MR. PAUL WYNDHAM.
On the morning after the day fraught with so many events to the heiress
of Redmon, the mother of the late heiress sat in the sitting-room of her
pleasant seaside home, reading a novel. The firelight shone on her
mourning-dress, but the inward mourning was not very profound. She had
cried a good deal at first for the loss of her son and daughter; she
cried sometimes still when people talked to her about them; but she
cried quite as much over the woes of her pet heroes and heroines, bound
in paper and cloth, and slept just as soundly, and took her meals with
as good a relish as ever she had done in her life. Mrs. Marsh was not
greatly given to borrowed trouble; she took the goods the gods provided,
and let to-morrow take care of itself, so long as she had enough for
to-day. Mr. Val Blake paid the butcher's, and baker's, and grocer's
bills quarterly; settled with Betsy Ann, and Miss Jo saw that she was
well dressed; and Mrs. Marsh took all as a matter of course, and I don't
think even once thanked Mr. Blake for his kindness.
On this sunny spring morning Mrs. Marsh sat comfortably reading, so
absorbed in her book as to be out of the reach of all mundane affairs.
The book had a bright yellow cover, with a striking engraving of one man
grasping another by the throat, and presenting a pistol at his head, and
was called the "Red Robber of the Rocky Mountains"--a sequel to the
"Black Brigand,"--when, just in the middle of a most thrilling chapter,
Mrs. Marsh was disturbed by a knock at the front door. Betsy Ann
answered the summons, and stood transfixed at the shining apparition she
beheld. A beautiful young lady, with big black eyes, that shone on Betsy
Ann like two black diamonds, arrayed in rustling silk, and a rich
creamy crape shawl, with a bonnet fine enough for the queen of England,
stood before her, asking, in a silvery voice, if Mrs. Marsh were at
home. Standing before the door was a small open carriage, drawn by two
milk-white ponies; and Miss Laura Blair sat within, nodding pleasantly
to her, Betsy Ann, and holding the reins. The girl, quite dazzled by the
splendor of this early visitor, ushered the radiant vision into the room
where her mistress sat, and Mrs. Marsh arose with an exclamation of
surprise she could not repress. They had met a few times before at the
houses of mutual friends, but this was the young lady's first call.
"Miss Henderson," Mrs. Marsh stammered, utterly at a loss what to
say--"I am sure I am very glad to see you; I have not had many visitors
of late."
Tears rose to her eyes as she spoke, with the thoughts of the pleasant
days gone by, when the friends of Nathalie and Charley, the friends of
their prosperity, had made the cottage more gay with laughter and music.
Miss Henderson was not looking at her, but into the red coal-fire.
"I have come on a little matter of business, Mrs. Marsh," she said. "I
have come to fulfill a duty I owe to you. I know the story of the past,
and, I am afraid, you must feel in some degree as if I had taken from
you what should have been yours. Your--your daughter had no doubt a
prior claim to what I now possess, and common justice requires you
should not be defrauded. I am aware of Mr. Blake's great generosity, but
the duty--and, I assure you, it is a pleasure to me--lies with me, not
with him. I have, therefore, settled upon you, for life, an annuity of
one hundred pounds per annum, which will be paid to you at my banker's,
monthly or quarterly, as you may prefer. It was to say this I came so
early this morning, but, if you will permit me, this visit shall be but
the forerunner of many others."
She was standing up as she finished, with a look of intense relief at
having accomplished her task, and Mrs. Marsh altogether too dazed and
bewildered to utter a word.
"And I shall be very, very happy, my dear Mrs. Marsh," the heiress said,
bending over her, and taking her hand, "if you will sometimes come up
and see me. I have no mother, and I will look upon you as such, if you
will let me."
Mrs. Marsh saw her go, feeling as though she were in a dream, or acting
a chapter out of one of her own romances.
