She has been fearing these questions for some days, and she has been clinging all the more fondly and passionately to the sweet dream which she has never once in all her passion of unselfish devotion dreamed could last. Again and again she has put aside the cruel end; for, oh! she cannot give him up yet—her king!
By the couch of deadly peril and pain, when his manhood is low beneath the scowl of death—when the divinity of his intellect is swallowed up in frenzy—in his weakness and despondency—the most royal days of Margaret's life have come to her, gold-tinged, and crowned with joy—the days of her love.
"You are not strong enough for this," she answers, wistfully. "Wait until you are a great deal stronger before you ask questions."
"But"—a bewildered line is knotting the sick man's brow like the faint ripple on the glassy waters of a stream—"I have seen you before in such different circumstances, and I would like to know where."
"I am Perdita, you know," with an anxious smile. "You met me in your delirium often enough, don't you remember?"
"Yes, yes—was that it? When did you find me?"
"Three weeks ago. You were in the first stages of yellow fever. You would have died if God had not providentially sent me here in time."
"So strange that you should risk your life for me—a tender lady."
"It was a pleasure to me, sir. I was not afraid of the risk."
"The very physicians fled from the smitten wretches by scores, for fear of sharing their fate. We had but few doctors in the city for a fortnight who were brave enough to stay, and we had to take turns and do what we could for each other. The very negroes could not be bought with money to stay with us, but fled, panic-stricken, and left us to die unattended. Nineteen bodies were carried out of this house in one day, and the last I can remember before I crawled into this room away from the groans to die, were the ghastly bodies of poor Major Hilton and the commandant of the forces lying waiting for removal. I held out longest, but had to succumb at last. It is so strange to wake up from death, and to find a lovely lady at my bedside, breathing my poisoned breath, and wooing me from my companions' fate with such devotion."
"A lovely lady!" How she glows over with surprised blushes and smiles! How she stoops again to catch the feeble accents and to read the upraised orbs.
"Lovely! Yes, yes; more than lovely—better than beautiful. When I looked up from my dream of death I thought yours the face of an angel. I think so still."
"Hush! hush! If you talk so wildly, dear, I shall think you are wandering again."
"I am not wandering, my Perdita. If ever I do, your beloved hand has but to touch mine and I will come back. Sometimes I have thought of late——"
"Go on, darling. You have thought of late——"
"That you were getting weary of your invalid, and regretting your promise."
"How could you ever think that of me?"
"There. I love to see those gray eyes deepen and flash through generous tears. I will take that back, for I see it is not true."
"Have I ever been forgetful of you?"
"No, no, no. If ever woman had the heart of an angel of mercy, you have one, my Perdita. It was not that you missed one atom of your wonderful care for me, but lately you have been reserved. You have denied me your hand so often to help me back to myself, or your bosom when my head ached; and the sweet words of endearment rarely come from you, except when once or twice you have thought I was sleeping."
"You are getting so well and strong that you do not require such excessive tenderness. It was only while you were helpless as a child that I felt for you as if you were one."
"You are but a child yourself, my poor, fragile darling; and yet, child as you are, Idorequire your motherly care, your motherly words of love. I have had them once, and they were so heavenly sweet that I cannot do without them."
"I will be your mother, then, until you can do without me. I shall take care of my child until he is able to take care of himself."
"Little mother, why do you weep?"
"Hush! hush! we have talked long enough; go to sleep."
"In yours arms, then Perdita."
She gathers him to her heart. Recklessly she strains him close while yet she may, heedless of the lonely days when heart and soul will hunger gnawingly for this blessed moment.
And so time fares on with this Brand which has been plucked from the burning.
Little by little he takes back to him life and strength; little by little he spells out this strange, sweet, new life, and analyzes it, and basks in the lambent sunshine. Not little by little grows his love for the Perdita of his fever dreams; she has taken the tide at its lowest ebb, and it has swept her into his deep, strong heart, which nevermore can shut her out.
He watches her beaming eyes with wistful constancy; he clings to her garments; he kisses her light hands, which touch him in gentle ministrations. The hard man is conquered, and by a woman.
But when he grows fearful that, after all, she may be wearying of this toil and care for him; when, with anxious eyes, he looks into the future, and pictures life without this gentle comforter, he almost wishes that health would turn her back on him forever, so that he might ever have Perdita; and he worries himself into continual fevers, which prove a great drawback to his convalescence.
She, also, has her secret load of anxiety. A crisis is approaching which she may not longer stave off. She must make herself known anon, and finish her duty with regard to him, and go away; and oh! heaven knows how she is to turn her back upon this great passion of her life, and him!
In her perfection of humility, she never hopes for reward for these great services of hers; she counts them but a feeble recompense for the evil she—his Marplot and ruin—has wrought him, which no recompense can atone for. She has not had the vanity to probe into his heart and weigh his gratitude toward her, or to count upon it for a moment. His daily evidences of love are to her but the wayward fancy of an invalid, which time and strength will sweep away, as surely as the ripple would blot her reflection from yonder smooth lagoon.
And at last the burden grows so heavy on the heart of each, that he, the least patient, breaks silence, and recklessly put his hand to the wheel which may revolve and crush him.
"You have always put me off when I was at all inquisitive about you," he says to her, one day; "but since I am getting well so rapidly, I think it time that I should assume a little of the responsibility of my own affairs. I have an appallingly heavy debt of gratitude to pay a kind lady, whose only name to me is Perdita, and I wish to be more particularly acquainted with my deliveress."
"If you would only wait until you were strong enough to travel," answers Margaret, becoming very pale, "it would be for the best."
"Why, where are we to travel, my Perdita?"
"You must prepare your mind for a journey, sir—a journey which will be for your good and happiness."
"With you?"
"Without me."
The desolate tones come quietly enough, but the invalid gives a great start, and clutches at his thin hands, and turns away his face.
Lying so still and so long that she almost thinks him sleeping, she bends timidly over him, and meets his dark eyes full of mournful tears.
"I feared it would come to this," he says, turning almost passionately to her; "and yet I have foolishly and selfishly clung to the hope that you would never seek to leave me. Have I been meddling much with your family duties by this long monopoly of you?"
"I have no family duties to attend to."
"No family ties to break, should I wish, if it were possible, for you to stay with me always?"
"Oh, sir, you would not speak so if you—if I could be honest and brave with you."
"My child—oh! my child; I cannot bear to see those tears. If you knew how dear you are to me, you would think well before you cast anything between us."
She buries her face in her hands; for a sacred space her heart throbs in its joy, and she feels that it were well worth the coming years of hunger to taste the sweet bliss as she tastes it now; and then she meekly looks her situation in the face.
