CHAPTER I.

A DYING WOMAN’S COMMAND.

She was dying–good old Ethel Brand, the mistress for half a century of
the hoary castle which stood like an ancient cathedral in the midst of
the noble estate in Surrey, Seven-Oak Waaste.

No need now of these whispering attendants, and that anxious little
physician; she would not trouble them more. No need for these grim
medicine vials, marshaled upon the little table near her couch; she was
past mortal needs or mortal help; her face, set in cold repose, seemed
glistening with supernal light, while waiting for the fatal kiss of
death.

And over her bent a woman, breathless, pulseless, motionless, as if
carved from stone, listening, with straining ear, for each slow,
rattling breath; watching, with great, glistening eyes, for each
darkening shadow over the noble face–Margaret Walsingham.

No high-born dame was she; no fortunate next-of-kin, watching with
decorous lament for the moment of emancipation from her weary wait for a
dead woman’s shoes. Only Mrs. Brand’s poor companion, Margaret
Walsingham.

Four years had she ministered to the whims, the caprices, the erratic
impulses of that most erratic of all creations, an eccentric old woman;
and exalting the good which she found, and pardoning the frailties she
could not blind her eyes to, her presence had become a sweet necessity
to the world-weary dowager, who repaid it by unceasing exactions and
doting outbursts of gratitude; and there had been much love between
these two.

Paler waxed the high patrician face, darker grew the violet circles
beneath her heavy eyes.

Margaret clasped her hands convulsively.

“Will she go before seven?” whispered she.

Old Dr. Gay stooped low and listened to the labored inspiration.

“Going–going fast,” he said, with faltering lips.

A wail burst from the crowd of servants standing by the door; sobs and
tears attested to the love they had borne their dying mistress.

“Hush!” whispered Margaret. “Do not awake her.”

“They’ll never wake her more,” said Dr. Gay, mournfully.

She turned at that with terror in her eyes; she laid a small, strong
hand upon the doctor’s arm and clung to it convulsively.

“She must live to see St. Udo Brand,” said she, in a low, thrilling
voice. “She must, I tell you–it is her dearest, her last wish–it is my
most earnest prayer. Surely you will not let her die before that wish is
fulfilled?”

She gazed with passionate entreaty in the little doctor’s face, and her
voice rose into a wail at the last words. He regarded her with helpless
sympathy and shook his head.

“She can’t live half an hour longer,” said Dr. Gay. “She’ll not see St.
Udo Brand.”

A fierce shudder seized Margaret Walsingham from head to foot. The blood
forsook her lips, the light her eyes–she stood silent, the picture of
heart-sick despair.

She had often appealed to Dr. Gay’s admiration by her faithfulness, her
kindness, her timidly masked self-sacrifices; she appealed straight to
his heart now by her patient suffering, unconscious as he was of its
cause.

“I will do what I can to keep up her strength,” he said, approaching the
bed to gaze anxiously again at the slumberer. “I will try another
stimulant, if I can only get her to swallow it. Perhaps the London train
may be here by that time.”

“Thank you! oh, thank you!” murmured Margaret; gratefully. “You little
know the desperate need there is for Mrs. Brand seeing her grandson
before she dies.”

Tears welled to her eloquent eyes, her lips trembled distressfully, she
waved the servants from the room and followed them out.

“Symonds, I wish you to hasten immediately to Regis for Mr. Davenport,
the lawyer,” said she, when she had dismissed the other servants down
stairs. “Give him this note and drive him back here as quickly as you
can drive.”

She dropped her note into the groom’s hand, and watched him from the
oriel hall window, as he hurried from the court below, out into the
deepening twilight, from the road which went to the pretty little
village of Regis, some two miles distant.

She stood in the waning light, watching for the lawyer’s coming, and her
thoughts were wild and bitter.

She had a _doom_ to confront, as terrible to her as unsought martyrdom
is to the quailing victim of a blinded hate; a _doom_ from which she
fain would court grim death himself if he would open his gates to let
her escape; a humiliating and revolting _doom_ from which she recoiled
with vehement dislike, every nerve in her high-strung frame quivering
with horror.

