A Changed Heart Part 10

"A little bird told me. I only wish it had been my good fortune."

"Oh, what a story!" cried Cherrie, her wicked black eyes dancing in her head; "I wonder you ain't ashamed! Didn't I hear you wanting to ride home with Miss Natty. I was peeking out through the dining-room door, and I heard you as plain as could be."

"Well, I wanted to be polite, you know. Not having the honor of your acquaintance, Cherrie, I knew there was no hope of escorting you; so I made the offer to Miss Marsh in sheer despair. Now, Cherrie, I don't want you to get too fond of that brother of hers."

Cherrie t.i.ttered once more.

"Now, how can you! I'm sure I don't care nothing about him; but I can't help his talking to me, and seeing me home, can I?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't talk too much to him, if I were you; and as for seeing you home, I'd rather do it myself. There is no telling what nonsense he may get talking! Does he come here often?"

"Pretty often; but all the young fellows come! Sandy McGregor, Jake Clowrie, Mr. Blake, Charley Marsh, and the whole lot of 'em!"

"What time do they come?"

"Evenings, mostly. Then, there's a whole lot of Bob and Eddie's friends come, too, and the house is full most every night!"

"And what do you all do?"

"Oh, ever so many things! Play cards, sing songs, and carry on, and dance, sometimes."

"May I come, too, Cherrie?"

"You may, if you like," said Cherrie, with coquettish indifference. "But the young ladies in Speckport won't like that!"

"What do I care for the young ladies in Speckport! Oh, here's the water!"

Ann came in with a gla.s.s, and the captain drank it without being the least thirsty.

"Bob and Eddie's coming up the road," said Ann to her sister; "you knit while I peel the potatoes for dinner."

"I am afraid I must go," said Captain Cavendish, rising, having no desire to make the acquaintance of the Messrs. Nettleby. "I have been here nearly half an hour."

"That ain't long, I'm sure," said Cherrie; "what's your hurry?"

"I have a call to make. May I come again, Miss Cherrie?"

"Oh, of course!" said Miss Cherrie, with perfect coolness; "we always like to see our friends. Are you going to Redmon?"

Captain Cavendish nodded, and took his hat. Pretty Cherrie got up to escort him to the gate.

"Good-bye, Miss Cherrie," he said, making her a flouris.h.i.+ng bow. "I will have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow."

Cherrie smiled most gracious consent.

As he turned out of the gate he encountered the two young fishermen who had directed him to Redmon. They were Cherrie's brothers, then; and, laughing inwardly at the memory of the late interview with that young lady, he entered the grounds of Redmon.

"She's a deuced pretty girl!" he said, slapping his boot with a rattan he carried; "and, faith, she's free and easy! No nonsensical prudery about Miss Cherrie. I only hope I may get on as well with the golden-haired heiress as I seem to have done with the black-eyed grisette!"

He opened the wooden gate, and sauntered along a bleak avenue, the grounds on either hand overrun with rank weeds, and spruce, and tamarack, and fir trees, casting somber gloom around.

The house, a great red barn, as Val had said, looked like a black, grimy jail; the shutters were closed on every window, the hall-door seemed hermetically sealed, and swallows flew about it, and built their nests in security on the eaves and down the chimneys. There was a great, grim iron knocker on the door, and the young man's knock reverberated with a hollow and ghostly echo through the weird house.

"What a place for such a girl to live in!" he thought, looking up at it.

"Her desire for wealth must be strong to tempt her to bury herself alive in such an old tomb. The riches of the Rothschilds would not induce me."

A rusty key grated in a lock, the door swung open with a creaking sound, and the bright face of Nathalie Marsh looked out.

She smiled when she saw who it was, and frankly held out her hand.

"You have lost no time, Monsieur. Walk in, and please to excuse me a few moments. I must go back to Mrs. Leroy."

They were in a long and dismal hall, flanked with doors, and with a great, wide, old-fas.h.i.+oned staircase sweeping up and losing itself somehow in the upper gloom. Natty opened one of the doors, ushered him into the reception parlor of the establishment, and then flew swiftly up the stairs and was gone.

Captain Cavendish looked about him, that is, as well as he could for the gloom. The parlor of Redmon was furnished after the style of the cabin of a certain "fine ould Irish gintleman," immortalized in song, "with nothing at all for show." No carpet on the dreary Sahara of floor; no curtains on the gloomy windows; no pictures on the dead, blank waste of whitewashed walls; a few chairs, a black, old mahogany table, a dreary horsehair sofa, about as soft as if cus.h.i.+oned with bricks; and that was all. The silence of the place was something blood-chilling; not the squeak of a mouse relieved its deathlike quiet.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes pa.s.sed, and the captain, getting desperate, was seriously thinking of making his escape, when a light step came tripping down the stairs, and Natty, all breathless and laughing, came breezily in.

"Are you tired to death waiting?" she laughed gayly. "Mrs. Leroy is dreadfully tiresome over her toilet, and I am femme de chambre, if you please! It is over now, and she desires me to escort you to her presence, and be introduced. I hope you may make a favorable impression!"

"But what am I to do?" said Captain Cavendish, with an appalled face.

"How am I to insinuate myself into her good graces? Where is the key to her heart?"

"The key was lost years ago, and her heart is now closed. Don't contradict her, whatever you do. Hus.h.!.+ here we are!"

They had ascended to a hall like the one below; flanked, like it, by doors. Natty, with a glance of wicked delight at his dolorous face, opened the first door to the right, and ushered him at once into the presence of the awful Lady Leroy.

Something--it certainly looked more like an Egyptian mummy than anything else--swathed in shawls and swaddling-clothes, was stuck up in a vast Sleepy Hollow open arm-chair, and had its face turned to the door. That face, and a very yellow, and seared, and wrinkled, and unlovely face it was, buried in the flapping obscurity of a deeply-frilled white cap, was lit by a pair of little, twinkling eyes, bright and keen as two stilettos.

"Mrs. Leroy," said Natty, her tone demure, but her mischievous eyes dancing under their lashes, "this is Captain Cavendish."

"How d'ye do, Captain Cavendish?" said Mrs. Leroy, in a shrill, squeaking voice, like a penny whistle out of tune; "sit down--do! Natty, can't you give the young man a cheer?"

Natty did not cheer, but she placed a chair for him, whispering, as she did so, "Speak loud, or she won't hear you."

"What's the weather like out o' doors?" inquired the old lady, scanning him from head to foot with her little piercing eyes; "be the sun a-s.h.i.+ning, hey?"

"No, Madam," said Captain Cavendish, in a loud key, "it is foggy."

She had paid no attention to his reply; she had been staring at him all the time, until even he, cool as any man of the world could be, got a trifle disconcerted. Natty, sitting demurely near, was enjoying it all with silent but intense delight.

"So you're the young English captain Natty was telling me about. You're not so handsome as she said you were; leastways, you ain't to my taste!"

It was Natty's turn now to look disconcerted, which she did with a vengeance, as the dark, laughing eyes of the young officer turned upon her.

"Miss Marsh does me too much honor to mention me at all," he said, speaking more at the young lady than to the old one.

"Hey?" inquired Lady Leroy, shrilly. "What's that? What did you say?"