"And now, Miss," she wound up, her little eyes glaring on the young lady, "I should like to know what you've got to say for yourself."
"I have nothing to say," replied Nathalie, speaking for the first time.
"Oh, I dare say not! All I say goes in one ear and out t'other, doesn't it, now? Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you minx?"
"No!" quietly said Nathalie.
Mrs. Leroy glared upon her with a look of fury, horribly revolting in that old and wrinkled face.
"Do you mean to say you'll ever do it again? Do you mean to say you'll go with that man any more? Do you mean to say you defy and disobey me? Tell me!" cried Lady Leroy, clawing the air as if she were clawing the eyes out of Captain Cavendish's handsome head, "tell me if you mean to do this!"
"Yes!" was the fiery answer flaming in the girl's crimson cheeks and flashing eyes, "I defy you to the death!" But prudence sidled up to her and whispered, "Heiress of Redmon, remember what you risk!" and so—oh, that I should have to tell it!—Nathalie Marsh smoothed her contracted brows, vailed the angry brightness of her blue eyes under their sweeping lashes, and steadily said:
"Mrs. Leroy, you know I have no wish to willfully defy or disobey you. I should be sorry to be anything but true and dutiful to you, and I am not conscious of being anything else now."
"You are—you know you are!" the old woman passionately cried. "You know I hate this man—this spendthrift, this fortune-seeker, this smooth-spoken, false-hearted hypocrite! Give up this man—promise me never to speak to him again, and then I will believe you!"
Nathalie stood silent.
"Promise," shrilly screamed Lady Leroy, "promise or else——"
She stopped short, but the white rage in her distorted face finished the sentence with emphasis.
"I will promise you one thing," said Nathalie, turning pale and cold, "that he shall not come to Redmon any more. You accuse him unjustly, Mrs. Leroy—he is none of the things you say. Do not ask me to promise anything else—I cannot do it!"
What Lady Leroy would have said to this Nathalie never knew; for at that moment there came a loud knock at the front door, and Miss Marsh, only too glad to escape, flew down to answer it.
The alarm at the outer door proved to come from Charley Marsh; and Nathalie stared, as she saw how pale and haggard he looked—so unlike her bright-faced brother.
"What ails you, Charley?" she anxiously asked. "Are you sick?"
"Sick? No! Why should I be sick?"
"You are as pale and worn-looking as if you had been ill for a month. Something has gone wrong."
"I have been up all night," said Charley, omitting, however, to add, playing billiards. "That's why. Nathalie," hurriedly and nervously, "have you any money? I can't ask before that old virago up-stairs."
"Money! Yes, I have some. Do you want it?"
"I want you to lend me as much as you can, for a short time. There!" he said, impatiently, "don't begin asking questions, Natty. I want it particularly, and I will pay you back as soon as I can. How much have you got?"
"I have nearly twenty pounds, more or less. Will that do?"
"It will help. Don't say anything about it, Natty, like a good girl. Who's in?"
"No one but Mrs. Leroy. Won't you come up?"
"I must, I suppose. Get the money while I am talking to her, and give it to me as I go out. What a solemn face you have got, Natty!"
He laughed as he spoke—Charley's careless, boyish laugh, but Nathalie only sighed as they ascended the stairs together.
"Mrs. Leroy has been scolding ever since I came from town. If ever a fortune was dearly bought, Charley, mine will be."
"Paying too dear for your whistle—eh? Never mind, Natty! it can't last forever, and neither can Lady Leroy."
All the shadow had gone from Charley's brow, and the change was magical. Whether it was the promise of the money, or his natural elasticity of spirit rebounding, he knew best; but certainly when he shook hands with the mistress of the domain, the sunshine outside was not brighter than his handsome face. Mrs. Leroy rather liked Charley, which is saying folios in the young man's favor, considering how few that cantankerous old cat admitted to her favor—but every one liked Charley Marsh.
While Nathalie went to her own room for the money, Nathalie's brother was holding Mrs. Leroy spell-bound with his brilliant flow of conversation. All the gossip and scandal of Speckport was retailed—business, pleasure, fashion, and fights, related with appetizing gusto; and where the reality fell short, Mr. Marsh called upon his lively imagination for a few extra facts. The forthcoming picnic and its delights were discussed, and Charley advised her to strain a point and be present.
"Midge can wheel you about the field, you know, in your chair," said Charley. "You won't take cold—the day's sure to be delightful, and I know every one will enjoy themselves ten times better for having you there. You had better come. Val Blake and I will carry you down stairs!"
To the astonishment of Nathalie, Mrs. Leroy assented readily to the odd proposition; and Charley departed, having charmed the old lady into utter forgetfulness, for the time being, of her antipathy to Captain Cavendish. Speckport could talk of nothing for a week beforehand but the picnic—the first of the season. All Speckport was going, young and old, rich and poor. Admission, twenty-five cents; children, half price.
The Redmon grounds, where the picnic was to be held, were extensive and beautiful. Broad velvety fields, green lanes, among miniature forests of fragrant cedar and spruce, and all sloping down to the smooth, white sands of the beach, with the gray sea tramping dully in, and the salt spray dashing up in your face. And "I hope it won't be foggy! I do hope it won't be foggy!" was the burden of every one's cry; the fog generally choosing to step in and stay a week or two, whenever Speckport proposed a picnic. How many blinds were drawn aside in the gray and dismal dawn of that eventful morning, and how many eager pairs of eyes, shaded by night-cap borders, turned anxiously heavenward; and how delightedly they were drawn in again! for, wonderful to tell, the sky was blue and without a cloud, and the sun, rising in a canopy of rose and amber, promised all beholders a day of unremitting sunshine.
Before nine o'clock the Redmon road was alive with people—all in gorgeous array. Before ten, the droves of men, women, and children increased fourfold, and the dust was something awful. The sun fairly blazed in the sky; had it ever shone so dazzlingly before, or was there ever so brilliantly blue a sky, or such heaps and heaps of billows of snowy white, floating through it? Before eleven, that boiling seaside sun would have grilled you alive only for the strong sea-breeze, heaven-sent, sweeping up from the bay. Through fiery heat, and choking dust, the cry was "still they come," and Redmon grounds swarmed with people, as the fields of Egypt once swarmed with locust. A great arch of evergreens surmounted the entrance-gate, and the Union Jack floated loyally over it in the morning sunshine. The clanging of the band and the roll of the drum greeted your delighted ears the moment you entered the fairy arch, and you found yourself lost and bewildered in a sea of people you never saw before. The swings were flying with dizzying velocity, young belles went up until the toes of their gaiters nearly touched the firmament, and your head reeled to look at them. Some two or three hundred ladies and gentlemen were tripping the light fantastic toe to the inspiring music of a set of Irish quadrilles; and some eight hundred spectators were gathered in tremendous circles about them, looking on, gazing as if never in all their lives had so glorious and wonderful a vision as their fellow-sinners jigging up and down, dazzled their enchanted eyes. The refreshment tents were in such a crowded and jammed and suffocating state, that you could see the steam ascending from them as from an escape-valve; and the fair ones behind the tables, bewildered by two dozen clamorous voices, demanding the attention of each one at once, passed pies and tarts, and sandwiches and soda water, and coffee and cakes frantically and at random, and let little boys feed in corners unnoticed, and were altogether reduced to a state of utter imbecility by the necessity of doing half a dozen things at one and the same time. Pink and blue, and yellow and green ribbons fluttered, and silks and muslins and bareges trailed the grass and got torn off the waist by masculine bootheels; and the picnic was too delightful for description, and, over all, the fiery noonday July sun blazed like a wheel of fire, and the sea wind swept up fresh and delicious, and the waves sang their old song down on the shore, and no one listened to their mystic music or wondered, like poor little Paul Dombey, what they were saying.
