A Changed Heart: A Novel

Oh, Captain Cavendish! you might have spared yourself the trouble of all these conjectures. Not one poor thought had she ever given you; not once had your image crossed her mind, until you stood bowing before her; and then, when she spoke to you, every nerve was as steady as when, an instant later, she welcomed old Squire Tod. Her eyes were following furtively another form, nothing like so tall, or stately, or gallant as your own, Captain Cavendish; another form that went in and out through the crowd – the form of her husband, who welcomed every one with a face infinitely kind and genial, who found partners for forlorn damsels, who stopped to talk courteously to neglected wall-flowers, and who came to where his wife stood every now and then, and addressed her as any other gentleman in his own house might address his wife, showing no sign of coldness or disunion on his part, at least.

Captain Cavendish was disappointed, and all Speckport with him. Where was the cold neglect on Mr. Wyndham's part, they had come prepared to see and relish? where the haughty disdain of the neglected and resentful wife? They were calmly polite to one another, and what more was required? As long as Mr. Wyndham did not beat her, or Mrs. Wyndham showed no sign of intending to elope with any other man, Speckport could see no reason why it should set them down as other than a very well-matched couple.

It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham that night paid rather marked attention to one of the lady guests present; but as the lady wore black bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and was on the frosty side of fifty, no scandal came of it. The lady was poor Mrs. Marsh, who had come, nothing loth, and who simpered a good deal, and was fluttered and flattered to find herself thus honored by the master of Redmon.

"Her story is a very sad one, Olive," he said; "I am glad you settled that annuity upon her; it does you credit."

Olive said nothing; but a dark red streak flushed across her face – a burning glow of shame. She was thinking of Mrs. Major Wheatly's governess – what would Paul Wyndham say of that pale little girl if he knew all? Mrs. Wyndham had repeatedly invited Miss Rose to Redmon; and Miss Rose had come two or three times, but never when there was company.

Mr. Wyndham led Mrs. Marsh in to supper, and sat beside her, and filled her plate with good things, and talked to her all through that repast. His wife, sitting between Major Wheatly and the Rev. Augustus Tod, still watched him askance, and wondered what he could find to say to that insipid and faded nonentity, who simpered like a school-girl as she listened to him. But shortly after conducting Mrs. Marsh back to the ballroom, and seeing her safely seated at a card-table, he disappeared, and was nowhere to be seen. Every one was so busy dancing, and flirting, and card-playing, that his absence was quite unnoticed – no, not quite, his wife had observed it. It was strange the habit she had insensibly contracted, of watching this man, for whom she did not care – or persuaded herself she did not – of listening for his voice, his step, and feeling better satisfied, somehow, to see him in the room. Where had he gone to? What was he doing? How could he be so rude as to go and leave their guests? She grew distrait, then fidgety, then feverishly and foolishly anxious to know what he could be about, and who he was with; and gliding unobserved from the crowded ballroom, she visited the dining-room, the library, peeped into his own room, which she never condescended to enter; all in vain. Mr. Wyndham was nowhere to be seen.

"It is very strange!" said Mrs. Wyndham to herself, knitting her black brow – always her habit when annoyed. "It is most extraordinary conduct! I think he might show a little more attention to his guests."

The library windows opened on the velvet lawn, and were opened now to their widest extent, to admit the cool night air. She stepped out into the pale starlit night, her rich ruby velvet dress and starry diamonds glowing dimly in the luminous darkness. As she walked across the lawn, glad to be alone for a moment, a figure all in white flew past her with a rush, but not before she had recognized the frightened face of Laura Blair.

"Laura!" she said, "is it you? What is the matter?"

Laura stopped, and passed her hands over her beating heart.

"I have had such a scare! I came out of the conservatory five minutes ago, on to the lawn to get cool, when I saw a figure that had been standing under the trees dart behind one of them, as if to hide. The person seemed to have been watching the house, and was trying to hide from me. It frightened me, and I ran."

Olive Wyndham was physically as brave as a man: she never screamed, or ran, or went into hysterics, from palpable terror. Now, she drew Laura's arm within her own, and turned in the direction that young lady had come.

"You little goose," she said, "it was some of the people here, out to get cool like yourself. We will go and see who they are."

