in my castle," she said; "and that I hope to meet him suitably, and to repay his devotion as it deserves."
She vanished within the gloomy portal, and Dr. Gay carried the message to Colonel Brand, who swore a great oath that the girl had both sense and spirit, and, with her castle to boot, would not make a bad speculation.
So his next visit was paid at the old castle, and Margaret led him through the length and breadth of it, and sought to trap him into blundering over its various rooms and he answered all her questions correctly, and comported himself with perfection as St. Udo Brand, and left her in the evening, still and moody, thinking out her next secret move to snare him.
St. Udo Brand was walking with Margaret over the rustling leaves of the Norman oaks, and beguiling the time by recounting his adventures in the American war.
How minutely he described his small part in the great wild drama of carnage! How feelingly he touched on the sorrows of war; how enthusiastically he extolled the valor of his Vermont boys!
The whole tissue of events reproduced with such marvelous accuracy, that Margaret was dumb with secret wonder.
How could one living being rehearse so faithfully the part of another?
Events which had been minutely described in his letters to the executors were now detailed with the most copious explanations; while allusions to his former life as a guardsman, and to incidents of his youth, kept her in continual mind of his genuineness.
He was constantly throwing little proofs of his identity in her way, and surrounding himself with a halo of reality, and yet—and yet——
Margaret paced over the crisp brown leaves, whirling round her footsteps in the bleak November wind, her eyes ever and anon turning upon her companion in troubled scrutiny, her ear intent to catch each syllable.
"How these old creaking oaks bring back to me my boyhood! What bright dreams of glory filled my brain! What a life mine was to be! I was to go forth and conquer; all men were to bow before St. Udo Brand; beauty was to melt and find its level at my feet. But see me, Miss Walsingham—no longer a dream-dazzled boy. A man at his prime! Where are my brilliant prospects now? My visions of fame—of love—of happiness? Lost in the quicksand of Time. Is there in the whole world a more useless, ruined wretch than myself? I am famous but for my misdeeds. My intellect has been squandered upon worthless objects; love has cheated me; I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."
Margaret could not respond to this half-earnest, half-bitter appeal.
How often she had imagined just such words in the mouth of St. Udo Brand, with a yearning thrill, as if Heaven itself would have been opened to her.
But now that the time had come she shrank from the man and his loneliness and his half remorse in cold sympathy.
How dare he come to her with his polluted life.
She read the false and shifting eyes with loathsome shudder, and a hardening of the lip, as if a rat had fawned upon her.
"You wretch!" thought the girl, with fiercely-clenched hand.
"How dare you think to step into St. Udo's shoes and expect to cheat me?"
"It is strange that Colonel Brand should be so dissatisfied with his laurels," she said, with cold scorn. "One would have thought that the reputation which he gained for bravery and intrepidity as a commander, would have slaked his thirst for fame. Perhapsyoufear that the laurels of a whole army would not cover your deficiencies?"
She placed such unconscious emphasis on the "you," that the colonel turned his face upon her with broad attention.
She saw the startled eye, though it instantly wavered from hers, and she felt the lagging of his feet.
"Is there no possibility of trapping him out of his own mouth?" she thought, "Can I not force him to betray himself?"
Women are apt at resources; they cannot surmount great difficulties—their muscles are so soft, and their brains so repressed by convention and circumstance, but they can vault the slighter obstacles with lightning quickness, while the man's slower strength is culminating for the heights.
"I know but little of St. Udo Brand," pondered Margaret; "But I will traverse with this man every inch of the ground of which I am mistress, and if he is false, surely he must fall in something. Let me setthe first trap."
"As we pass this lodge a certain association comes into my mind," she said, always with that cold scorn breaking through her enforced courtesy; "and now that I am honored by having you to refer to, I shall bring my difficulty for your solution.
"How was my dear Miss Brand choked by a parasite?"
