"What a lovely night!" Laura said; for all the world, so lately a howling wilderness, was moonlight and couleur de rose to her now, with plain Val Blake standing by her side. "How beautifully the moon is rising over the bay!"
"Yes," said Mr. Blake, eying it with the glance of a connoisseur in moonshine. "It's rather a neat thing in the way of moonrise. What whistle's that?"
"It's the American boat getting in. Suppose we go down, Val, and see who's coming?"
"All right!" said Val. "Run and put your things on, and don't be an hour about it, if you can help it."
Laura ran off, and reappeared in a quarter of the allotted time, turbaned and mantled, and furred, and tripped along through the moonlit and gaslit streets, with her new fiancé down to the wharf. The fine night had, as usual, drawn crowds down there, and the wharf was all bustle, and excitement, and uproar. Miss Blair, clinging confidingly to Mr. Blake's arm, watched the passengers making their way through the tumult to where the cabs were waiting, when all of a sudden she dropped the arm she held, with a little shrill feminine scream, and darting forward, plumped head foremost into the arms of a gentleman coming up the wharf, valise in hand. To say that Mr. Blake stared aghast would be a mild way of putting it; but stare he undoubtedly did, with might and main. The gentleman wore a long, loose overcoat, heavily furred, and his face was partially shaded by a big, black, California hat; but Val saw the handsome, sun-browned face beneath for all that, with its thick, dark mustache and beard. Could it be? surely not, with all those whiskers and that brown skin; and yet – and yet, it did look like: but by this time Laura had got out of the mustached stranger's coat-sleeves, and was back, breathless with excitement, beside the staring editor.
"Oh, Val! it's Charley! – it's Charley Marsh! Charley Marsh!" Charley, sure enough, in spite of the whiskers and the sun-brown. Val was beside him in two strides, shaking both hands as if he meant to wrench the arms from their sockets.
"My dear boy! my dear boy! my dear boy!" was all Mr. Blake could get out, while he spoke, and shook poor Charley's hands; and Laura performed a little jig of ecstasy around them, to the great delight of sundry small boys looking on. As for Charley himself, there were tears in his blue eyes, even while he laughed at Val.
"Dear old Val!" he said, "it is a sight for sair een to look at your honest face again! Dear old boy! there is no place like home!"
"Come along," cried Val, hooking his arm in Charley's. "The people are gaping as if we had two heads on us! Here's a cab; get in, Laura; jump after her, Charley. Now, then, driver, No. 12 Golden Row!"
"Hold on!" exclaimed Charley, laughing at his phlegmatic friend's sudden excitement, "I cannot permit myself to be abducted in this manner. I must go to Cottage Street."
"Come home with us first," said Val, gravely. "I have something to tell you – something you ought to know before you go to Cottage Street."
"My mother!" Charley cried, in sudden alarm; "she is ill – something is wrong."
"No, she's not! Your mother is well, and nothing is wrong. Be patient for ten minutes, and you'll find out what I mean!"
The cab stopped with a jerk in front of Mr. Blair's; and, as they got out, a gentleman galloped past on horseback, and turned round to look at them. Val nodded, and the rider, touching his hat to Laura, rode on.
"Where is Mr. Wyndham going, I wonder?" said Laura.
"To Redmon, I think," Val answered. "Come in, Charley! Won't the old folks stare, though, when they see you?"
Miss Rose – her name is Rose, you know – had gone from Rosebush Cottage to Redmon, at the earnest entreaties of her half-sister. She had wished to return to Mrs. Wheatly's, and let things go on as before; but Harriet Wade – the only name to which she had any right – had opposed it so violently, and pleaded so passionately, that she had to have her way.
"Stay with me, Olive, stay with me while I am here!" had been the vehement cry. "I shall die if I am left alone!"
"Very well, I will stay," her sister said, kissing her; "but, please, Harriet, don't call me Olive, call me Winnie. I like it best, and it is the name by which they know me here."
So Winnie Rose Henderson went to Redmon – her own rightful home, and hers alone – and on the night of Charley Marsh's return, when Paul Wyndham entered the house, her small, light figure crossing the hall was the first object he saw. She came forward with a little womanly cry at sight of him.
"Oh, Mr. Wyndham, I am so glad you have come! I want you to talk to Harriet. She is going away."
