IN HOPE.
In the pale November sunlight of the next morning, in the plain, dark
traveling-carriage from Redmon, a little party of four persons drove
rapidly along the country-roads to a quiet little out-of-the-way church,
some fifteen miles out of town. They were Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wyndham, Mr.
Blake, and Miss Rose Henderson; and in the quiet church a quiet ceremony
was performed by special license, which made Paul Wyndham and Harriet
Wade man and wife, beyond the power of earthly tribunals to dispute. The
clergyman was quite young, and the parties were all strangers to him,
and he had a private opinion of his own that it was a runaway match.
There were no witnesses but the two, and when it was over they drove
back again to Redmon, and Harriet's heart was at peace at last. She had
a trial to undergo that day--a great humiliation to endure--but it was a
voluntary humiliation; and with her husband--hers now--she could undergo
anything. The old, fierce, unbending pride, too, that had been her sin
and misfortune all her life, had been chastened and subdued, and she
owed to the society she had deceived the penance self-inflicted.
Val Blake had all the talking to himself on the way home, and, to do him
justice, there wasn't much silence during the drive. He was talking of
Charley Marsh, who had come home a far finer fellow than he had gone
away, a brave and good and rich man.
They were all to meet that evening at a quiet dinner-party at Redmon--a
farewell dinner party, it was understood, given by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham,
before their departure from Speckport to parts unknown. The invited
guests were Mrs. Marsh and her son, Dr. Leach, Mr. Blake, and Miss
Blair, Father Lennard (the old priest), and Mr. Darcy (the lawyer). A
very select few, indeed, and all but Mr. Darcy acquainted with the story
of the woman who had died at Rosebush Cottage, and the other story of
the true and false heiress. He, too, was to be enlightened this evening,
and Harriet Wyndham was publicly to renounce and hand over to her
half-sister, Winnifred Rose Henderson, the fortune to which she never
had possessed a claim. That was her humiliation; but with her husband by
her side, she was great enough for that or anything else.
So the wedding-day passed very quietly at Redmon, and in the pale early
twilight the guests began to arrive. Among the first to arrive was Mrs.
Marsh and her son; the next to appear was Val, with Laura tucked under
his arm; and Laura, with a little feminine scream of delight, dropped
into Mrs. Wyndham's arms, and rained upon that lady a shower of gushing
tears.
"Oh, what an age it is since I have seen my darling Olly before!" Miss
Blair cried, "and I have been fairly dying for this hour to arrive."
Mrs. Paul Wyndham kissed the rosy rapturous face, with that subdued and
chastened tenderness that had come to her through much sorrow; and her
dark eyes filled with tears, as she thought, perhaps, loving little
Laura might leave Redmon that night with all this pretty girlish love
gone, and nothing but contempt in its place.
Half an hour after, all the guests had arrived, and were seated around
the dinner table; but the party was not a very gay one, somehow. The
knowledge of what had passed was in every mind; but Mr. Darcy was yet in
ignorance, and he set the dullness down to the recent death of Mr.
Wyndham's mother. Once, too, there was a little awkwardness--Wyndham,
speaking to Miss Rose, had addressed her as Miss Henderson, and Mr.
Darcy stared.
"Henderson!" he exclaimed, "you are talking to Miss Rose, Wyndham! Are
you thinking of your courting days and Miss Olive Henderson?"
But Mrs. Wyndham and her half-sister colored, and everybody looked
suddenly down at their plates. Mr. Darcy stared the more; but Paul
Wyndham, looking very grave, came to the rescue.
"Miss Rose is Miss Rose Henderson! Eat your dinner, Mr. Darcy; we will
tell you all about it after."
So, when all returned to the drawing-room, Val Blake told Mr. Darcy how
he had been outwitted by a girl. Not that Mr. Blake put it in any such
barbarous way, but glossed over ugly facts with a politeness that was
quite unusual in straightforward Val. But Mrs. Paul Wyndham herself rose
up, very white, with lips that trembled, and was brave enough and strong
enough to openly confess her sin and her sister's goodness. She looked
up, with pitiful supplication, in the face of her husband, as she
finished, with the imploring appeal of a little child for pardon; and he
put his protecting arm around her, and smiled tenderly down in the
mournful black eyes, once so defiantly bright to him. Mr. Darcy's
amazement was beyond everything.
"Bless my soul!" was his cry, "and little Miss Rose is Miss Henderson,
after all, and the heiress of Redmon."
