A Changed Heart Part 76

"Now it is coming!" thought Val; "bless my soul! but it is hard to get out! It sticks in my throat like Macbeth's amen! Madam," he said, aloud, facing round and plunging into the icy shower-bath at once, "there has been a terrible mistake, which only came to my knowledge last night. A great wrong has been done you by Mr. Wyndham, and it is to inform you of it I have come here to-day."

Her pale face turned blood-red, and then ghastly white.

"You need not tell me," she cried, "I know it! She is not his mother!"

"She is not!" said Val, very much surprised; "but how in the world did you find it out?"

She did not speak. She sat looking at him with a dreadful fixed stare.

"Tell me all," she said; "tell me all! Who is she?"

"She is his wife! I don't think you can know that. He was a married man before he ever saw you here."

A low cry of despair broke from Olive's white lips. This was not what she had expected--at the worst, she had never thought of this.

"His wife!" she cried, "and what, then, am I?"

Val sat dumb. It was not a very pleasant question to answer; and, to tell the truth, he was more than a little afraid of the lightning flas.h.i.+ng from those midnight eyes.

"What am I?" she repeated, in a voice almost piercing in its shrillness.

"What am I? If she is his wife, what am I?"

"My dear madam, it is a most wicked affair from beginning to end, and you have been most shamefully duped. Believe me, I pity you from the very bottom of my heart."

With a cry that Val Blake never forgot, in its broken-hearted anguish and despair, she dropped down on the sofa, and buried her face among the pillows, as if she would have shut out the world and its miseries, as she did the sight of the man before her.

Mr. Blake, not knowing any panacea for misery such as this, and fearing to turn consoler, lest he should make a mess of it, did the very best thing he could have done, let it alone, and began the story he had to tell. So, lying there in her bitter humiliation, this woman heard that her miserable secret was a secret no longer, and that the pale, silent actress of Mrs. b.u.t.terby's lodgings had been Nathalie Marsh, and was now Paul Wyndham's beloved wife. That was the misery--she scarcely heeded, in the supreme suffering of that thought, the discovery of her own trickery and deceit--she only knew that the man she had thought her husband, and who, in spite of herself, she had learned to love, had cruelly and shamefully deceived her. She had never for one poor moment been his wife, never for an instant had a right to his name; she was only the poor despised tool, whom he used at the bidding of the wife he loved. The horrible agony she suffered lying there, and thinking of those things, no human pen can tell--no heart conceive.

Mr. Blake rose up when he finished his narrative, thankful it was over.

She had never moved or spoken all the time, but he knew she had heard him, and he paused, with his hand on the door, to make a last remark.

"I beg, my dear young lady, you will not be overcome by this unfortunate affair. It will be kept as close as possible, and you need not be disturbed in the possession of Redmon, since such is Miss Rose's wish. I have done my duty in telling you, though the duty has been a very unpleasant one, good-morning, madam."

She never moved. Val looked at the prostrate figure with a vague uneasiness, and remembered it was just such women as this that swallowed poison, or went down to the river and drowned themselves. He thought of it all the way to Mrs. Marsh's, growing more and more uneasy all the time.

"Oh, hang it," thought Mr. Blake, "I wish Paul Wyndham had been at Jericho before I ever got mixed up in his dirty doings. If that black-eyed young woman goes and does something desperate, I shall feel as if I had a hand in her death. I am always getting into other people's sc.r.a.pes, somehow! I suppose it's my luck!"

Val knocked at the cottage door, and was admitted to the pleased presence of Mrs. Marsh. And to her, once again, the story of plot and counterplot had to be told; but it was a long time before she could quite comprehend it. She cried a good deal when she fully took in the sense of the thing, said she wondered at Mr. Wyndham, and thought it was dreadful to have Nathalie restored, only to find she was out of her mind. She wanted to go to her at once, she said--poor dear Natty! and so Mr. Blake went for a cab without more ado, and found Mrs. Marsh shawled and bonneted, and all ready, upon his return. They drove up Golden Row and stopped at Mrs. Wheatly's for Miss Rose, whom Val handed in, in a few minutes, and then packed himself up beside the driver.

Midge opened the door of Rosebush Cottage to the visitors, and stared aghast upon seeing who they were.

"Is Mr. Wyndham in?" asked Val.

