CHAPTER XXXIII.

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 friendship 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 flourishing

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 friendship for you,

_mon camarade_?"

"Pshaw! Calembours, you and I know that your capabilities of friendship

could be bought at a ransom of five shillings."

"_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

ennoble 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 friendship."

"And in return, what do you expect?"

Calembours shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

"_Vive l'Anglais!_" he cried, "they can make a good bull's-eye can the

John Bulls. You see this _bourse_? Bah! how wrinkled are its sides, how

flattened under hard pressure of poverty! _Mon Dieu!_ did not the jade,

Madame Hesslein, take the bread out of my mouth in the amplitude of her

revenge? Very well. You who offer me the hand of friendship in return

for that leetle favor, and also for the other not leetle favor of

sending your Marguerite to save your life, shall take her fingers in

yours, kiss them, and say: "Have you forgotten the small souvenir which

you promised to my friend, the chevalier?" _Ma Mignonette_, now is the

time to remember it. And she will remember it--my word upon it, she

will, and will also urge upon you to let her souvenir me with a leetle

more of her pin-money. And with the proceeds of your joint munificence I

shall float again on the ascending tide of fortune, in my tight little

bark, in spite of the _grande_ she devil who has ruined me."

"Ah, your funds have run low, and you are here to replenish them?"

"By gar! that is so, _mon ami_."

The two men eyed each other; St Udo with raised eyebrows and slightly

scornful amusement; the ex-tailor of Szegedin with an ingratiating

impudence which showed that monsieur knew his man very well.

"I have told you often that you are a greedy dog," said the colonel;

"but I have no wish to see you under the feet of your favourite goddess,

though I had much rather you had left your services to speak for

themselves to our pockets. How much did Miss Walsingham agree to give

you? Davenport, it seems to me, mentioned something of this to me."

"Only one thousand of your pounds, _cher ami_, only one thousand; she

was going to insist upon doubling it, but I implored her: 'Admirable

lady, press no more upon me. At that time I little dreamed the days were

coming when necessity should compel me to accept."

"You shall have fifteen hundred to give you a start. I think you will

manage upon that, you are such a man of resource." Said the colonel,

admiringly, who had heard Davenport's grumbling account of the money

arrangement with the chevalier, and remembered it very well.

Whereupon monsieur got up, flung his arms around St. Udo, gave him a

French embrace, vowed he was a lord, and then coolly announced himself

the _attache_ of the little party, he rushed off to hunt up his quondam

antagonist, Davenport, and discuss the management of affairs, with much

impudent triumph, over that worthy gentleman for his former suspicions

of the honor of a French chevalier.

* * * * *

The white moonbeams poured brilliant as diamond lights into the porch of

the old church of Key West.

The spicy odor of the citron trees and of the orange groves filled each

passing breath; the boom of the far-off surf against the reefs made

endless sounding, like the dull roar of a conch-shell at the ear.

The robed figure of a clergyman stood in the low-browed church doorway,

and his hands gently chafed each other as he gazed down the white road

after a quiet cortege, which was gliding slowly toward the town.

Into the flickering shades of a branching palm-tree out to the vivid

moonbeams, bright as day, quietly moving farther and farther from the

man who had bound them together, for a peaceful or a turbulent life.

And the good pastor, softly chafing his hands, and thinking of the

bride's soft, holy face, and of the bridegroom's beauty, which had

reminded him of Antinous, grave, yet not severe, breathes a blessing

upon these strangers, who this night will leave forever behind them his

fairy isle.

"May their wedded life be as serene and smooth as these shades are

light, and these bursts of moonlight translucent. May the sky ever be

clear for them--the sea of life ever be unruffled, as yonder crystal

channel, to which they are hastening."

Then he, also, leaves the glistening temple behind him, and goes his way

among the down-dropping shrubs and spicy blossoms to his home among the

bananas.

Standing on the deck of the steamer, which was to convey him to his

long-forsaken home, with his arm around the Venus-like figure of his

wife, and his eyes upon the swiftly vanishing roof of the isle, St. Udo

Brand, who had spoken but little since repeating the vows which had made

his darling by his side his own, now found speech, and half playfully

apostrophized the dreamlike scene before him thus:

"Farewell ye coral isles, wherein I found my Pearl and happiness.

