CHAPTER XLIV.
Ormebar Castle presented a gay and festive scene--such as had not been beheld within its walls since the time of the first Charles. A number of the neighboring nobility and gentry had been invited to pass a few days there, in a sport already beginning to fall into disuse, although it had been revived for a short time by the favor of Charles the Second. A mew had long been attached to the castle; and the hawks of Ormebar were famous throughout the country. The merry monarch himself had even considered the present of a couple of pair of well-reclaimed birds of that breed as a great gift; and a grand hawking party at Ormebar was sure to attract all that was gay and graceful in the county. Two facts were remarked as strange by the guests: that the young Lord Coldenham was not present at the castle, for which various unsatisfactory reasons were assigned; and that Margaret Woodhall, publicly announced as the affianced bride of her cousin Robert--though in the castle with her father, and appearing occasionally at meal-time in the hall--shared not in any of the sports or amusements which were going on, and when seen, came with a pale cheek and sorrowful brow, self-involved in her own thoughts, and smiling not at the gayest jests or most pleasant amusements. She seemed to take no interest in any thing. She hardly appeared to notice aught around her. She looked like a person walking in a dream, and that a sad one; and vain was every effort to call her attention, or to awaken her interest. Lady Coldenham for several days seemed to take no heed of this conduct--let it pass as if it were undeserving a thought; but at length, one day, as Margaret sat alone in her room, the imperious woman entered, and seated herself with an air of proud disdain.
"I come," she said, "to inquire what you mean, my pretty cousin, by your treatment of my son."
"Me, madam," said Margaret, gazing at her with a look of abhorrence; "I have no particular meaning in my conduct."
"Then I wish you would have," replied Lady Coldenham, bitterly; "and a very different meaning from that which every one puts upon your demeanor. I wish you would mean to please your promised husband--to show him some sort of courtesy, if not respect."
Margaret was roused. "Respect!" she said; "what should I respect in Robert Woodhall?"
"You should respect him whom you have promised to marry," said Lady Coldenham; "you should respect the house from which he springs."
"My promise to marry him," replied Margaret, with cold calmness, "was cruelly wrung from me in a moment of the greatest agony. It is sufficient that I keep it, without exacting more. He can not make me more than his slave. Knowing that I abhorred him, he persisted in a suit which he ought to have felt could only make me abhor him more--obtained from my poor father, by what means I know not, a solemn promise that I should be his--instigated my father to take advantage of the most terrible circumstances to obtain a pledge from me. And now, Lady Coldenham, my father will redeem his vow. I will redeem my pledge. My hand shall be his; the estates, which he covets more than my hand, will be his likewise; but ask nothing further. My heart never can be his--my esteem, my respect, my love, he can never obtain."
"Impudent girl!" exclaimed Lady Coldenham; "this to his mother?"
"Ay, to any one, to every one, to all who question me on the subject," answered Margaret. "I am no longer the timid child whom you once knew, to quail at your presence, and to shrink from your proud eye. You and yours have taken from me all hope and all fear. You have strengthened me by misery. You have made life valueless--death a blessing to be coveted, and not far off, I trust. My father has brought me here, Lady Coldenham, against my will; but I trust at least that the privacy of my own chamber will be allowed to me."
"Good! mighty good!" cried Lady Coldenham, with a scornful laugh. "Now mark me, Mistress Margaret Woodhall, we will tame you a little. You seek, I know, to put off this marriage till the latest possible hour; but as we find that kindness has no effect upon you, we will try sterner measures. We will not allow you to trifle with us; the marriage shall take place soon--immediately."
"That will be as my father shall decide," replied Margaret, in as calm a tone as before. "I have always held that a man, doomed to die, shows himself a coward if he attempts to put off his execution for a moment. You have made me brave, Lady Coldenham; you can not frighten me."
"Ha, ha!" said the old lady, rising with an air of triumph; "lucky that no compulsion will be needed;" and she passed majestically out of the room.
Well might she triumph, for the object of her visit to Margaret was attained with less difficulty than she had expected. No opposition had been shown to a speedy marriage, and she hastened to Lord Woodhall to tell him that his daughter consented.
