A Changed Heart: A Novel

"Will I tell him you'll come down, Miss?" Rosie ventured to ask, when she thought the silence had lasted long enough.

The voice of the girl drew Olive out of her darkly-brooding fit, and she turned to close her door.

"Yes," she said. "Tell him I will be down in five minutes."

She walked to the glass, and looked at herself. I dare say Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots did the same before they were led to the block; and I doubt if either wore a more ghostly face at that horrible moment than the girl standing there did now. She smiled in bitter scorn of herself, as she saw the haggard face and the hollow, burning eyes.

"I look as if I had grown old in a night," she said. "Where is the beauty now that so many have praised since I came here?"

She made no attempt to change her dress, but with the loose white muslin wrapper trailing in long folds around her, and girdled with scarlet, she descended the stairs, and entered the drawing-room.

Mr. Paul Wyndham was sitting at a window, watching the ceaseless rain beating against the glass. At that very window, looking out at the silvery moonlight, she herself had sat a few nights before, while she promised Captain Cavendish she would be his wife. Perhaps she thought of this as she swept past, à la princesse, just deigning to acknowledge her visitor's presence by her haughtiest bow. She could not have acted otherwise, had a hundred fortunes depended on it, and she did not sit down.

She stood beside the mantel, her arm, from which the flowing white sleeves dropped away, leaning on it, her eyes fixed steadily upon the man before her, waiting in proud silence for what he had to say. Any one else might have been disconcerted; but Mr. Wyndham did not look as if he was. He looked pale and quiet and gentlemanly, and entirely self-possessed.

"You do not ask the object of my visit, Miss Henderson," he said, "although the hour is unfashionably early, and the day not such as callers usually select. But I presume you have been expecting me, and are not surprised."

"I am not surprised," she said, coldly.

"I thought that at this hour I should be most certain of finding you at home and alone. Therefore, I have come, knowing that after what passed last night, the sooner we come to an understanding the better."

"How have you found out my secret?" she abruptly demanded. "You never knew me in New York?"

"That is my secret, Miss Henderson – I presume you prefer being called by that name – that is my secret, and you will pardon me if I do not reveal it. I do know your secret, and it is that knowledge which has brought me to this place."

"And knowing it, what use do you intend to make of it?"

He smiled slightly.

"You are very straightforward, Miss Henderson. It is almost as easy getting on with you as if you were a man. I foresee that we shall settle this little matter pleasantly, after all."

Olive Henderson contracted her black brows, and reiterated her question.

"Knowing this secret, sir, what use do you intend making of it?"

"That depends upon yourself, madam."

"How?"

"I shall keep your secret, Miss Henderson," Paul Wyndham said, "I shall keep it inviolably; you shall still be Olive Henderson, heiress of Redmon, the lady paramount of Speckport, on one condition."

Her heart beat so fast and thick that she had to press her hands over it to still its tumultuous throbbing. Her hollow, burning black eyes never left his face, they were strained there in suspense too intense for words.

"You are aware, Miss Henderson," the cold, clear, yet melodious voice of Paul Wyndham went on, "of the position in which you stand. You have usurped the place of another – your stepsister – you have assumed a name which does not belong to you, and you have come here to dupe the people of this place, to pass yourself off for what you are not, and possess yourself of wealth to which you have no shadow of claim. In doing this, Miss Henderson, you must be aware you are guilty of a felony, punishable by law, punishable by trial, imprisonment, and life-long disgrace. All this you know, and knowing it, must be aware how entirely and irrevocably you are in my power!"

"Irrevocably and completely in my power," the pitiless voice went on, "you see it yourself as well as I. You know also much better than I do, the misery, the shame, the degradation exposure must bring. Your name published, your crime published far and wide, yourself the scoff and jeer of every boor in the town, the horrors of a jail, of a criminal cell, of a public trial before gaping thousands, of – "

Paul Wyndham stopped. It was not a cry she had uttered, but a gasping sob, telling more of the unutterable agony, the intense misery she was suffering, than any wild outbreak of womanly shrieks. She put out her hands with a passionate cry.

Paul Wyndham looked at the disturbed, crouching form, convulsed with despairing agony, with Heaven only knows how much of pity in his face.

"Miss Henderson! Miss Henderson!" he cried, "I did not mean – I did not think what I said would affect you like this. I only told you what might be, but it never will be, for you will listen to what I have yet to say, and I never will reveal your secret to a living soul!"

She lifted her head, and looked at him as a hunted stag might, with the knife at its throat.

