CHAPTER XIV.
NEVA STILL DEFIANT.
The sounds of active and hostile pursuit, growing every instant louder as the pursuers neared Neva’s temporary halting-place, startled the young fugitive into renewed flight. She started up like a wearied bird from its nest, and fled onward through tangled shrubbery and over outcropping boulders, tripping now and then over some loose rock, which, at the touch of her light feet, went rumbling down the steep mountain side with a crash that rang in her ears, frightening her to yet greater speed. She sped through thickets of the dwarfed mountain pines and firs, and over open and sterile patches of ground, where there were no trees nor friendly rocks to screen her flying figure, and the drizzling Scotch mist fell around her like a dusky vail, and the skies were gloomy above her, and the air was keen with wintry chill.
And still was borne to her ears, sometimes louder, sometimes fainter, the sounds of the barking of dogs and the shouts of men. These sounds quickened Neva’s flagging steps, but she could not outrun her pursuers. They were on her track, and sooner or later, unless she could out-wit them, or hide from them, they must capture her.
Her wild eyes searched the mountain side as she hurried on. There was no hole in the rocks into which she might creep, and lie concealed until her enemies should have passed. The trees were too low and scraggy to offer her shelter among their few and scanty foliaged branches. Her way was difficult and tortuous, and with a sudden change of purpose, Neva turned aside from her course of skirting the mountain, and plunged downward toward the mountain’s base.
“I shall come down upon the side nearly opposite the loch,” she thought. “At any rate, I have passed beyond the plateau.”
In the course of ten minutes more, she struck into a rude wagon track, which Neva conjectured led from the Wilderness to some farm-house or hamlet upon the opposite side of the mountain. She followed the circuitous, steep, and slowly descending track, looking, as she ran, like some wild spirit of the mist.
The sounds of pursuit faded out of hearing, and again she sat down to rest, her limbs giving way beneath her. Her tongue was parched and swollen, and the blood surged through her frame still with that one gigantic throbbing, and her feet ached with an utter weariness, yet she got up presently and staggered on, with fearing backward glances over her shoulders, and her eyes staring wildly from out the wet whiteness of her young face.
“I can’t keep on much longer,” she murmured aloud. “I feel very strange and ill. Perhaps I shall die here, and alone. Oh, is there no help for me?”
No answer came to that piteous cry save the wailing of the winds among the pine boughs, and the dashing of the sleet-like rain in her face. She moved more and more slowly. Her garments seemed strangely heavy to her, and her feet grew more and more like leaden clogs weighing her down to the earth.
A terrible despair seized upon her. With a wild prayer on her lips and a faintness like that of death upon her, she leaned against a low tree, clinging to it to prevent herself from falling. As her head sunk forward wearily upon her breast, her closing eyes caught a glimpse through the trees of an object at a little distance that lent to her for the moment an unreal strength and vigor, and she gave a great cry of joy, as hope surged back into her young fainting heart.
The object was only a small cabin built of cobblestones, a mere shepherd’s hut perhaps, or, as was far more likely, it had been built long ago for the occasional use of belated sportsmen who, during a stay at the Wilderness, found themselves lost upon the mountain. It had a strong roof and a capacious chimney, but it exhibited no sign of habitation. Neva did not observe this fact, and pressed onward to the door of the cabin, which she opened without preliminary knocking. There was no one in the cabin.
Neva’s heart sank as she made this discovery. There was no one here to whom she could appeal for protection. She hesitated whether to go or to remain here, but her physical exhaustion decided the question. It was absolutely necessary that she should rest, and she entered the humble dwelling and closed the door.
The cabin contained but a single room with two closets attached, and but a single window. This was provided with an inside shutter. There was also a stout wooden bar and iron rests for its support, as a means of securing the door. Neva barred the door and shuttered the window, and then sank down in a confused heap upon the floor, listening with sharpened hearing for some sound of pursuit.
But she heard none. Evidently her divergence from her first course had thrown her enemies off her track. A wild joy and gratitude filled her soul. But when its first flush was over, a chill like that of death again seized upon her. Her teeth chattered, and strange rheumatic pains shot through her frame. She shook too, as with an ague.
The room was bare of furniture, but the great blackened hearth, with a few half burnt sticks upon it, testified that some person had lately spent the night in the cabin. The door of one of the closets was open, and Neva could see that there were fagots of wood stored within. She arose feebly, and brought out an armful of wood, piling it on the hearth. She stirred the ashes, in the hope of finding a living coal; and finding none, went back to the closet. Here, to her great joy, she found a tin box half filled with matches hanging against the wall.
