CHAPTER XVII.
SIR HAROLD’S RETURN.
That night upon which Rufus Black visited Heather Hills, and was sent away again in despair, was a wild night throughout Great Britain and upon its coasts. Ships were wrecked upon the Goodwin Sands, and upon the south and west coasts. Over the open moors and heaths of the country the winds went roaring like unloosed demons, bent upon terrible mischief. Women with husbands at sea cowered before their blazing fires that night, and children in their beds snuggled closer and held their breaths with very fear. Houses were unroofed in many places, chimneys were blown down, and lives were lost upon bridges and country roads through falling timbers and uprooted trees. The gale that night was one long to be remembered for its wild violence, one so severe not having been experienced in Great Britain for years.
Mr. Atkins, the Canterbury solicitor, sat in his office until a late hour that night. His house was in a pleasant, quiet street, in a good neighborhood, and the lower floor was occupied by him as his office, the drawing-room being upon the second floor, and the family rooms above. The main office had an independent entrance from the street, with a door opening directly into the office—a convenient arrangement duly appreciated by Mrs. Atkins, as it left the house entrance free to her family and guests.
The solicitor had changed somewhat since his first introduction to the reader. His honest face had grown thin and sallow, his hair was streaked with gray, and there were anxious lines about his mouth and eyes that told of unrest and trouble.
He sat in a lounging chair before the fire, his feet on the fender. His family had long since retired, and the hour was wearing on toward eleven o’clock. His fire flamed up in a wild glow, the gas burned brightly, the red fire gleams lighted the dull office carpet and the well-polished furniture, making the room seem especially cozy and delightful. The shutters were lowered, but no care could shut out the sound of the mad winds careering through the streets, clutching at resisting outer blinds, and bearing along now and then some clattering sign-board or other estray.
“An awful night,” sighed the solicitor. “I have a strange feeling as if something were going to happen!”
He shifted uneasily in his chair, and bent forward and laid fresh coals upon the fire. Then he leaned back again and thought.
The office clock struck eleven, and the loud clangor struck upon Mr. Atkins in his nervous mood with singular unpleasantness. Before the echo of the last stroke had died out, footsteps were heard in the street, unsteady and wavering, as if the pedestrian were battling with the storm, and found it difficult to advance against it.
“Some poor fellow,” thought Mr. Atkins. “He must be homeless, to be out at this hour and in such a gale.”
The steps came nearer still and nearer, their sound being now and then lost in the tumult of the winds. They paused at the foot of the solicitor’s office steps, and then slowly mounted to the door.
“Who can it be at this time of night?” muttered Mr. Atkins. “Some vagabond who means to sleep on my steps? Or is it some houseless wanderer who sees my light through the shutters, and is come to beg of me?”
It almost seemed as if it were the latter, for the office lights did gleam out into the black streets, and lighted up a patch of pavement.
A knock, low and unsteady, was rung upon the knocker.
Mr. Atkins hesitated. He was not a timid man, but he had no client who found it necessary to visit him at that hour, and his visitor, he thought, was as likely to be some desperate vagrant or professional thief as an honest man.
The knock, low and faint and imploring, sounded again. It seemed to the solicitor as if there was something especially guarded and secret in the manner of it.
He arose and took from his office desk a loaded pistol, and placed it in his breast pocket. Then he went to the door and undid the bars and bolts, throwing it half way open, and peering out.
A man stood upon the steps, muffled in a thick long overcoat, whose fur collar was turned up above his ears. A slouched hat was drawn over his face, and Mr. Atkins could not distinguish a feature of his face.
“Who is it?” asked the solicitor, his hand feeling for his pistol.
“An old friend,” was the reply, in a hoarse whisper. “I must see you. Let me in, Atkins.”
He stepped forward, with an air of command that impressed Atkins, who involuntarily stepped aside, giving the stranger admittance.
The new-comer quietly turned the key in the lock.