"I don't believe it is any of the people here. I think it was a woman in a long cloak, with the hood over her head. Oh, I had rather not go!"

"Nonsense! it was some of the servants, or some curious, inquisitive straggler, come to – "

She stopped, for Laura had made a warning gesture, and whispered, "Look there!" Olive looked. Directly opposite the house, and shrinking behind a clump of cedar trees, on the edge of a thickly-wooded portion of the grounds, she could see a figure indistinctly in the star-light – the figure of a female it looked, wearing, as Laura said, a long cloak, with the hood drawn over the head and shrouding the face. They were in deep shadow themselves, and Laura hid her white dress behind some laurel bushes. Olive's curiosity was excited by the steadfast manner in which the shrouded figure watched the house – through those large, lighted windows, Olive knew the person could distinctly see into the drawing-room, if not distinguish the people there.

"Laura," she whispered, "I must find out who that is. I can get round without being seen – you remain and wait for me here."

Keeping in the shadow, Olive skirted the lawn and round the cedar clump, without being seen or heard by the watcher. She glided behind the stunted trees; but though she was almost near enough to touch the singular apparition, she could not see its face, it was so shrouded by the cowl-like hood. While she stood waiting for it to turn round, a man crossed the lawn hurriedly, excitedly, and, with a suppressed exclamation, clasped the cloaked figure in his arms. Olive hardly repressed a cry – the man was her husband, Paul Wyndham!

"My darling!" she heard him say, in a voice she never forgot – a voice so full of infinite love and tenderness, that it thrilled to her very heart – "my darling, why have you done this? I have been searching for you everywhere since I heard you were here. My love! my love! how could you be so rash?"

"I was so lonely, Paul, without you!" a woman's voice answered – a voice that had a strangely-familiar sound, and Olive saw the cloaked figure clinging to him, trustingly. "I was so lonely, and I wanted to see them all. But I am very cold now, and I want to go home!"

"I shall take you home at once, my darling! Your carriage is waiting at the gate. Come, I know a path through this wood that will lead us out – it will not do to go down the avenue. Oh, my dearest! never be so rash again! You might have been seen."

They were gone; disappearing into the black cedar woods, like two dark specters, and Olive Wyndham came out from her place of concealment, and stood an instant or two like one who has been stunned by a blow. Laura Blair rose up at her approach with a startled face, and saw that she was ghastly white.

"Olly!" Laura said, in a scared voice, "wasn't that Mr. Wyndham who went away with – with – that person?"

Olive Wyndham turned suddenly upon her, and grasped her arm, with a violence that made Laura cry out with pain.

"Laura Blair!" she cried, with passionate fierceness in her voice, "if ever you say a word of what you have seen to-night, I will kill you!"

With which remark, Mrs. Wyndham walked away, stepped through the library window, and into the house. She was in the drawing-room when poor Laura ventured in, sitting at the piano, enchanting her guests with some new and popular music, but with a face that had blanched to a sickly white. She might play, she might talk, she might laugh and dance, but she could not banish that frozen look from her face; and her friends, looking at her, inquired anxiously if she was ill; no, she said she was not ill; but she had been out in the grounds a short time before, and had got chilled – that was all.

Half an hour later, Mr. Wyndham re-appeared in the drawing-room, with a calm face that hid his secret guilt well. Some of the people were already beginning to depart, and his absence was unknown to all save two. Once he spoke to his wife, remarking on her paleness, and telling her she had fatigued herself dancing; and she had laughed strangely and answered, yes, it had been a delightful evening all through, and she had never enjoyed herself so much. And then she was animatedly bidding the last of her guests good-night, and the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and the banquet-hall deserted. And Paul Wyndham bade her good night, and left her alone in her velvet robes and diamond necklace, and splendid misery, and never dreamed that he was found out.

Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham did not meet again until Sunday. The next day, Friday, the young author had gone over to Rosebush Cottage with his MSS. and fishing-rod, and there spent the rest of the week. The dissipation at Redmon, the constant round of dressing, and visiting, and party-giving, knocked him up, he told Val Blake, and unfitted him for work; and, at the cottage, he could recruit, and smoke, and get on with his writing.