Miss Henderson took her place beside Laura in the pony carriage, and
they drove slowly along Cottage Street, looking at the broad blue bay,
sparkling in the sunshine, as if sown with stars. The beach, with its
warm, white sands, edged the sea like a silver streak; and the waves
sang their old music, as they crept up on its breast.
"How beautiful it all is!" the heiress cried, her dark face lighting up
as it always did at sight of the ocean. "Let us get out, Laura; I could
stay here listening to those sailors singing forever."
There were some idle boys at play on an old wharf, overgrown with moss
and slimy seaweed, its tarry planks rotting in the sun.
Miss Henderson dropped a bright silver shilling into the dirty palm of
one, and asked him to hold the ponies for ten minutes; and the two girls
walked along the decaying and deserted old wharf together.
"My solemn Laura!" the heiress said, looking at her friend's grave face;
"what a doleful countenance you wear! Of what are you thinking?"
"I am thinking of poor Nathalie Marsh," Laura answered; "it was on this
very wharf she met her death, that wild, windy night. I have never been
near the place since."
It is a remarkable trait of these swarthy faces that emotion does not
pale them as it does their blonde neighbors--they darken. Miss
Henderson's face darkened now--it always seemed to do so when the name
of the dead girl was mentioned. She turned away from her friend, and
stood staring moodily out to sea, until an exclamation from that young
lady caused her to turn round and perceive that either the sea-wind or
some other cause had very perceptibly heightened Miss Blair's color.
"I declare if that's not Val," Laura cried, "and that strange gentleman
with him that came from New York the other day. There! they see us, and
are coming here."
Miss Henderson looked indifferently as Mr. Blake and his friend
approached. Val introduced his companion to the ladies as Mr. Paul
Wyndham, of New York, and that gentleman was received graciously by Miss
Blair, and coldly, not to say haughtily, by Miss Henderson.
The heiress did not like people from New York. She never talked about
that city, if she could help it, and rather avoided all persons coming
from it. She stood, looking vacantly out at the wide sea, and listening
to the sailors' song, taking very little part in the conversation. She
turned round, when the singing ceased, in the direction of her carriage,
with a listless yawn she was at little trouble to suppress, and a bored
look she took no pains to conceal. The gentlemen saw them safely off,
and then loitered back to the old wharf.
"Well, Wyndham," Val asked, "and what do you think of the Princess of
Speckport?"
Mr. Paul Wyndham did not immediately reply. He was leaning lazily
against a rotten beam, lighting a cigar, for he was an inveterate
smoker.
Mr. Wyndham was not handsome, he was not dashing--he had neither
mustache nor whisker, nor an aquiline nose; and he could not dance or
sing, or do anything else like any other young Christian gentleman. He
was very slight and boyish of figure, with a pale, student-like face, a
high forehead, deep-set eyes, a characteristic nose, and a thin and
somewhat cynical mouth. There was character in everything about him,
even in the mathematical precision of his dress, faultlessly neat in the
smallest particular, and scrupulously simple. He looked like a gentleman
and a student, and he was both. More, he was an author, a Bohemian, with
a well-earned literary fame, at the age of seven-and-twenty. When he
was a lad of seventeen he had started with his "knapsack on his back,"
containing a clean shirt, and a quire of foolscap, and had traveled
through Europe and Asia, and had written two charming books of travel,
that filled his pockets with dollars, and established his fame as an
author. Since then he had written some half-dozen delightful novels,
over which Laura Blair herself had cried and laughed alternately,
although she did not know now that Mr. Wyndham and ---- ---- were one
and the same. He had written plays that had run fifty nights at a time,
and his sketches were the chief charm of one or two of the best American
magazines. He was a poet, an author, a dramatist, sometimes an actor,
when he took the notion, and a successful man in all. He looked as those
inspired men who chain us with their wonderful word-painting should
look, albeit I reiterate he was not handsome. He stood now leaning
against the rotten beam, smoking his cigar, and looking dreamily over
the shining sea, while Mr. Blake repeated his question.
