A Changed Heart: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

CHAPTER XXX.

VERY MYSTERIOUS.

The house-warming at Redmon was such a house-warming as Speckport never saw before; for, as Mr. Blake with his customary good sense remarked, "When Mrs. P. Wyndham did that sort of thing, she did do it." In the luminous darkness of the September evening, the carriages of the guests drove through the tall iron gates up the back avenue, all aglow with red, and blue, and green lamps, twinkling like tropical fireflies among the trees. The whole front of the beautiful villa blazed with illumination, and up in the gilded gallery the musicians were filling the scented air with delicious melody. It was not Redmon, this; it was fairy-land; it was a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and the darkly-beautiful lady in ruby velvet and diamonds, welcoming her friends, was the Princess Badelbradour, lovely enough to turn the heads of a brigade of poor Aladdins. Society went through the house that night, and had the eyes dazzled in their heads by the blinding radiance of light, and the glowing coloring and richness of all. The ladies went into raptures over Mrs. Wyndham's rooms, and the literary people cast envious eyes over the book-lined library, with its busts of poets, and pictures of great men, dead and gone. There was a little room opening off this library that seemed out of keeping in its severe plainness with the magnificence of the rest of the house—a bare, severe room, with only one window, looking out upon the velvety sward of the lawn at the back of the villa; a room that had no carpet on the floor, and very little furniture, only two or three chairs, a baize-covered writing-table, a leather-covered lounge under the window, a few pictures of dogs and horses, a plaster head of John Milton, a selection of books on swinging shelves, a bureau, a dressing-table, a lavatory, a shaving-glass, and a sofa-bedstead. Except the servants' apartments, there was nothing at all so plain as this in the whole house; and when people asked what it was, they were told by Mrs. Hill, who showed the house, that it was Mr. Wyndham's room. Yes, this was Mr. Wyndham's room, the only room in that house he ever entered, save when he went to dinner, or when visitors required his presence in the drawing-room or library. His big dog Faust slept on a rug beside the table, his canaries sung to him in their cages around the window, he wrote in that hard leathern armchair beside the green-baize table, he lay on that lounge under the open window in the golden breeze of the September weather, and smoked endless cigars; late into the night his lamp glimmered in that quiet room; and when it went out after midnight, he was sleeping the sleep of the just on the sofa-bedstead. The servants at Redmon talked, as servants will talk, about the palpable estrangement between master and mistress, about their never meeting, except at dinner, when there always was company; for Mrs. Wyndham breakfasted in the boudoir and Mr. Wyndham never ate luncheon. He was quite hermit-like in his habits, this pale, inscrutable young author—one glass of wine sufficed for him—he was out of bed and at work before the stable-boys or scullery-maids were stirring, and his only extravagance was in the way of cigars. From the day he had married Olive Henderson until this, he had never asked or received one stiver of her money; he had more than sufficient of his own for his simple wants and his mother's, and had Olive been the hardest virago of a landlady, she could hardly have brought in a bill against him, even for board and lodging, for he more than repaid her for both. He was always courteous, genial, and polite to her—too polite for one spark of her affection; always deferring to her wishes, and never attempting in the smallest iota to interfere with her caprices, or thwart her desires, or use his husbandly authority. She was in every way as much her own mistress as she had ever been; so much so that sometimes she wondered, and found it impossible to realize that she was really married. No, she was not married; these two had never been united either in heart or desire; they were bound together by a compact never mentioned now. What had he gained by this marriage? Olive sometimes wonderingly asked herself. He told her, or as good as told her, he wanted her for her money; but now that money was at his disposal, and he never made use of it. What had he married her for?

