Part 26 (1/2)
”I have been my own bitterest enemy, I fear. If I had been less insolent, less arrogant and sneering,” with a dark look of hatred up at the sky, ”I might have been the heir of Seven Oak Waaste at this present moment, instead--of where I am.”
Margaret looked at him in a sort of horrified fascination. That he was carried out of himself and spoke of the dead, she was dimly conscious; that the malevolent power which brought him here as a suitor, might also make him master, became to her dimly conscious too. She trembled before the depths of a hideous possibility.
”But about this letter,” said Colonel Brand, coming again out of his fog, and smoothing the ugly seams out of his face. ”I do not feel inclined to leave the subject until I have set myself in at least a more tolerable light before your eyes.”
He pulled his handkerchief with a flourish out of his pocket, to flick a cobweb off Margaret's sleeve, which she had brushed from a bush twenty minutes since, and as he did so, a small note-book fell to the ground.
Why had he not brushed the cobweb off before?
”I am sure that you will acknowledge that under the circ.u.mstances,”--here he stopped to pick up the note-book--”disappointment might drive me to say anything,”--he idly leafed over the book as if searching for something--”and I was really so astonished at my grandmother's will that surprise seemed to take away my senses. The idea of insinuating that you had stepped in fraudulently, and been the parasite which chocked her! And that allusion to Paolo Orsini strangling his wife--upon my honor as a gentleman, I humbly beg your pardon! Ah, that is what I was looking for, the autograph of General McClellan. Can you read characters by writing, or do you care to examine it, Miss Walsingham?”
She took the book from him at arm's length, and looked silently at the name.
”The General wrote that in my memorandum-book as a pa.s.sword on one occasion when I was on a secret emba.s.sy. The rough scrawl has often saved my life since.”
Margaret shut the memorandum-book, looked carefully at each cover, and handed it back.
”_Trap the first has failed!_” she thought. ”He is too clever for me.
But, you wretch, I am not daunted yet. A green morocco cover with silver clasps, and the Brand crest in gilt. Yes I shall know it again, and some time I shall find out why you dropped it among the withered leaves, if woman's wit can match man's cunning.”
”I can read characters very well sometimes,” she replied to the watchful colonels last remark, ”but not by their writing.”
They were nearing the house, and Margaret turned aside from the main entrance to a gla.s.s door in the next wing.
”Now for _trap the second_.”
”I am going into the library for a book,” she said; ”that is if the gla.s.s door is open.”
Colonel Brand stepped gallantly to the door by which the heir-expectant had stood during the reading of the will, and shook it.
”Locked,” he announced, smilingly.
”You ought to be master of the secret of that lock,” returned Margaret, also smiling, but chilly as an Arctic glacier, ”for if the legends of the place be not overdrawn, this suit of rooms was devoted exclusively to St. Udo Brand when a boy, and the gla.s.s entrance was used by him instead of the princ.i.p.al door. It is extraordinary that St. Udo when a man should have forgotten so completely the incidents of his childhood.”
”I am ashamed of my stupidity in keeping a lady waiting so long in the cold wind,” said the colonel, standing with his face to the door, ”but before I spoke, I had remarked that the old lock of my childish memory had been removed, and some patent arrangement put in its place which resists my clumsy efforts.
”It is the same arrangement,” retorted Margaret, with glittering eyes, ”that has been upon the door for thirty years. Mrs. Brand said so, and Mr. Davenport can vouch for it. This is a strange mistake of yours, Colonel Brand!”
Again these spots appeared on the Colonel's livid face, like finger-marks of the devil, and he stole a look of mingled fear and fury at his tormentor. Not trusting himself to speak he shook the door savagely.
”Still wrong,” said Margaret, mercilessly. ”Past experience ought to have taught you that shaking it only sends the bolts surer home. See.”
She pressed the spring of the disputed lock, and the gla.s.s leaves slid open.
”_Trap the second successful._”
”Now,” she said, turning within the room, and looking down on him with her pallid and scornful face, ”I have a fancy to know how far this aberration of mind exists with you. Will you permit me to amuse myself with an experiment? Will you let me stand here while you stand without, and describe to me the scene which pa.s.sed upon the occasion of our first meeting in this room?”
She put a hand upon each leaf of the door, and formed of herself a barrier; as if her woman's strength could shut him out of Castle Brand, and her gray eyes glowed with a new and fierce emotion which her simple heart had never known of before this man came home to his own.
”Madam,” said the colonel, gnawing the head of his cane, like a dog at the end of his chain, ”It is not all astonis.h.i.+ng that I should have forgotten the peculiarities of an old gla.s.s door, even though I often used it in my boyhood; other and graver memories might easily displace such trivialities and I never professed to cherish the old a.s.sociations of Castle Brand with much reverence. But the scene of our first meeting can never escape my recollection. It is cruel of you to recall the most abject moment of my life, but since you insist upon it, I cannot choose but obey.