CHAPTER XXVIII.
NEWS OF ST. UDO BRAND.
Dinner over, the ladies scattered, some to their rooms, some to go
walking--Margaret and Madame Hesslein simultaneously entered the
drawing-room. They turned to each other, the glittering bird of
Paradise, and the gentle ring-dove, with a resistless impulse of
attraction, and each examined the other keenly.
"You are Miss Margaret Walsingham, a celebrity, even in America," quoth
madame, blandly. "Your colonel was much talked of here for his bravery.
I am quite delighted to meet the woman who has fought so spiritedly for
the colonel's rights."
Margaret gazed earnestly at her; she was reading that artful simplicity
of madame with regret, and pitying the fine woman whom the world had
spoiled.
"Your praise is very disinterested, Madame Hesslein," returned she,
simply. "I thank you for it. I am very strange here, and can't tell what
the people say about my affairs. I had hoped that they knew nothing
about me."
"Pshaw! my good lady, you can't expect to pass through life with your
history and not excite remark," retorted Madame Hesslein, with a flirt
of the jeweled fan. "No heroine does, be she a good or a bad one. Men
must talk--give them something to talk about."
Margaret watched her spirited face with secret fascination.
"You are reading me," laughed madame, clanking her golden bracelet on
her dainty wrist. "You are wondering what a woman of the world like me
wants with a saint like yourself, are you not?"
"I am thinking that no doubt you have a purpose in view," said Margaret,
struck by the unlovely shrewdness of the lady's speech.
Madame Hesslein waved her dainty hands in graceful protest.
"Quite wrong, Miss Walsingham," she cried. "I have no purpose as yet,
save the pleasant one of studying a nature which I cannot imitate. I
have been celebrated in my day, but not as you; women are your
worshippers; women cry, 'Noble, generous creature!' Women only envied
me, and presumed to criticise; 'twas men who gave me homage."
"Don't jest, madame, upon my history; it may yet end in a tragedy!" said
Margaret.
"Ah, ah!" breathed madame, warningly, "you are one of those great
hearted, soft souled women who suffer affairs of the heart to trouble
them. Don't suffer affairs of the heart to trouble you. Griselda the
patient. When one hope dies, pursue another, and have a new one every
day. Ha! ha! Joliffe (my husband) used to say, 'Honoria sees no trouble,
for her heart is never at home to grant an interview.'"
"Your husband is dead?" asked Margaret, coldly.
"Yes, and no. Dead to me these five years, though. Fact is, Miss
Walsingham--don't feel horror-stricken--that Joliffe was intolerably
prosy; we had a quarrel, and I ran off. Why not? Since then we have got
comfortably divorced, and I can marry as soon as I like again. Joliffe
was so jealous. I must not drive to the general's, I must not walk with
a senator, I must eschew the military, and the best wits of the day are
military men. Horrors! I must devote myself to Joliffe, and he only on
the embassy at Washington."
Madame appealed impressively to the icy Margaret.
"General Legrange here declares that you are the widow of a
Plenipotentiary of the French Court!" she said.
"Does he indeed?" cried madame, with the gusto of habitual vanity. "Then
I sha'n't contradict him--don't you, Miss Walsingham. They must always
talk about me wherever I go. I am accustomed to it; I let them say what
they choose. I please myself, and the world gives me my way, I've been
North and South, East and West, and although I have seen trouble, I have
ever trodden over it; no woman has ever got into the wrong box so often
and come out of it to a higher grade; no woman has ever borne so much
scandal, and been popular in spite of it. I survive it all; I eat,
drink, make merry--am feasted, courted, and adored, and all because I
don't let affairs of the heart vex me. I don't mope, and muse, and turn
melancholy as you (a good creature, too), are doing."
The fine, small face of Madame Hesslein shone with wicked animation; her
thin, scarlet lips parted in two beauty curves with a string of pearls
between, with small, glittering head poised on one side, the gorgeous
parakeet studied the plain, tender creature before her, and laughed at
such a contrast.
"Do you know why I am here?" queried Margaret, tremulously.
Madame Hesslein smiled and nodded.
"All New York knows why the sombre English dame is here," she jibed,
"for your stupid lawyer has bored the city for news of your Colonel
Brand."
"Mr. Davenport only does his duty."
Madame grimaced charmingly.
"Duty!" she mocked. "Oh, Juggernaut of good people's lives, what
unwilling victims do ye crush beneath your wheels in your heavenward
march?"
"Have you been crushed?" asked Margaret, smiling.
"Oh, no; Mr. Davenport is too pompous to expect anything of a woman.
Stupid wretch!"
