A Changed Heart: A Novel

"I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead!" in a passion of consternation, that seemed to blot out every thought of prudence. "I thought you were dead! As Heaven hears me, I thought you were dead, or I never would have done it."

Miss Rose was standing with her back to the door, and the eavesdropper saw her trying to raise the heiress up.

"Get up, Harriet," she distinctly heard her say, though she spoke in a low voice; "I cannot bear to see you like this; and do not speak so loud – some one may hear you."

If they had only known of the pale listener at the door, hushing her very heart-beating to hear the better. But Miss Henderson would not rise; she only knelt there, white and wild, and holding up her clasped hands.

"I will never get up," she passionately cried. "I will never rise out of this until you promise to keep my secret. It is not as a favor, it is as a right I demand it! Your father robbed my mother and me. But for him I would have never known poverty and misery – and God only knows the misery that has been mine. But for him, I should never have known what it is to suffer from cold and hunger, and misery and insult; but for him I would have been rich to-day; but for him my mother might still be alive and happy. He ruined us, and broke her heart, and I tell you it is only justice I ask! I should never have come here had I not thought you dead; but now that I have come, that wealth and comfort have been mine once more, I will not go. I will not, I tell you! I will die before I yield, and go back to that horrible life, and may my death rest forever on your soul!"

Catty Clowrie, crouching at the door, turned as cold as death, listening to these dreadful words. Was she awake – was she dreaming? Was this Olive Henderson – the proud, the beautiful, the queenly heiress – this mad creature, uttering those passionate, despairing words. She could not see into the room, her ear was at the keyhole – strained to a tension that was painful, so absorbed was she in listening. But at this very instant her strained hearing caught another sound – Rosie, the chambermaid, coming along the lower hall, and up-stairs. Swift as a flash, Catty Clowrie sprang up, and darted into her aunt's room. She did not dare to close the door, lest the girl should hear her, and she set her teeth with anger and suppressed fury at the disappointment.

Rosie had come up to make her bed, and set her room to rights, and was in no wise disposed to hurry over it. She sang at her work; but the pale-faced attorney's daughter in the next room, furious with disappointment, could have seen her choked at the moment with the greatest pleasure. Half an hour passed – would the girl never go? Yes – yes, there was Mrs. Hill, at the foot of the stairs, calling her, and Rosie ran down. Quick as she had left it, Catty was back at her post, airing her eye at the keyhole once more.

The scene she beheld was not quite so tragic this time. The heiress and the governess were seated opposite one another, an inlaid table between them. There was paper and ink on the table; Miss Henderson held a pen in her hand, as if about to write, and Miss Rose was speaking. Her voice was sweet and low, as usual; but it had a firm cadence, that showed she was gravely in earnest now.

"You must write down these conditions, Harriet," she was saying, "to make matters sure; but no one shall ever see the papers, and I pledge you my solemn word, your secret shall be kept inviolable. Heaven knows I have done all I could to atone for my dead father's acts, and I will continue to do it to the end. He wronged your mother and you, I know, and I am thankful it is in my power to do reparation. I ask nothing for myself – but others have rights as well as you, Harriet, and as sacred. Two hundred pounds will pay all the remaining debts of my father now. You must give me that. And you must write down there a promise to pay Mrs. Marsh one hundred pounds a year annuity, as long as she lives. Her daughter should have had it all, Harriet, and neither you nor I; and the least you can do, in justice, is to provide for her. You will do this?"

"Yes – yes," Miss Henderson cried; "that is not much to do! I want to do more. I want you to share with me, Olly."

"No," said Miss Rose, "you may keep it all. I have as much as I want, and I am very well contented. I have no desire for wealth. I should hardly know what to do with it if I had possessed it."

"But you will come and live with me," Miss Henderson said, in a voice strangely subdued; "come and live with me, and let us share it together, as sisters should."

That detestable housemaid again! If Catty Clowrie had been a man, she might have indulged in the manly relief of swearing, as she sprang up a second time, and fled into Mrs. Hill's room. This time, Rosie was not called away, and she sat for nearly an hour, singing, at her chamber window, and mending her stockings. Catty Clowrie, on fire with impotent fury, had to stay where she was.

Staying there, she saw Miss Henderson's door opened at last; and, peeping cautiously out, saw the two go down-stairs together. Miss Rose looked as if she had been crying, and her face was very pale, but the fierce crimson of excitement burned on the dark cheeks and flamed in the black eyes of Miss Henderson. It was the heiress who let Miss Rose out, and then she came back to her room, and resumed the old trick of walking up and down, up and down, as on the preceding night.

Catty wondered if she would never be tired. It was all true, then; and there was a dark secret and mystery in Olive Henderson's life. "Olive!" Was that her name, and if so, why had Miss Rose called her "Harriet." And if the governess's name was Winnie, why did the heiress call her "Olly?"

