A Changed Heart Part 81

"I scarcely know," he began, "how I can say to you what I have come here to-night to say. I scarcely know how I dare speak to you at all. Believe me, no man could be more penitent for the wrong I have done you than I am. If my life could atone for it, I would give it, and think the atonement cheaply purchased. But my death cannot repair the sin of the past. I have wronged you--deeply, cruelly wronged you--and I have only your woman's pity and clemency to look to now. I can scarcely hope any feeling can remain for me in your heart but one of abhorrence, and that abhorrence I have deserved; but I owe it to you to say what I have come here to utter. You know all the story of the past. You heard it from the lips that are cold in death now, and those dying lips encouraged me to make this poor reparation. Harriet, my poor, wronged girl, if you will take her place, if you will be to me what the world here has for so many months thought you--what she really was--if you will be my wife, my dear and cherished wife, I will try what a lifetime of devotion will do to atone for the sorrowful past. Perhaps, my poor dear, you will be able to care for me enough in time to forgive me--almost to love me--and Heaven knows I will do my best to be all to you a husband should be to a beloved wife!"

He stopped, looking at her; but she did not stir, only the hand holding the screen trembled violently, and the fluttering breast rose and fell faster than ever.

"Harriet," he said, gently, "am I so hateful to you that you will not even look at me? Can you never forgive me for what I have done?"

She dropped the screen and rose up, her face all wet with a rain of happy tears, and held out both hands to him--all pride gone forever now.

"I do not forgive you," she said. "I love you, and love never has anything to forgive. O Paul, I have loved you ever since you made me your wife!"

So Paul Wyndham found out at last what others had known so long, and took his poor, forlorn wife to his arms with a strange, remorseful sort of tenderness, that, if not love, was near akin to it. So, while the fire burned low, and cast weird shadows on the dusky, book-lined walls, and the November wind wailed without, these two, never united before, sat side by side, and talked of a future that was to be theirs, far from Speckport and those who had heard the sinful and sorrowful story of the past.

By and by, a servant coming in to replenish the fire found them sitting peacefully together, as he had never seen his master and mistress sit before, and was sent to find Miss Rose and bring her to them. And I think Harriet herself was hardly happier in her new bliss than her gentle stepsister in witnessing it.

So, while Charley Marsh, up in Val Blake's room, that cold November night, listened in strange amazement to all that had been going on of late--to the romance-like story in which his unhappy sister had played so prominent a part--the two sat in the luxurious library at Redmon in this new happiness that had come to them from Nathalie Marsh's grave!

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

IN HOPE.

In the pale November sunlight of the next morning, in the plain, dark traveling-carriage from Redmon, a little party of four persons drove rapidly along the country-roads to a quiet little out-of-the-way church, some fifteen miles out of town. They were Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wyndham, Mr.

Blake, and Miss Rose Henderson; and in the quiet church a quiet ceremony was performed by special license, which made Paul Wyndham and Harriet Wade man and wife, beyond the power of earthly tribunals to dispute. The clergyman was quite young, and the parties were all strangers to him, and he had a private opinion of his own that it was a runaway match.

There were no witnesses but the two, and when it was over they drove back again to Redmon, and Harriet's heart was at peace at last. She had a trial to undergo that day--a great humiliation to endure--but it was a voluntary humiliation; and with her husband--hers now--she could undergo anything. The old, fierce, unbending pride, too, that had been her sin and misfortune all her life, had been chastened and subdued, and she owed to the society she had deceived the penance self-inflicted.

Val Blake had all the talking to himself on the way home, and, to do him justice, there wasn't much silence during the drive. He was talking of Charley Marsh, who had come home a far finer fellow than he had gone away, a brave and good and rich man.

They were all to meet that evening at a quiet dinner-party at Redmon--a farewell dinner party, it was understood, given by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, before their departure from Speckport to parts unknown. The invited guests were Mrs. Marsh and her son, Dr. Leach, Mr. Blake, and Miss Blair, Father Lennard (the old priest), and Mr. Darcy (the lawyer). A very select few, indeed, and all but Mr. Darcy acquainted with the story of the woman who had died at Rosebush Cottage, and the other story of the true and false heiress. He, too, was to be enlightened this evening, and Harriet Wyndham was publicly to renounce and hand over to her half-sister, Winnifred Rose Henderson, the fortune to which she never had possessed a claim. That was her humiliation; but with her husband by her side, she was great enough for that or anything else.

So the wedding-day pa.s.sed very quietly at Redmon, and in the pale early twilight the guests began to arrive. Among the first to arrive was Mrs.

Marsh and her son; the next to appear was Val, with Laura tucked under his arm; and Laura, with a little feminine scream of delight, dropped into Mrs. Wyndham's arms, and rained upon that lady a shower of gushing tears.