The colonel stared blankly. An uneasy frown stole up to his forehead; once, twice, he opened his lips to speak, but checked himself and waited.
The silence became too threatening on the part of Margaret; she was forced to lead the next step,
"You seem to be utterly confounded, sir, I would not have asked you the question if I had not had your own word that such was the case."
"May I ask, my dear Miss Walsingham, may I ask to what you refer?"
"You feign forgetfulness. Fie, Colonel Brand, is it possible that the few words which have ever passed between us could have slipped your memory? Perhaps you will profess yourself unable to explain to me the term 'fortune-hunter,' as applied in connection with me, also."
The blank change deepened on the soldier's sallow countenance, then a certain film covered the wandering eyes, like those of an eagle before the too bright sun.
"Miss Walsingham, whoever informed you of my using any such invidious term in connection with you, traduced me."
"You never used the word then?"
"On my honor as a gentleman, no."
"Ha," cried Margaret, with a flash of triumph, "then you utterly deny having ever written to me?"
A scowl, withering as fire, crossed the colonel's face, and a furtive glare at his daring opponent, made her shudder though she did not see it.
"You refer to the unlucky note I was insane enough to write to you, the night upon which I left Castle Brand?" he inquired, slowly coming out of his fog. "I had forgotten its contents."
"Most extraordinary that you should forget its contents, Colonel Brand. Then you can explain nothing, and I must expect no apology for the bitterest insult which you could have passed upon one in my position."
"Dear Miss Walsingham, I—I meant no insult. Please do not take it as such."
She laughed a taunting, irritating laugh. If he had been a worm wriggling along by her side she could not have treated him with more contempt.
"So brave to bark! so timid to bite!" she jibed. "Oh Colonel Brand, that is so unlike the daring spirit of the Brands, which scorned to cringe, that I am almost tempted tobelieve you some impish changeling."
Some white indentations came upon the livid face of Colonel Brand; for an instant it seemed as if in his murderous wrath he would smite the girl to the earth, but he quailed as soon as her glittering eyes were fixed upon him, and spoke, though with a thick and husky tone.
"Is it generous thus to trample on a fallen man? You can see—all who ever met me before I left England, can see how much I have changed by these cursed months in the deadly swamps, and the pestiferous hospital, not to speak of the wounds which reduced me to a skeleton, and aged me, as five years would have failed to do. All this tells upon a man's spirits, Miss Walsingham; and I am quite ready to confess that I have lost much of my bravado, and my insolent manner of riding on fortune's neck, as if I could ever expect to stay there."
"You speak as bitterly of yourself, as if you were your bitterest enemy!"
The colonel looked up at the dim sky with that hooded stare of his.
"I have been my own bitterest enemy, I fear. If I had been less insolent, less arrogant and sneering," with a dark look of hatred up at the sky, "I might have been the heir of Seven Oak Waaste at this present moment, instead—of where I am."
Margaret looked at him in a sort of horrified fascination. That he was carried out of himself and spoke of the dead, she was dimly conscious; that the malevolent power which brought him here as a suitor, might also make him master, became to her dimly conscious too. She trembled before the depths of a hideous possibility.
"But about this letter," said Colonel Brand, coming again out of his fog, and smoothing the ugly seams out of his face. "I do not feel inclined to leave the subject until I have set myself in at least a more tolerable light before your eyes."
He pulled his handkerchief with a flourish out of his pocket, to flick a cobweb off Margaret's sleeve, which she had brushed from a bush twenty minutes since, and as he did so, a small note-book fell to the ground.
Why had he not brushed the cobweb off before?
"I am sure that you will acknowledge that under the circumstances,"—here he stopped to pick up the note-book—"disappointment might drive me to say anything,"—he idly leafed over the book as if searching for something—"and I was really so astonished at my grandmother's will that surprise seemed to take away my senses. The idea of insinuating that you had stepped in fraudulently, and been the parasite which chocked her! And that allusion to Paolo Orsini strangling his wife—upon my honor as a gentleman, I humbly beg your pardon! Ah, that is what I was looking for, the autograph of General McClellan. Can you read characters by writing, or do you care to examine it, Miss Walsingham?"
