UNVAILING AN IMPOSTOR.
Margaret stole to her chamber and bolted the door, and leaned her dizzy head upon her hand.
Gradually the first surprise of her mind gave way before a dreadful despondency, and she revolved the revelation in ever increasing alarm.
"He is cleverer than I am," she assured herself, "and he will most likely win the contest. He has come out of a past which I shall never be able to trace to personate St. Udo Brand, and his resemblance is the weakest instrument he uses. He has appeared like a horrible phantom in St. Udo's guise, and he defies me to tear his mask from him. He is no mere adventurer who has traded upon an accidental likeness to Colonel Brand and stepped into his shoes upon the day of his death—he is a deliberate scoundrel who probably was arranging his plot upon the night on which he came from Regis with Captain Brand's letter. He has waited for St. Udo's death to step into his place and enact his life from the point where he laid it down on the battle-field. Has he anything to do with the sudden end of that life? Has he murdered St. Udo Brand? Great Heaven! am I to unvail an impostor and find an assassin in this man?"
She clenched her hands, and faithful memory brought back the vision of the dying hero, upon his pulseless horse, and she heeded it now, though she had sternly repressed all belief of it before.
"Is Mortlake the crawling demon who crouched over the brave colonel in the dark and stabbed him? Have I met him first upon the steps of Castle Brand—second in my vision of St. Udo's death, and last in my treacherous lover of to-night? Oh, my heart! is St. Udo really dead then, and by his hand! The grand lion-hearted king, by the hand of a fawning slave?"
Wild with horror, she shuddered at the dark chasm she beheld yawning in her way, but not for a moment did she shrink from the tortuous path which led to that abyss—the path of inexorable pursuit which ended not until the man was hunted down and unmasked.
She waited until she was calm, and then she wrote her letter to the two executors, which was to expose the man who stood in St. Udo's position, well knowing the dangers of the path she had chosen, and accepting her chances without fear:
"Castle Brand.
"Dear Sirs: This is the second appeal I make to you on behalf of the true disposition of Mrs. Brand's property. If this appeal is unheeded, I will take the case in my own hands, and pursue it to the end, whatever that end may be; and if I die before I succeed, God will hold you responsible for my death.
"The man who calls himself Colonel St. Udo Brand came here to-night according to appointment, and took the first step against me, and for the possession of Seven-Oak Waaste, by proposing for my hand.
"Believing him to be an imposter, I declined giving him a decided answer, and bade him wait for one month. In other words (and he perfectly understood it), I demanded a month in which to discover the proofs of his villany.
"He accepted my fiat, but with great reluctance because he felt his position so unsafe, before my marriage or death, that he feared thirty day's delay might ruin it.
"At the moment of our parting, a sudden rush of memory revealed to me the true personality of the pseudo Colonel Brand.
"I beg of you to weigh this communication well, and not to put it down as you have put down my convictions before.
"On the night of Madam Brand's death, you remember that Captain Brand, in his fatal carelessness, came as far as Regis to see his grandmother, and staid there, sending a note of excuse to me by a messenger. This messenger gave his name as Roland Mortlake, and stood waiting at the foot of the steps while I read the note.
"Mark me here! This man was so like the Brand's, that Purcell, the steward, advanced to meet him, saying:
"'Welcome to the castle, captain!'
"He explained that he was not the captain, but the captain's messenger, and he stood by all the time I was communicating the contents of the letter to Purcell. He was so close to us, that he must have heard all that passed. Under this belief, I turned suddenly to him and told him to go instantly for Captain Brand, and to tell him that the will must be changed, or he would be ruined.
"His crafty, eager look so arrested me, that I gazed fixedly in his face for some minutes; and it seemed to me that I discovered a crime-stained and guileful soul in his eyes for they haunted me long afterward.
"And I distinctly remember the words of the man who had accompanied him, as he rode away under the trees:
"'Gardez-tu, my friend! You English take great news sourly. Ma foi! you curse Mademoiselle Fortune herself when she smiles upon you the blandest!'
"I heeded these words not all then. I recalled them one by one to-night from the hidden chamber of memory, and I protest that they hold their own significance in that daring plot.
"Do you read nothing in this reminiscence beyond a woman's idle vagaries of fancy?
"Will you believe it—only, that when I swear that the man, Roland Mortlake, who stood on the castle-steps with me that night, and the man, St. Udo Brand, who stood with me on the castle-steps to-night, are one?
"I call upon you, in the interests of justice, to find the proofs of this infamous imposture.
"I appeal to you, that you may do your duty by the dead and unveil a monster of crime. What has Mortlake done with St. Udo Brand?