The old man could hardly believe his ears; but the assurance of Lady Coldenham was strong, and she told him, with a slight gloss, what had passed between her and Margaret.
Robert Woodhall came to her aid, seeming to understand his mother's schemes almost by intuition. Between them both, they soon obtained Lord Woodhall's consent that a very early day should be fixed, and preparations were immediately begun.
Margaret bore up well when the public eye was upon her. She quailed not, she wavered not; no tear was seen to dim her eyelids; not a word of opposition did she utter. Her character seemed to be entirely changed. The frank, simple, timid girl, blooming in rich health, and agitated by manifold emotions, was now the cold, grave, firm, decided woman--pale as monumental marble, and unmoved by any of the passing things of life. A petrifying hand had touched her--that of despair, and she was indeed no longer the same.
Robert Woodhall saw it all--understood it all. But he had no pity: he rejoiced.
Margaret was more alone than ever. She seldom, when she could avoid it, quitted her own room. She left to others all preparations, and only stipulated that the marriage should be performed by the good Irish clergyman who had been for so many years her father's chaplain--who had known her mother, and been the friend of her childhood. She knew that he had many faults; but she knew that he had many virtues too, and she thought that his familiar face would be a comfort and a support to her.
She was sitting alone one day in a little chamber communicating with her bed-room, while all the family and guests were absent on some gay occasion at Dorchester, when her maid announced to her that Doctor M'Feely had come to visit her.
"Bring him hither--bring him hither," cried Margaret, with the first appearance of eagerness she had displayed for many a day. "Here we shall not be interrupted, and I want much to speak with him."
In two minutes more, Doctor M'Feely, with his portly person and buoyant step, swung into the room, and, taking her hands in his, exclaimed, "Ah, my dear child--my dear young lady, that is--I am glad to see you again, but not to see you looking so. Bother it, Mistress Margaret, they have worried all the color out of your cheeks. They used to bloom like a couple of roses in a summer's day, but now they are like lilies in the shade. Well, man's a curious beast! I would not have had a hand in withering those roses to be Archbishop of Canterbury."
"The stem on which they grew will soon wither too," said Margaret, sadly. "The tree is dead at the heart, doctor, and can never bloom again."
"Don't say that, Mistress Margaret--don't say that, my dear child," cried the good parson; "that's just what I came to see you about, with just the least possible hope that one way or another--what between representations and denunciations--oh, that I were but a Roman Catholic, and believed in transubstantiation; wouldn't I curse them from the altar, and put a great seal upon them!--but, as I was saying, I do think something might be done; though what the foul fiend, the man intends to do, I don't know; for your father seems to me like a rock; and as to Robert Woodhall, he is mischief itself, and the more he thinks he vexes you, the more he'll do it. Couldn't you get up early one moonlight morning, my darling, and just make a run of it? There's a young man on the other side of the water who would be glad enough to hold you to his heart, and I'd go over and marry you to prevent mischief."
"Hush, hush, hush!" cried Margaret, clasping her hands wildly. "Oh forbear, forbear, my good friend! No," she continued, "my father has called down the curse of God upon his head if he does not give me to Robert Woodhall. I have consented, in order to save poor Ralph's life; and I will be honest. I will keep my word, though it kill me."
"Ay, but wasn't that word cheated out of you, my darling?" asked the parson, earnestly. "Did they not persuade you that poor Ralph had killed your brother Harry? If they did, I can show you in this paper here that it was one of the biggest lies that ever was told. I may show you the paper, dear Mistress Margaret; for, though it was given to me in confidence--sub sigillo confessionis, as I should say if I were a Romanist--God help the benighted people, and the king at the back of them--I was permitted by the letter to bring it forward, if they tried Ralph for the murder, and to show it to you if need be. Now I say I can prove from this--"
"No need--no need," replied Margaret, laying her hand upon his arm. "There is only one thing you can do for me, and that I wish you much to do. I have never been deceived in regard to Ralph's innocence of my brother's death--I have always done him justice; but I want you to tell him, Doctor M'Feely--I want you to tell him hereafter" (and the tears rolled plentifully down her face) "that Margaret loved him to the last hour she was permitted to love any one on earth. At the altar I renounce all earthly love. The ceremony might as well be my funeral as my marriage, for it consigns my heart to the tomb, and leaves my spirit only to seek its Maker. Thank God, I have wept again! I believe these tears will save my reason."