She took the book from him at arm's length, and looked silently at the name.
"The General wrote that in my memorandum-book as a password on one occasion when I was on a secret embassy. The rough scrawl has often saved my life since."
Margaret shut the memorandum-book, looked carefully at each cover, and handed it back.
"Trap the first has failed!" she thought. "He is too clever for me. But, you wretch, I am not daunted yet. A green morocco cover with silver clasps, and the Brand crest in gilt. Yes I shall know it again, and some time I shall find out why you dropped it among the withered leaves, if woman's wit can match man's cunning."
"I can read characters very well sometimes," she replied to the watchful colonels last remark, "but not by their writing."
They were nearing the house, and Margaret turned aside from the main entrance to a glass door in the next wing.
"Now fortrap the second."
"I am going into the library for a book," she said; "that is if the glass door is open."
Colonel Brand stepped gallantly to the door by which the heir-expectant had stood during the reading of the will, and shook it.
"Locked," he announced, smilingly.
"You ought to be master of the secret of that lock," returned Margaret, also smiling, but chilly as an Arctic glacier, "for if the legends of the place be not overdrawn, this suit of rooms was devoted exclusively to St. Udo Brand when a boy, and the glass entrance was used by him instead of the principal door. It is extraordinary that St. Udo when a man should have forgotten so completely the incidents of his childhood."
"I am ashamed of my stupidity in keeping a lady waiting so long in the cold wind," said the colonel, standing with his face to the door, "but before I spoke, I had remarked that the old lock of my childish memory had been removed, and some patent arrangement put in its place which resists my clumsy efforts.
"It is the same arrangement," retorted Margaret, with glittering eyes, "that has been upon the door for thirty years. Mrs. Brand said so, and Mr. Davenport can vouch for it. This is a strange mistake of yours, Colonel Brand!"
Again these spots appeared on the Colonel's livid face, like finger-marks of the devil, and he stole a look of mingled fear and fury at his tormentor. Not trusting himself to speak he shook the door savagely.
"Still wrong," said Margaret, mercilessly. "Past experience ought to have taught you that shaking it only sends the bolts surer home. See."
She pressed the spring of the disputed lock, and the glass leaves slid open.
"Trap the second successful."
"Now," she said, turning within the room, and looking down on him with her pallid and scornful face, "I have a fancy to know how far this aberration of mind exists with you. Will you permit me to amuse myself with an experiment? Will you let me stand here while you stand without, and describe to me the scene which passed upon the occasion of our first meeting in this room?"
She put a hand upon each leaf of the door, and formed of herself a barrier; as if her woman's strength could shut him out of Castle Brand, and her gray eyes glowed with a new and fierce emotion which her simple heart had never known of before this man came home to his own.
"Madam," said the colonel, gnawing the head of his cane, like a dog at the end of his chain, "It is not all astonishing that I should have forgotten the peculiarities of an old glass door, even though I often used it in my boyhood; other and graver memories might easily displace such trivialities and I never professed to cherish the old associations of Castle Brand with much reverence. But the scene of our first meeting can never escape my recollection. It is cruel of you to recall the most abject moment of my life, but since you insist upon it, I cannot choose but obey.
"You came out of the shadow of St. George, after the reading of the will by Davenport, and at the polite little doctor's introduction, I was ungallant enough to indulge in unseemly laughter, and to exclaim: 'Ye Gods! What a Medusa!' at which—shall I ever forget your superb indignation!—you gathered your skirts and swept like a queen from the room. My dear madam, do I describe the scene accurately? It is not every woman who would have had the nerve to call up such a scene as that from the vast depths of memory; I must perforce admire your courage and—shall I say? your incredulity!"