Midge nodded, and jerked her head toward the room he had been in the preceding night, and, unconscious Val tapped at it, and then walked in, followed by the two ladies.

Paul Wyndham stood up as they entered, pale and quiet as ever. Nathalie, wrapped in a loose white morning-dress, lay on a lounge, a pile of pillows under her head, and a mingled odor of vinegar and cologne and a number of saturated cloths showed he had been bathing her forehead when they came in. Mrs. Marsh never noticed him, but fell down on her knees beside the lounge, in an outburst of motherly grief and joy, raining kisses on the feverish face. Alas! that now-flushed, feverish face! the cheeks crimson, the forehead s.h.i.+ning, and burning with raging fever, the golden hair all tossed and disordered over the pillows, and the hot, restless head turning ceaselessly from side to side, vainly trying to cool its fire. The blue eyes shone with fever's l.u.s.ter; but no light of recognition came into them at her mother's pa.s.sionate words and kisses.

Miss Rose, throwing off her hat and mantle, knelt beside her and dipped the cloths in vinegar and water, and laid them on the burning brow of the poor stricken girl. Val looked inquiringly at Mr. Wyndham.

"She must have taken cold last evening in the church," he answered, in a low tone; "she became delirious in the night, and has continued so ever since."

"I'll be off for the doctor at once," said Val, briskly; "she's in a bad way, I know. I'll fetch Dr. Leach, he was their family physician, and won't tell."

Energetic Mr. Blake stalked out of the room without more ado. Paul Wyndham followed him to the door.

"They know?" he inquired, motioning toward the room they had quitted.

"All about it," said Val, "and so does that unhappy young woman at Redmon, and if she doesn't commit suicide before night it will be a mercy. And oh, Wyndham, by the way, you had better not show yourself. It isn't a very creditable affair, you know, to any of the parties concerned, and the best atonement you can make is to keep out of sight."

He strode off, without waiting for a reply, in search of Dr. Leach, and had the good fortune to find that gentleman taking his dinner. Mr. Blake hurried him through that meal with little regard to calm digestion, and on the road had to relate, for the fourth time, the story, of which he was by this time heartily sick.

Dr. Leach listened like a man who cannot believe his own ears.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "is it a story out of the Arabian Nights you are telling me? Nathalie Marsh alive, and Mr. Wyndham's wife! The mother all a hoax, and the young woman at Redmon a--what is she, Blake?"

"Blamed if I know!" replied Mr. Blake; "but, whatever she is, Nathalie was the first wife. It's a very uncommon story, but it is true as preaching for all that, only I am getting tired of telling it so often."

"Well, well, well! Wonders will never cease! Natty returned to life, Cherrie back in Speckport, and Charley coming! Why, Val, we will have the old merry time all over again before long."

"I am afraid not! I am afraid poor Nathalie is beyond even your skill, doctor. She was almost at death's door before, and this fever will finish her."

Mr. Wyndham was not in the room when the doctor and Val returned. Mrs.

Marsh and Miss Rose were still keeping cooling applications to the hot forehead, but nothing could cool the fever that consumed her. Val drew Miss Rose aside as the doctor bent over his patient.

"Where is Wyndham?" he asked.

"I don't know. He has not been here since you left."

"What do you think of her?" nodding toward the fever-stricken girl on the lounge.

The governess, whose experience among the sick poor made her no unskillful leech, looked out of the window through a mist of tears.

"We have found her to lose her again, I fear. Look at Dr. Leach's face!

Can you not read his verdict there?"

The old physician certainly was looking seriously grave, and shook his head at Mrs. Marsh's eager questioning.

"We must hope for the best, ma'am, and do what we can. The result is in the hands of Providence."

"Then you think there is danger, doctor?" said Val, coming forward.

"Imminent danger, sir! It is typhoid fever, and a very serious case, too. A strong const.i.tution would stand a chance, but she has no const.i.tution at all. Gone, sir! gone! she is as feeble as an infant."

"Then there is no hope at all?"

"None!" replied Dr. Leach, solemnly; "she will never leave this room alive. And better so, better so than as she was."

"Yes," said Val, sadly; "it is better as it is! My dear Mrs. Marsh, don't distress yourself so. Think that her mind is entirely gone, and never could be restored, I believe, and you will be thankful that her earthly troubles are so nearly ended."