Ethel Brand had ever been capricious in her life, but of all the mad,
impulsive freaks which her lonely heart had led her into, her last
caprice was the most ill-advised, the most disastrous.

Margaret Walsingham had answered Mrs. Brand’s advertisement for a
companion four years previously, when she was a pale, timid girl of
twenty, clad in orphan’s weeds, and scarce lifting her deep, earnest
eyes to the inquisitive gaze of her patroness; but her quiet, grave,
soulful character had strangely fascinated the haughty old lady, and
from the humble post which she had gone to Castle Brand to fill, she
quickly rose to be the prime object of all its mistress’ dreams, to be
beloved, and indulged, and admired as no living mortal had ever been by
that closely-guarded heart, save St. Udo Brand. Margaret Walsingham was
a sea-captain’s daughter. Up to her twelfth year she had sailed the seas
in his ship and looked to him for society; and not till then was she
sent on shore to be educated. Still the stout captain had been ambitious
for his daughter, and had taken care that her education, when it did
commence, should be thorough, comprehensive and elegant in all its
branches; so that when after eight years of ceaseless learning on her
part, and ceaseless voyaging on his, he proposed going home to England
and retiring with his daughter upon a handsome fortune, she was well
fitted to adorn the society he intended to surround her with. But the
ill-starred captain went down in a Biscay gale when also within sight of
home, and with him went his whole life’s savings, leaving his Margaret
fatherless, homeless and fortuneless.

And that was why she answered Mrs. Brand’s advertisement.

St. Udo Brand was an officer in the Coldstream Guards, now in London. He
was the only son of Mrs. Brand’s only son, Colonel Cathcart Brand, long
dead.

Cathcart Brand had been a sad rake, lawless, reckless, and a natural
spendthrift. The one act of worldly wisdom which he had ever achieved
was his marriage, late in life, with a lady of noble birth, whose
ambitious leanings and insatiable vanity had scourged the easy colonel
up into the highest social circles, and in some measure covered his
_blasé_ reputation with her gilded arms.

St. Udo Brand was said to have inherited his father’s determined
extravagance united to his mother’s magnificent tastes; his father’s
careless, dashing, unscrupulous character, and his mother’s proud,
cynical, bitter temperament. At twenty he was the glory and terror of
his chums, the idolized of women, and the ideal of his grandmother’s
fastidious soul. At thirty he was a man to be feared only, a polished
gentleman with a questionable history–a universal scoffer, a
world-weary atheist, with a subtle, insidiously sweet influence, a sad
and embittered soul, and a heart long closed against all holy
whisperings of better feelings. And still his grandmother clung to him
with a pathetic belief in his nature’s nobility, and ignoring his wild
and hopeless life, looked forward with love-blinded eyes to a possible
future for him of worthy achievements. So, because she loved this man,
and trusted in the goodness of Margaret Walsingham, she had elected hers
to be the strong, soft hand to lead him back from ruin and to point him
a better way. She had vowed St. Udo Brand and Margaret Walsingham should
marry.

“You shall lure St. Udo back from the gates of hell,” quoth the
grandmother, with an inspired enthusiasm. “You are just the woman to
impress that high and royal heart with a true sense of your own pure
goodness; you can lead him captive by a secret power; you can lead him
where you will. You shall dispute with vice and fatal atheism for that
magnificent soul, and when you have routed your foes, you shall be
rewarded by his life-long gratitude, and his gratitude is more precious
far, my girl, than is the languid love of millions of other men. My
Margaret, you are twenty-four, strong, buoyant, pure-minded; my grandson
is thirty-four, world-weary and careless. Your fresh enthusiasm shall
stir his withering heart-strings and wake his slumbering belief–he
shall admire you, study you, and love you.”

“I dread your grandson, and tremble at the idea of ever meeting him,”
was Margaret’s shuddering answer.