"Going away! Where?"
"Back to New York, she says – anywhere out of this. Back to the old life of trouble and toil. Oh, Mr. Wyndham, talk to her. All I say is useless. But you have influence over her, I know."
"Have I?" Mr. Wyndham said, with a sad, incredulous smile. "What is it you want her to do, Miss Henderson?"
"I want you to make her stay here. I want you to persuade her to let everything go on as before. I mean," the governess said, coloring slightly, "as regards myself and her, of course."
Mr. Wyndham took her hand and looked down at her, with that grave, sad smile still on his face.
"My dear Miss Henderson," he said, " – for by that name I must call you – you are the best and noblest woman in the world, and I shall venerate all womankind henceforth for your sake. But we would be as selfish as you are noble did we accept the sacrifice you are so willing to make. I have come to offer the only atonement it is in my power to make for the wrong I have done her. On the result depends what her future life shall be."
The governess understood him, and the color deepened on her face.
"She is in the library," she said, withdrawing her hand and moving away. "You have my best wishes."
Paul Wyndham tapped at the library-door, and the familiar voice of the woman he sought called "Come in!" She was lying on a lounge, drawn up before a glowing coal-fire, listlessly lying there, its ruddy glow falling on her face, and showing how wan and worn it was. At sight of him, that pale face turned even paler, and she rose up and looked at him, as some poor criminal under trial for her life might look at her judge.
"Have I frightened you?" he said, noticing that startled glance. "Pray resume your seat. You hardly look well enough to stand up."
She sank back on the lounge, holding one hand over her throbbing heart. Paul Wyndham stood leaning against the marble mantel, looking down at the fire, and thinking of that other interview he had held with this woman, when he had to tell her she must be his wife. How few months had intervened since then, but what a lifetime of trouble, and secrecy, and suspicion, and guilt it seemed; and how she must hate and despise him! She had told him so once. How useless, then, it seemed, for him to approach her again! But, whether refused or not, that way duty lay; and he had deserved the humiliation. She sat before him, but not looking at him. He could not see her face, for she held up a dainty little toy of a hand-screen between it and the firelight; but he could see that the hand which held it shook, and that the lace on her breast fluttered, as if with the beating of the heart beneath. And seeing it, he took courage.
"I scarcely know," he began, "how I can say to you what I have come here to-night to say. I scarcely know how I dare speak to you at all. Believe me, no man could be more penitent for the wrong I have done you than I am. If my life could atone for it, I would give it, and think the atonement cheaply purchased. But my death cannot repair the sin of the past. I have wronged you – deeply, cruelly wronged you – and I have only your woman's pity and clemency to look to now. I can scarcely hope any feeling can remain for me in your heart but one of abhorrence, and that abhorrence I have deserved; but I owe it to you to say what I have come here to utter. You know all the story of the past. You heard it from the lips that are cold in death now, and those dying lips encouraged me to make this poor reparation. Harriet, my poor, wronged girl, if you will take her place, if you will be to me what the world here has for so many months thought you – what she really was – if you will be my wife, my dear and cherished wife, I will try what a lifetime of devotion will do to atone for the sorrowful past. Perhaps, my poor dear, you will be able to care for me enough in time to forgive me – almost to love me – and Heaven knows I will do my best to be all to you a husband should be to a beloved wife!"
He stopped, looking at her; but she did not stir, only the hand holding the screen trembled violently, and the fluttering breast rose and fell faster than ever.
"Harriet," he said, gently, "am I so hateful to you that you will not even look at me? Can you never forgive me for what I have done?"
She dropped the screen and rose up, her face all wet with a rain of happy tears, and held out both hands to him – all pride gone forever now.
"I do not forgive you," she said. "I love you, and love never has anything to forgive. O Paul, I have loved you ever since you made me your wife!"
So Paul Wyndham found out at last what others had known so long, and took his poor, forlorn wife to his arms with a strange, remorseful sort of tenderness, that, if not love, was near akin to it. So, while the fire burned low, and cast weird shadows on the dusky, book-lined walls, and the November wind wailed without, these two, never united before, sat side by side, and talked of a future that was to be theirs, far from Speckport and those who had heard the sinful and sorrowful story of the past.