No one! Yes, there was one sitting on a green bank, all alone, who had been very busy all morning until now, arranging tables and waiting on hungry pleasure-seekers, making little boys and girls behave themselves, and swinging little people who could get no one else to attend them. The breeze that set the tall reeds and fern at fandangoing waved her black barege dress, and flung back the little black lace vail falling from her hat. Tired and hot, she had wandered here to listen to the waves and to the tumult behind her.
What were the thoughts of the man who leaned against a tall tamarack tree and watched the reclining figure as a cat does a mouse? There are some souls so dark that all the beauty of earth and heaven are as blank pages to them. They see without comprehending, without one feeling of thoughtfulness for all the glory around them. Surely it were better for such to have been born blind. This man saw no wide sea spreading before him, glittering as if sown with stars. There was more to him worth watching in one flutter of that thin black dress on the bank than in all the world beside, and he stood and watched with his eyes half closed, waiting until she should see him.
He had not to wait long. Some prescience that something out of harmony with the scene was near, made her restless. She rose up on her elbow, and looked round—a second after, her face flushed, she was up off the grass and on her feet. The man lifted his hat and advanced.
"Pardon my intrusion, Winnie—Miss Rose, and—no, no—I beg you will not go!"
She had made to turn away, but he himself interposed—something of agitation in his manner, and it was but rarely, indeed. Captain George Cavendish allowed himself to be agitated. She stopped gently enough, the surprised flush faded out from her face—that pretty, pale face, tranquil as face could be, was only very grave.
"If you have anything to say to me, Captain Cavendish, please to say it quickly. I do not wish to be seen here."
"Is it such a disgrace, then, to be seen for one poor instant with me?" he said, bitterly.
She did not reply, save by an impatient tapping of one foot on the grass, and a backward glance at the crowded grounds.
"Winnie!" he broke out, passionately, as if stung by her manner, "have you turned into a flirt? Have you entirely forgotten what is past? You cannot—you cannot have ceased altogether to care for me, since I cannot, do what I will, forget you!"
Miss Rose looked at him—steadily, quietly, gravely, out of her brown eyes. If he had hoped for anything, that one look would have shivered his air-castles as a stone shivers brittle glass.
"I told you once before, Captain Cavendish, that such words from you to me were insults. The past, where you are concerned, is no more to me than if you had never existed. I have not forgotten it, but it has no more power to move me than the waves there can move those piles of rock. No! I have not forgotten it. I look back often enough now with wonder and pity at myself, that I ever should have been the idiot that I was."
His face turned crimson at the unmistakable earnestness of her words.
"Then I need scruple or hesitate no longer," he said, launching his last pitiful shaft. "I need hesitate no longer, on your score, to speak the words that will make one who is rich and beautiful, and who loves me, happy. I came here willingly to make what atonement I could for the past, by telling you beforehand, lest the shock of my marriage——"
He stopped in actual confusion, but raging inwardly at the humiliation she was making him feel—this poor little pale schoolmistress, whom he could have lifted with one hand and flung easily over the bank. She was smiling as she listened to him, a smile not of mockery or disdain, only so gallingly full of utter indifference to him.
"There is no atonement necessary," she said, with that conscious smile still hovering on her lips; "none, I assure you. I have no hard feelings toward you, Captain Cavendish, nothing to resent or forgive. If I was an idiot, it was my own fault, I dare say, and I would not blot out one day that is gone if I could. Marry when you will, marry as soon as you please, and no one will wish you joy more sincerely on your wedding day than I."
It half-maddened him, that supreme indifference, that serene face. He knew that he loved her, herself, and her alone; and while he fancied her pining and love-lorn, he was very well satisfied and quite complacent over her case. But this turn of the story was a little too mortifying to any man's pride to stand, and the man a lady-killer by profession at that.
"I don't believe it," he said, savagely, "you have not forgotten—you cared for me too much for that. I did not think you could stoop to falsehood while playing the rôle of a saint."
Miss Rose gave him a look—a look before which, with all his fury, he shrank. She had turned to walk away, but she stopped for a moment.
"I am telling no falsehood, Captain Cavendish: before I stoop to that, I pray I may die. You know in your heart I mean what I say, and you know that you believe me. I have many things to be thankful for, but chief among them, when I kneel down to thank God for his mercies, I thank him that I am not your wife!"
She walked slowly away, and he did not follow her; he only stood there, swallowing the bitter pill, and digesting it as best he might. It was provoking, no doubt, not to be able to forget this wretched little school-ma'am, while she so coolly banished him from her memory—so utterly and entirely banished him; for Captain Cavendish knew better than to disbelieve her. He had jilted her, it is true, as he had many another; but where was his triumph now? If he could only have forgotten her himself; but when the grapes were within his reach, he had despised them, and now that they grew above his head, and he did want them, it was exasperating that he could not get them.
"Pah!" he thought bitterly, "what a fool I am! I could not marry her were she ever so willing now, any more than I could then. This cursed debt is dragging me to—perdition—I was going to say, and I must marry a fortune, and that soon. Nathalie Marsh is the richest girl in Speckport, therefore I shall marry Nathalie Marsh. She is ten times more beautiful than that little quakeress who is just gone; but I can't love her, and I can't forget the other."
Captain Cavendish leaned against the tamarack a long time, thinking. The uproar behind him and the roar of the surf on the shore blended together in a dull, meaningless tumult in his ears. He was thinking of this marriage de convenance he must make, of this bride he must one day take home to England. He was a gambler and a spendthrift, this man, over head and ears in debt, and with no way but this one of ever getting out of it. From his friends in England? He had no friends in England on whom he could rely. His only rich relative, his uncle, the baronet, had taken it into his head, at the age of fifty-five, to get married; and what was more, there was an heir, a young gentleman of five months old, between him and the baronetcy. His commission had been purchased by his uncle, and it seemed all he need ever expect from him. He had never seen service, and had no particular desire to see any. He must marry a rich wife—there was no alternative—and he knew the power of his handsome face extremely well. He had no fear of a refusal; there was no use in delaying; he would make the heiress of Redmon happy that very day.
The sun was going down behind the waves, in an oriflamme of gold and crimson and purple and rose, flushing the whole sky with its tropical beauty, when the young officer turned away to seek for his future wife. As if his thoughts had evoked her she was coming toward him, and all alone; her white dress floating mistily about her, all her golden curls hanging damp and loose over her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed with the heat. She had taken off her hat, and was swinging it by its azure ribbons, as she came up; and she looked so beautiful that the young Englishman thought that it would not be so very dreadful a thing to sell himself to this violet-eyed sultana after all.
"Truant!" said Nathalie, "where have you been all the afternoon? I thought you had gone away."
"And all the time I have been standing here, like Patience on a monument, wishing you would come up."
"Did you want me, then?"
"When do I not want you?"
Nathalie laughed, but she also blushed. "Then you should have gone in search of me, sir. Mrs. Leroy wants to go home now, and I must go with her."
