Faithful Margaret Part 63

she could not forget what true love had been to her.

"She loved the boy, she nurtured him with care, and he was her only consolation when her heart was crushed with pain and what she then called--guilt.

"When her protector died, she married an American who took her out to Washington; but by this time her heart was so old, and cold, and weary of beating that it could hold no love for any man, and she devoted herself to the pretty boy, and brought him up a little gentleman, although she never dared treat him as her son for fear she should hate him some day for his wicked father's sake.

"She sent the boy to the North to gain a finished education, and lived very wearily with her jealous husband, finding her only amus.e.m.e.nt in attracting the homage of the men she met, and repaying it with scorn.

"At last she grew too restive under the yoke, and having had experience before of the evils of jealousy in a husband, she declined rehearsing her part a second time, and forestalled the humiliation by eloping with a Virginian planter.

"Hapless wretch! Can you blame her, dear count? no, no, we shall blame it all on that perfidious little tailor who broke her heart at first.

"She liked the sumptuous life on the fine plantation pa.s.sably well, her mansion was admirably arranged, her _menage_ was fine, her slaves numerous and docile; Dolores reigned royally.

"But her malevolent destiny could not leave her long in comfort, poor soul; it swooped upon her when she was almost contented, and with inflexible hand pushed her into misery once more.

"The war broke out, the slaves fled, monsieur, her kind friend went to Richmond and got a company, and Dolores was left in the great house with only one quadroon girl and a couple of old negroes to protect her from danger.

"In the second year of the war, her fate was sealed.

"One day a detachment of Federal soldiers encamped in the plantation, and two colonels came to the mansion to demand shelter for their wounded.

"The terrified Dolores was hastening down stairs to see them, when a voice which she had not heard for eighteen years sang a gay French _chanson_, which she last had heard from Ladislaus Schmolnitz, on the pretty banks of Theiss.

"Friends, this wretched woman recognized that voice as belonging to her once loved little tailor.

"Ah! her heart was not dead after all, it stirred in its long death-sleep, and thrilled with joy. Oh, Heaven! why is love so deathless in a woman's breast when it is ever her curse, her ruin?

"Well, she fled to her room again, and disguised herself as well as she could, for she yearned to meet her renegade husband, and to converse with him unsuspected. She did so. She concealed her pretty figure with clumsy padding, she browned her white face, she covered her yellow hair with a wig, and entering, she bowed low to her renegade husband and spoke only French, which he had never before heard her speak.

"But he could not feel at ease, he gazed suspiciously again and again at her, her eyes recalled the old love story by the banks of the Theiss--he feared the French madame of middle age.

"What her emotions were, it is scarce worth telling. She was happy to know that he was alive, she exulted that she had seen him, but she was bound to the kind planter and feared to betray herself to Schmolnitz, she let him go, not intending to reveal herself.

"But, at the moment of parting, a volley of shot was fired at the front of the mansion by some Confederate troops, who had surprised the encampment, and a cannon ball crashed in the doorway, almost in the midst of the little group in the hall.

"Dolores was startled out of her disguise and clung madly to the little tailor, crying out that she was his Dolores, and that she loved him still.

"Simple idiot! when she could live in palaces if she chose!

"Dear friends, that abject little tailor had the brutality to shake her off, to swear at her; to protest that he had suspected as much, and to fling her from him in a dead faint in the hall and escape with his comrade.

"Ah! count, could you believe that a fiend in man's form could be so dastardly?

"But Dolores did not fall a victim to the cruelty of the small Mephistopheles; her servants carried her out of the house, which was in flames, and she soon escaped to Richmond, where she fell ill, and on recovering learned that her friend, the planter, was killed in battle.

"Some months had pa.s.sed, but this insane creature was so enslaved by her pa.s.sion for that unworthy man that no sooner was she recovered from her illness than she determined to search out the little tailor, and display her true beauty, which was singularly heightened by the years which had pa.s.sed since they parted.

