A Changed Heart: A Novel

But Miss Jo was destined to become an heiress herself; for, a fortnight after the great wedding, and just as Speckport was getting nicely round after the shock, it received another staggerer in the news that a great fortune had been left to Miss Jo Blake. Thirty thousand pounds, the first startling announcement had it; thirteen, the second; and three, the final and correct one.

Yes; Miss Jo had been left the neat little sum of three thousand pounds sterling, and was going home to take possession of the fortune. An old maiden aunt, after whom Miss Joanna had been named, and from whom she had long had expectations – as all Speckport had heard a million times, more or less – had died at last, and left Miss Jo the three thousand and her blessing.

Upon receiving the tidings, Miss Blake was seized with a violent desire to revisit the scenes of her infantile sports, and gave warning of her intention of starting in the first vessel bound for Liverpool.

"And it's not in one of them dirty steamboats I'll go," said Miss Jo, decisively, "that's liable to blow up any minute; but I'll go an a ship that's slow and sure, and not put a hand in my own life by trusting to one of them new-fangled inventions!"

Mr. Blake expostulated with his sister on the impropriety of leaving him alone and unprotected to the mercies of heartless servant-girls. Miss Jo was inexorable.

"If you don't like keeping house and fighting with the servants," said Miss Blake, "go and board. If you don't like boarding, why, go and get married! it won't hurt your growth any, I'm sure!"

As Mr. Blake was on the wrong side of thirty, and had probably done growing, there was a great deal of sound truth in Miss Jo's remark. Mr. Blake, however, only stood aghast at the proposal.

"It's time you were getting married, Val," pursued Miss Jo, busily packing; "particularly now, that I'm going to leave you. You're well enough off, and there's lots of nice girls in Speckport who would be glad to snap at you. Not that I should like to see you marry a Bluenose – Lord forbid! if it could be helped; but there's Miss Rose, or there's Laura Blair, both of them as nice girls as you will find. Now, why can't you take and marry one of them?"

Mr. Blake was beyond the power of replying. He could only stare in blank and helpless consternation at his brisk, match-making sister.

"I would rather you took Miss Rose," pursued Miss Blake, "she's the best of the two, and a rock of sense; but Laura's very fond of you, and – where are you going now?"

For Mr. Blake had snatched up his hat and started out, banging the door after him. The first person he met, turning the corner, was Mr. Blair.

"So you're going to lose Jo, Blake," he said, taking his arm. "Laura tells me she is off next week in the Ocean Star. What are you going to do with yourself when you lose her?"

"Become a monk, I think," said Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I don't know anything else for it! Jo talks of boarding, but I hate boarding-houses, and where else can I go?"

"Come to us," cried Mr. Blair, heartily. "Mrs. B. thinks there's nobody like you, and you and I will have a fine chance to talk things over together. Come to us, old boy, and make our house your home!"

Mr. Blake closed with this friendly offer at once, on condition that the ladies of the house were satisfied.

"No danger of that," said Laura's father; "they will be in transports. Come up this evening and have a smoke with me, and see if they don't."

Laura Blair's eyes danced in her head when her father told them the news; but the little hypocrite affected to object.

"It will make so much trouble, pa," the young lady said, in a dissatisfied tone, "trouble for ma and me, I mean. I wish he wasn't coming."

Mr. Blair listened to the shocking fib with the greatest indifference. He didn't care whether she liked it or not, and said so, with paternal frankness.

So Miss Jo kissed everybody and departed, and Val translated his Lares and Penates to Mr. Blair's; at least, such of them as were not disposed of by public auction.

Speckport was just settling its nerves after this, when it was thrown into another little flutter by the unexpected return of Captain Cavendish.

Yes, Captain Cavendish, the defeated conqueror, came back to the scene of his defeat, rather swaggering than otherwise, and carrying things with a high hand. Perhaps the gallant captain wanted to show Speckport how little he cared for being jilted; perhaps he wanted to see what kind of life Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham would lead together; perhaps he found himself too well known as a roué and gambler in Montreal; or perhaps he was not tired bleeding young Alick McGregor and young Speckport generally, in that quiet house in Prince Street. He was back, anyway, handsome, and nonchalant, and unprincipled as ever.

