CHAPTER X.
THE INAUGURATION OF HOSTILITIES.
The sudden entrance of Neva Wynde into the midst of her exulting enemies struck them dumb. Craven Black sat with hands outstretched, as they had grasped the letter Neva had snatched from them, his face growing livid, and a look of consternation glaring from his eyes. Octavia Black stood, half leaning still over her husband’s shoulder, as if turned to stone, the mocking smile frozen on her lips, a look of terror and defiance on her face. Mrs. Artress, retaining more of self-possession than the others, stared at Neva with unmistakable hatred and triumph. The treacherous French woman drooped her gaze, and grew pale and awe-stricken.
Neva, still clutching the letter to her bosom, looked at her enemies one by one, her red-brown eyes blazing. It seemed to those who looked upon her that the red flames leaped from her eyes of gloom, and they trembled before her. Her pure, proud face was deathly white, but it was stern and awful in its wondrous beauty, as she turned it from one to another in an expression of scathing contempt that stung Craven and Octavia Black to the very soul.
Then, without a word, but with her letter still clutched against her panting breast, the young girl swept from the room with the air, the step, and the haughty carriage of an insulted empress.
The conspirators heard her slowly ascend the stairs to her own room. They stared at each other for a brief space in an utter and terrible silence. Mrs. Craven Black was the first to speak, and her companions started as her voice broke the dead and awful hush.
“Well, upon my word!” she ejaculated, forcing a strange, hoarse, and uneasy laugh, that jarred on the ears of her fellow conspirators.
“A queen of tragedy!” muttered Mrs. Artress, referring to Neva’s appearance and departure from their presence.
Craven Black sighed and scowled darkly. An ugly smile disfigured his mouth.
“Well,” he said, “matters have been brought to a crisis. I would have preferred to keep up the semblance of friendship a while longer, but the girl has torn the masks from our faces. She has declared war—so war let it be. In the fight before us, the strongest must conquer!”
“I could not dream she would follow me,” said the French woman deprecatingly. “I am not to blame. I am sure, very sure, that she is going to run away. She will leave the Wilderness to-night.”
The ugly smile deepened upon Craven Black’s visage.
“We will see!” he said, and his voice was terrible in its significance and threatening.
The French woman had read Neva’s purpose aright.
The young lady went up to her room and closed her door, and held in the flames of the bright wood fire the torn and crumpled letter she had written to her lover, and which she had rescued from the hands of Craven Black. She let the small burning remnant of paper fall upon the blazing log, and watched the blue shrivelled ash wave to and fro in the current of air, and then whirl upward into the capacious chimney.
The letter thus destroyed, Neva, with a white face and wild eyes, set about her few preparations for departure. Her soul was in a tumult; her brain seemed on fire. She could not think or reason yet; she only knew that she longed to get away, that she must get away. She put on her round hat above her braids, and was about to throw about her a light shawl, when a sudden fierce rattling of the casements in the wind warned her that a night in late September in the Scottish Highlands was likely to be cold. She opened one of her trunks and dragged out to the light a pretty sleeved jacket of the soft and delicate fur of the silver fox, and this she put on. She took up her muff and dressing bag and hurried into the ante-room, panting and breathless, eager for the outer air.
The door opening from the ante-room into the hall was closed. Neva pulled it open—and found herself face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, Mrs. Artress and the French woman!
The girl recoiled an instant before this human barricade as if she had received a blow. Then she waved her hand in a haughty, commanding gesture, and said:
“Let me pass! Stand aside!”
“Not so fast, Miss Wynde,” said Craven Black mockingly. “This lady, my wife, is your personal guardian, and she has the authority to control your movements—”
The girl’s passionate eyes flashed stormily at her enemies.
“Let me pass I say!” she cried, in a low, suppressed voice. “Attempt to detain me here, and I will arouse the household!”
“Do so,” said Craven Black, tauntingly. “The two stolid women in the kitchen cannot hear you; and if they could, they have been prepared for your outcries, and will not heed them. The sailors are on the yacht, in the loch below. You are out of the world up in this eagle’s eyrie, and you may beat your wings against the bars of your cage till you drop dead, my pretty bird, but no one will heed your flutterings. Call, if you will. Try the effect of a shriek!”
He took a step nearer to Neva, who retreated before him, shrinking from his touch. He went after her into the room, his companions following. Celeste closed the door, and placed herself against it.
