Olive Wyndham forgot her languor and weariness, and broke out in her old delighted way as she went through it.
"How beautiful it all is!" she cried, "and it is all mine—my own! I am going to be happy here—I will be happy here!"
Her black eyes flashed strangely upon her husband walking by her side, and the hand clenched, as if she defied Fate from henceforth.
"I hope so," Paul Wyndham said, gravely. "I hope, with all my heart, you may be happy here."
Laura looked from one to the other in silent wonder. Mr. Wyndham turned to her as they finished the tour of the house.
"I suppose Rosebush Cottage is hardly equal to this, Miss Laura? Have you been there lately?"
"Yes," said Laura. "Val and I—he stops with us now, you know—went through it last week. The rooms are very pretty, and the garden is one wilderness of roses; and Midge reminds me of Eve in Eden, only there is no Adam."
"And Midge does not exactly correspond with our ideas of our fair first mother," laughed Mr. Wyndham. "I must go there to-morrow and see the place. Will you come, Olive?"'
"No, thank you," she said, coldly. "Rosebush Cottage has very little interest for me."
Again Laura stared.
"Why is she so cross?" she thought. "How can she be cross, when he seems so kind? How soon do you expect your mother, Mr. Wyndham?" she said aloud.
"This is Friday—I shall leave on Monday morning for New York to fetch her."
There was an announcement that dinner was ready, and nothing more was said of Mr. Wyndham's mother. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage early next morning, attended only by a big Canadian wolf-hound, of which animals he had brought two splendid specimens with him, and told Midge he was going to leave him as guardian of the premises. Before he left the cottage, he called Midge into the pretty drawing-room, and held a very long and very confidential interview with her, from which she emerged with her ruddy face blanched to the hue of a sheet. Whatever was said in that long conversation, its effect was powerful on Midge; for she remained in a dazed and bewildered state for the rest of the day, capable of doing nothing but sitting with her arms folded on the kitchen-table, staring very hard at vacancy with her little round eyes.
Mr. Wyndham departed for New York on Monday morning, taking the other big dog, Faust, with him. Mrs. Wyndham took his departure with superb indifference—it was nothing to her. John, the coachman, was of as much consequence in her eyes as the man she had promised to love, honor, and obey. She did not ask him when he was coming back—what was it to her if he never came?—but he volunteered the information. "I will be back next week, Olive," he said. "Good-bye." And Olive had said good-bye, icily, and swept past him in the hall, and never once cast a look after him, as he drove down the long avenue in the hazy September sunshine.
The house-warming at Redmon could not very well come off until Mr. Wyndham's return; and the preparations for that great event being going on in magnificent style, and Olive eager for it to take place, she was not sorry when, toward the close of the following week, she learned her husband had returned. It was Miss McGregor who drove up to the villa to make a call, and related the news.
"The boat got in about two o'clock, my dear Mrs. Wyndham," Jeannette said, "and Mr. Wyndham and his mother came in her. I chanced to be on the wharf, and I saw them go up together, and enter a cab and drive off. I am surprised they are not here."
"They drove to Rosebush Cottage, I presume," Olive said, rather haughtily. "Everything is in readiness for Mrs. Wyndham there."
"What is she like, Jeannette?" asked Laura, who was always at Redmon, familiarly. "I suppose she was dressed in black?"
"Yes," Miss McGregor said, "she was dressed in black, and wore a thick black vail over her face, and they had driven off before any one had time to speak to them. No doubt, she would be present at the house-warming, and then they could call on her afterward."
But Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, did not appear at the house-warming; and society was given to understand, very quietly, by Mr. Wyndham, that his mother would receive no callers. Her health forbade all exertion or excitement, it appeared. She seldom, if ever, crossed her own threshold, from week's end to week's end; and it was her habit to keep her room, and she did not care to be disturbed by any one. Her health was not so very poor as to require medical attendance; but Mr. Wyndham owned she was somewhat eccentric, and he liked to humor her. Speckport was quite disappointed, and said it thought Mr. Wyndham's mother was a very singular person, indeed!
The house-warming at Redmon was such a house-warming as Speckport never saw before; for, as Mr. Blake with his customary good sense remarked, "When Mrs. P. Wyndham did that sort of thing, she did do it." In the luminous darkness of the September evening, the carriages of the guests drove through the tall iron gates up the back avenue, all aglow with red, and blue, and green lamps, twinkling like tropical fireflies among the trees. The whole front of the beautiful villa blazed with illumination, and up in the gilded gallery the musicians were filling the scented air with delicious melody. It was not Redmon, this; it was fairy-land; it was a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and the darkly-beautiful lady in ruby velvet and diamonds, welcoming her friends, was the Princess Badelbradour, lovely enough to turn the heads of a brigade of poor Aladdins. Society went through the house that night, and had the eyes dazzled in their heads by the blinding radiance of light, and the glowing coloring and richness of all. The ladies went into raptures over Mrs. Wyndham's rooms, and the literary people cast envious eyes over the book-lined library, with its busts of poets, and pictures of great men, dead and gone. There was a little room opening off this library that seemed out of keeping in its severe plainness with the magnificence of the rest of the house—a bare, severe room, with only one window, looking out upon the velvety sward of the lawn at the back of the villa; a room that had no carpet on the floor, and very little furniture, only two or three chairs, a baize-covered writing-table, a leather-covered lounge under the window, a few pictures of dogs and horses, a plaster head of John Milton, a selection of books on swinging shelves, a bureau, a dressing-table, a lavatory, a shaving-glass, and a sofa-bedstead. Except the servants' apartments, there was nothing at all so plain as this in the whole house; and when people asked what it was, they were told by Mrs. Hill, who showed the house, that it was Mr. Wyndham's room. Yes, this was Mr. Wyndham's room, the only room in that house he ever entered, save when he went to dinner, or when visitors required his presence in the drawing-room or library. His big dog Faust slept on a rug beside the table, his canaries sung to him in their cages around the window, he wrote in that hard leathern armchair beside the green-baize table, he lay on that lounge under the open window in the golden breeze of the September weather, and smoked endless cigars; late into the night his lamp glimmered in that quiet room; and when it went out after midnight, he was sleeping the sleep of the just on the sofa-bedstead. The servants at Redmon talked, as servants will talk, about the palpable estrangement between master and mistress, about their never meeting, except at dinner, when there always was company; for Mrs. Wyndham breakfasted in the boudoir and Mr. Wyndham never ate luncheon. He was quite hermit-like in his habits, this pale, inscrutable young author—one glass of wine sufficed for him—he was out of bed and at work before the stable-boys or scullery-maids were stirring, and his only extravagance was in the way of cigars. From the day he had married Olive Henderson until this, he had never asked or received one stiver of her money; he had more than sufficient of his own for his simple wants and his mother's, and had Olive been the hardest virago of a landlady, she could hardly have brought in a bill against him, even for board and lodging, for he more than repaid her for both. He was always courteous, genial, and polite to her—too polite for one spark of her affection; always deferring to her wishes, and never attempting in the smallest iota to interfere with her caprices, or thwart her desires, or use his husbandly authority. She was in every way as much her own mistress as she had ever been; so much so that sometimes she wondered, and found it impossible to realize that she was really married. No, she was not married; these two had never been united either in heart or desire; they were bound together by a compact never mentioned now. What had he gained by this marriage? Olive sometimes wonderingly asked herself. He told her, or as good as told her, he wanted her for her money; but now that money was at his disposal, and he never made use of it. What had he married her for?
