Faithful Margaret Part 68

"Her own words--that, in that contingency, Margaret Walsingham would never marry me--her own words."

"You believe in your Perdita's love?" cried the lawyer, throwing his last ball with triumph straight at the bull's eye.

"If n.o.ble tenderness, and devotion such as hers, is love, I do, most solemnly."

"Then she'll do as your Perdita, what she wouldn't do as your enemy, Margaret Walsingham. She'll even lower her pride to marry you, if she thinks it necessary to your happiness."

But Mr. Davenport was forced to modify his satisfaction, when, on seeking an audience with his ward, the old negress who had that morning taken Margaret's place in the colonel's sick room, brought from her chamber a note from the young lady.

"She's been and gone," said the woman; "and this is for Ma.s.sa Davenport." It said to the staring lawyer:

"DEAR MR. DAVENPORT:--I have thought it best at once to proceed to the Stanhopes', as the situation might become filled up, and all danger of infection has pa.s.sed from me by this time.

"You will see that the colonel is taken excellent care of until the English steamer arrives, when I am sure he will be able to travel; and you will accompany him to Seven-Oak Waaste, and be as useful to him and as faithful as you have been to me.

"I am going without bidding you good-by. Perhaps you will be a little angry; but, dear Mr. Davenport, it was far better than if I had. I have been a great bother to you from first to last, haven't I? But you will forgive me, now that our ways lie so widely apart.

"Tell Colonel Brand that I wish him to forgive the deception I have practiced upon him; but that I shall never regret the four weeks in which I watched him from the brink of the grave, and that if he can accept a message from Margaret Walsingham, it is that he may always think kindly of his Perdita, and try to keep her apart from his remembrance of a presumed adventuress.

"Your affectionate ward, M. W."

"Here's a pretty to do!" cried Davenport, bustling into the invalid's room with the little double sheet of note paper fluttering in his hand.

"Of all queer dodges, this is the last. She's gone, sir, this morning to her situation at the Stanhopes', and here's the note that she's obliging enough to write by way of good-by to you."

St. Udo took the note and scanned each pretty character, while his cheeks became bloodless as snow. It was blistered with tears, and it seemed to breathe in every line its quiet and patient sorrow, and to have become resigned to it, as if there was no remedy.

What the colonel's emotions were, to read this little note of his Perdita's, no one may know. He sat up in bed, and looked wildly round him, while the lawyer glared, and dumbly bit his nails.

"Let us drive instantly to the Stanhopes'."

"You? Humph! You look like a man going driving!"

"I tell you I shall drive there if I should faint every mile of the way."

He sprang from the bed, and signified the sincerity of his intention by fainting on the spot.

Three days afterwards, Colonel Brand was lying quite alone on his sofa--his first day up--reading, or rather telling himself that he was reading. Every sound startled him, causing him to relinquish his book and listen with deepening eyes; and sometimes a fancied voice in the street below would send flames of excitement shooting across his pallid face.

Three days since the lawyer had left him; three days of doubt, and hope, and despair.

Had she loved him? Was that calm good-by to him from a heart indifferent? or did it hide beneath its cold exterior the smoldering pa.s.sion which sometimes her eyes had seemed to express?

Dear Margaret! Generous girl!

And memory took up her virtues one by one, and fondly turned them over, while fancy told him what his life might be with such a wife as she.

And even while he mourned with fading hopes over the memory of her whom he had pa.s.sionately loved as his Perdita, his chamber-door was briskly opened, and in walked Lawyer Davenport.

"Good-morning, sir! Glad to see you up! In honor of the day, eh?"

"Have you seen her?"

"Ha! first question. Nothing about how I enjoyed my trip, or stood it after my illness; only 'Have you seen her?' No thanks to you for your polite inquiries after me--I _have_ seen her."

"And--what have you to tell me?"

"Come, now--what do you expect? You, who have such a poor opinion of the fair s.e.x, shouldn't look for much from 'em."

"Little enough would I expect from any other woman under the sun, but from Margaret Walsingham, all that makes a woman pure, right in heart, grand in spirit."

"I found her at Mr. Stanhope's, ill and sorrowful----"

"My poor child!"

"Quite prostrated, and unfit for her duties--Mrs. Stanhope full of concern, the children out on the beach with their black nurse. You should have seen her, when they sent her down from her room to me."

"I wish I had."

"Her eyes couldn't have been fuller of love and pleasure if it had been you, instead of me; I never received such a beauty-glance in all my days! And her first words were twice as polite as yours, sir--they expressed her delight in seeing _me_, not inquiries about a third party.

'Oh, Mr. Davenport, I never thought of this kindness. Have you come to bid me good-by?' Not a word you see, about you, colonel; nor a thought either, I'll be bound. Ten to one if she would have brought you in at all to the conversation, if I hadn't asked her plump and plain, if she didn't mean to give the colonel his property, after all?

"'Why,' says she, flas.h.i.+ng a glance at me, to see if I meant it, and then turning her face away, 'have I not intrusted you with it, to give over to him? What obstacle can there be?'

"'You don't do his fine character much justice in this transaction, though you always vaunted it up to Gay and me,' I said. 'If he had been a paltry money-hunter, you couldn't have served him much worse.'

"'He is satisfied, is he not?' cried she.

"Then I drew a horrible picture of your despair upon finding that she had gone, and how you fainted in trying to prepare to follow her, and--trust, me for making up a case! The last of it was her hanging on my shoulder, and crying over my broadcloth, and sobbing:

"'Take me back to him, Mr. Davenport; how could I have been so cruel as to leave him in his weakness, uncared for! Take me back again.'"

"And so----"

"Well, now, I rather enjoy the mighty interest with which you survey me!

And so Mrs. Stanhope granted me an interview, in which I told her to look out for another governess, as Miss Walsingham had been sent for on very particular business, to go home to England, and Miss Margaret and I had a very nice little trip back. I have, you may be sure, spared no eloquence in keeping Miss Margaret's alarms up about you, and she is waiting below, doubtless with her heart in her mouth, to know whether you're dead or alive."

"What! Is she here? Let me go for my fair girl this----"

"Fair and softly, my young sir. I have a proposition to make, before I let you out of my power. What day of the month is this?"

"Twenty-fifth."

"And what must be done before the twenty-eighth? Eh? Don't you know?

Miss Margaret must be wooed and won before the twenty-eighth. And why?

Because Madam Brand's will was written on the twenty-eighth of last March, and the year in which you were to marry your co-heir pa.s.ses in three days, and after that, according to the will, you can't have one inch of Seven-Oak Waaste. What does that necessitate, then? (Oh, young people, what would you do without me!) Why, you must marry her, colonel--by Heaven! you must--before the twenty-eighth! What do you think of that for a little romance?"

"Too much of Heaven's brightness--too little of earth's shadows. You see I don't deserve that she should love me."