“Sit down, Neva,” said Octavia Black, with a mocking intonation. “Lay aside your hat and sacque. Don’t abandon us upon the very evening of our arrival in our new residence.”
Neva made no answer, but Octavia shrank before the stern accusing of the girl’s gloomy, passionate eyes.
“As your guardian,” said Mrs. Black, recovering her self-possession, which had been momentarily shaken, “I desire to ask you where you were about to go when we intercepted you?”
“I might refuse to answer, madam,” replied Neva, “but you know as well as I do that I was about to start for Inverness on foot, and that I intended to go back to Hawkhurst and to my friends. Unfortunately, Mrs. Black, you are my personal guardian; but Sir John Freise and my other guardians, are desirous that I should choose another in your stead, and I shall now do so. Your character, madam, is at last revealed to me in all its moral hideousness. My recent vague suspicions of you have become certainties. Mr. Atkins was right in his distrust of you. But, madam, because my dead father loved and trusted you to the last hour of his life, because you have borne his honored name, I will spare you from blame and obloquy, and screen your ill-doings and ill-treatment of me even from my guardians. I will agree to thus screen you if you will stand aside and let me go forth now, at this moment.”
“But, Neva,” said Mrs. Black, “you will lose your way on the mountains; you will make a misstep over some cliff, or into some ravine; or you will die of cold and exhaustion long before you can reach Inverness. It is twenty miles as the crow flies. It is forty, as you would have to travel. We will not send you in the yacht. Your scheme of departure is impracticable. In fact, you cannot go.”
“You mean to detain me here a prisoner?”
“Call yourself by what name you will,” said Craven Black, “you cannot go.”
The young girl looked around her desperately, like a hunted deer. There was no pity or sympathy in those hard and greedy faces. Had she been penniless, she would have been as free as the birds of the air; but being rich, her enemies looked upon her as their rightful prey.
“Are you a pack of outlaws?” demanded Neva, her young voice ringing through the room. “How dare you thus interfere with the liberty of an English woman?”
“You are not an English woman, but only an English girl,” interrupted Octavia Black. “You are a minor, without right or liberty or the exercise of your own will. You are my ward, Neva, and as your guardian I command your obedience. How can you reconcile it with your conscience to rebel against your step-mother?”
“You are not my step-mother,” cried Neva hotly. “When you ceased to be my father’s widow, you ceased to be my step-mother.”
“I think the law takes another view of such a case,” said Mrs. Black. “But, at any rate, I am still your guardian, and as such I have a right to read all the letters you write or receive. I read your letter to Lord Towyn, and exhibited it to my husband—”
“And to your husband’s cousin, and to your maid,” said Neva. “I am aware of all that. As to your right to examine my letters, I do not believe in it. Your action in opening my letter to Lord Towyn,” and Neva’s cheeks flamed, “and in reading its contents aloud to your familiars, was an act of the grossest indelicacy and want of honor and moral principle. Any person with a grain of decency in his composition will confirm what I say!”
Mrs. Craven Black was stung to fury by this outspoken declaration, its truthfulness giving it keener effect. She compressed her lips, being unable to speak, and hurried to and fro with uneven tread like a caged tigress.
“We will not discuss the right or wrong of Mrs. Black’s very natural and proper act,” said Craven Black. “She had the right to read your letter, and therefore did read it. I think you have no further fault to find with us than this?”
“Such an indelicate letter for a young lady to write,” murmured Mrs. Artress, turning her eyes upward. “‘My own dear Arthur.’ I never was so shocked!”
Neva turned her back upon the woman, without a word, and replied to Craven Black as if she had not heard his cousin speak.
“I have other fault to find with you, Mr. Black,” the young girl said haughtily. “You and your wife have been false and treacherous to me from the beginning. You planned to come to this place before you left Hawkhurst, and you sent Mrs. Artress on in advance to prepare this house for your reception. Yet you pretended to me that we were to go by rail into Yorkshire. You allowed me to convey that impression to my friends, while you intended the impression to be a false one. The manner in which you proceeded from the railway station to Gravesend, and in which you have come to this place, has been secret and furtive, as if you meant to throw off pursuit. You have shamefully deceived me, and I regard your conduct and that of your wife, now that my eyes have been opened, as base, mean, and treacherous.”
“Regard it as you like,” said Craven Black airily, although his face flushed. “My dear child, you are beating against your bars like the bird in the cage to which I likened you. Don’t waste your strength in this manner. Be reasonable, and submit to the power of those who have right and strength upon their side.”
