A Changed Heart: A Novel
by May Agnes Fleming · English · Gutenberg #41672 · 938,983 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Changed Heart: A Novel
Author: May Agnes Fleming
Release date: December 20, 2012 [eBook #41672]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHANGED HEART: A NOVEL ***
A CHANGED HEART
A Novel.
BY MAY AGNES FLEMING,
AUTHOR OF "GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE," "A TERRIBLE SECRET," "A WONDERFUL
WOMAN," "ONE NIGHT'S MYSTERY," "SILENT AND TRUE," "A MAD MARRIAGE,"
"LOST FOR A WOMAN," ETC., ETC.
"If Fortune, with a smiling face,
Strew roses on our way,
When shall we stoop to pick them up?
To-day, my love, to-day."
NEW YORK:
Copyright, 1881, by
_G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers_,
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
MDCCCLXXXIII.
Stereotyped by
SAMUEL STODDER,
ELECTROTYPER & STEREOTYPER,
90 ANN STREET, N. Y.
TROW
PRINTING AND BOOK-BINDING CO.
N. Y.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Miss McGregor at home 7
II. Nathalie 14
III. Miss Rose 25
IV. Val's office 36
V. Killing two birds with one stone 46
VI. An evening at Miss Blake's 59
VII. Too many irons in the fire 67
VIII. Val turns mentor 82
IX. Wooed and won 95
X. Fast and loose 112
XI. How Captain Cavendish meant to marry Cherrie. 123
XII. In which the wedding comes off 138
XIII. After the wedding 150
XIV. Mining the ground 157
XV. Springing the mine 167
XVI. A crime 179
XVII. Found guilty 191
XVIII. The darkening sky 207
XIX. The flight 217
XX. "One more unfortunate" 227
XXI. Mrs. Butterby's lodgings 236
XXII. The heiress of Redmon 247
XXIII. The heiress of Redmon enters society 259
XXIV. The spell of the enchantress 275
XXV. The double compact 283
XXVI. Mr. Paul Wyndham 299
XXVII. Mr. Wyndham's wooing 312
XXVIII. Mr. Wyndham's wedding 324
XXIX. Mr. Wyndham's mother 336
XXX. Very mysterious 349
XXXI. Val's discovery 366
XXXII. Cherrie tells the truth 377
XXXIII. Overtaken 391
XXXIV. The Vesper-Hymn 406
XXXV. "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'" 417
XXXVI. Drifting out 425
XXXVII. Dies Iræ, Dies Illa 430
XXXVIII. Out of the crooked ways 450
XXXIX. In Hope 478
A CHANGED HEART.
CHAPTER I.
MISS McGREGOR AT HOME.
It was a foggy night in Speckport. There was nothing uncommon in its
being foggy this close May evening; but it was rather provoking and
ungallant of the clerk of the weather, seeing that Miss McGregor
particularly desired it to be fine. Miss Jeannette (she had been
christened plain Jane, but scorned to answer to anything so
unromantic)--Miss Jeannette McGregor was at home to-night to all the
élite of Speckport; and as a good many of the élite owned no other
conveyance than that which Nature had given them, it was particularly
desirable the weather should be fine. But it wasn't fine; it was nasty
and drizzly, and sultry and foggy; and sky and sea were blotted out; and
the gas-lamps sprinkled through the sloppy streets of Speckport blinked
feebly through the gloom; and people buttoned up to the chin and wrapped
in cloaks flitted by each other like phantoms, in the pale blank of wet
and fog. And half the year round that is the sort of weather they enjoy
in Speckport.
You don't know Speckport! There I have the advantage of you; for I know
its whole history, past, present, and--future, I was going to say,
though I don't set up for a prophet; but the future of Speckport does
not seem hard to foretell. The Union-jack floats over it, the State of
Maine is its next-door neighbor, and fish and fog are its principal
productions. It also had the honor of producing Miss McGregor, who was
born one other foggy night, just two-and-twenty years previous to this
"At Home," to which you and I are going presently, in a dirty little
black street, which she scorns to know even by name now. Two-and-twenty
years ago, Sandy McGregor worked as a day-laborer in a shipyard, at
three and sixpence per day. Now, Mr. Alexander McGregor is a
ship-builder, and has an income of ten thousand gold dollars per year.
Not a millionaire, you know; but very well off, and very comfortable,
and very contented; living in a nice house, nicely furnished, keeping
horses and carriage, and very much looked up to, and very much respected
in Speckport.
Speckport has its Fifth Avenue as well as New York. Not that they call
it Fifth Avenue, you understand; its name is Golden Row, and the abiders
therein are made of the porcelain of human clay. Great people, magnates
and aristocrats to their finger-tips, scorning the pigmies who move in
second and third society and have only the happiness of walking through
Golden Row, never of dwelling there. The houses were not brown-stone
fronts. Oh, no! there were half-a-dozen brick buildings, some pretty,
little Gothic cottages, with green vines, and beehives, and bird-houses,
about them, and all the rest were great painted palaces of wood. Some
had green shutters, and some had not; some were painted white, and some
brown, and some stone-color and drab, and they all had a glittering air
of spickspan-newness about them, as if their owners had them painted
every other week. And in one of these palaces Mr. McGregor lived.
You drove down Golden Row through the fog and drizzle, between the
blinking lamps, and you stop at a stone-colored house with a brown
hall-door, and steps going up to it. The hall is brilliant with gas, so
is the drawing-room, so are the two parlors, so is the dining-room, so
are the dressing rooms; and the élite of Speckport are bustling and
jostling one another about, and making considerable noise, and up in the
gallery the band is in full blast at the "Lancers"--for they know how
to dance the Lancers in Speckport--and the young ladies dipping and
bowing through the intricacies of the dance, wear their dresses just as
low in the neck and as short in the sleeves as any Fifth avenue belle
dare to do.
Very pretty girls they are, floating about in all the colors of the
rainbow. There are no diamonds, perhaps, except glass ones; but there
are gold chains and crosses, and bracelets, and lockets and things; and
some of the young ladies have rings right up to the middle joint of
their fingers. The young gentlemen wear rings, too, and glittering
shirt-studs and bosom-pins, and are good looking and gentlemanly. While
the young folks dance, the old folks play wallflower or cards, or take
snuff or punch, or talk politics. All the juvenile rag-tag and bobtail
of Speckport are outside, gaping up with open-mouthed admiration at the
blazing front of the McGregor mansion, and swallowing the music that
floats through the open windows.
Sailing along Golden Row, with an umbrella up to protect her bonnet from
the fog, comes a tall lady, unprotected and alone, and "There's Miss Jo,
hurrah!" yells a shrill voice; and the tall lady receives her ovation
with a gratified face, and bows as she steps over the McGregor
threshold. Ten minutes later, she enters the drawing-room, divested of
her wrappings; and you see she is elderly and angular, and prim and
precise, and withal good-natured. She is sharp at the joints and
shoulder-blades, and her black silk dress is hooked up behind in the
fashion of twenty years ago. She wears no crinoline, and looks about as
graceful as a lamp-post; but she is fearfully and wonderfully fine, with
a massive gold chain about her neck that would have made a ship's cable
easily, and a cross and a locket clattering from it, and beating time to
her movements on a cameo brooch the size of a dinner-plate. Eardrops, a
finger-length long, dangle from her ears; cameo bracelets adorn her
skinny wrists; and her hair, of which she has nothing to speak of, is
worn in little corkscrew curls about her sallow face.
Miss Joanna Blake is an old maid, and looks like it; she is also an
exile of Erin, and the most inveterate gossip in Speckport.
A tremendous uproar greets her as she enters the drawing-room, and she
stops in considerable consternation.
In a recess near the door was a card-table, round which four elderly
ladies and four elderly gentlemen sat, with a laughing crowd looking on
from behind. The card-party were in a violently agitated and excited
state, all screaming out together at the top of the gamut.
Miss Jo swept on in majestic silence, nodding right and left as she
streamed down the apartment to where Mrs. McGregor stood, with a little
knot of matrons around her--a lady as tall as Miss Jo herself, and ever
so much stouter, her fat face hot and flushed, and wielding a fan
ponderously, as if it were a ton weight. Mrs. McGregor, during forty
years of her life, had been a good deal more familiar with
scrubbing-brushes than fans; but you would not think so now, maybe, if
you saw her in that purple-satin dress and gold watch, her fat hands
flashing with rings, and that bewildering combination of white lace and
ribbons on her head. Her voice was as loud as her style of dress, and
she shook Miss Jo's hand as if it had been a pump-handle.
"And how do you do, Miss Blake, and whatever on earth kept you till this
hour? I was just saying to Jeannette, a while ago, I didn't believe you
were going to come at all."
"I could not help it," said Miss Jo. "Val didn't come home till late,
and then I had to stop and find him his things. You know, my dear, what
a trouble men are, and that Val beats them all. Has everybody come?"
"I think so; everybody but your Val and the Marshes. Maybe my lady is in
one of her tantrums, and won't let Natty come at all. Jeannette is all
but distracted. Natty's got lots of parts in them things they're
having--tablets--no; tableaux, that's the name, and they never can get
on without her. Jeannette's gone to look for Sandy to send him up to
Redmon to see."
"I say, Miss Jo, how do you find yourself this evening?" exclaimed a
spirited voice behind her; and Mrs. McGregor gave a little yelp of
delight as she saw who it was--a young man, not more than twenty,
perhaps, very good-looking, with bright gray eyes, fair hair, and a
sunny smile. He was holding out a hand, small and fair as a lady's, to
Miss Blake, who took it and shook it heartily.
"Jo's very well, thank you, Mr. Charles. How is your mamma this
evening?"
"She was all right when I left home. Is Val here?"
"Not yet. Have you just come?"
The young gentleman nodded, and was turning away, but Mrs. McGregor
recalled him.
"Isn't your mother coming, Charley?"
"No, she can't," said Charley. "The new teacher's come, and she's got to
stay with her. She told me to bring her apologies."
The ladies were all animation directly. The new teacher! What was she
like? When did she come? Was she young? Was she pretty? Did she seem
nice?
"I didn't see her," said Charley, lounging against a sofa and flapping
his gloves about.
"Didn't see her! I thought you said she was in your house?" cried Mrs.
McGregor.
"So she is. I mean I didn't see her face. She had a thick vail on, and
kept it down, and I left two or three minutes after she came."
"She came to Speckport in this evening's boat, then?" said Miss Jo.
"What did she wear?"
Charley was bowing and smiling to a pretty girl passing on her partner's
arm.
Mrs. McGregor nodded, and Charley sauntered off. The two ladies looked
after him.
"What a nice young man that Charley Marsh is!" exclaimed Miss Jo,
admiringly, "and so good-looking, and so steady, and so good to his
mamma. You won't find many like him nowadays."
Mrs. McGregor lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper.
"Do you know, Miss Jo, they say he goes after that Cherrie Nettleby. Did
you hear it?"
"Fiddlestick!" said Miss Jo, politely. "Speckport's got that story out,
has it? I don't believe a word of it!"
"Here's Val!" cried Mrs. McGregor, off on a new tack; "and, my patience!
what a swell he's got with him!"
Miss Jo looked round. Coming down the long room together were two young
men, whose appearance created a visible sensation--one of them,
preposterously tall and thin, with uncommonly long legs and arms--a
veritable Shanghai--was Mr. Valentine Blake, Miss Jo's brother and sole
earthly relative. He looked seven-and-twenty, was carelessly dressed,
his clothes hanging about him any way--not handsome, but with a droll
look of good humor about his face, and a roguish twinkle in his eyes
that would have redeemed a plainer countenance.
His companion was a stranger, and it was he who created the sensation,
not easy Val. Mrs. McGregor had called him a "swell," but Mrs. McGregor
was not a very refined judge. He was dressed well, but not overdressed,
as the slang term would imply, and he looked a thorough gentleman. A
very handsome one, too, with dark curling hair, dark, bright, handsome
eyes, a jetty mustache on his lip, and a flashing diamond ring on his
finger. There was a certain air militaire about him that bespoke his
profession, though he wore civilian's clothes, and he and Val looked
about the same age. No wonder the apparition of so distinguished-looking
a stranger in Mrs. McGregor's drawing-room should create a buzzing among
the Speckport bon ton.
"My goodness!" cried Mrs. McGregor, all in a flutter. "Whoever can he
be? He looks like a soldier, don't he?"
"There came a regiment from Halifax this morning," said Miss Jo. "Here's
Val bringing him up."
Mr. Val was presenting him even while she spoke. "Captain Cavendish,
Mrs. McGregor, of the --th," and then the captain was bowing profoundly;
and the lady of the mansion was returning it, in a violent trepidation
and tremor, not knowing in the least what she was expected to say to so
distinguished a visitor. But relief was at hand. Charley Marsh was
beside them with a young lady on his arm--a young lady best described by
that odious word "genteel." She was not pretty; she was sandy-haired
and freckled, but she was the daughter of the house, and, as such,
demanding attention. Val introduced the captain directly, and Mrs.
McGregor breathed freely again.
"Look here, Val!" she whispered, catching him by the button, "who is he,
anyway?"
Val lowered his voice and looked round him cautiously.
"Did you ever hear of the Marquis of Carrabas, Mrs. McGregor?"
"No--yes--I don't remember. Is he an English nobleman?"
"A very great nobleman, Ma'am; famous in history as connected with the
cat-trade, and Captain Cavendish is next heir to the title. Mrs. Marsh
can tell you all about the Marquis; can't she, Charley?"
Charley, who was ready to burst into a fit of laughter at
Mrs. McGregor's open-mouthed awe, took hold of the arm of a
feeble-minded-looking young gentleman, whose freckled features, sandy
hair, and general resemblance to the family, proclaimed him to be Mr.
Alexander McGregor, Junior, and walked him off.
"And he came from Halifax this evening, Val?" Mrs. McGregor asked,
gazing at the young Englishman in the same state of awe and delight.
"Yes," said Val, "it was there I got acquainted with him first. I met
him on my way here, and thought you would not be offended at the liberty
I took in fetching him along."
"Offended! My dear Val, you couldn't have pleased me better if you had
been trying for a week. A Markis and a Captain in the Army! Why, it's
the greatest honor, and I'm ever so much obliged to you. I am, indeed!"
"All right," said Val. "Speckport will be envious enough, I dare say,
for it's not every place he'll go to, and all will want him. You'll lose
Jane if you're not careful, though--see how he's talking to her."
Mrs. McGregor's eyes were dancing in her head. A dazzling vision rose
before her--her daughter a Marchioness, living in a castle, dressed in
satin and diamonds the year round! She could have hugged Val in her
rapture; and Val reading some such idea in her beaming face, backed a
little, in some alarm.
"I say, though, wasn't there to be tableaux or something?" he inquired.
"When are they coming off?"
"As soon as Natty Marsh gets here; they can't get on without her."
"What keeps her?" asked Val.
"The new teacher's come to Mrs. Marsh's, Charley says, and Natty is
stopping in to see her. There's the captain asking Jeannette to dance."
So he was; and Miss Jeannette, with a gratified simper, was just laying
her kidded fingers inside his coat-sleeve, when her brother came
breathlessly up.
"Look here, Janie! you'd better not go off dancing," was his cry, "if
you mean to have those tableaux to-night. Natty's come!"
CHAPTER II.
NATHALIE.
Mrs. McGregor's drawing-room was empty. Everybody had flocked into the
front parlor and arranged themselves on seats there to witness the
performance; that is to say, everybody who had no part in the
proceedings. Most of the young people of both sexes were behind the
solemn green curtain, with its row of footlights, that separated the two
rooms, dressing for their parts. The old people were as much interested
in the proceedings as the young people, for their sons and daughters
were the actors and actresses.
Captain Cavendish and Mr. Val Blake occupied a front seat. Val had a
part assigned him; but it did not come on for some time, so he was
playing spectator now.
"I saw you making up to little Jane, Cavendish," Val was saying, sotto
voce, for Miss Janie's mamma sat near. "Was it a case of love at first
sight?"
"Miss McGregor is not very pretty," said Captain Cavendish, moderately.
"Who was that young lady with the red cheeks and bright eyes I saw you
speaking to, just before we came here?"
"Red cheeks and bright eyes!" repeated Val, putting on his
considering-cap, "that description applies to half the girls in
Speckport. What had she on?"
Captain Cavendish laughed.
"Would any one in the world but Val Blake ask such a question? She had
on a pink dress, and had pink and white flowers in her hair, and looked
saucy."
"Oh, I know now!" Val cried, with a flash of recollection; "that was
Laura Blair, one of the nicest little girls that ever sported crinoline!
Such a girl to laugh, you know!"
"She looks it! Ah! up you go!"
This apostrophe was addressed to the curtain, which was rising as he
spoke. There was a general flutter, and settling in seats to look; the
orchestra pealed forth and the first tableau was revealed.
It was very pretty, but very common--"Rebecca and Rowena." Miss Laura
Blair was Rowena, and a tall brunette, Rebecca. The audience
applauded, as in duty bound, and the curtain fell. The second was
"Patience"--"Patience on a monument smiling at Grief." On a high
pedestal stood Miss Laura Blair, again, draped in a white sheet, like a
ghost, her hair all loose about her, and an azure girdle all over
spangles clasping her waist.
At the foot of the pedestal crouched Grief, in a strange, distorted
attitude of pain. The face of the performer was hidden in her hands; her
black garments falling heavily around her, her hair unbound, too, her
whole manner expressing despair, as fully as attitude could express it.
The music seemed changing to a wail; the effect of the whole was
perfect.
"What do you think of that?" said Val.
"Very good," said Captain Cavendish. "It goes considerably ahead of
anything I had expected. Patience is very nice-looking girl."
"And isn't she jolly? She's dying to shout out this minute! I should
think the glare of these footlights would force her eyelids open."
"Who is Grief?"
"Miss Catty Clowrie--isn't there music in that name? She makes a very
good Grief--looks as if she had supped sorrow in spoonfuls."
"Is she pretty? She won't let us see her face."
"Beauty's a matter of taste," said Val, "perhaps you'll think her
pretty. If you do, you will be the only one who ever thought the like.
She is a nice little girl though, is Catty--the double-distilled essence
of good-nature. Down goes the curtain!"
It rose next on a totally different scene, and to music solemn and sad.
The stage was darkened, and made as much as possible to resemble a
convent-cell. The walls were hung with religious pictures and statues, a
coverless deal table held a crucifix, an open missal, and a candle which
flared and guttered in the draft. On a prie-dieu before the table a
figure knelt--a nun, eyes uplifted, the young face, quite colorless,
raised, the hands holding her rosary, clasped in prayer. It was
Evangeline--beautiful, broken-hearted Evangeline--the white face, the
great dark lustrous eyes full of unspeakable woe. Fainter, sweeter and
sadder the music wailed out; dimmer and dimmer paled the lights; all
hushed their breathing to watch. The kneeling figure never moved, the
face looked deadly pale by the flickering candle-gleam, and slowly the
curtain began to descend. It was down; the tableau was over; the music
closed, but for a second or two not a sound was to be heard. Then a
tumult of applause broke out rapturously, and "Encore, encore!" twenty
voices cried, in an ecstasy.
Captain Cavendish turned to Val with an enthusiastic face.
"By George, Blake! what a beautiful girl! Evangeline herself never was
half so lovely. Who is she?"
"That's Natty," said Val, with composure. "Charley Marsh's sister."
"I never saw a lovelier face in all my life! Blake, you must give me an
introduction as soon as these tableaux are over."
"All right! But you needn't fall in love with her--it's of no use."
"Why isn't it?"
"Because the cantankerous old toad who owns her will never let her get
married."
"Do you mean her mother?"
"No, I don't, she doesn't live with her mother. And, besides, she has no
room in her heart for any one but Charley. She idolizes him!"
"Happy fellow! That Evangeline was perfect. I never saw anything more
exquisite."
"I don't believe Longfellow's Evangeline was half as good-looking as
Natty," said Val. "Oh! there she is again!"
Val stopped talking. The curtain had arisen on an old scene--"Rebecca at
the well." Evangeline had transformed herself into a Jewish maiden in an
incredibly short space of time, and stood with her pitcher on her
shoulder, looking down on Eleazer at her feet. Sandy McGregor was
Eleazer, and a sorry Jew he made, but nobody except his mother looked at
him. Like a young queen Rebecca stood, her eyes fixed on the bracelets
and rings, her hair falling in a shower of golden bronze ripples over
her bare white shoulders. One would have expected black hair with those
luminous dark eyes, but no ebon tresses could have been half so
magnificent as that waving mass of darkened gold.
"Nice hair, isn't it?" whispered Val. "Natty's proud of her hair and her
voice beyond anything. You ought to hear her sing!"
"She sings well?" Captain Cavendish asked, his eyes fixed as if
fascinated on the beautiful face.
"Like another Jenny Lind! She leads the choir up there in the cathedral,
and plays the organ besides."
Captain Cavendish had a pretty pink half-blown rose in his button-hole.
He took it out and flung it at her feet as the curtain was going down.
He had time to see her bright dark eye turn upon it, then with a little
pleased smile over the spectators in quest of the donor, and then that
envious green curtain hid all again.
"Very neat and appropriate," criticised Val. "You're not going to wait
for the introduction to begin your love-passage, I see, Captain
Cavendish."
The captain laughed.
"Nothing like taking time by the forelock, my dear fellow. I will never
be able to thank you sufficiently for bringing me here to-night!"
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Val, opening his eyes, "you never mean to
say you're in love already, do you?"
"It's something very like it, then. Where are you going?"
"Behind the scenes. The next is 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' and they want
me for the beanstalk," said Val, complacently, as his long legs strode
over the carpet on his way to the back parlor.
There were ever so many tableaux after that--Captain Cavendish,
impatient and fidgety, wondered if they would ever end. Perhaps you
don't believe in love at first sight, dear reader mine; perhaps I don't
myself; but Captain Cavendish, of Her Most Gracious Majesty's --th
Regiment of Artillery did, and had fallen in love at first sight at
least a dozen times within quarter that number of years.
Captain Cavendish had to exercise the virtue of patience for another
half-hour, and then the end came.
