A Changed Heart Part 51

"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 Sat.u.r.day 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 ba.s.s. 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 s.h.i.+ning plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a diamond bracelet flas.h.i.+ng 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 appet.i.te, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociations, lay on the ground a great heap of broken bricks and mortar, and the villa was going up with a rapidity only surpa.s.sed 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 superst.i.tious 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 fis.h.i.+ng in the clear streams running through them. The string band, perched up in a gallery, played away merrily; and what with suns.h.i.+ne 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, flas.h.i.+ng in and out among the trees; now superintending the unpacking, and a.s.sisting Mrs. Hill and Catty Clowrie to set the table. The cloth was laid on the gra.s.s; 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 s.h.i.+ver; 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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 rea.s.sure 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 t.i.tle-page was written, in a man's hand: "To Nathalie, from hers in life and death--G. P. C." The book pa.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 gra.s.s, flung away his cigar, and approached.

"Well, ladies--well, Miss Laura," he asked, "have you seen the ghost?"

"Yes," said Laura, gravely. "Here is a ghost we found in Nathalie's room. I presume you have the best right to it!"

She handed him the book before them all, and every eye was turned upon him as he glanced at the t.i.tle-page. His face changed, in spite of all his self-control, turning nearly as colorless as Miss Henderson's.

"I believe I did give Miss Marsh this once," he said, trying to be at his ease. "I suppose you gave the rats a rare fright! There's the music.

Miss McGregor, I believe I have this dance?"

The band was playing the "Aline Polka," and no mortal feet could resist that. All the girls were soon whirling about like teetotums, and the elderly folks sat down for a game of euchre on the gra.s.s. Olive Henderson, declining, coldly, a dozen eager aspirants for the honor of her hand in the polka, strolled off unsociably herself, as she had done before. They were too busy enjoying themselves to notice her absence at first, and only one followed her. That one was poor Tom Oaks; and to him, in her absence, the sun was without light, the world empty, since the universe held but her. She did not hear him--she was leaning against a tree, looking out with that darkly-brooding face of hers, over the spreading fields and wood, sloping down to the sea, and all her own.

Looking out over that wide sea, with a dreary stare, that told plainly all the wealth she had inherited, all the love and admiration she had won, had not the power to make her happy. Her white dress fluttered in the spring breeze; her shawl, of rich gold-colored c.r.a.pe, fell in loose, graceful folds, like sunlight-drapery, around her, held together with one little brown hand. Her head was bare, and the s.h.i.+ning profusion of thick black hair was twisted in great serpent-like coils around her head. She looked more sultana-like than ever, holding that ma.s.s of glowing golden drapery around her, a woman to command a kingdom, not to be wooed for a household-angel; but that poor Tom Oaks was down on the gra.s.s at her feet, before she knew he was near, imploring her to take pity upon him. Heaven only knows what he said--Tom never did; but he was pouring out his whole heart in a vehement outburst of pa.s.sionate pleading. The man had chosen an unpropitious moment.

"Get up, Mr. Oaks," the cold sweet voice said; "don't make such a scene!

Hus.h.!.+ some one will hear you."

She might as well have told a rus.h.i.+ng waterfall to hush. Tom got up, pleading vehemently, pa.s.sionately, wildly, for what seemed to him--poor, foolish fellow!--more than life.

"No, no, no!" she said, impatiently; "go away, Mr. Oaks. It is of no use."

It seemed like the old parable of asking for bread and receiving a stone. Tom Oaks turned away, but something in his despairing face touched her woman's heart. She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and looked compa.s.sionately into his white face.

"I am sorry," she said, in a voice that faltered a little, "I am sorry!

I did not think you cared for me like this, but I cannot help you! You must forget me, Mr. Oaks!"

There was one other witness to this little love-pa.s.sage besides the birds, singing their songs, in the green branches. Captain Cavendish had seen Tom Oaks follow Olive Henderson off the grounds, and knew, by the prescience of jealousy, as well what was going to happen, as he did after the scene was over. He had followed the young man, and, in the tangled green heart of the wood, had heard every word, and watched the white and amber figure flit out of sight. He leaned against a tree now, almost as pale as Tom Oaks had been. But if she should refuse him, too!

It was the first time in his life he had ever asked himself that question; and he had made love, and offered marriage even, to more than Winnifred Rose and Nathalie Marsh. What if she should refuse him like this? Pride, love, ambition, all were at stake with Captain Cavendish now, and what if he should lose her? He set his breath and clenched his hand at the thought.

"I will not lose her!" he said to himself. "I will not! I should go as mad as that idiot on the gra.s.s there is, if I lost that glorious girl!"

He might have gone after her, and proposed on the spot, had he not possessed so fully that sixth sense, tact. Like the lady immortalized in the Irish poem of "Paddy, Would You Now," she must be taken when she was "in the humor," and that most decidedly was not to-day. So he strolled back to the rest, and had the satisfaction of seeing her waltzing with his superior officer, Major Marwood, who was unmarried, and rich, and one of her most obedient very humble servants.

The picnic was to wind up with what Mr. Blake called a "danceable tea,"

at Mr. Darcy's, whither they all drove, in the pleasant April twilight, and the handsome captain enjoyed the privilege of sitting beside the heiress in the pony carriage, to the great envy of every one else. They drove very slowly, watching the moon rise in a long glory of silvery radiance over the sleeping sea, while he told her of Italian moon-rises, and Alpine sunsets, he had gazed upon; and she listened, lying back with half-vailed eyes, and a longing sensation of pleasure in it all at her heart. Was she in love with Captain Cavendish? No; but she liked him best of all her admirers; and there were few women who would not have listened with pleased interest to those vivid word-pictures of far-off lands, and looked with admiration, at least, into that pale, high-bred, cla.s.sically handsome face.

Captain Cavendish retained his advantage all that evening, and left compet.i.tors far behind. He sang duets with Miss Henderson, danced with her, took her in to supper, and folded the shawl around her when they were going home. She might be the veriest iceberg to-morrow, the haughtiest and most imperious Cleopatra; but she was gentle, and graceful, and all feminine sweetness to-night. His hopes were high, his heart all in a glow of thrilling ecstasy, as he went home, under the serene stars. The cup of bliss was almost at his lips, and the many slips were quite forgotten.

The afternoon following the picnic, Olive sat in her cottage drawing-room entertaining some callers. The callers were Major Marwood, Lieutenant Blank, and Captain Cavendish. Mrs. Darcy, who was spending the day with her, sat at a window crotcheting, and playing propriety, with Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Hill's niece, Miss Clowrie. Somehow this young lady was very fond of dropping in to see her aunt, and staying for dinner, and often all night. The heiress sat at the piano, playing some exquisite "song without words," when a servant entered and ushered in Miss Blair. The officers, who had been there some time, took their departure, and Laura burst out into thanksgiving.

"Now, thank goodness! they're gone. Run up and get your hat, Olly, and come down to see the boat come in."

"I don't care about seeing the boat come in," said the heiress, lazily, lying back in a fauteuil. "I feel comfortable where I am."

"But you must come, I tell you!" cried Laura, "there's a lot of delegates coming from somewhere, about something, and everybody will be there, and I want to see them."

Miss Henderson laughed at this lucid explanation.

"I shan't go," she said.

Miss Blair changed from the imperative mood to the potential, exhorting, entreating.