"Perhaps he has murdered him. Will you let a possible murderer escape you because a woman points him out? How do we know that the news of his being killed in battle was not true? And, being true, how do we know that Mortlake's hand was not the hand that destroyed the heir of Castle Brand?
"How do we know that this plot, if sifted well, would not reveal in the suitor you sent me to-night a red-handed assassin?
"Come to me in the morning and tell me what you are going to do. If you are going to do nothing, then I will carry on the contest alone, and trace the history of Roland Mortlake from the bottom step of Castle Brand, where I saw him first, pace by pace, to the foot of the gallows, where I shall see him last.
"Yours Respectfully,
"Margaret Walsingham.
"To Messrs Davenport & Gay."
Late as it was she rang for the housekeeper, and gave orders that her letter should be conveyed to the lawyer's house that night.
"Tell Symonds to give it to Mr. Davenport himself, and to trust it to no one else," she said.
The housekeeper met the feverish flash of her young mistress' eyes, and took the envelope from her hand with much uneasiness.
"My poor dear, you ar'nt strong enough for all this worrying and wearing," she observed, sympathetically. "I wish for your sake, deary, the colonel had lain quiet in his grave."
Margaret drew back with a sudden storm of grief, and shut the door, Mrs. Chetwode went down stairs, sorrowfully vowing to herself that Miss Margaret would pine to death before she wore the colonel's wedding-ring.
"He lies quiet enough in his shallow grave," moaned Margaret; "noble, proud St. Udo! Oh my heart; why was I doomed to be the Marplot of his life? He was so haughty in his abhorrence of low scheming—so constant in his love—so tender with his dying Vermont boys—so heroic, and so reckless of his own grand life that I love him. I love him! And he is dead!"
She wrung her hands and wept such tears as make the heart grow old, and the life wane early; such tears as are only rendered by a nature generous and effulgent in its love as tropical sunshine, whose revenge is self-immolating as the suttee of the Hindoo's widow.
Toward ten o'clock the next morning the executors made their appearance in a gig, and betook themselves to the library.
They found their troublesome ward already waiting them, with an expression of nervous defiance on her face, as if she fully expected a sound berating from each of them.
Dr. Gay looked at her anxiously, and shook his head over his own thoughts.
Mr. Davenport coughed sarcastically, and frowned to hide the effect which her blanched cheeks made upon him.
"I'm sorry to have called you out too early to begin the search," said Margaret, bitterly.
"Too early? by no means, my dear," cried the doctor, seating himself cozily near her; "it's never to early to do what's right. Now we're all ready to hear what you have got to say."
"I have told you surely enough in my letter for you to act upon," she answered, "without having to say any more. What do you say of the declaration I have made as to the man's identity?"
"Most startling!" said the physician, in a quiet tone, as if it was really not startling at all.
"What have you to say of it?" she demanded of the lawyer, with an anxious look at his impenetrable countenance.
"Consider the absurdity of your suspicions," broke in Davenport, "the childishness and impossibility of your premises. How could an imposter act out St. Udo Brand's history? How could he know Colonel Brand's most private affairs, and his friends, and write with his hand, and have the same appearance, and cheat everybody—we among the rest, who saw him when he was a boy as often as I have fingers and toes? Oh, Miss Walsingham!"
"You wish me to marry Mortlake, do you?" she asked, with scorn.
"For Heaven's sake don't call him that!" ejaculated Davenport. "If you call him that and he hears it, the Brand spirit will be very quiet for the first time if he doesn't end the slander in murder."
"It began in murder," retorted she, "that would be the fittest end, after all. But do not fear; I shall not alarm your colonel without proper cause. You really expect me to treat him as if he was St. Udo Brand?"
"Yes, until you have proofs to the contrary."
She sat with folded hands and pondered. An ashy pallor overspread her face. A mental gag was forced between her teeth; a mental rope was placed for her across a yawning chasm, and selfish hands were pushing her toward it, and selfish voices were urging her to cross alone.
"Very well," she breathed firmly, "I will bring you proofs that you will not venture to discredit. When I send for you again, come as promptly as you did to-day."
The executors were forced to depart with this arrangement, and rode back to Regis deep in discussion relating to their ward's sanity.
How long Margaret sat alone in the library she could not tell—an ominous foretaste of the grim future had shrouded her soul, and the dark hours passed unheeded by. When she roused herself, it was to instant action.
She sat down before her desk and began to write a letter—her third appeal for help.
She wrote but one passionate sentence, then her head sank between her hands.