"There are no family ties keeping me from you," she murmurs, as firmly as she may; "but it would not be honorable for me to accept any gratitude from you, or to accede to any such request as you have made, because—I did not come here and find you out with any craven hope of reward. I have barely done my duty toward you, and have had no thought of buying your love."
"I do not understand. I love you, Heaven knows, most fervently, Perdita; but whether you have bought it or not, I cannot say. It is yours, and cannot be recalled."
"And I cannot take it under such circumstances as those in which I won it. When you understand fully your affairs, you will then see how mercenary I would be to accept your love now."
"Mercenary? My poor child? I offer you this poor, wasted hand, and a broken constitution, and penniless prospects wherewith to be happy; and it is a part of my native selfishness to imagine that my great love could compensate for all drawbacks, but there is not the smallest room for suspecting you of mercenary motives—not the smallest."
"I have heard it said"—this with piteous hesitation—"that Colonel Brand was to be reinstated in his rights—that a great estate in England was going to be offered to him."
The invalid half raises himself on his elbow, and laughs heartily.
"Dismiss that rumor from your mind," he says, in a relieved tone; "for, if that is all the basis you have upon which to found mercenary expectations, it is as slight as the mirage in air. I would not go back to England to meddle with that property if I begged my bread for want of it. I will toady round no woman's shoes."
"But if she didn't wish it?" trembled Margaret; "if she insisted on giving it up to you, and rejecting all claim to it?"
"Not she."
"But if she did?"
"I hope she never may, darling. If she did, and if I were ever base enough to accept it, I should have in honor to propose to her by way of gratitude, and because my grandmother's will said so; and I would rather be an organ-grinder, with a monkey tied to my girdle, than be the heir of Castle Brand with Margaret Walsingham for my wife."
"Perhaps you misjudge her. Perhaps she was as unwilling to be the obstacle between you and your property as you were that she should be so."
"You are generous, my little mother, to defend one of the greediestkestrelswho ever struck claw into carrion; but you are not just. I have no doubt that if she ever brought herself to try such an experiment as offering her booty to me, it would be with the assurance that I would refuse it, or with the hope that common decency would urge me to marry her."
"She would never marry you," is the quiet and sad rejoinder.
"Well, we sha'n't give her the chance. Let us turn from a very groveling subject (to my mind), and get over your next objection to me. We have sent the mercenary one a-flying—now for the next."
"That is the only one. Let us leave the subject altogether. You will know more fully what I meant to-morrow."
She leaves him hastily—never without a sweet backward glance before—and he is left alone for hours.
When she returns it is evening, and the long shadows lie athwart the room, and she flits across the ladders of gloom to him as if innumerable bars were holding them apart.
But when they are all passed, and she is close by his side, he scans his Perdita's countenance with a conviction growing within him that bars are yet between them which she cannot pass, and he seizes her hand in sudden foreboding.
"What is this, dear child? Why are you so pale and troubled? Have you been weeping?"
"Oh, nothing of consequence. Have you been comfortable?"
"Everything is of consequence which brings these marks of sorrow to my Perdita's face. Who has been vexing you, child?"
"No one—no one, sir."
"Who has been grieving you, then?"
"I—it is no one's fault. I have only been a little foolish—that is all."
She averts her pallid face, and will not be questioned more, but leads him utterly from personal subjects.
She has been dear and kind before, but never precisely with the yearning, smothered passion of this last evening; she almost seems to cling to him, as if invisible hands were driving her away, and her pathetic face grows tremulous at every word of tenderness from him.
And St. Udo has an indistinct memory of burning tears flashing somewhere while he sleeps, and of soft lips touching his in one meek kiss, and of tender words of blessing and of prayer; and then a shadow falls upon him gray and sad, for the door had shut him in, and the girl is gone.
The next morning St. Udo Brand lay impatiently waiting for his dear young nurse, and scowling at the stupid negress, who was putting his room to rights, when a visitor entered, and made his way up to the sick man.
A haggard-looking old gentleman, with pale, yellow cheeks, pendulous and flaccid—eyebrows which bristled like furze on the brow of a beetling crag, and lack-luster eyes, which glistened like the dull waters at the foot of it.
"My service to you, sir," said he, with an old-fashioned bow; "I am Andrew Davenport, if you remember."
"I do remember Andrew Davenport, if you are he; you are so changed that I need scarcely beg pardon for not recollecting you sooner."
"Same to you, sir. Gad, sir, yellow fever is no joke, and you took it worse than me by a long chalk."
"How comes it that you have had yellow fever? When did you come here?"
"About a month ago. Came here with a face as red as a lobster, and as broad as that. Look at it now. I don't begrudge it though, when I see you looking so much better than ever I thought to see you when first I looked at you in this bed. We have much to be thankful for, Colonel Brand."
"I fail to understand. What brought you to Key West, and what have you to do with me?"
"A good deal, my young sir. I have to escort you home to your castle, for one thing."
"I am astonished that you should come all this way to waste words upon such a subject. I thought that by this time Miss Walsingham would be married, and that I could go on my way rejoicing."
"Married to that impostor, who hoped to fill your shoes? Pho! what do you take us all for? Well, after all, I needn't take any share of the glory. It was Miss Margaret herself, who found out the whole conspiracy, and set off like a brave young woman as she is, taking me for company, to find you, sir."
"Heavens! What did she want of me?"
"Gad! sir, if you really don't know, all I can say is that she's the first woman I ever saw who could hold her tongue! It was to find you out and give you the property of Seven-Oak Waaste, the lands, houses, etc., attached, that she came while the plague was literally raging, to this confounded rat-trap, where, if one gets in they can't get out."
"Is Margaret Walsingham in Key West?"
"She is."
"Then it is she who has been troubling my poor darling with this wretched story."
"In Key West, and I leave you to judge whether she makes a good sick nurse or no."
"Has she been my nurse?"
"To be sure? Nice place you've got here, sir! Everything as dainty as a lady's boudoir; and what a magnificent bunch of flowers! Think of that in March!"
"Miss Walsingham—my Perdita! The girl who risked her life for me!"
"Even so. Precious short were her visits to my bedside, for watching at yours; and between us she's had a wearing time of it, the dear, kindly girl!"
"Good Heaven—is my own darling, that Miss Walsingham?"
"Yes, and I thank Heaven to hear that from you. You love her, so it's all right."
The lawyer here dropped his jocund air, pressed the hand which had nervously clutched his, and retired to the window for a while.
A silence fell upon the pair; the rescued man was turned face downward to his pillow, with his hands clasped tightly.
