MR. WYNDHAM'S WEDDING.
Captain Cavendish, sitting at the window of his room in the hotel,
stared at the red sunset with a clouded face and a gloomy abstraction of
manner, that told how utterly its lurid glory was lost upon him.
Captain Cavendish had been sitting there since four in the afternoon,
thinking this over and over again, and never able to get beyond it. His
day of retribution had come. He was feeling the torture he had so often
and so heartlessly made others feel; he was learning what it meant to be
jilted in cold blood. Olive Henderson had turned out the veriest, the
most capricious, the most heartless of flirts, and Captain Cavendish
found himself incontinently snubbed! He had asked for no explanation
yet, but the climax had come to-day. He had ridden over to escort the
heiress on her breezy morning gallop, and had found Mr. Wyndham just
assisting her into the saddle. She had bowed distantly to him, cut her
horse a stinging blow across the neck, and had galloped off, with Paul
Wyndham close beside her. Catty Clowrie looked out of the cottage
window, and laughed a voiceless laugh, to see the captain's blank
consternation.
"Tit for tat!" Catty said; "you are getting paid back in your own coin,
Captain George Cavendish!"
So, while the fierce red sun blazed itself out in the purple arch, and
the big round yellow moon rose up, like another Venus, out of the
bluish-black bay, Captain Cavendish sat at his window, telling the same
refrain over and over in his mind, as perseveringly as ever any holy
monk told the Ave Maria on his rosary:--"What has changed her? what has
changed her? what has changed her?"
The moon was high in the sky before he roused himself from his long and
somber musing-fit, and, pulling out his watch, looked at the hour.
"Half-past seven," he said; "they were to start at eight, and she
promised to go. I shall ask for an explanation to-night."
He rang for his servant, and desired that young man, when he appeared,
to fetch him his overcoat. Mr. Johnston brought that garment, and
assisted his master into it, and the captain put on his hat and gloves,
and with his cane under his arm (for, of course, as an officer of the
British army, it was his duty at all times to carry a cane under his
arm), he set off for the cottage of my Lady Caprice.
The whole front of the pretty cottage was in a state of illumination, as
he opened the little gate and walked up the gravel path, and men's
shadows moved on the curtained windows as he rang the bell. Rosie, with
pink ribbons in her hair, and her Sunday dress on, opened the door and
showed him into the drawing-room.
"I'll tell Miss Olive you're here," she said; "she is engaged with
company just now."
Captain Cavendish said nothing. He walked over to the low chimney-piece,
and leaned moodily against it, as Paul Wyndham had done that rainy
morning, little better than a week before. He had seen something as he
came in that had not tended to raise his spirits. The dining-room door
stood half-open, and glancing in as he passed, he perceived that Miss
Henderson had given a dinner-party, and that the company was still
lingering around the table. He saw the Rev. Augustus Tod and his
sister--and the Tods were the very cream of Speckport society--Major
and Mrs. Wheatly, and Mr. Paul Wyndham. That was all; but he, her
betrothed husband, her accepted suitor, had known nothing of it--had
never been invited!
Captain Cavendish, leaning against the mantel, listened to the laughter,
and pleasant mingling of voices, and the jingling of glasses in the
dining-room, and he could plainly distinguish the musical laughter of
Olive, and her clear voice as she talked to her guests. He stood there
for upward of half an hour, raging with inward fury, all the more fierce
for having to be suppressed. Then he heard the dining-room door open, a
rustle of silk in the passage, an odor of delicate perfume in the air,
and then the drawing-room door opened.
Miss Henderson swept into the room, bowing and smiling as she passed
him, and sinking gracefully into a low violet-velvet chair, her rosy
skirts and misty white lace floating all about her like pink and white
clouds, and she looked up at him with the same glance of inquiry she
might have given any lout of a fisherman in Speckport, had such a person
presumed to call.
"I fear I intrude, Miss Henderson," he said, suppressing, as a gentleman
must, his rage. "I did not know there was a dinner-party at the
cottage."
"Oh, it is of no consequence," Miss Henderson said, carelessly, toying
with her watch and chain; "my guests are all friends, who will readily
excuse me. Will you not take a seat, Captain Cavendish?"
"No, Miss Henderson! in a house where I am made to feel I am an intruder
I must decline being seated. I believe you promised to join the
sailing-party on the bay to-night, but I suppose it is useless to ask
you if you are going now."
