A Changed Heart Part 65

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sengers 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 princ.i.p.al hotels.

Mr. Blake took his tea, and then set off for a ramble through the town.

A quiet town, with gra.s.s-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?"

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CHERRIE TELLS THE TRUTH.

It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, that that quiet, gra.s.s-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 const.i.tutional 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 pa.s.sion 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."