By and by, a servant coming in to replenish the fire found them sitting peacefully together, as he had never seen his master and mistress sit before, and was sent to find Miss Rose and bring her to them. And I think Harriet herself was hardly happier in her new bliss than her gentle stepsister in witnessing it.
So, while Charley Marsh, up in Val Blake's room, that cold November night, listened in strange amazement to all that had been going on of late – to the romance-like story in which his unhappy sister had played so prominent a part – the two sat in the luxurious library at Redmon in this new happiness that had come to them from Nathalie Marsh's grave!
CHAPTER XXXIX.
IN HOPE
In the pale November sunlight of the next morning, in the plain, dark traveling-carriage from Redmon, a little party of four persons drove rapidly along the country-roads to a quiet little out-of-the-way church, some fifteen miles out of town. They were Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wyndham, Mr. Blake, and Miss Rose Henderson; and in the quiet church a quiet ceremony was performed by special license, which made Paul Wyndham and Harriet Wade man and wife, beyond the power of earthly tribunals to dispute. The clergyman was quite young, and the parties were all strangers to him, and he had a private opinion of his own that it was a runaway match. There were no witnesses but the two, and when it was over they drove back again to Redmon, and Harriet's heart was at peace at last. She had a trial to undergo that day – a great humiliation to endure – but it was a voluntary humiliation; and with her husband – hers now – she could undergo anything. The old, fierce, unbending pride, too, that had been her sin and misfortune all her life, had been chastened and subdued, and she owed to the society she had deceived the penance self-inflicted.
Val Blake had all the talking to himself on the way home, and, to do him justice, there wasn't much silence during the drive. He was talking of Charley Marsh, who had come home a far finer fellow than he had gone away, a brave and good and rich man.
They were all to meet that evening at a quiet dinner-party at Redmon – a farewell dinner party, it was understood, given by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, before their departure from Speckport to parts unknown. The invited guests were Mrs. Marsh and her son, Dr. Leach, Mr. Blake, and Miss Blair, Father Lennard (the old priest), and Mr. Darcy (the lawyer). A very select few, indeed, and all but Mr. Darcy acquainted with the story of the woman who had died at Rosebush Cottage, and the other story of the true and false heiress. He, too, was to be enlightened this evening, and Harriet Wyndham was publicly to renounce and hand over to her half-sister, Winnifred Rose Henderson, the fortune to which she never had possessed a claim. That was her humiliation; but with her husband by her side, she was great enough for that or anything else.
So the wedding-day passed very quietly at Redmon, and in the pale early twilight the guests began to arrive. Among the first to arrive was Mrs. Marsh and her son; the next to appear was Val, with Laura tucked under his arm; and Laura, with a little feminine scream of delight, dropped into Mrs. Wyndham's arms, and rained upon that lady a shower of gushing tears.
"Oh, what an age it is since I have seen my darling Olly before!" Miss Blair cried, "and I have been fairly dying for this hour to arrive."
Mrs. Paul Wyndham kissed the rosy rapturous face, with that subdued and chastened tenderness that had come to her through much sorrow; and her dark eyes filled with tears, as she thought, perhaps, loving little Laura might leave Redmon that night with all this pretty girlish love gone, and nothing but contempt in its place.
Half an hour after, all the guests had arrived, and were seated around the dinner table; but the party was not a very gay one, somehow. The knowledge of what had passed was in every mind; but Mr. Darcy was yet in ignorance, and he set the dullness down to the recent death of Mr. Wyndham's mother. Once, too, there was a little awkwardness – Wyndham, speaking to Miss Rose, had addressed her as Miss Henderson, and Mr. Darcy stared.
"Henderson!" he exclaimed, "you are talking to Miss Rose, Wyndham! Are you thinking of your courting days and Miss Olive Henderson?"
But Mrs. Wyndham and her half-sister colored, and everybody looked suddenly down at their plates. Mr. Darcy stared the more; but Paul Wyndham, looking very grave, came to the rescue.
"Miss Rose is Miss Rose Henderson! Eat your dinner, Mr. Darcy; we will tell you all about it after."