In flocked the performers, in laughing commotion, to find themselves
surrounded by the rest, and showered with congratulations. Captain
Cavendish stood apart, leaning against a fauteuil, stroking his mustache
thoughtfully, and looking on. Looking on one face and form only of all
the dozens before him; a form tall, taller than the average height,
slender, graceful, and girlish as became its owner's eighteen years;
and a face inexpressibly lovely in the garish gaslight. There was
nobility as well as beauty in that classic profile, that broad brow;
fire in those laughing blue eyes, so dark that you nearly mistook them
for black; resolution in those molded lips, the sweetest that ever were
kissed. The hair alone of Nathalie Marsh would have made a plain face
pretty; it hung loose over her shoulders as it had done on the stage,
reaching to her waist, a cloud of spun gold, half waves, half curls,
half yellow ripples.
Few could have worn this hair like that, but it was eminently becoming
to Nathalie, whom everything became. Her dress was of rose color, of a
tint just deeper than the rose color in her cheeks, thin and flouting,
and she was entirely without ornament. A half-blown rose was fastened in
the snowy lace of her corsage, a rose that had decked the buttonhole of
Captain Cavendish half an hour before.
Val espied him at last and came over. "Are you making a tableau of
yourself," he asked, "for a certain pair of bright eyes to admire? I saw
them wandering curiously this way two or three times since we came in."
"Whose were they?"
"Miss Nathalie Marsh's. Come and be introduced."
"But she is surrounded."
"Never mind, they'll make way for you. Stand out of the way, Sandy. Lo!
the conquering hero comes! Miss Marsh, let me present Captain Cavendish,
of the --th; Miss Marsh, Captain Cavendish."
The music at that instant struck up a delicious waltz. Mr. Val Blake,
without ceremony, laid hold of the nearest young lady he could grab.
"Come, Catty! let's take a twist or two. That's it, Cavendish! follow in
our wake!"
For Captain Cavendish, having asked Miss Marsh to waltz, was leading her
off, and received the encouraging nod of Val with an amused smile.
"What a character he is!" he said, looking after Val, spinning around
with considerable more energy than grace; "the most unceremonious and
best-natured fellow in existence."
The young lady laughed.
"Oh, everybody likes Val! Have you known him long?"
"About a year. I have seen him in Halifax frequently, and we are the
greatest friends, I assure you. Damon and Pythias were nothing to us!"
"It is something new for Mr. Blake to be so enthusiastic, then. Pythias
is a new rôle for him. I hope he played it better than he did Robert
Bruce in that horrid tableau awhile ago."
They both laughed at the recollection. Natty scented her rose.
"Some one threw me this. Gallant, wasn't it? I love roses."
"Sweets to the sweet! I am only sorry I had not something more worthy
'Evangeline,' than that poor little flower."
"Then it was you. I thought so! Thank you for the rose and the
compliment. One is as pretty as the other."
She laughed saucily, her bright eyes flashing a dangerous glance at him.
Next instant they were floating round, and round, and round; and Captain
Cavendish began to think the world must be a great rose garden, and
Speckport Eden, since in it he had found his Eve. Not quite his yet,
though, for the moment the waltz concluded, a dashing and dangerously
good-looking young fellow stepped coolly up and bore her off.
Val having given his partner a finishing whirl into a seat, left her
there, and came up, wiping his face.
"By jingo, 'tis hard work, and Catty Clowrie goes the pace with a
vengeance. How do you like Natty?"
"'Like' is not the word. Who is that gentleman she is walking with?"
"That--where are they? Oh, I see--that is Captain Locksley, of the
merchant-service. The army and navy forever, eh! Where are you going?"
"Out of this hot room a moment. I'll be back directly."
Mrs. McGregor came up and asked Val to join a whist-party she was
getting up. "And be my partner, Val," she enjoined, as she led him off,
"because you're the best cheat I know of."
Val was soon completely absorbed in the fascinations of whist, at a
penny a game, but the announcement of supper soon broke up both
card-playing and dancing; and as he rose from the table he caught sight
of Captain Cavendish just entering. His long legs crossed the room in
three strides.
"You've got back, have you? What have you been about all this time?"
"I was smoking a cigar out there on the steps, and getting a little
fresh air--no, fog, for I'll take my oath it's thick enough to be cut
with a knife. When I was in London, I thought I knew something of fog,
but Speckport beats it all to nothing."
"Yes," said Val, gravely, "it's one of the institutions of the country,
and we're proud of it. Did you see Charley Marsh anywhere in your
travels. I heard Natty just now asking for him."
"Oh, yes, I've seen him," said Captain Cavendish, significantly.
There was that in his tone which made Val look at him. "Where was he and
what was he doing?" he inquired.
"Making love, to your first question; sitting in a recess of the tall
window, to your second. He did not see me, but I saw him."
"Who was he with?"
"Something very pretty--prettier than anything in this room, excepting
Miss Natty. Black eyes, black curls, rosy cheeks, and the dearest little
waist! Who is she?"
Val gave a long, low whistle.
"Do you know her?" persisted Captain Cavendish.
"Oh, don't I though? Was she little, and was she laughing?"
"Yes, to both questions. Now, who is she?"
Val's answer was a shower of mysterious nods.
"I heard the story before, but I didn't think the boy was such a fool.
Speckport is such a place for gossip, you know; but it seems the gossips
were right for once. What will Natty say, I wonder?"
"Will you tell me who she is?" cried Captain Cavendish, impatiently.
"Come to supper," was Val's answer; "I'm too hungry to talk now. I'll
tell you about it by-and-by."
Charley was before them at the table, helping all the young ladies right
and left, and keeping up a running fire of jokes, old and new, stale and
original, and setting the table in a roar. Everybody was talking and
laughing at the top of their lungs; glass and china, and knives and
forks, rattled and jingled until the uproar became deafening, and people
shouted with laughter, without in the least knowing what they were
laughing at. The mustached lip of Captain Cavendish curled with a little
contemptuous smile at the whole thing, and Miss Jeannette McGregor, who
had managed to get him beside her, saw it, and felt fit to die with
mortification.
"What a dreadful noise they do keep up. It makes my head ache to listen
to them!" she said, resentfully.
Captain Cavendish, who had been listening to her tattle-tittle for the
last half-hour, answering yes and no at random, started into
consciousness that she was talking again.
"I beg your pardon, Miss McGregor. What was it you said? I am afraid I
was not attending."
"I am afraid you were not," said Miss McGregor, forcing a laugh, while
biting her lips. "They are going back to the drawing-room--_Dieu merci!_
It is like Babel being here."
"Let us wait," said Captain Cavendish, eying the crowd, and beginning to
be gallant. "I am not going to have you jostled to death. One would
think it was for life or death they were pushing."
It was fully ten minutes before the coast was clear, and then the
captain drew Miss Jeannette's arm within his, and led her to the
drawing-room. Mrs. McGregor, sitting there among her satellites, saw
them, and the maternal bosom glowed with pride. It was the future
Marquis and Marchioness of Carrabas!
Some one was singing. A splendid soprano voice was ringing through the
room, singing, "Hear me, Norma." It finished as they drew near, and the
singer, Miss Natty Marsh, glancing over her shoulder, flashed one of her
bright bewitching glances at them.
She rose up from the piano, flirting out her gauze skirts, and laughing
at the shower of entreaties to sing again.
"I am going to see some engravings Alick has promised to show me," she
said; "so spare your eloquence, Mesdames et Messieurs. I am inexorable."
"I think I will go over and have a look at the engravings, too," said
Captain Cavendish.
She was sitting at a little stand, all her bright hair loose around her,
and shading the pictures. Young McGregor was bending devoutly near her,
but not talking, only too happy to be just there, and talking was not
the young gentleman's forte.
"Captain Cavendish," said the clear voice, as, without turning round,
she held the engraving over her shoulder, "look at this--is it not
pretty?"
How had she seen him? Had she eyes in the back of her head? He took the
engraving, wondering inwardly, and sat down beside her.
It was a strange picture she had given him. A black and wrathful sky, a
black and heaving sea, and a long strip of black and desolate coast. A
full moon flickered ghastly through the scudding clouds, and wan in its
light you saw a girl standing on a high rock, straining her eyes out to
sea. Her hair and dress fluttered in the wind; her face was wild,
spectral, and agonized. Captain Cavendish gazed on it as if fascinated.
"What a story it tells!" Nathalie cried. "It makes one think of Charles
Kingsley's weird song of the 'Three Fishers.' Well, Charley, what is
it?"
"It is the carryall from Redmon come for you," said Charley, who had
sauntered up. "If you are done looking at the pictures you had better go
home."
Natty pushed the portfolio away pettishly, and rose, half-poutingly.
"What a nuisance, to go so soon!"
Then, catching Captain Cavendish's eye, she laughed good-naturedly.
"What can't be cured--you know the proverb, Captain Cavendish. Charley,
wait for me in the hall, I will be there directly."
She crossed the room with the airy elegance peculiar to her light
swinging tread, made her adieux quietly to the hostess, and sought her
wrappings and the dressing-room.
As she ran down into the hall in a large shawl, gracefully worn, and a
white cloud round her pretty face, she found Captain Cavendish waiting
with Charley. It was he who offered her his arm, and Charley ran down
the steps before them. Through the wet fog they saw an old-fashioned
two-seated buggy waiting, and the driver looking impatiently down.
"I wish you would drive up with me, Charley," said Natty, settling
herself in her seat.
"Can't," said Charley. "I am going to see somebody else's sister home.
I'll take a run up to-morrow evening."
"Miss Marsh," Captain Cavendish lazily began, "if you will permit me
to----" but Natty cut him short with a gay laugh.
"And make all the young ladies in there miserable for the rest of the
evening! No, thank you! I am not quite so heartless. Good night!"
She leaned forward to say it, the next moment she was lost in the fog.
He caught one glimpse of a white hand waved, of the half-saucy,
half-wicked, wholly-bewitching smile, of the dancing blue eyes and
golden hair, and then there was nothing but a pale blank of mist and
wet, and Charley was speaking:
"Hang the fog! it goes through one like a knife! Come along in, captain,
they are going to dance."
Captain Cavendish went in, but not to dance. He had come from curiosity
to see what the Speckportonians were like, not intending to remain over
an hour or so. Now that Natty was gone, there was no inducement to stay.
He sought out Mrs. McGregor, to say good-night.
"What's your hurry?" said Val, following him out.
"It is growing late, and I am ashamed to say I am sleepy. Will you be in
the office to-morrow morning?"
"From eight till two," said Val.
"Then I'll drop in. Good night!"
The cathedral clock struck three as he came out into the drizzly
morning, and all the other clocks in the town took it up. The streets
were empty, as he walked rapidly to his lodgings, with buttoned-up
overcoat, and hat drawn over his eyes. But a "dancing shape, an image
gay" were with him, flashing on him through the fog; hunting him all the
way home, through the smur and mist of the dismal day-dawn.
CHAPTER III.
MISS ROSE.
Eight was striking by every clock in the town, as down Queen Street--the
Broadway of Speckport--a tall female streamed, with a step that rang and
resounded on the wooden pavement. The tall female, nodding to her
acquaintances right and left, and holding up her bombazine skirts out of
the slop, was Miss Jo Blake, as bright as a new penny, though she had
not had a wink of sleep the night before. Early as the hour was, Miss Jo
was going to make a morning call, and strode on through the fog with her
head up, and a nod for nearly every one she passed.
Down Queen Street Miss Jo turned to the left, and kept straight on,
facing the bay, all blurred and misty, so that you could hardly tell
where the fog ended and the sun began. The business part of the town,
with its noise and rattle and bustle, was left half a mile behind, and
Miss Jo turned into a pretty and quiet street, right down on the
sea-shore. It was called Cottage Street, very appropriately, too; for
all the houses in it were cozy little cottages, a story and a half high,
all as much alike as if turned out of a mold. They were all painted
white, had a red door in the center, and two windows on either side of
the door, decorated with green shutters. They had little grass-plots and
flower-beds in front, with white palings, and white gate, and a little
graveled path, and behind they had vegetable-yards sloping right down to
the very water. If you leaned over the fences at the lower end of these
gardens, on a stormy day, and at high tide, you could feel the salt
spray dashing up in your face, from the waves below. At low water, there
was a long, smooth, sandy beach, delightful to walk over on hot summer
days.
Before one of the cottages Miss Jo drew rein, and rapped. While waiting
for the door to open, the flutter of a skirt in the back garden caught
her eye; and, peering round the corner of the house, she had a full view
of it and its wearer.
And Miss Jo set herself to contemplate the view with keenest interest.
To see the wearer of that fluttering skirt it was that had brought Miss
Jo all the way from her own home so early in the morning, though she had
never set eyes on her before.
Uncommonly friendly, perhaps you are thinking. Not at all: Miss Jo was a
woman, consequently curious; and curiosity, not kindness, had brought
her out.
The sight was very well worth looking at. You might have gazed for a
week, steadily, and not grown tired of the prospect. A figure, slender
and small, wearing a black dress, white linen cuffs at the wrists, a
white linen collar, fastened with a knot of crape, a profusion of pretty
brown hair, worn in braids, and low in the neck, hands like a child's,
small and white. She was leaning against a tree, a gnarled old rowan
tree, with her face turned sea-ward, watching the fishing-boats gliding
in and out through the fog; but presently, at some noise in the street,
she glanced around, and Miss Jo saw her face. A small, pale face, very
pale, with pretty features, and lit with large, soft eyes. A face that
was a history, could Miss Jo have read it; pale and patient, gentle and
sweet, and in the brown eye a look of settled melancholy. This young
lady in black had been learning the great lesson of life, that most of
us poor mortals must learn, sooner or later, endurance--the lesson One
too sublime to name came on earth to teach.
Miss Jo dodged back, the door swung open, and a fat girl, bursting out
of her hooks and eyes, and with a head like a tow mop, opened the door.
Miss Jo strode in without ceremony.
"Good morning, Betsy Ann! Is Mrs. Marsh at home this morning?"
"Yes, Miss Jo," said Betsy Ann, opening a door to the left, for there
was a door on either hand; that to the right, leading to the
drawing-room of the cottage, and a staircase at the end leading to the
sleeping-room above; the door to the left admitted you to the
sitting-room and dining-room, for it was both in one--a pleasant little
room enough, with a red and green ingrain carpet, cane-seated chairs,
red moreen window-curtains on the two windows, one looking on the bay,
the other on the street. There was a little upright piano in one corner,
a lounge in another; pictures on the papered walls; a Dutch clock and
some china cats and dogs and shepherdesses on the mantel-piece; a
coal-fire in the Franklin, and a table laid for breakfast.
The room had but one occupant, a faded and feeble-looking woman, who sat
in a low rocking-chair, her feet crossed on the fender, a shawl around
her, and a book in her hand. She looked up in her surprise at her early
visitor.
"Law! Miss Blake, is it you? Who'd have thought it? Betsy Ann, give Miss
Blake a chair."
"It's quite a piece from our house here, and I feel kind of tired," said
Miss Jo, seating herself. "Your fire feels comfortable, Mrs. Marsh;
these foggy days are chilly. Ain't you had breakfast yet?"
"It's all Charley's fault; he hasn't come down stairs yet. How did you
enjoy yourself at the party last night?"
"First-rate. Never went home till six this morning, and then I had to
turn to and make Val his breakfast. Charley left early."
"Early!" retorted Mrs. Marsh; "I don't know what you call early. It was
after six when he came here, Betsy Ann says."
"Well, that's odd," said Miss Jo. "He left McGregor's about half past
three, anyway. Did you hear they had an officer there last night?"
"An officer! No. Who is it?"
"His name is Captain Cavendish, and a beautiful man he is, with a
diamond ring on his finger, my dear, and the look of a real gentleman.
His folks are very great in England. His brother's the Marquis of
Cabbage--Carraways--no, I forget it; but Val knows all about him."
"Law!" exclaimed Mrs. Marsh, opening her light-blue eyes, "a Marquis!
Who brought him?"
"Val did. Val knows every one, I believe, and got acquainted with him in
Halifax. You never saw any one so proud as Mr. McGregor. I didn't say
anything, my dear; but I thought of the time when lords and marquises,
and dukes and captains without end, used to be entertained at Castle
Blake," said Miss Jo, sighing.
"And what does he look like? Is he handsome?" asked Mrs. Marsh, with
interest; for Castle Blake and its melancholy reminiscences were an old
story to her.
"Uncommon," said Miss Jo; "and I believe Mrs. McGregor thinks her Jane
will get him. You never saw any one so tickled in your life. Why weren't
you up?--I expected you."
"I couldn't go. Miss Rose came just as I was getting ready, and of
course I had to stay with her."
"Oh, the new teacher! I saw a young woman in black standing in the
background as I came in; was that her?" said Miss Jo, who did not always
choose to be confined to the rules of severe grammar.
"Yes," said Mrs. Marsh; "and what do you think, Miss Blake, if she
wasn't up this morning before six o'clock? Betsy Ann always rises at
six, and when she was rolling up the blind Miss Rose came down-stairs
already dressed, and has been out in the garden ever since. Betsy Ann
says she was weeding the flowers most of the time."
"She's a little thing, isn't she?" said Miss Jo; "and so
delicate-looking! I don't believe she'll ever be able to manage them big
rough girls in the school. What's her other name besides Miss Rose?"
"I don't know. She looks as if she had seen trouble," said Mrs. Marsh,
pensively.
"Who is she in mourning for?"
"I don't know. I didn't like to ask, and she doesn't talk much herself."
"Where did she come from? Montreal, wasn't it?"
"I forget. Natty knows. Natty was here last night before she went up to
McGregor's. She said she would come back this morning, and go with Miss
Rose to the school. Here's Charley at last." Miss Jo faced round, and
confronted that young gentleman sauntering in.
"Well, Sleeping Beauty, you've got up now, have you?" was her salute.
"How do you feel after all you danced last night?"
"Never better. You're out betimes this morning, Miss Jo."
"Yes," said Miss Jo; "the sun don't catch me simmering in bed like it
does some folks. Did it take you from half-past three till six to get
home this morning, Mr. Charles?"
"Who says it was six?" said Charley.
"Betsy Ann does," replied his mother. "Where were you all the time?"
"Betsy Ann's eyes were a couple of hours too fast. I say, mother, is the
breakfast ready? It's nearly time I was off."
"It's been ready this half-hour. Betsy Ann!"
That maiden appeared.
"Go and ask Miss Rose to please come in to breakfast, and then fetch the
coffee."
Betsy Ann fled off, and Charley glanced out of the window.
"Miss Rose is taking a constitutional, is she? What is she like,
mother--pretty? I didn't see her last night, you know."
"What odds is it to you?" demanded Miss Jo; "she's not as pretty as
Cherrie Nettleby, anyhow."
Charley turned scarlet, and Miss Jo's eyes twinkled at the success of
her random shaft. The door opened at that instant, and the small,
slender black figure glided in. Glided was the word for that swift,
light motion, so noiseless and fleet.
"Good morning," said Mrs. Marsh, rising smiling to shake hands; "you are
an early bird, I find. Miss Blake, Miss Rose--Miss Rose, my son
Charles."
My son Charles and Miss Blake both shook hands with the new teacher, and
welcomed her to Speckport. A faint smile, a shy fluttering color coming
and going in her delicate cheeks, and a few low-murmured words, and then
Miss Rose sat down on the chair Charley had placed for her, her pretty
eyes fixed on the coals, her small childlike hands fluttering still one
over the other. Betsy Ann came in with the coffee-pot and rolls and
eggs, and Mrs. Marsh invited Miss Jo to sit over and have some
breakfast.
"I don't care if I do," said Miss Jo, untying her bonnet promptly. "I
didn't feel like taking anything when Val had his this morning, and your
coffee smells good. Are you fond of coffee, Miss Rose?"
Miss Rose smiled a little as they all took their places.
"Yes, I like it very well."
"Some folks like tea best," said Miss Jo, pensively, stirring in a third
teaspoonful of sugar in her cup, "but I don't. What sort of a journey
had you, Miss Rose?"
"Very pleasant, indeed."
"You arrived yesterday?"
Miss Rose assented.
"Was it from Halifax you came?"
"No, ma'am; from Montreal."
"Oh, from Montreal! You were born in Montreal, I suppose?"
"No, I was born in New York."
"Law!" cried Mrs. Marsh, "then, you're a Yankee, Miss Rose?"
"Do your folks live in Montreal, Miss Rose?" recommenced the persevering
Miss Jo.
The faint, rosy light flickered and faded again in the face of Miss
Rose.
"I have no relatives," she said, without lifting her eyes.
"None at all! Father, nor mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, nor
nothing."
"I have none at all."
"Dear me, that's a pity! Who are you in black for?"
There was a pause--then Miss Rose answered, still without looking up:
"For my father."
"Oh, for your father! Has he been long dead? Another cup, if you please.
Betsy Ann knows how to make nice coffee."
"He has been dead ten months," said Miss Rose, a flash of intolerable
pain dyeing her pale cheeks at this questioning.
"How do you think you'll like Speckport?" went on the dauntless Miss Jo.
"It's not equal to Montreal or New York, they tell me, but the Bluenoses
think there's no place like it. Poor things! if they once saw Dublin,
it's little they'd think of such a place as this is."
"Halte là!" cried Charley; "please to remember, Miss Jo, I am a native,
to the manner born, an out-and-out Bluenose, and will stand no nonsense
about Speckport! There's no place like it. See Speckport and die!
Mother, I'll trouble you for some of that toast."
"Won't you have some, Miss Rose?" said Mrs. Marsh. "You ain't eating
anything."
"Not any more, thank you. I like Speckport very much, Miss Blake; all I
have seen of it."
"That's right, Miss Rose!" exclaimed Charley; "say you like fog and all.
Are you going to commence teaching to-day?"
"I should prefer commencing at once. Miss Marsh said she was coming this
morning, did she not?" Miss Rose asked, lifting her shy brown eyes to
Mrs. Marsh.
"Yes, dear. Charley, what time did Natty go home last night?"
"She didn't go home last night; it was half-past two this morning."
"Did she walk?"