Her bravery, her generosity, her devotion came up to gild her gentle worth; and he could well judge now how great had been that bravery, that generosity, that devotion.
Taking in by slow degrees, the greatness of this woman's soul, whom falsely and bitterly he had maligned; comprehending the grandeur of humility in one whose garments he in his high-handed pride felt unworthy to touch, the time had come when St. Udo Brand could pray; when he could plead that Heaven would bless him with Margaret Walsingham's love, and bestow on him her hand, as the richest gift of earth.
Presently Davenport resumed the conference by recounting all the particulars of the Castle Brand plot, and you may be sure he lost no opportunity of adding luster to his admired Miss Margaret's laurels, by unstinted praise, which brought tears, one by one, into the eyes of young Brand.
"And here's the formal relinquishing of every rood of Seven-Oak Waaste, drawn up and signed," said the lawyer, unfolding a parchment and spreading it out triumphantly on his knee; "and she has even made provision against your refusing to accept it. In that case, it is all to go, on the 28th of March (one year from the date of the will), toward building a Charitable Institution for sick seamen, (I suppose from her father having been a sea-captain), and she is going as governess into Mr. Stanhope's family here. What do you think of all this, eh?" chuckled the old gentleman, with the air of being vastly amused.
"She will do it," said St. Udo, gazing with consternation at the parchment.
"But will you allow her to do it?"
A keen pang struck to the heart of St. Udo; his merciless scorn of her came back to him as expressed only the day before; her mournful words; "She will never marry you," recurred like a death-knell to his memory.
Now he understood the cause of her gentle tears—of her clinging wistfulness, of her sweet and humble timidity; he comprehended all, and covered his eyes with a remorseful moan.
"I have ruined all, and lost her!" he thought. "Where is the noble girl?"
"Gad! I thought you'd soon be asking that! It's likely she's taking a rest, poor dear; but I'll send her to you."
"No—let her have her rest; I would never be so selfish as to disturb her, while I can wait. But, Davenport, I will be candid with you, and say that I have no hope of winning her. I have insulted her too deeply."
"Did she think of your former insults when she came here at the risk of her life to find you, and to nurse you out of the fever?"
"No, bless her—all that was forgiven!"
"And will she think of your former insults when you say, 'Margaret, I won't accept one penny piece of the Brand property unless you be my wife?'"
"Her own words—that, in that contingency, Margaret Walsingham would never marry me—her own words."
"You believe in your Perdita's love?" cried the lawyer, throwing his last ball with triumph straight at the bull's eye.
"If noble tenderness, and devotion such as hers, is love, I do, most solemnly."
"Then she'll do as your Perdita, what she wouldn't do as your enemy, Margaret Walsingham. She'll even lower her pride to marry you, if she thinks it necessary to your happiness."
But Mr. Davenport was forced to modify his satisfaction, when, on seeking an audience with his ward, the old negress who had that morning taken Margaret's place in the colonel's sick room, brought from her chamber a note from the young lady.
"She's been and gone," said the woman; "and this is for Massa Davenport." It said to the staring lawyer:
"Dear Mr. Davenport:—I have thought it best at once to proceed to the Stanhopes', as the situation might become filled up, and all danger of infection has passed from me by this time."You will see that the colonel is taken excellent care of until the English steamer arrives, when I am sure he will be able to travel; and you will accompany him to Seven-Oak Waaste, and be as useful to him and as faithful as you have been to me."I am going without bidding you good-by. Perhaps you will be a little angry; but, dear Mr. Davenport, it was far better than if I had. I have been a great bother to you from first to last, haven't I? But you will forgive me, now that our ways lie so widely apart."Tell Colonel Brand that I wish him to forgive the deception I have practiced upon him; but that I shall never regret the four weeks in which I watched him from the brink of the grave, and that if he can accept a message from Margaret Walsingham, it is that he may always think kindly of his Perdita, and try to keep her apart from his remembrance of a presumed adventuress."Your affectionate ward, M. W."
"Dear Mr. Davenport:—I have thought it best at once to proceed to the Stanhopes', as the situation might become filled up, and all danger of infection has passed from me by this time.
"You will see that the colonel is taken excellent care of until the English steamer arrives, when I am sure he will be able to travel; and you will accompany him to Seven-Oak Waaste, and be as useful to him and as faithful as you have been to me.
"I am going without bidding you good-by. Perhaps you will be a little angry; but, dear Mr. Davenport, it was far better than if I had. I have been a great bother to you from first to last, haven't I? But you will forgive me, now that our ways lie so widely apart.
"Tell Colonel Brand that I wish him to forgive the deception I have practiced upon him; but that I shall never regret the four weeks in which I watched him from the brink of the grave, and that if he can accept a message from Margaret Walsingham, it is that he may always think kindly of his Perdita, and try to keep her apart from his remembrance of a presumed adventuress.
"Your affectionate ward, M. W."
"Here's a pretty to do!" cried Davenport, bustling into the invalid's room with the little double sheet of note paper fluttering in his hand. "Of all queer dodges, this is the last. She's gone, sir, this morning to her situation at the Stanhopes', and here's the note that she's obliging enough to write by way of good-by to you."
St. Udo took the note and scanned each pretty character, while his cheeks became bloodless as snow. It was blistered with tears, and it seemed to breathe in every line its quiet and patient sorrow, and to have become resigned to it, as if there was no remedy.
What the colonel's emotions were, to read this little note of his Perdita's, no one may know. He sat up in bed, and looked wildly round him, while the lawyer glared, and dumbly bit his nails.
"Let us drive instantly to the Stanhopes'."
"You? Humph! You look like a man going driving!"
"I tell you I shall drive there if I should faint every mile of the way."
He sprang from the bed, and signified the sincerity of his intention by fainting on the spot.
Three days afterwards, Colonel Brand was lying quite alone on his sofa—his first day up—reading, or rather telling himself that he was reading. Every sound startled him, causing him to relinquish his book and listen with deepening eyes; and sometimes a fancied voice in the street below would send flames of excitement shooting across his pallid face.
Three days since the lawyer had left him; three days of doubt, and hope, and despair.
Had she loved him? Was that calm good-by to him from a heart indifferent? or did it hide beneath its cold exterior the smoldering passion which sometimes her eyes had seemed to express?
Dear Margaret! Generous girl!
And memory took up her virtues one by one, and fondly turned them over, while fancy told him what his life might be with such a wife as she.
And even while he mourned with fading hopes over the memory of her whom he had passionately loved as his Perdita, his chamber-door was briskly opened, and in walked Lawyer Davenport.