"I say, Wyndham, how do you like her--the beauty, the belle, the
Princess of Speckport?"
"She is a fine-looking girl," Mr. Wyndham quietly replied. "And those
big black eyes of hers are very handsome, indeed. It strikes me I should
like to marry that girl!"
"Yes," said Mr. Blake, composedly, "I dare say. I know several other
gentlemen in Speckport who would like to do the same thing, only they
can't, unfortunately."
"Can't they? Why?"
"Because there is an absurd law against bigamy in this province, and the
young lady has promised to marry one man already."
"Ah! who is he?"
"Captain Cavendish. You met him yesterday, you remember. He proposed the
other night at the house, and told me about it coming home. She accepted
him; but the affair has not yet been made public, by the lady's express
desire."
Mr. Wyndham took out his cigar, knocked off the ashes with the end of
his little finger, and replaced it.
"Captain Cavendish is a lucky fellow," he said. "But yet I don't
despair. Until the wedding-ring actually slips over the lady's finger,
there is room for hope."
"But, my dear fellow, she is engaged."
"_C'est bien!_ There is many a slip. I don't believe she will ever be
Mrs. Cavendish."
Mr. Blake stared at his friend; but that gentleman looked the very
picture of calm composure.
"My dear Wyndham," Mr. Blake remarked, compassionately, "you are simply
talking nonsense. I know you are very clever, and famous, and all that
sort of thing, and brain is excellent in its way; but I tell you it has
no chance against beauty."
"By which you would imply, I stand no chance against Captain Cavendish.
Now, if you'll believe me, I am not so sure of that. I generally manage
to accomplish whatever I set my heart upon; and I don't think--I really
don't, old boy--that I shall fail in this. Besides, if it does come to
beauty, I am not such a bad-looking fellow, in the main."
To say that Mr. Blake stared after hearing this speech would be but a
feeble description of the open-mouthed-and-eyed gape with which he
favored its deliverer. To do Mr. Wyndham justice, he was that phenomenon
not often seen--a modest author. He never bored his enemy about "My last
book, sir!" he never alluded to his literary labors at all, unless
directly spoken to on the subject; and certainly had never before
displayed any vanity. Therefore, Mr. Blake stared, not quite decided
whether he had heard aright; and Mr. Wyndham, seeing the look, did what
he did not often do, burst out laughing.
"My dear old Val," he cried, slapping him on the shoulder, "I have not
lost my senses; so there is no need of that look. I should like to have
a tall wife--small men always do, you know--with black eyes and two
hundred thousand dollars; and I shall enter the lists with this
fascinating Captain Cavendish, and bear off the prize if I can, in spite
of his sword, and uniform, and handsome face. I think, on the whole, I
shall make the young lady quite as good a husband as he."
"Well," said Mr. Blake, drawing a long breath, and appealing to the
deep, "for cool impudence and self-conceit, Paul Wyndham hasn't his
match in broad America. Here he comes from New York; and before he is a
week in the place he talks of marrying the richest and handsomest girl
it contains, as coolly as if he were Sultan of all Turkey, and she a
Circassian slave. Yes, Mr. Wyndham, ask her, by all means, and when you
get your _conge_, let me know--it will be one of the happiest days of my
life."
"But I don't think I shall get my _conge_" persisted Paul Wyndham. "Do
you know if she is in love with this Captain Cavendish?"
"I never asked her," responded Mr. Blake. "I leave that for Mr. Wyndham
to ascertain."
"Because I don't think she is," went on his friend. "When she stood here
a few minutes ago, you and the other young lady, Miss--what's her
name?--were talking of the gallant captain, and she listened with a face
of perfect indifference. I was watching her, and I don't think she cares
about him."
"I saw you watching her," said Val, "and so did she, and I don't think
she liked it. I saw those black brows of hers contract once or twice,
and that is an ominous sign with Miss Henderson."