In three minutes more she had a glorious fire on the hearth, crackling and blazing and flaming cheerily, and the girl’s heart leaped up at the sight of those dancing flames. She sank down upon the hearth, her hands held out to the genial blaze, her pale wild face looking strangely weird and lovely in the red glow, and the steam arising from her wet garments like a thick mist.
A delicious sense of rest pervaded her frame, and the rheumatic pains disappeared before the penetrating heat of the great fire. But a terrible sense of weakness remained. Her prison fare of bread and water, and her lack of exercise, during her dreary days of confinement at the Wilderness, had told seriously upon her strength. She began to fear that she could go no further, and a great hunger began to assail her, seeming like a vulture tearing at her vitals.
Impelled by a vague hope that there might be food in the dwelling, she went to the second small closet. It was filled with empty shelves. In one corner an old torn basket had been carelessly thrown. Neva examined the basket, and discovered in it a small black bottle, with a few drops of Highland whiskey in it, but there was no food. She drank the whiskey and crouched down again upon the hearth, weary and worn, and a little later a merciful stupor enwrapped her senses—the stupor of a death-like sleep, such as utter exhaustion sometimes produces.
It seemed to her that she had slept but a minute, but really she had slept for hours, when she was awakened by a loud beating upon the cabin door. She started up broad awake, and stood in an attitude of flight, her head bent toward the door.
“I say she’s in here!” she heard a voice crying loudly—a voice which she recognized with a thrill of terror as the voice of Craven Black. “We’ve scoured the mountain on this side, and have not found her. She must have taken refuge in this unused cabin. Miss Wynde! Miss Neva!”
Neva was still as death. She scarcely dared to breathe.
Again Craven Black beat furiously upon the door.
“Break in the door!” he shouted. “Here, one of you sailors, bring that log of wood yonder, and we’ll see who has barred this door on the inside. The log of wood! Quick!”
Neva stared around her with wild, frightened eyes. There was no outlet from the cabin save through the door or window, and these were side by side, and both commanded by her enemies.
With a terrible despair she crouched again on the hearth, her head still bent toward the door.
“We’ll make a battering-ram of the log,” said Craven Black. “So! Now the four of us will break the door in in a second. Guard the door, men, while I go in. Keep out those sheep dogs. They act like wolves. Now!”
There was a combined assault upon the door. It trembled and creaked, and one of the iron rests in the wall, unable to resist the pressure brought to bear upon it, gave way, bursting from its socket. The wooden bar dropped to the floor, and the door was burst open so violently and so suddenly that Craven Black came flying into the room like some projectile hurled from a mortar.
He gave a yell of triumph at sight of the slender, crouching figure on the hearth.
“Here she is, boys,” he cried. “We’ve found her! Poor creature! She is still in the delirium of the fever, as I told you. How wild she looks!”
The sailors stood without the door, half-careless, half-pitying. Craven Black had told them that his wife’s step-daughter was ill, and had fled from the Wilderness in the delirium of fever, and they saw nothing in Neva’s appearance to contradict the statement. For the young girl sprang to her feet and retreated from Craven Black with both hands upraised, the palms turned outward, and her wild face full of horror and loathing. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and her cheeks and lips were tinted with vivid carmine. Even Craven Black was alarmed at her appearance, and was calmed into instant gentleness.
“My poor Neva!” he cried. “I am come to take you home—”
“I will not go!” cried the girl, her red-brown eyes flashing. “O God, am I utterly forsaken and abandoned to my enemies?”
“You hear her?” exclaimed Black. “Poor thing! she needs her step-mother’s tender care and nursing. We brought her up to the Wilderness, hoping that the change would cure her propensity to these paroxysms. Come, Neva. Your step-mother is very anxious about you, and the whole household is alarmed.”
“Let me die here,” said Neva, her sweet young voice rising to a wail. “Oh, men, have you no pity for me? Can you not see that Craven Black is my enemy? Will you not protect me, and set me free? In the name of Mercy—”
“Hear her!” said the sailor who had acted as captain of the yacht, speaking in an audible whisper. “As mad as a March hare—and so young too!”
Clearly there was no help to be expected from the sailors.
Neva retreated to the further corner, as a helpless mouse retreats to a corner of the trap, and Craven Black followed her. There was a brief struggle, and Neva was again a captive.
