May Fleming - A Changed Heart - A Novel

"Midge can wheel you about the field, you know, in your chair," said Charley. "You won't take cold – the day's sure to be delightful, and I know every one will enjoy themselves ten times better for having you there. You had better come. Val Blake and I will carry you down stairs!"

To the astonishment of Nathalie, Mrs. Leroy assented readily to the odd proposition; and Charley departed, having charmed the old lady into utter forgetfulness, for the time being, of her antipathy to Captain Cavendish. Speckport could talk of nothing for a week beforehand but the picnic – the first of the season. All Speckport was going, young and old, rich and poor. Admission, twenty-five cents; children, half price.

The Redmon grounds, where the picnic was to be held, were extensive and beautiful. Broad velvety fields, green lanes, among miniature forests of fragrant cedar and spruce, and all sloping down to the smooth, white sands of the beach, with the gray sea tramping dully in, and the salt spray dashing up in your face. And "I hope it won't be foggy! I do hope it won't be foggy!" was the burden of every one's cry; the fog generally choosing to step in and stay a week or two, whenever Speckport proposed a picnic. How many blinds were drawn aside in the gray and dismal dawn of that eventful morning, and how many eager pairs of eyes, shaded by night-cap borders, turned anxiously heavenward; and how delightedly they were drawn in again! for, wonderful to tell, the sky was blue and without a cloud, and the sun, rising in a canopy of rose and amber, promised all beholders a day of unremitting sunshine.

Before nine o'clock the Redmon road was alive with people – all in gorgeous array. Before ten, the droves of men, women, and children increased fourfold, and the dust was something awful. The sun fairly blazed in the sky; had it ever shone so dazzlingly before, or was there ever so brilliantly blue a sky, or such heaps and heaps of billows of snowy white, floating through it? Before eleven, that boiling seaside sun would have grilled you alive only for the strong sea-breeze, heaven-sent, sweeping up from the bay. Through fiery heat, and choking dust, the cry was "still they come," and Redmon grounds swarmed with people, as the fields of Egypt once swarmed with locust. A great arch of evergreens surmounted the entrance-gate, and the Union Jack floated loyally over it in the morning sunshine. The clanging of the band and the roll of the drum greeted your delighted ears the moment you entered the fairy arch, and you found yourself lost and bewildered in a sea of people you never saw before. The swings were flying with dizzying velocity, young belles went up until the toes of their gaiters nearly touched the firmament, and your head reeled to look at them. Some two or three hundred ladies and gentlemen were tripping the light fantastic toe to the inspiring music of a set of Irish quadrilles; and some eight hundred spectators were gathered in tremendous circles about them, looking on, gazing as if never in all their lives had so glorious and wonderful a vision as their fellow-sinners jigging up and down, dazzled their enchanted eyes. The refreshment tents were in such a crowded and jammed and suffocating state, that you could see the steam ascending from them as from an escape-valve; and the fair ones behind the tables, bewildered by two dozen clamorous voices, demanding the attention of each one at once, passed pies and tarts, and sandwiches and soda water, and coffee and cakes frantically and at random, and let little boys feed in corners unnoticed, and were altogether reduced to a state of utter imbecility by the necessity of doing half a dozen things at one and the same time. Pink and blue, and yellow and green ribbons fluttered, and silks and muslins and bareges trailed the grass and got torn off the waist by masculine bootheels; and the picnic was too delightful for description, and, over all, the fiery noonday July sun blazed like a wheel of fire, and the sea wind swept up fresh and delicious, and the waves sang their old song down on the shore, and no one listened to their mystic music or wondered, like poor little Paul Dombey, what they were saying.

No one! Yes, there was one sitting on a green bank, all alone, who had been very busy all morning until now, arranging tables and waiting on hungry pleasure-seekers, making little boys and girls behave themselves, and swinging little people who could get no one else to attend them. The breeze that set the tall reeds and fern at fandangoing waved her black barege dress, and flung back the little black lace vail falling from her hat. Tired and hot, she had wandered here to listen to the waves and to the tumult behind her.

What were the thoughts of the man who leaned against a tall tamarack tree and watched the reclining figure as a cat does a mouse? There are some souls so dark that all the beauty of earth and heaven are as blank pages to them. They see without comprehending, without one feeling of thoughtfulness for all the glory around them. Surely it were better for such to have been born blind. This man saw no wide sea spreading before him, glittering as if sown with stars. There was more to him worth watching in one flutter of that thin black dress on the bank than in all the world beside, and he stood and watched with his eyes half closed, waiting until she should see him.

He had not to wait long. Some prescience that something out of harmony with the scene was near, made her restless. She rose up on her elbow, and looked round – a second after, her face flushed, she was up off the grass and on her feet. The man lifted his hat and advanced.

"Pardon my intrusion, Winnie – Miss Rose, and – no, no – I beg you will not go!"

She had made to turn away, but he himself interposed – something of agitation in his manner, and it was but rarely, indeed. Captain George Cavendish allowed himself to be agitated. She stopped gently enough, the surprised flush faded out from her face – that pretty, pale face, tranquil as face could be, was only very grave.

"If you have anything to say to me, Captain Cavendish, please to say it quickly. I do not wish to be seen here."

"Is it such a disgrace, then, to be seen for one poor instant with me?" he said, bitterly.

She did not reply, save by an impatient tapping of one foot on the grass, and a backward glance at the crowded grounds.

"Winnie!" he broke out, passionately, as if stung by her manner, "have you turned into a flirt? Have you entirely forgotten what is past? You cannot – you cannot have ceased altogether to care for me, since I cannot, do what I will, forget you!"

Miss Rose looked at him – steadily, quietly, gravely, out of her brown eyes. If he had hoped for anything, that one look would have shivered his air-castles as a stone shivers brittle glass.

"I told you once before, Captain Cavendish, that such words from you to me were insults. The past, where you are concerned, is no more to me than if you had never existed. I have not forgotten it, but it has no more power to move me than the waves there can move those piles of rock. No! I have not forgotten it. I look back often enough now with wonder and pity at myself, that I ever should have been the idiot that I was."

His face turned crimson at the unmistakable earnestness of her words.

"Then I need scruple or hesitate no longer," he said, launching his last pitiful shaft. "I need hesitate no longer, on your score, to speak the words that will make one who is rich and beautiful, and who loves me, happy. I came here willingly to make what atonement I could for the past, by telling you beforehand, lest the shock of my marriage – "

He stopped in actual confusion, but raging inwardly at the humiliation she was making him feel – this poor little pale schoolmistress, whom he could have lifted with one hand and flung easily over the bank. She was smiling as she listened to him, a smile not of mockery or disdain, only so gallingly full of utter indifference to him.