He bowed sardonically. The ugly seams, so suggestive of crime and cunning, had come back upon his brow, and he doffed his hat; the twitching face bore a smile of triumph, which revealed how sure he felt of victory.
"Trap the third has signally failed," thought Margaret; "this part at least of St. Udo's history has been well studied. Ah, he will be too clever for me!"
She dropped her hands from the leaves of the door and stood aside, while a slight increase of palor stole up to her face.
"You have satisfied me, Colonel Brand. Come in if you please."
He silently entered, and with one accord, these two people, who were tacitly drawing together their forces for a deadly conflict, turned and eyed each other; she with stern-unflinching defiance; he with a quailing, yet impudent look of confident success.
In that dumb scrutiny, they seemed to be measuring each other's capabilities.
"Miss Walsingham?" said the colonel, after this strange pause, "I can see that you have taken a deep animosity against me, probably because of my treatment of my grandmother's will; we shall suppose it is. Now, my dear young lady, I shall try to explain myself and to set myself right with you, so that in the future we may perfectly understand each other. I have come back to my native land determined to obey, if possible, that part of the will which refers to me—determined to try my best to win Miss Walsingham's regard—determined to make it no fault of mine if the name of Brand is forgotten. Knowing these three things to be my set purposes, are you willing to forgive generously what the meaner-minded of your sex could not forgive, and to drop the past between us? Are you willing that we should be friends?"
With his head on one side, and his eyes watchfully taking note of his listener's face, he bent forward with a certain vailed significance and clasped her hand.
"Away!" cried Margaret, shaking him off as she would have shaken off a reptile, and regarding him in a perfect passion of horror, "do you dare to expect that I could enter into a compact withyou?"
Something crept into his eyes which made her shudder.
"I have asked you to forgive my former insults, and you have refused," he said; "but remember, I asked you to enter into no compact with me. All the world is at liberty to know that St. Udo Brand repented of his foolishness, and came home to carry out his grandmother's will. If the world believes anything else of me, I shall know that Margaret Walsingham not only refused to be my friend, but cast off all obligations to the dead and became my enemy. The Brands of Brand Castle have ever been famous for their ferocity. I shall be sorry if a woman should fall a prey to it."
"I will never wrong St. Udo Brand," said the meek woman, suddenly withstanding him with blazing eyes, "but I will guard Ethel Brand's dying wishes from being fraudulently represented, whoever dares to fraudulently represent them."
"And I, deeply impressed with the conviction that Seven-Oak Waaste will fall ultimately into the possession of its rightful heir—that is myself—intend to permit no fair lady's frown to turn me from my ancestor's doors."
Again they gazed at each other—deeper horror and passionate determination in her eyes, darker folds of sin and cunning on his brow, while a smile played round his wicked mouth, fatal as the blasting lightning.
"You shall have to weather the frowns of more than me before you are master of this castle," said Margaret.
"Is that a declaration of war?"
He tried in his wrath and apprehension to catch her hand again, but she slid with a gasp out of his reach and passed through the door.
"You ask if I have made a declaration of war," said Margaret, turning when the length of the hall was between them; "and I am not afraid to say—yes. If there be a hidden page in your life which you would keep from me, tremble for your chances of Brand Castle."
She vanished from his gaze, and the fitful wind swept from door to door of the library with the howl of a hundred furies.
Mrs. Chetwode, who was busy in the glass pantry which faced the library, thought to herself that she had never seen such an evil looking face as that which looked out of the half-closed door for full five minutes.
The eyes became small and crafty; the forehead receded and narrowed to a Mongolian size; the mouth drooped with a fang-like ferocity; infinitesimal wrinkles, not often seen there, dawned into view like the folds of the deadly cobra before its spring.
"Heaven preserve me!" interjected the housekeeper, turning her back upon the unholy vision; "I do think Colonel Brand the wickedest-looking man ever I saw. Heaven send poor Miss Margaret a better husband."
