CHAPTER IX.
A SURPRISE FOR MISS WYNDE.
Miss Neva Wynde, on finding herself confronted by Artress at the very door of Mr. Black’s wild Highland retreat, comprehended in one swift flash that she had been betrayed by her enemies, and caught in a snare, as we have said—that, in short, she was virtually their prisoner.
But after her first wild start of amazement, after the first wild glance at her enemies, she sternly repressed all signs of terror or surprise, and although her pure, proud face was paler than usual, yet she did not otherwise betray her fears.
“Mrs. Artress here!” she said. “This is a surprise. You said, Mrs. Black, that she was staying with friends in London, did you not?”
An evil smile played about the full sensual lips of Octavia Black, and she looked at Neva keenly as she answered, with affected carelessness:
“I did say so, I believe. But I intended to surprise you. You are so fond of Mrs. Artress, Neva, that I wished her to be of our party. I am glad you are so pleased.”
Neva did not reply, but she drew up her slight figure with a sudden haughtiness, and her pale, proud face wore an expression of sternness before which Mrs. Black ought to have quailed. But Octavia only laughed, and as Neva thought, mockingly.
“Come into the drawing-room, good people,” cried Mrs. Artress. “I have made the house habitable, and I want you to compliment me upon my handiwork.”
Mrs. Black went into the room, and Neva followed her, Craven Black coming last like a body-guard. Neva had an uncomfortable feeling that she was already a prisoner.
The drawing-room at the Wilderness was a long barrack-like apartment, with bare white walls, upon which were hung a few engravings. The furniture was old, but well kept, being a combination of mahogany and black haircloth. The six windows were curtained with faded damask of the color of mahogany, and an old book-case, containing a few old and worn volumes, completed the list of furniture.
“It’s a perfect old barrack, Craven!” said Mrs. Black, with a shudder. “But I suppose it must be fearfully difficult to get furniture and such things up the cliff. However, if we make a shooting box of this place, decent furniture and pictures and things have got to be brought here. This room is like a draughty old barn.”
“So is the whole house,” said Mrs. Artress. “But the place is so delightfully romantic, and secluded and hidden, you know, that one can put up with drawbacks. I have had my hands full, I assure you, since I arrived here. How do you like the Wilderness, Miss Wynde?”
“It is romantic and secluded, as you say, Mrs. Artress,” answered Neva quietly, yet with a shade of hauteur. “Have you been here long?”
“I came direct from Hawkhurst, stopping only a day in London,” said Mrs. Artress. “I came by rail to Inverness, and there I chartered a fishing smack and loaded her with provisions and furniture, and bed and table-linen, and whatever else I fancied we were likely to need during our stay here. I had visited the Wilderness once when I was a girl, and knew about what we should require. I came on, sent away the sloop, and put the house in order. I have two women servants in the house, of the stolidest possible description. You will find it next to impossible to make them comprehend your soft southern tongue, Miss Wynde.”
Neva wondered if the last sentence contained a hidden meaning.
“It is September at Hawkhurst,” continued Mrs. Artress, with a shiver, “but here one might swear it was January, the mountain air is so cold. Will you go up to your rooms?”
“Yes,” responded Mrs. Black. “When do we dine?”
Mrs. Artress consulted a tiny jewelled watch, one of her recent acquisitions.
“A half an hour,” she said. “You won’t have time to dress. I’ll send one of the servants down the cliff to guide up the sailors with the luggage. But first I will show you to your rooms.”
She passed out into the hall, her train sweeping the floor with silken rustle. Mrs. Black linked her arm in Neva’s, but the young girl quietly withdrew her person from her enemy’s touch, and walked apart proudly, and with a shade of defiance. Thus they passed up the wooden stairs, Craven Black bringing up the rear.
The upper part of the house was very simply arranged, there being a central hall, with chambers opening off it on either side. At the rear end of the hall was a door opening upon a flight of steps, beyond which lay the passage from which the servants’ rooms opened, and from which the servants’ staircase led down to the kitchen.
“The room at the left is yours, Octavia,” said Mrs. Artress. “You will find two dressing-rooms attached, such as they are. The chamber just opposite, here upon the right, is Miss Wynde’s. Permit me to show you into your room, Miss Neva.”
She opened a door upon her right, and ushered Neva into a long ante-room, furnished as a bed-chamber. Beyond this ante-room, the door open between them, was a large square bed-room, where candles were burning in battered silver sconces.
“This ante-room was intended for the use of your maid,” remarked Mrs. Artress, “but as you did not bring your maid, and as Celeste is to attend upon you as well as upon Octavia and me, she may as well occupy your ante-room. In fact, we are so cramped for habitable quarters, that I have been compelled to assign it to her. How do you like your room?”
It was decently furnished, with a new carpet, curtains, and green roller blinds. There was a wood fire on the broad, old-fashioned hearth. The high-post bedstead, a modern armed chair and a low chintz-covered couch were particularly noticeable.