"Who knows whether I shall live until it could be answered?" she moaned.
Bethinking herself, she tore the sheet and cast it into the heart of the fire, and took a new sheet; dashed off again but one sentence, signed her name, thrust it into an envelope, hurriedly sealing it, as if she feared her mind might change at any moment.
It was a telegram and ran thus:
"Lady Juliana Ducie:—Come at once to Castle Brand on a matter of life and death.
"Margaret Walsingham."
Then she dressed herself and drove down to Regis in the carriage, clutching the dispatch in her hand, and drawing back from view whenever she passed a wayfarer, trembling lest her enemy should detect her in this move against his safety.
After an hour of feverish impatience, an answer came which satisfied her.
"I will come to-morrow night.
"Lady J. Ducie."
She went out to her carriage with a triumphant air: she felt that she was one move ahead of the colonel.
"Lady Juliana shall strip him of his disguise," she thought, "and the executors shall be present to see the exposure."
She stopped before Mr. Davenport's office, wrote a line on her card requesting that he and Dr. Gay would come to the castle the following evening about seven o'clock, and then she hurried home.
The next day passed with the anxious girl slowly enough; as the evening drew on, which she hoped would be the last of her enemy's imposture, her excitement became terrible; she was in that stage of over-strained endurance in which a triviality turns the brain.
She told the housekeeper to have a bedchamber prepared for a lady visitor, and heedless of her exclamations of wonder, directed her to send Symonds at a quarter to six to the railway station with the carriage, and to take whatever strangers were for the castle as secretly home as possible, so that no one in the village should know who they were.
"Lawk-a-mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Chetwode, "what's Seven Oak a coming to! A body would think you was going to hide away a murderer, Miss Margaret dear."
"Not to hide away a murderer, but to discover one!" muttered the girl, turning from the colloquy.
She had two hours to wait for the coming of Lady Juliana, and she must live through the dreary time somehow, so, weary of the silence of the castle, she flung a large dark mantle about her, and went out for a walk upon the Waaste.
It was nearing the shortest day of the year, and the early twilight was already setting over the distant hill and forest.
The dun leaves, heaped high under the oaks of the front park, were white with hoary frost, crackled like paper under her feet, and, starting with every sound, she soon quitted the shadows of the trees, and paced over the sere turf down to the inky mere, where the long, brown flags pricked up in paper-like spikes, and the dank rushes pierced the filmy ices at the margin of the water, and the hazel shrubs clustered close about the slippery banks, and hid them from the Waaste.
She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into the mere at her feet.
She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a disagreeable start.
She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about.
Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet.
Her heart stood still with horror.
She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through the dusk.
The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!
With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged.
And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor.
He looked not to right or left, but slouched on after his dog upon the bank, and, as he passed the woman in her hiding place, she saw that in his face, which no Brand of knightly English blood ever wore, since Sir Hildebrand broke his lance at Cressy.
That crafty and sinister half smile, that green, scintillating shimmer of the introverted eye, that gathered brow, seamed with the hideous lines of crime and cunning!
Could such a face belong to St. Udo, the dare-man and dare-devil? That coward's shuffle, and murderous, nervous hand clutching the empty air, or thrust into his bosom! Could such belong to the gallant soldier who had stormed the Rocky Ridge, and braved the cannon's mouth in the thickest of the fight? Thank Heaven, no! He lay in his hidden grave, and his bravery was glowing in the mouths of a hundred heroes, and his honor should be kept untarnished, if a woman's hand could uphold the proud escutcheon!
Closer stole the blood hound to the willow tree, but though she eyed his approach with curling blood, she would not utter a cry which might betray her to the man she hated.
For the nervous hand he had thrust into his bosom had brought out something which glittered with a steel-blue flash in the indistinct gloom, and he had come to a dead stand with it, and was looking at it with the glare of a hungry wolf.
He was but a few paces from Margaret Walsingham, and the sleuth-hound was gliding on her track, making his last circle round the mere. She knew it by his glaring eyes and watering fangs, and his short, deep groans of eagerness.
"I must have recourse to you again, my tiny talisman?" hissed Colonel Brand to his stiletto. "She insists on having you, and I am going to humor her."
He hissed these words through his teeth slowly, deliberately, as if it was a sort of joy to utter them aloud, but once, and then he thrust it into his bosom again.
And the woman tore off her heavy cloak and dropped it beneath the willow tree, and, rising to her feet, she glided through the hazel copse across the Waaste, and fled for her life, just when the snarling hound sprang upon her garment and tore it into pieces, with many a wolfish bay!