"Mr. Wyndham," she said, with that dignity which is born of extreme misery, "what have I ever done to you that you should come here and torment me like this?"

Paul Wyndham turned away from that reproachful face, with a dark shadow on his own.

"Heaven knows, Miss Henderson, I hate the necessity which compels me to cause you this pain, but it is a necessity, and I must do it; you never have wronged me – I have no wish to give you a moment's suffering, but a fatality against which I am powerless, urges me on. I hate myself for what I am doing – but what can I do – what can I do?"

He seemed to ask himself the question, as he sprang up and took, like herself, to walking excitedly up and down. His face was so darkly troubled that Olive Henderson looked at him with searching, wondering eyes.

"I do not understand you," she said, chilled with a new fear, "does any one but yourself know my secret?"

She was still sitting, and never ceasing to watch him. Paul Wyndham leaned against the mantel, as she had done a moment before, and looked down at her.

"Miss Henderson, I can tell you nothing but that your secret is safe with me if you will comply with the condition I have to name. You may trust me; I shall never reveal it!"

"And that condition is – "

There was a pause, during which Olive could have counted the raindrops on the window or the loud beating of her heart.

Paul Wyndham's large, clear, bright gray eyes steadily met her own.

"The condition is, that you become my wife."

She gave a cry, she was so utterly astonished, and sat staring at him, speechless.

"Your – wife!" she slowly said, when her returned senses enabled her to speak.

"Yes, Miss Henderson, my wife! I am no more insensible to the power of wealth than you are. You have risked everything for the future; you can only hold it now, on condition of becoming my wife!"

Olive Henderson rose up, white and defiant, "I never will!" she said, "I never will! I will lose every shilling of it, I will die before I consent!"

"Oh, no!" Mr. Wyndham said, quietly, "I do not think you will, when you come to reflect, it is not pleasant to die when one is young and handsome and prosperous, particularly if one has not been very good, and not at all sure of going to Heaven. You will not die, Miss Henderson; you will keep the fortune and marry me."

"I never will!" she vehemently cried; "what if I told you my stepsister, the real Olive Henderson, were alive, that I have seen her lately, and that she has made over everything to me. What if I told you this?"

He smiled incredulously.

"You do not believe me, but I swear to you I state the truth. Olive Henderson lives, though I thought her dead; and I have seen her, I tell you, and she has consented to my keeping all."

"Well," said Mr. Wyndham quietly, "supposing, for argument's sake, what you say to be true, it does not alter your position in the least. Should I go to a lawyer and tell him your story, the arrest, the exposure, the disgrace all follow as inevitably as ever. The rightful heiress may, as you say, be alive, and willing you should usurp her birthright, though it does not sound very likely; but even if so, Harriet Wade is too proud a woman to incur life-long disgrace and humiliation, when she can avert it so easily."

She turned away from him, dropped into her seat, and laid her hand on a table near. The action, the attitude, told far more than words, of the cold, dark despair thickening around her.

She never lifted her head. She was suffering, as other women have suffered, dumbly.

"In asking you to be my wife, Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham still continued, "I make no pretense of being in love with you myself. I am not – I may as well tell you plainly – and I shall never ask love from you. In becoming my wife, you will go through a legal ceremony that will mean nothing. I shall never intrude upon you one single moment out of all the twenty-four hours, unless you desire it, or when the presence of others makes our being together unavoidable. We may dwell under the same roof, and yet live as far apart as if hemispheres divided us. Believe me, I shall not force myself upon you against your will; but for your own sake, Miss Henderson, and to still the whispers of busy tongues, it would be as well to keep your sentiments regarding me to yourself, as well we should be apparently on cordial terms. Are you listening, Miss Henderson?"

He really thought she was not. She was lying so still, so rigid, with her poor white face on the table, and the thick coils of her dead-black hair unloosing themselves, and trailing and twining about her like black snakes. She was not hysterical now; she was lying there in a sort of dumb anguish, that none but very proud and sensitive hearts, crashed to the very dust in shame and humiliation, can ever feel.

"Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham repeated, looking at the drooping, girlish figure, its very attitude speaking so much of supreme misery, "I am waiting for my answer."

She lifted her head and looked at him, with something the look of a deer at bay.

"Have you no pity?" she said. "Will you not spare me? I am only a girl, alone in the world, and you might pity me and be merciful. I have done wrong, I know, but Heaven alone knows what I have suffered from poverty, and the degradation it inevitably entails. I was tempted, and I yielded; but I think I never was so miserable in the worst days of my suffering as I have been at times since I came here. I am not good, I know, but I am not used to wickedness and plotting like this, and I think I am the most miserable creature on the face of this wide earth. But I never wronged you, sir; and you might pity me and spare me."