"How proud you must be of your husband, Mrs. Wyndham!" other women had said to her, when abroad; and sometimes, in spite of herself, a sharp pang cut to the center of her haughty heart at the words. Why, these very women had as much right to be proud of him, to speak to him, to be near him, as she had. Proud of him! She thought she had cause to hate him, she was wicked enough to wish to hate him, but she could not. Neither could she despise him; she might treat him as coldly as she pleased, but she never could treat him with contempt. There was a dignity about the man, the dignity of a gentleman and a scholar, that asserted itself, and made her respect him, as she never had respected any other man. Once or twice a strange thought had come across her; a thought that if he would come to her and tell her he was growing to love her, and ask her not to be so cruelly cold and repellent, she might lay her hand on his shoulder with the humility of a little child, and trust him, and yield herself to him as her friend and protector through life, and be simply and honestly happy, like other women. But he never did this; his manner never changed to her in the slightest degree. She had nothing to complain of from him, she had every cause to be grateful for his kindness and clemency. And so she shut herself up in her pride, and silenced fiercely her mutinous heart, and sought happiness in costly dress and jewelry, and womanly employment, and incessant visiting, and party-giving, and receptions and money-spending—and failed miserably. Was she never to be happy? She had everything her heart could desire—a beautiful house, servants to attend her, rich garments to wear, and she fared sumptuously every day; but for all that, she was wretched. I do not suppose Dives was a happy man. There is only one receipt in this wide world for happiness, believe me, and that is goodness. We may be happy for a brief while, with the brief happiness of a lotus-eater; but it cannot last—it cannot last! and the after-misery is worse than anything we ever suffered before. Olive Henderson had said she would be happy, she had tried to compel herself to be happy; and thought for a few poor minutes, sometimes, when she found herself the belle of some gay party, dancing and laughing, and reigning like a queen, that she had succeeded. But "Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter!" Next day she would know what a ghastly mockery it had all been, and she would watch Paul Wyndham, mounted on his pony, with his dog behind him, riding away to his mother's cottage, with a passionately rebellious and bitter heart, and wonder if he or any one else in the wide world would really care if they found her lying on the floor of her costly boudoir, stark and dead, slain by her own hand.
Paul Wyndham appeared to be very fond of his mother, if he was not of his wife. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage every day, rain or shine, and sometimes staid there two or three days together.
Mr. Wyndham's mother, for all her age and her ill-health, could play the piano, it seemed. People going past Rosebush Cottage had often heard the piano going, and played, too, with masterly skill. At first, it was thought to be Mr. Wyndham himself, who was quite a musician, but they soon found out the piano-playing went on when he was known to be at Redmon. Olive heard all this, and, like Speckport, would have given a good deal to see Mr. Wyndham's mother; but she never saw her. She had asked him, carelessly, if his mother would come to the house-warming, and he had said "No, she never went out;" and so the house-warming had come off without her.
There was one person present on that occasion whom Speckport was surprised to see, and that was Captain Cavendish. Captain Cavendish had received a card of invitation, and, having arrayed himself in his uniform, made his appearance as a guest, in the house he once hoped to call his own. Those floating stories, whispered by the servants, and current in the town, of the cold disunion between husband and wife, had reached him, and delighted him more than words can tell. After all, then, she had loved him! Doubtless she spent her nights in secret weeping and mourning for his loss, fit to tear her black hair out by the roots, in her anguish at having lost him. He was very late in arriving at Redmon, purposely late; and he could imagine her straining her eyes toward the drawing-room door, her heart throbbing at every fresh announcement, and turning sick with disappointment when she found it was not he. Would she betray any emotion when she met him? Would her voice falter, her eyes droop, her color rise, or her hand turn cold in his own?
Oh, Captain Cavendish! you might have spared yourself the trouble of all these conjectures. Not one poor thought had she ever given you; not once had your image crossed her mind, until you stood bowing before her; and then, when she spoke to you, every nerve was as steady as when, an instant later, she welcomed old Squire Tod. Her eyes were following furtively another form, nothing like so tall, or stately, or gallant as your own, Captain Cavendish; another form that went in and out through the crowd—the form of her husband, who welcomed every one with a face infinitely kind and genial, who found partners for forlorn damsels, who stopped to talk courteously to neglected wall-flowers, and who came to where his wife stood every now and then, and addressed her as any other gentleman in his own house might address his wife, showing no sign of coldness or disunion on his part, at least.
Captain Cavendish was disappointed, and all Speckport with him. Where was the cold neglect on Mr. Wyndham's part, they had come prepared to see and relish? where the haughty disdain of the neglected and resentful wife? They were calmly polite to one another, and what more was required? As long as Mr. Wyndham did not beat her, or Mrs. Wyndham showed no sign of intending to elope with any other man, Speckport could see no reason why it should set them down as other than a very well-matched couple.
It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham that night paid rather marked attention to one of the lady guests present; but as the lady wore black bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and was on the frosty side of fifty, no scandal came of it. The lady was poor Mrs. Marsh, who had come, nothing loth, and who simpered a good deal, and was fluttered and flattered to find herself thus honored by the master of Redmon.
"Her story is a very sad one, Olive," he said; "I am glad you settled that annuity upon her; it does you credit."
Olive said nothing; but a dark red streak flushed across her face—a burning glow of shame. She was thinking of Mrs. Major Wheatly's governess—what would Paul Wyndham say of that pale little girl if he knew all? Mrs. Wyndham had repeatedly invited Miss Rose to Redmon; and Miss Rose had come two or three times, but never when there was company.
Mr. Wyndham led Mrs. Marsh in to supper, and sat beside her, and filled her plate with good things, and talked to her all through that repast. His wife, sitting between Major Wheatly and the Rev. Augustus Tod, still watched him askance, and wondered what he could find to say to that insipid and faded nonentity, who simpered like a school-girl as she listened to him. But shortly after conducting Mrs. Marsh back to the ballroom, and seeing her safely seated at a card-table, he disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen. Every one was so busy dancing, and flirting, and card-playing, that his absence was quite unnoticed—no, not quite, his wife had observed it. It was strange the habit she had insensibly contracted, of watching this man, for whom she did not care—or persuaded herself she did not—of listening for his voice, his step, and feeling better satisfied, somehow, to see him in the room. Where had he gone to? What was he doing? How could he be so rude as to go and leave their guests? She grew distrait, then fidgety, then feverishly and foolishly anxious to know what he could be about, and who he was with; and gliding unobserved from the crowded ballroom, she visited the dining-room, the library, peeped into his own room, which she never condescended to enter; all in vain. Mr. Wyndham was nowhere to be seen.
"It is very strange!" said Mrs. Wyndham to herself, knitting her black brow—always her habit when annoyed. "It is most extraordinary conduct! I think he might show a little more attention to his guests."
The library windows opened on the velvet lawn, and were opened now to their widest extent, to admit the cool night air. She stepped out into the pale starlit night, her rich ruby velvet dress and starry diamonds glowing dimly in the luminous darkness. As she walked across the lawn, glad to be alone for a moment, a figure all in white flew past her with a rush, but not before she had recognized the frightened face of Laura Blair.
"Laura!" she said, "is it you? What is the matter?"
Laura stopped, and passed her hands over her beating heart.
"I have had such a scare! I came out of the conservatory five minutes ago, on to the lawn to get cool, when I saw a figure that had been standing under the trees dart behind one of them, as if to hide. The person seemed to have been watching the house, and was trying to hide from me. It frightened me, and I ran."
Olive Wyndham was physically as brave as a man: she never screamed, or ran, or went into hysterics, from palpable terror. Now, she drew Laura's arm within her own, and turned in the direction that young lady had come.
"You little goose," she said, "it was some of the people here, out to get cool like yourself. We will go and see who they are."
"I don't believe it is any of the people here. I think it was a woman in a long cloak, with the hood over her head. Oh, I had rather not go!"
