Faithful Margaret Part 48

On the whole his visit did much to heighten Margaret's feverish impatience, and filled her with some of his own sanguine hopes.

When the young gentleman had gone, Margaret wandered through the wide, echoing rooms with a sense of freedom which she had never experienced before; a feeling of affection for these familiar chambers, for the sake of her who had owned them, and of him who should have now possessed them.

How she had loved the tender-hearted and freakish Madam Brand, no soul save herself and that dead woman had known; and loving her as she did, could she do else than lay a like sentiment at the feet of her only kinsman, the hapless St. Udo.

Pacing through these lofty rooms the lonely girl thought over her checkered past; she breathed a sigh over the pathetic memory of her fond and foolish patroness; she gave a smile of scorn to the man who had come like a curse in the n.o.ble St. Udo's stead; the hateful impostor, whose last abject depredation had been but the type of his crawling, insatiable nature, which, sleuth-hound like, held on to the prey to the very last, and made off with a miserable mouthful of it rather than nothing.

But when she came to the portrait of St. Udo Brand, in the long crimson dining-room, the fierce flicker softened in her yearning eyes, and a sacred, tender smile dawned on her lips.

She studied the grand, pa.s.sionate-speaking countenance, whose features were cast in a mold fitted to express the n.o.blest emotions, till the soulful eyes seemed to seek hers with a living beam of grat.i.tude; till the fine lips seemed to thrill with a gentle smile, and the souls of St.

Udo Brand and Margaret Walsingham appeared to have met face to face for the first time, and to hold sweet communion together.

Great tears slowly dropped from Margaret's pa.s.sionate eyes and washed her cheeks, her tender lip quivered with the thoughts that were swaying her heart; for a quick wild pang of grief smote her to think that he was in his grave.

He had scorned her, he had trampled her under foot, and she forgave him all, and wept that he was dead.

For oh, the heart of such a woman is capable of a love, which, to love of softer women, is as glowing wine to water, as the towering, scorching flame of the red volcano to the chill pale ray of the winter morn.

In the afternoon of the same day, Mrs. Chetwode came into Margaret's room with the news that Mr. Davenport was below, inquiring for an immediate interview.

"He do look raised, Miss Margaret," said Mrs. Chetwode; "he snaps round like an angry watch-dog."

He came up to Miss Walsingham's parlor and burst in, hot, red, loud, and angry.

"Ha! you have seen fit to return to your post, sir," cried Margaret, woman-like antic.i.p.ating the fray.

"Return, madam!" fired the lawyer. "Am I here too soon for you, madam--how long did you want me to stay?"

"I did not want you to go, sir," said Margaret.

"Hear her, oh, hear her!" screamed the lawyer, appealing to the cornice, "if that is not upright and downright insanity, show me a maniac in Bedlam. Madam," with grim pleasantry, "shall you banish me to the top of Mont Blanc in your next letter about a mythological Colonel Brand?"

She maintained a dignified silence.

"Madam, since your little scheme to get both your guardians out of the way has succeeded so well, will you do me the favor of confessing what you have done with the colonel?"

"I have unmasked him, Mr. Davenport, and shown the world a murderer."

"What the duse do you mean, young lady?"

"He is proved an impostor, Mr. Davenport, believe me for once."

"Pig-headed as ever, I see," groaned the lawyer. "Come tell me why you sent me to Bala?" in a wheedling tone. "Be calm and give your reasons frankly."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I did not send you to Bala."

"Confound the woman!" shouted Davenport, "she denies everything. She is mad! she'll deny the work of her own hand next, I do believe. Why did you write me this letter, Miss Margaret Walsingham?" (s.n.a.t.c.hing it from his pocket and waving it like a banner of victory before her eyes.) "Your own handwriting--your own signature, madam. Please do not shock me by denying it."

She looked at the letter--her own familiar chirography started her out of countenance.

Truly, Roland Mortlake's was an accommodating genius.