"No; the old lady sent that wheelbarrow of hers after her."
"Wheelbarrow!" cried his mother, aghast. "Why, Charley, what do you
mean?"
"It's the same thing," said Charley. "I'd as soon go in a wheelbarrow as
that carryall. Such a shabby old rattle-trap! It's like nothing but the
old dame herself."
"Charley, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Did you go with her?"
"Not I! I was better engaged. Another gentleman offered his services,
but she declined."
"Who was it? Captain Locksley?"
"No, another captain--Captain Cavendish."
"Did he want to go home with Natty?" asked Miss Jo, with interest. "I
thought he was more attentive to her than to Jane McGregor! Why wouldn't
she have him?"
"She would look fine having him--an utter stranger! If it had been
Locksley, it would have been different. See here, Miss Rose," Charley
cried, springing up in alarm, "what is the matter?"
"She is going to faint!" exclaimed Miss Jo, in consternation. "Charley,
run for a glass of water."
Miss Rose had fallen suddenly back in her seat, her face growing so
dreadfully white that they might well be startled. It was nothing for
Miss Rose to look pale, only this was like the pallor of death. Charley
made a rush for the water, and was back in a twinkling, holding it to
her lips. She drank a portion, pushed it away, and sat up, trying to
smile.
"I am afraid I have startled you," she said, as if necessary to
apologize, "but I am not very strong, and----"
Her voice, faltering throughout, died entirely away; and, leaning her
elbows on the table, she bowed her forehead on her hands. Miss Jo looked
at her with compressed lips and prophetic eye.
"You'll never stand that school, Miss Rose, and I thought so from the
first. Them girls would try a constitution of iron, let alone yours."
Miss Rose lifted her white face, and arose from the table.
"It is nothing," she said, faintly. "I do not often get weak, like this.
Thank you!"
She had gone to the window, as if for air, and Charley had sprung
forward and opened it.
"Does the air revive you, or shall I fetch you some more water?"
inquired Charley, with a face full of concern.
"Oh, no! indeed, it is nothing. I am quite well now."
"You don't look like it," said Miss Jo; "you are as white as a sheet
yet. Don't you go near that school to-day, mind."
Miss Rose essayed a smile.
"The school will do me no harm, Miss Blake--thank you for your kindness
all the same."
Miss Jo shook her head.
"You ain't fit for it, and that you'll find. Are you off, Charley?"
"Very hard, isn't it, Miss Jo?" said Charley, drawing on his gloves.
"But I must tear myself away. Old Pestle and Mortar will be fit to
bastinado me for staying till this time of day."
"Look here, then," said Miss Jo, "have you any engagement particular for
this evening?"
"Particular? no, not very. I promised Natty to spend the evening up at
Redmon, that's all."
"Oh, that's nothing, then. I want you and your mother, and Miss Rose, to
come over to our house this evening, and take a cup of tea. I'll get
Natty to come, too."
"All right," said Charley, boyishly, taking his wide-awake. "I'll take
two or three cups if you like. Good morning, all. Miss Rose, don't you
go and use yourself up in that hot school-room to-day."
Off went Charley, whistling "Cheer, boys, cheer!" and his hands rammed
down in his coat-pockets; and Miss Jo got up and took her bonnet.
"You'll be sure to come, Mrs. Marsh, you and Miss Rose, and come nice
and early, so as we can have a chat."
"Certainly," said Mrs. Marsh, "if Miss Rose has no objection."
Miss Rose hesitated a little, and glanced at her mourning dress, and
from it to Miss Jo, with her soft, wistful eyes.
"I have not gone out at all since--since----"
"Yes, dear, I know," said Miss Jo, kindly, interrupting. "But it isn't a
party or anything, only just two or three friends to spend a few hours.
Now, don't make any objection. I shall expect you both, without fail, so
good-bye."
With one of her familiar nods, Miss Jo strode out, and nearly ran
against a young lady, who was opening the gate.
"Is it you, Miss Jo? You nearly knocked me down! You must have been up
with the birds this morning, to get here so soon."
The speaker was a young lady who had been at Mrs. McGregor's the
previous night; a small, wiry damsel, with sallow face, thin lips, dull,
yellow, lusterless hair, and light, faded-looking eyes. She was not
pretty, but she looked pleasant--that is, if incessant smiles can make a
face pleasant--and she had the softest and sweetest of voices--you could
liken it to nothing but the purring of a cat; and her hands were limp
and velvety, and catlike too.
Miss Jo nodded her recognition.
"How d'ye do, Catty? How do you feel after last night?"
"Very well."
"Well enough to spend this evening with me?"
Miss Catty Clowrie laughed.
"I am always well enough for that, Miss Jo! Are you going to eclipse
Mrs. McGregor?"
"Nonsense! Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose are coming to take tea with me,
that's all, and I want you to come up."
"I shall be very happy to. Are Natty and--Charley coming?"
Miss Jo nodded again, and without further parley walked away. As she
turned the corner of Cottage Street into a more busy thoroughfare, known
as Park Lane, she saw a lady and gentleman taking the sidewalk in
dashing style. Everybody looked after them, and everybody might have
gone a long way without finding anything better worth looking after. The
young lady's tall, slight, willowy figure was set off by a close-fitting
black cloth basque, and a little, coquettish, black velvet cap was
placed above one of the most bewitching faces that ever turned a man's
head. Roseate, smiling, sunshiny, the bright blue eyes flashing laughing
light everywhere they fell. Her gloved hands daintily uplifting her
skirts, and displaying the pretty high-heeled boots, as she sailed along
with a very peculiar, jaunty, swinging gait.
And quite as well worth looking at, in his way, was her cavalier,
gallant and handsome, with an unmistakable military stride, and an
unmistakable military air generally, although dressed in civilian's
clothes. As they swept past Miss Jo, the young lady made a dashing bow;
and the young gentleman lifted his hat. Miss Jo stood, with her mouth
open, gazing after them.
"A splendid couple, ain't they, Miss Blake?" said a man, passing. It was
Mr. Clowrie, on his way to his office, and Miss Jo, just deigning to
acknowledge him, walked on.
"My patience!" was her mental ejaculation, "what a swell they cut! He's
as handsome as a lord, that young man; and she's every bit as
good-looking! I must go up to Redmon this afternoon, and ask her down.
Wouldn't it be great now, if that should turn out to be a match!"
CHAPTER IV.
VAL'S OFFICE.
Among the many tall, dingy brick buildings, fronting on that busy
thoroughfare of Speckport, Queen Street, there stood one to the right as
you went up, taller and dingier, if possible, than its neighbors, and
bearing this legend along its grimy front, "Office of Speckport
Spouter." There were a dozen newspapers, more or less, published in
Speckport, weekly, semi-weekly, and daily; but the Spouter went ahead of
them all, and distanced all competitors.
At about half-past seven o'clock, this foggy spring morning, two
individuals of the manly sex occupied the principal apartment of the
printing establishment. A dirty, nasty, noisy place it generally was;
and dirty and nasty, though not very noisy, it was this morning, for the
only sound to be heard was the voice of one of its occupants, chattering
incessantly, and the scratching of the other's pen, as he wrote, perched
up on a high stool.
The writer was foreman in the office, a sober-looking, middle-aged man,
who wore spectacles, and wrote away as mechanically as if he was doing
it by steam. The speaker was a lively youth of twelve, office-boy,
printer's devil, and errand-runner, and gossiper-in-chief to the place.
His name was in the baptismal register of Speckport cathedral, William
Blair; but in every-day life he was Bill Blair, brother to pretty Laura,
whom Val Blake had eulogized as "such a girl to laugh."
Laughter seemed to be a weakness in the family, for Master Bill's mouth
was generally stretched in a steady grin from one week's end to the
other, and was, just at this present moment. He was perched up on
another high stool, swinging his legs about, chewing gum, looking out of
the window, and talking.
"And there goes Old Leach in his gig, tearing along as if Old Nick was
after him," went on Master Bill, criticising the passers-by. "Somebody's
kicking the bucket in Speckport! And there's Sim Tod hobbling along on
his stick! Now, I should admire to know how long that old codger's going
to live; he must be as old as Methuselah's cat by this time. And there,
I vow, if there ain't Miss Jo, streaking along as tall as a grenadier,
and as spry as if she hadn't been up all night at that rout in Golden
Row. What a frisky old girl it is!"
"I tell you what, Bill Blair," said the foreman, Mr. Gilcase, "if you
don't take yourself down out of that, and get to work, I'll report you
to Mr. Blake as soon as he comes in!"
"No, you won't!" said Bill, snapping his gum between his teeth like a
pistol-shot. "There ain't nothing to do. I swept the office, and
sprinkled this floor, and I want a rest now, I should think. I feel as
if I should drop!"
"The office looks as if it had been swept," said Mr. Gilcase,
contemptuously; "there's the addresses to write on those wrappers; go
and do that!"
"That's time enough," said Bill; "Blake won't be here for an hour or two
yet; he's snoozing, I'll bet you, after being up all night. Look here,
Mr. Gilcase, did you know the new teacher was come?"
"No," said the foreman, looking somewhat interested; "has she?"
"Came last night," nodded Bill; "our Laury heard so last night at the
party. Her name's Miss Rose. Did you know they had an officer last night
at McGregor's?"
"I didn't think the officers visited McGregor's?"
"None of 'em ever did before; but one of them was there last night, a
captain, by the same token; and, I expect, old McGregor's as proud as a
pig with two tails. As for Jane, there'll be no standing her now, and
she was stuck-up enough before. Oh, here's Clowrie, and about as
pleasant-looking as a wild cat with the whooping-cough!"
A heavy, lumbering foot was ascending the steep dark stairs, and the
door opened presently to admit a young gentleman in a pea-jacket and
glazed cap. A short and thick-set young gentleman, with a sulky face,
who was never known to laugh, and whose life it was the delight of
Master Bill Blair to torment and make a misery of. The young gentleman
was Mr. Jacob Clowrie, eldest son and hope of Peter Clowrie, Esq.,
attorney-at-law.
"How are you, Jake?" began Mr. Blair, in a friendly tone, knocking his
heels about on the stool. "You look kind of sour this morning. Was the
milk at breakfast curdled, or didn't Catty get up to make you any
breakfast at all?"
Mr. Clowrie's reply to this was a growl, as he hung up his cap.
"I say, Jake, you weren't at McGregor's tea-splash last night, were you?
I know the old man and Catty were there. Scaly lot not to ask you and
me!"
Mr. Clowrie growled again, and sat down at a desk.
"I say, Jake," resumed that young demon, Bill, grinning from ear to ear,
"how's our Cherrie, eh?--seen her lately?"
"What would you give to know?" snapped Mr. Clowrie, condescending to
retort.
"But I do know, though, without giving nothing! and I know your cake's
dough, my boy! Lor, I think I see 'em now!" cried Bill, going off in a
shout of laughter at some lively recollection.
Mr. Clowrie glared at him over the top of his desk, with savage inquiry.
"Oh, you're cut out, old fellow! you're dished, you are! Cherrie's got a
new beau, and you're left in the lurch!"
"What do you mean, you young imp?" inquired Mr. Clowrie, growing very
red in the face. "I'll go over and twist your neck for you, if you don't
look sharp!"
Mr. Blair winked.
"Don't you think you see yourself doing it, Jakey? I tell you it's as
true as preaching! Cherrie's got a new fellow, and the chap's name is
Charley Marsh."
There was a pause. Bill looked triumphant, Mr. Clowrie black as a
thunderbolt, and the foreman amused in spite of himself. Bill crunched
his gum and waited for his announcement to have proper effect, and then
resumed, in an explanatory tone:
"You see, Jake, I had heard Charley was after her, but I didn't believe
it till last night, when I see them with my own two blessed eyes. My
governor and Laury were off to McGregor's, so I cut over to Jim Tod's,
to see a lot of terrier-pups he's got--me and Tom Smith--and he promised
us a pup apiece. Jim's folks were at the junketing, too; so we had the
house to ourselves. And Jim, he stole in the pantry through the window
and hooked a lot of pies and cakes, and raspberry wine, and Tom had a
pack of cards in his trowsers pocket. And we went up to Jim's room, and,
crackey! hadn't we a time! There was no hurry neither; for we knew the
old folks wouldn't be home till all hours, so we staid till after three
in the morning, and by this time Jim and me had lost three shillings in
pennies each, and the three of us were about ready to burst with all we
had eat and drank! It was foggy and misty coming home, and me and Tom
cut across them fields and waste lots between Tod's and Park Lane, when
just as we turned into Golden Row, who should we meet but Charley Marsh
and Cherrie. There they were, coming along as large as life, linking
together, and Charley's head down, listening to her, till their noses
were nearly touching. Me and Tom laughed till we were fit to split!"
Mr. Blair laughed again at the recollection, but Mr. Clowrie, scowling
more darkly than ever, replied not save by scornful silence. Bill had
his laugh out, and recommenced.
"So you see, Jake, it's no go! You can't get the beautifulest mug that
ever was looked at, and you haven't the shadow of a chance against such
a fellow as Charley Marsh! O Lor!"
With the last ejaculation of alarm, Bill sprang down from his perch in
consternation, as the door opened and Mr. Val Blake entered. He had been
so absorbed chaffing Mr. Clowrie that he had not heard Val coming
up-stairs, and now made a desperate dash at the nearest desk. Val
stretched out his long arm and pinned him.
"You young vagabond! is this the way you spend your time in my absence?
What's that about Charley Marsh?"
"Nothing, sir," said Bill, grinning a malicious grin over at Mr.
Clowrie. "I was only telling Jake how he was being cut out!"
"Cut out! What do you mean?"
"Why, with that Cherrie Nettleby! Charley Marsh's got her now!"
"What!" said Val, shortly; "what are you talking about, you little
rascal?"
"I can't help it, sir," said Bill, with an injured look, "if I am a
rascal. I saw him seeing her home this morning between three and four
o'clock, and if that don't look like cutting Jake out, I don't know what
does!"
"And what were you doing out at three o'clock in the morning, Master
Blair?"
"I was over to Tod's spending the evening, me and a lot more fellows,
and that was the time we were getting home. I don't see," said Bill,
with a still more aggrieved air, "why we shouldn't stop out a while, if
all the old codgers in the town set us the example!"
Val released him, and strode on to an inner room.
"See if you can attend to your business for one morning, sir, and give
your tongue a holiday. Mr. Gilcase, was the postman here?"
"Yes, sir. The letters and papers are on your table."
Val disappeared, closing the door behind him, and Master Blair turned a
somersault of delight and cut a pigeon-wing afterward.
"Get to work, sir!" shouted Mr. Gilcase, "or I'll make Mr. Blake turn
you out of the office!"
"Mr. Blake knows better," retorted the incorrigible. "I rather think the
Spouter would be nowhere if I left; Do you know, Mr. Gilcase, I think
Blake has some notion of taking me into partnership shortly! He has to
work like a horse now."
Val had to work hard--no mistake about it, for he was sole editor and
proprietor of the Sunday and Weekly Speckport Spouter. He is sitting in
his room now--and a dusty, grimy, littered, disordered room it
is--before a table heaped with papers, letters, books, and manuscript of
all kinds, busily tearing the envelopes off sundry overgrown letters,
and disgorging their contents.
"What's this? a private note from Miss Incognita. 'Would I be so kind as
to speak to the printers; they made such frightful mistakes in her last
sketch, filled her heroine's eyes with tars, instead of tears, and in
the battle-scene defeated Cromwell and his soldiers with wildest
laughter, instead of slaughter!' Humph.
"It's her own fault; why don't she write decently? Very well, Miss
Laura, I'll stick you in; you think I don't know you, I suppose. Come
in."
Val looked up from his literary labors to answer a tap at the door. Mr.
Gilcase put in his head.
"There's a gentleman here wants to see you, sir. Captain Cavendish."
Val got up and went out. Captain Cavendish, in a loose overcoat, and
smoking a cigar, was lounging against a desk, and being stared at by
Messrs. Clowrie and Blair, took out his cigar and extended his hand
languidly to Val.
"Good morning! Are you very busy? Am I an intruder? If so, I'll go away
again."
"I'm no busier than common," said Val. "Come in, this is my sanctum, and
here's the editorial chair; sit down."
"Is it any harm to smoke?" inquired the Captain, looking rather
doubtful.
"Not the least. I'll blow a cloud myself. How did you find your way here
through the clouds of fog?"
"Not very easily. Does the sun ever shine at all in Speckport?"
"Occasionally--when it cannot help itself. But when did you take to
early rising, pray? You used to be lounging over your breakfast about
this hour when I knew you in Halifax."
"Yes, I know--I'm a reformed character. Apropos, early rising seems to
be the style here. I met two ladies of my acquaintance figuring through
the streets ever so long ago."
"Who were they?"
"Your sister was one; Miss Marsh, the other."
"Natty, eh? Oh, she always was an early bird. Were you speaking to her?"
"I had the pleasure of escorting her to her mother's. By the way, she
does not live with her mother, does she?"
"No; she lives with old Lady Leroy, up at Redmon."
"Where is Redmon?"
"About a mile from Speckport. Natty walks it two or three times a day,
and thinks it's only a hen's jump. Redmon's a fine place."
"Indeed."
"Not the house exactly--it's a great barn--but the property. It's worth
eight thousand pounds."
"So much?" said Captain Cavendish, looking interested. "And who is Lady
Leroy?"
"The wife--the widow of a dead Jew. Don't stare, she only gets the title
as a nickname, for she's the greatest old oddity the sun ever shone on.
She's a cousin of Natty's mother, and Natty is to be her heiress."
Captain Cavendish's eyes lightened vividly.
"Her heiress! Is she very rich, then?"
"Immensely! Worth thirty thousand pounds or more, and the stingiest old
skinflint that ever breathed. Natty has been with her over a year now,
as a sort of companion, and a fine time she has with the old toad, I
know."
"And there is no doubt Miss Marsh is to be her heiress?"
"None at all--the will is made and in the hands of Darcy, her lawyer.
She has no children, and no relatives that ever I heard of nearer than
Miss Marsh. She was old Leroy's servant when he married her--it happened
in New York, where he made his money. This place, Redmon, was to be
sold for debt; Leroy bid it in dirt cheap, and rented it, employing
Darcy as his agent to collect rents, for there is quite a village
attached to it. After the old fellow's death, a year and a half ago, his
venerable relict came here, took up her abode at Redmon, with as great
an oddity as herself for a servant. She took a great fancy to pretty
Natty after awhile, and got her to go up there and reside as companion."
"And those Marshes--what are they? like the rest of Speckport--begging
your pardon!--nobody?"
"Family, you mean? That question is so like an Englishman. The father
was a gentleman. His profession was that of engineer, and his family, I
have heard, was something extra in England; but he made a low marriage
over here, and they would have nothing more to do with him. Mrs. Marsh
was pretty, and as insipid as a mug of milk and water, caring for
nothing in the world wide but sitting in a rocking-chair reading novels.
He married her, though; and they lived quite in style until Charley was
fourteen and Natty twelve years old. Then Mr. Marsh had a stroke of
paralysis which left him altogether incapable of attending to his
business, of doing anything, in fact, but teaching. He started a school,
and got a salary for playing the organ in the cathedral, but he only
lived two years after. Before he died they had to give up their fine
house, dismiss their servants, auction their furniture, and rent the
cottage they live in now. Miss Natty, sir, kept the school, gave
music-lessons after hours, took the organ Sundays, and supported the
family for the next three years; in point of fact, does to this day."
"How is that?" said Captain Cavendish. "Mrs. Leroy pays her a salary as
companion, I suppose?"
"She does; but that's only a pittance, wouldn't pay her mother's bills
in the circulating library. Natty refused to go to Redmon unless under
certain conditions. She would retain the school, the organ, and her
music pupils as usual, only she would engage another teacher for the
school, coming there one hour a day to superintend. That would take
about four hours a day, the rest was at the service of Lady Leroy. Her
ladyship grumbled, but had to consent; so Natty went to live up at
Redmon, and between all has her hands full."
"She is indeed a brave girl! What are her duties at the old lady's?"
"No trifle! She reads to her, retails all the news of the town, writes
her letters, keeps her accounts, receives the rents, makes out the
receipts, oversees the household--does a thousand things besides. If she
had as many hands as what's his name, the fellow in the
mythology,--Briareus, wasn't it?--the old vixen would keep them all
occupied. By the way, did you see Charley this morning when you were
in?"
"I wasn't in, I left Miss Natty at the door. I say, Val, you didn't tell
me last night who that pretty girl was I saw him with in the window. She
was not a guest, though I'll take my oath there wasn't a young lady
present half so pretty, save the belle of Speckport herself. Who was
she?"
"Cherrie, otherwise Miss Charlotte Nettleby. A little flirting piece of
conceit. She has had the young men of Speckport tagging after her. Rumor
set Charley down lately as one of her killed or wounded; but Speckport
is always gossiping, and I paid no attention to it. It seems it's true
though, for that young scamp Blair in the next room saw him escorting
her home this morning."
"What was she doing at the house if not invited!"
"How should I know? Cherrie is everywhere--she knows the servants, I
suppose."
"Oh, is that it? Then she is nobody."
"I wish she heard you! If ever any one thought themselves somebody it's
the same Miss Cherrie. She aspires to be a lady--bless your heart!--and
that foolish boy is to be entrapped into marrying her."
Val stopped to knock the ashes off his cigar.
"Well; and what then?" asked the captain.
"Why, Natty will go frantic, that is all. She thinks the Princess Royal
not half good enough for Charley."
"Is Miss Cherrie's position in life so low, then?"
"It's not that. Her father is a gardener, a poor man, but honest and
respectable enough. It's Cherrie herself; she's a shallow, vain, silly
little beauty, as ever made fools of men, and her vanity, and her
idleness, and her dress, and her flirtations are the scandal of the
town. Not that anything worse can be said of little Cherrie, mind; but
she is not the girl for Charley Marsh to marry."
"Charley is a gentleman; perhaps he isn't going to marry her," suggested
Captain Cavendish, with a light laugh, that told more of his character
than folios could have done.
"Being a gentleman," said Val, with emphasis, "he means to marry her if
he means anything at all."
