A Changed Heart Part 60

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 cus.h.i.+ons, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 flus.h.i.+ng 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt long before in the Canadian paper shown her in Mrs. b.u.t.terby's lodgings, by the pale actress.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. WYNDHAM'S MOTHER.

Mr. Wyndham and Miss Henderson had had but one confidential interview after that first one, during the length of their brief engagement. It was the day after the evening at the theater. Mr. Wyndham had called early and found the heiress waiting for him in the drawing-room. There was no terror, no humiliation in her manner now, nothing but reckless, scornful defiance, and fierce pride, with which she seemed to dare him and Fate to do their worst.

"I was afraid of you yesterday, Mr. Paul Wyndham," she said, with an unpleasant laugh. "I shall never be afraid of you again. I see that it is of no use to struggle against Destiny--Providence, good people would say, but I make no pretense of goodness. The French have a saying that embodies the character of the nation: '_Couronnons nous des roses avant qu'elles ne se fleurissent._' I take that for my motto from henceforth, and crown myself with roses before they fade. I shall dress and spend money and enjoy this fortune while I may--when it goes, why, let it go,--I, shall know what to do when that time comes!"

Mr. Wyndham bowed in grave silence, and waited to hear all she might have to say. "To retain this wealth," she went on in the same reckless tone, and with her black deriding eyes seeming to mock him, "I consent to marry you; that is, I consent to go through a civil and religious ceremony which the world will call a marriage, and which to us will simply mean nothing but an empty form. It will give you a right to my money, which is all you want; it will give you a right to dwell under the same roof, but no right ever to intrude yourself upon me for one second, except when others are present and it is necessary to avoid suspicion. The world will call me by your name; but I shall still remain Olive Henderson, free and unfettered--free to come and go and do as I please, without interference or hindrance from you. Do I make myself understood?"

"Perfectly," Mr. Wyndham said, coolly, "and express my views entirely. I am delighted with your good sense, Miss Henderson, and I foresee we shall make a model couple, and get on together famously. Now, as to our wedding arrangements. When is it to be?"

"Whenever you please," she said, scornfully; "it is a matter of perfect indifference to me."

"I do not like to hurry you too much, but if the end of June----"

Olive made a careless gesture with her ringed hand:

"That will do! One tune is as good as another."

"And our bridal tour? There must be a bridal tour, you know, or people will talk."

"I told you," she said, impatiently, "it was of no consequence to me!

Arrange it as you please--I shall make no objection."

"Then suppose we go to Canada for a couple of months? The villa at Redmon can be ready upon our return."

And this tender tete-a-tete between the plighted pair settled the matter. And in due time the solemn mockery was performed by the Rev.

Augustus Tod, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham departed on their wedding tour.

The upholsterer had received his orders, and the villa would be in readiness upon their return, and there would be a famous house-warming, to which half Speckport was to be invited. About three weeks after the amicable adjustment of affairs between the author and the heiress, Mr.

Wyndham made a little investment in landed property on his own account.

There was a delightful little dwelling, known as "Rosebush Cottage," for sale. A real bijou of a cottage, painted cream color, with vivid green window-shutters and door, and with a garden in front that was a perfect sea of roses--crimson roses, and monthly roses, and damask roses, and bridal roses, all kinds bloomed here, until the air became faint with perfume; and behind there was a gnarled old orchard, where apple-trees and plum-trees nearly covered the creamy cottage with their long green arms. This delicious Rosebush Cottage was for sale; and Mr. Wyndham, who had for some time been quietly on the look-out for just such a place, became its purchaser. When asked what he could possibly want of it, Mr.

Wyndham answered it was for his mother.

"For your mother!" exclaimed Mr. Blake, when Mr. Wyndham first told him.

"You never mean to say, Wyndham, your mother is going to exchange the genial and spicy breezes of Westchester County for our bleak province--hey?"

"Westchester County is a delightful place, no doubt," responded Mr.

Wyndham; "but in my absence, it is only vanity and vexation of spirit to my poor mother. What are all the Westchester Counties in America to her without her Paul, her only one! I shall send for her as soon as I return from Canada, to come here."

"Perhaps she won't come," said Val; "perhaps she will think of the old adage, 'My son's my son till he gets him a wife,' and prefer remaining where she is."

"No," said Mr. Wyndham, "my mother knows her son will be her son all the days of his life. She is very much changed, Blake, since you knew her; she never was very fond of society, as you are aware; but of late she has become a perfect recluse, shutting herself in and shutting the world out. Rosebush Cottage will make her a very nice hermitage, I think, and it is conveniently near Redmon. The next thing is to look out for a competent and trustworthy servant--not a young girl, you know, giddy and frivolous, but a quiet and sensible woman, who would not object to the loneliness."

Mr. Blake put on his considering-cap.

"There's Midge," he said, "she's out of place, and stopping with us--you saw her at our house last night, you remember; but I'm afraid she mightn't suit."

"That little dwarf, do you mean? She would do well enough, as far as looks are concerned, if that is the only objection."