"But not just yet. I have something to say to you, Nathalie."
And so here, in the hot warmth of the red sunset, the old, old story was told—the story that has been told over and over again since the world began, and will be told until its end, and yet is ever new. The story to which two little words, yes or no, ends so ecstatically, or gives the deathblow. It was yes this time; and when Nathalie Marsh, half an hour after, went home with Mrs. Leroy, she was wondering if there was one among all those thousands—one in all the wide world—as happy as she!
The last red glimmer of the sunset had faded out of the sky, and the summer moon was up, round and white and full, before the last of the picnickers went home. And in its pale rays, with his hands in his pockets, and a cigar between his lips, Captain Cavendish went home with Cherrie Nettleby.
Miss Nathalie Marsh was not the only young lady who received a proposal that memorable picnic-day. Flashing in and out among the other belles of Speckport, and eclipsing them all as she went, the belle of the bourgeois, par excellence, came Miss Cherrie Nettleby, quite dazzling to look at in a pink and white plaid silk, a white lace mantle, the blue parasol you wot of, the turban-hat, with a long white feather streaking round it, and the colored white lace vail over her blooming brunette face. Miss Nettleby had fawn-colored kid gloves, an embroidered kerchief sticking out of her pocket; and, to crown all, two or three yards of gold chain around her neck, and hanging ever so far below her waist. An overgrown locket and a carnelian cross dangled from the chain; and no giddy young peacock ever strutted about prouder of its tail than did the little black-eyed belle of these glittering fetters. She had only received the chain, and locket, and cross the night before; they had come in a box, with a huge bouquet, under the weight of which a small black boy staggered, with the compliments of Captain Cavendish, and would Miss Nettleby do him the honor of accepting them? Nettleby did him the honor, and was not able to sleep a wink all night for rapture. A gold chain had been the desire of her heart for many and many a day; and, at last, some good fairy had taken pity on her and sent it, with the handsomest man in Speckport for her ambassador. Cherrie's ecstasies are not to be described; a chain from any one would have been a delightful gift; but from Captain Cavendish, one smile from whom Cherrie would have given all the rest of her admirers for, delightedly. She had hugged Ann in her transports, until that young person, breaking indignantly from her, demanded to know if she had gone mad; and she had dressed for the picnic, expecting to have the young Englishman devotedly by her side the whole day long, before the aggravated and envious eyes of all Speckport. But Cherrie had never made a greater mistake in all her life; the blue parasol, the pink silk, the white lace mantle, and fawn-colored kid gloves were powerless to charm—Captain Cavendish never came near her. He had not come at all until late, and then he had driven in in the McGregor barouche, with the heiress of that house by his side, resplendent to look at; and he had walked about with her, and with Miss Laura Blair, and Miss Marsh, and sundry other young ladies, a step or two higher up the ladder of life than Miss Nettleby, but he had not once walked with her. He had passed her two or three times, as he could not very well help doing, since she had put herself straight in his way; and he had nodded and smiled, and walked deliberately on. Cherrie could have cried with chagrin; but she didn't, not wishing to redden her eyes and swell her nose there, and she consoled herself by flirting outrageously with everybody who would be flirted with.
As the afternoon wore on, Cherrie began to experience that fatigue which five or six hours' dancing in a blazing July sun is apt to engender, and informed her partner in the quadrille she was roasted to death. The partner—who was Mr. Charles Marsh, and who had been her most devoted all day—was leaning against a stout elderly gentleman as against a post, fanning himself with his straw wideawake, leisurely set that headpiece sideways on his brown locks and presented his arm.
"I thought you would come to that by-and-by, Miss Nettleby, in spite of your love of dancing. Quadrilles are all very well in December, but I can't say that I fancy them in the dog-days. Suppose we go down to the shore and get a whiff of fresh air."
Miss Nettleby put her fawn-colored kid-glove inside Mr. Marsh's coat-sleeve, and poising her azure parasol in the other hand, strolled with him to the beach. On their way, Nathalie, standing with Captain Locksley, young McGregor, and a number of other gentlemen and ladies, espied them, and her color rose and her blue eyes flashed at the sight.
"Egad! I think they'll make a match of it!" laughed Locksley. "Charley seems to be completely taken in tow by that flyaway Cherrie."
Nathalie said nothing, but her brow contracted ominously as she turned impatiently away.
"Oh, that's nothing," said the Reverend Augustus Tod; "it's the fashion to go with Cherrie, and Charley is ready to follow fashion's lead. The little girl will settle down some day, I dare say, into a sensible, hard-working fisherman's wife."
Even Nathalie laughed at the idea of Miss Nettleby hard-working and sensible; and that young lady and her escort sauntered leisurely on to the breezy seashore. The sun was dipping behind the western waves, the sky all flushed and radiant with the scarlet and golden glory of its decline, the blue sea itself flooded with crimson radiance. Even Mr. Marsh was moved to admiration of its gorgeous splendor.
"Neat thing in the way of sunsets, Cherrie," he remarked, taking out a cigar, and lighting it.
"What a nice magenta color them clouds is!" said Miss Nettleby, admiringly; "they would make a lovely dress trimmed with black braid. And that mauve cloud over there with the yellow edge, I should like to have a scarf of that."
"Well," said Charley, "I can't get you the mauve cloud, but if there's a scarf at all like it in Speckport you shall have it. By the way, Cherrie, where did you get that chain?"
"You didn't give it to me, anyhow," replied Miss Nettleby, tossing her turban. "I might wait a long time for anything before I got it from you."
"I didn't know you wanted one, or I might. I wish you wouldn't take presents from anybody but me, Cherrie."
"From anybody but you!" retorted Cherrie, with scorn. "I'd like to know the time you gave me anything, Charley Marsh?"
"Come now, Cherrie, I don't want to be mean, but that's a little too bad!"
"I suppose you're hinting at that coral set you sent me last week?" said Cherrie, in a resentful tone. "But, I can tell you, there's lots of folks, not a thousand miles off, would be glad to give me ten times as much if I would take it."
"Don't take their gifts, Cherrie; there's a good girl; it's not ladylike, you know; and some day you shall have whatever you want—when I am rich and you are my wife, Cherrie."
"The idea!" giggled Cherrie, her color rising, "your wife, indeed; I think I see myself!"
"Wouldn't you have me, Cherrie?"
He was still smoking, and still looking at the sunset—not seeing it, however. Poor Charley Marsh, light as was his tone, was exceedingly in earnest. Miss Nettleby stole a glance at him from under the blue parasol, not quite certain whether he were in jest or in earnest, and her silly little heart beating a trifle faster than was its wont.
"I suppose, Mr. Marsh," said the young lady, after a moment's deliberation, thinking it best to stand on her dignity, "you think it a fine thing to make fun of me; but I can tell you I ain't going to stand it, if you are a doctor, and me only a gardener's daughter. I think you might find something else to amuse you."
"I'll take my oath, Cherrie," said Charley, throwing his cigar over the bank, "I never was so much in earnest in all my life."
"I don't believe it," said Miss Nettleby.
"What's the reason you don't? Haven't I been going with you long enough? What did you suppose I meant?"
"I didn't suppose nothing at all about it. You aren't the only one that pays attention to me."
"No; but I don't think any of the others mean anything. I intend to marry you, Cherrie, if you'll consent."
