A Changed Heart Part 50

"Yes, I believe so; but it never was so publicly given out. He was her shadow; and every one said it would be a match after Mrs. Leroy's death, for she detested him."

"How did he act after she lost her fortune?"

"Well, the time was so short between that and her dreadful death, that he had very little opportunity of doing anything; but the general opinion was, the engagement would be broken off. In fact, he told Val himself that she broke off, immediately after--for Natty was proud. He went to the house every day, I know, until--Oh! _quand on parle de diable_--there he is himself!"

Laura did not mean by this abrupt change that his Satanic Majesty was coming, though it sounded like it. It was only one of his earthly emissaries--Captain Cavendish, on horseback. Captain Cavendish looked handsomer on horseback than anywhere else, a fact of which he was fully convinced, and he rode up and lifted his hat to the ladies with gallant grace.

"Good day to you, mesdemoiselles! I called at your house, Mr. Darcy, but found Miss Henderson out! I trust I find you well, ladies, after last night's fatigue?"

He addressed both, but he spoke only to one. That one lifted her dark eyes and bowed distantly, almost coldly, and it was Laura who answered.

"Seven or eight hours' incessant dancing have no effect on such const.i.tutions as ours, Captain Cavendish! We have been showing Miss Henderson the lions of Speckport!"

"And what does Miss Henderson think of those animals?"

"I like Speckport," she said, scarcely taking the trouble to lift her proud eyes; "this part of it particularly."

She was in no mood for conversation, and took little pains to conceal it. "Not at home to suitors," was printed plainly on those contracted black brows, and in the somber depths of those gloomy eyes. Captain Cavendish lifted his hat and rode on, and the distrait beauty just deigned a formal bend of her regal head, and no more.

Laura smiled a little maliciously to herself, not at all sorry to see the irresistible Captain Cavendish rather snubbed than otherwise. There was nowhere to go now but to Redmon, and they drove along the quiet road, in the gathering twilight of the short March afternoon. A gray and eerie twilight, too, the low flat sky, of uniform leaden tint, hanging dark over the black fields and moaning sea. The trees, all along the road, stretched out gaunt, bare arms, and the cries of the whirling sea-gulls came up in the cold evening blasts. They had fallen into silence, involuntarily--the gloom of the hour and the dreary scene weighing down the spirits of all. Something of the gloominess of the flat dull landscape lay shadowed on the face of the heiress, as she shivered behind her wraps in the raw sea-gusts.

Ann Nettleby stood at her own door as the party drove by. The cottage looked forlorn and stripped, too, with only bare poles where the scarlet-runners used to climb, and a dismal entanglement of broom stalks, where the roses and sweetbrier used to flourish. Mr. Darcy drew rein for a moment to nod to the girl.

"How d'ye do, Ann! Any news from that runaway Cherrie yet?"

"No, sir," said Ann, her eyes fixed curiously on the heiress.

"Is this Redmon?" asked Miss Henderson, looking over the cottage at the red brick house. "What a dismal place!"

Dismal, surely, if house ever was! All the shutters were closed, all the doors fastened, no smoke ascending from the broken chimneys, no sound of life within or without; not even a dog, to humanize the ghostly solitude of the place. Black, and grim, and ghostly, it reared its gloomy front to the gloomy sky; the stripped and skeleton trees moaning weirdly about it, an air of decay and desolation over all. Forlorn and deserted, it looked like a haunted house, and such Speckport believed it to be. The two young ladies leaning on Mr. Darcy's arms as they walked up the bleak, bare avenue, between the leafless trees, drew closer to his side, in voiceless awe. The rattling branches seemed to catch at the heiress as she pa.s.sed them, to catch savagely at this new mistress, out of whose face every trace of color had slowly died away.

"It's a dismal old barrack," Mr. Darcy said, trying to laugh; "but you two girls needn't look like ghosts about it. If the sun was shining now, I dare say you would be laughing at its grimness, both of you."

"I don't know," said the heiress, "I cannot conceive this place anything but ghostly and gloomy. I should be afraid of that murdered woman or that drowned girl coming out from under those black trees in the dead of night. I shall never like Redmon."

"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and the gra.s.s is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away.

Won't we, Laura?"

"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Who do you want to give her away to?"

"Well, I'm not certain. There's Tom Oaks looney about her; and there's that good-looking Englishman, all you girls are dying for. You like soldiers, don't you, Miss Olive?"

"Not particularly. Especially soldiers who never smell powder except on parade-day, and whose only battles are sham ones. I like those poor fellows who are fighting and dying down South, but carpet-knights I don't greatly affect.

