SWEET RECOMPENSE.
The next morning St. Udo Brand lay impatiently waiting for his dear young nurse, and scowling at the stupid negress, who was putting his room to rights, when a visitor entered, and made his way up to the sick man.
A haggard-looking old gentleman, with pale, yellow cheeks, pendulous and flaccid—eyebrows which bristled like furze on the brow of a beetling crag, and lack-luster eyes, which glistened like the dull waters at the foot of it.
"My service to you, sir," said he, with an old-fashioned bow; "I am Andrew Davenport, if you remember."
"I do remember Andrew Davenport, if you are he; you are so changed that I need scarcely beg pardon for not recollecting you sooner."
"Same to you, sir. Gad, sir, yellow fever is no joke, and you took it worse than me by a long chalk."
"How comes it that you have had yellow fever? When did you come here?"
"About a month ago. Came here with a face as red as a lobster, and as broad as that. Look at it now. I don't begrudge it though, when I see you looking so much better than ever I thought to see you when first I looked at you in this bed. We have much to be thankful for, Colonel Brand."
"I fail to understand. What brought you to Key West, and what have you to do with me?"
"A good deal, my young sir. I have to escort you home to your castle, for one thing."
"I am astonished that you should come all this way to waste words upon such a subject. I thought that by this time Miss Walsingham would be married, and that I could go on my way rejoicing."
"Married to that impostor, who hoped to fill your shoes? Pho! what do you take us all for? Well, after all, I needn't take any share of the glory. It was Miss Margaret herself, who found out the whole conspiracy, and set off like a brave young woman as she is, taking me for company, to find you, sir."
"Heavens! What did she want of me?"
"Gad! sir, if you really don't know, all I can say is that she's the first woman I ever saw who could hold her tongue! It was to find you out and give you the property of Seven-Oak Waaste, the lands, houses, etc., attached, that she came while the plague was literally raging, to this confounded rat-trap, where, if one gets in they can't get out."
"Is Margaret Walsingham in Key West?"
"She is."
"Then it is she who has been troubling my poor darling with this wretched story."
"In Key West, and I leave you to judge whether she makes a good sick nurse or no."
"Has she been my nurse?"
"To be sure? Nice place you've got here, sir! Everything as dainty as a lady's boudoir; and what a magnificent bunch of flowers! Think of that in March!"
"Miss Walsingham—my Perdita! The girl who risked her life for me!"
"Even so. Precious short were her visits to my bedside, for watching at yours; and between us she's had a wearing time of it, the dear, kindly girl!"
"Good Heaven—is my own darling, that Miss Walsingham?"
"Yes, and I thank Heaven to hear that from you. You love her, so it's all right."
The lawyer here dropped his jocund air, pressed the hand which had nervously clutched his, and retired to the window for a while.
A silence fell upon the pair; the rescued man was turned face downward to his pillow, with his hands clasped tightly.
Her bravery, her generosity, her devotion came up to gild her gentle worth; and he could well judge now how great had been that bravery, that generosity, that devotion.
Taking in by slow degrees, the greatness of this woman's soul, whom falsely and bitterly he had maligned; comprehending the grandeur of humility in one whose garments he in his high-handed pride felt unworthy to touch, the time had come when St. Udo Brand could pray; when he could plead that Heaven would bless him with Margaret Walsingham's love, and bestow on him her hand, as the richest gift of earth.
Presently Davenport resumed the conference by recounting all the particulars of the Castle Brand plot, and you may be sure he lost no opportunity of adding luster to his admired Miss Margaret's laurels, by unstinted praise, which brought tears, one by one, into the eyes of young Brand.
"And here's the formal relinquishing of every rood of Seven-Oak Waaste, drawn up and signed," said the lawyer, unfolding a parchment and spreading it out triumphantly on his knee; "and she has even made provision against your refusing to accept it. In that case, it is all to go, on the 28th of March (one year from the date of the will), toward building a Charitable Institution for sick seamen, (I suppose from her father having been a sea-captain), and she is going as governess into Mr. Stanhope's family here. What do you think of all this, eh?" chuckled the old gentleman, with the air of being vastly amused.
"She will do it," said St. Udo, gazing with consternation at the parchment.
"But will you allow her to do it?"
A keen pang struck to the heart of St. Udo; his merciless scorn of her came back to him as expressed only the day before; her mournful words; "She will never marry you," recurred like a death-knell to his memory.
Now he understood the cause of her gentle tears—of her clinging wistfulness, of her sweet and humble timidity; he comprehended all, and covered his eyes with a remorseful moan.
"I have ruined all, and lost her!" he thought. "Where is the noble girl?"
"Gad! I thought you'd soon be asking that! It's likely she's taking a rest, poor dear; but I'll send her to you."
"No—let her have her rest; I would never be so selfish as to disturb her, while I can wait. But, Davenport, I will be candid with you, and say that I have no hope of winning her. I have insulted her too deeply."
"Did she think of your former insults when she came here at the risk of her life to find you, and to nurse you out of the fever?"
"No, bless her—all that was forgiven!"
"And will she think of your former insults when you say, 'Margaret, I won't accept one penny piece of the Brand property unless you be my wife?'"
"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 noble 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 Massa 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 passed 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 passion 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 passionately 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 sex, 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, flashing 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 passes 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."
"Humph! no. I can't say that you do. But that's nobody's business if the lady's pleased. Now, having given your memory a jog about the flight of time, I'll send her up to you."
"Let me go to her."
"Stay where you are, sir; don't stir, I beg. I don't profess to know much about woman's curious little idiosyncrasies, but I'll bet a dozen of claret, that this humdrum chamber of yours where she nursed you day after day for four weeks, is the dearest place to her of all the world, and I'll go farther and say that so long as she lives the memory of this same room, sir, will have power to send the rush of fond tears up to her eyes, be she happy or miserable. You see she found you here, and got your life from Heaven, as it were, by dint of unwearied prayer, and its hallowed to her like a little sanctuary. Women are strange creatures, sir and I advise you, if you want to sway her heart to your wishes, to see her here."
Lying face downward and alone, with his hands clasped in grateful thanksgiving, all the wicked recklessness and the unbelief and the cynical fatalism slipped forever from St. Udo's soul, and he turned after long years to the idol of his youth—hope crowned with Heavenly faith; and in that sweet hour of supreme humility the sheath dropped from the fruit, and the noble works of Heaven's hand turned to adore its Creator.
So it came to pass that when Margaret Walsingham, standing at the doorway, too timid to approach—too womanly soft to go away, now that the man was dying for her—heard the low entreaty,
"Bless me with her love—ennoble me with her love, O Heaven!"
Her whole face became transfigured with joy, and she stood there a breathless and a lovely vision, listening to what she dared not believe before.
"Is that my darling, standing on the threshold? Come."
Folded heart to heart, her head upon its place for the first time, his arms about her in a band of love—her hour of sweet recompense has come at last, and with unutterable thrills shooting through her tremulous frame, she whispers, smiling:
"I have won my own dear lord of Castle Brand."