And the young officer shrugged his shoulders.
"_Chacun à son goût._ I must be going, I believe. Here I have been
trespassing on your time these two hours."
"The day's young yet," said Val; "have you any engagement for this
evening?"
"I believe not, except a dinner at the mess-room, which can be shirked."
"Then come up to Redmon. If you are a student of character, Mrs. Leroy
will amply repay the trouble."
"I'm there! but not," said Captain Cavendish, laughing, "to see Mrs.
Leroy."
"I understand. Well, good morning."
"Until then, _au revoir_."
Mr. Bill Blair, perched on his high stool, his elbows spread out on the
desk, stared at him as he went out.
"Cracky, what a rum swell them officer chaps are? I say, Clowrie,
wouldn't Cherrie like that cove for a beau? He would be safe to win if
he tried it on, and Charley Marsh would be where you are now--nowhere."
And little did Mr. William Blair or his hearers think he was uttering a
prophecy.
CHAPTER V.
KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.
Captain Cavendish, looking very handsome and distinguished in the
admiring eyes of Speckport, lounged down Queen Street, and down half a
dozen other streets, toward the sea-shore. The tide was ebbing as he
descended to the beach, and the long, lazy swell breaking on the strand
was singing the old everlasting song it has sung through all time. Its
mysterious music was lost on Captain Cavendish; his thoughts were
hundreds of miles away. Not very pleasant thoughts, either, judging by
his contracted brow and compressed lips, as he leaned against a tall
rock, his eyes looking out to sea. He started up after awhile, with a
gesture of impatience.
"Pshaw!" he said; "what's the use of thinking of it now? it's all past
and gone. It is Fate, I suppose; and if Fate has ordained I must marry a
rich wife or none, where is the good of my puny struggles? But poor
little Winnie! I have been the greatest villain that ever was known to
you."
He walked along the beach, sending pebbles skimming over the waves as he
went. Two fishermen in oilcloth trowsers, very scaly and rattling, were
drawing up their boat, laden to the water's edge with gaspereaux, all
alive and kicking. Captain Cavendish stopped and looked at them.
"Your freight looks lively, my men. You have got a fine boatload there."
The two young men looked at him. They were tall, strapping, sunburnt,
black-eyed, good-looking fellows both, and the one hauling up the boat
answered; the other, pulling the fish out of the nets, went on with his
work in silence.
"Yes, sir, we had a good haul last night. The freshet's been strong
this spring, and has made the fishing good."
"Were you out all night?"
"Yes; we have to go when the tide suits."
"You had a foggy night for it, then. Can you tell me which is the road
to Redmon?"
The young fisherman turned and pointed to a path going up the hillside
from the shore.
"Do you see that path? Well, follow it; cut across the field, and let
down the bars t'other side. There's a road there; keep straight on and
it will fetch you to Redmon. You can't miss the house when you get to
it; it's a big brick building on a sort of hill, with lots of trees
around it."
"Thank you. I'll find it, I think."
He sauntered lazily up the hillside-path, cut across the fields, and let
down the bars as he had been directed, putting them conscientiously up
again.
The road was a very quiet one; green meadows on either hand, and clumps
of cedar and spruce wood sparsely dotting it here and there. The breeze
swept up cool and fresh from the sea; the town with its bustle and noise
was out of sight and hearing.
He was walking so slowly that it was nearly half an hour before Redmon
came in sight--a large weather-beaten brick house on the summit of a
hill, with bleak corners and reedy marshes, and dark trees all around
it, the whole inclosed by a high wooden fence. The place took its name
from these marshes or moors about it, sown in some time with crimson
cranberries and pigeonberries, like fields of red stars. But Captain
Cavendish only glanced once at Redmon; for the instant it had come in
sight something else had come in sight, too, a thousand times better
worth looking at. Just outside the extremity of the fence nearest him
there stood a cottage--a little whitewashed affair, standing out in
dazzling contrast to the black cedar woods beside it, hop-vines
clustering round its door and windows, and a tall gate at one side
opening into a well-cultivated vegetable garden.
Swinging back and forward on this gate was a young girl, whom Captain
Cavendish recognized in a moment. It was a face that few young men
forgot easily, for its owner was a beauty born; the figure was petite
and plump, delightfully rounded and ripe indeed, with no nasty sharp
curves or harsh angles; the complexion dark and clear, the forehead low,
with black, arching brows; the eyes like black beads; the cheeks like
June roses; the lips as red, and ripe, and sweet as summer strawberries,
the teeth they parted to disclose, literally like pearls, and they
parted very often, indeed, to disclose them. The hair was black as hair
can be, and all clustering in little short, shining rings and kinks
about the forehead and neck. Captain Cavendish had seen that face for
the first time last night, in the window with Charley Marsh, but he was
a sufficiently good judge of physiognomy to know it was not necessary to
be very ceremonious with Miss Cherrie Nettleby. He therefore advanced at
once, with a neat little fiction at the top of his tongue.
"I beg your pardon," he said politely, "but I am very thirsty. Will you
be kind enough to give me a drink?"
Miss Cherrie, though but nineteen in years, was forty at least in
penetration where handsome men were concerned, and saw through the ruse
at once. She sprang down from the gate and held it open, with the
prettiest affectation of timidity in the world.
"Yes, sir. Will you please to walk in."
"Thank you," said the captain, languidly, "I believe I will. My walk has
completely used me up."
Miss Cherrie led the way into the cottage. The front door opened
directly into the parlor of the dwelling, a neat little room, the floor
covered with mats; a table, with books and knicknacks in the center; a
lounge and a rocking-chair, and some common colored prints on the walls.
It had an occupant as they came in, a sallow, dark-eyed girl of sixteen,
whose hands fairly flew as she sat at the window, netting on a
fisherman's net, already some twenty fathoms long.
"Ann," said Cherrie, placing a chair for their distinguished visitor,
"go and fetch the gentleman a drink."
The girl turned her sallow but somewhat sullen face, without rising.
"There ain't no water in," she said, curtly.
"Go for some now," said Cherrie. "I'll knit till you come back."
"No, no!" hastily interposed Captain Cavendish. "I beg you will give
yourself no such trouble. I am not so thirsty as I thought I was."
"Oh, we'll want the water anyhow to get the boys' dinner," said Cherrie,
throwing off her scarlet shawl. "Go, Ann, and make haste."
Ann got up crossly, and strolled out of the room at a snail's pace, and
Miss Cherrie took her place, and went to work industriously.
"Is that your sister?" he asked, watching Cherrie's hand flying as
swiftly in and out as Ann's had done.
"Yes, that's our Ann," replied the young lady, as if every one should
know Ann, as a matter of course.
"And do you and Ann live here alone together?"
Cherrie giggled at the idea.
"Oh dear, no. There's father and the boys."
"The boys, and are they----"
"My brothers," said Cherrie. "Two of 'em, Rob and Eddie. They fish, you
know, and Ann, she knits the nets."
"Are those you are now making for them?"
"Yes, these are shad-nets. I hate to knit, but the boys pay Ann for
doing it, and she does them all. I guess you'll be pretty thirsty," said
Cherrie, laughing as easily as if she had known him for the past ten
years, "before Ann gets back with the water. She's horrid slow."
"Never mind. The longer she is away, the better I shall like it, Miss
Cherrie."
Miss Cherrie dropped her needle and mesh-block, and opened her black
eyes.
"Why, how did you find out my name? You don't know me, do you?"
"A little. I trust we shall be very well acquainted before long."
Cherrie smiled graciously.
"Everybody knows me, I think. How did you find out who I was?"
"I saw you last night."
"No! did you, though? What time? where was I?"
"Sitting in a window, breaking a young gentleman's heart."
Cherrie giggled again.
"I'm sure I wasn't doing any such thing. That was only Charley Marsh."
"Only Charley Marsh. Had you and he a pleasant walk home this morning?"
"Now, I never. How did you know he saw me home?"
"A little bird told me. I only wish it had been my good fortune."
"Oh, what a story!" cried Cherrie, her wicked black eyes dancing in her
head; "I wonder you ain't ashamed! Didn't I hear you wanting to ride
home with Miss Natty. I was peeking out through the dining-room door,
and I heard you as plain as could be."
"Well, I wanted to be polite, you know. Not having the honor of your
acquaintance, Cherrie, I knew there was no hope of escorting you; so I
made the offer to Miss Marsh in sheer despair. Now, Cherrie, I don't
want you to get too fond of that brother of hers."
Cherrie tittered once more.
"Now, how can you! I'm sure I don't care nothing about him; but I can't
help his talking to me, and seeing me home, can I?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't talk too much to him, if I were you; and as
for seeing you home, I'd rather do it myself. There is no telling what
nonsense he may get talking! Does he come here often?"
"Pretty often; but all the young fellows come! Sandy McGregor, Jake
Clowrie, Mr. Blake, Charley Marsh, and the whole lot of 'em!"
"What time do they come?"
"Evenings, mostly. Then, there's a whole lot of Bob and Eddie's friends
come, too, and the house is full most every night!"
"And what do you all do?"
"Oh, ever so many things! Play cards, sing songs, and carry on, and
dance, sometimes."
"May I come, too, Cherrie?"
"You may, if you like," said Cherrie, with coquettish indifference. "But
the young ladies in Speckport won't like that!"
"What do I care for the young ladies in Speckport! Oh, here's the
water!"
Ann came in with a glass, and the captain drank it without being the
least thirsty.
"Bob and Eddie's coming up the road," said Ann to her sister; "you knit
while I peel the potatoes for dinner."
"I am afraid I must go," said Captain Cavendish, rising, having no
desire to make the acquaintance of the Messrs. Nettleby. "I have been
here nearly half an hour."
"That ain't long, I'm sure," said Cherrie; "what's your hurry?"
"I have a call to make. May I come again, Miss Cherrie?"
"Oh, of course!" said Miss Cherrie, with perfect coolness; "we always
like to see our friends. Are you going to Redmon?"
Captain Cavendish nodded, and took his hat. Pretty Cherrie got up to
escort him to the gate.
"Good-bye, Miss Cherrie," he said, making her a flourishing bow. "I will
have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow."
Cherrie smiled most gracious consent.
As he turned out of the gate he encountered the two young fishermen who
had directed him to Redmon. They were Cherrie's brothers, then; and,
laughing inwardly at the memory of the late interview with that young
lady, he entered the grounds of Redmon.
"She's a deuced pretty girl!" he said, slapping his boot with a rattan
he carried; "and, faith, she's free and easy! No nonsensical prudery
about Miss Cherrie. I only hope I may get on as well with the
golden-haired heiress as I seem to have done with the black-eyed
grisette!"
He opened the wooden gate, and sauntered along a bleak avenue, the
grounds on either hand overrun with rank weeds, and spruce, and
tamarack, and fir trees, casting somber gloom around.
The house, a great red barn, as Val had said, looked like a black, grimy
jail; the shutters were closed on every window, the hall-door seemed
hermetically sealed, and swallows flew about it, and built their nests
in security on the eaves and down the chimneys. There was a great, grim
iron knocker on the door, and the young man's knock reverberated with a
hollow and ghostly echo through the weird house.
"What a place for such a girl to live in!" he thought, looking up at it.
"Her desire for wealth must be strong to tempt her to bury herself alive
in such an old tomb. The riches of the Rothschilds would not induce me."
A rusty key grated in a lock, the door swung open with a creaking sound,
and the bright face of Nathalie Marsh looked out.
She smiled when she saw who it was, and frankly held out her hand.
"You have lost no time, Monsieur. Walk in, and please to excuse me a few
moments. I must go back to Mrs. Leroy."
They were in a long and dismal hall, flanked with doors, and with a
great, wide, old-fashioned staircase sweeping up and losing itself
somehow in the upper gloom. Natty opened one of the doors, ushered him
into the reception parlor of the establishment, and then flew swiftly up
the stairs and was gone.
Captain Cavendish looked about him, that is, as well as he could for the
gloom. The parlor of Redmon was furnished after the style of the cabin
of a certain "fine ould Irish gintleman," immortalized in song, "with
nothing at all for show." No carpet on the dreary Sahara of floor; no
curtains on the gloomy windows; no pictures on the dead, blank waste of
whitewashed walls; a few chairs, a black, old mahogany table, a dreary
horsehair sofa, about as soft as if cushioned with bricks; and that was
all. The silence of the place was something blood-chilling; not the
squeak of a mouse relieved its deathlike quiet.
Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed, and the captain, getting
desperate, was seriously thinking of making his escape, when a light
step came tripping down the stairs, and Natty, all breathless and
laughing, came breezily in.
"Are you tired to death waiting?" she laughed gayly. "Mrs. Leroy is
dreadfully tiresome over her toilet, and I am femme de chambre, if you
please! It is over now, and she desires me to escort you to her
presence, and be introduced. I hope you may make a favorable
impression!"
"But what am I to do?" said Captain Cavendish, with an appalled face.
"How am I to insinuate myself into her good graces? Where is the key to
her heart?"
"The key was lost years ago, and her heart is now closed. Don't
contradict her, whatever you do. Hush! here we are!"
They had ascended to a hall like the one below; flanked, like it, by
doors. Natty, with a glance of wicked delight at his dolorous face,
opened the first door to the right, and ushered him at once into the
presence of the awful Lady Leroy.
Something--it certainly looked more like an Egyptian mummy than anything
else--swathed in shawls and swaddling-clothes, was stuck up in a vast
Sleepy Hollow open arm-chair, and had its face turned to the door. That
face, and a very yellow, and seared, and wrinkled, and unlovely face it
was, buried in the flapping obscurity of a deeply-frilled white cap, was
lit by a pair of little, twinkling eyes, bright and keen as two
stilettos.
"Mrs. Leroy," said Natty, her tone demure, but her mischievous eyes
dancing under their lashes, "this is Captain Cavendish."
"How d'ye do, Captain Cavendish?" said Mrs. Leroy, in a shrill,
squeaking voice, like a penny whistle out of tune; "sit down--do! Natty,
can't you give the young man a cheer?"
Natty did not cheer, but she placed a chair for him, whispering, as she
did so, "Speak loud, or she won't hear you."
"What's the weather like out o' doors?" inquired the old lady, scanning
him from head to foot with her little piercing eyes; "be the sun
a-shining, hey?"
"No, Madam," said Captain Cavendish, in a loud key, "it is foggy."
She had paid no attention to his reply; she had been staring at him all
the time, until even he, cool as any man of the world could be, got a
trifle disconcerted. Natty, sitting demurely near, was enjoying it all
with silent but intense delight.
"So you're the young English captain Natty was telling me about. You're
not so handsome as she said you were; leastways, you ain't to my taste!"
It was Natty's turn now to look disconcerted, which she did with a
vengeance, as the dark, laughing eyes of the young officer turned upon
her.
"Miss Marsh does me too much honor to mention me at all," he said,
speaking more at the young lady than to the old one.
"Hey?" inquired Lady Leroy, shrilly. "What's that? What did you say?"
"I was saying how remarkably well you were looking, ma'am," said the
captain, raising his voice, "and that this Redmon is a very fine old
place."
"It's not!" screamed Lady Leroy, viciously; "it's the hatefulest,
daftest, uncomfortablest hole ever anybody set foot in! Natty!"
"Yes, ma'am!" said Natty. "What is it?"
"Is old Nettleby planting them potatoes to-day?"
"Yes, of course he is."
"He'll plant Carters where he ought to plant Early Blues! I know he
will!" cried the old lady in an ecstasy of alarm; "run out as fast as
you can, Natty, and tell him not to plant any Carters in the
three-cornered field. Run, run, run!"
Natty knew Lady Leroy a great deal too well to expostulate. "I will be
back directly," she said, in a low voice, the laughing light in her eyes
still, as she passed her visitor; "do not get into trouble if you can
help it, in my absence."
She was gone, and Lady Leroy, with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall,
seemed to have gone off into a fit of musing. Captain Cavendish tried to
look about him, which he had not ventured to do before, under those
basilisk eyes. It was a large square room, like all the rest in the
house, and stiflingly close and warm. No wonder, for a small
cooking-stove was burning away, and every window was closed and
shuttered. A bed stood in one corner, an old-fashioned clock ticked in a
loud hoarse voice on the mantel-piece, a small round table stood at the
old lady's elbow, and the floor was covered with a carpet that had been
Brussels once, but which was dirty, and colorless, and ragged now. There
was an open cupboard with dishes, and a sort of pantry with a half glass
door, through which he could see boxes and barrels, hams and dried beef,
and other commissary stores. The chair matched the flinty sofa down
stairs, and the only thing to attract attention in the room was a green
cabinet of covered wood that stood beside the bed. While he was looking
at it, the old-fashioned clock began striking twelve in a gruff and
surly way, as if it did it against its better judgment. The sound woke
the old lady up from her brown study--woke her up with a sharp jerk.
"It's twelve o'clock!" she exclaimed shrilly, "and I want my dinner!
Call Midge!"
This was addressed to Captain Cavendish, and in so peremptory a tone
that that gallant young officer looked alarmed and disconcerted.
"Call Midge, I tell you! Call her quick!" yelped Lady Leroy in an
excited way. "Call Midge, will you!"
"Where is she? Where will I call her?" said the young man, in
considerable consternation.
"Open that door, stupid, and call Midge!" cried the old woman, violently
excited; "call her quick, I tell you!"
Thus ordered, Captain Cavendish opened the door and began calling loudly
on the unknown lady bearing the name of Midge.
Out of the gloom and dismalness below a hoarse voice shouted in reply,
"I'm a coming;" and Captain Cavendish went back to his seat. The voice
was that of a man, and of a man with a shocking bad cold, too; and the
step lumbering up stairs was a man's step; but for all that, Midge
wasn't a man, but a woman. Such a woman! the Egyptian mummy in the
arm-chair was a Parisian belle compared to her. Between three and four
feet high, and between four and five feet broad, Midge was just able to
waddle under the weight of her own fair person, and no more. A shock of
hair, very like a tar-mop, stood, bristling defiance at combs and
brushes, up on end, like "quills upon the fretful porcupine." To say she
had no forehead, and only two pinholes for eyes, and a little round lump
of flesh in lieu of a decent nose, would be doing no sort of justice to
the subject; for the face, with its fat, puffy cheeks, was altogether
indescribable. The costume of the lady was scant, her dress displaying
to the best advantage a pair of ankles some fifteen inches in
circumference, and a pair of powerful arms, bare to the shoulders, were
rolled up in a cotton apron. With the airy tread of an elephant inclined
to embonpoint, this sylph-like being crossed the hall and stood in the
doorway awaiting orders, while Captain Cavendish stared aghast, and
backed a few paces with a feeble "By Jove!"
"What do you want, ma'am?" inquired the damsel in the doorway, who might
have been anywhere in the vale of years between twenty and fifty.
"Get my dinner! It's after twelve! Don't I always tell you to come and
get my dinner when you hear the clock strike twelve?"
"And how do you suppose I can hear that there clock half a mile off,
down in that kitchen!" retorted Midge, sharply. "I ain't jest got ears
as sharp as lancets, I'd have you know. I'll take the key!"
Mrs. Leroy produced a key from a pocket somewhere about her; and Midge,
rather jerking it out of her hands than otherwise, unlocked the pantry,
and began busying herself among the forage there. Mrs. Leroy's keen eyes
followed every motion as a cat follows its prey, and Captain Cavendish
gazed too, as if fascinated, on the fairy form of Miss Midge. In passing
to and fro, Midge had more than once caught his eye, and at last her
feelings got the better of her, and, pausing abruptly before him, with
her arms akimbo, burst out, "Look here, sir! I don't know who you are,
but if you're a doggertype-man, come to take my picter, I'd jest thank
you to be quick about it, and not sit there gaping like----"
"Midge!" called a ringing voice in the doorway. It was Nathalie, her
face stern, her voice imperative. "Midge, how dare you speak so?"
"Oh, never mind!" said Captain Cavendish, who, in the main, was a
good-natured young officer. "I deserve it, I dare say. I have made an
unpardonably long call, I believe. Mrs. Leroy, I wish you good morning."
"Good morning!" said Mrs. Leroy, without looking at him, all her eyes
being absorbed in the doings of Midge in the culinary department.
"Natty, you let him out."
Natty did so, and they both laughed when at a safe distance.
"What did you do to Midge?" she inquired, "to tempt her to pour the
vials of her wrath on your head, as she was doing when I came in."
"Staring very hard, I am afraid! Where is Barnum, that he does not get
hold of that domestic monstrosity?"
"Oh, hush!" said Natty. But the warning came too late. Midge, descending
the stairs, had heard the speech, and gave the speaker a look so baleful
and vindictive, that, had he been troubled with those feminine miseries,
nerves, might have haunted him many a day. He smiled at it then, but he
remembered that look long after.
"She is acutely sensitive, dull as she seems," said Natty, with a pained
look. "I am sorry she heard you."
"I am sincerely sorry for my thoughtless words, then, Miss Marsh, if
they pain you."
"She saved Charley's life once," said Natty, "when he was a little
fellow. I have always liked Midge since, and I believe she loves me with
the faithful and blind fidelity of--but no irreverence--a dog. A
slighting word rankles in her memory long."
"I shall fetch her a peace-offering the next time I come, which, by the
way," he said, coolly, "is to be this evening, with your permission.
Blake is to be my chaperon on the occasion."
"I regret I shall not see either of you then; but," said Natty, with a
funny look, "no doubt Mrs. Leroy will be delighted to entertain you till
her bedtime comes, which is precisely nine o'clock."
"Not see us? Are you----"
"I have promised to spend the evening out. When I was with the gardener
a few moments ago, Miss Blake came in and asked me to spend the evening
with her. Mamma and Miss Rose, the new teacher, are to be there, and I
could not refuse."
"Then I shall postpone my call. Oh, there is a summons for you! How
impatient your old lady is!"
They shook hands, and parted. Captain Cavendish lit a cigar, and went
smoking, meditatingly, down the dreary avenue, and out into the
highroad. Standing near the gate was pretty Cherrie, and a refulgent
smile greeted him from the rosy lips. He lifted his hat, and passed on;
for standing in the doorway was the stalwart young fishermen of the
beach.