Mrs. Black paused in her walk before Neva, and said vindictively, and even fiercely:
“That is what you will have to do, Neva—submit! We are stronger than you, I should think your conscience would reproach you for rebelling against me in this manner. Did not your father a score of times enjoin you in his letters to love and obey me? Did he not in his will enjoin you to cling to me, and be gentle and loving and obedient to my wishes? Is it thus you respect his wishes and memory—”
“Stop!” cried Neva imperiously. “How dare you urge my father’s wishes upon me? How dare you speak of respect to his memory, which you outraged at the time of your recent and third marriage, when you summoned my father’s tenantry to a ball, and made merry in my father’s house, thus virtually rejoicing in his death? I cannot hear my father’s name from your lips, madam.”
“Oh, you can’t!” sneered Octavia Black. “You will have to hear whatever I may choose to say of him; let me tell you that, Miss Neva. You may fling off my authority and your late father’s together, if you choose, but his last letter to you should be held sacred by you, and its injunctions fulfilled to the letter, as sacred commands from the dead to the living.”
“That last letter!” said Neva. “The letter written by Craven Black, with your assistance and connivance! Ah, you start. You see that I comprehend you at last—that I have fathomed your wickedness! That letter, now in the hands of Lord Towyn or Mr. Atkins, or Sir John Freise, emanated from Craven Black’s brain and hand. It was a clever forgery, but, thank God, I know it to be a forgery! My father could never have so coolly and easily disposed of his daughter’s future. He never wrote that letter!”
The girl spoke in a tone of such firm conviction, as if she knew whereof she affirmed, that the discomfited plotters made no attempt to deny her assertion. The Blacks looked at each other darkly, and read in each other’s eyes incitement to continue in their wickedness with unabated courage. Mrs. Artress looked on, evilly exultant. She had never liked the heiress of Hawkhurst, with her dainty beauty, her piquant witchery of face and manner, and with all the wealth that seemed so boundless. Mrs. Artress was jealous, envious, and full of hatred of her, and her greed of money had been enlisted against the young girl.
There was a brief pause, during which Neva sat down laying aside her muff and dressing bag. Presently she said:
“I understand you now, as you know. I trust that you understand me. I will not trouble you to deal more in subterfuges and deceptions. I comprehend that I have been decoyed here for a purpose, and that I am now your prisoner. What is your purpose against me?”
“We have no purpose against you, Neva,” said Octavia Black quite calmly, and even pleasantly. “You deceive yourself. We saw you anxious to plunge into marriage with Lord Towyn, but disapproving the match, I have brought you here. I stand in the relation of a parent to you, and use a parent’s authority, as I have a right. I have other designs for you. A worthy and accomplished young man, the son of my present husband, has solicited your hand in marriage, and I am anxious that you should enter the same family with myself. We will not coerce you; but I am sure, after a residence more or less prolonged at this Wilderness, you will be glad to marry Rufus Black and go back into society. You shall have sufficient time for consideration. I am ready to sacrifice myself and remain here all winter, if necessary to bring you to the desired view of the subject.”
“One thing we may as well make plain,” said Craven Black deliberately. “When you leave this house, Miss Wynde, it will be as the promised bride of my son.”
Neva’s eyes flashed mutiny.
“Is Rufus Black a party to this scheme?” she demanded.
“No,” said Mr. Black promptly. “He knows nothing of my designs. I have told him to hope that you will relent, and he thinks that his step-mother has unbounded influence over you, which she will use in his behalf. Rufus is a poor, weak young fellow, with all his desirable qualities, and he would sooner cut his throat than force you into a marriage with him. No; Rufus is at Hawkhurst, where I have ordered him to remain until our return, or until he hears from me. He supposes us to be in Yorkshire. We are ready to start for your home with you any day when you shall have given us your oath that this visit to the Highlands shall be kept secret by you, and that you will marry Rufus on your return to Hawkhurst. These are our terms.”
“I have said upon what terms I am willing to keep your villainy secret,” said Neva haughtily. “My condition is that I am immediately allowed to go free. I shall not repeat that offer after to-night. I shall never agree to your terms. I shall never marry Rufus Black. I am betrothed to a noble and honorable gentleman, and I regard my promise to him as sacred as any oath. In short, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, I will stay here until I die before I will yield to your dominion, or perjure myself by a cowardly oath.”
“Very well,” said Black. “It only remains to see which will hold out the longest, besiegers or besieged. Octavia, let us go. A night of reflection may bring our young lady to terms.”