Atkins clutched his pistol, quietly upon his guard.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
The stranger took off his hat, revealing the upper portion of a noble head, crowned with grizzled hair. Then slowly he turned down his greatcoat collar, and stood before Atkins without disguise, displaying a grandly noble face, with keen blue eyes, a pale bronzed countenance, and sternly set lips above a gray military beard.
Atkins’ hand dropped to his side. With a wild and stifled shriek, he staggered to a chair, his eyes glaring wildly at the stranger.
“My God!” he cried, with white lips. “Sir Harold Wynde!”
Sir Harold—for it was indeed he, returned that day to England, after a prolonged journey from India—smiled his old warm smile, and held out his hand.
“Sir Harold Wynde!” repeated Atkins, not taking the hand—“who—who died—”
“I can give you the best of proofs, Atkins, that I did not die in India,” said the baronet, with a cheery little laugh. “You look at me as at a ghost, but I’m no ghost. Feel my hand. Is not that real flesh and blood? Atkins, you are giving me a sorry welcome, my old friend.”
Atkins still stared with a wild incredulity at his old friend and employer. He could not yet comprehend the glad truth.
“I—I must be dreaming,” he muttered. “I felt queer to-night. I—”
Sir Harold advanced and, pulling off his glove, laid his hand on that of Atkins. Its touch was chill, but unmistakably human.
“What!” cried the baronet. “Do you believe in ghosts, my friend? I wouldn’t have believed a bona-fide wraith could have so startled the hard-headed Atkins I once knew. I was not eaten by the tiger, Atkins, but I have been kept a prisoner in the hands of human tigers until I managed to escape last month. You know me now, and that I am no ghost?”
Atkins rose up, pale and trembling still, but with an unutterable joy on his face.
“It is Sir Harold alive, and in the flesh!” he ejaculated. “Sir Harold whom we mourned as dead! This is a miracle!”
He clasped the baronet’s hand, and laughed and cried in a breath. He seemed overflowing with his great joy.
The baronet held the trembling hand of his friend in a strong, restful pressure for some minutes, during which not a word was spoken between them. Their hearts were full.
“I am not myself to-night, Sir Harold,” said Atkins brokenly, after a little. “I have been upset lately.”
He drew Sir Harold toward the fire, helped him off with his greatcoat, and ensconced him in the lounging chair before the fender. Then he drew a chair close beside the baronet’s, and asked tremulously:
“Have you been to Hawkhurst yet, Sir Harold?”
“No, not yet. You could not think I would leave home again so soon, if I had gone there? I only landed in England to-day, coming through France. I am a week overdue. I arrived in Canterbury an hour ago, and as soon as I had food I came to you. I saw your light through the shutters, but if I had not seen it I should have rapped you up, in my impatience. I want you to go with me to Hawkhurst, and to break the news that I still live to my wife and daughter. My appearance shocked you nearly into an apoplexy. I must not appear unannounced to them.”
Mr. Atkins trembled, and covered his face with his hands.
“You would go to-night—in this storm?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. What is the storm to me? A few miles only divide me from my home and loved ones. And I shall see them before I sleep. Oh, Atkins, how I have looked forward to this hour of my home coming: I have thought of it during the days and nights when I lay chained in an Indian hut among the Himalayas; I have thought of it when pacing the lonely deck at midnight under the stars. I have prayed for this hour as the crowning joy of my life. Almost home! It seems as if my soul would burst with rapture. My home! My wife! My child! The sweetest, holiest words in our language!”
The baronet’s face glowed with a joyous radiance. Atkins was sick at heart.
“I have been careful that no hint of my return as from the dead should arrive before me,” continued Sir Harold. “I came home under the name of Harold Hunlow. Only Major Archer and his family, besides yourself, know that I still live. At the hotel I registered the name of Hunlow, and no one but a new waiter I had never seen before saw my face. The surprise of my family will be complete. Come, Atkins, let us be off. I have a cab waiting at the hotel.”
“I—I wouldn’t go to-night, Sir Harold,” said Atkins feebly.
Something in his tones alarmed the baronet.
