A Changed Heart Part 41

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes pa.s.sed. The expectant crowd were getting angry and impatient; it was shameful, this dallying. But two or three policemen are out now with their red batons and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons of authority, clearing a way for the gentlemen who are coming out, and for the cab which is to draw up close to the front door. Still, the mob press forward, the coroner and jury are departing; and now the prisoner's coming. But a new disappointment is in store for them; for when he comes, he has his hat pulled so far over his eyes, and springs in so quickly, that they don't even get that fleeting glimpse of him they are crushing each other to death to obtain. The constables follow; it is pleasant even to see them; the blinds are pulled down; the cab drives off rapidly, and the crowd go home, ravenous for their dinner.

And Charles Marsh is on his way to Speckport jail, to await his trial for the willful murder of Jane Leroy!

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DARKENING SKY.

The day after the inquest, the funeral took place. As the clock of Speckport cathedral chimed in sonorous sweetness the hour of ten, all that was earthly of Mrs. Leroy was placed in the hea.r.s.e, and the gloomy cortege started. A great many carriages followed the mistress of Redmon to her last long home; and, in the foremost, two ladies, robed in sable, and vailed in c.r.a.pe, rode. The outward mourning was for the dead, the deeper _deuil_ of the heart for the living--for him who, on this wretched August day, was a prisoner in Speckport jail, awaiting his trial for the greatest crime man can commit, doomed to suffer, perhaps, the greatest penalty man can inflict.

n.o.body in all the long line of carriages talked; they crouched into corners, and shivered, and were silent, and sulky, and cross, and uncomfortable, and gaped, and wished the thing was well over, or that they had never come.

They got their wish after a while. The last sod was beaten down, and the carriages rattled back into the foggy town--all but three or four; and they drove back to the eerie old house, never so lonely and desolate as now. One ceremony was yet to be gone through--that ceremony the reading of the last will and testament of Mrs. Leroy. Here, where it had been written, in the ghostly reception-room, where the inquest had taken place, and where the rats and black beetles had it all their own way, it was to be read. It was this that brought Mrs. Marsh, who had been ill and hysterical ever since she had heard the result of the inquest, to the funeral at all. To her it was a great and joyful thing this wealth that after to-day was to be theirs, and not even in her grief could she forego the pleasure of being present. Heaven knows, it was nothing of the sort brought her daughter--the silent agony she had endured since yesterday can never be told; but she had hope yet. She had hope in this very wealth that was to be hers to help him. Young as she was, she knew enough of the power of money to be aware it can do almost anything in this world, and smooth the road to the next; and she trusted in its magic power to free her imprisoned brother. They all went into the silent and forlorn house together; Mr. Darcy, who was to read the will, and whose face was distressed and troubled to the last degree; Mr.

Blair, as an intimate friend of the family; Mr. McGregor, Senior, and Dr. Leach; Mrs. McGregor and Mrs. Blair were with Mrs. Marsh, and Miss McGregor and Miss Blair were deeply sympathetic with Miss Marsh--the heiress!--and Mr. Val Blake, with his sister on his arm; and Midge, who had been at the signing of the will, brought up the rear.

The shutters of the closed rooms had all been opened, and the cas.e.m.e.nts raised, for the first time in many a day, and the pale light of the foggy morning poured in. Lawyer Darcy took his seat at a table, and laid out on it a legal-looking doc.u.ment tied with red tape. The others seated themselves around the apartment; and Nathalie Marsh, in her deep mourning-robes, and her thick black c.r.a.pe vail down over her face, took her seat beside one of the open windows, and leaned her forehead on her hand, as if it ached.

Long afterward, when she was gone from them forever, they remembered that drooping black figure and bowed young head, with one or two bright curls, like lost sunbeams, shimmering out from under her c.r.a.pe bonnet.

Long afterward, they thought of how she had sat that dull and miserable day, suffering as these patient womanly martyrs only suffer, and making no sign.

Lawyer Darcy seemed strangely reluctant to commence his task. He lingered and lingered, his face pale and agitated, his lips twitching nervously, and the fingers that untied the doc.u.ment before him, trembling. His voice, too, when he spoke, was not quite steady.

"I am afraid," said the lawyer, in that unsteady voice, "that the reading of this will will be a shock--a disappointment! I know it must astonish all, as it did me, and I should like to prepare you for it, before it is read."

There was a surprised and alarmed murmur, but no one spoke.