Miss Blair received a letter from her friend three weeks after her departure, dated Niagara. Mrs. Wyndham was not a good correspondent, it seemed; her letter was very brief and unsatisfactory, and she only mentioned her husband once, and then merely to say Mr. Wyndham was well. She signed the letter simply, "Olive," not using her real name, and told Laura that Montreal was tiresome and the Canadians stupid. Miss Blair sent her half a quire of note-paper by way of answer, recording every item of information, and every possible scrap of news, and imploring a speedy reply. But Olive never replied, although August wore itself out while Laura waited. On the last day of that month, Mrs. Hill received a telegram from Portland, Me., from Mr. Wyndham, informing her her master and mistress would arrive next day.

It was a glorious September afternoon that on which the wedded pair returned from their short bridal-tour. The steamer swept up to the crowded wharf in a sort of sun-burst of glory, and the air was opaque with amber mist, as if it were raining impalpable gold-dust. Not a sign of fog in the cloudless blue sky; it might have been Venice instead of Speckport, so luminously brilliant was sky and earth that afternoon.

The passengers poured out of the steamer, and came up the bustling floats, where cabmen, porters, hotel-runners and the steamer-hands were making a Babel of discord, and the passengers wondered to see the crowd of people looking curiously down upon them from the wharf above. Laura Blair stood straining her eyes for a sight of her friend. Olive Henderson, with her dangerous gift of fascination, had won the girl's love as it had never been won before, and Laura had missed her sadly during these two last months. As she stood impatiently waiting, she was thinking of that pleasant March evening when Olive Henderson had first come to Speckport, and they had watched her walk up these very floats, stately and tall, leaning on Mr. Darcy's arm, and wearing a vail over her face. And while Laura thought of it, and could scarcely believe it was only six months ago, she saw the same Olive – Olive Wyndham now – coming toward her on her husband's arm. She was not vailed this time, although a long drab gossamer vail floated back from the pretty jockey-hat she wore, and Laura saw how pale and fagged and spiritless she looked. The next moment, she had thrown her arms impetuously around her, and was kissing her rapturously.

"My darling Olly! my darling Olly!" she was crying out. "Oh, how glad I am to see you again!"

Her darling Olly did not return the embrace very enthusiastically, though her face lit up at sight of her friend. Laura shook hands with Mr. Wyndham, who was smiling at her effusions, and then turned again to the friend she loved.

"Oh, Olly! how dull it has been since you went away, and how cruel of you never to write to me! Why didn't you write?"

"Writing is such a bore," Olive said, drearily. "I hate writing. Is that the carriage waiting up there?"

"Yes," said Laura; "and how did you enjoy your travel? You look pale and tired."

"I am tired to death," Mrs. Wyndham said, impatiently, "and I have not enjoyed myself at all. Every place was stupid, and I am glad to be home! Do let us get out of this mob, Mr. Wyndham!"

Mr. Wyndham had paused for a moment to give some directions about the baggage, and his wife addressed him so sharply that Laura stared. Laura noticed during the homeward drive how seldom she spoke to her husband, and how cold her tone always was when she addressed him. But Mr. Wyndham did not seem to mind much. He talked to Laura – and Mr. Wyndham knew how to talk – and told her about their travels, and the places they had been, and the people they had met, and the adventures they had encountered.

"Olive reigned Lady Paramount wherever we went," he said, smiling (he never called her Mrs. Wyndham or "my wife," always Olive). "Our tour was a long succession of brilliant triumphs for her."

Olive merely shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and looked at the swelling meadows as they drove along Redmon road. A beautiful road in summer time, and the Nettleby cottage was quite lost in a sea of green verdure, sprinkled with red stars of the scarlet-runners. Ann Nettleby stood in the door as they drove by in a cloud of dust – in that doorway where pretty Cherrie used to stand, pretty, flighty little Cherrie, whom Speckport was fast learning to forget.

