MARGARET'S PERIL.
Margaret double-locked her door, and stood listening with the book clutched fast in her hand.
Drop by drop her blood gurgled from her heart—her hair bristled.
What had she done?
She had thrown the gauntlet at him; henceforth there should be no quarter.
She thought it all out in that breathless watch for the result. She knew that she had given herself over to his sworn vengeance; that she would be cut down from his path like a noxious weed; that the battle which was coming would be a battle for her life.
Yes, her day of grace was past—even now her enemy knew his loss. She had—oh, galling thought!—outwitted him.
He searched his pockets—all of them; he shook the coat—in vain. His eyes stole up the staircase with the green glare of murder in their tawny depths; his lean face grew chalk-white; his hand hid itself in his bosom and griped something there. Alas, for reckless Margaret!
And yet the wretch stood scheming—scheming, wary as his own blood thirsty sleuth-hound.
It was a woman not easily brushed aside; He must be very cautious with his dark revenge, and creep with sheathed claws toward his purpose.
John, coming down stairs empty-handed, met the gaze of a face looking at him, which he thought at first was that of the arch enemy of mankind.
"Where has your mistress gone, my man?"
"To her room, your honor."
"Have you been meddling with the pockets of this coat?"
"No, indeed, sir; I hope you'll believe me, sir. I just had but hung it up when I was sent with a lamp to the upper hall. Please ask Miss Walsingham if it wasn't so, yer honor."
"Then, by Heaven! I've been robbed!"
He turned on his heel, and carried his livid face into the library, as spotted as if he had been smitten with a white plague, rummaged without ceremony until he had got himself pen, and ink, and paper, and wrote a billet-doux to his lady-love.
Five minutes after Margaret's whirlwind rush to her room, there came a knocking at the door.
"Who is it?"
"It's me. Miss Margaret, dear."
"Oh, Mrs. Chetwode! what is it."
"A letter from the colonel, Miss Margaret."
"Push it under the door."
"Dear me, it won't go."
"Make it go."
Presently a slip of white appeared, caught on the edge of the carpet. She seized and pulled it through.
It had got rid of its envelope in the rough transit, and came followed by fluttering rags, held together by a great wax seal, like a scarlet beacon of danger.
Still kneeling, she read it, fiercely bit her lip, and pondered.
"I give five minutes to retract your mistake. A few pencil-scrawls are not worth a life. Only five minutes, my dear Miss Walsingham."
"If I yielded, would I be safer than if I was obstinate?" she thought, crushing the scraps in her hand. "No, what are his assurances? Lies to lull me to sleep. Let me drive my foe to open enmity—let me goad him to his ruin, or mine, if God so forgets me, but I will never give up this evidence of his guilt." She held aloft, with wild triumph, the green note-book. "Do your worst to Margaret Walsingham, you monster, but you will not get St. Udo's right out of her faithful hands. My five minutes of grace are slipping away, and I am going to defy him. I will pray Heaven to protect me, and—I will do my duty."
She bowed her head on her hands, and, as second by second slipped by, her thoughts went up to Heaven and to God, and, with the love of a servant tried and true, to Ethel Brand.
"Mrs. Chetwode?"
"I am waiting here, miss, for the answer."
"Tell Colonel Brand that the five minutes are past, and I defy him."
"Oh, Miss Margaret, dearie, them same words?"
"Exactly. Change nothing."
The housekeeper went with lagging feet and this message to the snarling hound in the library, who cursed her heartily and shut the door in her face.
Margaret remained with her head sunk on her knees in that sort of trance with which the wretch awaits the too sure sentence of death. It came; a dull tremor through the massive walls—the great door was shut—Colonel Brand had left the house.
Now she knew that she was sentenced to death; no remedy—no drawing back.
A cold ooze broke over her; her natural womanly fears became rampant; her fancy pictured the form of murder which the crawling wretch she had to deal with would most surely employ. At once the dull waves of the pool where she had encountered the sleuth-hound and his monster occurred to her; its cold chill waters enveloped her heart; the weeds and mud chocked her even more than the fancied hand at her throat; that gleaming stiletto seemed driven into her bosom; for a time she lived through the agonies of actual death.
But she was naturally a brave woman, notwithstanding all her timidity; yes, a dauntless creature, whose generous blood was sure to rise before wrong and danger.
She shook of the slavish terror which threatened to overcome her altogether, and set herself to her next course of action.
"And now for my night's work," she said, glancing round the room, where a fire burned redly in the grate, and the ghostly December day faded from point to point.
She quietly made arrangements against being interrupted; rang the bell, and called to the maid through the door that she had retired for the night, and did not wish any dinner, except a cup of strong coffee, which should be brought to her by the housekeeper.
Then she carefully locked her window, and closed the massive mahogany shutters, lit her candles, drew her writing-table before the fire, swept the hearth, and saw that she had a supply of candles, matches, and pens.
