MR. WYNDHAM'S WOOING.
A bleak and rainy morning in Speckport--a raw and windy morning, with a
sky all lead-color, except where it was inky black. A wild, wet, rainy
day, on which nobody wanted to stir out if they could help it. An
utterly black and miserable day, that which followed the officers' ball.
On this wretchedly wet and windy day Olive Henderson sat at her chamber
window, and looked out over the black and foam-crested bay. The room
looked very cozy and pleasant, with its soft, warm, bright-hued Brussels
carpet, its cushioned easy-chairs and lounges, its white-draped bed, its
pretty pictures and tables, and bright coal fire burning in the
glittering steel grate, its costly window-draperies of lace and damask,
looking all the more pleasant and luxurious by contrast with the black,
bleak day outside.
A delightful room this bad May morning, a room to bask and luxuriate in,
this chamber of Olive Henderson. But Olive Henderson herself, sitting by
the window, staring blankly out, seemed to take very little enjoyment in
its comfort and beauty. She wore a white loose muslin wrapper, tied
carelessly round the slender waist with a crimson cord, its every fold,
as it hung straight about her, telling how indifferently the simple
toilette had been made. All her profuse black hair was drawn away from
her face, haggard and worn in the gray morning light, and fastened in a
great careless knot behind. But, somehow, the stateliness that was a
part of herself characterized her as strikingly in this primitive
simplicity as when robed in velvet and diamonds last night. Perhaps
Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, when in trouble with foreign parts, wore
white muslin wrappers, and her black hair disheveled, before her
subjects, and managed to look Queen Semiramis withal. It isn't likely,
you know, but she may.
Rain, rain, rain! How ceaselessly it lashed the windows, and how
piteously it beat on the heads of the poor little newsboys, passing up
and down Golden Row, and chanting, disconsolately, "Morning Snorter,"
the "Sn-o-o-or-ter!" Perhaps, looking up at the curtained-window, where
the young lady sat, these newsboys thought it was a fine thing to be
Miss Olive Henderson, the heiress of Redmon, and live in a handsome
house, with servants to wait on her, and nothing to do but play the
piano, and drive about in her carriage all day long. But, I am pretty
sure, there was not a pug-nosed urchin coming there that particular
morning, who was not a thousand times happier than the heiress of
Redmon.
Discovered--disgraced--in the power of this man--this stranger! Liable
to be exposed as a liar and a cheat to the world at any hour! Liable to
have all this wealth and luxury, for which she had done so much--for
which she had risked her very soul--torn from her at any instant, and
she herself thrust out to fight the battle of life, with poverty and
labor and misery once more. She seemed to have grown old in
four-and-twenty hours, with her haggard cheeks and great hollow eyes.
She had sat as she was sitting now for hours, her hands clasped loosely
in her lap, her vacant gaze fixed on the wretched day, but seeing
nothing. Only yesterday, and she had been so sure, so secure, so happy,
and now--and now!
She had not fainted the night before. Laura Blair found her lying back
ghastly and white in her chair, but not insensible. The ballroom had
been filled with consternation, and she was so surrounded immediately
that Mr. Wyndham, returning with his glass of water, could find no
possibility of approaching her. They had led her into the ladies'
dressing-room, and Captain Cavendish had gone for a cab; and when she
was a little better, they took her home, and the rest went back to the
ballroom. People began to think that in spite of Miss Henderson's
apparent physical perfection, she was subject to fainting fits, and
pitied her very much, as they resumed their dancing. But the eclipsed
belles of Speckport rejoiced, I am afraid, in their wicked little
hearts, that the conqueress was gone, and held up their pretty heads,
which had drooped in the sunlight of her shining presence before.
Once at home, Miss Henderson professed herself perfectly restored, and
insisted on Laura and her mamma, who had been their chaperone, and
Captain Cavendish, going back to the ball once more.
"I shall do well enough now," she said, wearily. "I am very foolish,
but----"
Her voice died away, and her head drooped forward on her arm. Captain
Cavendish bent tenderly over her, as she lay on a sofa, with a pale and
anxious face.
"My darling," he said, "I am afraid you are very ill. Let me go for Dr.
Leach--this may be something serious."
But Miss Henderson positively refused, and insisted on their returning
to the ball.
"I shall lie down and go asleep," she said, "and I will be quite
restored to-morrow. Go at once."
"I shall go," the captain said, holding her hands, "but not back to the
ball. Do you think there could be any pleasure for me there, and you
absent, Olive? Good night, my love--get rid of this white face before I
see you to-morrow."
Olive Henderson slept that night, but it was more like stupor than
healthful sleep, and she awoke with a dully throbbing headache, and a
numbing sense of misery at her heart. She had arisen in the black and
wretched dawn of that miserable May morning, and had sat staring
vacantly out at the ceaseless rain, and dark and turbid sea. She was not
thinking--she was sitting there in a dull torpor of despair, waiting for
the end.
There was a knock at the door. It had to be repeated two or three times
before she comprehended what it meant, and then she arose and opened the
door. It was Rosie, the housemaid; and the girl recoiled at sight of
her, as if she had seen a ghost.
"My patience, Miss! how bad you do look! I am afraid you are worse than
you was last night."
"No. What is it you want?"
"It's a gentleman, Miss, that has called, and is in the drawing-room,
although it is raining cats and dogs."
She presented a card to her mistress, and Olive read the name of "Paul
Wyndham." She turned sick at sight of that name--that name so lately
heard for the first time, but so terribly familiar now; and looked at
the girl with a sort of terror in her great black eyes.
"Is this man--is this Mr. Wyndham here?"
"Down in the drawing-room, Miss, and his overcoat and umbrella making
little streams of rain-water all along the hall. Will you go down,
Miss?"
Olive Henderson's hand had closed on the pasteboard with so convulsive a
pressure, that the card was crushed into a shapeless mass. Her stupor
was ending in a sort of sullen desperation. Let the worst come, it was
Fate; and she was powerless to battle with so formidable a foe. Whatever
brought this man now, his coming was merciful; the most dreadful
certainty was better than this horrible suspense, which had made the
past night a century of misery.
Rosie, the pretty housemaid, watched her young lady's changing face, as
she walked rapidly up and down, her eyes staring straight before her
with a fierce and feverish luster, and her lips so rigidly set. Rosie
saw all this, and greatly marveled thereat. A gentleman had called very
early on a very wet morning; but that was no reason why Miss Henderson
should be prancing up and down her room, with the look of an inmate of a
lunatic asylum.
"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.