Miss Henderson, on whom all eyes were admiringly bent, was painfully
confused, and shrank so palpably, that the old lawyer spared her, and no
one was sacrilegious enough to tell the little heroine what they thought
of her noble conduct. And when Mrs. Marsh burst unexpectedly out in a
glowing eulogy on all her goodness, not only to herself and Nathalie,
but to all who were poor and friendless in the town, the little heiress
broke down and cried. So no more was said in her hearing, and the
gentlemen gathered together, and talked the matter over apart from the
ladies, and settled how the news was to be taken to Speckport.
It was late when the party broke up, and good-night and good-bye was
said to Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, who were to leave to-morrow at eight. Val
and Laura promised to be at the boat to see them off; and they were down
true to their word, before the Redmon carriage arrived. Charley was
there, too, and so was Cherrie, in crape to the eyes, looking very
pretty in her widow's weeds, and all in a flutter at the thought of
seeing Charley again. But this bearded and mustached and grave-looking
young man was not the hot-headed, thoughtless Charley her pretty face
had nearly ruined for life; and as he held out his hand to her, with a
grave, almost sad smile, Cherrie suddenly recollected all the evil she
had caused him, and had the grace to burst into tears, much to the
horror of Mr. Blake, who had a true masculine dread of scenes.
"Don't cry, Cherrie," Charley said, "it's all over now, and it has done
me good."
If any lingering hope remained that the old time might be renewed, that
question and the smile that accompanied it banished forever from poor
Cherrie's foolish heart and her punishment that moment was bitterer than
all that had gone before.
Miss Henderson was in the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, and went
on board with them, as did the rest of their friends, and lingered until
the last bell rang. Then, as Mrs. Wyndham threw back her vail for a
parting kiss, they all saw that her eyes were swollen with crying. Paul
Wyndham held both the little hands of the heiress in his own, and looked
down in the gentle face with tender reverence.
"Good-bye, little sister," he said; "good-bye, and God bless you!"
The others were crowding around, and hasty farewells were spoken; and
then the steamer was moving away from the wharf, and Charley led Miss
Henderson, who was crying behind her vail, ashore; and they stood on the
wharf to watch the steamer out of sight. They saw Paul Wyndham with his
wife on his arm, waving a last farewell from the deck; and then the
steamer was down the bay, and all the people on the wharf were going
home. Charley Marsh assisted Miss Henderson into her carriage, and she
was driven away to her new home.
Speckport knew everything--the murder was out, and Speckport, from one
end to the other, was agape at the news. There was one thing about the
affair they could not understand, and that was, how the rightful
heiress, knowing herself to be so, and perfectly able to prove it, could
wear out her life as a pitiful governess, and leave a princely fortune
in the hands of a usurping stepsister. Speckport could not understand
this--never could understand it, and set her down as an insipid little
nonentity, with no will of her own, and easily twisted around the finger
of that bold, bad, ambitious woman, Mrs. Paul Wyndham. Speckport did not
spare its late enchantress, and for all their contempt of that "insipid
thing" the present heiress, were very well satisfied to be noticed by
her in public, and only too happy to call at Redmon. It was in her
favor, they said, that she put on no airs in consequence of her sudden
rise in the world, but was as gentle, and humble, and patient, and
sweet, as heiress of Redmon as she had been when Mrs. Wheatly's
governess. A few there were who understood and appreciated her; and when
old Father Lennard laid his hand on her drooping head and fervently
exclaimed, "God bless you, my child!" her eyes filled, and she felt more
than repaid for any sacrifice she had ever made. Speckport said--but
Speckport was always given to say a good deal more than its
prayers--Speckport said Mr. Charles Marsh appreciated her, too, and that
the estate of Redmon would eventually go, in spite of Mrs. Leroy's
unjust will, to the Marsh family. But it was only gossip, this, and
nobody knew for certain, and Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose Henderson had
always been the best of friends.
And just about this time, too, Speckport found something else to talk
about--no less a matter, indeed, than the marriage of Valentine Blake,
Esq., to Miss Laura Amelia Blair. Such a snapper of a day as the
wedding-day was--cold enough to freeze the leg off an iron pot--but for
all that, the big cathedral was half filled with curious
Speckportonians, straining their necks to see the bride and bridegroom,
and their aiders and abettors. Mr. Blake stood it like a man, and looked
almost good-looking in his neatly-fitting wedding suit; and Charley
Marsh by his side looked like a young prince--handsomer than any prince
that ever wore a crown, poor Cherrie thought, as she made eyes at him
from her pew.