By the time these arrangements were completed, the housekeeper was knocking at the door with the edge of a lunch-tray.
"Has Colonel Brand left the house?" called Margaret.
"Yes, miss, some time ago."
"Are you sure he's not lurking about your back, Mrs. Chetwode?"
"Holy mercy! I hope not."
Sounds of the tray being dumped on a hall-table ensued, and the hurried tread of the old woman showed that she was looking into various empty rooms.
"What made you think such a queer thing, dearie?" whispered she, presently, through the key-hole. "I seen him go out, plain as plain can be."
Margaret opened the door, and held out her hands for the tray.
"What did he say to my message?"
The housekeeper gave an expressive shudder.
"Ugh! He swore like a blasphemer at me, Miss Margaret, dear."
"Keep watch lest any of the doors be left open to-night, Mrs. Chetwode."
"Oh, yes, miss—though I'm sure Purcell is very careful. My goody! Miss Margaret, how wild you look! Surely you can't be well?"
"Oh, yes. Do not let any one disturb me to-night again, if you please. Good-night."
"Sleep soundly, miss. Good-night."
The door was locked again, and Margaret sat down to her cup of coffee and her ponderings.
She was quite calm, quite strong of purpose when she opened her desk, laid the note-book upon it, and began her task.
And what a story these notes, remarks, and hinted plots disclosed to her!
It commenced with, strange to say, a description of herself, her position at Castle Brand, what she said when summoned to receive St. Udo Brand's note on the night of Mrs. Brand's death. Then followed the words:
"I believe I could do it. My own perseverance tells me I could do it; the devil in the shape of Calembours tells me I could do it."
Leaf after leaf of such hints were read and laid to heart, then a paragraph which made those deep gray eyes grow black with apprehension.
"All right. Am sure I can do it. My chances doubled by the actors themselves. The will is in favor of M. W. St. U. scornfully washes his hands of the affair, preferring a pretty face and poverty. Stupid devil, to throw away such a birthright! Lucky dog, who is to be his successor? Let the rogue win the race. I am so tired of the dodges, the twists, the aliases, the lurkings, that I will put on the greatest disguise of all, a gentleman swell, and try what freedom is like, and the sea-captain's daughter, and Seven-Oak Waaste. St. U. sails to-morrow for the United States, and I send company with him which will twist him into shape more than the haughty dog expects. Be kind to him, oh, captivating chevalier! be attentive to him, oh, patient Thoms!"
Then came a complete interview between St. Udo Brand and the "Chevalier," purporting to have taken place on board the steamer going to New York, with this laudatory conclusion:
"Thoms, you are no fool. Thoms, I really think you are a genius."
Leaf after leaf again. The firm lip curved with stern determination, the brain quick and comprehending.
The copy of the farewell letter from St. Udo to herself was the next glimpse of a familiar past, with the leaf turned down just where the cunning hypocrite had marked the place during that walk under the oaks.
Then a copy of his letter to Lady Juliana Ducie, in which he had "pinned his faith" to her sleeve, with a memorandum attached of, "Faithfully mailed by good Thoms; and thus ends St. U.'s affair with little Ducie. Now he will fight like a devil with these Yankees."
Following this was the transcription of two letters to Gay and Davenport, in which St. Udo had scornfully explained the fact of his departure from England.
Then came the secret of his ready recognition of Lady Juliana when she stood before him in the Brands' reception-room. Her photograph, painted beautifully, was pasted into a cunning little pocket, and her description was written out at full, as if the picture were not to be trusted alone.
Initials of strange names—addresses in London, scraps of information about officers in the Guards—a frequent (see private album)—carefully noted bon mots of different English friends of the colonel's, anecdotes of London life, all headed by the significant note:
"Brand's daily gossip.—Study well."
Then came a copy of Lady Juliana's letter of dismissal, with the comment:
"Thoms, my boy, you did well to search that vest pocket."
This grim pleasantry of the genial writer closed what appeared to be part the first in the movements of the watched man.
Let her think before she turned the leaf; let her rest her whirling brain awhile, and examine this curious idea which had slid into her mind. Who was Thoms!
In this memorandum book he purported to be a valet. Was Thoms Roland Mortlake? Could he have crawled round his purpose under the disguise of a body-servant, touching daily the man whom he meant to murder?
Put these thoughts of horror away—go on to the end.
Part the second commenced with St. Udo's first battle, and his part in it minutely described.
Then followed letters from the executors of the Brand estates, in which Margaret saw her departure to become school-teacher freely commented on as a freak which would soon wear itself out.
Then suddenly followed, dashed down in a rough, unsteady hand, as if in the dark, five or six pages of phonetic writing.
