"No, no, no. If ever woman had the heart of an angel of mercy, you have one, my Perdita. It was not that you missed one atom of your wonderful care for me, but lately you have been reserved. You have denied me your hand so often to help me back to myself, or your bosom when my head ached; and the sweet words of endearment rarely come from you, except when once or twice you have thought I was sleeping."
"You are getting so well and strong that you do not require such excessive tenderness. It was only while you were helpless as a child that I felt for you as if you were one."
"You are but a child yourself, my poor, fragile darling; and yet, child as you are, I _do_ require your motherly care, your motherly words of love. I have had them once, and they were so heavenly sweet that I cannot do without them."
"I will be your mother, then, until you can do without me. I shall take care of my child until he is able to take care of himself."
"Little mother, why do you weep?"
"Hush! hush! we have talked long enough; go to sleep."
"In yours arms, then Perdita."
She gathers him to her heart. Recklessly she strains him close while yet she may, heedless of the lonely days when heart and soul will hunger gnawingly for this blessed moment.
And so time fares on with this Brand which has been plucked from the burning.
Little by little he takes back to him life and strength; little by little he spells out this strange, sweet, new life, and a.n.a.lyzes it, and basks in the lambent sunshine. Not little by little grows his love for the Perdita of his fever dreams; she has taken the tide at its lowest ebb, and it has swept her into his deep, strong heart, which nevermore can shut her out.
He watches her beaming eyes with wistful constancy; he clings to her garments; he kisses her light hands, which touch him in gentle ministrations. The hard man is conquered, and by a woman.
But when he grows fearful that, after all, she may be wearying of this toil and care for him; when, with anxious eyes, he looks into the future, and pictures life without this gentle comforter, he almost wishes that health would turn her back on him forever, so that he might ever have Perdita; and he worries himself into continual fevers, which prove a great drawback to his convalescence.
She, also, has her secret load of anxiety. A crisis is approaching which she may not longer stave off. She must make herself known anon, and finish her duty with regard to him, and go away; and oh! heaven knows how she is to turn her back upon this great pa.s.sion of her life, and him!
In her perfection of humility, she never hopes for reward for these great services of hers; she counts them but a feeble recompense for the evil she--his Marplot and ruin--has wrought him, which no recompense can atone for. She has not had the vanity to probe into his heart and weigh his grat.i.tude toward her, or to count upon it for a moment. His daily evidences of love are to her but the wayward fancy of an invalid, which time and strength will sweep away, as surely as the ripple would blot her reflection from yonder smooth lagoon.
And at last the burden grows so heavy on the heart of each, that he, the least patient, breaks silence, and recklessly put his hand to the wheel which may revolve and crush him.
"You have always put me off when I was at all inquisitive about you," he says to her, one day; "but since I am getting well so rapidly, I think it time that I should a.s.sume a little of the responsibility of my own affairs. I have an appallingly heavy debt of grat.i.tude to pay a kind lady, whose only name to me is Perdita, and I wish to be more particularly acquainted with my deliveress."
"If you would only wait until you were strong enough to travel," answers Margaret, becoming very pale, "it would be for the best."
"Why, where are we to travel, my Perdita?"
"You must prepare your mind for a journey, sir--a journey which will be for your good and happiness."
"With you?"
"Without me."
The desolate tones come quietly enough, but the invalid gives a great start, and clutches at his thin hands, and turns away his face.
Lying so still and so long that she almost thinks him sleeping, she bends timidly over him, and meets his dark eyes full of mournful tears.
"I feared it would come to this," he says, turning almost pa.s.sionately to her; "and yet I have foolishly and selfishly clung to the hope that you would never seek to leave me. Have I been meddling much with your family duties by this long monopoly of you?"
"I have no family duties to attend to."
"No family ties to break, should I wish, if it were possible, for you to stay with me always?"
"Oh, sir, you would not speak so if you--if I could be honest and brave with you."
"My child--oh! my child; I cannot bear to see those tears. If you knew how dear you are to me, you would think well before you cast anything between us."
She buries her face in her hands; for a sacred s.p.a.ce her heart throbs in its joy, and she feels that it were well worth the coming years of hunger to taste the sweet bliss as she tastes it now; and then she meekly looks her situation in the face.
"There are no family ties keeping me from you," she murmurs, as firmly as she may; "but it would not be honorable for me to accept any grat.i.tude from you, or to accede to any such request as you have made, because--I did not come here and find you out with any craven hope of reward. I have barely done my duty toward you, and have had no thought of buying your love."
"I do not understand. I love you, Heaven knows, most fervently, Perdita; but whether you have bought it or not, I cannot say. It is yours, and cannot be recalled."
"And I cannot take it under such circ.u.mstances as those in which I won it. When you understand fully your affairs, you will then see how mercenary I would be to accept your love now."
"Mercenary? My poor child? I offer you this poor, wasted hand, and a broken const.i.tution, and penniless prospects wherewith to be happy; and it is a part of my native selfishness to imagine that my great love could compensate for all drawbacks, but there is not the smallest room for suspecting you of mercenary motives--not the smallest."
"I have heard it said"--this with piteous hesitation--"that Colonel Brand was to be reinstated in his rights--that a great estate in England was going to be offered to him."
The invalid half raises himself on his elbow, and laughs heartily.
"Dismiss that rumor from your mind," he says, in a relieved tone; "for, if that is all the basis you have upon which to found mercenary expectations, it is as slight as the mirage in air. I would not go back to England to meddle with that property if I begged my bread for want of it. I will toady round no woman"s shoes."
"But if she didn"t wish it?" trembled Margaret; "if she insisted on giving it up to you, and rejecting all claim to it?"
"Not she."
"But if she did?"
"I hope she never may, darling. If she did, and if I were ever base enough to accept it, I should have in honor to propose to her by way of grat.i.tude, and because my grandmother"s will said so; and I would rather be an organ-grinder, with a monkey tied to my girdle, than be the heir of Castle Brand with Margaret Walsingham for my wife."
"Perhaps you misjudge her. Perhaps she was as unwilling to be the obstacle between you and your property as you were that she should be so."
"You are generous, my little mother, to defend one of the greediest _kestrels_ who ever struck claw into carrion; but you are not just. I have no doubt that if she ever brought herself to try such an experiment as offering her booty to me, it would be with the a.s.surance that I would refuse it, or with the hope that common decency would urge me to marry her."
"She would never marry you," is the quiet and sad rejoinder.
"Well, we sha"n"t give her the chance. Let us turn from a very groveling subject (to my mind), and get over your next objection to me. We have sent the mercenary one a-flying--now for the next."
"That is the only one. Let us leave the subject altogether. You will know more fully what I meant to-morrow."
She leaves him hastily--never without a sweet backward glance before--and he is left alone for hours.
When she returns it is evening, and the long shadows lie athwart the room, and she flits across the ladders of gloom to him as if innumerable bars were holding them apart.
But when they are all pa.s.sed, and she is close by his side, he scans his Perdita"s countenance with a conviction growing within him that bars are yet between them which she cannot pa.s.s, and he seizes her hand in sudden foreboding.
"What is this, dear child? Why are you so pale and troubled? Have you been weeping?"
"Oh, nothing of consequence. Have you been comfortable?"