“We must take turns in carrying her home,” said Craven Black, pinioning Neva’s arms to her sides. “It’ll be a tough job up the steep mountain path, but we can do it.”
“It’s no great task,” said one of the seamen. “She can’t weigh much. She’s fell away since she came to Scotland, and she can’t be heavier nor a child of ten.”
Craven Black caught up the girl’s light figure, and bore her from the cabin, the men following. He strode up the steep hill, holding Neva fiercely to his breast, and now and then he looked down upon her still white face with an expression singularly made up of love and hatred.
Yes, although he had married Lady Wynde from motives of interest, and because, as he had said to himself, a half-loaf of bread was better than none at all, his old love for Neva was not dead in his guilty breast. It was a strange passion, growing hot and cool by turns, now verging toward hatred, and now reviving to its olden strength. As he gathered the girl in his arms, and went up the hill with her at long, fierce strides, he said to himself that there was no crime at which he would pause, no obstacle which he would not sweep from his path, if the heiress of Hawkhurst would only promise to marry him on the attainment of his freedom.
“Neva!” he whispered.
The young girl raised her eyes to his with such a look of loathing and detestation that his love for her changed suddenly again to hatred. He knew in that moment that the guilty scheme he had just conceived was only a vain fancy, and that Neva could never be induced under any circumstances to marry him.
“I’m tired, captain,” he said abruptly. “You can carry her.”
The captain took the helpless burden and went on, Black keeping at his side.
In this manner, taking turns in carrying the young captive, the party returned to the Wilderness.
The mist was still falling when they came upon the plateau, but Mrs. Black stood out upon the lawn, her head bare, her morning robe saturated with wet, and her face worn and haggard with anxiety. There were great dark circles under her hard black eyes, and her mouth was compressed, and there were deep lines about it that added ten years to her apparent age. What she had suffered that day from fear of exposure through her injured step-daughter, her face declared, but she had known less of remorse than of apprehension and terror.
Behind Octavia, upon the porch, and comfortably wrapped in a water-proof cloak, stood Mrs. Artress. Both had thus been watching nearly all the day for the return of the pursuers, and it was now three o’clock of the afternoon, and the dusk was rapidly falling.
“They’ve come! They’ve come!” cried Octavia Black hysterically. “They are alone—No; they have got the girl! We are safe—safe!”
She came running to meet her husband, who was now in advance of his men. Craven Black briefly informed his wife how and where he had found Neva, and at the porch he took the captive in his own arms, dismissing the three men to the yacht. He carried Neva to her own room, where Celeste was busy at the moment, and he unloosed the cord confining the girl’s arms, setting her free.
There was a wood fire blazing on the hearth. Neva, paying no heed to her enemies, crouched down before it.
“Leave her to herself,” said Craven Black. “Celeste, you may remain to dress your young lady—”
“I will dress myself,” interposed Neva, in a low, weary voice. “I want to be alone.”
“Celeste had better dress Octavia,” exclaimed Mrs. Artress abruptly. “Octavia has acted like some cowardly, frightened child all day, Craven. She has stood on the lawn bare headed, in the mist, until she is wet to the skin, and has a fearful cold. She is nearly ill.”
“I will have hot drinks prepared immediately,” said Craven Black. “Octavia, you must take a hot bath. Celeste, bring a hot bath to Miss Wynde.”
He led the way from the room, the others following. Celeste locked Neva’s door, putting the key in her pocket. Octavia went to her own room, coughing dismally.
“Do you hear that?” demanded Mrs. Artress, stopping Craven Black in the hall. “Exercise has prevented any serious harm to Miss Wynde from to-day’s exposure; but Octavia has taken a fearful cold. You’d better nurse her carefully. In your desire to get ten thousand a year more, don’t throw away the four thousand you already have. Remember, if Octavia should die, you and I would be beggars!”
“What an infernal croaker you are!” said Black angrily. “It isn’t necessary to twit me with my poverty. As to Octavia, if she’s foolish enough to stand out in a chilling mist out of sheer cowardice, let her cure herself. I am cold and hungry, and I intend to take care of myself.”
He proceeded to do so, ministering to his own wants with assiduity.
The French woman brought in a hot bath to Neva, and a bowl of steaming hot whisky punch, then hastening away to attend upon her mistress. Neva took her bath, changed her wet garments for dry ones, drank her punch, and went to bed. A free perspiration was induced, and the fever that had threatened her subsided, her pulse beat evenly, and her brain grew cool. She went to sleep, and did not awaken until late in the evening.