Patiently Margaret spelled it out—the life of St. Udo Brand, as told to the Chevalier de Calembours at the midnight camp-fire. Every minute detail, every passing mention of a friend, of a place visited, of scenes, adventures, college incidents; also what made the heart burn in the breast of the woman who was reading these records—a few sad sentences which told the secret of poor St. Udo's bitterness.
"Calembours, I would have been a better man now but for one grave mistake which I made early in life. I loved a woman passionately and purely; she was my first conception of love, and would have perfected in me a noble manhood had she been worthy. She broke the trust—vilely cheated me, and fled with an officer in the artillery, a man whom all pure women would have shrunk from; and she was lost, as she might have foreseen. Since then, to perdition to the sex, say I, and their cant of feminine purity, for of all crafty, insatiable, double-faced hypocrites I have found woman to be the worst."
The next few leaves were covered with crude specimens of writing. St. Udo's name again and again, until it was a perfect imitation of St. Udo's hand, and, after this, the notes were written in the newly-acquired style, as if to perfect the cunning forger.
Then was faithfully narrated an interview between "the chevalier" and Colonel Brand, in which the former was proposing to his friend to turn traitor, and go with him to the South, and take up arms against their present comrades.
And, as a brave man would answer, so answered the honest Englishman, heaping epithets of scorn and anger on the little traitor. Attached to this was the memorandum:
"Calembours has parted with my man; not good for Calembours; he has broken the bargain. Thoms has stuck by Brand; invaluable Thoms; so will he stick by Brand while he lives. He says so. Has he very long to live? No."
On the succeeding page came a sudden change; a few wild sentences in the breathlessness of rage.
"He has given me the slip. He has slipped the noose and got away. Where? where? Have I lost him? have I lost my prize at the last trick, my Castle Brand, my good luck, my fair play, my amends for seven months of toil under his boot-heel? No, not while I have brain to plan, or body to track him. I swear to leave this book untouched until I have found him and left him a lump of clay."
Leaf by leaf is turned over; the pale hand stops and trembles down to her side.
Here is a note. If he has kept his vow, this note is a record of St. Udo's murder. She reads a date, and her eyes seem to pulsate with blind fire.
"September 1st. The deed is done. Lost in the skurry of a midnight sortie. 'Killed in battle,' his men will say; but—Thoms knows better! He tracked him with his long sleuth-hound through the swamps, and the surging morass, and the long, hot highway, the spikey groves, the dark fens, and through hunger and danger of death; and he found him! Why not keep his promise? He stole his history, habits, phrases, manners, friends; and now, the lesson being learned, Thoms may keep his promise, made to himself. He stooped this moonlit night upon the battle-field, and stole his master's life, and stood erect—not Thoms, the ignoble valet, but St. Udo, the heir of Castle Brand!"
Margaret paused, sick and heart-quenched.
Memory brought back the vision of the battle-field, and of the wounded hero, and of the brooding assassin, and reason stood aghast at the manifest overturn of her natural laws.
"Grant me days enough to avenge him, high Heaven!" she cried, with a passion of tears.
She would allow herself no luxury of sorrow; she repressed these tears, trimmed her candles—took up her bitter task again.
Part the third showed that the murderer had arrived in England; that he had lurked about the castle for a few days before presenting himself, and acquainted himself with as many necessary facts as possible. After this came the appearance of the pseudo-heir before the executors.
"I have stepped into the wrong man's shoes with marvelous ease, and I have seen my future wife. Could anything be more appropriate, I wonder, than for her to faint at sight of me? I am resolved to marry her. It wouldn't be fair play to silence her as I silenced some one who is in his grave; and when we are man and wife I will tell her where she first saw her husband."
The second entry was not quite so confident:
"The girl is going to be troublesome. Confound her! why has she taken such a dislike to me?"
Entry the third still more expressive of alarm:
"What's this I hear? The girl left Gay's house without any explanation, and gone to Castle Brand. What does that mean? Has she taken anything into her head against me?
"I think she has seen with those mystical eyes of hers the deep ruts on my wrists and ankles; and I think she is looking back a dozen years to the man who lay in chains and cursed her cup of cold water. Confound her! I am afraid of her."
There were other allusions to her which made her eyes blaze with indignation, intermixed with careful entries of names or localities which might be useful to the adventurer; and still, step by step, the purpose of the man slowly unfolded itself. He had expected at first to deceive Margaret Walsingham with the rest, and to win the fortune by marrying her.
"A more monstrous fate," thought the girl, "than death."
But it soon appeared that she had betrayed her distrust, and he was quietly waiting a chance to remove her. One note broke out thus:
"The girl will be my ruin, unless I shut the hatches on her. She has shown her hand to-day in three different attempts to make me betray myself. By Heaven, she will succeed if she tries that long; but I have made a counter plot which, clever as she is, she can't evade. I have been beforehand with her, and won the confidence of the executors. I have also announced my determination to propose to-morrow for her. If she refuses, that's a sign that I let the hatch drop; if she accepts, hold up the hatch a while, and give her another chance."