Cherrie tossed her turban disdainfully, but in her secret heart she was in raptures. Not that she meant to accept him just then, with Captain Cavendish in the background; but neither had she the slightest intention of refusing him. The handsome Englishman had given her a gold chain, to be sure, but then he had also given her the cold shoulder all that day; and if things did not turn out with him as she could wish, Charley Marsh would do as a dernier resort. Cherrie liked Charley, and he could make her a lady; and if she failed in becoming Mrs. Cavendish, it would be a very nice thing to become Mrs. Marsh, and half the young ladies in Speckport would be dying of envy. Cherrie thought all this in about two seconds and a half.
"Well, Cherrie, have you nothing to say?" inquired Charley, rather anxiously.
"Mr. Marsh," said Miss Nettleby, with dignity, remembering how the heroine of the last novel she had read had answered in a similar case, "I require time to pon—ponder over it. On some other occasion, when I have seriously reflected on it, you shall have my answer."
Mr. Marsh stood aghast for a moment, staring at the young lady, and then went off into a fit of uproarious laughter.
"Well," demanded Cherrie, facing round rather fiercely, "and what are you laughing at, sir?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon, Cherrie," said Charley, recovering from his paroxysm; "but really you did that so well that I——"
Charley came near going off again; but, seeing the black eyes flashing, recovered himself.
"Come, Cherrie, never mind Laura-Matilda speeches, but tell me, like a sensible little girl, that you like me, and by-and-by will be my wife."
"I'll do nothing of the sort!" cried Miss Nettleby, in a state of exasperation, "either now or at any other time, if I don't choose. You'll just wait for your answer, or go without."
She sailed away as she spoke, leaving Charley too much taken aback, not to say mortified, to follow her.
"Hang it!" was Mr. Marsh's exclamation, as he turned in an opposite direction; "the idea of getting such an answer from that girl! What would Natty say? She would think it bad enough my proposing at all, but to get such a reply."
Yet, even in the midst of his chagrin, he laughed again at the recollection of Miss Nettleby's speech—careless Charley, who never let anything trouble him long.
"She'll come to it, I dare say," he reflected, as he went along, "and I can wait. I do like her, she's such a pretty little thing, and good, too, in the main, though rather frivolous on the surface. Well, Miss Rose, how are you enjoying yourself?"
Miss Rose's fair, sweet face was rather a striking contrast after Cherrie's, but Charley was not thinking of that, as he offered her his arm. Cherrie in the distance saw the act, and felt a pang of jealousy.
"He's gone off with that pale-faced school-mistress, now," she thought, resentfully. "I dare say she'd be glad to catch him, if she could. Oh!"
She stopped short with an exclamation half suppressed. She had come upon Captain Cavendish leaning against a tall tree, and talking to Nathalie Marsh. Another jealous pang pierced the frivolous heart, and—I am sorry to tell it—she crept in close under the tree, with the blue parasol furled, and—yes, she did—she listened. Listened for over twenty minutes, her color coming and going, her breath bated, her hands clenched. Then she fluttered hurriedly off, just in time to escape them, as they walked away, plighted lovers.
There was a little clump of cedar-bushes, forming a sort of dell, up the side of the bank. Cherrie Nettleby fell down here in the tall grass, dashing the blue parasol down beside her, crumpling the turban, soiling the white feather, and smearing the pink dress, tore off the gold chain, and burst into such a passion of spiteful, jealous, and enraged tears, as she had never before shed in her life. To think that all her hopes should have come to this; that the gold chain was only a glittering delusion; all his pretty speeches and lover-like attentions only hollow cheats, and Nathalie Marsh going to be his wife! Cherrie seized the chain in a paroxysm of fury, as she thought of it, and hurled it over the bank.
"The hateful, lying, deceitful scamp," she passionately cried. "I hate him, and I'll go and marry Charley Marsh, just for spite."
Charley was not hard to find. He was playing quoits with a lot of other young Speckportians; and Miss Catty Clowrie was standing gazing admiringly on, and ready to talk to him between whiles. Cherrie tapped him on the arm with her parasol, and looked shyly up in his face with a rosy blush. But the shy look and the blush were exceedingly well got up, and Charley dropped the quoits with a delighted face.
"Cherrie! what is it? Have you made up your mind, then?"
"Yes, Charley! You didn't believe I was in earnest that time, did you? I do like you, and I will be your wife as soon as ever you like."
Did Miss Catty Clowrie, standing unheeded by, with ears as sharp as lances, hear this very straightforward avowal? She had flashed a keen, quick glance from one to the other; had dropped her vail suddenly over her face, and turned away. Neither noticed her.
Charley was in raptures, and might have fallen on Miss Nettleby and embraced her there and then, only that before that maiden had quite finished speaking, Nathalie confronted them, her face haughty, her step ringing, her voice imperious.
"Charley, Mrs. Leroy is going home, and desires you to come immediately and assist Mr. Blake."
"Oh, bother!" cried Charley, politely, "let her get some of the other fellows; I can't go."
"Charley!"
"Why can't she get McGregor, or some of the rest?" said Charley, impatiently; "don't you see I'm playing quoits, Natty?"
"I see you're doing nothing of the sort, sir, and I insist on you coming this instant! Don't trouble yourself about Miss Nettleby, she has legions of adorers here, who will only be too happy to attend her home."
Miss Marsh swept away like a young queen; her violet eyes flashing, her perfect lips curling. Charley turned to follow, saying, hurriedly, as he went:
"I'll be back in half an hour, Cherrie, wait for me here."
"Proud, hateful thing!" exclaimed Cherrie, apostrophizing the receding form of Miss Marsh; "she looked at me that time as if she scorned to touch me! Wait until I am her brother's wife, we will see who will put on mistress." From where she stood, Cherrie could see the party for Redmon come. Charley and Val Blake wheeled Mrs. Leroy in her chair of state over the grass, that mummy having consented to be exhumed for the occasion, and having been the chief curiosity and attraction of the picnic. Nathalie walked on one side, and Midge on the other, but Captain Cavendish did not make one of the party now, for the moment they were out of sight, that gallant officer hurriedly walked deliberately up to her. Cherrie tossed her turban again, and curled her lip suspiciously, not deigning to notice him by so much as a glance.
"Come, Cherrie, what's the matter?" he began, in a free and easy way; "how have I got into disgrace?"
"Oh, it's you, Captain Cavendish, is it?" said Cherrie, loftily, condescending to become aware of his presence, "I don't know what you mean."
"Nonsense, Cherrie! What is the matter? Come, now, be reasonable, and tell me what I have done."
"You haven't done anything to me," quite frigidly, though; "how could you?"
"That's precisely what I want to know. Where is that chain I saw around your neck a short time ago?"
"In my pocket. You had better take it back again. I don't want it."
Captain Cavendish stared. Miss Nettleby, grasping the parasol firmly, though the sun had gone down, and the moon was rising, with a very becoming glow in her cheeks, and bright, angry light in her eyes, looked straight before her, and addressed empty space when she spoke.
"There is some mystery here, and I am going to get at the bottom of it," he said, resolutely; "Cherrie, let me go home with you, and see if we cannot clear it up by the way."
"With me?" said Cherrie, stepping back, and looking at him disdainfully; "why, what would Miss Marsh say to that?"
A light broke on the captain.
"Miss Marsh! Why, what have I to do with Miss Marsh?"