"That's a rap over the head, Mr. Darcy," cried Laura, with sparkling eyes. "I wish he heard you, Miss Henderson."

"He might if he liked," said the heiress, scornfully.

"Well," said the lawyer, taking the "rap" good-humoredly, "he can make whom he marries, 'my lady,' some day. Is not that an inducement, my dear?"

"Is he of the n.o.bility, then?" asked Olive Henderson, indifferently, and not replying to the question.

"He is next heir to a baronetcy. Lady Olive Cavendish does not sound badly, does it?"

"He used to come here often enough in the old days," Laura said, looking at the gloomy old mansion; "he was all devotion to poor Nathalie."

Miss Henderson's beautiful short upper-lip curled.

"He seems to have got wonderfully well over it in so brief a time, for a love so devoted."

"It is man's nature, my dear," said Mr. Darcy; "here's the house, will you go through?"

Laura absolutely screamed at the idea.

"Good gracious, Mr. Darcy! I would not go in for all the world. Don't go, Olive--I mean Miss Henderson."

"Oh, call me Olive! I hate Miss Henderson. No, I don't care for going in--the place has given me the horrors already."

As they walked back to the carriage, Laura asked her what she thought of Mr. Darcy's plan of the villa.

"I shall think about it," was the reply. "Meantime, Mr. Darcy, I wish you would look out for a nice house for me, one with a garden attached, and a stable, and in some nice street, with a view of the water."

"But, dear me!" said Laura, "I should think it would be ever so much nicer and handier to board. It will be such a bother, housekeeping and looking after servants, and all that kind of thing. If I were you I would board."

She turned upon Laura Blair, her eyes, her face, her voice, so pa.s.sionate, that that young lady quite recoiled.

"Laura!" she cried out, in that pa.s.sionate voice, "I must have a home. A home, do you hear, not a boarding-house. Heaven knows I have had enough of them to last me my life, and the sound of the word is hateful to me.

I must have a home where I will be the mistress, free to do as I please, to come and go as I like, to receive my friends and go to them as it suits me, unasked and unquestioned. I must have a home of my own, or I shall die."

Mr. Darcy looked out a house for the heiress; and after a fortnight's search, found one to suit. It belonged to a certain major, who was going with his bride, a fair Speckportian, home to old England, on a prolonged leave of absence. It was to be let, all ready furnished; it was situated around the corner from Golden Row, commanding a fine view of the harbor, and with two most essential requisites, a garden and a stable.

It was a pretty little cottage house, with a tiny drawing-room opening into a library, and a parlor opening into a dining-room. There was a wide hall between, with a delightful gla.s.s porch in front, a garden fronting the street, and the door at the other end of the hall opening into a gra.s.s-grown backyard. Altogether it was a pleasant little house, and Miss Henderson took it at once, as it stood, on the major's own terms, and made arrangements for removing there at once.

"I must have a horse, Laura, you know," she said to Miss Blair, as they inspected the cottage together, for the two girls had grown more and more intimate, with every pa.s.sing day. "I must have a horse, and a man to take care of him; and besides, I shall feel safer with a man in the house. Then I must have a housekeeper, some nice motherly old lady, who will take all that trouble off my hands; and a chambermaid, who must be pretty, for one likes to have pretty things about one; and I shall get new curtains and pictures, and send to Boston for a piano and lots of music, and oh, Laura! I shall be just as happy as a queen here all day long."

She waltzed round the room where they were alone, in her new glee, for she was as fitful of temper as an April day--all things by turns, and nothing long. Laura, who was lolling back in a stuffed rocker, looked at her lazily. "A housekeeper, Olly! There's Mrs. Hill, that widow you told me once you thought had such a pleasant face. She is the widow of a pilot, and has no children. She lives with her brother-in-law, Mr.

Clowrie, and would be glad of the place."

Miss Henderson gave a last whirl and wheeled breezily down upon a lounge.

"Would she? But perhaps she wouldn't suit. I want some one that can get up dinners, and oversee everything when I have a party. I must have a cook, too--I forgot that."

Laura laughed.

"If you went dinnerless one day, you would be apt to remember it afterward. Mrs. Hill is quite competent to a dinner, or any other emergency, for she was housekeeper in some very respectable English family, before she married that pilot. I am sure she would suit, and I know she would like to come."

"And I know I would like to have her. I'll go down to Mr. Clowrie's to-morrow, and make her hunt me up a cook and housemaid, and stableman.

I shall want a gardener, too--that's another thing I forgot."

"Old Nettleby will do that. I say, Olly, you ought to give us a house-warming."