Faithful Margaret Part 37

And, as a brave man would answer, so answered the honest Englishman, heaping epithets of scorn and anger on the little traitor. Attached to this was the memorandum:

"Calembours has parted with my man; not good for Calembours; he has broken the bargain. Thoms has stuck by Brand; invaluable Thoms; so will he stick by Brand while he lives. He says so. Has he very long to live?

No."

On the succeeding page came a sudden change; a few wild sentences in the breathlessness of rage.

"He has given me the slip. He has slipped the noose and got away. Where?

where? Have I lost him? have I lost my prize at the last trick, my Castle Brand, my good luck, my fair play, my amends for seven months of toil under his boot-heel? No, not while I have brain to plan, or body to track him. I swear to leave this book untouched until I have found him and left him a lump of clay."

Leaf by leaf is turned over; the pale hand stops and trembles down to her side.

Here is a note. If he has kept his vow, this note is a record of St.

Udo's murder. She reads a date, and her eyes seem to pulsate with blind fire.

"September 1st. The deed is done. Lost in the skurry of a midnight sortie. 'Killed in battle,' his men will say; but--Thoms knows better!

He tracked him with his long sleuth-hound through the swamps, and the surging mora.s.s, and the long, hot highway, the spikey groves, the dark fens, and through hunger and danger of death; and he found him! Why not keep his promise? He stole his history, habits, phrases, manners, friends; and now, the lesson being learned, Thoms may keep his promise, made to himself. He stooped this moonlit night upon the battle-field, and stole his master's life, and stood erect--not _Thoms, the ign.o.ble valet, but St. Udo, the heir of Castle Brand_!"

Margaret paused, sick and heart-quenched.

Memory brought back the vision of the battle-field, and of the wounded hero, and of the brooding a.s.sa.s.sin, and reason stood aghast at the manifest overturn of her natural laws.

"Grant me days enough to avenge him, high Heaven!" she cried, with a pa.s.sion of tears.

She would allow herself no luxury of sorrow; she repressed these tears, trimmed her candles--took up her bitter task again.

Part the third showed that the murderer had arrived in England; that he had lurked about the castle for a few days before presenting himself, and acquainted himself with as many necessary facts as possible. After this came the appearance of the pseudo-heir before the executors.

"I have stepped into the wrong man's shoes with marvelous ease, and I have seen my future wife. Could anything be more appropriate, I wonder, than for her to faint at sight of me? I am resolved to marry her. It wouldn't be fair play to silence _her_ as I silenced some one who is in his grave; and when we are man and wife I will tell her where she first saw her husband."

The second entry was not quite so confident:

"The girl is going to be troublesome. Confound her! why has she taken such a dislike to me?"

Entry the third still more expressive of alarm:

"What's this I hear? The girl left Gay's house without any explanation, and gone to Castle Brand. What does that mean? Has she taken anything into her head against _me_?

"I think she has seen with those mystical eyes of hers the deep ruts on my wrists and ankles; and I think she is looking back a dozen years to the man who lay in chains and cursed her cup of cold water. Confound her! I am afraid of her."

There were other allusions to her which made her eyes blaze with indignation, intermixed with careful entries of names or localities which might be useful to the adventurer; and still, step by step, the purpose of the man slowly unfolded itself. He had expected at first to deceive Margaret Walsingham with the rest, and to win the fortune by marrying her.

"A more monstrous fate," thought the girl, "than death."

But it soon appeared that she had betrayed her distrust, and he was quietly waiting a chance to remove her. One note broke out thus:

"The girl will be my ruin, unless _I shut the hatches_ on her. She has shown her hand to-day in three different attempts to make me betray myself. By Heaven, she will succeed if she tries that long; but I have made a counter plot which, clever as she is, she can't evade. I have been beforehand with her, and won the confidence of the executors. I have also announced my determination to propose to-morrow for her. If she refuses, that's a sign that I let the hatch drop; if she accepts, hold up the hatch a while, and give her another chance."

The result of his proposal showed how unlooked for her answer had been.

"She's a move in advance again--clever she devil; I am quite thrown out.

Proposed according to plan; was put off for a month. I think her demand of a month's time to consider means a month's time to run me to the end of my chain. My chain would run out in a week with her at the right end of it; so I suppose it must be once, twice, thrice, and _down goes the hatch_!"

The next entry was written with the sneer of a triumphant demon:

"Thought you would trip me, did you? Silly fool, to tamper with your crazy hatch-door! Don't you know that when it drops you will suffocate?

So you expected me to be caught by Lady Juliana Ducie, did you? No, no, my bride of death, I have pored over her picture too often. But for your fine intention you shall suffer, Margaret Walsingham!

"My lady is a mighty fine-feathered bird for _me_ to have fluttering round me. I have a mind to marry the marquis' daughter when the watch-dog of the castle has died of her little sickness; wouldn't that be fair play all round?"

The succeeding notes described two visits to London, in which the daring wretch had penetrated into the Marquis of Ducie's residence, and had private interviews with my lady, who seemed to be straining every nerve to win him from Miss Walsingham; and it closed with the ominous sentence:

"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey, and _drop that hatch_!"

The diary in the note-book had come to an end. Mortlake's secrets were hers now. Mortlake's course of crime was run, if she could live to give them to the world.

Margaret once more trimmed her candles, replenished the drowsy fire, paced up and down her room, and then sat down and commenced to copy such parts of the entries as bore directly upon the conspiracy.

Hour followed hour; the candles burned down; the fire wasted to white ashes; the wintry wind moaned without, carrying sleet on its wings.

Still the girl's strength held out; she wrote with energy the dark record which was to ruin the murderer of St. Udo Brand. Long past midnight found her at the last page, and at the last sentence:

"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey, and drop that hatch."

The hoa.r.s.e baying of the dogs roused her to things present. She rose from her cramped position, cold and trembling with terror.

Who was lurking about so late? Her enemy?

The candles dropped into their little wells of boiling wax and expired.

She stood in the pitchy darkness, listening.

The angry babel of howling dogs filled her ears again. A sudden pause; they, too, were listening. Then a yelp of canine rage and eagerness.

Margaret groped in the box for another candle and a match; fitted the candle into the tall silver candlestick, lit it, and gathered up her papers, while the flame was as yet small and sickly as a far-off star.

She hid them all in a compartment of her desk, carried the desk to a closet, locked it, and hid the key beneath a loose edge of the carpet.

"I may pay the forfeit of my life for these proofs," she thought; "but Davenport and Gay shall see them, whatever the risk, and my work shall descend to their hands if I am removed."

She was calm, but a curious pulse was beating in her ears and deadening her sense of hearing. Through it she could swear that strange noises were in the air, which were entirely foreign to any that could be caused within the house.

The bounding pulse still beat in her ears, and she stood intently waiting.

What it was she knew not, which smote her whole being into intensity--her hair bristled.

There it was again--through the thick shutter and ma.s.sive window--the deep breathing of a man who has been hard at work, and stops his operations to listen.

Could it be that her enemy was at the window?