"A great deal, I should think, after what passed between you over there on the beach."
"Cherrie! where were you? Not listening?"
"I was passing," said Miss Nettleby, stiffly, "and I chanced to overhear. It wasn't my fault if you spoke out loud."
Even Captain Cavendish stood for a moment non-plussed by this turn of affairs. He had no desire his proposal to Miss Marsh should become public property, for many reasons; and he knew he might as well have published it in the Speckport Spouter, as let Cherrie find it out. Another thing he did not want—to lose Cherrie; she was a great deal too pretty, and he fancied her a great deal too much for that.
"Cherrie, that was all an—an accident! I didn't mean anything! There are too many people looking at us here, to talk; but, if you will go home, I will explain by the way."
"No," said Cherrie, standing resolutely on her dignity, but trying to keep from crying, "I can't. I promised Mr. Marsh to wait for him."
"Oh, confound Mr. Marsh! Come with me, and never mind him."
"No, Captain Cavendish; I think I'll wait. Charley thinks more of me than you do, since he asked me to marry him this afternoon, and I am going to do it."
Captain Cavendish looked at her. He knew Cherrie's regard for truth was not the most stringent; that she would invent, and tell a fib with all the composure in life, but she was palpably telling no falsehood this time. He saw it in the triumphant flash of her black eyes, in the flush of her face, and set his teeth inwardly with anger and mortification. "How blessings brighten as they take their flight!" Never had Cherrie Nettleby looked so beautiful; never had her eyes been so much like black diamonds as now, when their light seemed setting to him forever. Captain Cavendish believed her, and resolved not to lose her, in spite of all the Charley Marshes in the world.
"So Marsh has asked you to be his wife, has he? Now, Cherrie, suppose I asked you the same question, what would you say?"
"You asked Miss Marsh to-day, and I think that's enough."
"I did not mean it, Cherrie. I swear I did not! I am fifty times as much in love with you as I am with her."
And Captain Cavendish was speaking truth. Humiliating as it is to say so of one's heroine, the black-eyed grisette was a hundred times more to his taste than the blue-eyed lady. Could they have changed places, he would have married Cherrie off-hand, and never given one sigh to Nathalie. It was the prospective fortune of that young lady he was in love with.
"Cherrie, you don't believe me," he said, seeing incredulity in her face, "but I swear I am telling the truth. Let me prove it—give up Charley Marsh and marry me!"
"Captain!"
"I mean it! Which of us do you like best—Marsh or I?"
"You know well enough," said Cherrie, crying. "I like you ever so much the best; but when I heard you asking Miss Natty, I—I——" here the voice broke down in good earnest, and Cherrie's tears began to flow.
Captain Cavendish looked hurriedly about him. The last rays of the sunset had burned themselves out, and the moon was making for herself a track of silver sheen over the sea. The crowd were flocking homeward, tired out, and there was no one near; but in the distance his eagle eye saw Charley Marsh striding over the dewy evening grass. Poor Charley! The captain drew Cherrie's arm inside his own, and walked her rapidly away. They were out on the Redmon road before either spoke again.
"I did not mean one word of what I said to Miss Marsh. But I'll tell you a secret, Cherrie, if you'll never mention it again."
"I won't," said Cherrie. "What is it?"
"I should like to share her fortune—that is, you and I—and if she thinks I am in love with her, I stand a good chance. I should like to be richer than I am, for your sake, you know; so you must not be jealous. I don't care a straw for her, but for her money."
"And you do care for me?"
"You know I do! Are you ready to give up Charley, and marry me?"
"Oh!" said Cherrie, and it was all she replied; but it was uttered so rapturously that it perfectly satisfied him.
"Then that is settled? Let me see—suppose we get married next week, or the week after?"
"Oh! Captain!" cried the enraptured Cherrie.
"Then that is settled too. What a little darling you are, Cherrie! And now I have only one request to make of you—that you will not breathe one word of this to a living soul. Not a syllable—do you understand?"
"Why? said Cherrie, a little disappointed.
"My dear girl, it would ruin us both! We will be married privately—no one shall know it but the clergyman and—Mr. Blake."
"Mr. Blake? Val?"
"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, gravely, "he shall be present at the ceremony, but not another being in Speckport must find it out. If they do, Cherrie, I will have to leave you forever. There are many reasons for this that I cannot now explain. You will continue to live at home, and no one but ourselves shall be the wiser. There, don't look so disappointed; it won't last long, my darling. Let Charley still think himself your lover; but, mind you, keep him at a respectful distance, Cherrie."
They reached the cottage at last, but it took them a very long time. Captain Cavendish walked back to Speckport in the moonlight, smoking, and with an odd little smile on his handsome face.
"I'll do it, too," he said, glancing up at the moon, as if informing that luminary in confidence. "There's a law against bigamy, I believe; but I'll marry them both, the maid first, the mistress afterward."
The clerk of the weather in Speckport might have been a woman, so fickle and changeable in his mind was he. You never could put any trust in him; if you did, you were sure to be taken in. A bleak, raw, cheerless, gloomy morning, making parlor fires pleasant in spite of its being July, and hot coffee as delicious a beverage as cool soda-water had been the day before; a morning not at all suited for constitutionals; yet on this cold, wet, raw, foggy morning Charley Marsh had arisen at five o'clock, and gone off for a walk, and was only opening the front-door of the little cottage as the clock on the sitting-room mantel was chiming nine. Breakfast was over, and there was no one in the room but Mrs. Marsh, in her shawl and rocker, beside the fire which was burning in the Franklin, immersed ten fathoms deep in the adventures of a gentleman, inclosed between two yellow covers, and bearing the euphonious name of "Rinaldo Rinaldi." Miss Rose had gone to school, Betsy Ann was clattering among the pots in the kitchen; the breakfast-table looked sloppy and littered; the room, altogether dreary. Perhaps it was his walk in that cheerless fog, but Charley looked as dreary as the room; his bright face haggard and pale, his eyes heavy, and with dark circles under them, bespeaking a sleepless night. Mrs. Marsh dropped "Rinaldo Rinaldi," and looked up with a fretful air.
"Dear me, Charley, how late you are! What will Doctor Leach say? Where have you been?"
"Out for a walk."
"Such a hateful morning—it's enough to give you your death! Betsy Ann, bring in the coffee-pot!"
Betsy Ann appeared with that household god, and a face shining with smiles and yellow soap, and her mistress relapsed into "Rinaldo Rinaldi" again. Charley seemed to have lost his appetite as well as his spirits. He drank a cup of coffee, pushed the bread and butter impatiently away, donned his hat and overcoat, the former pulled very much over his eyes, and set out for the office.
Charley had enough to trouble him. It was not only Cherrie's desertion, though that was enough, for he really loved the girl with the whole fervor and strength of a fresh young heart, and meant to make her his honored wife. He was infatuated, no doubt; he knew her to be illiterate, silly, unprincipled, false and foolish, a little dressy piece of ignorance, vanity, selfishness and conceit, or might have known it if he chose; but he knew, too, she was a beautiful, brilliant, bewitching little fairy, with good-natured and generous impulses now and then, and the dearest little thing generally that ever was born. In short, he was in love with her, and love knows nothing about common sense; so when he had seen her walk off the previous evening with Captain Cavendish, and desert him, he had leaned against a tree, feeling—heaven only knows how deeply and how bitterly. Once he had started up to follow them, but had stopped—the memory of a heavy debt contracted in Prince Street, owing to this man, and hanging like an incubus about his neck, night and day, thrust him back as with a hand of iron. He was in the power of the English officer, beyond redemption; he could not afford to make him his enemy.