Speckport saw Mrs. Wyndham driving, and riding, and promenading through its streets, that day and the next, beautifully dressed and looking beautiful, but Speckport never once dreamed of the devouring jealousy that had eaten its way to her inmost heart, and must hitherto be added to her other tortures. Yes, Olive Wyndham was jealous, with the fierce jealousy of such natures as hers – and your dark women can be jealous of your fair women with a vengeance. And as real jealousy without love is simply an impossibility, the slow truth broke upon Olive Wyndham that she had grown to love her husband.

How it had come about, Heaven only knows; she had honestly done her best to hate him. But that mischievous little blind god, flying his arrows at random, had shot one straight to her haughty heart. This, then, was the secret of all her anxiety and watchfulness, though she had never suspected it – she might have been a long time in suspecting it, but for the discovery made in the grounds that night. She loved him who would never love her. She knew him indifferent to herself; but while she thought him equally indifferent to every one else, she had not cared much; but now, but now! Who was this woman who had stepped between her and the man to whom she was married?

Who was she? who was she? she asked herself the miserable question a hundred times a minute – she could think of nothing else – but she never could answer it. In all Speckport she could not fix upon any one she knew Paul Wyndham was likely to address such words as she had heard to. How their memory thrilled her – those tones so full of passionate love – it made her grind her teeth to think of them.

"If I had her here, whoever she is," she thought, "I could tear the eyes out of her head, and send her back to him streaming blood! Oh, who can she be? who can she be?"

It was Catty Clowrie who first changed the course of her ideas, and set her off at a new tangent. Catty was sewing at the villa; and, as Mrs. Wyndham, in her miserable restlessness, wandered from room to room, she came at last to a pleasant vine-grown glass porch at the back of the house, where Miss Clowrie sat stitching away in the afternoon sunshine. An open book lay beside her, as if she had just been reading, and Olive saw it was Mr. Wyndham's volume of travels. She took it up with a strange contradictory feeling of tenderness for the insensate thing.

"How do you like it?" she asked, looking at his portrait in front, the deep, thoughtful eyes gazing back at her from the engraving, with the same inscrutable look she knew so well.

"I think it is lovely," said Catty. "I wish I could finish it, but I must get on with my work. Mr. Wyndham must be wonderfully clever; his descriptions set the places before you as if you saw them."

Olive sat down, and began talking to this girl, whom she instinctively disliked, about her husband and her husband's books. Catty, snapping off her thread, asked at last:

"Mr. Wyndham is not at home to-day, is he? I haven't seen him."

"No," said his wife, carelessly, "he has gone over to Rosebush Cottage."

Miss Clowrie gave an unpleasant little laugh.

"Of course he is at Rosebush Cottage! Every one knows Mr. Wyndham never goes anywhere else! If he had a Fair Rosamond shut up there, he could not be fonder of going there. Mr. Wyndham must be very much attached to his mother."

There was a long blank pause after her cruel speech, during which the mistress of Redmon never took the book from before her face. She felt that she was deadly pale, and had sense enough left not to wish Catty Clowrie to see it. She rose up presently, throwing the book on the ground as she did so, and walked out of the porch with such fierce rebellious bitterness in her heart, as never at her worst of misery had she felt before. A Fair Rosamond! Yes, the secret was out! and what a blind fool she must have been not to have seen it before! It was no sickly old mother Paul Wyndham had shut up in Rosebush Cottage, but a fair inamorata. It was she, too, whom they had seen in the grounds the previous night; she who, wearied of her pretty prison without him, and fall of curiosity, doubtless, had come to Redmon. "I was so lonely without you, Paul!" – she remembered the sweet and strangely-familiar voice that had said those words, and the tender caress which had answered them; and she sank down in her jealous rage and despair in her own room, hating herself and all the world. Oh, my poor Olive! Surely retribution had overtaken you, surely judgment had fallen upon you even in this life, for your sins of ambition and pride!

Mrs. Wyndham was not much of a church-goer, but rather the reverse. She had a heathenish way of lolling in her boudoir Sundays, and listening with a dreamy sensuous pleasure to the clashing of bells, and falling asleep when they ceased, and awakening to read novels until dinner-time.