Catty Clowrie sat thinking while the April day faded into misty twilight, and the cold evening star glimmered down on the sea. She sat there thinking while the sun went low, and dipped into the bay, and out of sight. She sat thinking while the last little pink cloud of the sunset paled to dull gray, and the round white moon came up, like a shining shield. She sat there thinking till the dinner-bell rang, and she remembered she was cold and hungry, and went slowly down-stairs – still thinking.

To her surprise, for she had been too absorbed to hear her come out of her room, Miss Henderson was there, beautifully dressed, and in high spirits. She had such a passion for luxury and costly dress, this young lady, that she would array herself in velvets and brocades, even though there were none to admire her but her own servants.

On this evening, she had dressed herself in white, with ornaments of gold and coral in her black braids, broad gold bracelets on her superb arms, and a cluster of scarlet flowers on her breast. She looked so beautiful with that fire in her eyes, that flush on her cheek, that brilliant smile lighting up her gypsy face, that Mrs. Hill and Catty were absolutely dazzled. She laughed – a clear, ringing laugh – at Mrs. Hill's profuse congratulations on her magical recovery.

"You dear old Mrs. Hill!" she said, "when you are better used to mo, you will cease to wonder at my eccentricities! It is a woman's privilege to change her mind sixty times an hour, if she chooses – and I choose to assert all the privileges of my sex!"

She rose from the table as she spoke, still laughing, and went into the drawing-room. The gas burned low, but she turned it up to its full flare, and, opening the piano, rattled off a stormy polka. She twirled round presently, and called out:

"Mrs. Hill!"

Mrs. Hill came in.

"Tell Sam to go up to Miss Blair's, and fetch her here. Let him tell her I feel quite well again, and want her to spend the evening, if she is not engaged. He can take the gig, and tell him to make haste, Mrs. Hill."

Mrs. Hill departed on her errand, and Miss Henderson's jeweled fingers were flying over the polished keys once more. Presently she twirled around again, and called out: "Miss Clowrie."

"I wish Laura would come!" Miss Henderson said, pulling out her watch, "and I wish she would fetch a dozen people with her. I feel just in the humor for a ball to-night."

She talked to Catty Clowrie vivaciously, and to Mrs. Hill, because she was just in the mood for talking, and rattled off brilliant sonatas between whiles. But she was impatient for Laura's coming, and kept jerking out her watch every five minutes, to look at the hour.

Miss Blair made her appearance at last, and not alone. There was a gentleman in the background, but Miss B. rushed with such a frantic little scream of delight into the arms of her "dear, darling Olly," and so hugged and kissed her, that, for the first moment or two, it was not very easy to see who it was. Extricating herself, laughing and breathless, from the gushing Miss Blair, Olive looked at her companion, and saw the amused and handsome face of Captain Cavendish.

"I hope I am not an intruder," that young officer said, coming forward, "but being at Mr. Blair's when your message arrived, and hearing you were well again, I could not forbear the pleasure of congratulating you. The Princess of Speckport can be ill dispensed with by her adoring subjects."

Some one of Miss Henderson's innumerable admirers had dubbed her "Princess of Speckport," and the title was not out of place. She laughed at his gallant speech, and held out her hand with frank grace.

"My friends are always welcome," she said, and here she was interrupted by a postman's knock at the door.

"Dear me! who can this be?" said Mrs. Hill, looking up over her spectacles, as Rosie opened the door.

It proved to be Mr. Val Blake. That gentleman being very busy all day, had found no time to inquire for Miss Henderson, until after tea, when, strolling out, with his pipe in his mouth, for his evening constitutional, he had stepped around to ask Mrs. Hill. Miss Henderson appeared in person to answer his friendly inquiries, and Mr. Blake came in, nothing loth, and joined the party.

Some one proposed cards, after a while; and Mr. Blake, and Miss Blair, and Mrs. Hill, and Miss Clowrie, gathered round a pretty little card-table, but Miss Henderson retained her seat at the piano, singing, and playing operatic overtures. Captain Cavendish stood beside her, turning over her music, and looking down into the sparkling, beautiful face, with passionately loving eyes. For the spell of the sorceress burdened him more this night than ever before, and the man's heart was going in great plunges against his side. He almost fancied she must hear its tumultuous beating, as she sat there in her beauty and her pride, the red gold gleaming in her black braids and on her brown arms. It had always been so easy before for him to say what was choking him now, and he had said it often enough, goodness knows, for the lesson to be easy. But there was this difference – he loved this black-eyed sultana; and the fever called love makes a coward of the bravest of men. He feared what he had never feared before – a rejection; and a rejection from her, even the thought of one, nearly sent him mad.