There was a wedding-breakfast to be eaten at Mr. Blair's, and a very
jolly breakfast it was. And then Mrs. V. Blake exchanged her bridal-gear
for a traveling-dress, and was handed into the carriage that was to
convey her to the railway station, by her husband; and the bridemaids
were kissed all round by the bride, and good-bye was said, and the happy
pair were fairly started on their bridal tour.
It took Speckport a week to fairly digest this matter, and by the end of
that time it got another delectable morsel of gossip to swallow. Charley
Marsh was going away. He was a rich man, now; but for all that he was
going to be a doctor, and was off to New York right away, to finish his
medical studies and get his diploma.
It was a miserably wet and windy day, that which preceded the young
man's departure. A depressing day, that lowered the spirits of the most
sanguine, and made them feel life was a cheat, and not what it is
cracked up to be, and wonder how they could ever laugh and enjoy
themselves at all. A dreary day to say good-bye; but Charley, buttoned
up in his overcoat, and making sunshine with his bright blue eyes and
pleasant smile, went through with it bravely, and had bidden his dear
five hundred adieu in the course of two brisk hours. There was only one
friend remaining to whom he had yet to say "that dear old word
good-bye;" and in the rainy twilight he drove up the long avenue of
Redmon, black and ghastly now, and was admitted by Mrs. Hill herself.
"Oh, Mr. Charley, is it you?" the good woman said. "You're going away,
they tell me. Dear me, we'll miss you so much!"
"That's right, Mrs. Hill! I like my friends to miss me; but I don't mean
to stay away forever. Is Miss Henderson at home?"
"She is in the library. Walk right in!"
Charley was quite at home in Redmon Villa. The library door stood ajar.
Some one was playing, and he entered unheard. The rain lashed and
blustered at the windows; and the wail of the wind, and sea, and woods
made a dull, roaring sound of dreariness without; but a coal-fire glowed
red and cheery in the steel grate; and curtained, and close, and warm,
the library was a very cozy place that bad January day. The twilight
shadows lurked in the corners; but, despite their deepening gloom, the
visitor saw a little, slender, girlish shape sitting before a small
cottage-piano and softly touching the keys. Old, sad memories seemed to
be at work in her heart; for the chords she struck were mournful, and
she broke softly into singing at last--a song as sad as a funeral-hymn:
"Rain! rain! rain!
On the cold autumnal night!
Like tears we weep o'er the banished hope
That fled with the summer light.
"O rain! rain! rain!
You mourn for the flowers dead;
But hearts there are, in their hopeless woe,
That not even tears may shed!
"O rain! rain! rain!
You fall on the new-made grave
Where the loved one sleeps that our bitter prayers
Were powerless to save!
"O fall! fall! fall!
Thou dreary and cheerless rain!
But the voice that sang with your summer-chime
Will never be heard again!"
The song died away like a sigh; and she arose from the instrument,
looking like a little, pale spirit of the twilight, in her flowing white
cashmere dress. The red firelight, flickering uncertainly, fell on a
young man's figure leaning against the mantel, and the girl recoiled
with a faint cry. Charley started up.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Henderson--Winnie" (they had all grown to call
her Winnie of late). "I am afraid I have startled you; but you were
singing when I came in, and the song was too sweet to be broken. I am
rather late, but I wanted to say good-bye here last."
"Then you really go to-morrow?" she said, not looking at him. "How much
your mother will miss you!"
"Yes, poor mother! but," smiling slightly, "I shall send her a box full
of all the new novels when I get to New York, and that will console her.
I wish somebody else would miss me, Winnie."
Is a woman ever taken by surprise, I wonder, in these cases? Does she
not always know beforehand when that all-important revelation is made
that it is coming, particularly if she loves the narrator? I am pretty
sure of it, though she may feign surprise ever so well. She can tell the
instant he crosses the threshold what he has come to say. So Winnifred
Rose Henderson knew what Charles Marsh had come to tell her from the
moment she looked at him; and sitting down on a low chair before the
glowing fire, she listened for a second time in her life to the old, old
story. What a gulf lay between that time and this--a girl then, a woman
now! And how different the two men who had told it!
Worthy Mrs. Hill, trotting up-stairs and down-stairs, seeing to fires
and bed-rooms, and everything proper to be seen to by a good
housekeeper, suddenly remembered the fire in the library must be getting
low, and that it would be just like the young people saying good-bye to
one another to forget all about it, rapped to the door some half an hour
after. "Come in!" the sweet voice of Miss Henderson said, and Mrs. Hill
went in and found the young lady and Mr. Marsh sitting side by side on a
sofa, and both wearing such radiant faces, that the dear old lady saw at
once through her spectacles how matters stood, and kissed Miss Henderson
on the spot, and shook hands with Mister Charley, and wished him joy
with all her honest heart. So the momentous question had been asked and
answered, and on Miss Henderson's finger glittered an engagement-ring,
and Charley Marsh, in the bleak dawn of the next morning, left Speckport
once more, the happiest fellow in the universe.