"Why, yes," in the same careless way, "it is hardly probable I should
leave my friends, even for the moonlight excursion. Are you going? I am
sure you will have a very pleasant time; the night is lovely."
"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, "I am likely to have a pleasant time, as
I have had, you must be aware, all through the past week. If you can
spare a few minutes from these very dear friends of yours, Miss
Henderson, I should be glad to have an explanation of your conduct."
"Of my conduct?" still in that careless way. "How?"
Captain Cavendish choked down an oath, but there was a subdued
fierceness in his voice when he spoke.
"Miss Olive Henderson, has it quite escaped your memory that you are my
promised wife? It strikes me your conduct of late has not been
altogether in keeping with this fact. Will you have the goodness to
explain the contempt, the slights, the strangeness of your conduct?"
"It is very easily explained," Miss Henderson answered, with supreme
indifference, which, whether real or assumed, was very natural. "I have
repented that rash promise, and now retract it. I have changed my mind;
it is a woman's privilege, Captain Cavendish, and here is your
engagement ring."
She drew the little golden circlet off her finger and held it out to
him, as she might have returned it to some jeweler who had asked her to
purchase it. He did not take it--he only stood looking at her, stunned!
"Olive!"
"I am sorry to give you pain, Captain Cavendish," Miss Henderson replied
to that cry, still toying with her chain; "but you know I told you that
night I did not love you, so you ought not to be surprised. I suppose it
seems heartless, but then I am heartless; so what can you expect."
She laughed to herself a little hard laugh, and looked up at him with
coldly-shining eyes. He was white, white even to his lips; for,
remember, he loved this woman--this cold-blooded and capricious
coquette.
"Olive! Olive!" was all he could cry, and there was nothing but wild
astonishment and passionate reproach in his voice. There was no room for
anger now. He loved her, and it made him a coward, and he faltered and
broke down.
Olive Henderson rose up as if to end the interview.
"Better we should understand one another now, Captain Cavendish, than
later. Perhaps the day may come and sooner than you expect, when you
will thank me for this. I am not good, and I should not have made you a
good wife, and you have more cause for thankfulness than regret. Here is
your ring, and with it I renounce all claim to you! We are from
henceforth what we were before you spoke--friends! In that character I
shall at all times be happy to see you. Good evening, Captain
Cavendish!"
Captain Cavendish walked back to his hotel in a stunned and stupefied
sort of way, much as a man might who had received a heavy blow on the
head, and was completely benumbed. He had received a blow, a most
unexpected and terrible blow; a blow so inconceivable, he could hardly
realize it had really fallen. His worst enemy could scarcely have wished
him a more miserable night than that which he spent, ceaselessly walking
his room, and acting over and over again the scene that had so lately
passed. O Nathalie Marsh! could you have risen up in spirit before him
then, surely you would have thought yourself completely avenged.
Was Miss Olive Henderson, lying in luxurious ease among the satin
pillows of a lounge in the dining-room, next morning, wearing a most
becoming matin neglige, and listlessly turning over the leaves of a
novel, thinking of her rejected lover, I wonder? Catty Clowrie, sitting
sewing industriously at the window--for Catty was not above doing plain
sewing for the heiress--and watching her stealthily between the
stitches, wondered if she were really reading, or only thinking, as she
lay there, turning over the leaves with restless fingers, and jerking
out her pretty little watch perpetually to look at the hour. It was very
early, only nine o'clock, too soon for her to expect visitors--even that
indefatigable Mr. Wyndham, who came like clockwork every day, could
hardly have made his appearance so early. Catty, thinking this, stopped
suddenly, for a gentleman was ringing the door-bell--a gentleman with a
white, fierce face, and a look about him, altogether, Miss Clowrie had
never seen him wear before. Olive sat up and looked at Catty.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Captain Cavendish."
The black brow contracted suddenly, and Catty saw it. She, as well as
all Speckport, knew there was a breach between the two, and she and all
Speckport set Mr. Wyndham down as the cause.
Olive Henderson rose up, with her brows still contracted, and walked
into the drawing-room. She shut the door behind her; and oh! what would
not Catty Clowrie have given had the painted panels of that door been
clear glass, that she might see what was going on. She could hear, not
their words, but the voice of the captain, passionate and then
reproachful, then pleading, then passionately angry again. Once she
crept to the door; it was after an unusually vehement outburst on his
part; and when her curiosity was excited beyond all bounds, she affixed
her ear to the keyhole.