"Had you known St. Udo Brand," cried Margaret, blushing, "you could not
laugh at his destruction. He was bitterly proud, but he was true as
steel."
"Was he so?" breathed madam--and her green eyes grew black--"I should
have liked to meet him, then. I have yet to meet the man who is as true
as steel. Griselda, you are one who should win back a man--but, oh,
you'll never do it! never!"
A wild change swept over her fine face, her wondrous, globular eyes grew
deep and passionate, and her beautiful hands were clasped in covert
anguish.
"I pity your sad life, madame, if you have proved all false," said
Margaret, with feeling, "for there are good men on earth, I doubt not."
"The best die; the fairest, the most loved," said madame, faintly. "Miss
Walsingham, I had one son--ah!"--she shivered and closed her eye--"and
he died miserably. I loved him, I did love him, and he was my only
consolation for many years." She dashed her tears away and looked up
sternly. "You make me talk to you, with your soft, true face," she
exclaimed, bitterly, "and I must not talk. But mind, I have told you
nothing; you can't say that I have narrated any of my history to you."
"I had not thought of saying so," replied Margaret.
"Ah, you are a good soul, and I like you," murmured madame, patting
Margaret's hand with a touch like falling rose-leaves. "So sweet, so
heroic, so humble! You remind me of myself many years ago in old
Austria, when I was in love with--my destroyer!"
Her face hardened, her green eyes glimmered with the deadly light of
hate.
She turned off her momentary remorse with a heartless laugh, and rattled
her _collier_ of golden lockets.
"Each of these lockets," sneered madame, "contains a victim to my power
of fascination, [there were at least a dozen,] and the whole string of
them was presented to me by an old vice admiral who fell in love with me
at Barbadoes last winter, and escorted me to the Bermudas when I went
there. My good lady, that first foolish passion of mine has so destroyed
my powers of mercy that I love to torture mankind and madden them with
false expectations, if only I might be revenged."
The beautiful lips of the lady suddenly compressed with a cruel
expression, and looking up, Margaret beheld the Chevalier de Calembours
hurrying across the room to join them.
"The Chevalier de Calembours wishes to be presented to you," said
Margaret.
Those gleaming, chrysolite orbs flashed a full upward glare in the
chevalier's face. He recoiled, he changed color, and became strangely
silent.
"So glad to meet the chevalier," murmured madame, with an inimitable
elegance of manner.
Monsieur's face relaxed; he drew near her, dazzled as with the eye of a
rattlesnake.
"Incomparable madame, where have we met before?" inquired he, with soft
insinuation.
She honored him with a glance of astonishment and an artless smile.
"Indeed I cannot say, chevalier," she minced, "unless we've met in
dreams."
"Pardon the presumption, madame, _mon amie_," persisted the chevalier,
growing very pale, "but I think we are not strangers."
Another change swept over Madame Hesslein's ever-changeful face; all
resemblance of her late self disappeared, and a bold, brilliant, haughty
creature sat in her place, smiling with supercilious amusement at the
little Bohemian's blunder.
"I should indeed feel honored if monsieur would recall the circumstances
of our acquaintance," she said, blandly; "for I am frequently accosted
by strangers who vow that I am known to them, and who afterward discover
that my resemblance to the person they took me for was owing solely to
the Protean expression of my face. I can't help my face being like
twenty other people's in a breath, can I, Miss Walsingham? But I would
like to think that Chevalier Calembours had known me previously, for I
always have a warm side to Frenchmen for a special reason."
The chevalier was himself again: his doubts had fled, and he was
laughing at himself for his momentary illusion.
"Madame has explained the sweet hallucination," he said, hand on heart.
"We have not met except in dreams. Ah! that we had been friends in those
days of glory when I was the favorite of the Hungarian court, the Count
of Calembours, owner of diamond mines! _Mon Dieu!_ my homage was worthy
of its object then!"
Monsieur launched into his loftiest braggadocio, and madame listened
well, and drew him out with skill.
"So monsieur was born in Hungary?"
"In Hungary, madame."
"Have you seen the pretty river Theiss?"
"Hem! Yes, madame. I lived in Irzegedin."
"Ah!"--with a mocking smile--"the residences of the counts are
particularly magnificent in that city, are they not?"
"Madame is right. Madame must have been there."
"Oh, no, my dear chevalier, else I should have heard of Count
Calembours, without doubt. And Chevalier de Calembours left his princely
fortune behind when he came here to fight?"
"Madame is a good listener."
"Brave chevalier! but you will return to your estates?"
"Without doubt, madame, when I am weary of glory."
"Admirable man!" cried madame, with a silvery laugh. "What an enviable
lady your wife is."