"Oh, what an age it is since I have seen my darling Olly before!" Miss Blair cried, "and I have been fairly dying for this hour to arrive."

Mrs. Paul Wyndham kissed the rosy rapturous face, with that subdued and chastened tenderness that had come to her through much sorrow; and her dark eyes filled with tears, as she thought, perhaps, loving little Laura might leave Redmon that night with all this pretty girlish love gone, and nothing but contempt in its place.

Half an hour after, all the guests had arrived, and were seated around the dinner table; but the party was not a very gay one, somehow. The knowledge of what had pa.s.sed was in every mind; but Mr. Darcy was yet in ignorance, and he set the dullness down to the recent death of Mr.

Wyndham's mother. Once, too, there was a little awkwardness--Wyndham, speaking to Miss Rose, had addressed her as Miss Henderson, and Mr.

Darcy stared.

"Henderson!" he exclaimed, "you are talking to Miss Rose, Wyndham! Are you thinking of your courting days and Miss Olive Henderson?"

But Mrs. Wyndham and her half-sister colored, and everybody looked suddenly down at their plates. Mr. Darcy stared the more; but Paul Wyndham, looking very grave, came to the rescue.

"Miss Rose is Miss Rose Henderson! Eat your dinner, Mr. Darcy; we will tell you all about it after."

So, when all returned to the drawing-room, Val Blake told Mr. Darcy how he had been outwitted by a girl. Not that Mr. Blake put it in any such barbarous way, but glossed over ugly facts with a politeness that was quite unusual in straightforward Val. But Mrs. Paul Wyndham herself rose up, very white, with lips that trembled, and was brave enough and strong enough to openly confess her sin and her sister's goodness. She looked up, with pitiful supplication, in the face of her husband, as she finished, with the imploring appeal of a little child for pardon; and he put his protecting arm around her, and smiled tenderly down in the mournful black eyes, once so defiantly bright to him. Mr. Darcy's amazement was beyond everything.

"Bless my soul!" was his cry, "and little Miss Rose is Miss Henderson, after all, and the heiress of Redmon."

Miss Henderson, on whom all eyes were admiringly bent, was painfully confused, and shrank so palpably, that the old lawyer spared her, and no one was sacrilegious enough to tell the little heroine what they thought of her n.o.ble conduct. And when Mrs. Marsh burst unexpectedly out in a glowing eulogy on all her goodness, not only to herself and Nathalie, but to all who were poor and friendless in the town, the little heiress broke down and cried. So no more was said in her hearing, and the gentlemen gathered together, and talked the matter over apart from the ladies, and settled how the news was to be taken to Speckport.

It was late when the party broke up, and good-night and good-bye was said to Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, who were to leave to-morrow at eight. Val and Laura promised to be at the boat to see them off; and they were down true to their word, before the Redmon carriage arrived. Charley was there, too, and so was Cherrie, in c.r.a.pe to the eyes, looking very pretty in her widow's weeds, and all in a flutter at the thought of seeing Charley again. But this bearded and mustached and grave-looking young man was not the hot-headed, thoughtless Charley her pretty face had nearly ruined for life; and as he held out his hand to her, with a grave, almost sad smile, Cherrie suddenly recollected all the evil she had caused him, and had the grace to burst into tears, much to the horror of Mr. Blake, who had a true masculine dread of scenes.

"Don't cry, Cherrie," Charley said, "it's all over now, and it has done me good."

If any lingering hope remained that the old time might be renewed, that question and the smile that accompanied it banished forever from poor Cherrie's foolish heart and her punishment that moment was bitterer than all that had gone before.

Miss Henderson was in the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, and went on board with them, as did the rest of their friends, and lingered until the last bell rang. Then, as Mrs. Wyndham threw back her vail for a parting kiss, they all saw that her eyes were swollen with crying. Paul Wyndham held both the little hands of the heiress in his own, and looked down in the gentle face with tender reverence.

"Good-bye, little sister," he said; "good-bye, and G.o.d bless you!"

The others were crowding around, and hasty farewells were spoken; and then the steamer was moving away from the wharf, and Charley led Miss Henderson, who was crying behind her vail, ash.o.r.e; and they stood on the wharf to watch the steamer out of sight. They saw Paul Wyndham with his wife on his arm, waving a last farewell from the deck; and then the steamer was down the bay, and all the people on the wharf were going home. Charley Marsh a.s.sisted Miss Henderson into her carriage, and she was driven away to her new home.