So, when all returned to the drawing-room, Val Blake told Mr. Darcy how he had been outwitted by a girl. Not that Mr. Blake put it in any such barbarous way, but glossed over ugly facts with a politeness that was quite unusual in straightforward Val. But Mrs. Paul Wyndham herself rose up, very white, with lips that trembled, and was brave enough and strong enough to openly confess her sin and her sister's goodness. She looked up, with pitiful supplication, in the face of her husband, as she finished, with the imploring appeal of a little child for pardon; and he put his protecting arm around her, and smiled tenderly down in the mournful black eyes, once so defiantly bright to him. Mr. Darcy's amazement was beyond everything.
"Bless my soul!" was his cry, "and little Miss Rose is Miss Henderson, after all, and the heiress of Redmon."
Miss Henderson, on whom all eyes were admiringly bent, was painfully confused, and shrank so palpably, that the old lawyer spared her, and no one was sacrilegious enough to tell the little heroine what they thought of her noble conduct. And when Mrs. Marsh burst unexpectedly out in a glowing eulogy on all her goodness, not only to herself and Nathalie, but to all who were poor and friendless in the town, the little heiress broke down and cried. So no more was said in her hearing, and the gentlemen gathered together, and talked the matter over apart from the ladies, and settled how the news was to be taken to Speckport.
It was late when the party broke up, and good-night and good-bye was said to Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, who were to leave to-morrow at eight. Val and Laura promised to be at the boat to see them off; and they were down true to their word, before the Redmon carriage arrived. Charley was there, too, and so was Cherrie, in crape to the eyes, looking very pretty in her widow's weeds, and all in a flutter at the thought of seeing Charley again. But this bearded and mustached and grave-looking young man was not the hot-headed, thoughtless Charley her pretty face had nearly ruined for life; and as he held out his hand to her, with a grave, almost sad smile, Cherrie suddenly recollected all the evil she had caused him, and had the grace to burst into tears, much to the horror of Mr. Blake, who had a true masculine dread of scenes.
"Don't cry, Cherrie," Charley said, "it's all over now, and it has done me good."
If any lingering hope remained that the old time might be renewed, that question and the smile that accompanied it banished forever from poor Cherrie's foolish heart and her punishment that moment was bitterer than all that had gone before.
Miss Henderson was in the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, and went on board with them, as did the rest of their friends, and lingered until the last bell rang. Then, as Mrs. Wyndham threw back her vail for a parting kiss, they all saw that her eyes were swollen with crying. Paul Wyndham held both the little hands of the heiress in his own, and looked down in the gentle face with tender reverence.
"Good-bye, little sister," he said; "good-bye, and God bless you!"
The others were crowding around, and hasty farewells were spoken; and then the steamer was moving away from the wharf, and Charley led Miss Henderson, who was crying behind her vail, ashore; and they stood on the wharf to watch the steamer out of sight. They saw Paul Wyndham with his wife on his arm, waving a last farewell from the deck; and then the steamer was down the bay, and all the people on the wharf were going home. Charley Marsh assisted Miss Henderson into her carriage, and she was driven away to her new home.
Speckport knew everything – the murder was out, and Speckport, from one end to the other, was agape at the news. There was one thing about the affair they could not understand, and that was, how the rightful heiress, knowing herself to be so, and perfectly able to prove it, could wear out her life as a pitiful governess, and leave a princely fortune in the hands of a usurping stepsister. Speckport could not understand this – never could understand it, and set her down as an insipid little nonentity, with no will of her own, and easily twisted around the finger of that bold, bad, ambitious woman, Mrs. Paul Wyndham. Speckport did not spare its late enchantress, and for all their contempt of that "insipid thing" the present heiress, were very well satisfied to be noticed by her in public, and only too happy to call at Redmon. It was in her favor, they said, that she put on no airs in consequence of her sudden rise in the world, but was as gentle, and humble, and patient, and sweet, as heiress of Redmon as she had been when Mrs. Wheatly's governess. A few there were who understood and appreciated her; and when old Father Lennard laid his hand on her drooping head and fervently exclaimed, "God bless you, my child!" her eyes filled, and she felt more than repaid for any sacrifice she had ever made. Speckport said – but Speckport was always given to say a good deal more than its prayers – Speckport said Mr. Charles Marsh appreciated her, too, and that the estate of Redmon would eventually go, in spite of Mrs. Leroy's unjust will, to the Marsh family. But it was only gossip, this, and nobody knew for certain, and Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose Henderson had always been the best of friends.