Her head dropped down again with a sort of sob, and the pitiful pleading was touching to hear from those proud lips. If Paul Wyndham had possessed the hardest heart that ever beat in a man's breast since the days of Nero, I think it must have been touched by the sight of that haughty spirit so bowed and crushed before him. His face showed no sign of whatever he might feel, but his clear voice shook a little as he replied.

"It is of little use, Miss Henderson, for me to say how deeply I do pity you – how sorely against my will I wage this unequal warfare, since the battle must go on all the same. It would only sound like mockery were I to say how grieved I am to give you this pain, since I should still remain inexorable."

"Will nothing bribe you?" she asked. "Half the wealth I possess shall be yours if – "

She had lifted her face again in eager hopefulness, but he interrupted with a gesture.

"I said I was inexorable, Miss Henderson, and I must repeat it. Besides," he added, with a slight smile, that showed how credulous he was about the story, "the real heiress, though she might make over the fortune to you, might object to your handing the half of it over to a stranger. No, Miss Henderson, there is only the one alternative – be my wife, or else – "

"Or else you will tell all?"

He did not speak. He stood, quietly waiting his answer – quiet, but very inflexible.

Olive rose up and stood before him.

"Must you have your answer now?" she asked, "or will you not even give me a few hours respite to think it over?"

"As many as you please, Miss Henderson."

"Then you shall have it to-night," she said, with strange, cold calmness. "I promised Miss Blair to go to the theater – you will see me there, and shall have your answer."

Mr. Wyndham bowed, and with a simple "Good morning," walked out of the room. As he shut the door behind him, he felt as though he were shutting Olive Henderson in a living tomb, and he her jailer.

"Poor girl! poor girl!" he was thinking, as he put on his overcoat; "what a villain I must seem in her eyes, and what a villain I am, ever to have consented to this. But it is only retribution after all – one ill turn deserves another."

Paul Wyndham walked to his hotel through the drenching rain and cold sea-wind, and Olive Henderson listened to the tumult of the storm, with another storm quite as tumultuous in her own breast.

The play that night was the "Lady of Lyons." There is only one theater in Speckport, so Mr. Wyndham was not likely to get bewildered in his search. The first act was half over when he came in, and looked round the dress circle, and down in the orchestra stalls. In the glare of the gaslight Olive Henderson looked superb. Never had her magnificent black eyes shone with such streaming luster as to-night, and a crimson glow, quite foreign to her usual complexion, beamed on either cheek – the crimson glow, rouge, worn for the first time in her life; and though she was a New York lady, she had the grace to be ashamed of the paint, and wear a thin black vail over her face. She took her eyes off Mademoiselle Pauline for a moment, to fix them on Mr. Wyndham, who came along to pay his respects, and to find a seat directly behind that of the heiress, but she only bent her head in very distant acknowledgment of his presence, and looked at Pauline again.

The curtain fell on the first act. Miss Henderson was very thirsty – that feverish thirst had not left her yet, and Captain Cavendish went out for a glass of ice-water. Laura was busy chattering to Mr. Blake, and Paul Wyndham bent forward and spoke to the heiress, who never turned her head.

"I have come for my answer, Miss Henderson," he said; "it is 'Yes,' I know."

"It is 'Yes,' Mr. Wyndham, and, with my consent, take the knowledge that I hate and despise you more than any other creature on the face of the earth."

She never turned while saying this. She stared straight before her at the row of gleaming footlights. The music was croaking out, every one was talking busily, and not one of the young ladies who looked enviously at the beautiful and brilliant heiress, nor the men who worshiped her at a distance, and who hated the young New Yorker for the privilege he enjoyed of talking to her – not one of them all dreamed ever so faintly of that other play being enacted off the stage.

Captain Cavendish came back with the water, the play went on, but I doubt if Olive Henderson heard a word, or knew whether they were playing "Othello" or the "Lady of Lyons," but none of the others knew that; that serviceable mask, the human face, is a very good screen for the heart.

The play was over, and they were all going out. Mr. Wyndham had not addressed her since, but she knew he was behind her all the time, and she knew nothing else. He was by her side as they descended the stairs, and the cold night-wind struck them on the face. She was leaning on the arm of Captain Cavendish, but how was that conquering hero to know it was for the last time?

"I will have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow, Miss Henderson," he distinctly said, as he bowed an adieu and was lost in the crowd.