A Changed Heart: A Novel

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 going down behind the waves, in an oriflamme of gold and crimson and purple and rose, flushing the whole sky with its tropical beauty, when the young officer turned away to seek for his future wife. As if his thoughts had evoked her she was coming toward him, and all alone; her white dress floating mistily about her, all her golden curls hanging damp and loose over her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed with the heat. She had taken off her hat, and was swinging it by its azure ribbons, as she came up; and she looked so beautiful that the young Englishman thought that it would not be so very dreadful a thing to sell himself to this violet-eyed sultana after all.

"Truant!" said Nathalie, "where have you been all the afternoon? I thought you had gone away."

"And all the time I have been standing here, like Patience on a monument, wishing you would come up."

"Did you want me, then?"