"It hardly becomes you, Captain Cavendish," she heard the voice say, in
a tone of cold disdain; "it does not become you to talk like this of
infidelity. If all tales be true, you have been rather faithless
yourself in your time. People who live in glass houses are always the
readiest to throw stones, I think!"
Catty dared not stay, lest they should suddenly open the door, and went
back to her work.
"She has refused him!" she thought. "What new mystery is this?"
Had Miss Clowrie been able to look into the room, she would have seen
Captain Cavendish pacing it like a caged tiger, and Miss Henderson
standing up and leaning against the mantel, and looking icily at him out
of her great black eyes. He stopped abruptly before her, controlling his
passion, and steadfastly returned her gaze.
"And is it for Mr. Paul Wyndham," he asked, with sneering emphasis, "the
little pitiful quill-driver, that I am rejected?"
The black eyes of Olive Henderson flashed flame at the gibing tone.
"Yes!" she flashed, impetuously, "it is for Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose name
is a household word in lands where he has never been--who will be
remembered by thousands when you are dead and forgotten!"
If Captain Cavendish could, with any propriety, have knocked the defiant
young lady down at that moment, I think he would have done it. He set
his strong white teeth, and clenched his hands, in the impotence of his
fury.
"And this insult, am I to understand, is your final answer?"
"The answer is final," Olive said, frigidly. "The insult, if such it be,
you provoked yourself, by first insulting me. I wished to part friends
with you; if you prefer we should part enemies, it is immaterial to me.
I do not know why you have come to make this scene this morning, when
you received your answer last night."
The morning sunshine was streaming brightly into the room; but, as she
spoke, it was suddenly darkened, and Paul Wyndham, riding past, strung
his horse at the door. An instant after, Catty Clowrie saw Captain
Cavendish leave the house, his hat slouched over his eyes, and stride
away as if shod with seven-league boots. Mr. Wyndham had come to escort
Miss Henderson on her customary morning-ride to Redmon, and Olive ran
up-stairs to put on her riding-habit. But not until Catty had seen how
haughtily cold her reception of Mr. Wyndham was, and how ghostly pale
she looked as she ran up-stairs.
Catty Clowrie was not the only young lady in Speckport puzzled by Miss
Henderson's remarkable conduct. Laura Blair was bothering her poor
little brain with the enigma, and could not solve it, though she tried
ever so.
"Olly, dear," she said, in a perplexed tone, when she came to the
cottage next day, and up in Olive's room seated herself for a
confidential chat, "have you quarreled with Captain Cavendish?"
Olive was reclining in a vast Sleepy Hollow of an armchair, looking pale
and fagged; for she had been at a ball the previous night, and lay with
her hands folded listlessly in her lap, and the lazy lids hiding the
splendor of her eyes. She hardly took the trouble to lift these heavy
eyelids, as she replied:
"No--yes. Why?"
"Because, he's gone away, dear! I thought you knew it. He has gone off
on leave of absence to Canada, I believe."
"Indeed!" Miss Henderson said, indifferently. "When did he go?"
"He left in the steamer for Portland, Maine, this morning. Olly,
dearest, will you not tell me what it is all about?"
"All what is about?" asked Olive, impatiently.
Laura looked frightened; she always got scared when Miss Henderson's big
black eyes flashed.
"You won't be angry, my darling Olly? but I thought--every one
thought--you were going to marry Captain Cavendish."
"Did they? Then it's a pity 'every one' must be disappointed, for I am
not going to marry Captain Cavendish."
Laura sat silent after this quencher. She was seated on a low stool at
her friend's feet, with her brown head lying on her lap. The heiress
bent down and kissed the pretty face.
"My poor, silly, inquisitive little Laura!" she said, "you would like a
wedding, I know. You have a feminine love of bridal-vails and
orange-wreaths, and you would like to look pretty in white silk and
Honiton lace, as my bridemaid--wouldn't you, now?"
"Yes," said Miss Blair.
"Well, then, Laura, you shall!"
Laura started up, and stared.
"What?"
"I say," repeated Olive, quietly, "you shall be gratified. You shall
wear the white silk and the Honiton lace, my dear, and be first
bridemaid, for I am going to be married!"