And Redmon! Could Mrs. Leroy have risen from her grave and looked on Redmon, she might well have stared aghast at the magical changes. A lovely little villa, with miniature peaks and turrets, and a long piazza running around it, and verdant with climbing roses and sweetbrier. A sloping velvety lawn, on which the drawing-room and dining-rooms windows opened, led from the house to the avenue; and fair flower-gardens, where fountains played in marble basins, and bees and butterflies disported in the September sunshine, spread away on all sides. Beyond them lay the swelling meadows, the dark woods; and, beyond all, the shining sea aglitter in the summer sunshine. The groom came up to lead away the horse, and Mrs. Hill, in a black silk dress and new cap, stood in the doorway to receive them. The dark, sunless face of Olive lit up and became luminous for the first time as she saw all this.

"How pretty it is, Laura!" she said. "I am glad I am home."

The servants were gathered in the hall to welcome their master and mistress as they entered arm-in-arm. The upholsterer had done his work well, the drawing-room was one long vista of splendor, the dining-room almost too beautiful for eating in, and there was a conservatory the like of which Speckport had never seen before. Mrs. Wyndham had a suite of rooms, too – sleeping-room, dressing-room, bath-room, and boudoir – all opening into one another in a long vision of brightness and beauty, and there was a library which was a library, and not a mockery and a delusion, and was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Speckport had been shown the house, and pronounced it perfection.

Olive Wyndham forgot her languor and weariness, and broke out in her old delighted way as she went through it.

"How beautiful it all is!" she cried, "and it is all mine – my own! I am going to be happy here – I will be happy here!"

Her black eyes flashed strangely upon her husband walking by her side, and the hand clenched, as if she defied Fate from henceforth.

"I hope so," Paul Wyndham said, gravely. "I hope, with all my heart, you may be happy here."

Laura looked from one to the other in silent wonder. Mr. Wyndham turned to her as they finished the tour of the house.

"I suppose Rosebush Cottage is hardly equal to this, Miss Laura? Have you been there lately?"

"Yes," said Laura. "Val and I – he stops with us now, you know – went through it last week. The rooms are very pretty, and the garden is one wilderness of roses; and Midge reminds me of Eve in Eden, only there is no Adam."

"And Midge does not exactly correspond with our ideas of our fair first mother," laughed Mr. Wyndham. "I must go there to-morrow and see the place. Will you come, Olive?"'

"No, thank you," she said, coldly. "Rosebush Cottage has very little interest for me."

Again Laura stared.

"Why is she so cross?" she thought. "How can she be cross, when he seems so kind? How soon do you expect your mother, Mr. Wyndham?" she said aloud.

"This is Friday – I shall leave on Monday morning for New York to fetch her."

There was an announcement that dinner was ready, and nothing more was said of Mr. Wyndham's mother. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage early next morning, attended only by a big Canadian wolf-hound, of which animals he had brought two splendid specimens with him, and told Midge he was going to leave him as guardian of the premises. Before he left the cottage, he called Midge into the pretty drawing-room, and held a very long and very confidential interview with her, from which she emerged with her ruddy face blanched to the hue of a sheet. Whatever was said in that long conversation, its effect was powerful on Midge; for she remained in a dazed and bewildered state for the rest of the day, capable of doing nothing but sitting with her arms folded on the kitchen-table, staring very hard at vacancy with her little round eyes.

Mr. Wyndham departed for New York on Monday morning, taking the other big dog, Faust, with him. Mrs. Wyndham took his departure with superb indifference – it was nothing to her. John, the coachman, was of as much consequence in her eyes as the man she had promised to love, honor, and obey. She did not ask him when he was coming back – what was it to her if he never came? – but he volunteered the information. "I will be back next week, Olive," he said. "Good-bye." And Olive had said good-bye, icily, and swept past him in the hall, and never once cast a look after him, as he drove down the long avenue in the hazy September sunshine.

The house-warming at Redmon could not very well come off until Mr. Wyndham's return; and the preparations for that great event being going on in magnificent style, and Olive eager for it to take place, she was not sorry when, toward the close of the following week, she learned her husband had returned. It was Miss McGregor who drove up to the villa to make a call, and related the news.

"The boat got in about two o'clock, my dear Mrs. Wyndham," Jeannette said, "and Mr. Wyndham and his mother came in her. I chanced to be on the wharf, and I saw them go up together, and enter a cab and drive off. I am surprised they are not here."

