A Changed Heart: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

Miss Nettleby fell to musing.

"Well, I don't care if I do," she said, at length. "I should like to see Boston, and the trip in the steamboat will be nice. But, look here, Charley, I've gone and told our folks and everybody else that I was going to Greentown, in this afternoon's train, and it won't do to back out."

"But you must back out, Cherrie! You cannot go to Greentown and to Boston, both."

Cherrie put on her considering-cap again, only for a moment, though, and then she looked up with a sparkling face.

"I have it, Charley! The nicest plan! This evening, at half-past five, I'll go off in the cars, and every one will think I've gone to Greentown, so my absence to-morrow won't be noticed. I'll get out at the first station, three miles off, and walk back home, but won't go in. About eight to-night you call at our house, pretending you don't know about my being off, you know; and when our Ann tells you I have gone, you go up to Lady Leroy's and stay till bed-time. Then wait around the grounds in front of the house, and I'll come to you about ten. I can stop in one of the hotels here, where they don't know me. I'll wear a thick vail until morning, and then we will hide on board the boat. Isn't it a splendid plan, Charley? They'll think I'm in Greentown, and never suspect we have gone off together!"

No poor fly ever got entangled in a spider's web more readily than did Charley Marsh in that of Captain Cavendish. He thought the plan was capital, and he told her so.

"You must be sure to wait in front of the house until I come," said the wicked little enchantress, keeping her black eyes fixed anywhere but on his face. "And here, Charley—now don't refuse—it is only a trifle, and I won't go with you, if you don't take it. I don't suppose you have much money, and father made it a present to me after Lady Leroy paid him. I must go now, because I have ever so much to do before evening. Good-bye, Charley, you won't forget anything I've said?"

Forget! That face, fair in spite of its haggardness, was radiant. Bad as Cherrie was, she had not the heart to look at him as she hurried out of the shop and down the street. If he had only known!—if he had only known!—known of the cunning trap laid for him, into which he was falling headlong—if he had only known what was to take place that fatal night!

Charley Marsh did not go home to his dinner; he had dinner enough for that day. All that long sweltering afternoon he sat in the smothering little back-office, staring out at the baked and blistered backyard, and weaving, oh! such radiant dreams of the future. Such dreams as we all weave; as we see wither to shreds, even in the next hour. Visions of a home, far, very far from Speckport, where the past should be atoned for and forgotten—a home of which Cherrie, his darling little Cherrie, should be the mistress and fireside fairy.

It was some time past five, when, awakening from these blissful day-dreams, Charley Marsh found that the little back office was so insufferably hot as not to be borne any longer, and that a most extraordinary change had come over the sky, or at least as much of the firmament as was visible from the dirty office-window. He took his hat and sauntered out, pausing in the shop-door to stare at the sky. It had turned livid; a sort of ghostly, greenish glare, all over with wrathful black clouds and bars of blood-red streaking the western horizon. Not a breath of air stirred; the trees along the streets of Speckport and in its squares hung motionless in the dead calm, and feathers and bits of paper and straw lay on the sidewalk. The sea was of the same ghastly tinge as sky and air, as if some commotion in its watery bowels had turned it sick. And, worst of all, the heat was unabated, the planked sidewalks scorched your feet as you walked, and you gasped for a mouthful of air. Speckport declined taking its tea; its butter was butter no longer, but oil; its milk had turned sour, and the water from the street-hydrants nearly warm enough to make tea of, without boiling at all. There were very few out as Charley walked down Queen Street, but among these few he encountered Mr. Val Blake, striding in the direction of Great St. Peter Street.