"Dear friend, I have no wife," complacently.
"Is that credible? A young and handsome man without a wife? Oh,
chevalier!"
"My wife,"--with a frown--"my wife is gone long since."
"Alas! how sad. You must have been adored by her," breathed Madame
Hesslein.
"Ah, _pauvrette_, yes. She wearied me with that grand passion of hers."
Madame's smiling face hardened into a stone-mask, but her eyes seemed to
pulsate with smothered fire.
"Wearied monsieur, did she?" (with a threatening smile into his eyes).
"Silly, clumsy wretch!"
"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier; "she was a pretty Venus, but
unsophisticated, unformed, somewhat vulgar."
"And your indifference broke her heart--she died for love of you?"
questioned madame, wickedly.
"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier again. "She consoled herself.
She ran away with a cotton lord from Manchester, and I heard of her no
more."
"She was mad--she was a fool!" cried madame, blandly mischievous. "She
should have polished her dull luster, and recaptured the errant heart of
her noble chevalier. I should have done so."
"You, exquisite madame?" sighed the chevalier, _con amore_. "Ah, but my
wife was not clever like you, nor beautiful."
"She was only affectionate?" whispered madame.
"Only affectionate," and monsieur bowed.
Again their eyes met, hers streaming forth a bewildering fire, his
wistful and adoring, and though her words stung the Chevalier de
Calembours, the victim could not choose but hover close, and closer to
admire the serpentine grace of his tormentor.
Presently, becoming weary of the amusement, the siren sent him for a
chess-board, promising him a game of backgammon for reward, and turning
to Margaret, with a laugh of derision, her excitement burst forth.
"See how that man throws himself down to be trampled over by me," she
whispered, exultingly. "See how he licks the dust from my feet. Ah, if I
could only spurn him into ruin I would do it."
She thrust her lovely foot of Andalusian grace from out of its velvet
folds, and contemplated it with a smile.
"I am more beautiful than that creature who loved him long ago on the
banks of the Theiss, am I? Then by virtue of my beauty, I shall avenge
her cause, and my own. I shall humiliate our noble count."
She whispered it gayly to her sumptuous bracelets, turning and clanking
the golden shackle on her shapely wrist; but her fine, small face was
wild with malice.
"You hate my friend, the chevalier, with a strange perversity," remarked
the disapproving Margaret. "Doubtless that hapless woman was as much to
blame as he."
"Ah, was she?" breathed madame, turning pale. "I think he said that her
only fault was her passionate love, which his shallow soul wearied of.
Oh, Heaven! how cruel you can be! Her case, Miss Walsingham, is like my
own--how keenly I can understand such wrongs. Pshaw! I shall moralize no
more. I have long, long ago left these stormy waves behind, and now
float on a glassy sea, lit by rays of golden ambition. I have buried the
god of luckless youth, poor Cupid, and set upon his grave the god of the
Thirties--yellow-faced Pluto. My motto is, 'No heart and a good
digestion,' and taking heed to its warning, I expect to live, handsome
as a picture, to the age of old Madame Bellair, who
"'Lived to the age of one hundred and ten;
And died from a fall from a cherry-tree then.'"
The chevalier returning with the chess-board, madame and he enjoyed
several hours of their game, she played more games than that of
backgammon, although all her faculties seemed to be concentrated in
winning the chevalier's golden dollars from him, which she did with
marvelous relish, and keeping her accounts, which she did with marvelous
precision.
She ended her game of backgammon by transferring the last piece in the
charmed chevalier's purse to her own, and she ended the game of hearts
by dropping the net of bewilderment completely over poor Calembours, and
then she thought of tightening the cord.
"Poor Miss Walsingham!" said madame, with a rippling laugh of wicked
glee; "I shall chase away that look of stern dislike which has settled
upon your face ever since you discovered that I added gambling to my
other sins--I shall make you like me in spite of yourself. Come,
chevalier, turn my music."
She strolled gracefully down the long drawing-room, attended by the
elated chevalier, who had never been so happy in his life, and, followed
by the wondering and admiring eyes of a score of both sexes, took her
seat at the piano.
But Margaret turned her back, and shut her heart against the bold and
erring creature, whose beauty was but the fatal bewitchment of clever
wickedness, whose spasms of grief were the last expiring gleams of a
better nature which she sedulously quenched.
Madame played some air, fairy nonsense, that her little hands might
glamour the rapt chevalier in their bird-like glancings here and there;
and then, with a defiant glance over her shoulder at cold Margaret
Walsingham, she stole into a theme with sentiment, with soul in every
chord.