"You are all aware," the lawyer went on, keeping his eyes resolutely from that drooping figure at the window, "that when Mrs. Leroy made her will after coming to Speckport she bequeathed all she possessed to her ward, Miss Marsh. I drew up the will, and she made no secret of her intentions."

There was another painful pause. Val Blake broke it.

"Of course," he said, impatiently, "we all know Mrs. Leroy left Miss Marsh heiress of Redmon."

"But you do not know," said Mr. Darcy, "that a short time ago--in fact, a few days before her tragical death, she revoked that first will and made a new one."

"What?" the cry was from Val Blake, but no one heeded him; every eye was strained upon the lawyer.

"Made a new one," the lawyer repeated, still averting his eyes from the black form at the window; "a new one, entirely different; leaving, I am sorry to say, Redmon away from Miss Marsh--in point of fact, disinheriting her."

There were two little feminine shrieks from the Misses Blair and McGregor, a hysterical cry from Mrs. Marsh, but the bowed figure at the window never stirred. In the unnatural stillness of her att.i.tude, her face hidden behind her c.r.a.pe mask, there was something more fearful than any outbursts of wild womanly distress.

"The new will was made, as I told you," continued Mr. Darcy, "but a few days before her death; made whilst smarting under a sense of anger, and what she called ingrat.i.tude. Miss Marsh had offended her, disobeyed her in a matter on which she had set her heart, and for this she was going to disinherit her. I expostulated, entreated, did all I could, but in vain. She was obstinate, and this new will was made, which I now hold in my hand."

Mrs. Marsh's face had turned as white as that of a dead woman, and great beads of cold sweat stood on her forehead. But she sat rigidly still, listening, and feeling as though she were in some dreadful dream.

"I drew up the will," pursued Mr. Darcy, "and Midge yonder and old Nettleby signed it. I fancied when her first resentment cooled, she would see the injustice of her act, and retract it. I was right; the day preceding the night of her death, hearing she was ill, I called to see her, and she told me to come the next morning, and a third will should be made, leaving all to Nathalie as at first. Next morning she was dead."

To the dark form, whose drooping face was pitifully hidden by the black vail, did any memory come of the words spoken to her by the dead woman that fatal night, and which had then been so mysterious:

"I'll make it all right, Natty! I'll make it all right!" Did she know what was meant now?

"And do you mean to say, Mr. Darcy," Val Blake cried, astonished and indignant, "that Nathalie Marsh is not the heiress of Redmon?"

"I do! this will disinherits her! It is a crying wrong, but no fault of mine."

"And who, then, is the heir?" asked Mr. McGregor.

"She bequeaths all she possesses, unconditionally, to her brother, Philip Henderson, or, in case of his death, to his children. I will read the will."

Amid that profound and impressive stillness, the lawyer read the last will and testament of Jane Leroy. It was concise enough, and left the whole of her property, real and personal, without conditions, to her brother, Philip Henderson, and his heirs, with the exception of five pounds to Miss Nathalie Marsh, to buy a mourning-ring.

Mr. Darcy hesitated over this last cruel pa.s.sage, and felt inclined to leave it out; but he did not, and there was a suppressed murmur of indignation from every lip on hearing it.

Poor Mrs. Marsh was catching her breath in hysterical gasps, and being fanned and sprinkled with cold water, and the palms of her hands slapped by Miss Jo and the two married ladies. And still the vailed figure at the window sat rigidly there, uttering no cry, shedding no tears.

There are griefs too deep for words, too intense for tears, when we can only sit in mute and stony despair, while the world reels under our feet, and the light of the sun is blackness. To Nathalie Marsh, the loss of fortune was the loss of everything--brother, lover, home, happiness--the loss of all to which she had looked forward so long, for which she had endured so much. And now, she sat there, like a figure carved in ebony; and only for the ghastly pallor of her face in the indistinct glimpses of it they could catch through the vail, could they tell that she even heard.

It was Val Blake who again broke the silence that followed the reading of the will.

"I protest against this will!" he indignantly cried. "It is unjust and ungrateful! You should never have produced it, Mr. Darcy. You should have read the former will."

"You are jesting, Mr. Blake! While regretting as much as you can possibly do this unfortunate change, my duty is sacred, and by this will we must abide. Mrs. Marsh seems very ill; I think she had better be conveyed home."