"Good-morning, sir! Glad to see you up! In honor of the day, eh?"
"Have you seen her?"
"Ha! first question. Nothing about how I enjoyed my trip, or stood it after my illness; only 'Have you seen her?' No thanks to you for your polite inquiries after me—Ihaveseen her."
"And—what have you to tell me?"
"Come, now—what do you expect? You, who have such a poor opinion of the fair sex, shouldn't look for much from 'em."
"Little enough would I expect from any other woman under the sun, but from Margaret Walsingham, all that makes a woman pure, right in heart, grand in spirit."
"I found her at Mr. Stanhope's, ill and sorrowful——"
"My poor child!"
"Quite prostrated, and unfit for her duties—Mrs. Stanhope full of concern, the children out on the beach with their black nurse. You should have seen her, when they sent her down from her room to me."
"I wish I had."
"Her eyes couldn't have been fuller of love and pleasure if it had been you, instead of me; I never received such a beauty-glance in all my days! And her first words were twice as polite as yours, sir—they expressed her delight in seeingme, not inquiries about a third party. 'Oh, Mr. Davenport, I never thought of this kindness. Have you come to bid me good-by?' Not a word you see, about you, colonel; nor a thought either, I'll be bound. Ten to one if she would have brought you in at all to the conversation, if I hadn't asked her plump and plain, if she didn't mean to give the colonel his property, after all?
"'Why,' says she, flashing a glance at me, to see if I meant it, and then turning her face away, 'have I not intrusted you with it, to give over to him? What obstacle can there be?'
"'You don't do his fine character much justice in this transaction, though you always vaunted it up to Gay and me,' I said. 'If he had been a paltry money-hunter, you couldn't have served him much worse.'
"'He is satisfied, is he not?' cried she.
"Then I drew a horrible picture of your despair upon finding that she had gone, and how you fainted in trying to prepare to follow her, and—trust, me for making up a case! The last of it was her hanging on my shoulder, and crying over my broadcloth, and sobbing:
"'Take me back to him, Mr. Davenport; how could I have been so cruel as to leave him in his weakness, uncared for! Take me back again.'"
"And so——"
"Well, now, I rather enjoy the mighty interest with which you survey me! And so Mrs. Stanhope granted me an interview, in which I told her to look out for another governess, as Miss Walsingham had been sent for on very particular business, to go home to England, and Miss Margaret and I had a very nice little trip back. I have, you may be sure, spared no eloquence in keeping Miss Margaret's alarms up about you, and she is waiting below, doubtless with her heart in her mouth, to know whether you're dead or alive."
"What! Is she here? Let me go for my fair girl this——"
"Fair and softly, my young sir. I have a proposition to make, before I let you out of my power. What day of the month is this?"
"Twenty-fifth."
"And what must be done before the twenty-eighth? Eh? Don't you know? Miss Margaret must be wooed and won before the twenty-eighth. And why? Because Madam Brand's will was written on the twenty-eighth of last March, and the year in which you were to marry your co-heir passes in three days, and after that, according to the will, you can't have one inch of Seven-Oak Waaste. What does that necessitate, then? (Oh, young people, what would you do without me!) Why, you must marry her, colonel—by Heaven! you must—before the twenty-eighth! What do you think of that for a little romance?"
"Too much of Heaven's brightness—too little of earth's shadows. You see I don't deserve that she should love me."
"Humph! no. I can't say that you do. But that's nobody's business if the lady's pleased. Now, having given your memory a jog about the flight of time, I'll send her up to you."
"Let me go to her."
"Stay where you are, sir; don't stir, I beg. I don't profess to know much about woman's curious little idiosyncrasies, but I'll bet a dozen of claret, that this humdrum chamber of yours where she nursed you day after day for four weeks, is the dearest place to her of all the world, and I'll go farther and say that so long as she lives the memory of this same room, sir, will have power to send the rush of fond tears up to her eyes, be she happy or miserable. You see she found you here, and got your life from Heaven, as it were, by dint of unwearied prayer, and its hallowed to her like a little sanctuary. Women are strange creatures, sir and I advise you, if you want to sway her heart to your wishes, to see her here."
Lying face downward and alone, with his hands clasped in grateful thanksgiving, all the wicked recklessness and the unbelief and the cynical fatalism slipped forever from St. Udo's soul, and he turned after long years to the idol of his youth—hope crowned with Heavenly faith; and in that sweet hour of supreme humility the sheath dropped from the fruit, and the noble works of Heaven's hand turned to adore its Creator.
So it came to pass that when Margaret Walsingham, standing at the doorway, too timid to approach—too womanly soft to go away, now that the man was dying for her—heard the low entreaty,
"Bless me with her love—ennoble me with her love, O Heaven!"
Her whole face became transfigured with joy, and she stood there a breathless and a lovely vision, listening to what she dared not believe before.
"Is that my darling, standing on the threshold? Come."
Folded heart to heart, her head upon its place for the first time, his arms about her in a band of love—her hour of sweet recompense has come at last, and with unutterable thrills shooting through her tremulous frame, she whispers, smiling:
"I have won my own dear lord of Castle Brand."
"By gar!mon camarade, and do you call yourself a man, prying into Madam Fortune's good graces? Why, she has starved you, the jade, she has given you the prison fare, she has been a vampire to you,moncolonel. What for you wear that face of parchment when I come to preside over the hand-grip, and to bless, and to be the good fairy? Ah, bah! Your future may be very good, but your past has been execrably bad. I drop the tear of friendship to yourmal-de-grain."
Monsieur, the chevalier, had just arrived from New York per steamer, breezy, brisk, jocund as a stage harlequin, and rushed in upon our colonel to congratulate him after having hunted up all particulars connected with him in the little town, and had the gratification of finding affairs so much better than he feared.
"Ah, Calembours, it's some time since we met. You look so flourishing that I need scarcely express a hope that you are well. Thanks for your sympathy. Don't waste it, though. I'll soon be all right, if I'm not done brown in Fortune's frying-pan. But what brings you to Key West? A consignment of tough beef?"
"Ma foi!you take a man up sharp,mon ami. I have not the affliction to see the last of the Brand spirit, gone out of you, for all the sugars and panadas of this illness. Do you suppose a consignment of anything could bring me to thisinfernoof yellow fever and negroes? Why not sooner suggest pleasure, duty, or what say you to friendship for you,mon camarade?"
"Pshaw! Calembours, you and I know that your capabilities of friendship could be bought at a ransom of five shillings."