"Miss Henderson could fly into a dickens of a passion, too, if she
liked. Your black-eyed, black-haired, brown-skinned women raise the very
old diable herself, if you stroke them the wrong way. They are something
like big black cats. I tell you, Blake, I don't believe she cares about
that military popinjay, Cavendish."
"Don't you," said Mr. Blake, with his hands in his pockets. "Of course,
if you say so it must be so."
"No; but I really think so. Are his family anything in England?"
"It is currently believed he is next heir to a baronetcy. But the
baronet got married in his old days, and there is a little shaver in
petticoats to cut Master George out. Still, he lives in hope. The new
baronet has the measles and the mumps, and the whooping-cough, and the
scarlatina, and the chicken-pox, and a tribe of other diseases, his
teeth included, to struggle through, before he reaches man's estate.
There is no telling but Cavendish may be a baronet yet."
"That is it, then!" said Wyndham. "It is for his prospective baronetcy
the girl has promised to marry him. Pride and ambition, the two sins
that hurled Lucifer from heaven to hell, are strong in that woman."
"Oh, come now," said Val, starting up, "I think we had better get out of
this, and drop the subject. It strikes me your language is rather
forcible, Mr. Wyndham; and there is no telling what you may work
yourself up to, if you keep on. It wouldn't be healthy for you, I'm
thinking, if Miss Henderson heard you."
"Nevertheless," Paul Wyndham persisted, flinging away his smoked-out
weed, "I shall marry Miss Henderson."
The two friends walked away together to the office in Queen Street--Mr.
Blake disdaining all reply to the last remark.
On their way they met Captain Cavendish, mounted on his favorite bay,
and looking the very beau ideal of a military rider, slowly cantering
beside the pretty pony-carriage where the Princess of Speckport sat in
state. The contrast between the handsome officer on horseback and the
young author on foot was great; but Mr. Wyndham bowed to the soldier and
his fair friends with undisturbed placidity.
"You see!" said Mr. Blake, significantly.
"I see," serenely answered Mr. Wyndham; "and I repeat. I shall marry
Miss Olive Henderson!"
There was nothing at all of boasting in the tone of Mr. Paul Wyndham in
saying this--simply one of deep, quiet determination. You had only to
look at his face--that pale, steadfast face--if you were any judge of
physiognomy, to perceive that his assurance to Mr. Blake, of seldom
failing in any undertaking, was no idle bravado. He was one of those men
of iron inflexibility, of invincible daring, of over mastering strength
of will, bending all other wills to their own. Men of the Napoleon
Bonaparte stamp, made to sway empires, and move about other men, kings
and knights, queens and bishops, as they please, on the great chessboard
of life. Mr. Val Blake, knowing Paul Wyndham, had some dim perception of
this; but he knew, too, that Olive Henderson was no ordinary woman. He
had a strong will, and so had she; but it was only a woman's will after
all, and with it went womanly weakness, passion, and impulse, and the
calm, passionless man was the master-mind.
"But I think she will baffle him here, after all," Mr. Blake said to
himself, as he ceased thinking about the matter. "I don't believe Olive
Henderson will ever marry Paul Wyndham, not but what he's a great deal
better fellow than Cavendish, after all!"
It seemed as though he was right, for a whole week passed before Mr.
Wyndham and Miss Henderson met again. The engagement of the heiress with
Captain Cavendish, though not formally announced, was pretty generally
known; and it was rumored that the wedding was to take place early in
June. May had come in, draped in a sodden sheet of gray wet fog; but the
villa at Redmon went steadily up, despite of wind and weather.
Landscape-gardeners were turning the potato-patches and broad meadows
and turnip-fields into a little heaven below, and the place was to be
completed in July, when Mrs. Grundy said the happy pair would be
returning from their bridal-tour, and take up their abode therein.