And just about this time, too, Speckport found something else to talk about – no less a matter, indeed, than the marriage of Valentine Blake, Esq., to Miss Laura Amelia Blair. Such a snapper of a day as the wedding-day was – cold enough to freeze the leg off an iron pot – but for all that, the big cathedral was half filled with curious Speckportonians, straining their necks to see the bride and bridegroom, and their aiders and abettors. Mr. Blake stood it like a man, and looked almost good-looking in his neatly-fitting wedding suit; and Charley Marsh by his side looked like a young prince – handsomer than any prince that ever wore a crown, poor Cherrie thought, as she made eyes at him from her pew.
There was a wedding-breakfast to be eaten at Mr. Blair's, and a very jolly breakfast it was. And then Mrs. V. Blake exchanged her bridal-gear for a traveling-dress, and was handed into the carriage that was to convey her to the railway station, by her husband; and the bridemaids were kissed all round by the bride, and good-bye was said, and the happy pair were fairly started on their bridal tour.
It took Speckport a week to fairly digest this matter, and by the end of that time it got another delectable morsel of gossip to swallow. Charley Marsh was going away. He was a rich man, now; but for all that he was going to be a doctor, and was off to New York right away, to finish his medical studies and get his diploma.
It was a miserably wet and windy day, that which preceded the young man's departure. A depressing day, that lowered the spirits of the most sanguine, and made them feel life was a cheat, and not what it is cracked up to be, and wonder how they could ever laugh and enjoy themselves at all. A dreary day to say good-bye; but Charley, buttoned up in his overcoat, and making sunshine with his bright blue eyes and pleasant smile, went through with it bravely, and had bidden his dear five hundred adieu in the course of two brisk hours. There was only one friend remaining to whom he had yet to say "that dear old word good-bye;" and in the rainy twilight he drove up the long avenue of Redmon, black and ghastly now, and was admitted by Mrs. Hill herself.
"Oh, Mr. Charley, is it you?" the good woman said. "You're going away, they tell me. Dear me, we'll miss you so much!"
"That's right, Mrs. Hill! I like my friends to miss me; but I don't mean to stay away forever. Is Miss Henderson at home?"
"She is in the library. Walk right in!"
Charley was quite at home in Redmon Villa. The library door stood ajar. Some one was playing, and he entered unheard. The rain lashed and blustered at the windows; and the wail of the wind, and sea, and woods made a dull, roaring sound of dreariness without; but a coal-fire glowed red and cheery in the steel grate; and curtained, and close, and warm, the library was a very cozy place that bad January day. The twilight shadows lurked in the corners; but, despite their deepening gloom, the visitor saw a little, slender, girlish shape sitting before a small cottage-piano and softly touching the keys. Old, sad memories seemed to be at work in her heart; for the chords she struck were mournful, and she broke softly into singing at last – a song as sad as a funeral-hymn:
"Rain! rain! rain!
On the cold autumnal night!
Like tears we weep o'er the banished hope
That fled with the summer light.
"O rain! rain! rain!
You mourn for the flowers dead;
But hearts there are, in their hopeless woe,
That not even tears may shed!
"O rain! rain! rain!
You fall on the new-made grave
Where the loved one sleeps that our bitter prayers
Were powerless to save!
"O fall! fall! fall!
Thou dreary and cheerless rain!
But the voice that sang with your summer-chime
Will never be heard again!"
The song died away like a sigh; and she arose from the instrument, looking like a little, pale spirit of the twilight, in her flowing white cashmere dress. The red firelight, flickering uncertainly, fell on a young man's figure leaning against the mantel, and the girl recoiled with a faint cry. Charley started up.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Henderson – Winnie" (they had all grown to call her Winnie of late). "I am afraid I have startled you; but you were singing when I came in, and the song was too sweet to be broken. I am rather late, but I wanted to say good-bye here last."
"Then you really go to-morrow?" she said, not looking at him. "How much your mother will miss you!"
"Yes, poor mother! but," smiling slightly, "I shall send her a box full of all the new novels when I get to New York, and that will console her. I wish somebody else would miss me, Winnie."