Ah, those strains of tender sadness! how they rose and fell in
persistent plaint! how they mourned, and whispered of hope, mourned
again in homeless accents! Then these waves of stronger passion--how
they surged from grief to fury! how they gushed from beneath the
glancing hands in menacing strains and conquering thunder!
It was as if a Frederic Chopin sat before the keys, instead of that
small Circe.
Then these songs, so wild, so caroling, so purely joyous--could Sappho
sing more burningly of happiness and love?
Margaret forgot her chill disdain of the perverted nature, forgot her
own heart-trouble, even forgot St. Udo Brand in her trance of
ravishment; and unconscious that she did so, rose and stood beside the
wondrous St. Cecilia.
Madame raised her mock-simple eyes--they were not disappointed--Margaret
was bending over her with a fascinated face, and the chevalier was
wrapped in his study of the fair musician.
"Thanks for that act of homage," said Madame Hesslein, gravely, to
Margaret; then dropping her tones, and rising, "I thought I could make
you like me. I came here, to this hotel, to make you like me, because I
had something pleasant to tell you; and I never do a favor for any one
who presumes to criticise me unfavorable. Griselda, patient soul, come
to my room, and we shall talk."
She drew the astonished Margaret's hand within her arm, gave a majestic
bow to the flushed chevalier, and led the unresisting girl out of the
drawing-room to her own luxurious apartments.
"Now, my good lady," observed Madame Hesslein, airily. "I have conceived
something like appreciation of your humdrum goodness, and since I see a
good deal of intellect at the back of it, I am disposed to do you a good
turn, hoping that, charity-like, it may cover a multitude of my sins."
"What is it that you have to communicate?" asked Margaret, earnestly.
"How can it be that you, a stranger have become acquainted with my
concerns?"
"Pshaw! English exclusiveness again!" mocked madame. "But I do know
somewhat of your affairs, gentle Griselda. For instance, I hear that you
are searching for Colonel Brand, that you may make over your fortune to
him. Margaret Walsingham, how can you be so foolish?"
"Madame, I only do my duty."
"Ugh! You horrify me with your crucifixion of the flesh, you devotee of
Duty."
"Colonel Brand is worth sacrificing life itself for," said Margaret,
with glowing eyes.
Madame watched her with sudden interest.
"Ah! I thought so," murmured she, sadly; "You care for this man--you
love him."
"Madame!" deprecated timid Margaret, coldly.
"Yes, I see it. Poor creature, you should not love anything, do you know
that, said madame, pityingly.
"You are right," replied Margaret, with a meek, quiet despair. "My plain
face and manner will never win me love."
Madame Hesslein looked at her with a curious smile--at the spiritual
face, the soulful eyes, the tall, magnificent figure--and she patted
Margaret's hand with dainty tenderness.
"Your humility is very prettily done," said she, "and would really look
well on myself, for I have none of it. But you mistake me; I meant that
since love is eternally being met with treachery, why do you waste it,
and especially upon such a poor _parti_ as a colonel? Heavens! she
troubles her digestion about a colonel! Why are you not more ambitious?
If I were you, I wouldn't look below a major-general. I don't intend to
give myself to any man who can't give me a lift in life. I am going to
marry Vice-Admiral Oldright, who followed me to the Bermudas. I have
worked hard to entrap him, and I have succeeded, I crossed the Atlantic
five times for his sake, and I mean to get him; because when he is an
admiral, and I am his wife, I shall take precedence of all other women
in my circle."
"Ambition is not worth a true woman's pursuit," said Margaret.
"Well said, St. Griselda--such an apothegm deserves applause. Ah, well,
Miss Walsingham, perhaps you are right, but you are not wise. You will
stick to your colonel in spite of my advice? You will give him your
fortune, and live on your wits in future? Poor creature! However I will
not reproach you; for, as St. Chrysostom wrote to Pentadia, 'I know your
great and lofty soul, which can sail, as with a fair wind through many
tempests, and in the midst of the waves enjoy a white calm.' You will
depart on your Utopian enterprise, contented with the white calm of an
approving conscience in the midst of the waves of starvation. Men are
such beasts, they prefer the bold and grasping Kestral like myself to
rewarding the fidelity of a ring-dove like Miss Walsingham."
Margaret was gazing breathlessly in the brilliant, heartless woman's
face, and her voice faltered, as she asked:
"Can you send me on that enterprise? Do you bring me news of Colonel
Brand?"
And madame, with a glance of pity in the passionate eyes, replied:
"Yes, I can. When at Key West, a month ago, I saw Colonel Brand driving
out with a friend. Does that please you?"
Margaret's face was quivering with joy--with a noble triumph; she turned
it from those scoffing eyes, and whispered a quiet "Thank God!"