"They drove to Rosebush Cottage, I presume," Olive said, rather haughtily. "Everything is in readiness for Mrs. Wyndham there."

"What is she like, Jeannette?" asked Laura, who was always at Redmon, familiarly. "I suppose she was dressed in black?"

"Yes," Miss McGregor said, "she was dressed in black, and wore a thick black vail over her face, and they had driven off before any one had time to speak to them. No doubt, she would be present at the house-warming, and then they could call on her afterward."

But Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, did not appear at the house-warming; and society was given to understand, very quietly, by Mr. Wyndham, that his mother would receive no callers. Her health forbade all exertion or excitement, it appeared. She seldom, if ever, crossed her own threshold, from week's end to week's end; and it was her habit to keep her room, and she did not care to be disturbed by any one. Her health was not so very poor as to require medical attendance; but Mr. Wyndham owned she was somewhat eccentric, and he liked to humor her. Speckport was quite disappointed, and said it thought Mr. Wyndham's mother was a very singular person, indeed!

CHAPTER XXX.

VERY MYSTERIOUS

The house-warming at Redmon was such a house-warming as Speckport never saw before; for, as Mr. Blake with his customary good sense remarked, "When Mrs. P. Wyndham did that sort of thing, she did do it." In the luminous darkness of the September evening, the carriages of the guests drove through the tall iron gates up the back avenue, all aglow with red, and blue, and green lamps, twinkling like tropical fireflies among the trees. The whole front of the beautiful villa blazed with illumination, and up in the gilded gallery the musicians were filling the scented air with delicious melody. It was not Redmon, this; it was fairy-land; it was a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and the darkly-beautiful lady in ruby velvet and diamonds, welcoming her friends, was the Princess Badelbradour, lovely enough to turn the heads of a brigade of poor Aladdins. Society went through the house that night, and had the eyes dazzled in their heads by the blinding radiance of light, and the glowing coloring and richness of all. The ladies went into raptures over Mrs. Wyndham's rooms, and the literary people cast envious eyes over the book-lined library, with its busts of poets, and pictures of great men, dead and gone. There was a little room opening off this library that seemed out of keeping in its severe plainness with the magnificence of the rest of the house – a bare, severe room, with only one window, looking out upon the velvety sward of the lawn at the back of the villa; a room that had no carpet on the floor, and very little furniture, only two or three chairs, a baize-covered writing-table, a leather-covered lounge under the window, a few pictures of dogs and horses, a plaster head of John Milton, a selection of books on swinging shelves, a bureau, a dressing-table, a lavatory, a shaving-glass, and a sofa-bedstead. Except the servants' apartments, there was nothing at all so plain as this in the whole house; and when people asked what it was, they were told by Mrs. Hill, who showed the house, that it was Mr. Wyndham's room. Yes, this was Mr. Wyndham's room, the only room in that house he ever entered, save when he went to dinner, or when visitors required his presence in the drawing-room or library. His big dog Faust slept on a rug beside the table, his canaries sung to him in their cages around the window, he wrote in that hard leathern armchair beside the green-baize table, he lay on that lounge under the open window in the golden breeze of the September weather, and smoked endless cigars; late into the night his lamp glimmered in that quiet room; and when it went out after midnight, he was sleeping the sleep of the just on the sofa-bedstead. The servants at Redmon talked, as servants will talk, about the palpable estrangement between master and mistress, about their never meeting, except at dinner, when there always was company; for Mrs. Wyndham breakfasted in the boudoir and Mr. Wyndham never ate luncheon. He was quite hermit-like in his habits, this pale, inscrutable young author – one glass of wine sufficed for him – he was out of bed and at work before the stable-boys or scullery-maids were stirring, and his only extravagance was in the way of cigars. From the day he had married Olive Henderson until this, he had never asked or received one stiver of her money; he had more than sufficient of his own for his simple wants and his mother's, and had Olive been the hardest virago of a landlady, she could hardly have brought in a bill against him, even for board and lodging, for he more than repaid her for both. He was always courteous, genial, and polite to her – too polite for one spark of her affection; always deferring to her wishes, and never attempting in the smallest iota to interfere with her caprices, or thwart her desires, or use his husbandly authority. She was in every way as much her own mistress as she had ever been; so much so that sometimes she wondered, and found it impossible to realize that she was really married. No, she was not married; these two had never been united either in heart or desire; they were bound together by a compact never mentioned now. What had he gained by this marriage? Olive sometimes wonderingly asked herself. He told her, or as good as told her, he wanted her for her money; but now that money was at his disposal, and he never made use of it. What had he married her for?