The result of his proposal showed how unlooked for her answer had been.
"She's a move in advance again—clever she devil; I am quite thrown out. Proposed according to plan; was put off for a month. I think her demand of a month's time to consider means a month's time to run me to the end of my chain. My chain would run out in a week with her at the right end of it; so I suppose it must be once, twice, thrice, and down goes the hatch!"
The next entry was written with the sneer of a triumphant demon:
"Thought you would trip me, did you? Silly fool, to tamper with your crazy hatch-door! Don't you know that when it drops you will suffocate? So you expected me to be caught by Lady Juliana Ducie, did you? No, no, my bride of death, I have pored over her picture too often. But for your fine intention you shall suffer, Margaret Walsingham!
"My lady is a mighty fine-feathered bird for me to have fluttering round me. I have a mind to marry the marquis' daughter when the watch-dog of the castle has died of her little sickness; wouldn't that be fair play all round?"
The succeeding notes described two visits to London, in which the daring wretch had penetrated into the Marquis of Ducie's residence, and had private interviews with my lady, who seemed to be straining every nerve to win him from Miss Walsingham; and it closed with the ominous sentence:
"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey, and drop that hatch!"
The diary in the note-book had come to an end. Mortlake's secrets were hers now. Mortlake's course of crime was run, if she could live to give them to the world.
Margaret once more trimmed her candles, replenished the drowsy fire, paced up and down her room, and then sat down and commenced to copy such parts of the entries as bore directly upon the conspiracy.
Hour followed hour; the candles burned down; the fire wasted to white ashes; the wintry wind moaned without, carrying sleet on its wings.
Still the girl's strength held out; she wrote with energy the dark record which was to ruin the murderer of St. Udo Brand. Long past midnight found her at the last page, and at the last sentence:
"Little Ducie proves so much to my taste that I will go down to Surrey, and drop that hatch."
The hoarse baying of the dogs roused her to things present. She rose from her cramped position, cold and trembling with terror.
Who was lurking about so late? Her enemy?
The candles dropped into their little wells of boiling wax and expired. She stood in the pitchy darkness, listening.
The angry babel of howling dogs filled her ears again. A sudden pause; they, too, were listening. Then a yelp of canine rage and eagerness.
Margaret groped in the box for another candle and a match; fitted the candle into the tall silver candlestick, lit it, and gathered up her papers, while the flame was as yet small and sickly as a far-off star.
She hid them all in a compartment of her desk, carried the desk to a closet, locked it, and hid the key beneath a loose edge of the carpet.
"I may pay the forfeit of my life for these proofs," she thought; "but Davenport and Gay shall see them, whatever the risk, and my work shall descend to their hands if I am removed."
She was calm, but a curious pulse was beating in her ears and deadening her sense of hearing. Through it she could swear that strange noises were in the air, which were entirely foreign to any that could be caused within the house.
The bounding pulse still beat in her ears, and she stood intently waiting.
What it was she knew not, which smote her whole being into intensity—her hair bristled.
There it was again—through the thick shutter and massive window—the deep breathing of a man who has been hard at work, and stops his operations to listen.
Could it be that her enemy was at the window?
Margaret shrank back; she had been standing in profile, not two feet from the window, and her ear had caught the indistinct sounds so clearly that she was able to trace them immediately to their cause.
A man was in the balcony outside her window, and he was listening to know whether she was sleeping or waking. Perhaps a burglar? No.
Mortlake was there to retrace his false step before the morning light should place his secret in other hands.
"He's going to force an entrance and murder me," thought Margaret, who could reason distinctly in this moment of peril; "and, knowing that I only share the knowledge of his guilt, he hopes to escape suspicion. He will arrange it like a burglary—likely take away my few jewels and articles of value, and drop them in the mere. I am afraid I am lost."
These thoughts just glanced through her mind as lightning glimmers through the thunderous clouds, and, with the sudden instinct of self-preservation, she ran to the door, determined to rush into safety.
Before she had reached it, or her hand could touch the lock, a slow and gentle scratching on the window-pane arrested her, and she paused, fascinated, to understand it. Scratch—scratch—scratch—cr-ick! the tiny tinkle of falling glass.
Scratch—scratch—scratch—scratch—scratch—scratch! cr-ick—cr-ick! More glass falling, a crunching footstep, a soft tremor of the mahogany shutter!
Margaret essayed to wrench round the heavy lock of her door.
Her hand had no more strength than an infant's. She shuddered from head to foot.
One more desperate wrench!
A low snarl reached her ear! Eager paws beat at the bottom of her door!
She stood transfixed as the devil's cunning of her adversary dawned upon her mind.
The terrible sleuth-hound had been stationed outside her door, ready to tear her limb from limb when she should issue.