A Changed Heart Part 42

Even in the pale, sickly half-twilight of the dark evening, Captain Cavendish could see the haggard cheeks, the sunken eyes, and the death-like livid pallor of the girl's face, and was shocked to see it.

He had expected to find her changed, but not like this; and there was real pity for the moment in his eyes as he bent over her and took her hand. He started to find it cold as ice, and it lay in his pa.s.sive, and like a bit of marble.

"Nathalie," he said, "my darling! I am sorry; I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you. You have suffered indeed since I saw you last."

She did not speak. She had not looked at him once. Her dilated eyes were fixed on the blackening night-sky.

"I only reached Speckport an hour ago," he went on, "and I can never tell you how deeply shocked I was to hear of the dreadful events that have taken place since my departure. Is it all true?"

"Yes--all!" she said. Her voice sounded strange and far-off, even to herself, and she was aware it must sound hollow and unnatural to him.

"All is true! My brother is in prison, accused of murder, and I am a beggar!"

Her hand felt so icily deathlike in his, that he dropped it with a shiver. She still sat looking out into the deepening gloom, her white, set face gleaming marble-white against her black dress and the darkening room.

Captain Cavendish rose up from the seat he had taken, and began pacing rapidly up and down, heartily wishing the scene was over.

"I know," said the hollow voice, so unlike--so unlike the melodious voice of Nathalie, "that all between us must end now. Disgrace and poverty must be my portion from henceforth, and you will hardly care to marry so fallen and degraded a creature as I am. From all that binds you to me, Captain Cavendish, I free you now!"

In the depths of her heart, unseen in the darkness of despair even by herself, did any feeble ray of hope--that great gift of a merciful G.o.d--still linger? If so, the deep and prolonged silence that followed her words must have extinguished the feeble glimmer forever. When Captain Cavendish spoke, and it was some time before he did so, there was a quiver of shame in his tones, all unusual there. Very few ever had a better opinion of their own merits, or were less inclined to judge hardly of themselves, than George Percy Cavendish, but she made him despise himself now, and he almost hated her for it.

"You are generous, Miss Marsh," he said--cold and cruel words, and even he felt them so to be, "and I thank you for that generosity. Loss of fortune would be nothing to me--that is to say, I could overlook it--though I am not rich myself, but this other matter is different. As you say, I could hardly marry into a family stained with--unjustly let us hope--the brand of murder. I shall ever esteem and respect you, Miss Marsh, as the best and bravest of women, and I trust that you will yet make happy some one worthier of you than I am."

Is murder, the murder of the body, when a man plunges a knife into his fellow-man's breast, and leaves him stark and dead, the greatest of all earthly crimes? Earthly tribunals consider it so, and inflict death on the perpetrator. But is there not another murder--a murder of the heart--committed every day, of which we hear nothing, and which man has never made a law to punish. There are wounds which leave little outward trace; but the patient bleeds inwardly, yet bleeds to death for all that, and it is the same ultimatum, death, by a different means. But there is a higher tribunal; and perhaps before that, the sins over-looked by man shall be judged and condemned.

Captain Cavendish took his hat and turned to depart. He felt exceedingly uncomfortable, to say the least of it. He wished that black figure would not sit so petrified and stone-like, he wished that white face gazing out into the night would look a little less like the face of a corpse. He wished she would flame up in some wrathful outburst of womanly fury and insulted pride, and order him to depart, and never show her his false face again. He wished she would do anything but sit there, in that frozen rigidity, as if slowly turning to stone.

"Nathalie!" he said, venturing to take her icy fingers again, "will you not speak one word to me before I go?"

She withdrew her fingers, not hastily or in anger, but never looked at him.

"I have nothing to say," her unnatural voice replied.

"Then good-bye, Nathalie!"

"Good-bye!"

He opened and closed the parlor door, opened and closed the front door, and was gone. He looked at the window of that dark room as he strode by, and fancied he saw the white face gleaming on him menacingly through the gloom. The white face was there, but not menacing. Whatever she might feel in the time to come, when the first terrible shock of all this was over, she could feel nothing so petty as resentment now. Her anguish was too supreme in this first dreadful hour. The world to her stood still, and the blackness of desolation filled the earth. "All for love, and the world well lost!" had been her motto. It was for his sake she had risked everything, and verily, she had her reward!

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FLIGHT.

