A Changed Heart Part 24

"Cherrie, you don't believe me," he said, seeing incredulity in her face, "but I swear I am telling the truth. Let me prove it--give up Charley Marsh and marry me!"

"Captain!"

"I mean it! Which of us do you like best--Marsh or I?"

"You know well enough," said Cherrie, crying. "I like you ever so much the best; but when I heard you asking Miss Natty, I--I----" here the voice broke down in good earnest, and Cherrie's tears began to flow.

Captain Cavendish looked hurriedly about him. The last rays of the sunset had burned themselves out, and the moon was making for herself a track of silver sheen over the sea. The crowd were flocking homeward, tired out, and there was no one near; but in the distance his eagle eye saw Charley Marsh striding over the dewy evening gra.s.s. Poor Charley!

The captain drew Cherrie's arm inside his own, and walked her rapidly away. They were out on the Redmon road before either spoke again.

"I did not mean one word of what I said to Miss Marsh. But I'll tell you a secret, Cherrie, if you'll never mention it again."

"I won't," said Cherrie. "What is it?"

"I should like to share her fortune--that is, you and I--and if she thinks I am in love with her, I stand a good chance. I should like to be richer than I am, for your sake, you know; so you must not be jealous. I don't care a straw for her, but for her money."

"And you do care for me?"

"You know I do! Are you ready to give up Charley, and marry me?"

"Oh!" said Cherrie, and it was all she replied; but it was uttered so rapturously that it perfectly satisfied him.

"Then that is settled? Let me see--suppose we get married next week, or the week after?"

"Oh! Captain!" cried the enraptured Cherrie.

"Then that is settled too. What a little darling you are, Cherrie! And now I have only one request to make of you--that you will not breathe one word of this to a living soul. Not a syllable--do you understand?"

"Why? said Cherrie, a little disappointed.

"My dear girl, it would ruin us both! We will be married privately--no one shall know it but the clergyman and--Mr. Blake."

"Mr. Blake? Val?"

"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, gravely, "he shall be present at the ceremony, but not another being in Speckport must find it out. If they do, Cherrie, I will have to leave you forever. There are many reasons for this that I cannot now explain. You will continue to live at home, and no one but ourselves shall be the wiser. There, don't look so disappointed; it won't last long, my darling. Let Charley still think himself your lover; but, mind you, keep him at a respectful distance, Cherrie."

They reached the cottage at last, but it took them a very long time.

Captain Cavendish walked back to Speckport in the moonlight, smoking, and with an odd little smile on his handsome face.

"I'll do it, too," he said, glancing up at the moon, as if informing that luminary in confidence. "There's a law against bigamy, I believe; but I'll marry them both, the maid first, the mistress afterward."

CHAPTER XI.

HOW CAPTAIN CAVENDISH MEANT TO MARRY CHERRIE.

The clerk of the weather in Speckport might have been a woman, so fickle and changeable in his mind was he. You never could put any trust in him; if you did, you were sure to be taken in. A bleak, raw, cheerless, gloomy morning, making parlor fires pleasant in spite of its being July, and hot coffee as delicious a beverage as cool soda-water had been the day before; a morning not at all suited for const.i.tutionals; yet on this cold, wet, raw, foggy morning Charley Marsh had arisen at five o'clock, and gone off for a walk, and was only opening the front-door of the little cottage as the clock on the sitting-room mantel was chiming nine.

Breakfast was over, and there was no one in the room but Mrs. Marsh, in her shawl and rocker, beside the fire which was burning in the Franklin, immersed ten fathoms deep in the adventures of a gentleman, inclosed between two yellow covers, and bearing the euphonious name of "Rinaldo Rinaldi." Miss Rose had gone to school, Betsy Ann was clattering among the pots in the kitchen; the breakfast-table looked sloppy and littered; the room, altogether dreary. Perhaps it was his walk in that cheerless fog, but Charley looked as dreary as the room; his bright face haggard and pale, his eyes heavy, and with dark circles under them, bespeaking a sleepless night. Mrs. Marsh dropped "Rinaldo Rinaldi," and looked up with a fretful air.

"Dear me, Charley, how late you are! What will Doctor Leach say? Where have you been?"

"Out for a walk."

"Such a hateful morning--it's enough to give you your death! Betsy Ann, bring in the coffee-pot!"