How that long morning dragged on, Charley never knew; certainly his medical studies did not progress much. Poor and in debt, in love and deserted, those were the changes on which his thoughts rang. A sulky-faced clock, striking one, made him start. It was time to go home to dinner, and he arose and went out. As he opened the shop-door, he stopped short. Tripping gayly along the foggy and sloppy streets came Cherrie herself, her dress pinned artistically up, to display a brilliant Balmoral skirt, of all the colors of a dying dolphin; her high-heeled boots clinking briskly over the pavement. Charley's foolish heart gave a great bound, and he stepped impulsively forward, with her name on his lips.
"Cherrie?"
Cherrie had not seen him until he spoke, and she recoiled with a scream.
"Sir! Charley Marsh! how you scare me! I wish you wouldn't shout out so sudden and frighten me out of my wits!"
"You may spare your hysterics, Cherrie," said Charley, rather coldly; "you could stand more than that if Captain Cavendish was in question."
Cherrie laughed, and tripped along beside him with dancing eyes. She liked Charley, though in a far less degree than the dashing and elegant young officer, and was in a particularly good-natured state of mind that morning. There was more than her liking for Charley to induce her to keep good friends with him—the warning of the captain and her own prudence. Cherrie, faithless herself, had no very profound trust in her fellow-creatures. Until she was actually the captain's wife, she was not sure of him; there is many a slip, she knew; and if he failed her, Charley was the next best in Speckport. Therefore, at his insinuation, she only tossed her turbaned head after her coquettish fashion, until all her black curls danced a fandango, and showed her brilliant white teeth in a gay little laugh.
"Oh, you're jealous, are you?" she said. "I thought you would be!"
"Cherrie!"
"There, now, Charley, don't be cross! I just did it to make you jealous, and nothing else! I was mad at you for going off the way you did!"
"You know I could not help it!"
"Oh, I dare say not. I'm nobody beside Miss Natty! So, when Captain Cavendish came up and asked leave to see me home, I just let him! I thought it wouldn't do you any harm to be a little jealous, you know, Charley."
Charley's hopes were high again; but his heart had been too deeply pained for him to forget its soreness at one encouraging word. Something wanting in Cherrie, he could not quite define what, had often struck him before, but never so palpably as now. That want was principle, of which the black-eyed young lady was totally devoid; and he was vaguely realizing that trusting to her was much like leaning on a broken reed.
Cherrie, a good deal piqued, and a little alarmed by his silence, looked at him askance.
"Oh, you're sulky, are you? Very well, sir, you can just please yourself. If you've a mind to get mad for nothing, you may."
"Cherrie," Charley said, quite gravely for him, "do you think you did right last night? After promising to be my wife, to go off and leave me as you did?"
"I didn't, either!" retorted Cherrie; "it was you went off and left me."
"That was no fault of mine, and I didn't go with another young lady. Cherrie, I want you to promise me you will let Captain Cavendish see you home no more."
"I shall promise nothing of the sort!" cried Cherrie, with shrill indignation. "Because I promised to marry you, I suppose you would like me to live like a nun for the rest of my life, and not even look at any other man. I'll just do as I did before, Mr. Charley Marsh; and if you ain't satisfied with that, you may go and marry somebody else—Miss Rose, or Miss Clowrie—she'd have you, fast enough!"
"I don't want Miss Clowrie; I only want you, Cherrie; and if you cared for me, you wouldn't act and talk as you do."
Some of poor Charley's pain was in his voice and it touched the coquette's frivolous heart. She stopped, at a dry-goods store, for an encouraging word before entering.
"You know very well, Charley, I like you ever so much—a great deal better than I do any one else; but I can't help being pretty, and having the young men after me, and I hate to be cross to them, too. Come up to Redmon this evening, I haven't time to stop to talk now."
With which the little hypocrite made a smiling obeisance, and darted into the shop, leaving her lover to pursue his homeward way, a little lighter in the region of the heart, but still dissatisfied and mistrustful.
The afternoon was as long and dreary as the morning. Charley sat in the dismal little back-office, listening listlessly to the customers coming in and out of the surgery, to buy Epsom-salts and senna, or hair-oil and bilious pills; and the shopboy droning over a song-book, which he read half aloud, in a monotonous sing-song way, when alone, staring vacantly at the rotten leaves, and bits of chips and straw and paper fluttering about the wet yard in the chill afternoon wind. And still the fog settled down thicker, and wetter, and colder than ever; and when the shopboy came in a little after six, to light the flaring gas-jet—it was already growing dark—Charley arose, drearily, to go.
"What a long day it has been!" he said, gaping in the boy's face; "it seems like a week since I got up this morning. Where's the doctor?"
"Up to Squire Tod's, sir. The old gentleman's took bad again with the gout."
The lamps were flaring through the foggy streets as he walked along, and the few people abroad flitted in and out of the wet gloom, like shadowy phantoms. Queen Street was bright enough with the illumination from shop-windows, but the less busy thoroughfares looked dismal and deserted, and the spectral passers-by more shadowy than ever. As he was turning the corner of Cottage Street, one of these phantoms, buttoned up in an overcoat, and bearing an umbrella, accosted him in a very unphantomlike voice, and with a very unphantomlike slap on the shoulder.
"How are you, Marsh? I thought I should come upon you here!"
Charley turned round, and, with no particular expression of rapture, recognized Captain Cavendish.
"Good evening," he said, coldly; "were you looking for me?"
The captain turned and linked his arm within his own.
"I was. What became of you last night? We expected you at Prince Street."
"I made another engagement."
"You will be there to-night, of course? I owe you your revenge, you know."
"Which means," said Charley, with a laugh, that sounded strange and bitter from him, "you will get me some thirty or forty dollars more in your debt!"
"Talking of debt," said Captain Cavendish, in an indifferent matter-of-fact tone, "could you oblige me with a trifle on account—say twenty pounds?"
Charley silently produced his pocketbook, and handed over the twenty he had received from Nathalie a few days before. The nonchalant young officer pocketed it as coolly as if it had been twenty pence.
"Thanks! One often needs a trifle of this sort on an occasion. Is this your house? Who is that playing? Not your sister?"
They had halted in front of the cottage, and could hear the sound of the piano from within.
"It is Miss Rose, I presume," said Charley, in the same cold voice; "will you come in?"
"Not now. You will be up at Prince Street for certain then to-night?"
Charley nodded, and entered the house.
At her own door stood Miss Catty Clowrie. She was often standing there; and though she returned the captain's bow, it was after Charley she looked until he disappeared. There was no one in the sitting-room when he entered; his mother's rocking-chair was vacant, and Miss Rose was playing and singing in the parlor—touching the keys so lightly and singing so sweetly that it seemed more an echo of the wind and waves than anything else. The table was set for tea, and Betsy Ann was scouring knives in the kitchen, humming some doleful ditty at her work. There was a lounge under the window overlooking the bay, sullen and stormy to-night. Charley flung himself upon it, his arm across the pillow, his face lying in it, and listened in a vague and dismal way to the music. The song was weird and mournful, truly an echo of the wailing wind and sea.