Laura Blair clasped her hands.
"Oh, Olly! and to Mr. Wyndham?"
"Yes; to Mr. Wyndham."
Laura sat like one transfixed, digesting the news. Somehow, she was not
so much surprised, but the suddenness of the intelligence stunned her.
Olive Henderson laughed outright as she looked at her.
"Well, Miss Blair," she said, "if I had told you I had committed a
murder, and was going to be hanged for it, you could hardly look more
aghast! Pray, is there anything so very terrible in my marrying Mr.
Wyndham?"
"It's not that," said Laura, recovering herself slowly, "but the news
came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that----"
"Unexpectedly! Is it possible, Laura, Speckport has not decided before
now I should marry Mr. Wyndham?"
"Speckport doesn't know what to think," said Laura; "it decided upon
your marriage with Captain Cavendish; it said that you were engaged, and
that all was settled, when, lo! this Mr. Wyndham appears, and presto!
all is changed. Captain Cavendish flies out of the country, and Mr.
Wyndham becomes the hero of the story. Speckport never was so pleased
before; you are as erratic as a comet, Miss Henderson, and it is as
useless trying to account for your vagaries."
"I am glad Speckport has found that out. Well, Laura, you will be
bridemaid?"
"Of course. Oh how strange it all seems! When is it to come off?"
"What, the wedding? Oh, near the end of next month, I believe. Mr.
Wyndham, like any other ardent lover, objects to long engagements."
She laughed, as she spoke, a little disdainful laugh, that made Laura
fix her brown eyes thoughtfully on her face.
"Olly--don't be angry, please--do you love Mr. Wyndham?"
"Of course, you silly child," the heiress laughed, carelessly, "if not,
should I marry him? You have read a great many novels, my Laura, of the
high-pressure school, and have formed your own ideas of lovers from the
rapturous proceedings therein recorded. But Mr. Wyndham and I are not
romantic; it is not in my nature to be, and all the romance in his he
reserves as his stock-in-trade for his books, and has none left for this
prosy every-day life. He is sufficiently well-looking, he is gentlemanly
and attentive, and he is famous, and he has asked me to marry him, and I
have said yes; and I will do it, too, if I don't change my mind before
the day comes."
"Does Mr. Wyndham love you, Olly?" she asked, after a long, grave pause,
during which Olive had been humming an opera air.
"Of course, my love! How can he help it?"
"And you are really going to be married so soon, and to this stranger?
Oh, Olly! take care!"
"You absurd Laura! Take care of what? Are you afraid Mr. Wyndham will
beat me after the magic words are spoken?"
"I suppose it is the suddenness of it all that makes me feel so strange
about it. I like Mr. Wyndham very much, and I think his books are
lovely! I dare say you will be very happy with him, after all. How many
bridemaids are you going to have, and what are we to wear?"
After this truly feminine turn to the conversation, love and happiness
were forgotten in the discussion of silks and moire antiques, and the
rival merits of pink or white for the bridemaids' bonnets. They were a
very long time deciding; for somehow Olive Henderson, with all her
inborn love of dress, did not seem to take much interest in the matter.
"We'll settle it all again, Laura," she said, impatiently, "there's no
hurry--six weeks is a long time. Come, and let us have a drive."
As the young ladies entered the little pony-carriage, Mr. Wyndham rode
up on his bay, looking his best, as good riders always do on horseback.
Laura, who was on very friendly, not to say familiar, terms with the
young author, held out her hand.
"Accept my congratulations," she said, "I am to be bridemaid-in-chief on
the happy occasion; and, next to being married myself, there is nothing
we girls like better than that!"
Mr. Wyndham smiled, lifted her hand to his lips gallantly, and made some
complimentary reply; but there was no rapture in his face, Laura
noticed, even although his bride-elect, in the dark splendor of her
beauty, sat before him among the rich cushions, like an Egyptian queen.
"He does not love her," thought Laura; "he is like all the rest; he
wants to marry her because she is handsome, and the fashion, and the
heiress of Redmon. I wonder, if I were in her place, if that stupid Val
would ever come to the point. I know he likes me, but the tiresome
creature won't say so."
Mr. Wyndham had but just left Mr. Blake's office, after having
bewildered that gentleman with the same news Olive had imparted to her
friend.