"Mon Dieu!but you are hard on your Ludovic. Did I not squander all my little gains for to get your rights in England? Did I not give up the grand demoiselle. Marguerite, to you, when she might have been the countess, when she might have loved me? Ah,moncolonel, you have me to thank for all your good fortune, and yet you will not lift the eyes to thank me."
"Brag was an impudent dog; still, there's my hand, comrade, and in virtue of my present happiness, which you helped to bring about, take a hearty squeeze."
The chevalier squeezed it, and declared, with tears in his eyes, that he was the luckiest dog out of Paris in possessing such a finecamarade.
"You shall now hear my little plan in having ventured to this infectious place," he cried. "Your glorious mademoiselle had struck such frenzy of admiration into my soul that the instant Madame Hesslein released me from attending upon her—curse Madame Hesslein"—his visage grew pale with uncontrollable rage—"I determined to follow Mademoiselle Walsingham here, and to find if the plague had spared her, and if she was left without protection, (for I must tell you,mon ami, that I had no hope of seeing you alive again), to offer her my poor help and escort back to her home and friends in Surrey, and to be the friend in need to her until she turned me away.
"I come full of these glorious plans of benevolence which might well ennoble any man, and find—hey, presto! the romance has turned the other way! My colonel still lives, being conjured back to life by undiluted fidelity; the lawyer with the knotty head has argued the plague out of conceit of him, and the glorious mademoiselle is afiancee; so I bury my too fond plans for mademoiselle's welfare, and I crucify the flesh, and say to myself:
"'I will be the good fairy for these two people; will be the mason to build the steps to their summit of bliss; I will be the porter to carry them thence.'
"So I fly to you—behold me—I am here to act as manager—I glow with the eagerness of friendship."
"And in return, what do you expect?"
Calembours shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
"Vive l'Anglais!" he cried, "they can make a good bull's-eye can the John Bulls. You see thisbourse? Bah! how wrinkled are its sides, how flattened under hard pressure of poverty!Mon Dieu!did not the jade, Madame Hesslein, take the bread out of my mouth in the amplitude of her revenge? Very well. You who offer me the hand of friendship in return for that leetle favor, and also for the other not leetle favor of sending your Marguerite to save your life, shall take her fingers in yours, kiss them, and say: "Have you forgotten the small souvenir which you promised to my friend, the chevalier?"Ma Mignonette, now is the time to remember it. And she will remember it—my word upon it, she will, and will also urge upon you to let her souvenir me with a leetle more of her pin-money. And with the proceeds of your joint munificence I shall float again on the ascending tide of fortune, in my tight little bark, in spite of thegrandeshe devil who has ruined me."
"Ah, your funds have run low, and you are here to replenish them?"
"By gar! that is so,mon ami."
The two men eyed each other; St Udo with raised eyebrows and slightly scornful amusement; the ex-tailor of Szegedin with an ingratiating impudence which showed that monsieur knew his man very well.
"I have told you often that you are a greedy dog," said the colonel; "but I have no wish to see you under the feet of your favourite goddess, though I had much rather you had left your services to speak for themselves to our pockets. How much did Miss Walsingham agree to give you? Davenport, it seems to me, mentioned something of this to me."
"Only one thousand of your pounds,cher ami, only one thousand; she was going to insist upon doubling it, but I implored her: 'Admirable lady, press no more upon me. At that time I little dreamed the days were coming when necessity should compel me to accept."
"You shall have fifteen hundred to give you a start. I think you will manage upon that, you are such a man of resource." Said the colonel, admiringly, who had heard Davenport's grumbling account of the money arrangement with the chevalier, and remembered it very well.
Whereupon monsieur got up, flung his arms around St. Udo, gave him a French embrace, vowed he was a lord, and then coolly announced himself theattacheof the little party, he rushed off to hunt up his quondam antagonist, Davenport, and discuss the management of affairs, with much impudent triumph, over that worthy gentleman for his former suspicions of the honor of a French chevalier.
The white moonbeams poured brilliant as diamond lights into the porch of the old church of Key West.
The spicy odor of the citron trees and of the orange groves filled each passing breath; the boom of the far-off surf against the reefs made endless sounding, like the dull roar of a conch-shell at the ear.
The robed figure of a clergyman stood in the low-browed church doorway, and his hands gently chafed each other as he gazed down the white road after a quiet cortege, which was gliding slowly toward the town.
Into the flickering shades of a branching palm-tree out to the vivid moonbeams, bright as day, quietly moving farther and farther from the man who had bound them together, for a peaceful or a turbulent life.
And the good pastor, softly chafing his hands, and thinking of the bride's soft, holy face, and of the bridegroom's beauty, which had reminded him of Antinous, grave, yet not severe, breathes a blessing upon these strangers, who this night will leave forever behind them his fairy isle.
"May their wedded life be as serene and smooth as these shades are light, and these bursts of moonlight translucent. May the sky ever be clear for them—the sea of life ever be unruffled, as yonder crystal channel, to which they are hastening."
Then he, also, leaves the glistening temple behind him, and goes his way among the down-dropping shrubs and spicy blossoms to his home among the bananas.
Standing on the deck of the steamer, which was to convey him to his long-forsaken home, with his arm around the Venus-like figure of his wife, and his eyes upon the swiftly vanishing roof of the isle, St. Udo Brand, who had spoken but little since repeating the vows which had made his darling by his side his own, now found speech, and half playfully apostrophized the dreamlike scene before him thus:
"Farewell ye coral isles, wherein I found my Pearl and happiness. Blessed be your coraline foundations, your lazy inhabitants, and your fever-breeding climate. You have been to me a world of passion, of hope, of purity. Oh, my Lost Good, who has been sent to me in mercy"—his playful accents changed to the gravity of deep emotion, as he drew yet closer to him his "Perdita"—"I turn to you henceforth to be what you would wish me, and to study your secret of how to live. I have been wandering on the burning sands, and pressing forever onward to reach a glittering lake of the desert, which, ever rippling and vanishing, beckoned me farther from the cool, calm shades of rest. Now I come, a wearied pilgrim to your pure heart, my wife, for you have opened it to let a weary, dusty wanderer in. Your purity, my simple Margaret, reminds me of the immaculate heights of snow-capped Gaurisankar—serene, majestic, while I, a lava-crusted, thunderous, calcined volcano, lashed by the fires of many passions, come to cool my fevered blood by your chill radiance."
"Hush, St. Udo! If you knew how intensely happy I am with my destiny——"
She paused, for her glad eyes were filling fast, her fond tones faltering.
"Oh, my soft-souled Perdita! my simple darling!"