Blessed be your coraline foundations, your lazy inhabitants, and your

fever-breeding climate. You have been to me a world of passion, of hope,

of purity. Oh, my Lost Good, who has been sent to me in mercy"--his

playful accents changed to the gravity of deep emotion, as he drew yet

closer to him his "Perdita"--"I turn to you henceforth to be what you

would wish me, and to study your secret of how to live. I have been

wandering on the burning sands, and pressing forever onward to reach a

glittering lake of the desert, which, ever rippling and vanishing,

beckoned me farther from the cool, calm shades of rest. Now I come, a

wearied pilgrim to your pure heart, my wife, for you have opened it to

let a weary, dusty wanderer in. Your purity, my simple Margaret, reminds

me of the immaculate heights of snow-capped Gaurisankar--serene,

majestic, while I, a lava-crusted, thunderous, calcined volcano, lashed

by the fires of many passions, come to cool my fevered blood by your

chill radiance."

"Hush, St. Udo! If you knew how intensely happy I am with my

destiny----"

She paused, for her glad eyes were filling fast, her fond tones

faltering.

"Oh, my soft-souled Perdita! my simple darling!"

And then sweetly swooped the rush of joy to them, and they were dumb,

for some one who has read the human heart says, "The most exquisite of

all emotions is utter silence, with a being in whom we feel entire

sympathy."

"Ah, _par ma foi!_ but I am the good fairy, after all!" muttered the

chevalier, hugging his fancy little self, and pacing about near them,

with a protecting air, as if they were his especial _proteges_. "I feel

like Guardian Angel of their fortunes. Saint Ludovic--_par la messe_, it

sounds well!"

"Thank Heaven! Ethel Brand's incomprehensible will has explained itself

at last!" mused Davenport, laying down his crumpled _Times_, "and it has

proved itself to be the wisest will ever the Brands made. Married in

spite of themselves, and as happy as love can make them in spite of a

plain face, on the one side, and a reputation that the dogs wouldn't

pick up once, on the other. He's a saved man, and she's a happy

woman--dear, faithful Margaret. What glorious news for old Gay."

* * * * *

When Mrs. St. Udo Brand came home to Seven-Oak Waaste, she found a

letter awaiting her, and in its many pages she found at last the true

history of the man who had been the Sleuth-Hound of Castle Brand:

CONVICT SHIP FEARLESS, March --, '63.

"MISS WALSINGHAM:--As you are a remarkably clever woman, and I

have always been an admirer of fair play, I will give you your

dues, and own that in our little game you had the best of it,

and deserved to have.

"I don't bear you malice for this cursed mess which you've

pushed me into, although I have you only to blame for it, for

perhaps I didn't go the right way to work with you and I was a

confounded fool for my pains.

"Yes I've been a lover of fair play all through my dodging

life, ever since I was big enough to run at my father with a

knife for making my mother cry; and since in our desperate

little game together you won, I think it but fair play to own

it, and to show you the few trumps with which I fought against

your full hand.

"I'm sent back to banishment for life, and you are, I hear, a

happy bride, coming home with St. Udo Brand; but if I know the

practical good sense you possess, you won't toss this into the

fire till you've read it all, and wasted a few good-hearted

regrets on the wretch whose luck was so infernally poor.

"Forty years ago, Colonel Cathcart Brand, only son of Ethel

Brand, Dowager of Seven-Oak Waaste, went to Cuba, which was a

military station then as now, and fell in with a

splendid-looking Cuban girl called Zerlini Barelli.

"Of course, the man took her in, and ruined all her worldly

prospects through her love of him. In five years he was ordered

back to England again, and coolly proceeded to take leave of

the girl who had been more to him than many a wife is to her

husband, and had nursed him through more than one, almost fatal

attack, of fever. In vain she pleaded that he would take her

with him, and own her boy as his legal heir. The colonel swore

he couldn't, and offered her any money if she would not follow

him.

"She agreed to this, and when I was four years old, they

parted, never to meet again.

"I inherited all my mother's deep, patient ferocity, added to

my father's outward appearance; and was called Brand Bareilli,

at St. Kitts, where I was sent to school, I not having the

remotest idea of my parentage.

"When I was ten years of age I was sent to England, probably at

the colonel's instigation, and I was put into a training

academy to fit me for the army.

"At twenty-one I received my commission as lieutenant in the

artillery, through the influence of Colonel Brand, who from

time to time took a certain care of my fortunes.

"About this time, noticing a great resemblance between the

colonel and myself, a suspicion seized me that I had found my

father.

"I once hinted as much to him, and was furiously ordered to

hold my tongue, and to beware how I insulted my benefactor.