“I have a last word to say,” exclaimed Neva, arising, her young face full of a bitter and passionate rebellion against her enemies. “You have not fairly counted the cost of your present undertaking, Mr. and Mrs. Black. The heiress of Hawkhurst, the only child of the late Sir Harold Wynde, the betrothed wife of the wealthiest young nobleman in Great Britain, cannot disappear in a manner so mysterious without exciting attention. I shall be sought after far and wide. My three guardians will set the officers of the law upon my track. Even now it is quite possible my friends may be on their way to this place. I shall be rescued from your hands, and you will be rewarded with the punishment and ignominy you deserve.”
“You believe all this?” cried Craven Black. “You think I am clumsy enough to permit myself to be tracked? How little you know me! I defy all the detectives in the world to trace me. I did not buy the yacht. A friend bought it in his own name, and provisioned it. The three sailors on board the yacht will never see a newspaper; will not stir out of the loch, and will see no one. I have attached them to me by a free use of money, and I have a hold upon them in knowing their past. If the officers of the law were to trace you to the loch below us, the men would not dare to reveal your whereabouts, for fear of being held as conspirators against your liberty. The two women-servants in this house never stir off the plateau. The cabman I hired to convey us from the London railway station to Gravesend, I discovered, in my conversation with him, was employed for that day alone, to take the place of the cabman who was ill. The fellow told me he was a navvy, bound for a voyage the next day, and he wished he could sail our yacht instead of going out to Australia in a steamer. You see how my tracks are covered? Your help must come from yourself, not from Lord Towyn. I have no more to say at present. If you choose to come to terms, you can send Celeste to my wife at any moment. Permit me to wish you a good-night.”
He approached her as if to shake hands. Neva gathered up her effects and retreated into her room. The next instant a key was inserted in the lock, and the bolt was shot home. Neva was in truth a prisoner.
“Celeste, you will occupy this room,” said Mrs. Black, to her maid, “and you must sleep with one eye open. Miss Wynde is desperate, and may attempt to pick the lock, or to escape by one of her windows.”
“I am not afraid of pursuit,” said Mr. Black meditatively, “but I would like to throw the pursuers upon a wrong scent. I wish I could get Lord Towyn over upon the Continent, with that sharp-eyed Atkins. How can we contrive to give them the impression that we are gone upon a Continental tour?”
They pondered the question for many minutes.
“I have it,” said Celeste at last. “I have a sister who lives in Brussels, and who works in a milliner’s shop in the Rue Montague de la Cour. You shall write a letter for Mademoiselle, Mr. Black, in her very handwriting, and date the letter Brussels, and I will send it under cover to my sister to be posted at Brussels. Yes, my faith, we have it. One of the sailors shall post my letter, with its inclosure, from Inverness. It is well, is it not?”
The plan suited Mr. and Mrs. Black, who resolved to act upon it. The whole party adjourned to the drawing-room. Mrs. Craven Black brought forth several letters she had formerly received from Neva while at the Paris school, and which she had preserved for possible use. Mr. Black still retained the envelope to the letter Neva had addressed to her lover, and which he had intercepted. With these materials, and his skill at counterfeiting, Craven Black set to work to write a letter in Neva’s name, and dated at Brussels. While he was thus engaged, Mrs. Black supplying him with suitable paper and ink, the French maid wrote to her sister at Brussels, requesting her to stamp and forward the inclosed missive. Octavia Black gave her attendant a Bank of England note to inclose in payment of the service.
The double letter was finished and sealed that night, and Craven Black went to Inverness the next day in the yacht and posted it.
This then was the letter which had been brought up to London to Lord Towyn by his steward, and which the young earl, having read, and so instantly and vehemently pronounced a forgery.
But though it failed of its object, and did not deceive the keen-witted young lover as to its origin, it did not enlighten him as to Neva’s whereabouts. He continued his search for her, calling in the aid of professional detectives, Mr. Atkins devoting his time also to the search, but they failed to find a clue to the missing young girl. And she, hidden in the far-off Scottish wilds, among mountain peaks and in a secluded rocky wilderness, looked in vain for her lover’s coming. Her enemies were indeed more cunning than she had dreamed, and it seemed indeed as if the words of Craven Black would prove true, and the matter between the “besiegers and the besieged” would become a question of resistance. Which would be the first to yield to the loneliness and gloom of the Wilderness, and to the rigors of the swiftly approaching Highland winter?