“Yes, I regret not having caused you to meet before,” complacently
observed Mrs. Brand. “You will soon overcome these childish tremors.
Would you not like to be the mistress of Castle Brand, and the owner of
Seven-Oak Waaste, my proud Margaret?”

“No, madam,” breathed Margaret, fervently; “never as Captain Brand’s
wife.”

“Ah–hem! We shall see, we shall see,” quoth the lady, serenely, and
dropped the subject.

Soon after that she was smitten with her death sickness, and at the last
she called her poor Margaret to her, and with plaintiff affection
boasted to her of what she had done for her.

“You shall never be homeless again, sweet soul,” murmured she, with
glistening eyes. “I have willed this castle to you if St. Udo refuses
your hand.”

“Madam, for Heaven’s sake revoke that will!” prayed Margaret,
vehemently. “Do not bequeath such misery to him and to me!”

“Pooh–rubbish! He will deserve to lose all if he refuses the woman I
choose for his wife,” cried the autocratic dame.

“I thank Heaven that I have no beauty with which to buy his love!” cried
Margaret, with proudly flashing eyes. “He will not sue for me. But,
madam, you must revoke your will. I cannot live to injure your grandson
so deeply.”

“You are a foolish girl. I tell you, Margaret,” in rising wrath, “that I
will not have my estate, the richest in all Surrey, squandered away in
gambling, horse-racing, and worse extravagance by St. Udo. I had much
rather give it all to you than to his mad associates. He has spent his
patrimony, and his mother’s fortune went soon after her death. He has
only Seven-Oak Waaste to stand between him and penury. So will he not,
think you, mend his life, and become a man worthy of Margaret
Walsingham, if it was only to come into possession of his own
inheritance? Tears, my darling? Come, you give my love a poor return.”

“Oh, madam–oh, madam!” sobbed Margaret, “blot my name out of your will,
if you value my happiness.”

Mrs. Brand watched her in bitter disappointment, then turned her face
away and wept a few angry tears.

“Send for St. Udo,” said she, curtly. “If he refuses your hand before my
face, I shall change the will, but not unless he does so.”

Margaret telegraphed to London for Captain Brand, telling him of his
grandmother’s sudden illness and her desire to see him.

Captain Brand wrote a polite and indifferent reply to Margaret
Walsingham, expressing regrets, sympathy, and excuses, and promising to
run down to Surrey some day next week.

Margaret wrote an entreating note, setting forth the urgency of the case
and the certainty that Mrs. Brand was dying; and Captain Brand
telegraphed a dry, “Very well, I will be at Regis to-night.”

And all day long the dying woman sank lower, and forgot ere long the
things of earth, and hour after hour went past, bringing only wilder
grief and anxiety to the hapless Margaret.

So she was still tied to the wehr-wolf of her loathing fancy, and until
St. Udo Brand chose to come to his grandmother that tie was
indissoluble.

Margaret Walsingham was aroused from her hopeless meditations by the
appearance of Symonds driving Mr. Davenport, Mrs. Brand’s lawyer, into
the court-yard, and she descended swiftly to meet him in the library.

Mr. Davenport entered–a tall, thin, wiry man, with beetling brows and
irascible eyes–and cautiously shut the door.

“Is Mrs. Brand conscious yet?” he asked.

“She is asleep,” said Margaret. “We fear that she will not live to see
the heir. Now, Mr. Davenport, I have asked you to come here that when
Captain Brand arrives you may be upon the ground to change the will
legally. Dr. Gay hopes that she may awake to consciousness for a few
minutes before death. Wait here, if you please, until you are summoned.”

Without another word she left the library, followed to the door by the
lawyer’s keen eyes, and ascended to the death-chamber.

Dr. Gay sat by the dying woman, wiping the death-dews from her brow; her
eyes were open and were eagerly fixed upon the door. Margaret entered,
they flickered up into a transient brightness, her cold lips faintly
smiled.

“You know me, do you not?” murmured Margaret, kneeling beside her and
laying her cheek fondly on the pillow beside her friend’s.