"Two very pretty girls!" he mused, over his Havana; "_belle blonde, et
jolie brunette_. It's extremely convenient their living so near
together; one journey does for both. I think I understand now what is
meant by the old adage of killing two birds with one stone."
CHAPTER VI.
AN EVENING AT MISS BLAKE'S.
The establishment of Miss Joanna Blake was not on a scale of
magnificence. Miss Jo's only parlor being about ten feet square, was not
too grandly vast at any time, and not exactly adapted for the mirthful
throng to disport themselves in. The style of furniture, too, was, some
people might think, on a trifle too grand a scale for its dimensions.
When Val, and his fourteen or fifteen friends aforesaid, lit their
cigars, tilted back their chairs, elevated the heels of their boots on
the piano or table, and all puffed away together, the parlor became
rather obscure, and a stranger suddenly entering might have conceived
the idea that the house was in flames; and that, perhaps, was the reason
the parlor always smelt like a tobacconist's shop. Besides the parlor,
Miss Jo had a dining-room and a kitchen, and two bedrooms, in the floor,
though, and she did her own work.
In the parlor of No. 16 Great St. Peter's Street, the lamp was lit, the
drab moreen curtains let down, and the table set for tea. There was a
snowy cloth on the mahogany which hid the marks of the bootheels and the
stains of the punch-tumblers, and the china cups and saucers, and the
glass preserve-plates and butter-dish, and spoon-holder, not to speak of
the spoons themselves, which were of real silver, and had cost a dollar
a piece, and had a big capital "B" engraven thereon, glittered and
flashed in the light. There was buttered toast, and hot biscuit, and
pound-cake, and fruit-cake, and mince-pie, and quince-jelly, and cold
chicken, and coffee and tea--all the work of Miss Jo's own fair hands;
and Miss Jo herself, rather flushed with the heat, but very imposing and
stately to look at in a green poplin dress--real Irish poplin at
that--and a worked collar a finger-length deep, presided at the
tea-tray, and dispensed the hospitalities of the festive board. Val,
sitting opposite, did his part, which consisted chiefly in attempting to
pass the cake-plates, and spilling their contents, of upsetting
everything he touched, and looking mildly but reproachfully at the
refractory object afterward. Mrs. Marsh was there, placid, and insipid,
and faded, and feeble, as usual; and Miss Rose was there, pale and
pretty; and Miss Clowrie was there, smiling and soft of voice, and deft
of touch, and purring more than ever; and Miss Blair was there, laughing
at all the funny things, and rosy as Hebe herself; and Charley Marsh was
there, making a martyr of himself in the attempt to be fascinating to
three young ladies at once; and everybody had eaten and drank, forced
thereto by Miss Blake, until they were, as Charley forcibly put it, "a
misery to themselves." So a move was made to adjourn, which just
consisted of pushing their chairs about five inches from the table, not
being able to push them any further, and Miss Jo began rattling among
the tea-things, which she called clearing them off. Miss Catty, always
sweet and obliging, and that sort of a thing, insisted on helping her,
and Charley opening the upright, clattered a "Fisher's Hornpipe" in
spirited style.
"Come and sing us a song, Laura--that's a good girl," he said, while
Val, making an apology, slipped out. "Come and sing 'The Laird o'
Cockpen.'"
Miss Blair, all smiles, took her seat, and sung not only "The Laird o'
Cockpen," but a dozen others of the same kidney.
"What do you think of that?" inquired Miss Blair, triumphantly rising
up, with a finishing bang. "Who says I can't sing? Now, Miss Rose, you
sing, I know."
"Of course she does," said Charley. "Miss Rose, permit me to lead you to
the instrument."
Miss Rose looked as though she were about to excuse herself, but that
impulsive Laura Blair ran over and caught her by both hands.
"Up with you! We won't take any excuses. Charley, the young lady is at
your mercy, lead her off."
Charley promptly did so. Miss Rose, smiling graciously, ran her white
fingers over the yellow keys, and looked up at him.
"What shall I sing, Monsieur?"
"Anything you please, Mademoiselle. I am prepared to be delighted with
'Old Dan Tucker,' if you chose it."
The white fingers still ran idly over the keys, breaking into a
plaintive prelude at last, and in a voice, "low and sweet" as Annie
Laurie's own, the song began. The words were those of a gifted young
American poetess; the melody, a low sweet air, in a melancholy minor
key--Miss Rose's own, perhaps.
The sweet voice faltered a little toward the close; but as a buzz of
congratulation ran around the circle she arose hastily. Arose to find
herself face to face with two gentlemen who had entered as she began her
song, and who had stood silently listening with the rest. It was Captain
Cavendish and Val; and the young officer's face wore a look no one in
that room had ever seen it wear before--a pale and startled look of
anxiety, almost of fear--and as she faced them he backed a few paces
involuntarily. Miss Rose, evidently taken completely by surprise,
started visibly, growing white and red by turns. But Val was introducing
them, and only he and one other present saw the changing faces of the
twain. That other was Miss Catty Clowrie, whose eyes were as keen as any
other cat's, and who watched them furtively, with vividest interest.
Miss Catty was enough of a mathematician to know there is no effect
without a cause. What, then, was the cause of this? It was easily enough
answered. Captain Cavendish and Miss Rose had met before, and had known
each other well, though they were now bowing as perfect strangers. The
elegant officer had recovered all his high-bred sangfroid, and was
smooth and bland as sweet oil; but Miss Rose's face had settled into so
deadly a pallor that Mrs. Marsh, albeit not the most eagle-sighted in
the world, noticed it.
"Dear me, Miss Rose, how pale you are! Aren't you well?"
Miss Rose murmured something about the heat, and subsided into the most
shadowy corner she could find; and Charley created a diversion by
sitting down to the piano himself and rattling off a jingling symphony.
In the midst of it carriage wheels rolled up to the door of No. 16, and
the first-floor bell rang loudly a minute after.
"That's Natty," said Charley.
Miss Jo met her in the hall and escorted her to her bedroom, which was
the dressing-room for the evening; and presently Miss Nathalie came in,
dressed in black silk, trimmed with black lace, and all her beautiful
golden hair falling in glittering ringlets over her shoulders, her
cheeks glowing with the rapid ride through the night air. Brilliant she
looked; and Captain Cavendish's heart, or whatever the thing is that
does duty for a heart with men of the world, quickened its beating a
little, as he shook hands. Nathalie kissed Miss Rose, sitting so very
still in her quiet corner.
"My pale little girl! Here you sit like a white shadow, all by yourself.
Charley, what on earth are you shouting there?"
"Now, Natty, it's your turn," said Miss Jo.
"Here's the cards," said Charley, laying hold of a pack. "While Natty's
singing we'll play 'Muggins.' Does anybody here know 'Muggins'?"
Nobody did.
"What a disgrace! Then I'll teach you. Miss Jo, I'll sit beside you.
Come along, captain; here Laura, Catty, Val, mother; Miss Rose, won't
you join us?"
"Don't, Miss Rose," said Natty, who was playing a waltz. "They're
nothing but a noisy set. Come here and sing with me."
Natty sung everything--Italian arias, French chansonettes, German and
Scotch ballads; her full, rich soprano voice filling the room with
melody, as on Sundays it filled the long cathedral aisles. Natty's voice
was superb--Miss Rose listened like one entranced. So did another,
Captain Cavendish, who made all sorts of blunders in the game, and could
not learn it at all, for watching the two black figures at the
piano--the little pale girl with the modest brown braids, and the
stately heiress with her shining yellow curls. Catty Clowrie watched
them and the captain, and the game too, noting everything, and making no
mistakes. A very noisy party they were, every one laughing,
expostulating, and straining their voices together, and Charley winning
everything right and left.
"I say, Cavendish, old fellow! what are you thinking of?" cried Val.
"This is the third time I've told you to play."
Captain Cavendish started into recollection, and began playing with the
wildest rapidity, utterly at random.
"Look here, Natty," called Charley, as the card-party, more noisy than
ever, broke up; "I say it's not fair of you to monopolize Miss Rose all
the evening. Here's Captain Cavendish has lost all his spare change,
because he couldn't watch the game for watching that piano."
Miss Rose retreated hastily to her corner; Natty wheeled round on the
piano-stool.
"What noise you have been making. Have you finished your game?"
Charley jingled a pocketful of pennies--Speckport pennies at that--as
large as quoits.
"Yes, we have finished, for the simple reason I have cleaned the whole
party completely out, and I have won small change enough to keep me in
cigars for the next two months. Who's this?"
"It's somebody for me," said Natty, starting up; "that's Rob Nettleby's
knock."
"Don't go yet, Natty," said Val, "it is too early."
"It is half-past ten; I should have been off half an hour ago. Miss
Blake, my things, please."
Miss Jo produced a white cloud and large cloak, and Natty's move was a
signal for all to depart. Catty, Laura, Miss Rose, and Mrs. Marsh's
mufflings had to be got, and the little parlor was a scene of "confusion
worse confounded."
Val strolled over to where Captain Cavendish was making himself useful,
helping Miss Marsh on with her cloak.
"Natty, I'll go home with you, if you like," said polite Val; "it will
be rather a dismal drive up there with no one but Rob Nettleby."
"Mr. Blake is forestalled," said Captain Cavendish, coolly. "Miss Marsh
has accorded the honor to me."
"All right," said Val, "I'll go home with Laura Blair, then. Charley can
take care of the other three, for Catty lives next door."
Lady Leroy's carryall, with Cherrie Nettleby's elder brother for driver,
was waiting at the door. Good-byes were said, Natty kissed her mamma,
Laura and Miss Rose, but only shook hands with Miss Clowrie. Captain
Cavendish noticed the omission as he seated himself beside her, and they
drove off.
"I don't like her," said Natty; "I never did, since I was a child. She
was such a crafty, cunning little thing in those days--a sort of spy on
the rest of us--a sort of female Uriah Heep."
"Is she so still?"
"Oh, no; she is well enough now; but old prejudices cling to one, you
know. I don't like her, because I don't like her--an excellent female
reason, you understand."
"Does your brother share your prejudices, Miss Marsh?" asked the young
officer, with a meaning smile.
"Charley? I don't know. Why?"
"Because I fancy the young lady is rather disposed to regard him with
favor. I may be mistaken, though."
Natty suddenly drew herself up.
"I think you are mistaken, Captain Cavendish. Catty Clowrie has sense,
whatever else she may lack, and never would dream of so preposterous a
thing."
"Pardon! it has been my mistake, then. You seem to be all old friends in
this place."
"Oh," said Natty, with her gay laugh, "every one knows every one else in
Speckport, and a stranger is a marked being at once. Apropos of
strangers, what a perfect darling that Miss Rose is."
"How very young-ladylike! Miss Rose does not sound like a family name;
has she no other cognomen?"
"Her letter to me was signed W. Rose. I don't know what the 'W' is for.
I think she has the sweetest face I ever saw."
"What a lovely night it is?" was Captain Cavendish's somewhat irrelevant
answer; and had the moon been shining, Natty might have seen the flush
his face wore. Perhaps it was the sea-breeze, though; for it was blowing
up fresh and bracing, and a host of stars spangled a sky of cloudless
blue. The monotonous plash of the waves on the shore came dully booming
over the rattle of their own carriage-wheels.
"What are the wild waves saying? Miss Rose and I have a bond of sympathy
between us: we both love the sea. I suppose," said Natty, going off into
another subject, "Mrs. Leroy will read me a lecture for my long stay,
when I get back."
"Will she not be asleep?"
"Asleep? No, indeed; I believe if I staid out for a week she would never
close an eye until I got back."
"Is she so very fond of you, then?"
"It is not that; though I think she is as fond of me as it is in her
nature to be of anything, except," with another laugh, "eating and
money. It is fear that keeps her awake; she dreads being left alone."
"Why? Not from an evil conscience, I trust."
"For shame, sir. No, she always keeps a large sum of money in her
chamber--you saw that queer cabinet--well, in that; and she is terribly
scared of robbers, in spite of all our bolts and bars."
"She should not keep it about her, then."
"Very true; but she will. I sleep in the room next hers, and I presume
she feels my presence there a sort of safeguard against burglars. In
Midge she has no confidence whatever."
"And yet I should consider Midge the greatest possible safeguard. The
sight of her might scare away an army of robbers."
"Now, now!" cried Natty. "I shall not have Midge abused. She is the most
faithful and trustworthy creature that ever lived."
"Perhaps so; but you will own that she is not the most lovely. When I
was a boy at Eton, I used to read German legends of beautiful
princesses guarded by malignant spirits, in uncouth human forms. I
thought of the stories this morning when I was at Redmon."
"That's a compliment, I suppose," said Natty, "but I don't relish
compliments, I can tell you, at Midge's expense. Here we are at the
cottage."
"What cottage is it?" Captain Cavendish asked, forgetting suddenly that
he had spent half an hour there that very morning.
"The Nettlebys. The father is our gardener; the sons, the whole family,
make themselves useful about the place, all but Cherrie, who is more for
ornament than use. Here we are at Redmon, and there is the light burning
in Mrs. Leroy's window."
"Does it burn all night?" he asked, looking up at it.
"No; it is a beacon for me. I must go to her room the first thing now,
give an account of myself, and extinguish it. Good-night; I hope you
will enjoy your solitary journey back."
"I shall have pleasant thoughts of a lady fair to keep me company. Are
you sure you can get in?"
"Midge is opening the door now; once more, good-night."
Waving her hand to him, she was gone while she spoke. Midge stood
blinking in the doorway, holding a candle above her head, which tar-mop
was now tied up in a red flannel petticoat.
She shaded her eyes with her hand, peering out at the tall figure in the
loose overcoat; and when she made sure of his identity, slamming the
door to with a bang that left no doubt of her feelings toward him.
"Midge, why did you do that?" Natty said, reprovingly.
"Because I never want to see his wicked face here, Miss Natty; that's
why!" cried Midge, shrilly; "and I don't want to see him with you, for
he is a villain, and he will turn out one, if he was ten officers, ten
times over."
But Natty was flying up the polished stairs with a new happiness at her
heart, singing as she went a snatch of "Love's Young Dream."
CHAPTER VII.
TOO MANY IRONS IN THE FIRE.
Mr. Val Blake was a young gentleman possessing a great many admirable
virtues, among others the fearful one of always saying what he thought.
Another, not quite so terrible to society, was that of early rising. The
sun, whenever that luminary condescended to show its face in Speckport,
which wasn't so very often, never found him in bed, either winter or
summer. Val might be up until two o'clock in the office, as he sometimes
was in busy seasons, such as election times, but that never prevented
his rising at half-past four the next morning, as bright as a new penny.
Val had escorted Miss Laura Blair home from his sister's little
sociable--not only escorted her home, in fact, but had gone in with her.
It was past eleven then, but Papa Blair had invited him to blow a
friendly cloud, and Val had accepted the invitation. There they sat,
smoking and talking politics until after one, and it was half-past when
he got back to No. 16 Great St. Peter's Street; but for all that, here
he was next morning at the hour of six, coming striding along the
sea-shore, a pipe in his mouth, and a towel in his hand. Val had been
taking a sea-bath, his invariable custom every fine morning, from the
first of May to the last of October, to the alarming increase of his
appetite for breakfast. There were few to be met on the sand, at that
hour, except in the fishing seasons; and the fishermen not being in yet
from the night's work, the shore was entirely deserted. The editor of
the Speckport Gazette had not the shore all to himself after all; for,
as he passed a jutting bowlder, he came in view of a fluttering figure
walking slowly on before. The black dress waving in the breeze, the
slender form in the long black mantle, the little straw hat, and the
brown braid were familiar by this time.
Miss Rose, the pretty little school-teacher, was taking an early
constitutional as well as himself, with a book for her only companion.
Val's long legs were beginning to measure off the sand in vast strides,
to join her, when he was forestalled most unexpectedly. Starting up from
behind a tall rock, in whose shadow on the warm sand he had been lying,
his hat pulled over his eyes to protect him from the sun, a gentleman
came forward, lifted his hat, and accosted her. Val knew the gentleman
quite as well as he did the lady, and stopped. At the sound of his voice
coming so suddenly, she had recoiled with a suppressed cry, but at sight
of whom it was, she stood perfectly still, as if transfixed.
There was a path up the hillside--the very path Captain Cavendish had
been shown by the young Nettlebys the day before. Val turned up this,
with his hands in his pockets, and his mind in a state of soliloquy.
"I'm not wanted, I expect; so I'll keep clear! There's something queer
about this--they were both taken aback last night, were they not? She's
a pretty little thing, and he's been in Montreal, I know; was quartered
there before he was ordered to Halifax. I suppose it's the old story--he
always was a flirt, and his handsome face sets the girls loony wherever
he goes. Miss Rose looks sensible, but I dare say she's as bad as the
rest."
Val's suspicions might have become certainty had he been listening to
the conversation of the young officer and the little school-teacher; but
there was no one to listen, except the waves and the wind, and the
seagulls clanging over their heads.
"Winnie!" Captain Cavendish was hurriedly saying, "I knew you would be
here, and I have been waiting for the past half hour. No, do not go!
Pray stay and hear me out."
"I must go!" Miss Rose said, in a violent tremor and agitation. "You
have nothing to say to me, Captain Cavendish. I cannot be seen here with
you."
"There is no one to see us--the shore is deserted! Winnie! you must
stay."
She had turned to go; but he caught her hand, his own face pale as hers
had turned.
"Let go my hand, sir!" she cried, in so peremptory a tone that he
dropped it at once; "every word you speak to me is an insult! Let me
go!"
"Only one moment, Winnie."
Again she interposed, her eyes quite flashing.
"Have the goodness, Captain Cavendish, to be a little less familiar; to
cease calling me Winnie."
"What shall I call you, then?" he said, with a strange look, "Miss
Rose?"
She turned away, and made a little passionate gesture with her hand.
"You have no right to call me anything--to speak to me at all! I do not
know what evil fate has driven us together here; but if you have one
feeling of honor, Captain Cavendish, you will leave me in peace--you
will let me alone. My lot is not such a happy one that you should wish
to destroy the little comfort I have left."
Her voice choked and something fell on her book and wet it. The face of
the English officer looked strangely moved for him.
"Heaven knows, Winnie, I have no desire to disturb it; I have been a
villain--we both know that--but destiny was against me. I am poor; I am
in debt--I was then--what could I do?"
"Will you let me go?" was her answer, without turning her averted face
to him.
"Am I, then, utterly hateful to you?" he asked, with some bitterness.
"You have soon forgotten the past, but I deserve it! I do not ask what
chain of circumstances brought you here; I only ask, being here, that
you will not reveal the story of--of what is past and gone. Will you
promise me this, Winnie?"
"What right have you to ask any promise of me?" she demanded, her gentle
voice full of indignation.
"Very little, I know; but still, I want the promise, Winnie, for your
own sake, as well as for me."
"I am not likely to tell; the story of one's own folly is not too
pleasant to repeat. And now, in return, Captain Cavendish, I want, I
demand, a promise from you! We met last night as strangers, as strangers
let us meet henceforth. Go your own way. I shall not molest you, never
fear; and be generous enough to grant me the same favor. My life is to
be one of hard work. I do not regret that. Let me find happiness in my
own way, and do not disturb me any more."
"And it has all come to this!" he said, moodily, looking out over the
wide sea. "Well, Winnie, let it be as you wish, only I never thought you
could be so unforgiving."
"I have forgiven long ago; I want to try and forget as well!"
She walked rapidly away. Only once had she looked at him all the
time--after that first glance of recognition, her face had been averted.
Captain Cavendish watched her out of sight, took two or three turns up
and down the sand, and then strolled away to his lodgings. His rooms
were in the Speckport House, fronting on Queen Street; and after
disposing of his beefsteak and coffee with a very good appetite, he
seated himself near an open window, to smoke no end of cigars and watch
the passers-by.
A great many passers-by there were, and nearly all strangers to him; but
presently, two young men went strutting past, arm-in-arm, and, chancing
to look at his window, lifted their hats in passing. A sudden thought
seemed to flash through the officer's mind as he saw them, and, seizing
his hat, he started out after them. It was young McGregor and Charley
Marsh, and he speedily overtook them.
"I have been sitting there for over half an hour," he said, taking
Charley's other arm, familiarly, "watching society go by, and you two
were the first I knew. Being tired of my own company, I thought I would
join you. Have a cigar?"
"You find Speckport rather slow, I suppose?" said Charley, lighting his
weed. "I should myself, if I had nothing to do."
"Oh, I am used to it; and," with a droll look, "I have discovered there
is more than one pill to kill time, even in Speckport."
"Already! where do you mean?"
"Prince Street, for instance."
Charley laughed, and young McGregor smiled.
"You go there, do you? Well, I have lived all my life in Speckport, but
I have never set foot over the threshold you mean, yet."
"Nor I," said young McGregor. "By George, wouldn't the old man look
half-a-dozen ways at once if he thought I would dare look at it twice."
There was a smile on Captain Cavendish's face, half of amusement, half
of contempt.
"I am going there now, and was about asking you to accompany me for an
hour's amusement. Come on, better late than never."
Charley hesitated, coloring and laughing, but McGregor caught at the
invitation at once.
"I say, Marsh, let us go! I've always wanted to go there, but never had
a chance without the governor finding it out, and kicking up the deuce
of a row!"
"I have the entree," said Captain Cavendish; "no one will be the wiser,
and if they should, what matter? It is only to kill time, after all."
But still Charley hesitated, half laughing, half tempted, half
reluctant. "That is all very well from Captain Cavendish, nephew of a
baronet, and with more money than he knows what to do with; but it's of
no use going to that place with empty pockets, and medical students, it
is proverbial, never have anything to spare. No, I think you must hold
me excused."
"Oh, confound it, Charley," exclaimed McGregor, impatiently, "I'll lend
you whatever you want. Fetch him along, captain; what he says is only
gammon."
"Perhaps," said the captain, with a cynical smile, "Mr. Marsh has
conscientious scruples--some people have, I am told. If so----"
He did not finish the sentence, but the smile deepened. That mocking
smile did more to overthrow Charley's resolution than any words could
have done. He turned at once in the direction of Prince Street: "The
only scruples I know anything about relate to weights and measures, and
I believe these are in a dram. I have a couple of hours before dinner;
so until then, I am at your service, captain."