"From that day I lost favor with him; he treated me when we met

with such cold contempt that my blood boiled; and all the while

he was raising a fiend of hatred in my heart against him, he

continued to pay over to me an annuity, which kept my

suspicions on the alert.

"At last I wrote to my mother, who sent me the whole story,

asking me whether I had ever seen the colonel's son, St. Udo

Brand, who was five years younger than I.

"Colonel Brand, upon returning from Cuba to England, had

married a lady of birth, whose one son had absorbed all the

affection which was truly mine by priority or birth, and from

the moment in which I heard of his existence, I hated him with

furious hatred, and longed to visit my wrongs upon him.

"Three years after this I first saw St. Udo Brand, then just

twenty. He was an ensign in the Guards, and mightily admired

for his good humor and wit. He, too, was extremely like his

father, which made me chary of his acquaintance for fear he

would make me out what I was, and taunt me with it before my

companions; so we never knew each other in the slightest.

"But a devil of envy possessed me, for I knew that this chap

had no more business to be happy, rich, and respected than I

had--nor so much, for I was his elder brother; and I was

neither happy, nor rich, nor respected--everybody giving me the

name of a sullen dog, etc., which was scarce fair play.

"So I watched my man till I saw an opening for spoiling his

smiling fortunes, and then I cut in cleverly.

"I found out that St. Udo was madly in love with a young lady

of fashion, and that some had it they were to be married

whenever he attained his majority. I knew the girl myself, as

luck would have it, and was rather fond of her, too; so,

rather than let him, of all others in the world, cut me out of

anything more which was mine by rights, I set myself cunningly

to winning her affections.

"How often I've watched till the coast was clear of the dashing

young ensign, and then got in for my visit to Genevieve

Carlisle. So cleverly did I manage the thing, that not once did

St. Udo contrive to meet me, although I was there every day as

regularly as he himself was.

"At last I induced her to fly with me, and we went to Paris,

and they lost all trace of us, for I was always good at a

dodge, and had been bred to it for many a year.

"She was discontented and moping as might have been expected,

after a few months; she had been used to luxury and fashion,

and plenty of approving friends, and now she hadn't enough to

eat or wear, nor a friend in the world; for, of course, when I

was in hiding, my father couldn't send me my annuity; and as

for her family, they cut her dead when she eloped with a

nameless adventurer, as they were pleased to call me.

"She also took into her head to repent of her bargain, and to

take a dislike to me, and I consider that this wasn't exactly

fair play, seeing that she had been ready enough to fall in

love with me when I was fawning about her in London.

"Well, we got on miserably enough, until her continual

reproaches sent me off to hunt up some money, and I had the

misfortune to be caught in a forgery, which had it succeeded,

might have left me a prosperous man to-day.

"But the sharp dogs detected me, and had me convicted and

booked for twelve years penal service in Tasmania, and the news

killed the woman; she never held her head up after she found

out what company her treachery to St. Udo Brand had brought her

into.

"I can't blame myself for anything in the affair; was it my

fault that I was born with a wrong to avenge? Was it my fault

that my father gave me opportunity to hate him and his, by his

unjust treatment of me? And was it my fault that St. Udo chose

to fall in love with a girl whom I had my eye on, or that she

should be false to him, and prefer me, after all her vows to

him?

"As for the forgery business, if either of us were to blame, it

was she, who should have stood in my chains, for her eternal

harping and carping sent me oft in a fury to do anything I

could for funds.

"Still, it was I that suffered, all throughout; strive as I

might, my cursed ill-luck met me at every turn, and balked me.

"As we went out in the beastly convict ship, we took on board

an old sea-captain and his daughter, who were going part of the

way with us.

"I used to see the little girl walking the deck, and peering

down into the hatch at us poor devils, each chained like a dog

to his log, and her great eyes used to brim over with tears

whenever she looked up; and she would sit at the mouth of the

hatch, crying for us, till we began to watch for her.

"Do you remember all that, Margaret Walsingham?

"You were the little girl, and I was that half-crazy convict

who always tried to drive you away with curses, and to frighten

you with beastly threats. But back you would come next day,

with your solemn eyes beaming with pity, and drop an apple, or

an orange, or even a little book down among us, and sit

watching us for hours, like a spirit, as if our misery burdened

you so that you could not rest without sharing it with us.

"Once when I took fever, and could not speak for thirst, you

climbed down the ladder, and fearlessly approached me with a

cup of pure, cold water.