The cold lips framed an eager “Yes,” the groping hand sought hers and
pressed it gratefully.

Margaret Walsingham’s tears fell fast; she kissed the wan cheek of her
dying patroness and smoothed her white tresses back from her clammy
brow.

“God be with you, my good Margaret!” muttered the old lady, brokenly,
“you have been a good friend to a lonely woman. You shall be rewarded
when I am gone.”

A wave of anguish swept over Margaret’s plain, proud face, her voice
grew beautiful with the soul’s voiceless eloquence, her soft eyes
pleaded wistfully, her shy lips quivered beseechingly. The old dowager’s
glaring eyes dwelt on her with gloating admiration.

“You will make a noble lady,” muttered Mrs. Brand, with a fond smile.
“Come, tell me you are satisfied with my arrangements for you?”

“No, no, I cannot meet St. Udo Brand–and I will not stand between him
and his own property. I cannot, indeed!” cried Margaret, with a
heart-rending sob.

The words rang out sharply in the hushed death-chamber, and the little
doctor shifted uneasily in his chair, and stopped stirring the stimulant
he was preparing, to gaze from one to the other–the lady and her
companion. Twice Mrs. Brand essayed to speak, but her trembling lips
refused to articulate a word, and her faint eyes sought Margaret’s in
dumb appeal.

“Say but one word before Dr. Gay and Mr. Davenport,” pleaded Margaret,
wildly. “Say that you wish the will to be canceled, and your grandson to
come into his inheritance without incumbrance. For the sake of the love
we have borne each other, grant my request.”

“Unsay those words, my darling,” wailed Mrs. Brand. “You give me a
parting stab I never thought to receive from you. Oh, my darling, can’t
you save St. Udo from ruin for my sake?–do you grudge to do something
for my sake?”

“No, dear madam, I would be glad to die for your sake,” cried Margaret,
lifting up a brave, love illumined face; “but not this–oh, Heaven! not
this.”

Mrs. Brand closed her eyes with a pang of mortal anguish.

“Have I been mistaken in my Margaret?” she uttered, brokenly. “Is she
not the high, heroic soul I deemed her?”

Tears rose from the heart that thought never to feel another earthly
pang, and rushed from the eyes which she thought to have closed in
peace; and Margaret’s tender heart accused her sternly for her own
self-care in this most pitiful hour.

“Do not fear for your grandson,” said she, eagerly, “I shall not suffer
him to be defrauded.”

Mrs. Brand turned a piercing gaze upon her.

“You must do your best to win St. Udo’s love,” she whispered, earnestly,
“else you will defraud him of his rights, and his ruin will be at your
door.”

Poor Margaret’s head sank on her breast, her heart grew heavy as lead.
Her last supplications had been made, and vainly. Death was stealing
closer to his feeble victim.

Where, where was St. Udo Brand that he came not in time to save her and
himself from this fatal chain which his grandmother’s death was to rivet
round them both?

The trampling of horses hoofs reached her ear. She started to her feet
and listened breathlessly. Yes, through the still April eve stole those
welcome sounds, nearer and clearer. An arrival at Castle Brand.

Margaret took her dying friend in her arms and tenderly kissed her cold,
trembling mouth, and laid her on her pillow again.

“Captain Brand has arrived,” said she, softly. “I shall bring him in at
once.”

She stepped to the doctor’s side–he was still stirring the stimulant
with a nervous hand.

“Give it to her quickly,” she whispered; “the heir has come.”

She left the chamber, her pulses throbbed with a vague sense of evil,
her limbs seemed heavy as lead; and as she crept down the great vaulted
staircase, lit by pale, flickering tapers, she thought that her own tall
shadow writhed and shuddered before her like the phantom of a deadly
tear.

The great hall-door stood open, the servants were waiting decorously in
the hall to greet the heir, and Purcell, the old steward, stood out on
the threshold bare-headed, his silvery locks glistening in the broad
moon’s light.

Margaret Walsingham stepped beside him and eagerly looked for St. Udo
Brand.