And then sweetly swooped the rush of joy to them, and they were dumb, for some one who has read the human heart says, "The most exquisite of all emotions is utter silence, with a being in whom we feel entire sympathy."
"Ah,par ma foi!but I am the good fairy, after all!" muttered the chevalier, hugging his fancy little self, and pacing about near them, with a protecting air, as if they were his especialproteges. "I feel like Guardian Angel of their fortunes. Saint Ludovic—par la messe, it sounds well!"
"Thank Heaven! Ethel Brand's incomprehensible will has explained itself at last!" mused Davenport, laying down his crumpledTimes, "and it has proved itself to be the wisest will ever the Brands made. Married in spite of themselves, and as happy as love can make them in spite of a plain face, on the one side, and a reputation that the dogs wouldn't pick up once, on the other. He's a saved man, and she's a happy woman—dear, faithful Margaret. What glorious news for old Gay."
When Mrs. St. Udo Brand came home to Seven-Oak Waaste, she found a letter awaiting her, and in its many pages she found at last the true history of the man who had been the Sleuth-Hound of Castle Brand:
Convict Ship Fearless, March —, '63."Miss Walsingham:—As you are a remarkably clever woman, and I have always been an admirer of fair play, I will give you your dues, and own that in our little game you had the best of it, and deserved to have."I don't bear you malice for this cursed mess which you've pushed me into, although I have you only to blame for it, for perhaps I didn't go the right way to work with you and I was a confounded fool for my pains."Yes I've been a lover of fair play all through my dodging life, ever since I was big enough to run at my father with a knife for making my mother cry; and since in our desperate little game together you won, I think it but fair play to own it, and to show you the few trumps with which I fought against your full hand."I'm sent back to banishment for life, and you are, I hear, a happy bride, coming home with St. Udo Brand; but if I know the practical good sense you possess, you won't toss this into the fire till you've read it all, and wasted a few good-hearted regrets on the wretch whose luck was so infernally poor."Forty years ago, Colonel Cathcart Brand, only son of Ethel Brand, Dowager of Seven-Oak Waaste, went to Cuba, which was a military station then as now, and fell in with a splendid-looking Cuban girl called Zerlini Barelli."Of course, the man took her in, and ruined all her worldly prospects through her love of him. In five years he was ordered back to England again, and coolly proceeded to take leave of the girl who had been more to him than many a wife is to her husband, and had nursed him through more than one, almost fatal attack, of fever. In vain she pleaded that he would take her with him, and own her boy as his legal heir. The colonel swore he couldn't, and offered her any money if she would not follow him."She agreed to this, and when I was four years old, they parted, never to meet again."I inherited all my mother's deep, patient ferocity, added to my father's outward appearance; and was called Brand Bareilli, at St. Kitts, where I was sent to school, I not having the remotest idea of my parentage."When I was ten years of age I was sent to England, probably at the colonel's instigation, and I was put into a training academy to fit me for the army."At twenty-one I received my commission as lieutenant in the artillery, through the influence of Colonel Brand, who from time to time took a certain care of my fortunes."About this time, noticing a great resemblance between the colonel and myself, a suspicion seized me that I had found my father."I once hinted as much to him, and was furiously ordered to hold my tongue, and to beware how I insulted my benefactor."From that day I lost favor with him; he treated me when we met with such cold contempt that my blood boiled; and all the while he was raising a fiend of hatred in my heart against him, he continued to pay over to me an annuity, which kept my suspicions on the alert."At last I wrote to my mother, who sent me the whole story, asking me whether I had ever seen the colonel's son, St. Udo Brand, who was five years younger than I."Colonel Brand, upon returning from Cuba to England, had married a lady of birth, whose one son had absorbed all the affection which was truly mine by priority or birth, and from the moment in which I heard of his existence, I hated him with furious hatred, and longed to visit my wrongs upon him."Three years after this I first saw St. Udo Brand, then just twenty. He was an ensign in the Guards, and mightily admired for his good humor and wit. He, too, was extremely like his father, which made me chary of his acquaintance for fear he would make me out what I was, and taunt me with it before my companions; so we never knew each other in the slightest."But a devil of envy possessed me, for I knew that this chap had no more business to be happy, rich, and respected than I had—nor so much, for I was his elder brother; and I was neither happy, nor rich, nor respected—everybody giving me the name of a sullen dog, etc., which was scarce fair play."So I watched my man till I saw an opening for spoiling his smiling fortunes, and then I cut in cleverly."I found out that St. Udo was madly in love with a young lady of fashion, and that some had it they were to be married whenever he attained his majority. I knew the girl myself, as luck would have it, and was rather fond of her, too; so, rather than let him, of all others in the world, cut me out of anything more which was mine by rights, I set myself cunningly to winning her affections."How often I've watched till the coast was clear of the dashing young ensign, and then got in for my visit to Genevieve Carlisle. So cleverly did I manage the thing, that not once did St. Udo contrive to meet me, although I was there every day as regularly as he himself was."At last I induced her to fly with me, and we went to Paris, and they lost all trace of us, for I was always good at a dodge, and had been bred to it for many a year."She was discontented and moping as might have been expected, after a few months; she had been used to luxury and fashion, and plenty of approving friends, and now she hadn't enough to eat or wear, nor a friend in the world; for, of course, when I was in hiding, my father couldn't send me my annuity; and as for her family, they cut her dead when she eloped with a nameless adventurer, as they were pleased to call me."She also took into her head to repent of her bargain, and to take a dislike to me, and I consider that this wasn't exactly fair play, seeing that she had been ready enough to fall in love with me when I was fawning about her in London."Well, we got on miserably enough, until her continual reproaches sent me off to hunt up some money, and I had the misfortune to be caught in a forgery, which had it succeeded, might have left me a prosperous man to-day."But the sharp dogs detected me, and had me convicted and booked for twelve years penal service in Tasmania, and the news killed the woman; she never held her head up after she found out what company her treachery to St. Udo Brand had brought her into."I can't blame myself for anything in the affair; was it my fault that I was born with a wrong to avenge? Was it my fault that my father gave me opportunity to hate him and his, by his unjust treatment of me? And was it my fault that St. Udo chose to fall in love with a girl whom I had my eye on, or that she should be false to him, and prefer me, after all her vows to him?"As for the forgery business, if either of us were to blame, it was she, who should have stood in my chains, for her eternal harping and carping sent me oft in a fury to do anything I could for funds."Still, it was I that suffered, all throughout; strive as I might, my cursed ill-luck met me at every turn, and balked me."As we went out in the beastly convict ship, we took on board an