* * * * *
The story is told, the play played out, the actors off the stage, and
high time for the curtain to fall. But the audience are dissatisfied
yet, and have some questions to ask. "How did Val Blake and Laura get
on, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham? What became of Cherrie and Catty Clowrie?
and have Charley and Miss Henderson got married yet? and who was at the
wedding? and who were the bridemaids? and what did the bride wear?"
Well, let me see. I'll answer as they come. It is six months after,
red-hot July--not a sign of fog in Speckport, picnics and jollifications
every day, and the blessed little city (it is a city, though I have
stigmatized it as a town) out in its gala-dress. Do you see that
handsome house in Golden Row? There is a shining door-plate on the front
door, and you can read the name--"V. Blake." Yes, that is Mr. Blake's
house, and inside it is sumptuous to behold; for the "Spouter" increases
its circulation every day, and Mr. B. keeps his carriage and pair now,
and is a rising man--I mean out of doors. In his own single nook, I
regret to say, he is hen-pecked--unmercifully hen-pecked. The gray mare
is the better horse; and Mr. Blake submits to petticoat-government with
that sublime good-nature your big man always manifests, and knocks
meekly under at the first flash of Mistress Laura's bright eye--not that
that lady is any less fond of Mr. Val than of yore. Oh, no! She thinks
there is nobody like him in this little planet of ours; only she
believes in husbands keeping their proper place, and acts up to this
belief. She is becoming more and more literary every day--fearfully
literary, I may say; and the first two fingers of the right hand are
daily steeped to the bone in ink.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham are in New York, and are very busy. Charley Marsh
was a frequent visitor at their house last winter, and says he never saw
a happier and more loving husband and wife. Mr. Wyndham is high in the
literary world; and Mrs. Wyndham is very much admired in society, as
much, perhaps, for her gentleness and goodness as for her beauty. They
are happy and at peace; and so we leave them.
Cherrie Nettleby (nobody thinks of calling her Mrs. Cavendish) is going
to be married next week. The happy man is Sergeant O'Shaughnessy, a big
Irishman, six feet four in his stockings, with a laugh like distant
thunder, rosy cheeks, and curly hair. A fine-looking fellow, Sergeant
O'Shaughnessy, with a heart as big as his body, who adores the ground
Cherrie walks on.
And Charley is married, and happier than I can ever tell. He is rich and
honored, and does a great deal of good, and is a great man in
Speckport--a great and good man. And his wife--but you know her--and she
is the same to-day, and will be the same unto death, as you have known
her. Mrs. Marsh, Senior, lives with them, and reads as much as ever; and
is waited on by Midge, who lives a life of luxurious leisure in Redmon
kitchen, and queens it over the household generally.
There is a quiet little grave out in the country which Charles Marsh and
his wife visit very often, and which they never leave without loving
each other better, and feeling more resolute, with God's help, to walk
down to the grave in the straight and narrow path that leads to
salvation. They are only human. They have all erred, and sinned, and
repented; and in that saving repentance they have found the truth of the
holy promise: "There shall be light at the eventide."
THE END.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.
page 136 We go press to to-morrow ==> We go to press to-morrow]
* * * * *
POPULAR NOVELS.
BY MAY AGNES FLEMING.
1.--GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE.
2.--A WONDERFUL WOMAN.
3.--A TERRIBLE SECRET.
4.--NORINE'S REVENGE.
5.--A MAD MARRIAGE.
6.--ONE NIGHT'S MYSTERY.
7.--KATE DANTON.
8.--SILENT AND TRUE.
9.--HEIR OF CHARLTON.
10.--CARRIED BY STORM.
11.--LOST FOR A WOMAN.
12.--A WIFE'S TRAGEDY.
13.--A CHANGED HEART.
14.--PRIDE AND PASSION.
15.--SHARING HER CRIME.
16.--A WRONGED WIFE (_New_).
"Mrs. Fleming's stories are growing more and more popular every day.
Their delineations of character, life-like conversations, flashes of
wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interacting plots,
combine to place their author in the very front rank of Modern
Novelists."
All published uniform with this volume. Price, $1.50 each, and sent
_free_ by mail on receipt of price,
BY
G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
New York.