Two horsemen were cantering across the Waaste; the night wind bore the
fragment of a gay _chanson_ to the doors of Castle Brand. Under the
Norman oaks they rode softly over the velvet turf, now snatched from
view by the dense hazel coppice, anon seen plainly on the brow of this
gentle curve.

Nearer, nearer–home at last to Seven-Oak Waaste. They slackened their
pace as they approached, and gazed admiringly at the ancient castle,
then observing a lady in the doorway, curved into the court and
dismounted.

“Is this St. Udo Brand?” whispered Margaret to the steward.

A tall man had approached to the foot of the granite steps, leaving his
companion standing between the pawing horses, holding a bridle of each,
and serenely smoking a cigar–a tall man wrapped in a Spanish
riding-cloak, who gazed about him with a dark, lowering eye.

“Can’t say, Miss Margaret,” muttered the steward; “if it is, he’s a
sight the worse for wear; but I haven’t seen him for well nigh onto
seven years.”

The old man descended stiffly to greet the heir.

“Welcome to the Castle, captain,” said he, sourly. “It’s well you come
at last, you’re but just in time to see her alive.”

The stranger removed his hat and disclosed a thin, wary face, just now
wreathed in courtly smiles.

“I have not the honor to be Captain Brand,” he said. “I am merely his
messenger.”

“What? Heh? Captain Brand didn’t come after all?” cried Mr. Purcell,
recoiling from the dark, smiling face.

“Yes, he came; he will remain in Regis to-night, and when less fatigued
will pay his devoirs to Mrs. Brand. He made me the bearer of a note to
Miss Walsingham. Can I see her?”

The steward turned; the man looked up, his black, flashing eyes rested
upon her. She stood not three feet away, looking down upon him, her
white, electric face startling him in the chill radiance of the summer
moon, her long garments sweeping in regal folds about her magnificent
person, her blue-black hair curving in rich waves under the lace
mantilla she had thrown over her head–a woman to mark, to remember.

She stretched forth a long, white hand, with a vehement gesture.

“Give it to me,” she said. “I am Miss Walsingham.”

The man forgot his courtly smile and his wary watchfulness; his
artificial polish cracked in all directions and exposed a terribly
startled man. He gazed at Margaret Walsingham with arrested eye, and his
hands strayed unconsciously to his wrists as if they would find spectral
shackles there.

The envelope he held dropped to his feet, he stooped with a muttered
oath, and recovering it, reached it to her outstretched hand.

She did not retire to read the missive, the moonlight saved her the
necessity, and the man stood awaiting an answer, as she tore the note
from its crested envelope, and in a moment had mastered its contents.

A blaze of indignation spread over her brow and cheek.

“Heartless trifler!” ejaculated she, bitterly, and read these words
aloud to the steward:

“St. Udo Brand presents his compliments to Miss Walsingham, and
his thanks for her tearful invitations to join her in the
melancholy duties of sick-nurse. Feeling that his vocation does
not lie in soothing the nervous sufferings of the aged, he begs
Miss Walsingham’s disinterested heart to hold him excused; and
confidently commends his dear grandmother to the delicate care
of her pet and _protegee_ until such time as she can assure him
that his presence will not bring on another attack of the
vapors upon Madam Brand. Hoping that you will both enjoy a good
night’s rest, and that you may feel justified in receiving me
some time to-morrow, I remain yours,

“ST. UDO BRAND.”

“Captain Brand must come instantly,” cried Margaret, and turned sharply
upon the quailing ambassador. “Do you hear, sir?”

She paused with a lady’s instinct–a lady’s aversion to address an
unknown man.

“Roland Mortlake, Miss Walsingham,” murmured the stranger coming out of
his fog.

“Go tell Captain Brand that Mrs. Brand is dying–that she has but a few
minutes to live, and that he must come instantly if he would hear her
last words. You will remember, Mr. Mortlake? And say the will must be
changed, or Captain Brand will be ruined. Tell him that. Now go, for
Heaven’s sake!”