“You have a dressing-room beyond, Miss Wynde,” said Mrs. Artress, as Neva did not answer, pointing out a large light closet adjoining the bedroom. “This is a dear, delightful, out-of-the-world place, is it not?”
Neva deliberately looked into the closet, and surveyed the walls.
“I see no outlet from this room except through the ante-room,” she said abruptly.
“There is none. Those queer old-fashioned architects were very outlandish in their ideas; but then an ante-room is convenient, my dear—”
Neva checked Mrs. Artress’ familiarity by a haughty gesture. She had not liked the woman when Mrs. Artress had been Lady Wynde’s silent and unobtrusive gray companion, and she liked her still less now that she had bloomed into a devotee of fashion, and was obtrusively and offensively familiar and patronizing.
“It strikes me, Mrs. Artress,” she said quietly, “that the marriage of Lady Wynde to Mr. Black has completely transformed you. You do not seem like the same person.”
“And I am not,” declared Mrs. Artress. “There is no use in keeping the secret any longer, Miss Wynde. The whole world may know that I am the cousin of Craven Black, and being his cousin, of course I am his wife’s equal. I am going into society with Mrs. Craven Black during the approaching season, and it is quite possible that I may make as brilliant a marriage as Octavia Hathaway did when she married Sir Harold Wynde.”
Neva started, those careless words bringing to her awakening mind a crowd of new and strange suspicions. She remembered that Mrs. Artress had been in Octavia Hathaway’s employ before the marriage of the latter with Sir Harold. And Mrs. Artress was Craven Black’s cousin! Perhaps it was through Mrs. Artress, and after the death of Sir Harold Wynde in India, that Craven Black and Lady Wynde had become acquainted? And perhaps Craven Black had known Octavia Hathaway before her marriage to Sir Harold Wynde?
The thought—the doubt—was torture to her.
“I had not suspected your relationship to Mr. Black,” she said coldly; “but I saw, upon the very morning after Mrs. Black’s marriage, that your relations to her had changed.”
She longed to ask, directly or indirectly, how long Octavia had known Craven Black, but her pride would not permit her to put the question. She turned haughtily away from Mrs. Artress, signifying by her manner that she desired to be alone.
The woman’s face reddened, and she turned away with scarcely smothered anger.
“There is no bell in the room, Miss Wynde,” she said, halting an instant at the door; “but you will hear the dinner bell, even in here. There will be a servant in the hall to show you down to the dining-room.”
She went out, closing the door behind her.
Neva’s first act, on being left alone, was to examine the two windows under their roller blinds and chintz curtains. The windows were of the quaint, old-fashioned sort, with tiny diamond panes set in heavy divisions of lead. The windows were casements, opening like doors, upon hinges, but the lock and fastening were intricate, and had they not been, it would have been difficult to open the windows owing to the presence of the inside blinds and curtains.
And even while Neva was tugging with all her strength at the cumbrous fastenings, she heard the savage baying of dogs as they chased across the grounds below, and knew that, whether intentionally or otherwise, her escape by her windows, should she ever desire to escape in that manner, would be utterly impracticable.
She retreated from the window and sat down for a few moments by her fire, thinking.
“It will not do to show suspicion,” she decided at length. “Perhaps I am alarmed without cause. Why can my father’s wife, whom my father so loved, desire to harm me? Is she determined upon my marriage to Rufus Black? How will such a marriage benefit her? I acquit Rufus of any share in the conspiracy. They dared not bring him with them to this place. He would not permit this oppression and wickedness. Can it be that my fortune tempts Craven Black and his wife to force me into a marriage that is repugnant to me, and that they count upon the weak nature of Rufus, and that when they get me securely wedded to Rufus, they will seize upon my income and divert it to their own use?”
She could not rid herself of this idea, which, as the reader is aware, approached so nearly to the truth.
“I know that I am in the midst of enemies,” she said to herself energetically. “There is no use in shutting my eyes to the truth. The whole truth has come upon me to-night like a revelation. I must be on my guard, brave and watchful. I must seem unsuspicious, to throw my enemies off their guard. How strange it seems that I, who hate no one, have enemies!”
She arose, not daring to give way further to the suspicions and anxieties crowding upon her, and brushed her brown cloth traveling suit and her red-brown hair, and washed her face and hands. A fresh collar and cuffs were found in her dressing bag, and she had hardly put them on when the loud clangor of a bell in the lower hall announced that dinner was ready.
She went through the ante-room into the hall, and found Celeste, the French maid, waiting to show her down to the dining-room.
“One moment,” said Neva in French, slipping a gold coin into the woman’s hand. “How far is the nearest post-office, Celeste?”
“Fifteen miles across the mountains and lochs, Miss,” answered the woman, pocketing the coin, with a courtesy. “There is a village, or hamlet, fifteen miles from here, but it’s a day’s journey nearly to reach it. It’s over twenty miles to Inverness, and that is a half day by water, with a favorable wind, but Inverness is the family post-office, Miss.”