And all this while Miss Olive Henderson sat on her piano-stool, and sang "Hear me, Norma," serenely unconscious of the storm going on in the English officer's breast. He had heard that very song a thousand times better sung, by Nathalie Marsh. Ah! poor forgotten Nathalie! – but he was not listening to the singing. For him, the circling sphere seemed momentarily standing still, and the business of life suspended. He was perfectly white in his agitation, and the hand that turned the leaves shook. His time had come. The card-party were too much absorbed in scoring their points to heed them, and now, or never, he must know his fate. What he said he never afterward knew – but Miss Henderson looked strangely startled by his white face and half incoherent sentences. The magical words were spoken; but as the self-possessed George Cavendish had never spoken thus before, and the supreme question, on which his life's destiny hung, asked.

The piano stood in a sort of recess, with a lace-draped window to the right, looking out upon Golden Row. Miss Henderson sat, all the time he was speaking, looking straight before her, out into the coldly moonlit street. Not once did her color change – no tremor made the scarlet flowers on her breast rise and fall – no flutter made the misty lace about her tremble. She was only very grave, ominously grave, and the man's heart turned sick with fear, as he watched her unchanging face and the dark gravity of her eyes. She was a long time in replying – all the while sitting there so very still, and looking steadfastly out at the quiet street; not once at him. When she did reply, it was the strangest answer he had ever received to such a declaration. The reply was another question.

"Captain Cavendish," she said, "I am an heiress, and you – pardon me – have the name of a fortune-hunter. If I were penniless, as I was before this wealth became mine – if by some accident I were to lose it again – would you say to me what you have said now?"

Would he? The answer was so vehement, so passionate, that the veriest skeptic must have believed. His desperate earnestness was written in every line of his agitated face.

"I believe you," she said; "I believe you, Captain Cavendish. I think you do love me; but I – I do not love you in return."

He gave a sort of cry of despair, but she put up one hand to check him.

"I do not love you," she steadily repeated, "and I have never loved any one in this way. Perhaps it is not in me, and I do not care that it should be: there is misery enough in the world, Heaven knows, without that! I do not love you, Captain Cavendish, but I do not love any one else. I esteem and respect you; more, I like you: and if you can be content with this, I will be your wife. If you cannot, why, we will be friends as before, and – "

But he would not let her finish. He had caught her hand in his, and broke out into a rhapsody of incoherent thanks and delight.

"There, there!" she smilingly interposed, "that will do! Our friends at the card-table will hear you. Of one thing you may be certain: I shall be true to you until death. Your honor will be safe in my hands; and this friendly liking may grow into a warmer feeling by-and-by. I am not very romantic, Captain Cavendish, and you must not ask me for more than I can give."

But Captain Cavendish wanted no more. He was supremely blessed in what he had received, and his handsome face was radiant.

"My darling," he said, "I ask for no more! I shall think the devotion of a whole life too little to repay you for this."

"Very well," said Miss Henderson, rising; "and now, after that pretty speech, I think we had better join our friends, or my duty as hostess will be sadly neglected."

She stood behind Miss Laura Blair for the rest of the evening, watching the fluctuations of the game, and with no shadow of change in her laughing face. She stood there until the little party broke up, which was some time after ten, when Mr. Blair called around for Laura himself. Miss Laura was not to say over and above obliged to her pa for this act of paternal affection – since she would have infinitely preferred the escort of Mr. Blake. That gentleman hooked his arm within that of Captain Cavendish, and bade Miss Blair good-night, with seraphic indifference.

Miss Henderson's bedroom windows commanded an eastward view of the bay, and when she went up to her room that night, she sat for a long time gazing out over the shining track the full moon made for herself on the tranquil sea. "Gaspereaux month" had come around again, and the whole bay was dotted over with busy boats. She could see the fishermen casting their nets, now in the shadow, now in the glittering moonlight, and the peaceful beauty of the April night filled her heart with a deep, sweet sense of happiness. Perhaps it was the first time since her arrival in Speckport she had been really happy – a vague dread and uncertainty had hung over her, like that fabled sword, suspended by a single hair, and ready to fall at any moment. But the fear was gone, she was safe now – her inheritance was secure, and she was the promised wife of an honorable gentleman. Some day, perhaps, he might be a baronet, and she "my lady," and her ambitious heart throbbed faster at the thought. She sat there, dreaming and feeling very happy, thinking of the double compact ratified that most eventful day, but she never once thanked God – never gave one thought to him to whom she owed it all. She sat there far into the night, thinking, and when she laid her head on the pillow and fell asleep, it was to act it all over in dreamland again.

Some one else lay awake a long time that night, thinking, too. Miss Clowrie, in the opposite chamber, did not sit up by the window; Mrs. Hill would, no doubt, not have permitted it, and Miss Clowrie was a great deal too sensible a person to run the risk of catching cold. But, though she lay with her eyes shut she was not asleep, and Olive Henderson might not have dreamed quite such happy dreams had she known how dark and ominous were the thoughts the attorney's pale daughter was thinking.