Faithful Margaret Part 61

A funeral emerged from a court hard by--a funeral which was composed of the clergyman, an old man weeping over his dead, and tottering feebly after, and four negroes carrying the bier. They flitted by like phantoms, casting apathetic glances after the old man, the boatman, and the young lady who were mounting the hill to that lonely house on its brow.

They entered the grove, and with one accord paused and gazed toward the house, and listened, and looked in each others faces for encouragement.

The door was ajar, the windows all open, and the fair white curtains, fluttering low adown among the climbing grapes and budding roses, were limp and yellow with nights of dew and days of rust, but not a living face looked out through the silent panes, not a sound broke the deep and breathless silence.

These men were brave men, but which of them would venture within these desolate walls where death triumphant reigned.

Suddenly Margaret slipped her hand from the lawyer's clasp, and fled like a spirit into the silent house--fear, hope, and love giving her the courage which these others could not summon.

She traversed the pa.s.sages, where all was wild confusion, she looked into every room, but the drivers of the dead carts had been there before her--each bed was vacant, each chamber that used to echo to the careless jests of the soldiers was dull and lifeless as they.

She fled up the staircase, she opened another chamber-door--it was the last.

It was a wide, dim chamber, whose close-drawn curtains banished all the light, and between her and the window loomed a great white object--a bed with the hangings drawn close about it.

No breath, no sound--oh, Heaven! is he not here? Is he dead and gone forever?

A long sigh breaks the blank silence: a moan steals helplessly from the great white mausoleum which entombs the man.

She glides forward and draws back the shroud-like folds from window, then from bed, and the yellow light falls upon a flushed and foam-flecked face, and upon two toiling, twitching hands.

And, blessed be Heaven! this is surely St. Udo Brand, and there is life in him yet!

The lawyer enters and tries to drag her back, and fills the room with his beseeching clamor; but she breaks wildly from him, and returns to St. Udo Brand.

And, Heaven be praised! she thinks that she is in time, and that this dear soul may yet be held on earth.

So she lifts the hot head to her arm, and lays her loving hand upon the heart that is almost still, and she kisses tenderly the shrunken forehead where death fain would print his seal.

And she whispers from her n.o.ble heart:

"Oh, G.o.d! give me back his life! oh, G.o.d! give me back his life!"

And the old lawyer weeps, and repeats after her the half-articulate prayer.

One glance of anguish she casts at her poor old friend, and past him, up into Heaven, it says:

"Man cannot help us, but G.o.d will!" and then she turns again to the beloved one.

He has wronged her, hated her, maligned her; no single throb has his hushed heart ever beat for her; but she has forgiven him long ago, if she has anything to forgive. She is warming that chilling heart against her own; she is watching that disfigured face which can never be disfigured to her; she loves him faithfully.

When Reed comes back from his search for a doctor, they find the old lawyer sitting by the window, with his wet eyes covered by his hands, and the woman kneeling by the bed, with the sick man's head on her breast.

"You must leave this place," says the doctor, in affright.

"No, I will nurse him best," she smiles.

So she has her way, good, faithful Margaret.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

A REVELATION.

Madame Hesslein, standing on the deck where Margaret had bidden her adieu--weeping in her lace handkerchief until it was wet, and waving it after her until it was dry, seemed so well worth losing a thousand pounds for, that the Chevalier Calembours quickly overcame his sincere regrets at the mad Margaret's departure into the jaws of death, and, flinging all uncomfortable emotions into the limbo of forgetfulness, he abandoned himself to the care of this fair creature who was left upon his hands.

"There they go, these doomed ones!" sobbed madame, with a great gush of tears. "Farewell, farewell, poor devoted Griselda."

"Be content, dear madame, I do not forsake thee--take comfort of thy slave!"

"Oh, chevalier, is there ever a man on this stale old globe who can show a heart like faithful Margaret's?"

"_Mon Dieu!_ I know such a man."

"I do not. I have yet to meet the man who is content to love without one hope of recompense; who counts it joy to lay his all at the feet of the one who has scorned him--who rushes with a willing soul to brave death in the service of his enemy."

"Madame is skeptical, madame is cruel. Ah--could she read the heart of Calembours----"

"Ha, ha, ha!" mocked madame, wildly, "perhaps I can. Perhaps I have met with such before, and sifting it well, found it the heart of a fiend.

But enough, 'tis a long time since I have believed in love, and faithfulness, and such mawkish sentimentality; now, do you know what I believe in, monsieur?"

"_Pardieu_, no--cruel that thou art."

"Ambition is my G.o.d," breathed madame, tauntingly. "I will climb to the highest step of the social ladder, and there I'll feel content."

The chevalier grew pale with envy.

"If madame would accept my poor help to raise her to her throne," sighed he.

"_Yours!_" she interrupted, scornfully.

"Madame, I am not what I seem."

"Faith, I don't think you are."

"Madame, on the honor of a chevalier, I possess some fine t.i.tles and estates."

"Foolish man, to cloak your royalty with this disguise!"

"I am Count de S. S. Turin."

"I salute you, count."

"I am Knight of the Three Sicilies."

"Receive my obeisance, knight."