"Nonsense! it was some of the servants, or some curious, inquisitive straggler, come to——"
She stopped, for Laura had made a warning gesture, and whispered, "Look there!" Olive looked. Directly opposite the house, and shrinking behind a clump of cedar trees, on the edge of a thickly-wooded portion of the grounds, she could see a figure indistinctly in the star-light—the figure of a female it looked, wearing, as Laura said, a long cloak, with the hood drawn over the head and shrouding the face. They were in deep shadow themselves, and Laura hid her white dress behind some laurel bushes. Olive's curiosity was excited by the steadfast manner in which the shrouded figure watched the house—through those large, lighted windows, Olive knew the person could distinctly see into the drawing-room, if not distinguish the people there.
"Laura," she whispered, "I must find out who that is. I can get round without being seen—you remain and wait for me here."
Keeping in the shadow, Olive skirted the lawn and round the cedar clump, without being seen or heard by the watcher. She glided behind the stunted trees; but though she was almost near enough to touch the singular apparition, she could not see its face, it was so shrouded by the cowl-like hood. While she stood waiting for it to turn round, a man crossed the lawn hurriedly, excitedly, and, with a suppressed exclamation, clasped the cloaked figure in his arms. Olive hardly repressed a cry—the man was her husband, Paul Wyndham!
"My darling!" she heard him say, in a voice she never forgot—a voice so full of infinite love and tenderness, that it thrilled to her very heart—"my darling, why have you done this? I have been searching for you everywhere since I heard you were here. My love! my love! how could you be so rash?"
"I was so lonely, Paul, without you!" a woman's voice answered—a voice that had a strangely-familiar sound, and Olive saw the cloaked figure clinging to him, trustingly. "I was so lonely, and I wanted to see them all. But I am very cold now, and I want to go home!"
"I shall take you home at once, my darling! Your carriage is waiting at the gate. Come, I know a path through this wood that will lead us out—it will not do to go down the avenue. Oh, my dearest! never be so rash again! You might have been seen."
They were gone; disappearing into the black cedar woods, like two dark specters, and Olive Wyndham came out from her place of concealment, and stood an instant or two like one who has been stunned by a blow. Laura Blair rose up at her approach with a startled face, and saw that she was ghastly white.
"Olly!" Laura said, in a scared voice, "wasn't that Mr. Wyndham who went away with—with—that person?"
Olive Wyndham turned suddenly upon her, and grasped her arm, with a violence that made Laura cry out with pain.
"Laura Blair!" she cried, with passionate fierceness in her voice, "if ever you say a word of what you have seen to-night, I will kill you!"
With which remark, Mrs. Wyndham walked away, stepped through the library window, and into the house. She was in the drawing-room when poor Laura ventured in, sitting at the piano, enchanting her guests with some new and popular music, but with a face that had blanched to a sickly white. She might play, she might talk, she might laugh and dance, but she could not banish that frozen look from her face; and her friends, looking at her, inquired anxiously if she was ill; no, she said she was not ill; but she had been out in the grounds a short time before, and had got chilled—that was all.
Half an hour later, Mr. Wyndham re-appeared in the drawing-room, with a calm face that hid his secret guilt well. Some of the people were already beginning to depart, and his absence was unknown to all save two. Once he spoke to his wife, remarking on her paleness, and telling her she had fatigued herself dancing; and she had laughed strangely and answered, yes, it had been a delightful evening all through, and she had never enjoyed herself so much. And then she was animatedly bidding the last of her guests good-night, and the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and the banquet-hall deserted. And Paul Wyndham bade her good night, and left her alone in her velvet robes and diamond necklace, and splendid misery, and never dreamed that he was found out.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham did not meet again until Sunday. The next day, Friday, the young author had gone over to Rosebush Cottage with his MSS. and fishing-rod, and there spent the rest of the week. The dissipation at Redmon, the constant round of dressing, and visiting, and party-giving, knocked him up, he told Val Blake, and unfitted him for work; and, at the cottage, he could recruit, and smoke, and get on with his writing.
Speckport saw Mrs. Wyndham driving, and riding, and promenading through its streets, that day and the next, beautifully dressed and looking beautiful, but Speckport never once dreamed of the devouring jealousy that had eaten its way to her inmost heart, and must hitherto be added to her other tortures. Yes, Olive Wyndham was jealous, with the fierce jealousy of such natures as hers—and your dark women can be jealous of your fair women with a vengeance. And as real jealousy without love is simply an impossibility, the slow truth broke upon Olive Wyndham that she had grown to love her husband.
How it had come about, Heaven only knows; she had honestly done her best to hate him. But that mischievous little blind god, flying his arrows at random, had shot one straight to her haughty heart. This, then, was the secret of all her anxiety and watchfulness, though she had never suspected it—she might have been a long time in suspecting it, but for the discovery made in the grounds that night. She loved him who would never love her. She knew him indifferent to herself; but while she thought him equally indifferent to every one else, she had not cared much; but now, but now! Who was this woman who had stepped between her and the man to whom she was married?
Who was she? who was she? she asked herself the miserable question a hundred times a minute—she could think of nothing else—but she never could answer it. In all Speckport she could not fix upon any one she knew Paul Wyndham was likely to address such words as she had heard to. How their memory thrilled her—those tones so full of passionate love—it made her grind her teeth to think of them.
"If I had her here, whoever she is," she thought, "I could tear the eyes out of her head, and send her back to him streaming blood! Oh, who can she be? who can she be?"
It was Catty Clowrie who first changed the course of her ideas, and set her off at a new tangent. Catty was sewing at the villa; and, as Mrs. Wyndham, in her miserable restlessness, wandered from room to room, she came at last to a pleasant vine-grown glass porch at the back of the house, where Miss Clowrie sat stitching away in the afternoon sunshine. An open book lay beside her, as if she had just been reading, and Olive saw it was Mr. Wyndham's volume of travels. She took it up with a strange contradictory feeling of tenderness for the insensate thing.
"How do you like it?" she asked, looking at his portrait in front, the deep, thoughtful eyes gazing back at her from the engraving, with the same inscrutable look she knew so well.
"I think it is lovely," said Catty. "I wish I could finish it, but I must get on with my work. Mr. Wyndham must be wonderfully clever; his descriptions set the places before you as if you saw them."
Olive sat down, and began talking to this girl, whom she instinctively disliked, about her husband and her husband's books. Catty, snapping off her thread, asked at last:
"Mr. Wyndham is not at home to-day, is he? I haven't seen him."
"No," said his wife, carelessly, "he has gone over to Rosebush Cottage."
Miss Clowrie gave an unpleasant little laugh.
"Of course he is at Rosebush Cottage! Every one knows Mr. Wyndham never goes anywhere else! If he had a Fair Rosamond shut up there, he could not be fonder of going there. Mr. Wyndham must be very much attached to his mother."
There was a long blank pause after her cruel speech, during which the mistress of Redmon never took the book from before her face. She felt that she was deadly pale, and had sense enough left not to wish Catty Clowrie to see it. She rose up presently, throwing the book on the ground as she did so, and walked out of the porch with such fierce rebellious bitterness in her heart, as never at her worst of misery had she felt before. A Fair Rosamond! Yes, the secret was out! and what a blind fool she must have been not to have seen it before! It was no sickly old mother Paul Wyndham had shut up in Rosebush Cottage, but a fair inamorata. It was she, too, whom they had seen in the grounds the previous night; she who, wearied of her pretty prison without him, and fall of curiosity, doubtless, had come to Redmon. "I was so lonely without you, Paul!"—she remembered the sweet and strangely-familiar voice that had said those words, and the tender caress which had answered them; and she sank down in her jealous rage and despair in her own room, hating herself and all the world. Oh, my poor Olive! Surely retribution had overtaken you, surely judgment had fallen upon you even in this life, for your sins of ambition and pride!