"Come to supper, ma'am!" at this juncture shrilly pealed the voice of Betsy Ann at the foot of the stairs, to some invisible person above; "Mr. Charley's here, and the biscuit is getting cold."
The song died away, as if it had drifted out on the gale surging up from the black bay, and Mrs. Marsh crept shivering down stairs.
"Come in, Miss Rose," she said, looking in at the parlor door before entering the room; "tea is ready, and Charley is here."
Charley started up; and, as he did so, the front door unceremoniously opened, and Nathalie, wrapped in a large shawl, and wearing a white cloud about her head, stepped in, to the surprise of all.
"Gracious me! Natty! is it you?" cried her mamma, in feeble consternation, "whatever has taken you out such an evening?"
"What's the matter with the evening?" said Nathalie, kissing her and Miss Rose. "A little cold sea-fog is nothing new, that it should keep me in-doors. Good evening, Charley."
"It's not a good evening," said Charley; "it's a very bad one, and you deserve to get your death of cold for venturing out in it. Did the old lady send you?"
"No, indeed! I had hard work to get off. Is tea ready, mamma? I have had no dinner, and am almost famished."
Mrs. Marsh was profuse in her sympathy. Another cup and plate were laid, and the quartet sat down to tea. It was wonderful how Nathalie's bright presence radiated the before gloomy room; the laughing light of her violet eyes made sunshine of their own, and all her luxuriant golden hair, falling loose and damp, in curls short and long around her face and shoulders, never looked so much like silky sunbeams before.
"How did you get on in school to-day?" she was asking Miss Rose; "I could not get down. The picnic must have disagreed with Mrs. Leroy; for I never saw her so cross."
"I should say all the cake, and pastry, and nastiness of that sort she devoured, would have disagreed with a horse," said Charley; "it was a sight only to see Laura Blair cramming her."
"I got on very well," answered Miss Rose, smiling at Charley's remark, which was perfectly true; "but the day seems long, Miss Marsh, when you do not visit us, and the children seem to think so too. I have got a new music-pupil—little Vattie Gates."
"You will make your fortune, Miss Rose, if you are not careful," said Charley; "eight dollars per quarter from each of those music-pupils, beside your school-salary. What do you mean to do with it all?"
"I should say rather she will work herself to death," said Nathalie. "Do you want to kill yourself, Miss Rose, that you take so many pupils?"
"Dear me! I think it agrees with her," remarked Mrs. Marsh, languidly, stirring her tea; "she is getting fat."
Everybody laughed. Miss Rose was not getting very fat; but she certainly had gained flesh and color since her advent in Speckport, though the small face was still rather pale, and the small brow sometimes too thoughtful and anxious. As they arose from table, Miss Clowrie came in with her crotcheting to spend the evening, Natty went to the piano, Miss Rose, with some very unfanciful-looking work in a dropsical work-basket, sat down at the window to sew while the last gray ray of daylight lingered in the sky, and Charley lounged on the sofa, beside Catty.
"What are you making, Miss Rose?" inquired Miss Clowrie, looking curiously at the small black figure, drooping over the work, at the window. Miss Rose laughed, and threaded her needle.
"You needn't ask," said Nathalie; "clothes for all the poor in Speckport, of course. Why don't you become a Sister of Charity at once, Miss Winnie?"
"I came very near it one time," smiled Miss Rose; "perhaps I may yet. I wish I could."
There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone. Nathalie shrugged her shoulders—to her it looked like wishing for something very dreary and dismal indeed. The world seemed a very bright and beautiful place to the heiress of Redmon that foggy summer night.
"Why don't you become one, then?" asked Catty, who would have been very glad of it; "I should think they would be pleased to get you."
"I am not so sure of that; I would be no great acquisition. But just at present there is a reason that renders it impossible."
Of course, no one could ask the reason, though all would have liked to know. When it grew too dark to sew or play, the lamp was lit, and they had cards, and it was nine when Nathalie arose to go.
"Couldn't you stay all night, Natty?" asked her mother; "it's dreadfully foggy to go up to Redmon to-night."
"If it were ten times as foggy, I should have to go. I don't mind it, though, in company with Charley and an umbrella."
She kissed them all good night, even Catty, in the happiness of her heart; and, wrapped in her shawl and cloud, she took her brother's arm and started. The fog was thicker, and wetter, and colder than ever; the night as wretched a one for a walk as could well be imagined, and the bleak sea wind blew raw in their faces all the way.
"How confoundedly cold it is!" exclaimed Charley, "more like January than July. You will perish, Natty, before we get to Redmon! You should not have come out this evening."
"I wanted to talk to you, Charley, on a very important matter indeed!"
Charley stared at her grave tone, but it all flashed upon him directly. Nathalie was used to talk to him more as a mother than a sister, in her superior woman's wisdom, and Charley was accustomed to take her lectures cheerfully enough; but in the damp darkness his face flushed rebelliously now.
He would not speak again, and his sister, after waiting a moment, broke the silence herself.
"It is about that girl, Charley?"
"What girl?" inquired Mr. Marsh, rather sulkily.
"You know well enough—Cherrie Nettleby."
"Well, what of Cherrie Nettleby?" this time defiantly.
"Charley, what do you mean by going with her as you do?"
"Nathalie," said Charley, mimicking her tone, "what do you mean by going with Captain Cavendish as you do?"
"My going with Captain Cavendish has nothing whatever to do with it; but if you want to know what I mean—I mean to marry him!"
"Nathalie, I don't want you to have anything to do with that man," Charley burst out passionately. "He is a villain!"
"Charley!"
"He is, I tell you! You know nothing about him—I do! I tell you he is a villain!"
"This is ungenerous of you, Charley," she calmly said; "it is cowardly. Is not Captain Cavendish your friend?"
"A friend I could throttle with the greatest pleasure in life!" exclaimed Charley, savagely.
"What has he done?"
"More than I would like to tell you—more than you would care to hear! All I have to say is, I would rather shoot you than see you his wife!"
"You are slandering him!" said Nathalie, her passion rising in spite of herself. "You are trying to baffle me; to keep me from talking of Cherrie, but I'll not be put off. You cannot—you cannot mean to marry that girl."
"Natty look here," he said, more gently, "I don't want to be disagreeable, but I cannot be dictated to in this! I am a man, and must choose for myself. I have obeyed you all my life; but in this you must let me be my own master."
"You know what a name she has! She is the talk of all Speckport!"
"Is Speckport ever done talking? Wouldn't it slander an archangel, if it got the chance?"
"But it is true in this instance—she is all that Speckport says—an idle, silly, senseless, flirty, foolish, dressy, extravagant thing! She has nothing in the wide world to recommend her but her good looks."
"Neither has Captain Cavendish, if it comes to that!"
"Charley, it is false! He is a gentleman by birth, rank, and education!"
"Yes," said Charley, bitterly. "Nature did her best to make a gentleman of him, but I know street-sweepers in Speckport ten times more of a gentleman than he! I tell you he is corrupt to the core of his heart—a spendthrift and a fortune-hunter! If you were Miss Marsh, the school-teacher, as you were two or three years ago, he would as soon ask Miss Jo Blake to be his wife as you!"
"I don't doubt it," said Nathalie, quite calmly; "he may not be able to afford the luxury of a penniless bride, and for all that be no fortune-hunter. You can't shake my faith in him, Charley!"