"How proud you must be of your husband, Mrs. Wyndham!" other women had said to her, when abroad; and sometimes, in spite of herself, a sharp pang cut to the center of her haughty heart at the words. Why, these very women had as much right to be proud of him, to speak to him, to be near him, as she had. Proud of him! She thought she had cause to hate him, she was wicked enough to wish to hate him, but she could not. Neither could she despise him; she might treat him as coldly as she pleased, but she never could treat him with contempt. There was a dignity about the man, the dignity of a gentleman and a scholar, that asserted itself, and made her respect him, as she never had respected any other man. Once or twice a strange thought had come across her; a thought that if he would come to her and tell her he was growing to love her, and ask her not to be so cruelly cold and repellent, she might lay her hand on his shoulder with the humility of a little child, and trust him, and yield herself to him as her friend and protector through life, and be simply and honestly happy, like other women. But he never did this; his manner never changed to her in the slightest degree. She had nothing to complain of from him, she had every cause to be grateful for his kindness and clemency. And so she shut herself up in her pride, and silenced fiercely her mutinous heart, and sought happiness in costly dress and jewelry, and womanly employment, and incessant visiting, and party-giving, and receptions and money-spending – and failed miserably. Was she never to be happy? She had everything her heart could desire – a beautiful house, servants to attend her, rich garments to wear, and she fared sumptuously every day; but for all that, she was wretched. I do not suppose Dives was a happy man. There is only one receipt in this wide world for happiness, believe me, and that is goodness. We may be happy for a brief while, with the brief happiness of a lotus-eater; but it cannot last – it cannot last! and the after-misery is worse than anything we ever suffered before. Olive Henderson had said she would be happy, she had tried to compel herself to be happy; and thought for a few poor minutes, sometimes, when she found herself the belle of some gay party, dancing and laughing, and reigning like a queen, that she had succeeded. But "Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter!" Next day she would know what a ghastly mockery it had all been, and she would watch Paul Wyndham, mounted on his pony, with his dog behind him, riding away to his mother's cottage, with a passionately rebellious and bitter heart, and wonder if he or any one else in the wide world would really care if they found her lying on the floor of her costly boudoir, stark and dead, slain by her own hand.

Paul Wyndham appeared to be very fond of his mother, if he was not of his wife. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage every day, rain or shine, and sometimes staid there two or three days together.

Mr. Wyndham's mother, for all her age and her ill-health, could play the piano, it seemed. People going past Rosebush Cottage had often heard the piano going, and played, too, with masterly skill. At first, it was thought to be Mr. Wyndham himself, who was quite a musician, but they soon found out the piano-playing went on when he was known to be at Redmon. Olive heard all this, and, like Speckport, would have given a good deal to see Mr. Wyndham's mother; but she never saw her. She had asked him, carelessly, if his mother would come to the house-warming, and he had said "No, she never went out;" and so the house-warming had come off without her.

There was one person present on that occasion whom Speckport was surprised to see, and that was Captain Cavendish. Captain Cavendish had received a card of invitation, and, having arrayed himself in his uniform, made his appearance as a guest, in the house he once hoped to call his own. Those floating stories, whispered by the servants, and current in the town, of the cold disunion between husband and wife, had reached him, and delighted him more than words can tell. After all, then, she had loved him! Doubtless she spent her nights in secret weeping and mourning for his loss, fit to tear her black hair out by the roots, in her anguish at having lost him. He was very late in arriving at Redmon, purposely late; and he could imagine her straining her eyes toward the drawing-room door, her heart throbbing at every fresh announcement, and turning sick with disappointment when she found it was not he. Would she betray any emotion when she met him? Would her voice falter, her eyes droop, her color rise, or her hand turn cold in his own?