Mr. Blake's hands were very deep in his pockets, and he was whistling a
dismally perplexed whistle, as the young author left his sanctum.
"It's very odd!" Mr. Blake was thinking, "it's very odd, indeed! He said
he would do it, and I didn't believe him, and now it's done. It's very
odd! I know she doesn't care about him, rather the reverse; and then,
she was promised to Cavendish. What can she be marrying him for?
Wyndham, too, he isn't in love with her; it's not in him to be in love
with any one. What can he want marrying her? It can't be her money--at
least, it's not like Paul Wyndham, if it is. And then he's a sort of
novel-writing hermit, who would live on bread and water as fast as
turtle-soup, and doesn't care a button for society. It's odd--it's
uncommonly odd!"
Speckport found it odd, too, and said so, which Mr. Blake did not,
except to himself. But then the heiress with the imperious beauty and
flashing eyes was a singular being, anyhow, and they put it down as the
last coquetry of my Lady Caprice. And while they talked of it, and
conjectured about it, and wondered if she would not jilt him for
somebody else before the day came round--while Speckport gossiped
ravenously, Mr. Wyndham was a daily visitor at the cottage, and
Speckport beheld the betrothed pair galloping together out along the
lovely country-roads and over the distant tree-clad hills, and saw the
new villa at Redmon going up with magical rapidity, and the once bleak
and dreary grounds being transformed into a fairy-land of beauty. All
the head dressmakers and milliners of the town were up to their eyes in
the wedding-splendors, and such a lot of Miss Henderson's dear five
hundred had been invited to the wedding that the miracle was how the
cottage was going to hold them all. Speckport knew all about the
arrangements beforehand; how they were to be married in Trinity Church,
being both High-Church people; how they were going on a bridal-tour
through the Canadas, and would return toward the close of August, when
the villa would be ready to receive them.
Speckport talked of all this incessantly, and of the five bridemaids; of
whom Laura Blair, Jeannette McGregor and Miss Tod, were the chief; and
while they talked, the day came round. A dull and depressing day, with a
clammy yellow fog that stuck to everything, and a bleak wind that
reddened the pretty noses of the bridemaids, and made them shiver in
their white satin shoes. The old church was crowded. Young and old,
gentle and simple, all flocked to see the beautiful black-eyed heiress
who had set so many unhappy young men crazy, married at last to the man
of her choice. The dismal weather had no effect on her, it seemed; for
she swept up the aisle, leaning on the arm of Mr. Darcy, who was to play
papa, in a dress whose splendor electrified Speckport, and which had
been imported direct from Paris; all in white, an immense vail floating
all around her like a silvery mist, she didn't, as scandalized Speckport
said, for all, look a bit like a bride. Where was the drooping of the
long eye-lashes; where the paling and flushing cheek; where the shy and
timid graces of virginhood? Was it not the height of impropriety to walk
up the aisle with her head erect, her black eyes bright and defiant, her
lips compressed, and her color never varying? It was the vulgarity and
brazenness of the New York grisette breaking out, or the spangles and
sawdust of the circus-rider. But Speckport said all this under their
breath; and when it was all over, and the names down in the register,
kissed the bride, at least female Speckport did, the beings in
broadcloth and white vests only looking as if they would like to. And
then they drove back to the cottage; and Miss Henderson--no, it was Mrs.
Wyndham now--went to her room at once to put on her traveling-dress, for
the steamer started in half an hour. There was a great crowd on the
wharf to see them off; and the bride and bridegroom stood to be looked
at--he, pale, quiet, and calm; she, haughty and handsome, and uplifted
to the end.
So it was all over, and the heiress of Redmon was safely married at
last! The news came out in next day's "Spouter," with a string of good
wishes from the editorial chair for the happy pair. Two young
men--Captain George P. Cavendish, in the reading-room of a Montreal
hotel, and Mr. Tom Oaks, in an Indian's tent up the country, where he
shot and fished--read it, and digested the bitter pill as best they
might. Some one else read it, too; Mr. Wyndham, with his own hands,
posted the first copy of that particular "Spouter" he received to a
young lady, who read it with strange eagerness in her own room in a
quaint New York hotel. A lady who read it over and over and over again,
as often and as eagerly as Miss Wade had read that advertisement long
before in the Canadian paper shown her in Mrs. Butterby's lodgings, by
the pale actress.