Part 69 (1/2)
”Humph! no. I can't say that you do. But that's n.o.body'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 n.o.ble works of Heaven's hand turned to adore its Creator.
So it came to pa.s.s 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--enn.o.ble 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.”
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
MARGARET'S HAPPY DESTINY.
”By gar! _mon camarade_, and do you call yourself a man, prying into Madam Fortune's good graces? Why, she has starved you, the jade, she has given you the prison fare, she has been a vampire to you, _mon_ colonel.
What for you wear that face of parchment when I come to preside over the hand-grip, and to bless, and to be the good fairy? Ah, bah! Your future may be very good, but your past has been execrably bad. I drop the tear of friends.h.i.+p to your _mal-de-grain_.”
Monsieur, the chevalier, had just arrived from New York per steamer, breezy, brisk, jocund as a stage harlequin, and rushed in upon our colonel to congratulate him after having hunted up all particulars connected with him in the little town, and had the gratification of finding affairs so much better than he feared.
”Ah, Calembours, it's some time since we met. You look so flouris.h.i.+ng that I need scarcely express a hope that you are well. Thanks for your sympathy. Don't waste it, though. I'll soon be all right, if I'm not done brown in Fortune's frying-pan. But what brings you to Key West? A consignment of tough beef?”
”_Ma foi!_ you take a man up sharp, _mon ami_. I have not the affliction to see the last of the Brand spirit, gone out of you, for all the sugars and panadas of this illness. Do you suppose a consignment of anything could bring me to this _inferno_ of yellow fever and negroes? Why not sooner suggest pleasure, duty, or what say you to friends.h.i.+p for you, _mon camarade_?”
”Pshaw! Calembours, you and I know that your capabilities of friends.h.i.+p could be bought at a ransom of five s.h.i.+llings.”
”_Mon Dieu!_ but you are hard on your Ludovic. Did I not squander all my little gains for to get your rights in England? Did I not give up the grand demoiselle. Marguerite, to you, when she might have been the countess, when she might have loved me? Ah, _mon_ colonel, you have me to thank for all your good fortune, and yet you will not lift the eyes to thank me.”
”Brag was an impudent dog; still, there's my hand, comrade, and in virtue of my present happiness, which you helped to bring about, take a hearty squeeze.”
The chevalier squeezed it, and declared, with tears in his eyes, that he was the luckiest dog out of Paris in possessing such a fine _camarade_.
”You shall now hear my little plan in having ventured to this infectious place,” he cried. ”Your glorious mademoiselle had struck such frenzy of admiration into my soul that the instant Madame Hesslein released me from attending upon her--curse Madame Hesslein”--his visage grew pale with uncontrollable rage--”I determined to follow Mademoiselle Walsingham here, and to find if the plague had spared her, and if she was left without protection, (for I must tell you, _mon ami_, that I had no hope of seeing you alive again), to offer her my poor help and escort back to her home and friends in Surrey, and to be the friend in need to her until she turned me away.
”I come full of these glorious plans of benevolence which might well enn.o.ble any man, and find--hey, presto! the romance has turned the other way! My colonel still lives, being conjured back to life by undiluted fidelity; the lawyer with the knotty head has argued the plague out of conceit of him, and the glorious mademoiselle is a _fiancee_; so I bury my too fond plans for mademoiselle's welfare, and I crucify the flesh, and say to myself:
”'I will be the good fairy for these two people; will be the mason to build the steps to their summit of bliss; I will be the porter to carry them thence.'
”So I fly to you--behold me--I am here to act as manager--I glow with the eagerness of friends.h.i.+p.”