Thus it ran:

"DEAR MR. DAVENPORT:--I have just receive an extraordinary telegram from some Dr. Lythwaite in Bala, Merioneth. I inclose it to you. Does it not convince you that my suspicions have a just foundation? If you can withstand the evidence of this stranger, who has never heard of my suspicions, you are willfully shutting your eyes to a plain fact.

"St. Udo Brand lies ill at Bala--send Davenport to receive his instructions to Gelert's Hotel, Coventry street.'

"That is what the telegram says; now I request that for once you will obey my wish, and fly thither by the first train.

"Tell no one, not even Gay, for he is in the confidence of this wretch here. Heaven knows whether you are not the same.

"Yours, anxiously,

"MARGARET WALSINGHAM."

In the envelope was the bogus telegram; no wonder that the lawyer, suspicious though he was, had been completely deceived this time.

"I can show you as strange an epistle, which I received," cried Margaret, going to her desk for Dr. Gay's purported letter, and handing it to Mr. Davenport.

He read it and turned it over in blank surprise.

"Extraordinary!" muttered the lawyer. "Could Gay have got another telegram! Then you didn't send the doctor off, did you?"

"No, indeed, Mr. Davenport, nor you, either. Your untimely absence almost cost me my life, as you would have heard had you made any inquiries as to the state of affairs at Emersham's law office, before you came over here. We have all been infamously duped, sir, by a wretch unworthy of the name of man--but he shall soon expiate his crimes on the scaffold. All these communications have been cleverly forged by no other than Roland Mortlake, who is now flying for his life from the officers of justice."

"Extraordinary! most extraordinary!" aspirated Mr. Davenport.

He was getting very quiet, his purple face was fading into a frightened gray, his rousing tones were sinking into a soft dejection; he began to scent a mistake from afar, and to shoulder the humiliation.

And at this auspicious moment, Mrs. Chetwode opened the door and announced Dr. Gay, just arrived, to demand his explanation.

The lawyer stepped to the door to warn Dr. Gay of his error, and shook hands with the solemnity of a s.e.xton greeting the chief mourner at a funeral.

"There's been a terrible blunder here," said he, spiritlessly; "we've both allowed ourselves to be made confounded fools of by a rascal. Have you heard anything in the town?"

"Not I," returned the little doctor, who looked as if he had not slept for a week. "I've just come home, and rushed over here as fast as a horse's legs could carry me. How are you now, Miss Margaret?"

"Well, thank you, and overjoyed to see you back again. I feel safe now,"

murmured Margaret, looking up in her counselor's face with a gentle glance. "There will be an end to all misunderstanding now, and we shall be friends as we used to be."

Mr. Davenport was wiping his forehead with his enormous bandanna, and looking very foolish; and Dr. Gay stared from one to the other, and got more mystified every minute.

"Have you made anything of this queer business?" asked he.

"Gad! sir, I think we have," returned the lawyer; "and more than we bargained for. We've caught a rascal in it!"

"Rascal enough!" sighed the little doctor, wearily. "He led me a fine dance of it. I suppose you want to hear what induced me to fly off at a tangent to the other side of England, don't you? A Welsh gentleman, calling himself Mr. Grayly, a tall, red-faced blue-eyed chap in a fur coat, called on me at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, with the strange tidings that he had come from New Radnor in Wales--fancy that--and got me to believe it, too, the rogue--where the true Colonel Brand was lying sick at the country house of a brother officer in the Guards. I was struck dumb, and didn't know what to think, till a dispatch came per telegraph from the colonel himself, begging me to come and see him, and a.s.suring me that Grayly would tell me all about him. So Grayly hustled me off on the half-past nine train, before I had time to think of anything. At ---- in Berks my friend the Welshman got out, saying that he had an hour's business to transact there, but that I could go on, and he would overtake me in Cirencester; so off I went alone, thinking no evil. But I've never seen him since, the dog."