No one ventured to speak to Nathalie, her unnatural manner awed them; but when her mother was supported from the room, and she arose to follow, good natured Miss Jo was beginning a homily on resignation, and on its being all for the best, perhaps, in the end. Her brother, however, cut her short with very little ceremony, and handed Miss Marsh in after her mother, and seating himself by the coachman, they started off rapidly. He might have spared himself the trouble; good Miss Jo might have preached for an hour, and Nathalie would not have heard one word of it. She sat looking straight before her, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, conscious of nothing, save only that dull and dark despair at her heart. Midge, who had come with them in the carriage, waited on Mrs.

Marsh, and cried quietly all the way, bestowing anything but blessings on the memory of her late mistress.

Mr. Blake a.s.sisted both ladies into the house when they reached Cottage Street. Mrs. Marsh, who was very ill and in a state of hysterics, he carried in his arms and laid on the sofa. Nathalie entered the parlor, closed the door, and, still wearing her bonnet and mantle, sat down by the window that looked out on the blurred and misty street. She had flung back her vail, and in her white and ghastly face and dilated violet eyes you could read a waiting look. Nathalie was waiting for one, who, by some secret prescience, she knew would soon come.

Doctor Leach entered the cottage soon after their return, prescribed for Mrs. Marsh, and departed again. Had he been able to minister to a mind diseased, he might have prescribed for Nathalie, too; but that not coming within his pharmacopoeia, he left without seeing her.

It was dusk when he for whom she waited came. The dull wet day was ending in a duller and wetter evening, and the tramp, tramp of the long-roaring waves on the sh.o.r.e made a dull ba.s.s for the high, shrill soprano shrieks of the wind. The lamps were flaring through the foggy twilight in the bleak streets, when Captain Cavendish, in a loose overcoat, and bearing an umbrella, wended his way to that house of mourning. He had not been two hours in Speckport, but he had heard all that had transpired. Was there one in the town, from the aristocratic denizens of Golden Row and Park Lane to the miserable dwellers in filthy back-alleys and noisome water-side streets, that did not know, and were not discussing these unhappy events with equal gusto? The robbery and murder of Mrs. Leroy, the inquest, the sentence and imprisonment of Charley Marsh, the will, and the disinheriting of Nathalie, all were as well known in the obscurest corner of Speckport as in that unhappy home to which he was going.

In the course of that long afternoon Midge had only once ventured into the parlor, and that was in fear and trembling, to ask her young mistress to take a cup of tea and some toast which she brought.

Nathalie had tasted nothing since the day before; and poor Midge, with tears in her fretful eyes, urged it upon her now. The girl looked at her out of a pair of hollow eyes, unnaturally large and bright, in a vague way, as if trying to comprehend what she said; and when she did comprehend, refusing. Midge ventured to urge; and then Nathalie broke out of her rigid, despairing stillness, into pa.s.sionate impatience.

"Take it away!" she cried, "and leave me alone! Leave me alone, I tell you!"

Midge could do nothing but obey. As she quitted the room with the tray, there came a knock at the front door. She set down the tray and opened it, and the tall form of the young English officer confronted her. Midge had no especial love for Captain Cavendish, as we know; but she was aware her young lady had, and was, for the first time in her life, glad to see him. It was good of him to come, she thought, knowing what had happened; and perhaps his presence might comfort her poor Miss Natty, and restore her to herself.

"Yes," Midge said, in answer to his inquiry; "Miss Marsh was at home, and would see him, she thought. If he would wait one minute she would ascertain."

She returned to the parlor to ask. But Nathalie had already heard his voice, and was sitting up, with a strained white face, and her poor wasted hands pressed hard over her heart. She only made an a.s.senting motion to Midge's question, should she show him in, and a negative one when she spoke of bringing a lamp. Through all her torpor of utter misery, she was dimly conscious of a change in herself; that she was haggard and ghastly, and the beauty which had won him first to her side, utterly gone. That gloomy twilight hour was best befitting the scene so soon to take place; for her prophetic heart told her, as surely as if she had read it in the Book of Fate, that this meeting was to be their last.

Midge admitted him, and closing the door behind him, retired into a distant corner of the hall, and throwing her ap.r.o.n over her head, cried quietly, as she had done all day. She would have given a good deal if the white painted panels of the parlor door had been clear gla.s.s, and that she could have seen this man comforting her beloved young lady.

Much as she had disliked him, she could have knelt down in her grat.i.tude, and kissed the dust off his feet.