A Changed Heart: A Novel

"Oh, the sea!" she cried; "the great, grand, beautiful sea! Oh, Laura! I should like to live where its voice would sound always, night and day, in my ears!"

She had grown so accustomed to hear every one the night before call Miss Blair Laura, that the name came involuntarily, and Laura liked it best.

"It is down here Nathalie Marsh used to live," Laura said; "there is the house. Poor Nathalie!"

"Mrs. Darcy was telling me of her. She was very pretty, was she not?"

"She was beautiful! Not like you," said Laura, paying a compliment with the utmost simplicity; "but fair, with dark blue eyes, and long golden curls, and the loveliest singer you ever heard. Every one loved her. Poor Natty!"

Tears came into Laura's eyes as she spoke of the friend she had loved, and through their mist she did not see how Olive Henderson's face was darkening.

"I never received such a shock as when I heard she was missing. I had been with her a little before, and she had been talking so strangely and wildly, asking me if I thought drowning was an easy death. It frightened me; but I never thought she would do so dreadful a deed."

"There can be no doubt, I suppose, but that it was suicide?"

"Oh no! but she was delirious; she was not herself – my poor, poor Natty! They talk of broken hearts – if ever any one's heart broke, it was hers!"

The strange, dark gloom falling like a pall on the face of the heiress, darkened, but Laura did not notice.

"Was it," she hesitated, and averted her face; "was it the loss of this fortune?"

"That, among other things; but I think she felt most of all about poor Charley. Ah! what a handsome fellow he was, and so fond of fun and frolic – every one loved Charley! I suppose Mrs. Darcy told you all the story?"

"Yes. You are quite sure it wasn't he, after all, who committed the murder?"

"Sure!" Laura cried, indignantly. "I am certain! If everybody hadn't been a pack of geese, they would never have suspected Charley Marsh, who wouldn't hurt a fly! No, it was some one else, and Val – I mean Mr. Blake – says if ever Cherrie Nettleby is found, it will be sure to come out!"

"And Mr. Blake supports Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Darcy says. That is very good of him."

Laura's eyes sparkled.

"Good! Val Blake's the best, the kindest-hearted, and most generous fellow that ever lived. He has that off-hand, unpolished way, you know; but at heart, he is as good, and kind, and tender as a woman!"

She spoke with an eagerness – this impulsive Laura – that told her secret plainly enough; but the heiress was thinking of other things.

"She was engaged to Captain Cavendish – this Miss Marsh – was she not?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and the grass is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away. Won't we, Laura?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Henderson's beautiful short upper-lip curled.

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

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

Laura absolutely screamed at the idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Laura!" she cried out, in that passionate voice, "I must have a home. A home, do you hear, not a boarding-house. Heaven knows I have had enough of them to last me my life, and the sound of the word is hateful to me. I must have a home where I will be the mistress, free to do as I please, to come and go as I like, to receive my friends and go to them as it suits me, unasked and unquestioned. I must have a home of my own, or I shall die."

Mr. Darcy looked out a house for the heiress; and after a fortnight's search, found one to suit. It belonged to a certain major, who was going with his bride, a fair Speckportian, home to old England, on a prolonged leave of absence. It was to be let, all ready furnished; it was situated around the corner from Golden Row, commanding a fine view of the harbor, and with two most essential requisites, a garden and a stable. It was a pretty little cottage house, with a tiny drawing-room opening into a library, and a parlor opening into a dining-room. There was a wide hall between, with a delightful glass porch in front, a garden fronting the street, and the door at the other end of the hall opening into a grass-grown backyard. Altogether it was a pleasant little house, and Miss Henderson took it at once, as it stood, on the major's own terms, and made arrangements for removing there at once.

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

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

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

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

Laura laughed.

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

"And I know I would like to have her. I'll go down to Mr. Clowrie's to-morrow, and make her hunt me up a cook and housemaid, and stableman. I shall want a gardener, too – that's another thing I forgot."

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

"I mean to; but they never can dance in these little rooms. Oh, how nice it is to have a house of one's own!"

Laura wondered at the morbid earnestness of Miss Henderson on this subject. She knew very little of the prior history of the heiress, beyond that from great wealth she had fallen to great poverty, and had had unpleasant experience in New York boarding-houses; the probable origin of this desperate heart-sick longing for a house of her own – a home where she would be the mistress, the sovereign queen.

Mrs. Hill, the pilot's widow, was very glad of Miss Henderson's offer, and gratefully closed with it at once. Perhaps the bread of dependence, never very sweet, was unusually bitter, when sliced by the fair hand of Miss Catty. She was a tall, portly old lady, with a fair, pleasing, unwrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes, that had a motherly tenderness in them for the rich young orphan girl.