Mrs. Wyndham was not much of a church-goer, but rather the reverse. She had a heathenish way of lolling in her boudoir Sundays, and listening with a dreamy sensuous pleasure to the clashing of bells, and falling asleep when they ceased, and awakening to read novels until dinner-time.
But sometimes she went to the fashionable Episcopal church, and yawned in the face of the Rev. Augustus Tod, expounding the word rather drawlingly in his white surplice, and sometimes she went to the cathedral with Laura Blair. She took the same sensuous, dreamy pleasure in going there that she did in listening to the bells, or in reading Owen Meredith's poetry. She liked to watch the purple, and violet, and ruby, and amber glows from the stained-glass windows on the heads of the faithful; she liked to listen to the grand solemn music of the old church, to inhale the floating incense, and listen to the chanting of the robed priests. And best of all she liked to see the Sisters of Charity glide noiselessly in through some side-door, with vailed faces and bowed heads, and to weave romances about them all the time high mass was going on. Matter-of-fact Catholics about her wondered why Mrs. Wyndham stared so at the Sisters, and it is probable the Sisters themselves would have laughed good-naturedly had they known of the tale of romance with which the dark-eyed heiress invested them. But it was not to look at the nuns—though she did look at them, almost wishing she were one too, and at rest from the great world strife—it was not to look at them she had come to the cathedral to-day, but to listen to a celebrated preacher somewhere from the United States. Laura had told her he was a Jesuit—those terrible Jesuits!—and Olive had almost as much curiosity to see a Jesuit as a nun. So she drove to the cathedral in her carriage, and sat in Mr. Blair's cushioned pew, and watched the people filling the large building, and listened to the grand, solemn strains of the organ touched by the masterly hand; and all listlessly enough. But suddenly her heart gave a quick plunge, and all listlessness was gone. There, coming up the aisle, behind the sexton, was a gentleman and a lady; a gentleman whose step she would have known the wide world over, and a lady she was more desirous of seeing than any other being on earth. It was Mr. Wyndham and his mother, and dozens of heads turned in surprise and curiosity, to look at that hitherto invisible mother. But she was invisible still, at least her face was, for the long black crape vail she wore was so impenetrably thick, no human eyes could pierce it. They saw she was tall and very slender, although she wore a great double black woolen shawl that would have made the slightest girlish form look clumsy and stout. She bent forward slightly as she walked, but the stoop was not the stoop of age—Olive Wyndham saw that. Mr. Wyndham, hat in hand, his mother hanging on his arm, his pale face gravely reverent, entered the pew the sexton indicated, after his mother.
It was directly in front of Mr. Blair's, facing the grand altar, and the jealous wife had an excellent chance of watching her husband and his companion.
Paul Wyndham was not a Catholic—he did not pretend to be anything in particular, a favorite creed with his countrymen, I think—but he was a gentleman; so he rose and sat and knelt as the worshipers about him did, and never once turned his back to the altar to stare at the choir.
Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, made no attempt to raise her vail during the whole service. She knelt most of the time with her face lying on the front rail of the pew, as if in prayer—a good deal to the surprise of those who saw her and imagined her not of their faith.
Olive never took her eyes off her—the Sisters of Charity, the swinging censers, the mitred bishop, the robed priests, the solemn ceremonies, the swelling music, were all unheard and unseen—that woman in front absorbed every sense she possessed. Even when the Jesuit mounted to the pulpit, she only gave him one glance, and saw that he was tall and thin and sallow, and not a bit oily and Jesuit-like, and returned to her watching of Mr. Wyndham's mother. That lady seemed to pay attention to the sermon, if her daughter-in-law did not, and a very impressive sermon it was, and one Olive Wyndham would have done well to heed. He took for his text that solemn warning of our Lord, "What will it avail a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" and the hearts of his hearers thrilled within them with wholesome fear as they listened to the discourse which followed. "You are here to-day, but you may be gone to-morrow. O my brethren!" the sonorous voice, which rang from aisle to aisle, like the trump of the last angel, cried; "the riches you are laboring so hard to amass you may never enjoy. The riches for which you toil by day and by night mean nothing if your poor span of existence permits you to accomplish them. Stop and think, oh, worldlings, while time remains. Work while it is yet day, for the night is at hand, and work for the glory which shall last for eternity. The road over which you are walking leads nowhere, but ends abruptly in the yawning grave. The fame for which you suffer and struggle and give up ease and rest, will be when over but a hollow sound, heard for one poor, pitiful moment, ere your ears are stilled in death, and your laurel crown dust and ashes. The great of this world—who made kings their puppets, and the nations of the earth their toys—have lived their brief space and are gone, and what avails them now the glory and the greatness they won? The fame of Shakespeare, of Alexander, of Napoleon of France, of a Byron, and a Milton, and all other great men—great in this life—remains to posterity, but what availed it all to them at the judgment-seat of God. There, at that awful tribunal, where we all must stand, nothing but their good works—if they ever did good works—could soften the rigor of Divine Justice. The world is like an express-train, rushing madly on, with a fathomless precipice at the end; and you laugh and sing on your way to it, consoling yourself with the thought, 'At the last moment I will repent, and all will be well.' But the Divine Justice has answered you beforehand—terribly answered you—'You shall seek me and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins!'"
The sermon was a very long one, and a very terrible one, likely to stir the dead souls of the most hardened sinner there. It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham's mother never lifted her head all the time, but that it lay on the pew-rail, and that she was as immovable as a figure carved in ebony. Olive Wyndham had to listen, and her cheek blanched as she did so. Was this sermon preached for her? Was she bartering her immortal soul for dross, so soon to be taken from her? And then a wild terror took possession of her, and she dared think no longer. She could have put her fingers to her ears to shut out the inexorable voice, thundering awfully to her conscience: "You shall seek me and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins." There was a dead silence of dumb fear in the cathedral when the eloquent preacher descended, and very devout were the hearers until the conclusion of mass. Then they poured out, a good deal more subdued than when they had entered, and Olive had to go with the rest. Mr. Wyndham and his mother showed no sign of stirring, nor did they leave their pew until the last straggler of the congregation was gone. The carriage from Rosebush Cottage was waiting outside the gates, and Mr. Wyndham assisted his mother in, and they drove off.
Olive dined at Mr. Blair's that day, and heard them discussing the sermon, and the unexpected appearance of Mr. Wyndham and his mother. Olive said very little—the panic in her soul had not ceased. The shortness of time, the length of eternity—that terrible eternity!—had never been brought so vividly before her before. Was the express-train in which she was flying through life near the end—near that awful chasm where all was blackness and horror? Human things frittered away—earthly troubles, gigantic before, looked puny and insignificant seen in the light of eternity—so soon to begin, never to end! She had been awakened—she never could sleep again the blind, heathenish sleep that had been hers all her life, or woe to her if she could.
Mr. Blake and Miss Blair walked home with her in the hazy September moonlight. They found Mr. Wyndham sitting in one of the basket-chairs in the glass porch, looking up at the moon as seen through the smoke of his cigar, and Olive's inconsistent heart throbbed as if it would break from its prison and fly to him. Oh, if all this miserable acting could end; if he would only love her, and let her love him, she would yield forever the wealth that had never brought her happiness, and be his true and loving wife from henceforth, and try and atone for the sins of the past. She might be a good woman yet, if her life could only be simple and true like other women, and all this miserable secresy at an end. But, though the silken skirt of her rich robe touched him, they could not have been further apart if the wide world divided them. She could have laid her head down on the table there, and wept passionate, scalding tears, so utterly forlorn and wretched and lonely and unloved did she feel. She could not talk—something rose in her throat and choked her—but she listened to Mr. Wyndham telling in his quiet voice how he had persuaded his mother to go out that day to hear the famous preacher, and how he thought it had done her good.