Neva’s heart sank.
“Could I send a letter to Inverness, do you think?” she inquired.
“Oh yes, Miss. The sailors can go in the sloop. Mr. Black will send them at your bidding, Miss.”
“I prefer a quicker mode,” said Neva, feeling not at all confident that Mr. Black would accede to such a request from her. “I desire to write to an old friend of my father, one of the guardians of my estate—Sir John Freise. Is there no hanger-on about this place who would go secretly and swiftly to Inverness for me? If you can find such a person, I will give him five pounds, and also give you five pounds, Celeste,” she added, carefully concealing her anxiety.
“I will do it, Miss,” exclaimed Celeste enthusiastically. “There is a young man hanging about the kitchen, a relative of the old cook. I will send him. Write your letter to-night, Miss Wynde, and I will send it immediately.”
Neva expressed her satisfaction at this arrangement, and descended the stairs to the lower hall, not seeing the singular gleam in the French woman’s eyes, nor the treacherous smile on the French woman’s countenance. Celeste guided her to the dining-room, a large, long, low room, where Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black and Artress were already gathered. The three greeted Neva courteously, and Craven Black came forward to meet her, and conducted her to her seat at the table.
The dinner consisted of broiled birds upon toast, vegetables, coffee, crystalized fruits, fresh grapes and other delicacies, some of which had been brought up from the yacht. Neva was silent during the meal, and very thoughtful during the subsequent hour she passed with her enemies in the drawing-room. At a very early hour she retired to her own room.
Her luggage had been brought up, and stood unstrapped in her chamber. Neva closed her door, and discovered that there was no key in the lock. She pushed one of her heavy trunks against the door to guard against surprise, and unlocked another trunk, taking out from the tray a dispatch box, upon which she proceeded to write a letter to Sir John Freise.
This was no sooner begun than it was torn up.
“Sir John is too old to be distressed about me,” she thought. “I will write to Arthur, who must be very anxious at not hearing from me. He can consult with Mr. Atkins and Sir John about me if he chooses, or come for me, as he thinks proper.”
She wrote a long letter to her lover, recounting her suspicions of Craven Black and his wife, and declaring that, while she was not locked in her room at the Wilderness, she nevertheless felt herself a prisoner. She entreated her lover to come to her, but not to come alone. She desired him to bring with him either Sir John or Mr. Atkins, whose support of Lord Towyn’s claims to take her home might be necessary. She declared that she was afraid, and that she should count the days until his coming.
Neva sealed and addressed this letter to Lord Towyn, and then stamping it, stole softly out into the ante-room. Celeste sat there sewing a frill upon one of her mistress’ robes by the light of candles, but she arose at Neva’s entrance.
“Celeste,” said the young girl, in a whisper, “here is my letter. And here are five pounds for the boy, and five pounds for you,” and she took out two crisp Bank of England notes from her well-filled pocket-book. “When I receive the answer to this letter which I expect, I will give you as much more. You must be very secret, and let no one see you. Have you spoken to the boy?”
“Yes, Miss, and he has got a rough Highland pony, and he says he’ll start for Inverness immediately.”
With a feeling of relief, Neva placed the two bank-notes and the money in the hands of the French woman.
“Go,” she whispered. “And remember, let no one suspect your errand.”
The French woman assented, and putting the money and the letter in her pocket, hurried away.
“I am forced to trust her, having no one else to trust,” said Neva to herself, after a few minutes of reflection. “Surely she would not take my money and deliberately betray me? She must know my position, but she cannot be sure that I know it. The money must tempt her to be true to me. But will the boy be true? I must see him—I will see him!”
She acted upon the impulse, going out into the hall, and softly descending the stairs. Here she paused, uncertain whether to seek the youth in the kitchen, or out at the stable. He was more likely to be at the latter place, and she flitted along the hall, pausing abruptly as a burst of laughter came from the drawing-room, the door of which was ajar.
She had halted at a point which commanded a view of the interior of the drawing-room, and involuntarily she looked in.
The sight she beheld absolutely transfixed her for the moment.
She beheld Craven Black seated at the centre-table, under a swinging lamp whose light fell full upon him. His wife was looking over his shoulder. Mrs. Artress and the treacherous French woman stood at a little distance, looking also at Mr. Black. And he—and he—Neva could scarcely believe the evidence of her senses—he was reading her letter which she had written to her lover, and he twirled his waxed mustaches and uttered little mocking sneers as some especially tender passage came under his vision.
“By Jove, she’s sweet on Lord Towyn!” he muttered, with bitter envy, and jealousy, his brows darkening. “But to go on. ‘Oh, my own Arthur—’”
With the spring of a leopardess, with her soul on fire, with her wild eyes flaming, with a cry of awful indignation on her lips, Neva bounded into the room, snatched the letter from the hands of Craven Black, and retreated a few steps, clutching it to her bosom, and glaring around her like some fierce wild creature turned at bay.