The trio turned into Prince Street--a quiet street, with staid rows of
white houses, and only one of any pretension, at one of its quiet
corners. Captain Cavendish ran up the steps, with the air of a man
perfectly at home, opened the outer door and rang the bell. There were
few people passing, but Charley and McGregor glanced uneasily about
them, before going in, and closed the street door after them with some
precipitation.
Charley had told the captain he was at his service for two hours, but
over four passed before the three issued forth again. Charley looked
flushed, excited, and in high spirits, so did Alick McGregor; but
Captain Cavendish, though laughing, was a trifle serious, too. "I had no
idea you were such an adept, Mr. Marsh," he was saying, "but you must
give me my revenge. Better luck next time."
"All right," said Charley, in his boyish way, "whenever you like, now
that the ice is broken. What do you say, Mac?"
"I'm your man. The sooner the better, as I intend keeping on until I
make a fortune on my own account. Would not the governor stare if he
knew the pile I made this morning."
As they passed into Queen Street, the town clock struck three. Charley
looked aghast.
"Three o'clock! I had no idea it was two. Won't they be wondering what
has become of me at home. I feel as though I should like my dinner."
"Dine with me," said the captain; "I ordered dinner at half-past three,
and we will be in the nick of time."
The two young Speckportians accepted the invitation, and the three went
up crowded Queen Street together.
Streaming down among the crowd came Miss Cherrie Nettleby. One
kid-gloved hand uplifted her silken robe, and displayed an elaborately
embroidered under-skirt to the admiring beholder; the other poised a
blue parasol; and, gorgeous to behold, Miss Nettleby flashed like a
meteor through Speckport. All the men spoke to her--all the women turned
up their fair noses and sailed by in delicate disdain. Charley blushed
vividly at sight of her.
"Don't blush, Charley," drawled young McGregor, "it's too
young-lady-like, but I suppose you can't help it any more than you can
being in love with her. Good afternoon, Miss Cherrie."
Miss Cherrie smiled graciously, made them a bow that ballooned her silk
skirt over the whole sidewalk, and sailed on. Charley looked as if he
should like to follow her, but that was next to impossible, so he walked
on.
"Cherrie comes out to show herself every afternoon," explained Alick;
"you don't know her, Captain Cavendish, do you?"
"I have seen her before, I think. A very pretty girl."
"Charley thinks so--don't you, old fellow? Half the young men in the
town are looney about her."
"I must make her acquaintance, then," said Captain Cavendish, running up
the hotel steps. "The girl that all are praising is just the girl for
me. This way, gentlemen."
While the triad sat over their dinner and dessert, Miss Nettleby did her
shopping--that is, she chatted with the good-looking clerks over the
counter, and swept past the old and ugly ones in silent contempt.
Cherrie was in no hurry; she had made up her mind before starting to go
through every drygoods store in Speckport, and kept her word. It was
growing dusk when the dress was finally bought, cut off, and paid for--a
bright pink ground, with a brighter pink sprig running through it.
"Shall we send it, Miss Nettleby?" insinuated the gentlemanly clerk,
tying it up with his most fascinating smile.
"Of course," said Cherrie, shaking out her skirts with an air; "Mr.
Nettleby's, Redmon Road. Good evening, Mr. Johnston."
Cherrie was soliloquizing as she gained the street.
"Now, I do wonder if he'll be home. They have tea at six, I know, and
it's only a quarter to six, now. I can say I want a book, and he'll be
sure to come home with me. I must see that new teacher."
Walking very fast Cherrie reached Cottage Street as the clocks of
Speckport were chiming six, and the laborers' bells ringing their
dismissal. Catty Clowrie was standing in her own doorway, but Cherrie
did not stop to speak, only nodded, and knocked at Mrs. Marsh's door.
Betsy Ann opened it and Cherrie walked into the sitting-room, where a
fire burned, warm as the afternoon had been, and Mrs. Marsh, with a
shawl about her and a novel in her hand, swayed to and fro in her
rocking-chair. Miss Rose in the parlor was trying her new piano, which
Natty had ordered that morning, and which had just come home.
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Marsh, looking up from the book and holding out her
hand, "is it you, Cherrie? How do you do? Sit down."
Cherrie did so.
"I've been out all the afternoon shopping for Miss Natty, and I thought
I would call here before I went home to ask you for another book. That
last one was real nice."
"Of course. What were you buying for Natty?"
"Oh, it was only a calico dress for Midge; it's being sent up. Mrs.
Marsh, who's that playing the piano?"
"That's Miss Rose, Natty's teacher. Have you seen her yet?"
"No. How nice she plays. Don't she?"
"She plays very well. And so you liked that last book--what's this it
was--'Regina,' wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Cherrie; "and oh, it was lovely. That earl was so nice, and
I liked Regina, too. What's that you're reading?"
"This is 'Queechy'--a very good story. Did you ever read 'The
Lamplighter?' I'll lend you that."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Cherrie. "It's getting late. I suppose I must
go."
"Stay for tea," said Mrs. Marsh, who liked Cherrie; "it's all ready,
and we are only waiting for Charley. I don't see where he's gone too; he
wasn't home to dinner, either."
"I saw him this afternoon," said Cherrie; "him and young McGregor and
Captain Cavendish were going up Queen Street."
"Was he? Perhaps they had dinner together there. How did you know
Captain Cavendish, Cherrie?"
"I saw him at Redmon. He was up all yesterday forenoon. I guess he is
after Miss Natty."
Mrs. Marsh smiled and settled her cap.
"Oh, I don't know. Take off your things, Cherrie, and stay for tea. It's
of no use waiting for Charley. Betsy Ann, bring us the teapot, and call
Miss Rose."
Cherrie laid aside her turban and lace, and was duly made acquainted
with Miss Rose. Cherrie had heard the new teacher was pretty, but she
had hoped she was not so very pretty as this, and a pang of jealousy
went through her vain little heart. She had stayed for tea, hoping
Charley would partake of that repast with them, and afterward escort her
home; but it commenced and was over, but that young gentleman did not
appear.
Miss Rose played after tea, and Cherrie lingered and lingered, under
pretense of being charmed; but it got dark, and still that provoking
Charley did not come. Cherrie could wait no longer, and a little cross
and a good deal disappointed, she arose to go.
"You will perish in that lace mantle," said Miss Rose, kindly. "You had
better wear my shawl; these spring nights are chilly."
Cherrie accepted the offer, rolled her lace up in a copy of the
"Speckport Spouter," and started on her homeward journey. The street
lamps were lit, the shop windows ablaze with illumination, and the cold,
keen stars were cleaving sharp and chill through the blue concave above.
A pale young crescent moon shone serene in their midst, but it might
have been an old oil-lamp for all Miss Nettleby cared, in her present
irate and vexed frame of mind. But there was balm in Gilead; a step was
behind her, a man's step, firm and quick; a tall form was making rapid
head-way in her direction. Cherrie looked behind, half frightened, but
there was no mistaking that commanding presence, that military stride,
in the handsome face with the thick black mustache, looking down upon
her. Cherrie's heart was bounding, but how was he to know that.
"I knew it was you, Cherrie," he said, familiarly. "Are you not afraid
to take so long and lonely a walk at this hour?"
"I couldn't help it," said Cherrie, all her good humor returning. "There
was no one to come with me. I was down at Mrs. Marsh's, and Charley
wasn't home."
"I don't want you to go to Mrs. Marsh's, and I am glad Charley wasn't
home."
"I didn't go to see Charley," said Cherrie, coquettishly. "I wanted a
book, and I wanted to see Miss Rose. Do you know where Charley is?"
"He is up at Redmon."
"And you are going there, too, I suppose."
"I am going to see you home, just now. Let me carry that parcel,
Cherrie, and don't walk so fast. There's no hurry, now that I am with
you. Cherrie, you looked like an angel this afternoon, in Queen Street."
As we do not generally picture angelic beings in shot silks and blue
parasols, not to speak of turban hats, it is to be presumed Captain
Cavendish's ideas on the subject must have been somewhat vague. Cherrie
obeyed his injunction not to hurry, and it was an hour before they
reached the cottage.
Captain Cavendish declined going in, but stood in the shadow of the
trees, opposite the house, tattling to her for another half hour, then
shook hands, and went to Lady Leroy's, where he and Charley and Mr.
Blake were to spend the evening.
Val and Charley were there before him, the former having but just
entered. The captain had not seen Val, but Val had seen the captain, and
watched him now with a comical look, playing the devoted to Nathalie.
In Mrs. Leroy's mansion there was no lack of rooms--Natty had two to
herself--sleeping-room adjoining the old lady's, and a parlor adjoining
that. It was in this parlor Natty received her own friends and
visitors, and there the three gentlemen were now. Natty's rooms were the
only light and cheerful ones in the vast, gloomy old house, and Natty
had fitted them up at her own expense. Delicate paper on the walls;
pretty drawings and landscapes, in water-colors, the work of her own
artistic fingers, hung around; a lounge, cushioned in chintz; an
arm-chair, cushioned in the same; attractive trifles of all sorts,
books, a work-table, and an old piano--made the apartment quite pleasant
and home-like. The only thing it wanted was a fire; for it was
essentially a bleak house, full of draughts--but a fire in any room save
her own was a piece of extravagance Lady Leroy would not hear of. So the
gentlemen sat in their overcoats; and Lady Leroy, who had been wheeled
in, in her arm-chair, looked more like an Egyptian mummy than ever.
Midge sat behind her, on her hunkers, if you know what that is; her
elbows on her knees, her chin between her hands, glaring balefully on
Captain Cavendish, making himself fascinating to her young mistress. If
that gallant young officer had ever heard the legend of the Evil Eye, he
might have thought of it then, with Midge's malignant regards upon him.
Lady Leroy, who dearly loved gossip, was chattering like a superannuated
magpie to Val and Charley. Mr. Blake was giving her what he knew of the
captain's history.
"His uncle," said Val, "is a baronet--a Yorkshire baronet at that--and
Captain Cavendish is next heir to the title. Meantime, he has nothing
but his pay, which would be enough for any reasonable man, but isn't a
tithe to him."
"And he wants a rich wife," said Lady Leroy, with a spiteful glance over
at him. "Ah! I see what he's coming after. Natty!"
"Ma'am!" said Natty, looking up, and still laughing at some anecdote
Captain Cavendish had been relating.
"What are you laughing at?" she said, sharply.
"Only at a story I have been listening to! Do you want anything?"
"Yes. Go into my room and see what time it is."
"We bring Time with us," said Mr. Blake, producing a watch as big as a
small football; "it's five minutes to nine."
"Then it's my bedtime! Natty, go and make me my punch. Midge, wheel me
in, and warm the bed. Young men, it's time for you to go."
Captain Cavendish and Val exchanged an amused glance and arose. Charley
stepped forward and laid his hand on the arm-chair.
"I'll wheel you in, Mrs. Leroy. Stand clear, Midge, or the train will
run into you. Go ahead, fellows, I'll be after you."
"You must not mind Mrs. Leroy's eccentricities, you know," said Natty,
shaking hands shyly and wistfully at the front door with the captain.
"Mr. Blake is quite used to it, and thinks nothing of it."
"Think better of me, Miss Marsh. I do not mind her brusqueness any more
than he does; in proof whereof I shall speedily pay my respects at
Redmon again. Good night!"
"Tell Charley to overtake us. Good night, Natty!" called Val, striding
down the moon-lit avenue, and out into the road.
Captain Cavendish lit a cigar, handed another to his companion, took his
arm and walked along, thinking. The Nettleby cottage was in a state of
illumination, as they passed it; and the shrieks of an accordion,
atrociously played, and somebody singing a totally different air, and
shouts of laughter, mingling together, came noisily to their listening
ears. Val nodded toward it.
"Cherrie holds a levee every night--the house is full now. Will you come
in? 'All the more the merrier,' is the motto there."
"No," said the captain, shrinking fastidiously; "I have no fancy for
making one in Miss Cherrie's menagerie."
"Does the objection extend to Miss Cherrie herself?" asked Mr. Blake,
puffing energetically.
"What do I know of Miss Cherrie?"
"Can't say, only I should suppose you found out something while seeing
her home an hour ago, and standing making love to her under the trees
afterward."
Captain Cavendish took out his cigar and looked at him.
"Where were you?"
"Coming through the rye--I mean the fields. The next time you try it on,
take a more secluded spot, my dear fellow, than the queen's highroad!"
"Oh, hang it!" exclaimed the young officer, impatiently; "it seems to
me, Blake, you see more than you have any business to do. Suppose I did
talk to the little girl. I met her on the road alone. Could I do less
than escort her home?"
"Look here," said Val, "there is an old saying, 'If you have too many
irons in the fire, some of them must cool.' Now, that's your case
exactly. You have too many irons in the fire."
"I don't understand."
"Don't you? Here it is, then! This morning, bright and early, I saw you
promenading the shore with Miss Rose. This evening, I saw you making up
to Cherrie Nettleby; and, ten minutes ago, you were as sweet as
sugar-candy on Natty Marsh. No man can be in love with three women at
once, without getting into trouble. Therefore, take a friend's advice,
and drop two of them."
"Which two?"
"That's your affair. Please yourself."
"Precisely what I mean to do; and now, Val, old boy, keep your own
counsel; there's no harm done, and there will be none. A man cannot help
being polite to a pretty girl--it's nature, you know; and, dear old
fellow, don't see so much, if you can help it. It is rather annoying,
and will do neither of us any good."
Perhaps Captain Cavendish would have been still more annoyed had he
known Val was not the only witness of that little flirtation with
Cherrie. As that young lady, when he left her, after watching him out
of sight, was about crossing the road to go into the house, a voice
suddenly called, "Hallo, Cherrie! How are you?"
Cherrie looked up greatly astonished, for the voice came from above her
head. Was it the voice of a spirit?--if so, the spirit must have a
shocking bad cold in the head, and inclined to over-familiarity at that.
The voice came again, and still from above.
"I say, Cherrie! You put in a pretty long stretch of courting that time!
I like to see you cutting out the rest of the Speckport girls, and
getting that military swell all to yourself."
Cherrie beheld the speaker at last; and a very substantial spirit he
was, perched up on a very high branch of a tree, his legs dangling about
in the atmosphere, and his hands stuck in his trowsers.
"Lor!" cried Miss Nettleby, quite startled, "if it ain't that Bill
Blair! I declare I took it for a ghost!"
Bill kicked his heels about in an ecstasy.
"Oh, crickey! Wasn't it prime! I ain't heard anything like it this month
of Sundays. Can't he keep company stunning, Cherrie? I say, Charley's
dished, ain't he, Cherrie?"
"How long have you been up there, you young imp?" asked Cherrie, her
wrath rising.
"Long enough to hear every word of it! Don't be mad, Cherrie--Oh, no, I
never mentions it, its name is never heard--honor bright, you know."
"Oh, if I had you here," cried Miss Nettleby, looking viciously up at
him, "wouldn't I box your ears for you!"
"Oh, no, you wouldn't!" said Bill, swinging about. "How was I to know
when I roosted up here that you were going to take a whack at courting
over there. I was going over to Jim Tod's, and, feeling tired, I got up
here to rest. I say, Cherrie? would you like to hear a secret?"
Cherrie would like nothing better, only before he told it, she would
rather he got down. It gave her the fidgets to look at him up there.
Bill got lazily down accordingly.
"Now, what's the secret?" asked the young lady.
"It's this," replied the young gentleman. "Do you know who Captain
Cavendish happens to be?"
"I know he's an Englishman," said Cherrie; "all the officers are that."
"Yes; but you don't know who his folks are, I bet."
"No. Who are they? Very rich, I suppose?"
"Rich!" exclaimed Mr. Blair, contemptuously. "I say, Cherrie, you won't
tell, will you? It's a secret."
"Of course not, stupid. Go on."
"Say, 'pon your word and honor."
"'Pon my word! Now go on."
"Well, then," said Bill, in a mysterious whisper, "he's--Queen
Victoria's--eldest--son!"
"What!"
"I told you it was a secret, and it is. I heard him telling my
boss--Blake, you know, and they didn't think I was listening. Queen
Victoria, when she was a young woman, was married secretly to a duke,
the Duke of Cavendish, and had one son. When her folks found it
out--jimminy! wasn't there a row, and the Duke was beheaded for high
treason, and she was married to Prince Albert. Now, you'll never tell,
will you, Cherrie?"
"Never!" answered Cherrie, breathlessly. "Well?"
"Well, Captain Cavendish was brought up private, and is the right heir
to the throne; and he expects his mother to leave it to him in her will
when she dies, instead of the Prince of Wales. Now, if he marries you,
Cherrie, and I am pretty sure he will before long--then you are Queen of
England at once."
"Now, Billy Blair," said Cherrie, puzzled whether to believe his solemn
face or not, "I do believe you're telling lies."
"It's true as preaching, I tell you. Didn't I hear 'em with my own ears.
That chap's sure to be King of England some day, and when you're queen,
Cherrie, send for Bill Blair to be your prime-minister. And now I must
go--good night."
CHAPTER VIII.
VAL TURNS MENTOR.
Miss Nathalie Marsh was not the only person in existence who took a
violent fancy to the pretty, pale little school-mistress, Miss Rose.
Before the end of the month, Speckport pronounced her perfection;
though, to do Speckport justice, it was not greatly given to overpraise.
Indeed, it was a common saying with the inhabitants that Speckport would
find fault with an archangel, did one of these celestial spirits think
fit to alight there, and the very person most vehement in this assertion
would have been the first in the backbiting. Yet Speckport praised Miss
Rose, and said their Johnnys and Marys had never get on so fast in their
A B abs, before, and the little ones themselves chanted her praises with
all their hearts. If she appeared in the streets, they rushed headlong
to meet her, sure of a smile for their pains. They brought her flowers
every morning, and a reproachful look was the severest punishment known
in the schoolroom. The old women dropped their courtesies; the old men
pronounced her the nicest young woman they had seen for many a day, and
the young men--poor things! fell in love.
There was some one else winning golden opinions, but not from all sorts
of people. Only from young ladies, who were ready to tear each other's
dear little eyes out, if it could have helped the matter: and the man
was Captain George Cavendish. Speckport was proud to have him at its
parties; for was he not to be a baronet some day? and was his family in
England, their Alma Mater, not as old as the hills, and older? But he
was an expensive luxury. Their daughters fell in love with him, and
their sons spent their money frightfully fast with him; and all sons or
daughters got in return were fascinating smiles, courtly bows, and
gallant speeches. He was not a marrying man, that was evident; and yet
he did seem rather serious with Nathalie Marsh. Miss Marsh was the
handsomest girl in Speckport; she would be the richest, and she was for
certain the only one that ever had a grandfather--that is, to speak of:
in the course of nature they all had, perhaps; but the grandfathers were
less than nobody--peddlers, rag-men, and fish-hawkers. But her father
and grandfather had been gentlemen born; and it is well to have good
blood in one's veins, even on one side. So the young ladies hated Miss
Marsh, and were jealous of each other; and that high-stepping young
heiress laughed in their face, and walked and talked, and rode and
sailed, and sang and danced with Captain Cavendish, and triumphed over
them like a princess born.
It was June, and very hot. Speckport was being grilled alive, and the
dust flew in choking simooms.
Cool through all the heat, Captain Cavendish walked up Queen Street in
the broiling noonday sun. Charley Marsh and Alick McGregor walked on
either side of him, like that other day on which they had met Cherrie;
and Charley's face was flushed and clouded, and young McGregor's drawn
down to a most lugubrious length. They had just come from Prince
Street--an every-day resort now; and Charley and McGregor seldom left it
of that late without clouded expression. Captain Cavendish was laughing
at them both.
"All in the downs!" he cried; "nonsense, Marsh. One would think you were
ruined for life."
"I soon shall be at this rate. I owe you a small fortune now."
"Only fifty pounds," said the captain, as carelessly as if it were fifty
pence, "a mere trifle."
"And I owe you twice as much," said young McGregor, with a sort of
groan; "won't there be the dickens to pay when it's found out at home."
"Don't let them find it out, then," said Captain Cavendish, in the same
off-hand manner.
"That's easily said. How am I to help it?"
"Your father has a check-book--help yourself."
"That would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs," said
Charley. "Let the old man find that out and good-bye to Alick's chance
of ever seeing Prince Street again. Here are my quarters--no use asking
you in to hear the row old Leach will make at my delay, I suppose."
He nodded, with his own careless laugh, and entered the office of Doctor
Leach. Captain Cavendish looked at his watch.
"Half-past eleven! I believe I owe your people a call, McGregor; so _en
avant_!"
Miss Jeannette McGregor was at home, and received the captain and her
brother in her boudoir, a charming little room, with velvet-pile carpet,
gilding, and ormolu, and medallion pictures of celebrated beauties set
in the oval paneled walls. A copy of Longfellow, all gold and azure, was
in her hand; she had once heard Captain Cavendish express his admiration
of the great American poet; and having seen her brother and he coming up
the front steps, she had arranged this little tableau expressly for the
occasion. If there was one young lady in all Speckport who more than
another sincerely hated Nathalie Marsh, or more sincerely admired
Captain Cavendish, that one was Miss McGregor. She had long been jealous
of Natty's beauty, but now she detested her with an honest earnestness
that, I think, only women ever feel. She kissed her whenever they met;
she invited her to every party they gave; she made calls at Redmon: and
she hated her all the time, and could have seen her laid in her coffin
with the greatest pleasure. It is a very common case, my brethren; Judas
Iscariot was not a woman, but kisses after his fashion are very popular
among the gentler sex.
"Evangeline," said Captain Cavendish, taking up her book; "I always
liked that, but never half so well as since I came to Speckport."
"Because you saw Miss Marsh in the character," said Jeannette, laughing,
as young ladies must, in these cases.
"Miss Marsh took her character very well, but that is not the only
reason why I shall long remember that night."