But sometimes she went to the fashionable Episcopal church, and yawned in the face of the Rev. Augustus Tod, expounding the word rather drawlingly in his white surplice, and sometimes she went to the cathedral with Laura Blair. She took the same sensuous, dreamy pleasure in going there that she did in listening to the bells, or in reading Owen Meredith's poetry. She liked to watch the purple, and violet, and ruby, and amber glows from the stained-glass windows on the heads of the faithful; she liked to listen to the grand solemn music of the old church, to inhale the floating incense, and listen to the chanting of the robed priests. And best of all she liked to see the Sisters of Charity glide noiselessly in through some side-door, with vailed faces and bowed heads, and to weave romances about them all the time high mass was going on. Matter-of-fact Catholics about her wondered why Mrs. Wyndham stared so at the Sisters, and it is probable the Sisters themselves would have laughed good-naturedly had they known of the tale of romance with which the dark-eyed heiress invested them. But it was not to look at the nuns – though she did look at them, almost wishing she were one too, and at rest from the great world strife – it was not to look at them she had come to the cathedral to-day, but to listen to a celebrated preacher somewhere from the United States. Laura had told her he was a Jesuit – those terrible Jesuits! – and Olive had almost as much curiosity to see a Jesuit as a nun. So she drove to the cathedral in her carriage, and sat in Mr. Blair's cushioned pew, and watched the people filling the large building, and listened to the grand, solemn strains of the organ touched by the masterly hand; and all listlessly enough. But suddenly her heart gave a quick plunge, and all listlessness was gone. There, coming up the aisle, behind the sexton, was a gentleman and a lady; a gentleman whose step she would have known the wide world over, and a lady she was more desirous of seeing than any other being on earth. It was Mr. Wyndham and his mother, and dozens of heads turned in surprise and curiosity, to look at that hitherto invisible mother. But she was invisible still, at least her face was, for the long black crape vail she wore was so impenetrably thick, no human eyes could pierce it. They saw she was tall and very slender, although she wore a great double black woolen shawl that would have made the slightest girlish form look clumsy and stout. She bent forward slightly as she walked, but the stoop was not the stoop of age – Olive Wyndham saw that. Mr. Wyndham, hat in hand, his mother hanging on his arm, his pale face gravely reverent, entered the pew the sexton indicated, after his mother.

It was directly in front of Mr. Blair's, facing the grand altar, and the jealous wife had an excellent chance of watching her husband and his companion.

Paul Wyndham was not a Catholic – he did not pretend to be anything in particular, a favorite creed with his countrymen, I think – but he was a gentleman; so he rose and sat and knelt as the worshipers about him did, and never once turned his back to the altar to stare at the choir.

Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, made no attempt to raise her vail during the whole service. She knelt most of the time with her face lying on the front rail of the pew, as if in prayer – a good deal to the surprise of those who saw her and imagined her not of their faith.

Olive never took her eyes off her – the Sisters of Charity, the swinging censers, the mitred bishop, the robed priests, the solemn ceremonies, the swelling music, were all unheard and unseen – that woman in front absorbed every sense she possessed. Even when the Jesuit mounted to the pulpit, she only gave him one glance, and saw that he was tall and thin and sallow, and not a bit oily and Jesuit-like, and returned to her watching of Mr. Wyndham's mother. That lady seemed to pay attention to the sermon, if her daughter-in-law did not, and a very impressive sermon it was, and one Olive Wyndham would have done well to heed. He took for his text that solemn warning of our Lord, "What will it avail a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" and the hearts of his hearers thrilled within them with wholesome fear as they listened to the discourse which followed. "You are here to-day, but you may be gone to-morrow. O my brethren!" the sonorous voice, which rang from aisle to aisle, like the trump of the last angel, cried; "the riches you are laboring so hard to amass you may never enjoy. The riches for which you toil by day and by night mean nothing if your poor span of existence permits you to accomplish them. Stop and think, oh, worldlings, while time remains. Work while it is yet day, for the night is at hand, and work for the glory which shall last for eternity. The road over which you are walking leads nowhere, but ends abruptly in the yawning grave. The fame for which you suffer and struggle and give up ease and rest, will be when over but a hollow sound, heard for one poor, pitiful moment, ere your ears are stilled in death, and your laurel crown dust and ashes. The great of this world – who made kings their puppets, and the nations of the earth their toys – have lived their brief space and are gone, and what avails them now the glory and the greatness they won? The fame of Shakespeare, of Alexander, of Napoleon of France, of a Byron, and a Milton, and all other great men – great in this life – remains to posterity, but what availed it all to them at the judgment-seat of God. There, at that awful tribunal, where we all must stand, nothing but their good works – if they ever did good works – could soften the rigor of Divine Justice. The world is like an express-train, rushing madly on, with a fathomless precipice at the end; and you laugh and sing on your way to it, consoling yourself with the thought, 'At the last moment I will repent, and all will be well.' But the Divine Justice has answered you beforehand – terribly answered you – 'You shall seek me and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins!'"