Mr. Paul Wyndham heard all this as he smoked his cigars and wrote away
placidly at his new novel, and was in nowise disturbed. Mr. Val Blake
heard it, and grinned as he thought of the egotistical young author
getting baffled for once. Miss Henderson's innumerable admirers heard
it, and gnashed their teeth with impotent, jealous fury, and, lastly,
Miss Henderson herself heard it, and frowned and laughed alternately.
"This horrid gossiping town of yours, Laura!" she said impatiently; "how
do they find out everything as soon as one knows it one's self, I
wonder! I wish people would mind their own business and let me alone!"
"Great people must pay the penalty of greatness, my dear," Miss Blair
answered, philosophically; "and, besides, it is only a question of time,
so don't get into a gale about it! It doesn't matter much whether it is
known this minute or the next."
The conversation between the young ladies took place in Miss Henderson's
room, and while dressing for a ball. It was to be a very grand ball
indeed, given by the officers, and to which only the tiptop cream of the
cream of Speckport society was to be invited. Of course Miss Henderson
was the first lady thought of, and of course her friend Miss Blair came
next; but Mr. Val Blake, who didn't belong to the crême at all, was to
be there too. But Mr. Blake was such a good fellow, and hand and glove
with the whole barracks, and was so useful to puff their concerts and
theatricals in the "Spouter," and praise the bass of Lieutenant the
Honorable L. H. Blank, and the tenor-solo of Captain G. P. Cavendish,
etc., etc., that it would have been an unpardonable breach to have
omitted him. Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose fame as an author had by this time
reached Speckport, was also to be there; and the ball was expected to be
the most brilliant thing of the season.
As far as weather went, it was rather a failure already. The dismal,
clammy fog had subsided at last into rain, and the rain lashed the
windows of Miss Henderson's room, and the wind shrieked about the
cottage, and roared out at sea as if bent on making a night of it. The
heiress, with Rosie, the maid, putting the finishing touches to her
toilette, stood listening to the storm, and drearily watching the
reflection of her own face and figure in the tall glass. She had taken a
fancy to be grandly somber to-night, and wore black velvet and the
diamonds Speckport talked so much of, ablaze on throat and arms. There
were blood-red flowers in her tar-black hair, and in her bouquet which
lay on the dressing table, but she looked more superb in her sable
splendor than ever.
Was Miss Laura Blair, with her commonplace prettiness of fair skin, pink
cheeks, and waving brown hair, laying herself out as a foil to the
black-eyed siren? She was dressed in white moire antique, gemmed with
seed-pearls, and with a train of richness that swept half way across the
room. She had white roses in her hair, on her breast, and in her
bouquet. She wore pearl bracelets and necklace, and looked fair as a
lily--a vivid contrast to her black and crimson neighbor.
Miss Henderson sent Rosie out of the room, and stood listening in
silence for a while to the raging of the storm. Presently she turned to
Laura, who was all absorbed settling her laces and jewels, with a rather
singular inquiry on her lips.
"Laura," she said, abruptly, "what is the matter with me to-night? Why
am I afraid to go to the ball?" Miss Blair turned round and gazed aghast
at this question. The shadow that sometimes lay on her friend's face was
there now, like a dark vail.
"Dear me, Olly! I'm sure I don't know what you mean! Afraid to go to the
ball?"
"Yes," repeated Olive, "afraid! I feel as though something were going to
happen! I have a presentiment that some misfortune is before me! I have
had it all day!"
"It's the weather, dear," said Laura, retiring to the toilet, "or else
it's indigestion. Don't be foolish!"
Olive Henderson was in no laughing humor, but she did laugh, half
fretfully, though, at this reply. "It's not the weather, and it's not
the indigestion, Miss Blair," she said, "it is the moral barometer
giving warning of a coming storm--it is coming events casting their
shadows before. I have half a mind not to go to the ball to-night."