When she opened her eyes, Mrs. Artress was standing at her bedside, feeling her pulse.
“How do you feel?” demanded the woman, her ashen eyes surveying the girl insolently.
“I am quite well—only tired.”
“Only tired!” echoed Mrs. Artress. “Only tired—after all the trouble you’ve made us to-day? Octavia is downright ill. You won’t get another opportunity to repeat your proceeding of this morning, my fine young lady. Celeste is with me, and hereafter we two shall call upon you together. Octavia was foolish to come in here alone, but she did not know you so well this morning as she does now. We have brought you up a hot supper, by Craven’s orders, but in the morning you go back to the bread and water diet, if you choose to remain obstinate.”
Celeste was standing at the foot of the bed, and now wheeled forward a small table, on which were lighted candles and a large tray of food. This done, Mrs. Artress and the French woman went out together, locking the door behind them.
Neva sat up in bed, leaning against her pillows, and looked hungrily at the tray. There was a pot of steaming coffee, a plate of buttered hot scones, a dish filled with daintily broiled birds on toast, a dish of baked fish, and a basket filled with oranges, apples and grapes. Neva thought she had never beheld a meal so tempting in her life, and surely she had never been so famished. Craven Black had feared the result of her day’s exposure on the bleak mountain to the chilling mist, upon her weakened frame, and had sent her strengthening food more from policy than pity. It was not to his interest that she should die.
Neva ate her dinner, or supper, as it might more properly be termed, and concealed the remnants of fowl in her trunk. It was well she did so, for the next morning Celeste brought to her only a meagre supply of bread and water. The remains of the wild fowls and of the whisky punch, however, were produced by the young girl when alone, and gave her the sustenance she needed.
Her limbs were somewhat stiff upon the day after her adventure on the mountain, but this stiffness wore off gradually, leaving her as well as ever.
Her diet continued meagre in the extreme, no change being afforded her from bread and water. Mrs. Artress and Celeste came to her once a day with food, Craven Black remaining in the ante-room during their visit, as a guard against another possible attempt at escape on the part of the young captive.
A week passed in this manner, before Octavia Black came again to Neva’s room. But what a change in her that week had wrought! She had grown thin, and her features were worn to sharpness. A red flush burned fitfully on her cheeks, and her hard black eyes were strangely glittering. She had lost many of the graces that had distinguished her, and looked what she was—a bold, unscrupulous, unprincipled woman. Neva could not particularize in what her charm of person and manner had lain, but those charms were now gone. She looked ten years older than her age, and coughed like a consumptive.
“What have you to say to-day, Neva?” asked Octavia, in a hoarse voice.
“Nothing,” said Neva calmly.
“You have put us to a terrible trouble; you have given me a horrible cold and cough; and yet you sit here as obstinate as if you were a princess and we were your subjects. Will nothing subdue your proud spirit? Will nothing bend your haughty will? Do you like bread and water and close confinement so well that you prefer them to a marriage with a handsome young man who adores you?”
“I prefer them to perjuring myself, madam,” said Neva bravely. “I prefer a brief imprisonment to a lifetime of sorrow and repining.”
“A brief imprisonment!” repeated Octavia. “It won’t be so brief as you think. We are going to remain here all winter, if necessary to subdue you. We have entered on a path from which there is no turning back. The winters, I am told, are fearful in these wild Highlands. We shall soon be shut in with snows and awful winds. Your lover can never trace you here, and if he could he would not be able to reach the Wilderness in the dead of winter. We shall have a dismal winter—you especially. What do you say, Neva?” and her tone grew anxious. “Will you yield?”
“Never!” said Neva quietly. “I am no child to be frightened by cold, and I am not so fond of the pleasures of the table as to sell my soul for them. I will live here till I die of old age before I will yield!”
Octavia Black’s face darkened with an awful shadow. She dreaded the terrible Highland winter; and a strange terror, for which she could not account, held possession of her soul night and day. But, as she had said, she had entered on a path from which there was no turning back. Neva must yield, sooner or later, she said to herself, even if compelled to yield through physical weakness.
“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Black, arising. “We will make preparations to spend the winter here. Craven will go to Inverness in the yacht one day this week, and purchase stores for our use during the cold season. We need blankets, and food of every description. If you should decide to go to Inverness with him, as the promised bride of Rufus Black, you have only to let me know before he sails.”
She went out and locked the door, giving the key to Celeste, who waited in the outer room.