Faithful Margaret Part 30

"Have I checkmated you?" thought Margaret. "You dread the delay of four weeks? Yes, you do, I see it in your wicked face, and I say to myself, 'Well done, Margaret!'"

"I have no motive beyond your own welfare," responded the lover, "when I urge you to place the day of your answer a little nearer."

"Is that a threat? Shall I turn round and tell Mrs. Chetwode that Colonel Brand has threatened me because I cannot promise to accept him without deliberation?"

"You have misunderstood me, then I shall say to your housekeeper. I shall explain that your weak health reminded me of the danger of protracted anxiety, and that then I urged you, for your own welfare, to place the day of your answer a little nearer."

There was a pause, and the two antagonists eyed each other firmly.

"In spite of the danger to my welfare," said Margaret, with unmistakable emphasis, "I must insist on taking a month to consider your proposal. I shall take as much care as possible of my health meanwhile, so that you may have no reason to complain of my imprudence."

"You are determined, then?" said the colonel, rising, with cold fury in his eyes. His repressive power was almost forsaking him, and it was with difficulty that he preserved that decorous gentleness of manner which he had donned with such care.

"Yes, I am determined."

There she stood, waiting with freezing smile for him to go. No gentleman could decently stay another moment under such circ.u.mstances.

A sudden impulse, quick as thought, moved Margaret to accompany him to the door; a certain expression on his face stirred up a Babel of memories; it was gone, and they were gone, but she would sound the same waters again.

"Keep the door shut, John, because of the draft," she said to the servant, pa.s.sing out under the stars with her adorer.

"I shall feel obliged if you only communicate with me through Mr.

Davenport," said she, touching the stone lintel with her hand, "until the next four weeks elapse. I shall specially invite you to the castle should I wish to see you at any time, and I expect you to obey the call."

The colonel bowed silently.

A wild, wan moon came out through a riven cloud and shone on Castle Brand. The man on the lowest step and the woman on the highest, gazed fixedly into each other's faces; his, fierce, envious, and distrustful, hers, watchful, cold, and unflinching.

Waiting breathlessly for that wave of memory to beat upon the sands again, it came with the grouping of certain incidents, and with the magic spell of a.s.sociation.

The time had come when the false seeming of this man should drop like a garment. The time had come when a light from the past should break upon Margaret with the suddenly s.h.i.+ning moon. The time had come when their souls were revealed to each other and doomed to recognition despite the most perfect masking which rascality could a.s.sume to compa.s.s its end or purity devise to hide from peril.

These two had stood thus before, the moon gleaming coldly on both--his horse pawing in the shadow, a dying woman in the Brand state chamber.

Margaret turned suddenly on her heel and shut the door. She leaned against the staircase pillars and clasped her hands under the eyes of the astonished John.

"I know him now," she muttered; "he was here the night of Mrs. Brand's death. His name was _Roland Mortlake_!"

CHAPTER XVI.

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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed. 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?