old sea-captain and his daughter, who were going part of the way with us."I used to see the little girl walking the deck, and peering down into the hatch at us poor devils, each chained like a dog to his log, and her great eyes used to brim over with tears whenever she looked up; and she would sit at the mouth of the hatch, crying for us, till we began to watch for her."Do you remember all that, Margaret Walsingham?"You were the little girl, and I was that half-crazy convict who always tried to drive you away with curses, and to frighten you with beastly threats. But back you would come next day, with your solemn eyes beaming with pity, and drop an apple, or an orange, or even a little book down among us, and sit watching us for hours, like a spirit, as if our misery burdened you so that you could not rest without sharing it with us."Once when I took fever, and could not speak for thirst, you climbed down the ladder, and fearlessly approached me with a cup of pure, cold water."How eagerly I drank it you may well remember, and also how ill I repaid it by a fierce oath the instant my tongue was loosened."But you only flitted away with a sorrowful face, and great tears standing on your lashes; and I felt such a queer, wrenching pain about my heart whenever I thought of it afterward that I vowed I would repay you, if I ever had the chance, for that little act of kindness."When I had been ten years out, I and a comrade of mine, O'Grady, got home on a ticket of leave."We were bound to have our freedom, and not many months passed after our return before we had it. Doubling, and dodging, and slipping through their fingers like eels, at last we slipped the chain, and came out, I as a gentlemanly gambler, he as the keeper of a gambling saloon, and we soon filled our pockets."Then I took a trip over the Continent for the purpose of perfecting myself in my profession; and then, coming back to England, circumstances sent Calembours in my way, and we joined in partnership."Then came my good luck, as I thought, and drove me against St. Udo Brand once more, and I wondered night and day whether I couldn't get any of the fortune which he so confidentially expected from his grandmother."The colonel, my father, was dead, so was his wife, and my brother was the only one living to whom I owed a grudge for my downfall: so I soon found out a way to make him pay up old scores."No sooner did Calembours suggest to me that I was like enough to St. Udo to pass for him, than I thought out the whole plot which it has been the business of Margaret Walsingham to explode."I compliment you on your infernal cleverness, and only blame myself for giving way to the only weak sentiment I have ever felt in my life, namely, mercy toward you for the sake of your kindness to me twenty years ago. If it hadn't been for that mistaken feeling, I could have wiped you out in the beginning of the game, and not a soul been the wiser."But I didn't and I heartily regret it now."With this sincere assertion, I close, remaining yours, humbly,Brand Bareilli."
Convict Ship Fearless, March —, '63.
"Miss Walsingham:—As you are a remarkably clever woman, and I have always been an admirer of fair play, I will give you your dues, and own that in our little game you had the best of it, and deserved to have.
"I don't bear you malice for this cursed mess which you've pushed me into, although I have you only to blame for it, for perhaps I didn't go the right way to work with you and I was a confounded fool for my pains.
"Yes I've been a lover of fair play all through my dodging life, ever since I was big enough to run at my father with a knife for making my mother cry; and since in our desperate little game together you won, I think it but fair play to own it, and to show you the few trumps with which I fought against your full hand.
"I'm sent back to banishment for life, and you are, I hear, a happy bride, coming home with St. Udo Brand; but if I know the practical good sense you possess, you won't toss this into the fire till you've read it all, and wasted a few good-hearted regrets on the wretch whose luck was so infernally poor.
"Forty years ago, Colonel Cathcart Brand, only son of Ethel Brand, Dowager of Seven-Oak Waaste, went to Cuba, which was a military station then as now, and fell in with a splendid-looking Cuban girl called Zerlini Barelli.
"Of course, the man took her in, and ruined all her worldly prospects through her love of him. In five years he was ordered back to England again, and coolly proceeded to take leave of the girl who had been more to him than many a wife is to her husband, and had nursed him through more than one, almost fatal attack, of fever. In vain she pleaded that he would take her with him, and own her boy as his legal heir. The colonel swore he couldn't, and offered her any money if she would not follow him.
"She agreed to this, and when I was four years old, they parted, never to meet again.
"I inherited all my mother's deep, patient ferocity, added to my father's outward appearance; and was called Brand Bareilli, at St. Kitts, where I was sent to school, I not having the remotest idea of my parentage.
"When I was ten years of age I was sent to England, probably at the colonel's instigation, and I was put into a training academy to fit me for the army.
"At twenty-one I received my commission as lieutenant in the artillery, through the influence of Colonel Brand, who from time to time took a certain care of my fortunes.
"About this time, noticing a great resemblance between the colonel and myself, a suspicion seized me that I had found my father.
"I once hinted as much to him, and was furiously ordered to hold my tongue, and to beware how I insulted my benefactor.
"From that day I lost favor with him; he treated me when we met with such cold contempt that my blood boiled; and all the while he was raising a fiend of hatred in my heart against him, he continued to pay over to me an annuity, which kept my suspicions on the alert.
"At last I wrote to my mother, who sent me the whole story, asking me whether I had ever seen the colonel's son, St. Udo Brand, who was five years younger than I.
"Colonel Brand, upon returning from Cuba to England, had married a lady of birth, whose one son had absorbed all the affection which was truly mine by priority or birth, and from the moment in which I heard of his existence, I hated him with furious hatred, and longed to visit my wrongs upon him.
"Three years after this I first saw St. Udo Brand, then just twenty. He was an ensign in the Guards, and mightily admired for his good humor and wit. He, too, was extremely like his father, which made me chary of his acquaintance for fear he would make me out what I was, and taunt me with it before my companions; so we never knew each other in the slightest.
"But a devil of envy possessed me, for I knew that this chap had no more business to be happy, rich, and respected than I had—nor so much, for I was his elder brother; and I was neither happy, nor rich, nor respected—everybody giving me the name of a sullen dog, etc., which was scarce fair play.
"So I watched my man till I saw an opening for spoiling his smiling fortunes, and then I cut in cleverly.
"I found out that St. Udo was madly in love with a young lady of fashion, and that some had it they were to be married whenever he attained his majority. I knew the girl myself, as luck would have it, and was rather fond of her, too; so, rather than let him, of all others in the world, cut me out of anything more which was mine by rights, I set myself cunningly to winning her affections.
"How often I've watched till the coast was clear of the dashing young ensign, and then got in for my visit to Genevieve Carlisle. So cleverly did I manage the thing, that not once did St. Udo contrive to meet me, although I was there every day as regularly as he himself was.
"At last I induced her to fly with me, and we went to Paris, and they lost all trace of us, for I was always good at a dodge, and had been bred to it for many a year.