Meantime Margaret, struck with a mortal panic, was walking fast down the road to Regis, quite unmindful of the calls of etiquette which prescribed for her the part of hostess to the visitor.
She left the Waaste with its grim, bare trees and its battlemented towers behind her; she left the lodge, clinging to its nook of ivy wall, behind her; she tried to shake off the crawling terror which oppressed her, and drank in the freshening gusts of wind as if her throat had been constrained by an iron hand.
"What have I dared to do?" she thought. "Have I thrown the gauntlet of defiance at him? And if he takes it up, what will become of me? But to imagine he could personate the brave St. Udo! Reptile!" she exclaimed, with a suddenly clenched hand, "I could crush you beneath my heel: You have no right to live, you monster!"
Faster she walked, although she was so thin and weak with her recent ill health that her limbs trembled beneath her; and in the urgent alarm which had taken possession of her, she marched straight through the village to the law-office of Mr. Davenport.
"My dear lady," ejaculated that functionary, arising in consternation, "what brings you here? I hope nothing annoying has occurred; but you do look very ill."
"Mr. Davenport, will you send for Dr. Gay? I have something of importance to communicate to you both."
"Certainly—certainly. I'll send immediately. No, I'll go myself. You won't object to sitting by my nice warm fire here until I come back? And I'll lock you in, if you like."'
"I don't object."
In a very short time the two executors entered, both breathing hard, and each having an anxious air about him.
"Good day, my dear Miss Walsingham," said the little doctor, drawing a chair close beside her; "I hear you have something on your mind to tell us. I think you might have sent for us, instead of walking here in your state of health; it scarcely looks well, my dear, especially—especially as it is you, my dear."
"I cannot help it. What I have to say outweighs in importance the trivial question of whether I come to you, or you visit me. You both, I have no doubt, were surprised at the manner in which I insisted on leaving your house, Dr. Gay, and taking up my abode at Seven-Oak Waaste?"
Both executors admitted that they had been surprised, very much surprised, the lawyer amended.
"I had a secret reason for my course of action," continued the ward, looking from one to the other, "which I did not feel at liberty to divulge until I had assured myself whether the motives that actuated me were just or not. I am now assured that they were, and I desire to divulge them to you, that you may prevent a fraud."
"My dear," said the lawyer, "isn't all this going to lead us to Colonel Brand?"
"It is going to lead you to the man whom I left at Seven-Oak Waaste."
"Is the colonel at Seven-Oak Waaste?"
"Yes."
"And you here?"
"In spite of etiquette—yes."
The two executors looked at each other as if prepared to hear any insanity after this.
"Have you made a deed of gift of Seven-Oaks to St. Udo, and are you here for more testimonials?" asked Mr. Davenport, helping himself to snuff.
"You have not fathomed my secret at all," answered Margaret, in a repressed tone, though she was in a state of high excitement; "when I willfully left the shelter and the protection of your house, Dr. Gay, it was to fulfil that clause of the will, which says, 'Should St. Udo Brand or Margaret Walsingham die within the year, the property shall revert to the survivor.' I left your house to take possession of Castle Brand."
The executors stared.
"But, my dear girl, St. Udo is not dead!" said Dr. Gay, imploringly.
"Good gracious, what do you mean?" sputtered the lawyer. "You may take the property by refusing to marry the colonel, or you may keep the property by quarreling with him and making him glad to leave you, but you can't take the property on the plea of his death, when he is by your own showing sitting in Castle Brand at this moment."
"That brings me to my accusation," cried Margaret, almost wildly; "I have convinced myself that the person who has come here in the semblance of St. Udo Brand, to woo me, and to be in time the master of Seven-Oak Waaste, is a villain who has weighed well the risks he runs, is, in short, animpostor!"
"Good Heavens!" gasped the physician.
"Your proofs, madam," demanded the lawyer, with another, and a larger pinch of snuff.