Val and Laura did not stay long, but set out on their moonlit homeward way. Ann Nettleby sat in her own doorway, and Val paused to speak to her.
"No news of Cherrie, yet, Ann?"
Ann made the usual reply, "No," and they walked on, talking of lost Cherrie.
"I'll find her out yet," Mr. Blake said, determinedly. "I don't despair, even though—well, what's the matter?"
Laura had uttered an exclamation, and clung suddenly to his arm. Redmon road was lonely, as you know, and not a creature was to be seen; but Laura was pointing to where, under the trees, in the moonlight, a woman was standing still. A woman or a spirit, which? For it was robed in white from head to foot, and a shower of pale hair drifted over its shoulders. The face turned toward them as they approached, a face as white as the dress, and Laura Blair uttered a loud shriek as she saw it, reeled and would have fallen, had not Val caught her in his arms.
Val had turned white himself, for the pale shadow under the trees had worn the dead face of Nathalie Marsh! As Laura shrieked it had vanished, in a ghostly manner enough, among the trees, and Val Blake was left standing gaping in the middle of Redmon road, holding a fainting lady in his arms.
Mr. Blake was in a predicament. Some men there are who would by no means turn aghast at being obliged to hold a fair, fainting damsel in their arms, but Mr. Blake was none of these. Should he lay her down on the road while he went for help, or should he carry her to the Nettleby Cottage? Yes, that was the idea; and Mr. Blake lifted the fair fainted in his stalwart arms, and bore her off like a man. The cottage was very near, and Mr. Blake was big and strong; but for all that he was in a very red and panting state when he gave a thundering knock at the cottage-door. One hundred and twenty pounds of female loveliness is no joke to carry, even for a short distance; and he leaned Miss Blair up against the door-post in such a way that she nearly toppled over on Miss Ann Nettleby's head, when that young lady opened the door. Ann screamed at the sight, but Mr. Blake pushed past her with very little ceremony.
"She's only fainted, Ann! Don't make a howling. Get some water, or hartshorn, or something, and bring her to."
Miss Ann Nettleby was a young lady of considerable presence of mind, and immediately began to apply restoratives. Whether it was that nature was coming round of her own accord, or from the intrinsic merit of burnt feathers held under her nose, and cold water doused in her face, Miss Blair, with a long, shivering sigh, consented at last to come to, and looked around her with a blank, bewildered stare.
"Well, Laura," said Val, stooping over her, "how do you find yourself, now?"
At the sound of his voice, recollection seemed to flash vividly across Laura's mind. She was lying on the couch in the front room; but she started up with a scream, her eyes dilating, and, to Mr. Blake's dismay, flung herself into his arms.
"Oh, Val!" she cried, clinging wildly to him, "the ghost! the ghost! I saw the ghost of Nathalie Marsh."
Ann Nettleby's eyes grew as round as saucers.
"The ghost of Nathalie Marsh!" she repeated. "Lor! Miss Laura, you haven't seen her ghost, have you?"
"Come, Laura, don't be frightened," said Val, soothingly, though sorely perplexed himself. "There is no ghost here, at all events. Perhaps you had better go back to Redmon, and stay with Mrs. Wyndham all night."
But Laura, gasping and hysterical, protested she would not venture out that night again for all the world, and ended the declaration by falling back on the lounge in a violent fit of hysterics. Val seized his hat and made for the door.
"You look after her, Ann," he said, "and I'll run up to Redmon for Mrs. Wyndham. She'll die before morning if she keeps on like this."
Mr. Blake's long limbs never measured off the ground so rapidly before, as they did now the distance between the cottage and the villa. In the whole course of his life, Val Blake had never received such a staggerer as he had this night. He did not believe in ghosts; he was as devoid of imagination as a pig; he had not eaten a heavy supper, nor drank one single glass of wine, yet he had seen the ghost of Nathalie Marsh! They had not been talking of the dead girl; they had not been thinking of her; yet she had stood before them, wearing the face, and looking at them out of the blue eyes they knew so well. It was all very fine to talk of the freaks of the sense of vision, of optical illusions, and all that sort of thing. It was no illusion, optical or otherwise. Nathalie Marsh was dead and buried, and they had seen her ghost on Redmon Road.
The servant who answered Mr. Blake's ring looked rather surprised, but showed him into the library, and went in search of his mistress. Olive came in, wearing the dress in which they had left her, and Val told his story with blunt straightforwardness. Olive's black eyes opened to their widest extent.
"Seen a ghost! My dear Mr. Blake, do I understand you aright?"
Mr. Blake gave one of his nods.
"Yes. It was a ghost, and it frightened Laura into a fit; and she's in one still, down there at Nettleby's. It was a ghost, I'll take my oath of it; for it had Nathalie Marsh's face, and Nathalie Marsh is dead and buried."
There was a slight noise at the door. Olive Wyndham's quick ear recognized it, and she turned round. Mr. Blake followed her eyes, and saw Paul Wyndham standing in the doorway. But what ailed him? His face was always pale; but it looked ghastly at this moment, turning from its natural hue to an awful ashen white.
"Hallo, Wyndham!" cried Val, "what's gone wrong with you? You look as if you had seen a ghost yourself."
"There is nothing the matter with me," said Mr. Wyndham, coming quietly forward. "What is that about ghosts, and where have you left Miss Blair?"
"At Nettleby's, fit to die of fright. We saw a woman who has been dead for more than a year, on the road; and Laura screamed out, and dropped down like a stone!"
"My dear Blake!"
"I wanted her to come up here," pursued Val, "and stay all night, but she went off into strong hysterics in the middle of what I was saying; so I left her with Ann Nettleby, and came up here for Mrs. Wyndham."
"I will go to her at once," Olive said, ringing the bell; "but, Mr. Blake, I don't understand this at all. Seen a ghost! It is incomprehensible!"
"Just so!" said Mr. Blake, with constitutional composure, "but it's true, for all that. Nathalie Marsh is dead, and buried over there in the cemetery; but, for all that, I saw her as plainly this night on Redmon road as ever I saw her in my life!"
There was something in Mr. Blake's manner that carried conviction with it, and Mr. Blake was not the man to tell a cock-and-bull story, or let himself be easily deceived. Had Laura Blair, a fanciful and romantic girl, alone told the story, every one would have laughed incredulously, but Val Blake was another story. Matter-of-fact Val had no fancies, natural or supernatural, and told his story with a resolute air of conviction now that perplexed his hearers. Mr. Wyndham affected to laugh; but, somehow, the laugh was mirthless, and his face and lips remained strangely colorless.
"It was some one playing a practical joke, depend upon it," he said; "perhaps that imp of mischief, Sam's brother. As to ghosts—why, Blake, where have your wits gone to?"
"All right," said Val; "I don't ask you to believe it, you know; but if it wasn't Nathalie Marsh's spirit, then it was Nathalie Marsh in the flesh, and we have all been deceived, and the woman buried in Speckport cemetery is not the woman I took her to be."
Paul Wyndham turned round suddenly, and walked to the window and looked out. He turned round so suddenly that neither his wife nor his friend saw the awful change that came over his face when these words were said. A servant brought Mrs. Wyndham her hat and shawl, and he did not turn round again until they were leaving the room. Olive's heart stood still at sight of the white change in his face.
"You are ill, Mr. Wyndham," she said, looking at him sharply and wistfully.
"You're as pale as a ghost," said Mr. Blake; "don't come with us—what's the matter?"