"How proud you must be of your husband, Mrs. Wyndham!" other women had said to her, when abroad; and sometimes, in spite of herself, a sharp pang cut to the center of her haughty heart at the words. Why, these very women had as much right to be proud of him, to speak to him, to be near him, as she had. Proud of him! She thought she had cause to hate him, she was wicked enough to wish to hate him, but she could not. Neither could she despise him; she might treat him as coldly as she pleased, but she never could treat him with contempt. There was a dignity about the man, the dignity of a gentleman and a scholar, that asserted itself, and made her respect him, as she never had respected any other man. Once or twice a strange thought had come across her; a thought that if he would come to her and tell her he was growing to love her, and ask her not to be so cruelly cold and repellent, she might lay her hand on his shoulder with the humility of a little child, and trust him, and yield herself to him as her friend and protector through life, and be simply and honestly happy, like other women. But he never did this; his manner never changed to her in the slightest degree. She had nothing to complain of from him, she had every cause to be grateful for his kindness and clemency. And so she shut herself up in her pride, and silenced fiercely her mutinous heart, and sought happiness in costly dress and jewelry, and womanly employment, and incessant visiting, and party-giving, and receptions and money-spending—and failed miserably. Was she never to be happy? She had everything her heart could desire—a beautiful house, servants to attend her, rich garments to wear, and she fared sumptuously every day; but for all that, she was wretched. I do not suppose Dives was a happy man. There is only one receipt in this wide world for happiness, believe me, and that is goodness. We may be happy for a brief while, with the brief happiness of a lotus-eater; but it cannot last—it cannot last! and the after-misery is worse than anything we ever suffered before. Olive Henderson had said she would be happy, she had tried to compel herself to be happy; and thought for a few poor minutes, sometimes, when she found herself the belle of some gay party, dancing and laughing, and reigning like a queen, that she had succeeded. But "Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter!" Next day she would know what a ghastly mockery it had all been, and she would watch Paul Wyndham, mounted on his pony, with his dog behind him, riding away to his mother's cottage, with a passionately rebellious and bitter heart, and wonder if he or any one else in the wide world would really care if they found her lying on the floor of her costly boudoir, stark and dead, slain by her own hand.

Paul Wyndham appeared to be very fond of his mother, if he was not of his wife. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage every day, rain or shine, and sometimes staid there two or three days together.

Mr. Wyndham's mother, for all her age and her ill-health, could play the piano, it seemed. People going past Rosebush Cottage had often heard the piano going, and played, too, with masterly skill. At first, it was thought to be Mr. Wyndham himself, who was quite a musician, but they soon found out the piano-playing went on when he was known to be at Redmon. Olive heard all this, and, like Speckport, would have given a good deal to see Mr. Wyndham's mother; but she never saw her. She had asked him, carelessly, if his mother would come to the house-warming, and he had said "No, she never went out;" and so the house-warming had come off without her.

There was one person present on that occasion whom Speckport was surprised to see, and that was Captain Cavendish. Captain Cavendish had received a card of invitation, and, having arrayed himself in his uniform, made his appearance as a guest, in the house he once hoped to call his own. Those floating stories, whispered by the servants, and current in the town, of the cold disunion between husband and wife, had reached him, and delighted him more than words can tell. After all, then, she had loved him! Doubtless she spent her nights in secret weeping and mourning for his loss, fit to tear her black hair out by the roots, in her anguish at having lost him. He was very late in arriving at Redmon, purposely late; and he could imagine her straining her eyes toward the drawing-room door, her heart throbbing at every fresh announcement, and turning sick with disappointment when she found it was not he. Would she betray any emotion when she met him? Would her voice falter, her eyes droop, her color rise, or her hand turn cold in his own?

Oh, Captain Cavendish! you might have spared yourself the trouble of all these conjectures. Not one poor thought had she ever given you; not once had your image crossed her mind, until you stood bowing before her; and then, when she spoke to you, every nerve was as steady as when, an instant later, she welcomed old Squire Tod. Her eyes were following furtively another form, nothing like so tall, or stately, or gallant as your own, Captain Cavendish; another form that went in and out through the crowd—the form of her husband, who welcomed every one with a face infinitely kind and genial, who found partners for forlorn damsels, who stopped to talk courteously to neglected wall-flowers, and who came to where his wife stood every now and then, and addressed her as any other gentleman in his own house might address his wife, showing no sign of coldness or disunion on his part, at least.

Captain Cavendish was disappointed, and all Speckport with him. Where was the cold neglect on Mr. Wyndham's part, they had come prepared to see and relish? where the haughty disdain of the neglected and resentful wife? They were calmly polite to one another, and what more was required? As long as Mr. Wyndham did not beat her, or Mrs. Wyndham showed no sign of intending to elope with any other man, Speckport could see no reason why it should set them down as other than a very well-matched couple.

It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham that night paid rather marked attention to one of the lady guests present; but as the lady wore black bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and was on the frosty side of fifty, no scandal came of it. The lady was poor Mrs. Marsh, who had come, nothing loth, and who simpered a good deal, and was fluttered and flattered to find herself thus honored by the master of Redmon.