Faithful Margaret Part 31

"Perhaps he has murdered him. Will you let a possible murderer escape you because a woman points him out? How do we know that the news of his being killed in battle was not true? And, being true, how do we know that Mortlake's hand was not the hand that destroyed the heir of Castle Brand?

"How do we know that this plot, if sifted well, would not reveal in the suitor you sent me to-night a red-handed a.s.sa.s.sin?

"Come to me in the morning and tell me what you are going to do. If you are going to do nothing, then I will carry on the contest alone, and trace the history of Roland Mortlake from the bottom step of Castle Brand, where I saw him first, pace by pace, to the foot of the gallows, where I shall see him last.

"Yours Respectfully,

"MARGARET WALSINGHAM.

"TO MESSRS DAVENPORT & GAY."

Late as it was she rang for the housekeeper, and gave orders that her letter should be conveyed to the lawyer's house that night.

"Tell Symonds to give it to Mr. Davenport himself, and to trust it to no one else," she said.

The housekeeper met the feverish flash of her young mistress' eyes, and took the envelope from her hand with much uneasiness.

"My poor dear, you ar'nt strong enough for all this worrying and wearing," she observed, sympathetically. "I wish for your sake, deary, the colonel had lain quiet in his grave."

Margaret drew back with a sudden storm of grief, and shut the door, Mrs.

Chetwode went down stairs, sorrowfully vowing to herself that Miss Margaret would pine to death before she wore the colonel's wedding-ring.

"He lies quiet enough in his shallow grave," moaned Margaret; "n.o.ble, proud St. Udo! Oh my heart; why was I doomed to be the Marplot of his life? He was so haughty in his abhorrence of low scheming--so constant in his love--so tender with his dying Vermont boys--so heroic, and so reckless of his own grand life that I love him. _I love him!_ And he is dead!"

She wrung her hands and wept such tears as make the heart grow old, and the life wane early; such tears as are only rendered by a nature generous and effulgent in its love as tropical sunshine, whose revenge is self-immolating as the suttee of the Hindoo's widow.

Toward ten o'clock the next morning the executors made their appearance in a gig, and betook themselves to the library.

They found their troublesome ward already waiting them, with an expression of nervous defiance on her face, as if she fully expected a sound berating from each of them.

Dr. Gay looked at her anxiously, and shook his head over his own thoughts.

Mr. Davenport coughed sarcastically, and frowned to hide the effect which her blanched cheeks made upon him.

"I'm sorry to have called you out too early to begin the search," said Margaret, bitterly.

"Too early? by no means, my dear," cried the doctor, seating himself cozily near her; "it's never to early to do what's right. Now we're all ready to hear what you have got to say."

"I have told you surely enough in my letter for you to act upon," she answered, "without having to say any more. What do you say of the declaration I have made as to the man's ident.i.ty?"

"Most startling!" said the physician, in a quiet tone, as if it was really not startling at all.

"What have you to say of it?" she demanded of the lawyer, with an anxious look at his impenetrable countenance.

"Consider the absurdity of your suspicions," broke in Davenport, "the childishness and impossibility of your premises. How could an imposter act out St. Udo Brand's history? How could he know Colonel Brand's most private affairs, and his friends, and write with his hand, and have the same appearance, and cheat everybody--we among the rest, who saw him when he was a boy as often as I have fingers and toes? Oh, Miss Walsingham!"

"You wish me to marry Mortlake, do you?" she asked, with scorn.

"For Heaven's sake don't call him that!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Davenport. "If you call him that and he hears it, the Brand spirit will be very quiet for the first time if he doesn't end the slander in murder."

"It began in murder," retorted she, "that would be the fittest end, after all. But do not fear; I shall not alarm your colonel without proper cause. You really expect me to treat him as if he was St. Udo Brand?"

"Yes, until you have proofs to the contrary."

She sat with folded hands and pondered. An ashy pallor overspread her face. A mental gag was forced between her teeth; a mental rope was placed for her across a yawning chasm, and selfish hands were pushing her toward it, and selfish voices were urging her to cross alone.

"Very well," she breathed firmly, "I will bring you proofs that you will not venture to discredit. When I send for you again, come as promptly as you did to-day."

The executors were forced to depart with this arrangement, and rode back to Regis deep in discussion relating to their ward's sanity.

How long Margaret sat alone in the library she could not tell--an ominous foretaste of the grim future had shrouded her soul, and the dark hours pa.s.sed unheeded by. When she roused herself, it was to instant action.

She sat down before her desk and began to write a letter--her third appeal for help.

She wrote but one pa.s.sionate sentence, then her head sank between her hands.

"Who knows whether I shall live until it could be answered?" she moaned.

Bethinking herself, she tore the sheet and cast it into the heart of the fire, and took a new sheet; dashed off again but one sentence, signed her name, thrust it into an envelope, hurriedly sealing it, as if she feared her mind might change at any moment.

It was a telegram and ran thus:

"LADY JULIANA DUCIE:--Come at once to Castle Brand on a matter of life and death.

"MARGARET WALSINGHAM."

Then she dressed herself and drove down to Regis in the carriage, clutching the dispatch in her hand, and drawing back from view whenever she pa.s.sed a wayfarer, trembling lest her enemy should detect her in this move against his safety.

After an hour of feverish impatience, an answer came which satisfied her.

"I will come to-morrow night.

"LADY J. DUCIE."

She went out to her carriage with a triumphant air: she felt that she was one move ahead of the colonel.

"Lady Juliana shall strip him of his disguise," she thought, "and the executors shall be present to see the exposure."

She stopped before Mr. Davenport's office, wrote a line on her card requesting that he and Dr. Gay would come to the castle the following evening about seven o'clock, and then she hurried home.

The next day pa.s.sed with the anxious girl slowly enough; as the evening drew on, which she hoped would be the last of her enemy's imposture, her excitement became terrible; she was in that stage of over-strained endurance in which a triviality turns the brain.

She told the housekeeper to have a bedchamber prepared for a lady visitor, and heedless of her exclamations of wonder, directed her to send Symonds at a quarter to six to the railway station with the carriage, and to take whatever strangers were for the castle as secretly home as possible, so that no one in the village should know who they were.

"Lawk-a-mercy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Chetwode, "what's Seven Oak a coming to!

A body would think you was going to hide away a murderer, Miss Margaret dear."

"Not to hide away a murderer, but to discover one!" muttered the girl, turning from the colloquy.