Mr. Wyndham gave them his former answer, "Nothing," and watched them walking down the moonlit avenue together, until they were out of sight. Then he left the room, put on his hat and overcoat, locked his own door, and dropped the key in his pocket, and followed them. Half an hour later, while Olive and Val were persuading Laura to come with them to Redmon, he was knocking at the door of Rosebush Cottage, and being admitted by Midge, whose ruddy face wore a look of blanched consternation at sight of him.
Mr. Val Blake walked home in the moonlight alone. As he passed the spot where, under the tree, the ghostly-white figure with the hazy hair and deathlike face had stood, he felt a cold thrill in spite of himself; but the spot was vacant now—not a soul, in the flesh or out of it, was to be seen on Redmon road. Mr. Blake, as I said, walked home in the moonlight alone, and astounded the whole Blair family by the unearthly tidings. For good Mrs. Blake's sake he omitted that part concerning Laura's fainting-fits—merely saying she was frightened, and he had thought it best to leave her at Redmon. Mrs. Blair turned pale, Master Bill grinned, and Mr. Blair pooh-poohed the story incredulously.
"A ghost! What nonsense, Blake! I always thought you a sensible man before; but if you draw the long bow like that, I shall have to change my opinion."
"Very well," said Val, in nowise disturbed at having his veracity doubted, "seeing's believing! You may think what you please, and so shall I!"
Before it took its breakfast next morning, Speckport had heard the story—the astounding story—that the ghost of Nathalie Marsh had appeared to Mr. Blake and Miss Blair on Redmon road, and had frightened the young lady nearly to death. Speckport relished the story amazingly—it was nothing more than they had expected. How could that poor suicide be supposed to rest easy in her grave! Mrs. Marsh, over her eternal novels, heard it, and cried a little, and wondered how Mr. Blake could say such cruel things on purpose to worry her. Captain Cavendish heard it, and laughed incredulously in Mr. Blake's face.
"Why, Val," he cried, "are you going loony, or getting German, or taken to eating cold pork before going to bed? Cold pork might account for it, but nothing else could ever excuse you for telling such a raw-head-and-bloody-bones story as that, and expecting sensible people to believe it. As to Laura, any gatepost or white birch tree in the moonlight would pass for a ghost with her."
Mr. Blake was entirely too much of a philosopher to waste his time in controversy with these unbelievers. He knew well enough it was no gatepost or white birch he had seen, but the subject was full of mystery and perplexity, and he was glad to let it drop. It could not be Nathalie Marsh; he had seen her dead and buried; and ghosts were opposed to reason and common sense, and all the beliefs of his life. It was better to let the subject drop then; so he only whistled when people laughed at him, or cross-questioned him, and told them if they didn't believe him the less they said about it the better.
But the strange story was not so soon to die out. Mr. Blake, about a fortnight after, was suddenly and unexpectedly confirmed. The ghost of Nathalie Marsh had been seen again—this time in Speckport Cemetery, kneeling beside her own grave; and the person who saw it had fled away, shrieking and falling in a fit at the sexton's door. It was the sexton's nephew, a lad of fifteen or thereabouts, who, going at nightfall to close the cemetery-gates, had seen some one kneeling on one of the graves. This being nothing unusual, the boy had gone over, to desire the person to leave, when, to his horror, it slowly turned round its face—the face of one buried there a twelvemonth before. With an unearthly yell, the boy turned tail and fled, and had been raving delirious ever since. The alarmed sexton had gone out to prove the truth of the incoherent story, but had found the cemetery deserted, and no earthly or unearthly visitant near the grave of the doomed girl.
Here was a staggerer for Speckport! People began to look blankly at each other, and took a sudden aversion to being out after nightfall. The "Snorter" and the "Bellower" and the "Puffer" reluctantly recorded this new marvel, confirming, as it did, the truth of Mr. Blake's story; but opined some evil person was playing off a practical joke, and hinted to the police to be on the look-out, and pin the ghost the first opportunity. It was the talk of the whole town—the boy was dangerously ill, and young ladies grew nervous and hysterical, and would not stay a moment in the dark, for untold gold. Laura Blair was worst of all; she was hysterical to the last degree, and shrieked if a door shut loudly, and fell into hysterics if they left her alone an instant night or day. Olive Wyndham's dark face paled with terror as she listened. Was the dead and defrauded heiress rising from her grave because her earthly wrongs would not let her rest there? Would she appear to her next?
Was it superstitious fear that had taken all the color—and he never at best had much to spare—out of Paul Wyndham's face, and left him the ghost of his former self. The servants at Redmon could have told you how little he ate, and perhaps that accounted for his growing as thin as a shadow. A dark look of settled gloom over-shadowed his pale face always now. He spent more of his time than ever at his mother's cottage, and when asked what was the matter—was he ill?—he answered no, but his mother was. Why, then, did he not have medical advice, sympathizers asked; and Mr. Wyndham replied that his mother declined—she was very peculiar, and positively refused. What did he suppose was the matter with her? and Mr. Wyndham had told them it was her nervous system—she was hypochondriacal—in fact; and he made the admission very reluctantly, and with a painful quivering about the mouth—she was not quite herself—her mind had lost its balance. And the sympathizers going their way, informed other sympathizers that all old Mrs. Wyndham's oddities were accounted for—the woman was mad!
Speckport pitied poor Mr. Wyndham, saddled with an insane mother, very much, when they saw his pale, worn face, and that gloomy look that never left it. Olive pitied him, too; and would have given the world, had it been hers to give, to comfort him in his great trouble; but she was nothing to him, and her heart turned to gall and bitterness, as she thought of it. No, she was nothing to him, she scarcely ever saw him at all now, and he seemed unconscious of her presence when they were together. But it was a relief to know the secret of Rosebush Cottage—however dreadful that secret was, it were better than the first diabolical thought suggested by Catty Clowrie. Once Olive Wyndham, in the humility born of this new love, had descended from the heights of high and mightydom on which she dwelt, and ate humble pie at her cold lord's feet. She might have left the unsavory dish alone—her humility was no more to him than her pride, and she had been repulsed. Not rudely, or unkindly. Mr. Wyndham was a gentleman, every inch of him, and would not be harsh to a woman; but still she was repulsed, and her proud heart quivered to its inmost core with the degradation.
She had found him, one evening on entering the library, sitting alone there, his forehead bowed on his hand, a look that was so like despair on his face; but she forgot everything but that she loved him, and that he was suffering a sorrow too great for words to tell. Had she not a right to love him, to comfort him—was she not his wife? She would not listen to her woman's nature, which revolted, and ordered her sternly back. She only knew that she loved him; and she went over and touched him lightly on the shoulder. It was the first time they had ever so met—therefore the look of surprise which came into his eyes when he looked up, was natural enough. He rose up, looking with that quiet air of surprise on the downcast eyes and flushed face, and waited silently.
"Mr. Wyndham," she said, her voice trembling so, her words were scarcely intelligible. "I—I am sorry to see you in such trouble? Can—can I do anything to alleviate it?"
"Thank you!" he said, "No!"
"If," still tremulously, "if I could do anything for your mother—visit her——"
She broke down entirely. In Mr. Wyndham's face there was nothing but cold surprise.
"You are very good," he said, "but you can do nothing."
He bowed and left the room. And Olive, humbled, repulsed, mortified to death, hating, for the moment, herself and him and all the world, flung herself upon a sofa, and wept such a scalding rush of tears, as only those proud, sensitive hearts can ever shed. They might have been tears of blood, so torn and wounded was the poor heart from whence they sprang; and when they dried, and she rose up, they had left her like a stone.