“Why not?” he demanded. “I—I have taken it for granted that they are all well at home. Octavia—Neva—how are they? Speak!”
Atkins arose, twisting his hands nervously together. His pallor frightened Sir Harold, who arose also.
“What is it?” he whispered. “They—they are not dead?”
“No, Sir Harold—no!”
“Thank God! You frightened me, Atkins. I can bear anything, now that I know they are alive. What has happened? They have not met with an accident? Don’t tell me, Atkins, that my wife, my beautiful young wife, is insane through grief at my supposed death?”
Atkins groaned aloud.
“No, no,” he said, grating his teeth and clenching his hands. “It is not that.”
“What is it then? Speak, for God’s sake. The suspense is killing me!”
“I have bad news for you, Sir Harold,” said the solicitor tremblingly. “Let me give you a glass of wine—”
Sir Harold clutched the solicitor’s arm, his burning eyes fixed upon the solicitor’s face.
“Speak!” he said hoarsely.
“I will, if you will sit down.”
Sir Harold dropped silently into his chair.
“Lady Wynde,” said Atkins—“Lady Wynde—how can I speak the words to you who love her so, Sir Harold—She has married again!”
Every vestige of color died from the baronet’s face, and he lay back upon his chair fainting. Atkins rang for water and brandy. He bathed Sir Harold’s face and chafed his hands, and poured brandy down his throat, the tears on his own cheeks. Presently Sir Harold gasped for breath, and looked up at him with a dazed and stunned expression.
“Say that over again, Atkins,” he said feebly. “I don’t quite understand.”
“I said, Sir Harold,” said the solicitor, every word giving him a pang, “that Lady Wynde had married again.”
Sir Harold gave a strange cry, and covered his face with his hands.
“Don’t take it so, Sir Harold,” cried Atkins. “You’ve had a happy escape from her. She’s a heartless, unprincipled—”
Sir Harold put up his hand.
“Don’t!” he said pleadingly. “You hurt me, Atkins. She thought me dead, my poor Octavia. Who—who did she marry!”
“A gamester and adventurer named Craven Black. During the past month, Sir Harold, I have devoted much time to the study of Mrs. Craven Black’s antecedents. Forgive me, Sir Harold, but in this hour you must know all the truth. I am like the physician who cuts deeply to extract a ball. Sir Harold, the woman you married was never fit to be taken into your family; she was never fit to be placed as step-mother and guardian over a pure young girl—”
“Atkins, she is my wife. Mine still, although another claims her. I will not hear a word against her.”
“You must hear it, Sir Harold,” said Atkins resolutely. “If you do not hear it from me, others less kind will pour it into your ears. You cannot escape the knowledge. As I said, during the past month I have studied up Lady Wynde’s antecedents. I have seen Mrs. Hyde, Lady Wynde’s aunt, and I have also seen a former maid of her ladyship. I tell you, Sir Harold, and I pray you to forgive me for telling you the truth, the woman you married never loved you. She married you only as a part of a daring conspiracy—”
“Atkins!”
“It is true, so help me God!” cried Atkins solemnly. “Lady Wynde—I suppose she is Lady Wynde still, her last marriage being rendered invalid by your return to the living, as one might say—Lady Wynde was engaged to marry Craven Black before she ever saw you. Mrs. Hyde told me this herself.”
“I cannot believe it!”
“Craven Black was poor, and so was Octavia Hathaway. You were at Brighton, rich, a widower. Craven Black conceived the idea that Octavia should win and wed you, and secure a rich jointure, upon which, in due time, having rid themselves of you, they should marry—”
“This is monstrous! Atkins, you are deceived. You are belying a noble woman!”
“Hear the rest, Sir Harold. As God is my judge, I believe your wife married you intending to poison you!”
Sir Harold shook his head. The idea seemed too monstrous for belief.