Speckport knew everything--the murder was out, and Speckport, from one end to the other, was agape at the news. There was one thing about the affair they could not understand, and that was, how the rightful heiress, knowing herself to be so, and perfectly able to prove it, could wear out her life as a pitiful governess, and leave a princely fortune in the hands of a usurping stepsister. Speckport could not understand this--never could understand it, and set her down as an insipid little nonent.i.ty, with no will of her own, and easily twisted around the finger of that bold, bad, ambitious woman, Mrs. Paul Wyndham. Speckport did not spare its late enchantress, and for all their contempt of that "insipid thing" the present heiress, were very well satisfied to be noticed by her in public, and only too happy to call at Redmon. It was in her favor, they said, that she put on no airs in consequence of her sudden rise in the world, but was as gentle, and humble, and patient, and sweet, as heiress of Redmon as she had been when Mrs. Wheatly's governess. A few there were who understood and appreciated her; and when old Father Lennard laid his hand on her drooping head and fervently exclaimed, "G.o.d bless you, my child!" her eyes filled, and she felt more than repaid for any sacrifice she had ever made. Speckport said--but Speckport was always given to say a good deal more than its prayers--Speckport said Mr. Charles Marsh appreciated her, too, and that the estate of Redmon would eventually go, in spite of Mrs. Leroy's unjust will, to the Marsh family. But it was only gossip, this, and n.o.body knew for certain, and Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose Henderson had always been the best of friends.

And just about this time, too, Speckport found something else to talk about--no less a matter, indeed, than the marriage of Valentine Blake, Esq., to Miss Laura Amelia Blair. Such a snapper of a day as the wedding-day was--cold enough to freeze the leg off an iron pot--but for all that, the big cathedral was half filled with curious Speckportonians, straining their necks to see the bride and bridegroom, and their aiders and abettors. Mr. Blake stood it like a man, and looked almost good-looking in his neatly-fitting wedding suit; and Charley Marsh by his side looked like a young prince--handsomer than any prince that ever wore a crown, poor Cherrie thought, as she made eyes at him from her pew.

There was a wedding-breakfast to be eaten at Mr. Blair's, and a very jolly breakfast it was. And then Mrs. V. Blake exchanged her bridal-gear for a traveling-dress, and was handed into the carriage that was to convey her to the railway station, by her husband; and the bridemaids were kissed all round by the bride, and good-bye was said, and the happy pair were fairly started on their bridal tour.

It took Speckport a week to fairly digest this matter, and by the end of that time it got another delectable morsel of gossip to swallow. Charley Marsh was going away. He was a rich man, now; but for all that he was going to be a doctor, and was off to New York right away, to finish his medical studies and get his diploma.

It was a miserably wet and windy day, that which preceded the young man's departure. A depressing day, that lowered the spirits of the most sanguine, and made them feel life was a cheat, and not what it is cracked up to be, and wonder how they could ever laugh and enjoy themselves at all. A dreary day to say good-bye; but Charley, b.u.t.toned up in his overcoat, and making sunshine with his bright blue eyes and pleasant smile, went through with it bravely, and had bidden his dear five hundred adieu in the course of two brisk hours. There was only one friend remaining to whom he had yet to say "that dear old word good-bye;" and in the rainy twilight he drove up the long avenue of Redmon, black and ghastly now, and was admitted by Mrs. Hill herself.

"Oh, Mr. Charley, is it you?" the good woman said. "You're going away, they tell me. Dear me, we'll miss you so much!"

"That's right, Mrs. Hill! I like my friends to miss me; but I don't mean to stay away forever. Is Miss Henderson at home?"

"She is in the library. Walk right in!"

Charley was quite at home in Redmon Villa. The library door stood ajar.

Some one was playing, and he entered unheard. The rain lashed and bl.u.s.tered at the windows; and the wail of the wind, and sea, and woods made a dull, roaring sound of dreariness without; but a coal-fire glowed red and cheery in the steel grate; and curtained, and close, and warm, the library was a very cozy place that bad January day. The twilight shadows lurked in the corners; but, despite their deepening gloom, the visitor saw a little, slender, girlish shape sitting before a small cottage-piano and softly touching the keys. Old, sad memories seemed to be at work in her heart; for the chords she struck were mournful, and she broke softly into singing at last--a song as sad as a funeral-hymn:

"Rain! rain! rain!

On the cold autumnal night!

Like tears we weep o'er the banished hope That fled with the summer light.

"O rain! rain! rain!

You mourn for the flowers dead; But hearts there are, in their hopeless woe, That not even tears may shed!

"O rain! rain! rain!

You fall on the new-made grave Where the loved one sleeps that our bitter prayers Were powerless to save!

"O fall! fall! fall!

Thou dreary and cheerless rain!

But the voice that sang with your summer-chime Will never be heard again!"