Betsy Ann appeared with that household G.o.d, and a face s.h.i.+ning with smiles and yellow soap, and her mistress relapsed into "Rinaldo Rinaldi"

again. Charley seemed to have lost his appet.i.te as well as his spirits.

He drank a cup of coffee, pushed the bread and b.u.t.ter impatiently away, donned his hat and overcoat, the former pulled very much over his eyes, and set out for the office.

Charley had enough to trouble him. It was not only Cherrie's desertion, though that was enough, for he really loved the girl with the whole fervor and strength of a fresh young heart, and meant to make her his honored wife. He was infatuated, no doubt; he knew her to be illiterate, silly, unprincipled, false and foolish, a little dressy piece of ignorance, vanity, selfishness and conceit, or might have known it if he chose; but he knew, too, she was a beautiful, brilliant, bewitching little fairy, with good-natured and generous impulses now and then, and the dearest little thing generally that ever was born. In short, he was in love with her, and love knows nothing about common sense; so when he had seen her walk off the previous evening with Captain Cavendish, and desert him, he had leaned against a tree, feeling--heaven only knows how deeply and how bitterly. Once he had started up to follow them, but had stopped--the memory of a heavy debt contracted in Prince Street, owing to this man, and hanging like an incubus about his neck, night and day, thrust him back as with a hand of iron. He was in the power of the English officer, beyond redemption; he could not afford to make him his enemy.

How that long morning dragged on, Charley never knew; certainly his medical studies did not progress much. Poor and in debt, in love and deserted, those were the changes on which his thoughts rang. A sulky-faced clock, striking one, made him start. It was time to go home to dinner, and he arose and went out. As he opened the shop-door, he stopped short. Tripping gayly along the foggy and sloppy streets came Cherrie herself, her dress pinned artistically up, to display a brilliant Balmoral skirt, of all the colors of a dying dolphin; her high-heeled boots clinking briskly over the pavement. Charley's foolish heart gave a great bound, and he stepped impulsively forward, with her name on his lips.

"Cherrie?"

Cherrie had not seen him until he spoke, and she recoiled with a scream.

"Sir! Charley Mars.h.!.+ how you scare me! I wish you wouldn't shout out so sudden and frighten me out of my wits!"

"You may spare your hysterics, Cherrie," said Charley, rather coldly; "you could stand more than that if Captain Cavendish was in question."

Cherrie laughed, and tripped along beside him with dancing eyes. She liked Charley, though in a far less degree than the das.h.i.+ng and elegant young officer, and was in a particularly good-natured state of mind that morning. There was more than her liking for Charley to induce her to keep good friends with him--the warning of the captain and her own prudence. Cherrie, faithless herself, had no very profound trust in her fellow-creatures. Until she was actually the captain's wife, she was not sure of him; there is many a slip, she knew; and if he failed her, Charley was the next best in Speckport. Therefore, at his insinuation, she only tossed her turbaned head after her coquettish fas.h.i.+on, until all her black curls danced a fandango, and showed her brilliant white teeth in a gay little laugh.

"Oh, you're jealous, are you?" she said. "I thought you would be!"

"Cherrie!"

"There, now, Charley, don't be cross! I just did it to make you jealous, and nothing else! I was mad at you for going off the way you did!"

"You know I could not help it!"

"Oh, I dare say not. I'm n.o.body beside Miss Natty! So, when Captain Cavendish came up and asked leave to see me home, I just let him! I thought it wouldn't do you any harm to be a little jealous, you know, Charley."

Charley's hopes were high again; but his heart had been too deeply pained for him to forget its soreness at one encouraging word. Something wanting in Cherrie, he could not quite define what, had often struck him before, but never so palpably as now. That want was principle, of which the black-eyed young lady was totally devoid; and he was vaguely realizing that trusting to her was much like leaning on a broken reed.

Cherrie, a good deal piqued, and a little alarmed by his silence, looked at him askance.

"Oh, you're sulky, are you? Very well, sir, you can just please yourself. If you've a mind to get mad for nothing, you may."

"Cherrie," Charley said, quite gravely for him, "do you think you did right last night? After promising to be my wife, to go off and leave me as you did?"

"I didn't, either!" retorted Cherrie; "it was you went off and left me."

"That was no fault of mine, and I didn't go with another young lady.

Cherrie, I want you to promise me you will let Captain Cavendish see you home no more."