"She seriously hoped to win back his worthless heart, and dreamed of nothing but of endowing him with the wreck of her fortune, which was still quite a handsome possession.

"So she took to visiting the hospitals and prisons, fancying that he might have been wounded or captured; but without success.

"No wonder, for the ineffable rascal had long since deserted from the North to the South, and was plying the profession of spy, under the ostensible one of commissary-general for the stores for the wounded.

"At last, Dolores chanced to ride out to a station where she had heard there were some Northern soldiers lying wounded; and there she came upon her own son, the dear consolation of her wretched life, lying starving on a handful of straw, and the place surrounded by Northern soldiers, who had just come to rescue their comrades.

"The unfortunate woman was just in time to see her brave boy die, and then, indeed, she thought that her cup of misery was full--but no, Heaven is prodigal of its punishments to such as she.

"While mourning over her boy, the renegade commissary rode up with his staff, intending to remove the invalids to Richmond, and was instantly attacked by the Federals; Dolores filled with mad grief, drew her old-time husband into the shed and bade him look upon his son, and the next moment beheld him struck down by a ball at her feet.

"She thought him dead, poor wretch, and lifted his head to her lap, and told him that she loved him with a love that could never die, and swore that she would water the graves of her husband and her son with her own heart-blood.

"When the skirmish was over the Northerners moved on with the wounded man as their prisoner, and this woman rode beside him, leaving her dear son dead in the shanty.

"At midnight, when the party stopped to rest, it was found that Schmolnitz was not dead, and he soon recovered enough to speak.

"Dolores bent over him, his head in her lap, and hoped that he would recognize her; but he did not, in the gloom, until she spoke, entreating him for the sake of her love years ago to take her back to him.

"Most brutally he repudiated her, a.s.suring her that she could not be his wife, and that he would never own her as such.

"Then, indeed, she sounded the shallow waters of his soul, and desired revenge.

"She would have stabbed him to the heart even then, if she had not been prevented, but she swore beside the heartless wretch that she should have vengeance; then she and her attendants rode back to Richmond.

"Months pa.s.sed, all trace of the man was lost to her; but patiently she searched for him until she found a clew.

"After many adventures, she found him in this city, and what think you were the t.i.tles which this little tailor had a.s.sumed?

"Dear count, will you not make a guess?

"Friends, I believe our honored count is indisposed--how pale he has become! Little wonder, for he sympathizes with every word I say.

"Do not, good Count de Calembours, forsake us until my story is completed.

"You must go? Then I shall hasten.

"Friends, the miserable little tailor, this renegade, dastard and spy, had entered the highest circles in New York under the t.i.tle which this man wears--the Count de Calembours!"

She swooped forward, she seized the arm of the retreating chevalier, and wheeled him round until he faced the company.

He was frightfully pale, his eyes flickered ominously, he glared helplessly at his tormentor, the beautiful bride-elect.

"What! has my _fiance_ nothing to say?" jibed madame, with flashing eyes, green as a tigress. "Is he choked by a skein of thread? Felled by a thimble? Stabbed by a tailor's needle? Fie, fie! Ladislaus Schmolnitz, to let the coat fit you so well! To stand dumb as your own goose! Oh, cowardly little tailor!"

Shrilly the scoffing denunciation rang out; stepping back a pace she pointed her finger in his face and laughed wildly; and the good company, suddenly catching the resistless drollery of the farce, burst into a long, convulsive, mocking peal of merciless laughter, till the room rang again, the gla.s.ses jingled, and the poor little tailor threw himself on his knees before the ferocious Nemesis and begged for mercy.

But the good company pointed their fingers in the wretch's appalled face and hissed him down; and the air seemed alive with ten thousand serpents, and the room swam around with eyes of mockery and ire; and deafened, horror-stricken, and utterly routed, the poor little tailor fell forward on the carpet in a dead swoon.

When he recovered his senses, the room was deserted, the lights were out, and one small, airy figure stood at a distant door with a taper in her hand and looking on the fallen hero.