A glance accompanied this speech that brought a glow to Miss McGregor's
cheek and a flutter to her heart. Captain Cavendish was a clever man. He
had more irons in the fire than even Val knew of, and allowed none of
them to cool; and it does take a clever man to make love discreetly to
half-a-dozen women at once.
"Natty looked stunning that night," put in Alick; "she is the handsomest
girl in Speckport."
"You think so--we all know that," said Jeannette, flashing a spiteful
glance at him; "you have been making a simpleton of yourself about her
for the last two years. Why don't you propose at once."
"Because she wouldn't have me," blurted honest Alick; "I wish to heaven
she would! I would soon do the popping."
"Faint heart never won fair lady; take courage and try," said the
captain.
Jeannette looked at him with her most taking smile.
"Are you quite sincere in that, Captain Cavendish?"
"Quite! Why not?"
"Oh, nothing! Only rumor says you are going to carry a Bluenose bride
back to Merrie England."
"Perhaps I may. You are a Bluenose, are you not, Miss Jeannette?"
Before Jeannette could answer, a sort of shout from Alick, who was at
the window, took their attention. Miss McGregor looked languidly over.
"Oh, how noisy you are! What is it, pray?"
The door-bell rang loudly.
"It's Natty herself and Laura Blair. You ought to have seen Natty
driving up, captain; she handles the ribbons in tiptop style, and that
black mare of Blair's is no joke to drive."
Before he had finished speaking, the door opened, and a servant showed
in the two young ladies. Miss Jeannette sprang up with the utmost
effusion, and kissed each on both cheeks.
"You darling Natty! It is ages since you were here. Laura, how good it
is of you to fetch her! for I know it must have been you."
"So it was," said Laura, shaking hands with Captain Cavendish. "I
haven't time, I haven't time, is always her cry. I tell her there will
be time when we are all dead--won't there, captain?"
"I presume so, unless at the loss of Miss Laura Blair the whole economy
of creation blows up with a crash."
"And so you see," said Laura, sitting down on a chair, and flirting out
her skirts all around her, "I drove up to Redmon this morning, with a
great basketful of English strawberries the size of crab-apples, as a
coaxer to Lady Leroy; and through their eloquence, and the promise of
another, got her to let Natty come to town with me on business."
"On business;" said Captain Cavendish; "that means shopping."
"No, sir, it doesn't; it means something serious, and that you must take
share in. You, too, Jeannette, and you, Alick, if we run short."
"Thank you," said Alick, "what is it?"
"Why, you know," began Miss Blair, with the air of one about entering
upon a story, "there's that Mrs. Hill--you know her, Alick?"
"What! the wife of the pilot who was drowned in the storm last week?"
"That's the one," nodded Laura. "Well, she's poor--Oh, dear me! ever so
poor, and her two children down in the measles, and herself half dead
with rheumatism. I shouldn't have known a thing about it only for Miss
Rose. I do declare Miss Rose is next door to an angel; she found her
out, and did lots of things for her, and told me at last how poor she
was, and asked me to send her some things. So then I made up this plan."
"What plan?" inquired Jeannette, as Laura stopped for want of breath,
and Nathalie sat listening with an amused look.
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, we're going to have a play, and every one
of us turn into actors; admission, half a dollar. Won't it be grand?"
"And the play is Laura's own," said Nathalie; "nothing less than the
adventures of Telemachus dramatized."
"That is delightful," said Jeannette, with sparkling eyes. "Have I a
part, Laura?"
"To be sure, and so has Natty, and myself, and Captain Cavendish, and
Val Blake, and Charley Marsh, and as many more as we want. The new wing
that pa has built to our house is just finished, and, being unfurnished,
will make a lovely theater. Only a select number of tickets will be
issued, and the place is sure to be crowded. The proceeds will be a
little fortune to Mrs. Hill."
"You should have given Miss Rose a part, as she was the head of it,"
suggested Alick.
"She wouldn't have it. I tried hard enough, but she was resolute. She is
such a timid little thing, you know, and she would make a lovely nymph,
too."
"What part have you assigned me?" inquired Captain Cavendish.
"Being a soldier and a hero, you are Ulysses, of course; Charley is
Telemachus; Val is Mentor--fancy Val with flowing white hair and beard,
like an old nanny-goat. Jeannette, you will be Calypso; Natty will take
Eucharis; I, Penelope. I wanted Miss Rose to be Eucharis--the part would
have suited her so well."
"I don't believe it would come natural to Charley to make love to her,"
said Alick; "he'll have to, won't he, if he is Telemachus?"
"You must change the casts, Miss Blair," said the captain, decidedly.
"If Telemachus is to do the love-making, I must be Telemachus. Mr. Marsh
and I must change."
"You would make such a nice Ulysses," said Laura, meditatingly, while
Nathalie blushed; "but please yourself. You must all spend the evening
at our house, and when the whole _dramatis personæ_ are gathered, we can
discuss and settle the thing for good, fix the rehearsal and the night
of the play. Don't fail to come."
"You need not be in a hurry," said Jeannette, as Laura rose and was
sailing off; "stay for luncheon."
"Couldn't possibly--promised to leave Natty back safe and sound in an
hour, and it only wants ten minutes now. If we fail one second, she
will never get off for rehearsals. Remember, you are all engaged for
this evening."
The two long parlors of the Blairs were pretty well filled that night
with young ladies and gentlemen, and a very gay party they were. There
was so much laughing and chaffing over it, that it was some trouble to
settle preliminaries; but Laura was intensely in earnest, and could see
nothing to laugh at, and Captain Cavendish coming gallantly to her aid,
matters were arranged at last. Charley Marsh, who was a Rubens on a
small scale, undertook to paint the scenery, superintend the carpenters
and the machinery of the stage. The young ladies arranged the costumes;
everybody got their parts in MS.; rehearsals were appointed, and some
time before midnight the amateurs dispersed. In the June moonlight, the
English officer drove Nathalie home, and it was not all theatricals they
talked by the way. There was a good deal of trouble about the thing yet,
now that it was finally started. In the first place, there was that
tiresome Lady Leroy, who made a row every time Natty went to rehearsal,
and required lots of strawberries, and jellies, and bottles of old wine,
to bring her to reason. Then they bungled so in their parts, and wanted
so much prompting, and Miss Elvira Tod, sister to the Rev. Augustus, who
was tall and prim, and played Minerva, objected to wearing a tin shield,
and wanted to keep on her hoops.
"Now, Miss Tod," expostulated Laura, ready to cry, "you know the goddess
Minerva always is painted with a breastplate, to conceal her want of a
bust; and as for your skeleton, you would be a nice goddess with
hoops--wouldn't you?"
On the whole, things progressed as favorably as could be expected; and
the eventful night was announced, tickets were issued and eagerly
bought, and Speckport was on the qui vive for the great event. When the
appointed night came, the impromptu theater was crowded at an early
hour, and with nothing but the upper-crust, either; the military band,
which formed the orchestra, played the "Nymph's Dance" ravishingly, and
amid a breathless hush, the curtain rose.
Mrs. Hill, the destitute widow, was made happy next day by some twenty
pounds, the produce of the play, and Speckport could talk of nothing
else for a week. The Speckport Spouter even went into personalities.
"Miss Nathalie Marsh," that journal said, "as Eucharis, astonished every
one. The fire, the energy, the pathos of her acting could not be
surpassed by the greatest professionals of the day. Captain Cavendish,
as the hero, performed his part to the life--it seemed more like reality
than mere acting; and Mr. C. Marsh as Ulysses, and Miss Laura Blair as
Penelope, were also excellent."
On the morning after this laudatory notice appeared in the Spouter, a
young gentleman, one of the employees of that office, walked slowly
along Queen Street, his hands thrust deep in his coat-pockets, his cap
very much on one side of his head, and his face lengthened to
preternatural solemnity. The young gentleman was Bill Blair; and that he
had something on his mind was evident, for his countenance was
seriously, not to say dismally, meditative. Reaching the office, he
walked deliberately up-stairs, entered the outer room, swung himself
nimbly up on the handiest stool, and began flinging his legs about,
without the ceremony of removing his cap. Mr. Clowrie, the only other
occupant of the apartment, looked at him over his desk with a frown.
"I thought Mr. Blake told you to be here at half-past six this morning,
and now it's a quarter past eight," began Mr. Clowrie; "if I was Blake,
I would turn you out of the office."
"But you ain't Blake!" retorted Master Blair; "so don't ruffle your fine
feathers for nothing, Jakey! If you had been up till half-past one this
morning, perhaps you wouldn't be any spryer than I am."
"What kept you up till that time? Some devilment, I'll be bound."
"No, it wasn't," said Bill; "our folks, the whole crowd but me, streaked
off to the theatre; so as I couldn't see the fun of playing Robinson
Crusoe at home, I just went over to Jim Tod's to have a game of
all-fours, and a look at the pups, and they're growing lovely. I didn't
mean to stay long, but some of the rest of the fellows were there, and
Jim had a box of cigars, and a bottle of sherry he had cribbaged out of
the sideboard, and it was all so jolly I'll be blowed if it didn't
strike twelve before we knew where we were."
"Well, now you've come, go to work, or there will be a precious row when
the boss comes."
"Blake won't row," said Bill, nodding mysteriously; "but I know where
there will be one before long. Cracky, won't there be a flare-up when
it's found out!"
Mr. Clowrie laid down his pen and looked up.
"When what's found out?"
"That's my secret," replied Bill, with a perfect shower of mysterious
nods. "I saw the rummiest go last night when I was coming home ever you
heard tell of."
"I don't believe it," said Jake, disdainfully; "you're always finding
mare's-nests, and a lot they come to when all's done!"
"Jake, look here! you won't tell, will you?"
"Bosh! go to work. What should I tell for?"
"Well, then," said Bill, lowering his voice, "I've found out who stole
that hundred pounds from old McGregor."
"What?"
"You remember that hundred pounds old McGregor had stole a week ago, and
that went so mysteriously? Well, I've found out who took it."
"You have!" cried Mr. Clowrie, excited; "why, there's a reward of fifty
dollars out for the thief!"
Bill nodded again.
"I know it, but I ain't going to apply. You won't tell--honor bright!"
"I won't tell! who was it?"
"Don't faint if you can! It was his own son, Alick!"
"Wha-a-t!"
"I tell you it was; I heard him say so myself, last night."
Mr. Clowrie sat thunderstruck, staring. Master Blair went on:
"Charley Marsh is in the mess too--I don't mean about the
money-stealing, mind! but him and Sandy McGregor are galloping the road
to ruin at a 2.40 rate!"
"What do you mean?"
Bill looked round as if fearful the very walls would hear him.
"They go to Prince Street, Jake! I met them coming out of a certain
house there past twelve o'clock last night!"
"By ginger!" exclaimed Mr. Clowrie, aghast. "You never mean to say young
McGregor stole the money to gam--"
"Hu-sh-sh! I wouldn't have it found out through me for the world. It's
all the work of that dandified officer; he was with them in a long
overcoat, but I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him. They were
talking about the bank-note, and the captain was laughing and smoking
away as jolly as you please; but I saw Charley's face as they passed a
gas-lamp, and I swear he was as white as a ghost!"
"I suppose he'd been losing."
"I reckon so, and Alick didn't look much better. That captain's a
regular scape--he's after Cherrie Nettleby as regular as clock-work
now."
Mr. Clowrie scowled suddenly, but Bill clattered on:
"I saw him twice last night; once before I met them in Prince Street. It
was about nine, and Cherrie was with him. There the two of them were
standing, like Paul and Virginny, at the gate, making love like sixty!
That Cherrie's the preciousest fool that ever drew breath, I do think.
Why don't you----"
He stopped short in consternation, for the door swung open and Val
strode in, and, as he had done once before, collared him. With the other
hand he turned the key in the lock to keep out intruders, and Bill
fairly quaked, for Val's face looked ominous.
"Now, look you, Master Bill Blair," he began, in a tone exceedingly in
earnest, "I have been listening out there for some time, and I have just
got this to say to you: if ever I find you repeat it to mortal man or
woman, as long as you live, I'll break every bone in your body! Do you
hear that?"
Yes, Master Bill heard, and jerked himself free with a very red and
sulky face.
"Don't forget now!" reiterated Val; "I'll thrash you within an inch of
your life, as sure as your name's Bill! And you, Clowrie, if you want to
keep yourself out of trouble, take my advice and say nothing about it.
Now get to work, you, sir, and no more gossiping."
Val strode off to his own room, and sat down to look over a file of
exchanges, and read his letters. But he could neither read nor do
anything else with comfort this morning. The boy's gossip had disturbed
him more than he would have owned; and at last, in desperation, he
pitched all from him, seized his hat, and went out.
"I played Mentor the other night on the stage. I think I'll try it in
real life. Confound that Cavendish; why can't he let the boy alone? I
don't mind McGregor; he's only a noodle at best, and the old man can
afford to lose the money; but Charley's another story! That Cherrie,
too! The fellow's a scoundrel, and she's a--! Oh, here she comes!"
Sure enough, tripping along, her blue parasol up, her turban on, a
little white lace vail down, a black silk mantle flapping in the breeze,
a buff calico morning-wrapper, with a perfect hailstorm of white buttons
all over it, sweeping the dust, came Miss Nettleby herself, arrayed as
usual for conquest. The incessant smile, ever parting her rosy lips,
greeted Val. Cherrie always kept a large assortment of different quality
on hand for different gentlemen. Val greeted her and turned.
"Where are you going, Cherrie?"
"Down to Mrs. Marsh's. I've got a book of hers to return. How's Miss
Jo?"
"She's well. I'll walk with you, Cherrie; I have something to say to
you."
His tone was so serious that Cherrie stared.
"Lord, Mr. Blake! what is it?"
"Let us go down this street--it is quiet. Cherrie, does Captain
Cavendish go to see you every evening in the week?"
"Gracious me, Mr. Blake!" giggled Cherrie, "what a question!"
"Answer it, Cherrie."
"Now, Mr. Blake, I never! if you ain't the oddest man! I shan't tell you
a thing about it!"
"He was with you last night, was he not?"
"It's none of your business!" said polite Cherrie; "he has as much right
to be with me as any one else, I hope. You come yourself sometimes, for
that matter."
"Yes; but I don't make love to you, you know."
"It wouldn't be any use for you if you did," said Miss Cherrie,
bridling.
"It's a different case altogether," said Val; "you and I are old
friends--he is a stranger."
"He's not! I've known him more than five weeks! If you only came to
preach, Mr. Blake, I guess you had better go back, and I'll find Mrs.
Marsh's alone."
"Cherrie, I want to warn you--the less you have to do with Captain
Cavendish the better. People are talking about you now."
"Let 'em talk," retorted Miss Nettleby, loftily; "when Speckport stops
talking the world will come to an end. I'll just do as I please, and
talk to whom I like; and if everybody minded their own business, it
would be better for some folks."
With which the young lady swept away majestically, leaving Mr. Blake to
turn back or follow if he pleased. He chose the former, and walked along
to Dr. Leach's office. Charley was standing, looking out of the window,
and whistling a tune.
"Hallo, Val!" was his greeting, "what brings you here? Want a tooth
pulled, or a little bleeding, or a trifle of physic of any kind? Happy
to serve you in the absence of the doctor."
"No, I don't want any physic, but I have come to give you a dose. Are
you alone?"
"Quite. Leach went to visit a patient ten minutes ago. What's the
matter?"
"Everything's the matter! What's this I hear you have been about
lately?"
"Turning actor--do you mean that? Much obliged to you, Val, for the puff
you gave me in yesterday's Spouter."
"No, sir, I don't mean that! Isn't Alick McGregor a nice fellow to rob
his own father and you his aider and abettor? Fine doings that!"
Charley fairly bounded.
"Oh, the d----! Where did you find that out?"
"Never mind, I have found it out; that is enough!"
"Is it known? Who else knows it?"
"Two that are not quite so safe to keep it as I am! No, I won't tell you
who they are. Charley, what are you coming to?"
"The gallows, I suppose; but I had no hand in that. If McGregor took the
money, it was his own doings, and his father could spare it."
"What did he want of it?"
"Am I his keeper? How should I know?"
"You do know! When did you turn gambler, Charley?"
Charley turned round, his face white.
"You know that, too?"
"I do! McGregor stole the hundred pounds to pay a gambling-debt to
Captain Cavendish. And you--where does your money come from, Marsh?"
"I don't steal it," said Charley, turning from pale to red; "be sure of
that!"
"Come, my boy, don't be angry. You know I don't deserve that speech; but
surely, Charley, this sort of thing should not go on. Where will it
end?"
"Where, indeed?" said Charley, gloomily. "Val, I wish you would tell me
how you found this out?"
"Pshaw! do you really expect to go in and out of the most notorious
gambling-house in Speckport, at all hours of the day and night, and it
not be discovered? You ought to know this place better."
"That is true; but how did that infernal business of McGregor's leak
out? No one knew it but ourselves."
"It has leaked out, and is known to two persons, who may blow on you all
at any moment."
"And I wanted to keep it from Natty. Val, old fellow, do tell me who
they are."
"You know I won't; it would do no good. Charley, I wish you would stop
in time."
"Stuff! it's no hanging matter after all. Dozens go there as well as I!"
"You won't give it up, then?"
"Not until I win back what I have lost. My coffers are not so full that
I can lose without trying to win it back. Don't talk to me, Blake, it's
of no use; win I must, there is no alternative. Won't Alick go into
white horror when he finds the murder's out?"
Val turned to leave.
"You're going, are you?" said Charley. "I need hardly tell you to keep
dark about this; it will only mar, not mend matters, to let it get wind.
Don't look so solemn, old boy, all's not lost that's in danger."
Val said nothing--what was the use? He passed out and went home to his
domain.
"I knew how it would be," he said to himself, going along; "but I have
done my duty, and that's satisfactory. I'll keep my eye on you, Captain
Cavendish, and if ever I get a chance, won't I play you a good turn for
this!"
CHAPTER IX.
WOOED AND WON.
"And if ever I find her going prancing round with him any more," said
Lady Leroy, clawing the air viciously with her skinny fingers, "or
letting him come home with her again, I'll turn her out of doors, I
will, as sure as your name's Midge."
"Which it isn't," said Midge; "for I was christened Prisciller. And as
for turning her out, you know right well, ma'am, you can never get along
without her, so where's the good of your gabbing."
The dialogue between mistress and maid took place, of course, in the
former's room, which she rarely left. Midge was preparing her ladyship's
dinner, all the cooking being done in the chamber, and all the edibles
being kept under lock and key, and doled out in ounces. Midge and Lady
Leroy fought regular pitched battles every day over the stinted
allowance awarded her; and Natty had to come to the rescue by
purchasing, from her own private purse, the wherewithal to satisfy
Midge. No other servant would have lived at Redmon on the penurious
wages the old lady grumblingly gave, probably on no wages at all,
considering the loneliness of the place, its crabbed and miserly
mistress, and hard work; but Midge stayed through her love of Nathalie,
and contradicted and bickered with Lady Leroy from morning till night.
In the days when the Marshes were rich and prosperous, Midge had been a
hanger on of the household, doing pretty much as she pleased, and coming
and going, and working or loafing as she liked. She had saved Charley's
life once, nearly at the risk of her own, and loved him and Nathalie
with a depth of self-sacrificing and jealous tenderness few would have
given her credit for. Nathalie was good to her always, considerate and
kind, putting up with her humor and querulousness, and ready to shield
her from slights at any time. Midge scolded the young lady roundly on
many an occasion, and Natty took it good-humoredly always. She was out
now, and Lady Leroy's wrath had been kindled by something that had
happened the preceding night, and which she had found out through
Cherrie Nettleby, for Midge told no tales. Captain Cavendish, contrary
to her express orders, had seen Nathalie home from a little sociable at
her mother's. Val, Miss Jo, Laura Blair, Catty Clowrie, Jeannette and
Alick McGregor, Charley, and Captain Cavendish only had been there; for
some sick pauper had sent for Miss Rose, and she had gone, glad to
escape. Cherrie had seen the captain and Miss Marsh pass the cottage,
and, spiteful and jealous, had tattled next morning. Lady Leroy disliked
Captain Cavendish--she did most people for that matter, but she honored
him with especial aversion. Nathalie had gone off after breakfast to
Speckport, to attend to her music-pupils and visit the school. Cherrie
had come in afterward to retail the town-gossip, and had but just
departed; and now the old lady was raging to Midge.
"I tell you, Midge, I don't like him!" she shrilly cried, "I don't like
him, and I don't want him coming here."
"No more don't I," retorted Midge, "I'd go to his hanging with the
greatest pleasure; but where's the odds? He don't care whether we like
him or not; he only laughs and jeers at both of us, so long as she
does."
"It ain't her he likes," said Lady Leroy, "it's my money, my money, that
I've pinched and spared to save, and that he thinks to squander. But
I'll be a match for him, and for her too, the ungrateful minx, if she
thinks to play upon me."
"She ain't an ungrateful minx, ma'am!" sharply contradicted Midge;
"she's better nor ever you were or ever will be! She lives shut up here
from one week's end to t'other, slavin' herself for you, and much she
gets for it! She can do what she likes with the money when you're dead!"
Lady Leroy's face turned so horribly ghastly at this speech that it was
quite dreadful to look at. The thought of death was her nightmare, her
daily horror. She never thought of it at all if she could, and thus
forcibly reminded, her features worked for a moment as if she had a fit.
Even Midge grew a little scared at what she had done.
"There, ma'am!" she cried, "you needn't go into fits about it. My
speaking of it won't make you die any sooner. I dessay you're good for
twenty years yet, if your appetite holds out!"
The old woman's livid face grew a shade less deathlike.
"Do you think so, Midge? Do you think so?"
"Oh, I think so fast enough! Folks like you always is sure to spin out
till everybody's tired to death of 'em. Here's your dinner ready now;
so swallow it, and save your breath for that!"
