A Changed Heart Part 27

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 press to 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 expose 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 grat.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude 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!"

CHAPTER XII.

IN WHICH THE WEDDING COMES OFF.

The foggy day had ended in a stormy night. Black clouds had hurried wildly over the troubled face of the sky; a dull peal of thunder, booming in the distance, had been its herald. Rain, and thunder, and lightning had it all its own way until about midnight, when the sullen clouds had drifted slowly, and the moon showed her fair, sweet face in her place. A day of brightest sunshine, accompanied by a high wind, had been the result; and in its morning refulgence, Captain Cavendish was sauntering along the Redmon road. Not going to the big brick house, surely: Nathalie had told him the picnic day of Mrs. Leroy's growing dislike to visitors, and the hint had been taken. Perhaps it was only for a const.i.tutional, or to kill time; but there he was, lounging in the teeth of the gale, and whistling an opera air as he went. The Nettleby cottage, fairly overrun with its luxuriance of sweetbrier, and climbing roses, and honeysuckle, was a pretty sight, and well worth looking at, and perhaps that was the reason Captain Cavendish stood still to admire it. The windows, all wreathed with crimson and pink roses, were open; and at one sat Cherrie, in all her beauty, like a picture in a frame.

The crimson July roses about her were not brighter than her cheeks at the sight of him, and her starry eyes flashed a welcome few men would not have coveted. How prettily she was dressed, too--knowing well he would come, the gypsy!--in pink muslin; her bare neck and arms rising plump and rounded out of the gauziness; all her shining jetty curls flashing about, and sprays of rosebuds twisted through them. How the pale, blue-eyed, snowy-skinned, fair-haired prettiness of Nathalie dimmed in the young officer's ardent imagination beside this tropical, gorgeous loveliness of the sunny South. He opened the little gate, and was at the window before she arose.

"My black-eyed fairy? You look perfectly dazzling this morning. Who is in?"

"No one," said Cherrie, showing her pearl-white teeth in her deepening smile. "The boys are off fishing; father's up working in Lady Leroy's garden, and Ann's gone to town for groceries."

"Allah be praised! I may come in, then, my darling, may I not?"

Cherrie's answer was to throw the door wide open; and the young officer entered and took a seat, screened from the view of pa.s.sers-by by the green gloom of the vines. That green twilight of roses and honeysuckles was just the thing for lovers to talk in; and Captain Cavendish had a great deal to say to Cherrie, and to all he said Cherrie had nothing to give but rapturous a.s.sents, and was altogether in the seventh heaven, not to say a few miles beyond that lofty elysium. It was all arranged at last as the young gentleman wished, and, lolling easily on the sofa, he went off on another tack.

"Are you often up in Redmon House, Cherrie?" he asked, stringing the black ringlets about his fingers.

Cherrie, seated on a low stool beside his couch, nestled luxuriously, with her head on his knee.

"Pretty often, George." It had come to that, you see. "Why?"

"Because--because I think you might find out something for me. I have a fancy, do you know, that the old lady doesn't over and above like me."

"I know she don't," said Cherrie, decidedly. "She can't bear you, nor Midge either. They scold Miss Natty like sixty every time you go there."

"The deuce they do? Suppose she fancied--mind, I only say fancied--I wanted to marry Miss Natty, do you suppose she would consent?"

"Consent! She'd pack Miss Natty bag and baggage out of the house, more likely. She'd die before she'd give in, would Mrs. Leroy."

Captain Cavendish fell to musing, and mused so long that Cherrie glanced up from under her black lashes, wondering what made his handsome face look so grave.