"She was discontented and moping as might have been expected, after a few months; she had been used to luxury and fashion, and plenty of approving friends, and now she hadn't enough to eat or wear, nor a friend in the world; for, of course, when I was in hiding, my father couldn't send me my annuity; and as for her family, they cut her dead when she eloped with a nameless adventurer, as they were pleased to call me.
"She also took into her head to repent of her bargain, and to take a dislike to me, and I consider that this wasn't exactly fair play, seeing that she had been ready enough to fall in love with me when I was fawning about her in London.
"Well, we got on miserably enough, until her continual reproaches sent me off to hunt up some money, and I had the misfortune to be caught in a forgery, which had it succeeded, might have left me a prosperous man to-day.
"But the sharp dogs detected me, and had me convicted and booked for twelve years penal service in Tasmania, and the news killed the woman; she never held her head up after she found out what company her treachery to St. Udo Brand had brought her into.
"I can't blame myself for anything in the affair; was it my fault that I was born with a wrong to avenge? Was it my fault that my father gave me opportunity to hate him and his, by his unjust treatment of me? And was it my fault that St. Udo chose to fall in love with a girl whom I had my eye on, or that she should be false to him, and prefer me, after all her vows to him?
"As for the forgery business, if either of us were to blame, it was she, who should have stood in my chains, for her eternal harping and carping sent me oft in a fury to do anything I could for funds.
"Still, it was I that suffered, all throughout; strive as I might, my cursed ill-luck met me at every turn, and balked me.
"As we went out in the beastly convict ship, we took on board an old sea-captain and his daughter, who were going part of the way with us.
"I used to see the little girl walking the deck, and peering down into the hatch at us poor devils, each chained like a dog to his log, and her great eyes used to brim over with tears whenever she looked up; and she would sit at the mouth of the hatch, crying for us, till we began to watch for her.
"Do you remember all that, Margaret Walsingham?
"You were the little girl, and I was that half-crazy convict who always tried to drive you away with curses, and to frighten you with beastly threats. But back you would come next day, with your solemn eyes beaming with pity, and drop an apple, or an orange, or even a little book down among us, and sit watching us for hours, like a spirit, as if our misery burdened you so that you could not rest without sharing it with us.
"Once when I took fever, and could not speak for thirst, you climbed down the ladder, and fearlessly approached me with a cup of pure, cold water.
"How eagerly I drank it you may well remember, and also how ill I repaid it by a fierce oath the instant my tongue was loosened.
"But you only flitted away with a sorrowful face, and great tears standing on your lashes; and I felt such a queer, wrenching pain about my heart whenever I thought of it afterward that I vowed I would repay you, if I ever had the chance, for that little act of kindness.
"When I had been ten years out, I and a comrade of mine, O'Grady, got home on a ticket of leave.
"We were bound to have our freedom, and not many months passed after our return before we had it. Doubling, and dodging, and slipping through their fingers like eels, at last we slipped the chain, and came out, I as a gentlemanly gambler, he as the keeper of a gambling saloon, and we soon filled our pockets.
"Then I took a trip over the Continent for the purpose of perfecting myself in my profession; and then, coming back to England, circumstances sent Calembours in my way, and we joined in partnership.
"Then came my good luck, as I thought, and drove me against St. Udo Brand once more, and I wondered night and day whether I couldn't get any of the fortune which he so confidentially expected from his grandmother.
"The colonel, my father, was dead, so was his wife, and my brother was the only one living to whom I owed a grudge for my downfall: so I soon found out a way to make him pay up old scores.
"No sooner did Calembours suggest to me that I was like enough to St. Udo to pass for him, than I thought out the whole plot which it has been the business of Margaret Walsingham to explode.
"I compliment you on your infernal cleverness, and only blame myself for giving way to the only weak sentiment I have ever felt in my life, namely, mercy toward you for the sake of your kindness to me twenty years ago. If it hadn't been for that mistaken feeling, I could have wiped you out in the beginning of the game, and not a soul been the wiser.
"But I didn't and I heartily regret it now.
"With this sincere assertion, I close, remaining yours, humbly,Brand Bareilli."
Before we bid our friends good-by, let us cast a farewell glance on each whose fortunes yet do hang in the balance.
Do you wish your picture taken?
Step into this magnificent establishment in Picadilly, London, whose excellencies appeal to you from placards on every wall within three miles of London Bridge.
You will enter an apartment carpeted with a web of Turkish loom, and strewn with ottomans of Oriental gorgeousness, and blazing with the splendid framings of fine paintings.
Ladies of rank and fashion throng here, gentlemen of taste and purse, artists of cynical aspect, diletantes of enthusiasm, and all the world wags its tongue about the prodigies of art to be viewed in that salon.
You will presently be conducted by a deferential man in elegant livery up two flights of marble steps into a studio, where you will meet the great French artist, Ludovic, the Chevalier de Calembours.
His bright eyes beam pleasantly, his handsome face glows with welcome, his white, shapely hand waves you gracefully into a velvet chair.
You look at the little man in the black velvet Hungarian dolman, embellished with those glittering badges, which catch the eye so much; you mark the glossy beard and mustache, trimmed to the last degree of Parisian taste, and as retentive memory suggests to you the once wretched little tailor, toiling over his small clothes on the banks of the Theiss, you feel that you are in the presence of a great man.
And when he has, with that charming smile ofnaiveteand indifference, shown you his cases of photographs, and his paintings colored and executed by ten of the first living artists in the world—all of whom are in his employ—you follow him into the crystal dome, and are photographed at eight guineas a dozen, with much the feeling you might experience were you one of those honored old women who have their feet washed once a year by the Empress of the French.
"The world likes to be gulled, then let us gull it."
In due time Madame Hesslein, of happy memory, married Vice-Admiral Oldright, who, as she had shrewdly calculated upon, soon got the post of admiral, and she was able to take precedence of all haughty ladies of her set, let them be ever so bitterly proud—she the blacksmith's daughter, a little tailor's wife.
I do not know whether she has yet quite forgotten that dying boy in the wretched shed, or those simple happy days by the river Theiss, but I hear that it is still her favorite waltz:
"Have no heart and a good digestion!"
Knowing the simple soul of my heroine; having a vague conception of the possible grandeur of my hero, feebly, but earnestly portrayed, need I assure you that happiness shed its golden light upon their future path, and that, hand clasped in hand, they paced through each small grief or joy, fanning in each other that bright and Heaven-born spark which leads us at last to Heaven?
Thus, gentle companions of these tortuous wanderings. I release you from your patient chaperonage. I think we part friends, and gratefully I press your hands, and sayau revoir!