The sight of her meals always had an inspiring effect on the mistress of
Redmon, and Natty was for the moment forgotten. Perhaps it might have
spoiled her appetite a little had she seen the way that young lady was
returning home, and in what company. Not walking discreetly along Redmon
road, and not alone. In the pretty boat, all white and gold, with the
name "Nathalie" in golden letters--the boat that had been poor Alick
McGregor's gift--a merry little party were skimming over the sunlit
waves, reaching Redmon by sea instead of land. The snow-white sail was
set, and Nathalie Marsh was steering; the sea-wind blowing about her
tangled yellow curls, fluttering the azure ribbons of her pretty hat,
deepening the roses in her cheeks, and brightening the starry eyes. She
sang as she steered, "Over the Sea in my Fairy Bark," and the melodious
voice rang sweetly out over the wide sea. Near her Captain Cavendish
lounged over the side, watching the ripples as they flew along in the
teeth of the breeze, and looking perfectly content to stay there
forever. Beside him sat Laura Blair, and, near her, Miss Jo Blake. Laura
was often with Miss Jo, whom she liked, partly for her own sake--for she
was the best-natured old maid that ever petted a cat--and partly for her
brother's, whom Miss Blair considered but one remove from an angel.
The quartet had "met by chance, the usual way," and Nathalie had invited
him to have a sail. She had rowed herself to town in her batteau, but
the sail back was inconceivably pleasanter. As the batteau ran up on the
beach below Redmon, Natty did not ask them to the house, but no one was
surprised at that. They accompanied her to the gate, Captain Cavendish
slinging the light oars over his shoulder.
"And you will be at the picnic day after to-morrow, without fail," Laura
was saying to Nathalie.
"Can't promise," replied Natty. "Mrs. Leroy may take it into her head to
refuse permission, and I have been out a great deal lately."
"I don't care," said Laura, "you must come! If Mrs. Leroy turns
inexorable, I will go up with a basket of oranges and let them plead in
your behalf. You see, captain, we have to 'stay that old lady with
flagons and comfort her with apples' when we want Natty very badly, and
she turns refractory."
"All the oranges in Seville would not be thrown away in such a cause. By
all means, Miss Marsh, come to the picnic."
Speckport was famous for its picnics, and excursions by land and water.
This one was the first of the season, and was to be held on Lady Leroy's
grounds--a pretty high price having to be paid for the privilege.
"There won't be any fun without you, Natty," said Miss Jo; "I won't hear
of your absenting yourself at all. Is Miss Rose to have a holiday on the
occasion?"
"I offered her one, but she declined; she did not care for going, she
said."
"What a singular girl she is!" said Laura, thoughtfully; "she seems to
care very little for pleasure of any kind for herself; but the poor of
Speckport look upon her as an angel sent down expressly to write their
letters, look after them in sickness, make them beef-tea, and teach
their children for nothing. I wish you would make her go to the picnic,
Natty, and not let her mope herself to death, drudging in that horrid
school-room."
Captain George Cavendish, leaning on the oars he had been carrying,
seemed not to be listening. He was looking dreamily before him, seeing
neither the broad green fields with the summer sunlight sleeping in
sheets of gold upon them, nor the white, winding, dusty highroad, nor
the ceaseless sea, spreading away and away until it kissed the
horizon-sky, nor tall Miss Blake, nor even the two pretty girls who
talked. It had all faded from before him; and he was many a mile away in
a strange, foreign-looking city, with narrow, crooked streets, filled
with foreign-looking men and women, and priests in long black soutanes,
and queer hats, and black nuns and gray nuns, and Notre Dame nuns and
Sisters of Charity and Mercy, all talking in French, and looking at each
other with dark Canadian eyes. He was back in Montreal, he saw the
Champ-de-Mars, the Place d'Arme, the great convents, the innumerable
churches with their tall crosses pointing to the heaven we are all
trying to reach, and he saw himself beside one--fairer in his eyes than
all the dusky Canadian beauties in the world, with their purple-black
hair and great flashing black eyes. "Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!" his false
heart was passionately crying, as that old time came back, and
golden-haired, violet-eyed Nathalie Marsh was no more to him than if she
had been but the fantasy of a dream. He had flirted and played the lover
to scores; played it so long and so often that it had become second
nature, as necessary as the air he breathed; but he had only loved one,
and he seemed in a fair way of going on to the end. He had been a
traitor, but he could not forget. The girl he had jilted was avenged if
she wished for vengeance: no pang he had ever given could be keener than
what he felt himself.
A laugh aroused him, a merry, girlish laugh. He awoke from his dream
with a start, and found them all looking at him.
"So you have awoke at last," laughed Laura. "Three times have I told you
we were going, and there you stood, staring at empty space, and paying
no more attention than if you were stone-deaf. Pray, Captain Cavendish,
where were you just now?"
Before he could answer, the gate against which Nathalie leaned was
pushed violently open, and the thick dwarfish figure and unlovely face
of Midge was thrust out--not made more prepossessing by an ugly scowl.
"Miss Natty," she shrilly cried, "I want to know if you mean to stand
here all day long? It's past two now, and when you go up to the house,
perhaps the old woman won't give it you--and serve you right, too!"
added Miss Midge, sotto voce.
"So late!" Nathalie cried, in alarm. "I had no idea of it! Good-bye,
Miss Jo; good-bye, Laura. I must go!"
She had smiled and nodded her farewell to the captain, and was off like
a dart. Midge slammed the gate in their faces, and went sulkily after.
In considerable consternation, Nathalie ran up-stairs and into the awful
presence of the mistress of the house. She knew well she was in for a
scolding, and was bracing herself to meet it.
Lady Leroy had never been so furiously angry since the first day the
young lady had entered beneath her roof, and the storm burst before Miss
Marsh was fairly in the room. Such a tempest of angry words, such a
tornado of scolding, such a wrathful outbreak of old woman's fury, it
has been the ill-fortune of but few to hear. Nathalie bore it like a
heroine, without flinching and without retreat, though her cheeks were
scarlet, and her blue eyes flashing fire. She had clinched one little
hand involuntarily, and set her teeth, and compressed her lips, as if to
force herself not to fling back the old woman's rage in her face; but
the struggle was hard. Passionate and proud Nathalie's nature was, but
the fiery steeds of pride and passion she had been taught, long ago, at
her father's knee, to rein with the curb of patience. But I am afraid it
was not this Christian motive that held her silent always under Lady
Leroy's unreasonable abuse. Ambition was the girl's ruling passion. With
her whole heart and soul she longed for wealth and power, and the first
of these priceless blessings, in whose train the second followed, could
only be obtained through this vituperative old bel-dame. If Nathalie let
nature and passion have their way, and flung back fury for fury, she
would find herself incontinently turned out of doors, and back again,
probably, the day after, in that odious school-room, wearing out her
heart, and going mad slowly with the dull drudgery of a poor teacher's
life. This motive in itself was strong enough, but of late days another
and a stronger had been added. If she were Miss Marsh, the
school-mistress, Captain Cavendish, the heir of a baronet, would
doubtless admire, and--have nothing whatever to say to her; but Miss
Marsh, the heiress of Redmon and of Lady Leroy's thousands, was quite
another thing. He was poor now, comparatively speaking; she knew
that--how sweet it would be to lay a fortune at the feet of the man she
loved! Some day in the bright future he would lay a title at her fair
feet in return, and all her dreams of love, and power, and greatness,
would be more than realized. Not that Nathalie for one instant fancied
George Cavendish sought her for her fortune--she would have flung back
such a suspicion furiously in the face of the profferer--but she knew
enough of the fitness of things to be aware that, however much he might
secretly adore her rose-hued cheeks, golden hair, and violet eyes, he
could never marry a portionless bride. On this tiger-cat old Tartar,
then, all these sweet dreams depended for their fruition; and she must
pocket her pride, and eat humble pie, and make no wry faces over that
unpalatable pastry. She must be patient and long-suffering now, that she
might reign like a princess royal hereafter; so while Lady Leroy stormed
and poured no end of vials of wrath on her ward's unfortunate head, that
young person only shut her rosy lips the harder, and bated her breath
not to reply. We are so strong to conquer ourselves, you see, when
pounds, shillings, and pence are concerned, and so weak and cowardly to
obey the commands of One who was led "as a lamb to the slaughter, and
who opened not his mouth." So Nathalie stood, breathing quick, and only
holding herself from flying at her tormentress by main force, and Lady
Leroy stormed on until forced to stop from want of breath.
"And now, Miss," she wound up, her little eyes glaring on the young
lady, "I should like to know what you've got to say for yourself."
"I have nothing to say," replied Nathalie, speaking for the first time.
"Oh, I dare say not! All I say goes in one ear and out t'other, doesn't
it, now? Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you minx?"
"No!" quietly said Nathalie.
Mrs. Leroy glared upon her with a look of fury, horribly revolting in
that old and wrinkled face.
"Do you mean to say you'll ever do it again? Do you mean to say you'll
go with that man any more? Do you mean to say you defy and disobey me?
Tell me!" cried Lady Leroy, clawing the air as if she were clawing the
eyes out of Captain Cavendish's handsome head, "tell me if you mean to
do this!"
"Yes!" was the fiery answer flaming in the girl's crimson cheeks and
flashing eyes, "I defy you to the death!" But prudence sidled up to her
and whispered, "Heiress of Redmon, remember what you risk!" and so--oh,
that I should have to tell it!--Nathalie Marsh smoothed her contracted
brows, vailed the angry brightness of her blue eyes under their sweeping
lashes, and steadily said:
"Mrs. Leroy, you know I have no wish to willfully defy or disobey you. I
should be sorry to be anything but true and dutiful to you, and I am not
conscious of being anything else now."
"You are--you know you are!" the old woman passionately cried. "You know
I hate this man--this spendthrift, this fortune-seeker, this
smooth-spoken, false-hearted hypocrite! Give up this man--promise me
never to speak to him again, and then I will believe you!"
Nathalie stood silent.
"Promise," shrilly screamed Lady Leroy, "promise or else----"
She stopped short, but the white rage in her distorted face finished the
sentence with emphasis.
"I will promise you one thing," said Nathalie, turning pale and cold,
"that he shall not come to Redmon any more. You accuse him unjustly,
Mrs. Leroy--he is none of the things you say. Do not ask me to promise
anything else--I cannot do it!"
What Lady Leroy would have said to this Nathalie never knew; for at that
moment there came a loud knock at the front door, and Miss Marsh, only
too glad to escape, flew down to answer it.
The alarm at the outer door proved to come from Charley Marsh; and
Nathalie stared, as she saw how pale and haggard he looked--so unlike
her bright-faced brother.
"What ails you, Charley?" she anxiously asked. "Are you sick?"
"Sick? No! Why should I be sick?"
"You are as pale and worn-looking as if you had been ill for a month.
Something has gone wrong."
"I have been up all night," said Charley, omitting, however, to add,
playing billiards. "That's why. Nathalie," hurriedly and nervously,
"have you any money? I can't ask before that old virago up-stairs."
"Money! Yes, I have some. Do you want it?"
"I want you to lend me as much as you can, for a short time. There!" he
said, impatiently, "don't begin asking questions, Natty. I want it
particularly, and I will pay you back as soon as I can. How much have
you got?"
"I have nearly twenty pounds, more or less. Will that do?"
"It will help. Don't say anything about it, Natty, like a good girl.
Who's in?"
"No one but Mrs. Leroy. Won't you come up?"
"I must, I suppose. Get the money while I am talking to her, and give it
to me as I go out. What a solemn face you have got, Natty!"
He laughed as he spoke--Charley's careless, boyish laugh, but Nathalie
only sighed as they ascended the stairs together.
"Mrs. Leroy has been scolding ever since I came from town. If ever a
fortune was dearly bought, Charley, mine will be."
"Paying too dear for your whistle--eh? Never mind, Natty! it can't last
forever, and neither can Lady Leroy."
All the shadow had gone from Charley's brow, and the change was magical.
Whether it was the promise of the money, or his natural elasticity of
spirit rebounding, he knew best; but certainly when he shook hands with
the mistress of the domain, the sunshine outside was not brighter than
his handsome face. Mrs. Leroy rather liked Charley, which is saying
folios in the young man's favor, considering how few that cantankerous
old cat admitted to her favor--but every one liked Charley Marsh.
While Nathalie went to her own room for the money, Nathalie's brother
was holding Mrs. Leroy spell-bound with his brilliant flow of
conversation. All the gossip and scandal of Speckport was
retailed--business, pleasure, fashion, and fights, related with
appetizing gusto; and where the reality fell short, Mr. Marsh called
upon his lively imagination for a few extra facts. The forthcoming
picnic and its delights were discussed, and Charley advised her to
strain a point and be present.
"Midge can wheel you about the field, you know, in your chair," said
Charley. "You won't take cold--the day's sure to be delightful, and I
know every one will enjoy themselves ten times better for having you
there. You had better come. Val Blake and I will carry you down stairs!"
To the astonishment of Nathalie, Mrs. Leroy assented readily to the odd
proposition; and Charley departed, having charmed the old lady into
utter forgetfulness, for the time being, of her antipathy to Captain
Cavendish. Speckport could talk of nothing for a week beforehand but the
picnic--the first of the season. All Speckport was going, young and old,
rich and poor. Admission, twenty-five cents; children, half price.
The Redmon grounds, where the picnic was to be held, were extensive and
beautiful. Broad velvety fields, green lanes, among miniature forests of
fragrant cedar and spruce, and all sloping down to the smooth, white
sands of the beach, with the gray sea tramping dully in, and the salt
spray dashing up in your face. And "I hope it won't be foggy! I do hope
it won't be foggy!" was the burden of every one's cry; the fog generally
choosing to step in and stay a week or two, whenever Speckport proposed
a picnic. How many blinds were drawn aside in the gray and dismal dawn
of that eventful morning, and how many eager pairs of eyes, shaded by
night-cap borders, turned anxiously heavenward; and how delightedly they
were drawn in again! for, wonderful to tell, the sky was blue and
without a cloud, and the sun, rising in a canopy of rose and amber,
promised all beholders a day of unremitting sunshine.
Before nine o'clock the Redmon road was alive with people--all in
gorgeous array. Before ten, the droves of men, women, and children
increased fourfold, and the dust was something awful. The sun fairly
blazed in the sky; had it ever shone so dazzlingly before, or was there
ever so brilliantly blue a sky, or such heaps and heaps of billows of
snowy white, floating through it? Before eleven, that boiling seaside
sun would have grilled you alive only for the strong sea-breeze,
heaven-sent, sweeping up from the bay. Through fiery heat, and choking
dust, the cry was "still they come," and Redmon grounds swarmed with
people, as the fields of Egypt once swarmed with locust. A great arch of
evergreens surmounted the entrance-gate, and the Union Jack floated
loyally over it in the morning sunshine. The clanging of the band and
the roll of the drum greeted your delighted ears the moment you entered
the fairy arch, and you found yourself lost and bewildered in a sea of
people you never saw before. The swings were flying with dizzying
velocity, young belles went up until the toes of their gaiters nearly
touched the firmament, and your head reeled to look at them. Some two or
three hundred ladies and gentlemen were tripping the light fantastic toe
to the inspiring music of a set of Irish quadrilles; and some eight
hundred spectators were gathered in tremendous circles about them,
looking on, gazing as if never in all their lives had so glorious and
wonderful a vision as their fellow-sinners jigging up and down, dazzled
their enchanted eyes. The refreshment tents were in such a crowded and
jammed and suffocating state, that you could see the steam ascending
from them as from an escape-valve; and the fair ones behind the tables,
bewildered by two dozen clamorous voices, demanding the attention of
each one at once, passed pies and tarts, and sandwiches and soda water,
and coffee and cakes frantically and at random, and let little boys feed
in corners unnoticed, and were altogether reduced to a state of utter
imbecility by the necessity of doing half a dozen things at one and the
same time. Pink and blue, and yellow and green ribbons fluttered, and
silks and muslins and bareges trailed the grass and got torn off the
waist by masculine bootheels; and the picnic was too delightful for
description, and, over all, the fiery noonday July sun blazed like a
wheel of fire, and the sea wind swept up fresh and delicious, and the
waves sang their old song down on the shore, and no one listened to
their mystic music or wondered, like poor little Paul Dombey, what they
were saying.
No one! Yes, there was one sitting on a green bank, all alone, who had
been very busy all morning until now, arranging tables and waiting on
hungry pleasure-seekers, making little boys and girls behave themselves,
and swinging little people who could get no one else to attend them. The
breeze that set the tall reeds and fern at fandangoing waved her black
barege dress, and flung back the little black lace vail falling from her
hat. Tired and hot, she had wandered here to listen to the waves and to
the tumult behind her.
What were the thoughts of the man who leaned against a tall tamarack
tree and watched the reclining figure as a cat does a mouse? There are
some souls so dark that all the beauty of earth and heaven are as blank
pages to them. They see without comprehending, without one feeling of
thoughtfulness for all the glory around them. Surely it were better for
such to have been born blind. This man saw no wide sea spreading before
him, glittering as if sown with stars. There was more to him worth
watching in one flutter of that thin black dress on the bank than in all
the world beside, and he stood and watched with his eyes half closed,
waiting until she should see him.
He had not to wait long. Some prescience that something out of harmony
with the scene was near, made her restless. She rose up on her elbow,
and looked round--a second after, her face flushed, she was up off the
grass and on her feet. The man lifted his hat and advanced.
"Pardon my intrusion, Winnie--Miss Rose, and--no, no--I beg you will not
go!"
She had made to turn away, but he himself interposed--something of
agitation in his manner, and it was but rarely, indeed. Captain George
Cavendish allowed himself to be agitated. She stopped gently enough, the
surprised flush faded out from her face--that pretty, pale face,
tranquil as face could be, was only very grave.
"If you have anything to say to me, Captain Cavendish, please to say it
quickly. I do not wish to be seen here."
"Is it such a disgrace, then, to be seen for one poor instant with me?"
he said, bitterly.
She did not reply, save by an impatient tapping of one foot on the
grass, and a backward glance at the crowded grounds.
"Winnie!" he broke out, passionately, as if stung by her manner, "have
you turned into a flirt? Have you entirely forgotten what is past? You
cannot--you cannot have ceased altogether to care for me, since I
cannot, do what I will, forget you!"
Miss Rose looked at him--steadily, quietly, gravely, out of her brown
eyes. If he had hoped for anything, that one look would have shivered
his air-castles as a stone shivers brittle glass.
"I told you once before, Captain Cavendish, that such words from you to
me were insults. The past, where you are concerned, is no more to me
than if you had never existed. I have not forgotten it, but it has no
more power to move me than the waves there can move those piles of rock.
No! I have not forgotten it. I look back often enough now with wonder
and pity at myself, that I ever should have been the idiot that I was."
His face turned crimson at the unmistakable earnestness of her words.
"Then I need scruple or hesitate no longer," he said, launching his last
pitiful shaft. "I need hesitate no longer, on your score, to speak the
words that will make one who is rich and beautiful, and who loves me,
happy. I came here willingly to make what atonement I could for the
past, by telling you beforehand, lest the shock of my marriage----"
He stopped in actual confusion, but raging inwardly at the humiliation
she was making him feel--this poor little pale schoolmistress, whom he
could have lifted with one hand and flung easily over the bank. She was
smiling as she listened to him, a smile not of mockery or disdain, only
so gallingly full of utter indifference to him.
"There is no atonement necessary," she said, with that conscious smile
still hovering on her lips; "none, I assure you. I have no hard feelings
toward you, Captain Cavendish, nothing to resent or forgive. If I was an
idiot, it was my own fault, I dare say, and I would not blot out one day
that is gone if I could. Marry when you will, marry as soon as you
please, and no one will wish you joy more sincerely on your wedding day
than I."
It half-maddened him, that supreme indifference, that serene face. He
knew that he loved her, herself, and her alone; and while he fancied her
pining and love-lorn, he was very well satisfied and quite complacent
over her case. But this turn of the story was a little too mortifying to
any man's pride to stand, and the man a lady-killer by profession at
that.
"I don't believe it," he said, savagely, "you have not forgotten--you
cared for me too much for that. I did not think you could stoop to
falsehood while playing the rôle of a saint."
Miss Rose gave him a look--a look before which, with all his fury, he
shrank. She had turned to walk away, but she stopped for a moment.
"I am telling no falsehood, Captain Cavendish: before I stoop to that, I
pray I may die. You know in your heart I mean what I say, and you know
that you believe me. I have many things to be thankful for, but chief
among them, when I kneel down to thank God for his mercies, I thank him
that I am not your wife!"
She walked slowly away, and he did not follow her; he only stood there,
swallowing the bitter pill, and digesting it as best he might. It was
provoking, no doubt, not to be able to forget this wretched little
school-ma'am, while she so coolly banished him from her memory--so
utterly and entirely banished him; for Captain Cavendish knew better
than to disbelieve her. He had jilted her, it is true, as he had many
another; but where was his triumph now? If he could only have forgotten
her himself; but when the grapes were within his reach, he had despised
them, and now that they grew above his head, and he did want them, it
was exasperating that he could not get them.
"Pah!" he thought bitterly, "what a fool I am! I could not marry her
were she ever so willing now, any more than I could then. This cursed
debt is dragging me to--perdition--I was going to say, and I must marry
a fortune, and that soon. Nathalie Marsh is the richest girl in
Speckport, therefore I shall marry Nathalie Marsh. She is ten times more
beautiful than that little quakeress who is just gone; but I can't love
her, and I can't forget the other."
Captain Cavendish leaned against the tamarack a long time, thinking. The
uproar behind him and the roar of the surf on the shore blended together
in a dull, meaningless tumult in his ears. He was thinking of this
marriage de convenance he must make, of this bride he must one day take
home to England. He was a gambler and a spendthrift, this man, over head
and ears in debt, and with no way but this one of ever getting out of
it. From his friends in England? He had no friends in England on whom he
could rely. His only rich relative, his uncle, the baronet, had taken it
into his head, at the age of fifty-five, to get married; and what was
more, there was an heir, a young gentleman of five months old, between
him and the baronetcy. His commission had been purchased by his uncle,
and it seemed all he need ever expect from him. He had never seen
service, and had no particular desire to see any. He must marry a rich
wife--there was no alternative--and he knew the power of his handsome
face extremely well. He had no fear of a refusal; there was no use in
delaying; he would make the heiress of Redmon happy that very day.
The sun was g
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