Is a woman ever taken by surprise, I wonder, in these cases? Does she not always know beforehand when that all-important revelation is made that it is coming, particularly if she loves the narrator? I am pretty sure of it, though she may feign surprise ever so well. She can tell the instant he crosses the threshold what he has come to say. So Winnifred Rose Henderson knew what Charles Marsh had come to tell her from the moment she looked at him; and sitting down on a low chair before the glowing fire, she listened for a second time in her life to the old, old story. What a gulf lay between that time and this – a girl then, a woman now! And how different the two men who had told it!
Worthy Mrs. Hill, trotting up-stairs and down-stairs, seeing to fires and bed-rooms, and everything proper to be seen to by a good housekeeper, suddenly remembered the fire in the library must be getting low, and that it would be just like the young people saying good-bye to one another to forget all about it, rapped to the door some half an hour after. "Come in!" the sweet voice of Miss Henderson said, and Mrs. Hill went in and found the young lady and Mr. Marsh sitting side by side on a sofa, and both wearing such radiant faces, that the dear old lady saw at once through her spectacles how matters stood, and kissed Miss Henderson on the spot, and shook hands with Mister Charley, and wished him joy with all her honest heart. So the momentous question had been asked and answered, and on Miss Henderson's finger glittered an engagement-ring, and Charley Marsh, in the bleak dawn of the next morning, left Speckport once more, the happiest fellow in the universe.
The story is told, the play played out, the actors off the stage, and high time for the curtain to fall. But the audience are dissatisfied yet, and have some questions to ask. "How did Val Blake and Laura get on, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham? What became of Cherrie and Catty Clowrie? and have Charley and Miss Henderson got married yet? and who was at the wedding? and who were the bridemaids? and what did the bride wear?" Well, let me see. I'll answer as they come. It is six months after, red-hot July – not a sign of fog in Speckport, picnics and jollifications every day, and the blessed little city (it is a city, though I have stigmatized it as a town) out in its gala-dress. Do you see that handsome house in Golden Row? There is a shining door-plate on the front door, and you can read the name – "V. Blake." Yes, that is Mr. Blake's house, and inside it is sumptuous to behold; for the "Spouter" increases its circulation every day, and Mr. B. keeps his carriage and pair now, and is a rising man – I mean out of doors. In his own single nook, I regret to say, he is hen-pecked – unmercifully hen-pecked. The gray mare is the better horse; and Mr. Blake submits to petticoat-government with that sublime good-nature your big man always manifests, and knocks meekly under at the first flash of Mistress Laura's bright eye – not that that lady is any less fond of Mr. Val than of yore. Oh, no! She thinks there is nobody like him in this little planet of ours; only she believes in husbands keeping their proper place, and acts up to this belief. She is becoming more and more literary every day – fearfully literary, I may say; and the first two fingers of the right hand are daily steeped to the bone in ink.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham are in New York, and are very busy. Charley Marsh was a frequent visitor at their house last winter, and says he never saw a happier and more loving husband and wife. Mr. Wyndham is high in the literary world; and Mrs. Wyndham is very much admired in society, as much, perhaps, for her gentleness and goodness as for her beauty. They are happy and at peace; and so we leave them.
Cherrie Nettleby (nobody thinks of calling her Mrs. Cavendish) is going to be married next week. The happy man is Sergeant O'Shaughnessy, a big Irishman, six feet four in his stockings, with a laugh like distant thunder, rosy cheeks, and curly hair. A fine-looking fellow, Sergeant O'Shaughnessy, with a heart as big as his body, who adores the ground Cherrie walks on.
And Charley is married, and happier than I can ever tell. He is rich and honored, and does a great deal of good, and is a great man in Speckport – a great and good man. And his wife – but you know her – and she is the same to-day, and will be the same unto death, as you have known her. Mrs. Marsh, Senior, lives with them, and reads as much as ever; and is waited on by Midge, who lives a life of luxurious leisure in Redmon kitchen, and queens it over the household generally.
There is a quiet little grave out in the country which Charles Marsh and his wife visit very often, and which they never leave without loving each other better, and feeling more resolute, with God's help, to walk down to the grave in the straight and narrow path that leads to salvation. They are only human. They have all erred, and sinned, and repented; and in that saving repentance they have found the truth of the holy promise: "There shall be light at the eventide."