The sermon was a very long one, and a very terrible one, likely to stir the dead souls of the most hardened sinner there. It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham's mother never lifted her head all the time, but that it lay on the pew-rail, and that she was as immovable as a figure carved in ebony. Olive Wyndham had to listen, and her cheek blanched as she did so. Was this sermon preached for her? Was she bartering her immortal soul for dross, so soon to be taken from her? And then a wild terror took possession of her, and she dared think no longer. She could have put her fingers to her ears to shut out the inexorable voice, thundering awfully to her conscience: "You shall seek me and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins." There was a dead silence of dumb fear in the cathedral when the eloquent preacher descended, and very devout were the hearers until the conclusion of mass. Then they poured out, a good deal more subdued than when they had entered, and Olive had to go with the rest. Mr. Wyndham and his mother showed no sign of stirring, nor did they leave their pew until the last straggler of the congregation was gone. The carriage from Rosebush Cottage was waiting outside the gates, and Mr. Wyndham assisted his mother in, and they drove off.

Olive dined at Mr. Blair's that day, and heard them discussing the sermon, and the unexpected appearance of Mr. Wyndham and his mother. Olive said very little – the panic in her soul had not ceased. The shortness of time, the length of eternity – that terrible eternity! – had never been brought so vividly before her before. Was the express-train in which she was flying through life near the end – near that awful chasm where all was blackness and horror? Human things frittered away – earthly troubles, gigantic before, looked puny and insignificant seen in the light of eternity – so soon to begin, never to end! She had been awakened – she never could sleep again the blind, heathenish sleep that had been hers all her life, or woe to her if she could.

Mr. Blake and Miss Blair walked home with her in the hazy September moonlight. They found Mr. Wyndham sitting in one of the basket-chairs in the glass porch, looking up at the moon as seen through the smoke of his cigar, and Olive's inconsistent heart throbbed as if it would break from its prison and fly to him. Oh, if all this miserable acting could end; if he would only love her, and let her love him, she would yield forever the wealth that had never brought her happiness, and be his true and loving wife from henceforth, and try and atone for the sins of the past. She might be a good woman yet, if her life could only be simple and true like other women, and all this miserable secresy at an end. But, though the silken skirt of her rich robe touched him, they could not have been further apart if the wide world divided them. She could have laid her head down on the table there, and wept passionate, scalding tears, so utterly forlorn and wretched and lonely and unloved did she feel. She could not talk – something rose in her throat and choked her – but she listened to Mr. Wyndham telling in his quiet voice how he had persuaded his mother to go out that day to hear the famous preacher, and how he thought it had done her good.

Val and Laura did not stay long, but set out on their moonlit homeward way. Ann Nettleby sat in her own doorway, and Val paused to speak to her.

"No news of Cherrie, yet, Ann?"

Ann made the usual reply, "No," and they walked on, talking of lost Cherrie.

"I'll find her out yet," Mr. Blake said, determinedly. "I don't despair, even though – well, what's the matter?"

Laura had uttered an exclamation, and clung suddenly to his arm. Redmon road was lonely, as you know, and not a creature was to be seen; but Laura was pointing to where, under the trees, in the moonlight, a woman was standing still. A woman or a spirit, which? For it was robed in white from head to foot, and a shower of pale hair drifted over its shoulders. The face turned toward them as they approached, a face as white as the dress, and Laura Blair uttered a loud shriek as she saw it, reeled and would have fallen, had not Val caught her in his arms.