The good clergyman wept too--wept like a child; but in the midst of his tears, he kept feeling in his pocket till he brought forth an unsealed letter, from the midst of which he took out another paper. "But what answer do you mean to give to this man?" he asked, totally forgetting that poor Margaret knew not who the man was. "He's a strange creature, and deals with the devil, I've little doubt. I spent a couple of hours with him one day, and he told me all manner of things--a learned man, too. I was his match in Latin, but he beat me to mud in Greek; and as to Hebrew and Arabic, Lord ha' mercy upon us!"
"Who--who?" cried Margaret; "do you mean Moraber?"
"Oh, ay, just Moraber," answered the parson; "Moraber's his surname, and Devil, I suppose, is his Christian name, though not a very Christian name either. But here--see what he writes to you here; for I take it for granted it's intended for you, because he told me to give it you;" and he spread out the inner paper before Margaret's eyes.
"Misguided girl!" the paper ran, "you have nearly destroyed your own happiness forever, for want of truth and confidence. Did I not tell you to be true and faithful to the last, and your happiness would be secure? Write me down an answer to these questions:
"Do you still love him whom you loved first?
"Has your heart never swerved from him through vanity, lightness, or caprice?
"Was it solely to save his life that you consented to wed a man whom, if there be any honesty in the heart of woman, you are bound to hate?
"Answer at once, and answer truly."
"Here's a pen and ink, darling," said Doctor M'Feely, bringing the implements for writing from a distant table. "I'll take it upon me that you can answer all the questions handsomely enough; and the man says something about a hope, in his letter to me--though how the devil he found me out, or his little spalpeen of a boy in blue and silver either, I can't tell. He can't have an optic glass that will look all the way from Lincolnshire to Cerne Abbas--to say nothing of the corners it would have to look round."
"I will answer truly at all events," replied Margaret, "be there hope or no hope;" and, taking the pen, she wrote rapidly, "I love him ever. No feeling of my heart has ever swerved from him. It was solely to save his life that I consented to wed a man whom I do hate. This is all true, so help me Heaven at my utmost need."
"There, Doctor M'Feely," she said, "give him that. But it is all in vain. You know the marriage is appointed for Friday next."
"Friday!" said the doctor; "that's an unlucky day, my dear; I never knew any one married on Friday in all my life."
"There never before was such a bridal," said Margaret. "Unlucky! Oh, Doctor M'Feely, if they chose the most unlucky day in all the calendar, they had hardly found one black enough to fit my wedding. I will not be married in mourning," she said, "for it would grieve my father; but I will have no bridal finery; I will not affect to rejoice while my heart is dying."
"Well, I think it would have been but civil," said the doctor, "to have let me know about the Friday."
"Doubtless you will hear of it to-day," replied Margaret. "Originally the day was fixed for the Monday after, but something seems to have affected Lady Coldenham strangely, and she has urged my father to curtail even the short space allowed. To me it is indifferent what is the day of execution. Doubtless Jane Grey shrunk from the block and ax, as I shrink from the altar and the ring; but she met her fate firmly, and so will I. Hark! there is a halloo in the fields; they are coming back. Take the paper, but say I have no hope; that my fate is sealed. Remember to tell Ralph what I have said; and bid him think of me as one dead; for to every thing that makes existence life, I must be dead from the moment the ring is upon my finger."
After a few words more, Doctor M'Feely left her; and in less than a quarter of an hour, the house, so lately silent and solitary, was full of gay sounds and heedless laughter, jarring painfully with the thoughts of the melancholy tenant of that solitary room. Indeed, it seemed as if the whole party, with the exception of Lord Woodhall, had determined to leave the poor girl to her own imaginations. No one came to console or support her; no one even attempted to cheer her by conversation, or to withdraw her from her sad and lonely state. Her father did come to see her, and strove to speak cheerfully; but there was a silent reproach in his daughter's deep gloom which sent him ever away with a heart depressed, and a consciousness that he had destroyed the peace of his only remaining child.