"You are blind!" Charley cried, vehemently. "I am telling you Heaven's truth, Natty, with no other motive than your good!"
"We will drop the subject," said Nathalie, loftily, "and talk of you and Cherrie Nettleby!"
"We'll do nothing of the sort," replied Charley, "resolutely go your own way, Natty, if you will, and I will go mine! The one marriage can be no madder than the other!"
"And you will really marry this girl?"
"I really will, if she will have me!"
Nathalie laughed a low and bitter laugh.
"Have you? Oh, there is little doubt of that, I fancy. Every one knows how she has been running after you this many a day!"
"But there is doubt of it. Your fine Captain Cavendish pursues her like her shadow."
"Charley, I will not listen to another word," cried Nathalie, imperiously. "Your infatuation seems to have changed your very nature. Why, oh why, has this girl crossed your path? If you wanted to marry, why could you not have chosen some one else? Why could you not have chosen Miss Rose?"
Charley smiled under cover of the darkness. The question was absurd. Why could she not have chosen any of her other suitors, all good and honorable men? Why could she not have chosen Captain Locksley, young, handsome, rich, and the soul of integrity. He did not say so, however, and neither spoke again till the gate of Redmon was reached.
"Good night," Nathalie briefly said, her voice full of inward pain.
"Good night, Natty," Charley replied, "and God bless you and," lowering his voice as he turned away "keep you from ever becoming the wife of Captain Cavendish!"
He walked on and entered the Nettleby cottage, where he found Cherrie in the parlor alone, bending over a novel. Cherrie's welcome to her lover was uncommonly cordial, for she was ennuied nearly to death. She had expected Captain Cavendish all the afternoon, and had been disappointed. Had she known that officer was making arrangements for their speedy nuptials, she might perhaps have forgiven him; and at that very moment, whilst talking to Charley of the time when she should be Mrs. Marsh, everything was arranged for her becoming, the very next week, Mrs. Captain George Cavendish.
About five o'clock of that foggy July afternoon, Mr. Val Blake sat in his private room, in the office of the Speckport Spouter, his shirt-collar limp and wilted with the heat, his hair wildly disheveled, and his expression altogether bewildered and distracted. The table at which he sat was, as usual, heaped with MS., letters, books, buff envelopes, and newspapers; and Mr. Blake was poring over some sheets of white ruled foolscap, closely written in a very cramp and spidery hand. It was a story from "the fascinating pen of our gifted and talented contributor 'Incognita,' whose previous charming productions have held spellbound hosts of readers," as the Spouter said, in announcing it the following week, and the title of the fascinating production was the "Ten Daughters of Dives." Miss Laura Blair had just finished reading the "Seven Loves of Mammon," by Mr. George Augustus Sala; hence the title and the quaint style in which the thing was written. So extremely quaint and original indeed was the style, that it soared totally beyond the comprehension of all ordinary intellects, beginning in the most disconcertingly abrupt manner, and ending with a jerk, while you were endeavoring to make out what it was all about.
"It's of no use trying," he murmured, pensively, "the thing is beyond me altogether. I'll put it in, hit or miss, or Laura will never forgive me; and I dare say the women will make out what it means, though I can't make top or tail of it."
There was a tap at the door as he arrived at this conclusion, and Master Bill Blair, in a state of ink, and with a paper cap on his head, labeled with the startling word "Devil" made his appearance, and announced that Captain Cavendish was in the office and wanted to see him.
"Tell him to come in," said Val, rather glad than otherwise of a chat by way of relaxation after his late severe mental labor.
The captain accordingly came in, smoking a cigar, and presented his cigar-case the first thing to Val. That gentleman helped himself, and the twain puffed in concert, and discussed the foggy state of the weather and the prospects of the "Spouter." As this desultory conversation began to flag, and the weed smoked out, Mr. Blake remembered he was in a hurry.
"I say, captain, you'll excuse me, won't you, if I tell you I haven't much time to spare this evening. We go to press to-morrow, and I shall have to get to work."
Captain Cavendish came out of a brown study he had fallen into, and lit another cigar.
"I won't detain you long, Val. I know you're a good fellow, and would do me a favor if you could."
Val nodded and lit a cigar also.
"I want you to do me the greatest service, and I shall be forever your debtor."
"Right," said Val; "let us hear what it is."
"You won't faint, will you? I am going to be married."
"Are you?" said Mr. Blake, no way discomposed. "To whom?"
"To Cherrie Nettleby."
Val did start this time, and stared with all his eyes.
"To what? You're joking, ain't you? To Cherrie Nettleby!"
"Yes, to Cherrie Nettleby, but on the cross you know, not on the square. Do you comprehend?"
"Not a bit of it. I thought you were after Natty Marsh all the time."
Captain Cavendish laughed.
"You dear old daisy, you're as innocent as a new-born babe. I'm not going to marry Cherrie in earnest, only sham a marriage, and I cannot do it without your help. The girl is ready to run away with me any day; but to make matters smooth for her, I want her to think, for a while at least, she is my wife. You understand now?"
"I understand," said Val, betraying, I regret to say, not the slightest particle of emotion at this exposé of villainy; "but it's an ugly-looking job, Cavendish."
"Not as bad as if she ran away with me in cold blood—for her I mean—and she is sure to do it. You know the kind of girl pretty little Cherrie is, Blake; so you will be doing her rather a service than otherwise in helping me on. If you won't help, you know I can easily get some one who will, and I trust to your honor to keep silent. But come, like a good fellow, help me out."
"What do you want me to do? Not to play clergyman?"
"No; but to get some one—a stranger to Cherrie and I—consequently a stranger in Speckport, who will tie the knot, and on whose discretion you may depend. You shall play witness."
Val put his hands in his pockets and mused.
"Well," he said, after a pause, "it's a horrid shame, but rather than that she should run off with you, without any excuse at all, I'll do it. How soon do you want the thing to come off?"
"As early as possible next week—say Tuesday night. It will be better after night, she won't be so apt to notice deficiencies."
Val mused again.
"Cherrie's a Methodist herself; at least, she sits under the teaching of the Reverend Mr. Drone, who used to be rather an admirer of hers before he got married. The chapel is in an out-of-the-way street, and I can feign an excuse for getting the key from Drone. Suppose it takes place there?"
Captain Cavendish grasped his hand, and gave it a friendly vise-like grasp.
"Val, you're a trump! You shall have my everlasting gratitude for this."
"Next Tuesday night, then," responded Val, taking the officer's rapture stoically enough. "And now I must beg you to leave me, for I have bushels of work on hand."
Captain Cavendish, expressing his gratitude once more, lounged into the drear and foggy night. How lucky for the peace of the community at large, we cannot read each other's thoughts. The young captain's ran something after this fashion:
"I always knew Blake was a spoon, but I never thought he was such an infernal scoundrel as this. Why, he is worse than I am; for I really am in love with the girl, and he does his rascality without a single earthly motive. Well, it's all the better for me. I'll have Cherrie as sure as a gun."
Mr. Blake, in the seclusion of his room, leaned back in his chair, and indulged himself in a low and quiet laugh, before commencing work.
"I said I owed you one," he soliloquized, throwing away the stump of his second cigar, "for leading Charley Marsh astray, and now's the time to pay you. If I don't serve you out this go, Captain Cavendish, my name's not Valentine Blake!"