"And I want you to find me a cook, and a groom, and a housemaid, Mrs. Hill," Olive said; "and the girl must be pretty. I mean to have nothing but pretty things about me. I am going to the cottage on Monday, and you must have them all before then."

Mrs. Hill was a treasure of a housekeeper. Before Saturday night she had engaged a competent cook, whose husband knew all about horses, and took the place of groom and coachman. She got, too, a chambermaid, with a charmingly pretty face and form; and the new window-draperies of snowy lace and purple satin were festooned from their gilded cornices; and the new furniture was arranged; and the new pictures, lonely little landscape-scenes, hung around the walls. It was a perfect little bijou of a cottage, and the heiress danced from room to room on Monday morning with the glee of a happy child delighted with its new toy, and hugged Laura at least a dozen times over.

"Oh, Laura, Laura, how happy I am! and how happy I am going to be here! I feel as if this great big world were all sunshine and beauty, and I were the happiest mortal in it!"

"Yes, dear," said Laura, "but don't strangle me, if you can help it. The rooms are beautiful, and your dear five hundred are dying to behold them. When does that house-warming come off?"

Miss Henderson was whirling round and round like a crazy teetotum, and now stopped before Miss Blair with a sweeping courtesy that ballooned her dress all out around her.

"On Thursday night, mademoiselle, Miss Henderson is 'At Home'. The cards will be issued to-day. Come and practice 'Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming.' Captain Cavendish takes the tenor, and Lieutenant Blank the bass. We must charm our friends with it that night."

Miss Henderson did not invite all her dear five hundred friends that Thursday night – the cottage-rooms would not have held them. As it was, the pretty dining-room and parlor were well filled, and the heiress stood receiving her guests with the air of a royal princess holding a drawing-room. She looked brilliantly beautiful, in her dress of rich mauve silk sweeping the carpet with its trailing folds, its flounces of filmy black lace, a circlet of red gold in her dead black hair, twisted in broad shining plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a diamond bracelet flashing on one rounded arm. Speckport, ah! ever-envious Speckport, said these were but Australian brilliants, and that the whole set had not cost three hundred dollars in New York; but Speckport had nothing like them, and Speckport never looked on anything so beautiful as Olive Henderson that night. She was no longer wan and haggard; her dark cheeks had a scarlet suffusion under the brown skin, and the majestic eye a radiance that seemed more and more glorious every time you saw her.

No one could complain that night of caprice or coquetry, or partiality; all were treated alike; Tom Oaks, Lieutenant Blank, Mr. Val Blake, and Captain Cavendish; she had enchanting smiles, and genial hostess-like courtesies for all, love for none. Whatever beat in the heart throbbing against the amber silk, the lace and the diamonds of her bodice, she only knew – the beautiful dark face was a mask you could not read.

Miss Henderson's reception was a grand success; Mrs. Hill's supper something that immortalized her forever after in Speckport. The guests went home in the gray morning light with a dazed feeling that they had been under a spell all night, and were awakening uncomfortably from it now. They were under the spell of those magical smiles, of that entrancing face and voice – a spell they were powerless to withstand, which fascinated all against their better judgment, which made poor Tom Oaks wander up and down in the cold, before the cottage, until sunrise, to the imminent risk of catching his death; which made half a score of his young towns-men lose their sleep and their appetite, and which made Captain George Percy Cavendish pace up and down his room in a sort of fever for two mortal hours, thrilling with the remembrance of the flashing light in those black eyes, in the bewildering touch of those hands. For you see, Captain Cavendish, having set a net to entrap an heiress, was getting hopelessly entangled in its meshes himself, and was drunk with the draught he would have held to her lips.

And so the reeling world went round, and she who wove the spell, who turned the heads, and dazed the hot brains of these young men, lay tossing on a sleepless pillow, sleepless with the excitement of the dead hours, sleepless with something far worse than excitement – remorse!

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SPELL OF THE ENCHANTRESS

The changes which Mr. Darcy had prophesied were going on at Redmon. Before the middle of May, the transformation had begun. The weird old red-brick house, haunted by so many dismal associations, lay on the ground a great heap of broken bricks and mortar, and the villa was going up with a rapidity only surpassed by Aladdin's palace. Miss Henderson had drawn out the plans herself, and superintended the works, with a clear head and a bright eye for all shortcomings and deficiencies. She rode over every day from the cottage, mounted on her black steed Lightning, her black-velvet cap with its long scarlet-tipped plume flashing in among the workmen, as, with gathered-up skirt, she inspected the progress of the building.