"Nonsense, Olly!" exclaimed Laura, in some alarm, knowing very well
Olive was just the girl not to go if she took it in her head, "how
absurd you are. Presentiments! pooh! You've been reading some German
trash--that's what you've been doing, and you have caught some absurd
German silliness! I should like to see you try to stay away from the
ball, the last, the best, the brightest of the season, and you looking
divine, too, in that black velvet! What could possibly happen you at
the ball, I should like to know?"
Miss Henderson and Miss Blair were rather late in arriving--nearly every
one was there before them. There were two gentlemen who came
considerably late, but no one noticed them much, being only Mr. Val
Blake and his New York friend, Mr. Paul Wyndham. Mr. Blake was fond of
dancing, and was captured by Miss Blair almost as soon as he entered,
and led off; for Miss Laura did make love to this big stupid Val in
pretty roundabout feminine fashion, as women have a way of doing all the
world over. Mr. Wyndham did not dance, and as he was not at liberty to
smoke, the ball was rather a bore than otherwise. He stood leaning
against a pillar, watching the dancers; his pale, grave, quiet face and
thoughtful gray eyes ever turned in one direction. A great many more
gentlemen's faces turned presently in the same quarter, for the
loadstone of the ball shone there, magnificent, in black velvet, and
with eyes that outshone her diamonds. Was there rapport between them?
Was it some inward magnetism that made the belle of the ball, in the
height of her triumph and power, aware of this fixed, steadfast gaze,
and uneasy under it? Flatterers and sycophants surrounded her on every
hand, but she had to turn restlessly away from them and look over every
now and then to that pale, watchful face, and those fixed, grave gray
eyes.
Paul Wyndham still watched her. She grew nervously miserable at last,
and enraged with herself for becoming so. If this strange man stared
rudely, what was it to her? She would take no further notice of him, she
would not look at him; and saying this to herself, she floated away in
the waltz, with her eyes persistently fixed on her partner or on the
floor.
The waltz concluded, and Miss Henderson, being tired and hot, her
partner led her to a seat, and left her to get an ice. It was the first
time all that evening she had been for a moment alone, and she lay back
among the cushions of her chair and listened to the raging of the storm
without.
The seat was in the recess of a bay window, partly shut out from the
room by scarlet drapery, and she was glad to think she was alone. Alone!
No, for there opposite to her stood Paul Wyndham, his magnetic eyes
fixed with powerful intensity on her face. A cold thrill of fear, vague
and chilling, crept through every vein--she would have risen, in
undefined panic, but he was by her side directly, speaking quietly the
commonest of commonplace words.
"Good evening, Miss Henderson. I trust I see you well and enjoying
yourself. It is the first time I have had the pleasure of approaching
you, you have been so surrounded all the evening."
She did not speak; a cold bend of the head answered him, and she rose
up, haughty and pale. But he would not let her go; the power of his
fixed gaze held her there as surely as if she had been chained.
"I fear," he said, in that quiet voice of his, "I fear you thought me
rude in watching you, as I must own to having done. But I assure you,
Miss Henderson, it was no intentional rudeness; neither was it my
admiration, which, pardon me, is great! I watched, Miss Henderson,
because I find you bear a most startling, a most wonderful resemblance
to a person--a young girl--I once knew in New York."
She caught her breath, feeling the blood leaving her face, and herself
growing cold. Paul Wyndham never took his pitiless eyes off her charming
face.
"In saying I knew this young girl," he slowly went on, "I am wrong; I
only saw her in the city streets. You came from New York, but you could
not have known her, Miss Henderson, for she was abjectly poor. She lived
in a mean and dirty thoroughfare called Minetta Street; she lodged in a
house filled with rough factory-women, and kept by one Mrs. Butterby;
and the young woman's name was Harriet Wade."
A moment after Mr. Wyndham said this, he came out of the curtained
recess, and crossed the ballroom rapidly. On his way he met Laura Blair,
and paused to speak.
"I am going for a glass of water," he said, "for Miss Henderson. I was
talking to her at that window when she was taken suddenly ill. You had
better go to her, Miss Blair. I am afraid she is going to faint."