The stranger turned his wrapt scrutiny of herself into a keen and crafty
attention of her words. He repeated them after her, with a significant
pause after each clause, as if he longed to wrest the uttermost moiety
of a meaning from her scant expressions.

“Symonds shall accompany you with the carriage, and bring Captain
Brand,” said Margaret. “Send him, Purcell.”

The steward trotted away to dispatch the coachman, and the pair were
left with each other.

The man on the lowest step and the woman on the highest gazed fixedly in
each other’s faces. His fierce, envious, and inquisitive; hers cold,
distrustful, and unflinching.

In that silent interview their souls stood forth, each revealing to the
other, and doomed to future recognition under the most perfect masking
which rascality could assume to compass its end, or purity devise to
hide from peril.

Then Roland Mortlake bowed to the earth, and, striding back to his horse
and his companion, uttered a terrible execration.

The other tossed his cigar over the low stone wall into a tulip bed,
and, springing to his horse, followed his angry comrade as he galloped
away.

“_Gardez-tu_, my friend,” cried he, breezily. “You English take great
news sourly, _ma foi!_ you curse Mademoiselle Fortune herself when she
smiles upon you the blandest.”

His clipped English rang out gaily on the summer breeze, and those
careless words, listened to by Margaret Walsingham on that eventful
night with unheeding ears, came back one day through the mists of
forgetfulness, and took their place in the wild drama with strange
significance.

Once more Margaret returned to her dying patroness, and met her eager,
questioning eyes with mute looks of anguish.

Utterly silent now, she held her poor friend’s fluttering hand, and
wiped the foam from her voiceless lips, and the kind old doctor turned
away his brimming eyes, that he might not witness the harrowing
spectacle of the woman’s love and grief while performing these last
gentle ministrations.

The housekeeper sat at the foot of the bed, shaking with her sobs. A few
of the old retainers of the household grouped near the door, stifling
their lamentations as best they might. But never a word spoke poor
Margaret, as she watched her last and only friend sinking from her
clinging arms into the mysteries of death.

The minutes sped; the doctor laid his watch upon the table; Margaret’s
eyes left the pallid face of the dying to watch its swift circling
hands, with a tightening of the heart-strings.

“I give them thirty minutes to go and return from Regis,” she murmured
to the doctor at last. “Will she live thirty minutes?”

Dr. Gay answered nothing; but the vampire Death, fanning the sinking
mortal into immortality, answered, by her convulsive face and twitching
hands.

“_No!_”

Ten, fifteen minutes passed, still the shrouded chest rose and fell in
intermittent respirations; still the cold fingers sought Margaret’s;
still the swimming eyes turned on hers with the dumb agony of the last
pang. Twenty minutes, twenty-five, twenty-six, the closing eyes flew
wide open, the relaxing chin took its comely place once more, the
toiling breath ceased in a long, full sigh.

She looked long and tenderly at her poor Margaret Walsingham, then
beyond her into the shadowy world she was entering, and a wondering
smile broke dazzlingly over her whole countenance.

“Lift me up,” she sighed, like a weary child.

Margaret lifted her to her breast.

“Higher,” whispered she. “Ah! this is rest–rest!”

And as Margaret lifted the smiling face to her shoulder, the last thrill
ran through the kind old heart, stopped, and she entered the everlasting
gates.

So she went on her dim, mystic journey, not sped by the hands of her
kindred; nor mourned by the hearts of her kindred; uncomforted and
alone, save for the love of Margaret Walsingham–good, impulsive,
generous Mrs. Brand.

Margaret laid her down and closed her sightless eyes; then arose from
her finished watch and turned away.

She looked blankly about; her eyes fell upon the watch still lying upon
the table, and noticed the hand resting upon the thirtieth minute, and
immediately the clang of horses’ hoofs and the roll of the carriage
wheels stole to her ear. She put her hand suddenly to her forehead like
one in physical pain; it fell to her bosom, and pressed convulsively
there. She uttered a piercing cry, flung up her hands, and fell forward
like one stabbed to the heart.

St. Udo Brand had come at last, and he was too late.