She entered with a true womanly interest into the erection and beautifying of this new home, and had quite got over her superstitious awe of the place. Perhaps this was owing to an artfully-laid plan of that scheming lawyer, Mr. Darcy, who, being absurdly fond of the dark-eyed heiress, and fearful of her depriving Speckport of the light of her beautiful countenance, by flying off somewhere, resolved she should like Redmon, and reside there. Accordingly, about a week after Miss Henderson had gone to the cottage, he had gotten-up a picnic to Redmon – a select picnic, with the military band and a platform for dancing.

The picnic day had dawned in cloudless splendor. Coquettish April, finding she must yield in spite of all her tears and smiles to her fairer sister, May, seemed resolved to put up with the inevitable with a good grace; and the day was more like sunny June than early spring. Before ten in the morning the party were on the grounds, swinging among the trees, dancing on the shaded platform, wandering among the grand old woods, or fishing in the clear streams running through them. The string band, perched up in a gallery, played away merrily; and what with sunshine and music, and gay laughter and bright faces, Redmon was a very different-looking place from the Redmon of a few weeks before. Miss Henderson had driven Laura Blair up in a little pony-carriage she had purchased, and owned that Redmon was not so lifeless after all. But she did not enter into the spirit of the thing with any great zest. Laura whispered it was one of her "dark days" to those who noticed the silent, abstracted, almost gloomy manner of the heiress. She danced very little, and had walked moodily through the quadrille, chafing at its length, and then had broken from her partner, and gone wandering off among the trees. Laura Blair made up in herself for all that was wanting in her friend. She was everywhere at once; now flying through a crazy cotillon; now on the swings, flashing in and out among the trees; now superintending the unpacking, and assisting Mrs. Hill and Catty Clowrie to set the table. The cloth was laid on the grass; the cold hams and fowls; the hot tea and coffee; the pies, and cakes, and sandwiches; the hungry picnickers called, and great and mighty was the eating thereof.

After dinner, the house was to be explored, the sight of ghosts, Mr. Darcy considered, being unfavorable to digestion. Some weak-minded persons declined with a shiver; they had no desire for cold horrors then, or the nightmare when they went to bed; and among the number was Captain Cavendish. He had no fancy for exploring ratty old buildings, he said; he would lie on the grass, and smoke his cigar while they were doing the house. Did any thought of unfortunate Nathalie Marsh obtrude itself upon the selfish Sybarite as he lay there, smoking his cigar, on the fresh spring grass, and looking up through the leafy arcades at the serene April sky? Did any thought of the old days, and she who had loved him so true and so well, darken for one moment that hard, handsome mask – his face? Did any more terrible recollection of a ghostly midnight scene that old house had witnessed, come back, terribly menacing? Who can tell? The past is haunted for the whole of us; but we banish the specter as speedily as possible, and no doubt Captain Cavendish did the same.

Miss Henderson, of course, was one of the party, leaning on Mr. Darcy's arm; but her face was very pale, and her great eyes filled with a sort of nameless fear, as she crossed its gloomy portal. Laura Blair clung tightly, with little delightful shudders of apprehension, to the arm of Mr. Val Blake, who took it all unconcernedly, as usual, and didn't put himself out any to reassure Miss Blair. The house had a damp and earthy odor, as of the grave; and their footsteps echoed with a dull, dismal sound, as footsteps always do in a deserted house. Dark, dreary, and forlorn, it looked, indeed, a haunted house, and every voice was silent in awe; the gayest laugh hushed; the most fearless feeling a cold chill creeping over him. Rats ran across their path; black beetles swarmed everywhere; the walls were slimy, and fat bloated spiders swung from vast cobwebs wherever they went. It was all dismal, but in the chamber of the tragedy most dismal of all. They hurried out of it almost before they had entered it, and went into the next room, the room that had been Nathalie's. In the darkness, something caught Val Blake's eye in one corner, he picked it up. It was "Paul and Virginia," bound in blue and gold; and on the title-page was written, in a man's hand: "To Nathalie, from hers in life and death – G. P. C." The book passed from hand to hand. No one spoke, but all knew those initials, and all wondered what the heiress thought of it. That young lady had not spoken one word since they had entered the house, and her face was as white as the dress she wore. But they had seen enough now, and they hurried out, heartily thankful when the front door boomed slowly behind them, and they were in the sunshine and fresh air once more. Every tongue was at once unloosed, and ran with a vengeance, as if to make up for lost time. Captain Cavendish started from the grass, flung away his cigar, and approached.