Between Nathalie Marsh's ghost and Mr. Wyndham's mad mother, Speckport was kept so busy talking, it had scarcely time to canvas the movement, when Captain George Cavendish announced his intention of selling out and going home. Mr. Blake was the only one, with the exception of some milk-and-water young ladies who were in love with the dashing Englisher, whom the announcement bothered; and it was not for the captain's sake, but for poor lost Cherrie's. Where was Cherrie? Val had vowed a vow to find her out, but this turn of affairs knocked all his plans in the head.
"If he does go," said Val to himself, "I'll send him off with a flea in his ear! I must find Cherrie, or Charley Marsh will be an exile forever!"
"But how?" Mr. Blake was at his wit's end thinking the matter over, and trying to hit on some plan. He was still thinking about it, when he sallied off to the post-office for his papers and letters, and encountered Mr. Johnston, the captain's man, coming out with a handful of letters. He was sorting them as he walked, and never noticed that he dropped one as he passed Mr. Blake. Val picked it up to return it, glancing carelessly at the superscription as he did so. His glance was magical—a red flush crimsoned his sallow face, and he turned it over to look at the postmark. Then he saw Mr. Johnston had missed it, and was turning round—he dropped it again, and walked on, and the captain's valet pounced upon it and walked off.
Blake strode straight to his boarding-house, informed Mr. Blair sudden business required him to go up the country for a week or so, scrawled off a note to his foreman, flung a few things into a valise, and started for the cars. He was just in time to take a through ticket to S——, before the evening train started, and was whirled off in the amber haze of a brilliant September sunset.
It was past midnight when the train reached the terminus, but Mr. Blake was not going to stop at S——. The steamer which started at eight next morning for Charlottetown, Prince Edward's Island, lay at the wharf, and Mr. Blake went on board immediately, and turned in. When the boat started next morning, he was strolling about the deck, smoking a pipe and watching the passengers come on board. There were not many, and he knew none of them, which was just what he wanted. It was a long, delightful day on the Gulf; and in the yellow glory of another sunset, Mr. Blake landed in Charlottetown, and, valise in hand, sauntered up to one of the principal hotels.
Mr. Blake took his tea, and then set off for a ramble through the town. A quiet town, with grass-grown red-clay streets, and only a few stragglers abroad. A beautiful town, with a few quiet shops, and a drowsiness pervading the air, and a general stillness and torpor pervading everywhere. Val retired early; but he arose early also, and was out with his hands in his pocket and a cigar in his mouth, wandering about again, staring at the Government House and the Colonial Buildings, and the fly-specked books in the stationers' shops, and the deserted drygoods'-stores, and going into the cathedral where morning-service was going on, and contemplating the pretty nuns of Notre Dame reading their missals with devoutly downcast eyes, in their pew. He was out again the moment he had swallowed his breakfast and made a few inquiries of the clerk, traversing the town-streets once more. These inquiries of his were concerning a lady, a young lady, he told the polite clerk, a friend of his whom he was most anxious to find out, but whose precise residence he was ignorant of. He was pretty certain she was in Charlottetown, but he could not exactly tell where. Perhaps the clerk had seen her—a black-eyed young lady with black curls and red cheeks, and not tall? No!—the clerk did not remember; he had seen a good many black-eyed young ladies in his time, but he did not know that he had seen this particular one. Mr. Blake pursued these inquiries in other places, chiefly in dry goods' or milliners' stores, and in one of these latter, the lady in attendance informed him that she knew such a person, a young lady, a Miss Smith, she believed, who used to shop there, and generally walked by every afternoon.
Mr. Blake never went home to dinner that day. It was a hot, sunshiny day, and he lounged about the milliner's shop, attracting a good deal of curiosity, and suspicion that he might have designs on the bonnets. But Val did not care for their suspicions; he was looking out for some one he felt sure would be along presently, if she were living and well. The watch was a very long one, but he kept it patiently, and about three in the afternoon he met with his reward. There, swinging along the street, with the old jaunty step he remembered so well, was a black-eyed, black-ringleted young lady, turban on head, parasol in hand. Mr. Blake bounced up, walked forward, and accosted her with the simple remark—sublime in its simplicity—"How are you, Cherrie?"
It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, that that quiet, grass-grown Charlotte Street was almost deserted; else the scream and recoil with which Cherrie—our old and long-lost-sight-of friend, Cherrie—received this salutation, might have attracted unpleasant attention.
Mr. Blake took the matter with constitutional phlegm.
"Oh, come now, Cherrie, no hysterics! How have you been all these everlasting ages?"
"Mis-ter Blake?" Cherrie gasped, her eyes starting in her head with the surprise. "Oh, my goodness! What a turn you gave me!"
"Did I?" said Val. "Then I'll give you another; for I want you to turn back with me, and take me to wherever you live, Mrs. Smith. That's the name you go by here, isn't it?"
"Who told you so?"
"A little bird! I say, Cherrie, you've lost your red cheeks! Doesn't Prince Edward's Island agree with you?"
Cherrie had lost her bright bloom of color; but save that she was much thinner and paler, and far less gaudily dressed, she was the same Cherrie of old.
"Agree with me!" exclaimed Cherrie, in rather a loudly-resentful tone, considering that they were on the street. "I hate the place, and I am nearly moped to death in it. I never was so miserable in all my life as I have been since I came here!"
"Then why didn't you leave it?" inquired Mr. Blake.
"Leave it!" reiterated Cherrie, like an angry echo. "It's very easy to say leave it; but when you have no money or nothing, it's not quite so easy doing it. I've been used shamefully; and if ever I get back to Speckport, I'll let some of the folks there know it, too! Did he send you?"
"Who?"
"You know well enough! Captain Cavendish!"
"He send me!" said Val. "I should think not. There isn't a soul in Speckport knows whether you are alive or dead; and he takes care they shan't, either. I have been trying to find you out ever since you left; and I have asked Captain Cavendish scores of times, but he always vowed he knew nothing about you—that you had run off after Charley Marsh. It was only by chance I saw a letter from you to him the other day, posted here, and I started off in a trice. Why didn't you write to your folks, Cherrie?"
"I daren't. He wouldn't let me. He told me, if I didn't stay here and keep quiet, he never would have anything more to say to me. I have been shamefully used!"—and here Cherrie began to cry on the street—"and I wish I was dead. There!"
"Perhaps you will before long," said Val, significantly.
Cherrie looked at him.
"What?"
"Perhaps you won't be let live long! You'll have to stand your trial when you go back, for helping in the murder of Mrs. Leroy; and maybe they'll hang you! Now, don't go screaming out and making such an infernal row on the street—will you?"
Cherrie did not scream. She suppressed a rising cry, and turned ashen white.
"I had nothing to do with the murder of Mrs. Leroy," she said, with lips that trembled. "You know I hadn't. You know I left Speckport the afternoon it happened. You have no business saying such things to me, Val Blake."
She laid her hand on her heart while she spoke, as if to still its clamor. Val saw by her white and parted lips how that poor, fluttering, frightened heart was throbbing.
"Oh, yes; I know you left Speckport that afternoon, Cherrie; but you and Cavendish had it all made up beforehand. You were to write Charley that note, and appoint a meeting in Redmon grounds, promising to run away with him, and making him wait for you there, while Cavendish got in through the window, and robbed the old woman. You never intended meeting Charley, you know; and you are just as much accessory to the murder as if you had stood by and held the lamp while he was choking Lady Leroy."