Mrs. Major Wheatly was a very fine lady, and lived in a very fine house two or three miles out of town. Having secured a traveling companion and a governess for her daughter, in the person of Miss Rose, the little Speckport school-mistress, she had desired that young person to come out to their place immediately, and a.s.sist in the packing and other arrangements, preparatory to starting. Miss Rose had obeyed, and being out of town had heard nothing of the inquest and the verdict until that night, when the major drove in, after dusk, with the news. Mrs. Major Wheatly, like any other fine lady, was greatly addicted to news, and received a severe shock in her nervous system by the manner in which her paid companion received the intelligence. They were all sitting at tea when the major blurted out the story, and his conviction that "the young scamp would be hung, and serve him right," and Miss Rose had fallen suddenly back in her chair in a violent tremor and faintness. All the next day she had gone about so pale and subdued that it gave Mrs.

Wheatly the fidgets to look at her; but whatever she felt, she had wisely kept to herself, and made her moan inwardly, as dependents who know their places always should. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"--that day brought its own evil tidings. The major returning at his usual hour of the evening from town, announced the astounding intelligence that Miss Nathalie Marsh was disinherited, and the broad lands of Redmon given to another. Mrs. Major Wheatly sipped her tea and ate her b.u.t.tered toast, and was deeply sympathetic. She had met the pretty, golden-haired, violet-eyed heiress often in society, and had admired and liked her, as most people did, and was as sorry for her as was consistent with the dignity of so great a lady.

"Of course Captain Cavendish must recede now," she said: "he paid her very marked attentions, but of course he will not marry a penniless bride. Were they engaged, I wonder?"

"Cavendish is a fortune-hunter," said the major. "Miss Marsh is a very nice girl, and a very pretty one, and altogether too good for him. No fear of his marrying her, my dear; he wouldn't marry the Venus Celestis herself, without a handsome dowry."

"Mrs. Wheatly," Miss Rose said, "I must go into town to-morrow morning, to see my friends and say good-bye."

She was so pale and tremulous saying this, that the lady hastened to a.s.sent, nervously, lest she should make another scene.

"I am going in about nine o'clock," the major said, "and will drive you.

Harris will take you back."

"And you must not stay long, Miss Rose," his lady languidly said; "remember we start at half-past two, and there is so much to be done."

The clock on the sitting-room mantel of that silent house on Cottage Street was pointing to half-past nine, when Betsy Ann, with fuzzy hair and sleepy face, hastened to answer a knock at the front door. She stared sleepily at her visitor, who came hurriedly in.

"Is she here, Betsy Ann?--Miss Marsh?"

"Yes'm," Betsy Ann said, "she's up in your room, and Miss Laura Blair and Midge, they've been and sot up with her all night, and me and Miss Jo Blake we've been sitting up with Mrs. Marsh. Midge, she's gone to bed now, and you'd better go up-stairs."

Miss Rose ascended the stairs, and tapped at the door that had been her own. It was opened by Laura Blair, looking pale and f.a.gged.

"Is it you, Miss Rose?" she said, in a low voice, kissing her. "I was afraid you were not coming to say good-bye."

"I could not come sooner, and can stay only an hour now. How is she?"

"There is no change. She has lain all night as she lying now."

Miss Rose looked at the bed, tears slowly swelling up and filling her soft brown eyes. Nathalie lay among the white pillows, her amber tresses trailing and falling loose all about, her hands clasped over her head, her haggard face turned to the window overlooking the bay, her wide-open blue eyes staring blankly at the dim gray sea melting away into the low gray sky.

"She lies like that," Laura softly said, "all the time. We sat up with her all night, but she never slept, she hardly moved; whenever we went near the bed, we found her eyes wide open and vacant, as they are now.

If she could only talk or cry, she would be better, but it makes one's heart ache to look at her."

"Does she not talk?"

"She will answer you if you speak to her, but that is all. She is quite conscious, but she seems to be in a sort of torpor. I will leave you with her, and lie down for half an hour. She was very fond of you, and perhaps you can do more with her than I could."

Laura departed; and Miss Rose, going over to the bed, stooped down and kissed the cold, white face, leaving two bright tears upon it.

"Nathalie, dearest," she said, "do you know me?"

Her large, melancholy eyes turned upon her sweet, tender face.

"Yes," she said, in that voice so unlike her own, that it startled her hearer. She seemed so unlike herself every way, that Miss Rose's tears rained down far faster than they would have done at any outbreak of grief.

"You are ill, my darling," Miss Rose faltered through her tears. "I wish I could stay and nurse you back to health, but I am going away to-day--going, perhaps, never to come back."

"Going away? Oh, yes. I remember!"

She turned wearily on the pillow, still gazing out over the wide sea, as if her thoughts were far away.