"How eagerly I drank it you may well remember, and also how ill

I repaid it by a fierce oath the instant my tongue was

loosened.

"But you only flitted away with a sorrowful face, and great

tears standing on your lashes; and I felt such a queer,

wrenching pain about my heart whenever I thought of it

afterward that I vowed I would repay you, if I ever had the

chance, for that little act of kindness.

"When I had been ten years out, I and a comrade of mine,

O'Grady, got home on a ticket of leave.

"We were bound to have our freedom, and not many months passed

after our return before we had it. Doubling, and dodging, and

slipping through their fingers like eels, at last we slipped

the chain, and came out, I as a gentlemanly gambler, he as the

keeper of a gambling saloon, and we soon filled our pockets.

"Then I took a trip over the Continent for the purpose of

perfecting myself in my profession; and then, coming back to

England, circumstances sent Calembours in my way, and we joined

in partnership.

"Then came my good luck, as I thought, and drove me against St.

Udo Brand once more, and I wondered night and day whether I

couldn't get any of the fortune which he so confidentially

expected from his grandmother.

"The colonel, my father, was dead, so was his wife, and my

brother was the only one living to whom I owed a grudge for my

downfall: so I soon found out a way to make him pay up old

scores.

"No sooner did Calembours suggest to me that I was like enough

to St. Udo to pass for him, than I thought out the whole plot

which it has been the business of Margaret Walsingham to

explode.

"I compliment you on your infernal cleverness, and only blame

myself for giving way to the only weak sentiment I have ever

felt in my life, namely, mercy toward you for the sake of your

kindness to me twenty years ago. If it hadn't been for that

mistaken feeling, I could have wiped you out in the beginning

of the game, and not a soul been the wiser.

"But I didn't and I heartily regret it now.

"With this sincere assertion, I close, remaining yours, humbly,

BRAND BAREILLI."

Before we bid our friends good-by, let us cast a farewell glance on each

whose fortunes yet do hang in the balance.

Do you wish your picture taken?

Step into this magnificent establishment in Picadilly, London, whose

excellencies appeal to you from placards on every wall within three

miles of London Bridge.

You will enter an apartment carpeted with a web of Turkish loom, and

strewn with ottomans of Oriental gorgeousness, and blazing with the

splendid framings of fine paintings.

Ladies of rank and fashion throng here, gentlemen of taste and purse,

artists of cynical aspect, diletantes of enthusiasm, and all the world

wags its tongue about the prodigies of art to be viewed in that salon.

You will presently be conducted by a deferential man in elegant livery

up two flights of marble steps into a studio, where you will meet the

great French artist, Ludovic, the Chevalier de Calembours.

His bright eyes beam pleasantly, his handsome face glows with welcome,

his white, shapely hand waves you gracefully into a velvet chair.

You look at the little man in the black velvet Hungarian dolman,

embellished with those glittering badges, which catch the eye so much;

you mark the glossy beard and mustache, trimmed to the last degree of

Parisian taste, and as retentive memory suggests to you the once

wretched little tailor, toiling over his small clothes on the banks of

the Theiss, you feel that you are in the presence of a great man.

And when he has, with that charming smile of _naivete_ and indifference,

shown you his cases of photographs, and his paintings colored and

executed by ten of the first living artists in the world--all of whom

are in his employ--you follow him into the crystal dome, and are

photographed at eight guineas a dozen, with much the feeling you might

experience were you one of those honored old women who have their feet

washed once a year by the Empress of the French.

"The world likes to be gulled, then let us gull it."

In due time Madame Hesslein, of happy memory, married Vice-Admiral

Oldright, who, as she had shrewdly calculated upon, soon got the post of

admiral, and she was able to take precedence of all haughty ladies of

her set, let them be ever so bitterly proud--she the blacksmith's

daughter, a little tailor's wife.

I do not know whether she has yet quite forgotten that dying

boy in the wretched shed, or those simple happy days by the river

Theiss, but I hear that it is still her favorite waltz:

"Have no heart and a good digestion!"

* * * * *

Knowing the simple soul of my heroine; having a vague conception of the

possible grandeur of my hero, feebly, but earnestly portrayed, need I

assure you that happiness shed its golden light upon their future path,

and that, hand clasped in hand, they paced through each small grief or

joy, fanning in each other that bright and Heaven-born spark which leads

us at last to Heaven?

Thus, gentle companions of these tortuous wanderings. I release you from

your patient chaperonage. I think we part friends, and gratefully I

press your hands, and say _au revoir_!

THE END.

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