“That affair in the water at Brighton was planned beforehand,” persisted Atkins. “You rescued the lady, as was expected of you. She followed up the acquaintance, and married you. You went to India; and I believe, if you had not gone, you would have died here suddenly of poison. When Lady Wynde had worn mourning a year in most decorous fashion, Craven Black and his son came up to Wyndham, and early in September there were great festivities at Hawkhurst, at the third marriage of Lady Wynde. There was a ball at the great house, and a ball for the tenantry on the lawn, with music and fire-works. It was for all the world an affair such as might have greeted the coming of age of an heir to a grand property, rather than the marriage of a widow from the house of her late husband to a notorious adventurer.”
Sir Harold groaned heavily.
“And they are at Hawkhurst now?” he said, in a voice so altered that Atkins hardly recognized it.
“No; they have been away for a month.”
“You understand that all these charges are not proved against Lady Wynde?” said Sir Harold. “I shall take my wife back again, Atkins, if she will come, and I will stand between her and the censure of a gossipping world.”
“Did you write from India the night before you disappeared, enjoining your daughter by her love for you to marry the son of Craven Black?” demanded Atkins abruptly.
“No; how should I? I don’t know Craven Black, nor his son.”
Atkins went to his desk, and took out a letter.
“Read that, Sir Harold,” he said, returning and presenting it to the baronet. “Lady Wynde gave that letter to Miss Wynde, telling her that it was your last letter to your daughter, written upon the eve of your supposed death.”
Sir Harold read the letter to the very end, an awful sternness gathering on his countenance. The tender epithets by which he had called his daughter, his particular modes of speech, and his own phraseology, in that skillfully forged letter staggered him.
“I never wrote it,” he said briefly. “It is a forgery!”
“Of course. I knew that. But Lady Wynde gave it to Miss Neva, declaring it to be your last letter.”
“Who is this Rufus Black?”
“A weak-souled, kindly young fellow, the son of a villain, and a ready instrument in the hands of his father. He loves Miss Neva, and proposed to her. She, however, loves Lord Towyn—”
“Lord Towyn! My old college-mate?”
“No; his son. Arthur has come into the title and property, and is as noble a young man as any in England. Miss Neva favored him, and the result is, Lady Wynde and Craven Black conceived a hatred of your daughter, and determined to bend her to their will. Sir Harold, as God hears me, Lady Wynde is a wicked, unscrupulous woman.”
Sir Harold’s face was deathly white. The letter, still held in his trembling hands, was proof of his wife’s wickedness, and he began to be convinced that he had been cruelly deceived by an unprincipled woman.
“It would have been better if I had died in India!” he moaned.
“Not so. Sir Harold, there is more to hear. Can you bear another blow?”
Sir Harold bowed; he was too broken to speak.
“A month ago, Lady Wynde, with her new husband and Miss Wynde, went away, ostensibly to Wynde Heights. But they did not go there. A letter came from Brussels to Lord Towyn, purporting to be from Miss Wynde, but Lord Towyn went to Brussels, and discovered that the young lady and her enemies have not been there. We have had detectives at work for weeks; Lord Towyn is at work day and night scarcely knowing rest, and I have done all that I could, but the fact remains. Craven Black and his wife have abducted Miss Wynde, and God alone, besides her enemies, knows where she is.”
The baronet leaped to his feet.
“Neva missing!” he cried.
“Yes, Sir Harold, missing for a month past, and she is in the hands of enemies who would not scruple to take her life, if they could hope to make money by her death. We have searched Great Britain for her, and have detectives at this moment upon the Continent. She is gone—lost! Her enemies have determined to force her into a marriage with Rufus Black, and to seize upon her property. She is helpless in their hands. You have returned in time to help search for her, but I am hopeless. We shall never find her except she is dead, or married to the son of that villain!”
Sir Harold was about to speak, but his voice choked. He leaned against his chair, looking like one dying.
And at this juncture, while the wind tore yet more madly through the streets, footsteps were heard ascending to the street door of the office, and, for the second time that night, the office knocker sounded lowly, secretly, and cautiously, yet with an imperiousness that commanded an instant admittance.