They had left the dull streets of the town, and were out in a lovely country road. Swelling meadows of golden grain and scented hay spread away on either hand, until they melted into the azure arch; and the long, dusty road wound its way under pleasant, shadowy trees, without a living creature to be seen. Cherrie, listening to these terrible words, spoken in the same tone Mr. Blake would have used had he been informing her the day was uncommonly fine, sank down on a green hillock by the roadside, and, covering her face with her hands, broke out in a passion of tempestuous tears. He had taken her so by surprise—he had given her no time to prepare—the sight of him had brought back the recollection of the old pleasant days, and the wretched dullness of the present. She was weak, and sick, and neglected, and miserable; and now this last turn was coming to crush her. Poor Cherrie sat there and cried the bitterest tears she had ever shed in her life; her whole frame shaking with her convulsive sobs, her distress touched Val; for pretty Cherrie had always been a favorite of his, despite her glaring faults and folly; and a twinge of remorse smote his conscience at what he had done.
"Oh, now, Cherrie, don't cry! People will be coming along, and what will they think? Come, get up, like a good girl, and we'll talk it over when we get to your house. Perhaps it may not be so bad after all."
Cherrie looked up at him with piteous reproach through her tears.
"Was it for this you wanted to find me out so bad, Mr. Blake? Was it to make me a prisoner you came over here?"
"Well," said Val, with another twinge of conscience, "ye-e-es, it was partly. But you must recollect, Cherrie, you have done worse. You let Charley Marsh—poor Charley! who loved you a thousand times better than that scamp of an Englishman—be sentenced for a deed he never committed, when you could have told the truth and freed him. Worse still, you helped to inveigle him into as horrible a plot as ever was concocted."
"I couldn't help it!" sobbed Cherrie. "I didn't want to do it, but he made me! I wish I had ran away with Charley that night. He never would have left me like this!"
"No; that he wouldn't! Charley was as true as steel, poor fellow! and loved you as no one ever will love you again, in this world! He is a soldier now, fighting down South; and perhaps he's shot before this; and if he is, his death lies at your door, Cherrie."
Cherrie's tears flowed faster than ever.
"As for Cavendish," went on Val, "he's the greatest villain unhung! Not to speak of his other atrocities—his gambling, his robbing, his murdering, his breaking the heart of Nathalie Marsh—he has been the biggest rascal that ever lived, to you, my poor Cherrie."
"Yes, he has!" wept Cherrie, all her wrongs bleeding afresh. "He's a villain, and I hate him. Oh dear me, I wish I was dead!"
"You don't know half the wrong he has done you and means to do," said Val. "Come, Cherrie, get up, and I'll tell you about it as we go along. Do you live far from this?"
"No; it's the first house you meet; the dullest old place on the face of the earth! He wouldn't let me leave it; and I know they despise me, and think I'm no better than I ought to be. There never was a girl in this world so ill-used as I have been! Why did he marry me, if he is ashamed of me? Why can't he stay with me as he ought to stay with his wife?"
"His wife!" repeated Val, staring at her as they walked along. "Why, Cherrie, is that all you know about it? Hasn't he told you that you are not his wife?"
"Not his wife!" shrieked Cherrie. "Val Blake, what do you mean?"
"Bless my soul!" cried Mr. Blake, appealing in dismay to the scarecrows in the fields, "I thought he had told her. Why, you unfortunate Cherrie, don't you know the marriage was a sham one?"
Cherrie gasped for breath. The surprise struck her speechless.
"I thought you knew all about it!" said Val; "I'll take my oath I did! Why, you poor little simpleton, how could you ever be idiot enough to think a fellow like Cavendish would marry the like of you! If you had two grains of sense in your head," said Mr. Blake, politely, "you must have seen through it. He planned the whole thing himself—a sham from beginning to end!"
"It isn't! it can't be! I don't believe it! I won't believe it!" panted Cherrie, recovering her breath. "You helped him, and the minister was there; and I am his wife, his lawful wedded wife. You are only trying to frighten me to death."
"No, I'm not," said Val; "and you're no more his wife than I am. The minister wasn't a minister, but a fellow who played the part. If you hadn't been the greatest goose that ever lived, Cherrie, you couldn't have been so taken in!"
Cherrie's breath went and came, and her tears seemed turned to sparks of fire, as she turned her eyes upon her companion.
"And you helped him to do this, Mr. Blake?"
"Well, Cherrie, what could I do? If I hadn't helped him, some one else would; and, anyhow, you would have run away with him, marriage or no marriage. Now, don't deny it—you know you would!"
"And you mean to say I'm not married to Captain Cavendish?"
"Yes, I do. I only wonder he hasn't let you find it out long ago. He came to me and persuaded me to help him, telling me you were ready to run off with him any time he asked you, which I knew myself. I'm sorry for it now, but it can't be helped."
"Very well, Mr. Blake," said Cherrie, whose cheeks were red, and whose eyes were flashing, "you may both be proud of your work. You are fine gentlemen, both of you, to distress a poor girl like me, as you have done. But I'll go back to Speckport, and I'll tell every soul in it how I have been taken in; and I hope they'll tar and feather the two of you for what you have done."
"Well," said Mr. Blake, in a subdued tone, "we deserve it, I dare say, but Cavendish is the worst after all. Why, Cherrie, my girl, you don't know half the wrong he has done you. He would have been married three mouths ago, if the lady had not changed her mind and married another man."
"Would he?" said Cherrie, vindictively, between her closed teeth. "Oh, if ever I get a chance, won't I pay him off! Who was the lady?"
"The new heiress of Redmon—Miss Henderson she was then, Mrs. Wyndham she is now. He was crazy about her, as all Speckport can tell you; and he asked her to marry him; and she consented first, and backed out afterward. You never saw any one in the state he was in, Cherrie; and he started off to Canada, because he couldn't bear to stay in the place and see her married to another man."
"But he's back, now," said Cherrie. "I had a letter from him two weeks ago, with a couple of pounds in it. He's the meanest, stingiest miser on the face of the earth, and I have to write and write, before I get enough from him to pay my board. I haven't had a decent dress these six months; and I can't leave the place, because I never have enough to pay my way back. I'm the worst-treated and most unfortunate creature in the whole world!"
And here poor Cherrie's tears broke out afresh.
"And that's not the worst, either," pursued Mr. Blake. "Do you know what has brought him back to Speckport, as you say? Of course, you don't—you are the last he would tell; but it is because he is selling out of the army, and going back to England for good. He wants to be rid of you entirely; and once he is there, and married to some one else with a fortune, many a fine laugh he will have at you."
"Never!" cried Cherrie, wrought up to the right pitch of indignation; "never shall he leave Speckport, if I can help it! I'll tell all, if I was to hang for it myself, sooner than let him get off like that, the villain!"
"But you won't hang for it, Cherrie, if you tell; it's only if you refuse to tell, that you are in danger. Whoever turns Queen's evidence gets off scot free, you know; and if you only do what is right, and take my advice, which means the same thing, you may triumph over Captain George Percy Cavendish yet."
"I'll do it!" said Cherrie, her lips compressed and her eyes flashing, and the memory of all her wrongs surging back upon her at once. "I'll do it, and be revenged on the greatest scoundrel that ever called himself a gentleman! But, mind, Val Blake, I must be sure that this is all true—I must be sure that I am not his wife."
"It will be very easy convincing you of that, once you are back in Speckport. You shall hear it from his own lips, without his knowing you are listening. Oh, is this the place?"
For Cherrie had stopped before a little farmhouse, garnished with a potato garden in front, and adorned with numerous pigsties on either hand. She led the way to the front room of the establishment; which was carpetless, and curtainless, and unfurnished, and impoverished-looking enough.
"Well," Val said, "this is rather different, Cherrie, from the days when you used to dress in silks and sport gold chains, and do nothing but flirt, and be petted and made love to from week's-end to week's-end. But never mind—the worst's over, now that I've found you out, and you'll have good times yet in Speckport."