CHAPTER XI.
LADY WYNDE’S IDEA ACTED UPON.
It was still early upon the evening of Neva’s return to Hawkhurst when Craven Black took his leave of the handsome widow and set out upon his walk to Wyndham. The summer night was filled with a light, pleasant gloom; and the songs of the nightingales, the chirping and drumming of insects in the Hawkhurst park and plantations, made the air musical. But Craven Black gave no heed to these things as he strode along over the hilly road. His mind was busy with the scheme that had been suggested to him that evening by Lady Wynde, and as he hurried along, he muttered:
“It’s a good idea, if well worked out. But there’s no finesse in it. It’s too simple, if it has any fault. And the girl may see through it, although that’s not likely. People who are guileless themselves are not apt to suspect guile in others. We shall have no difficulty with her. The only one who can balk our plans is that obstinate boy of mine, whom I have not seen since he shut himself up in his chamber. I must know his decision before I move a step further in this business. Of course he will yield to me; he has never dared pit his will against mine, and say to my face that he would not obey me. Poor weak coward! If he dares cling to that girl he married, I’ll risk the exposure and disgrace, and have the marriage legally set aside on the ground of his minority. By Heaven, if he dares to beard me, he shall find me a very tiger!”
He set his teeth together and his breath came hissingly between them as he strode heavily along the village street and approached the Wyndham inn. He saw that his own rooms were lighted, and that the room that he had assigned his son was dark. The fear came to him that Rufus had stolen away and returned to his young wife with the mad idea of flying with her, and, with a muttered curse upon the boy, he hurried into the inn and sped swiftly up the stairs, halting at his son’s door, with his hand on the knob.
It did not yield to his touch. The door was locked from within. Rufus must be within that darkened chamber, and as this conviction came to him Craven Black recovered all his coolness and self-possession. He crossed the hall into his own room and procured a lighted lamp, and then returned and knocked loudly on his son’s door. No voice answered him. No sound came from within the room.
“Can he have committed suicide?” Craven Black asked himself, with a sudden fluttering at his heart. “He was desperate enough, but I hardly think he could have been such a fool as that.”
He shook the door loudly, but eliciting no reply, he stooped to the key-hole, and cried, in a clear, hissing whisper:
“Rufus, open this door, or I’ll break it in! I’ll arouse the whole house. Quick, I say! Be lively!”
There was a faint stir within the room, as if a tortured wild beast were sluggishly turning in his cage, and then an unsteady step crossed the floor, and an unsteady hand groped feebly about the door, seeking the key. The bolt suddenly shot back, and then the unsteady steps retreated a few paces.
Craven Black opened the door and entered the room, closing the portal behind him. He set down his lamp, and his light eyes then sought out the form of his son.
Rufus stood in the centre of the room, his eyes covered with one hand to shade them from the sudden light, his figure drooping and abject, his head bowed to his breast, his mouth white and drawn with lines of pain. It seemed as if years had passed over his head since the morning. It would have been scarcely possible to trace in this spiritless, slouching figure, in this white, haggard face, the boy artist who had left his young wife that morning. All the brightness, elasticity and youth seemed gone from him, leaving only a poor broken wreck.
The cynical smile that was so characteristic of Craven Black’s countenance came back to his lips as he looked upon his son. He read in the changed aspect of the boy that he had achieved a victory over Rufus.
“I have come for your decision, Rufus,” he said. “What is it to be? Disgrace, imprisonment, a blasted name? Or will you turn from your low-born adventuress and accept the career I have marked out for you? Speak!”
The hand that shaded the artist’s eyes dropped, and he looked at his father with a countenance so wan, so woeful, so despairing, that a very demon might have pitied him. Yet his father only smiled at what he deemed the evidence of the lad’s weakness.
“Oh, father,” said the young man hollowly, “will you not have mercy upon me—upon her?”
“None!” replied Craven Black curtly. “Again I demand your choice!”
Rufus wrung his hands in wild despair.
“If I abandon her, what will become of her?” he moaned. “She will die of starvation! My poor little wife!”
“Do not call her again by that title!” cried Craven Black frowning. “Can you not comprehend that the marriage is illegal—is null and void—that she is not your wife? When she hears the truth, she will turn from you in loathing. As to her support, I will provide for her. She shall not starve, as she will do if you are sent to prison for perjury. For the last time I demand your decision. Will you give up the girl peaceably, or will you be forced to?”
There was a moment of dead silence. Then the answer came brokenly from the young man’s lips.
“I—I give her up!” he muttered. “God help us both!”
“It is well,” declared Craven Black, more kindly. “You could not do otherwise. You like the girl now, but a year hence you will smile at your present folly. Why should you fling away all your possibilities of wealth and honor for a silly boyish fancy? Cheer up, Rufus. Throw aside all that despair, and accept the goods the gods provide you. The girl will marry some one else, as you must do. Your future bride has arrived at Hawkhurst, and to-morrow evening I shall take you to call upon her. I suppose you have eaten nothing since the morning, and your first need is supper.”
He rang the bell vigorously, and to the servant who came up gave an order for supper—to be served in his own parlor. Taking up his lamp, and drawing his son’s arm through his, he conducted Rufus to his own rooms, and seated him in an easy-chair. The young man’s head fell forward on his breast and he sat in silence, but Craven Black, rendered good-natured by the success of his schemes, talked at considerable length of the revenues of Hawkhurst, and the perfections of Lady Wynde, and of Neva, whom he had not yet seen.
The supper of cold game was brought up, and Mr. Black ordered two bottles of wine. Rufus refused to eat, having, as he declared, no appetite, but he drank an entire bottle of wine with a recklessness he had never before displayed, and was finally prevailed upon to take food. When he had finished, he arose abruptly and retired to his own chamber.
The waiter removed the remains of the supper, and Craven Black was left alone. He sat a little while in his chair, with a complacent smile on his fair visage, and then arose and locked his door, and brought forward his small inlaid writing-desk and deposited it upon the table.
He produced from his pocket a small packet which Lady Wynde had given him that evening, and opened it. It contained a dozen sheets of note paper, of the style Sir Harold had liked and had habitually used. It was a heavy cream-colored vellum paper, unlined, and very thick and smooth. Upon the upper half of the first page was engraven in black and gold the baronet’s monogram and crest, and below these to the right, in quaint black and gold letters, were stamped the words, “Hawkhurst, Kent.” It was upon paper like this that nearly all of Sir Harold’s letters to his daughter had been written.
A dozen square envelopes similarly adorned with crest and monogram accompanied the paper; and a tiny vial of a peculiar black ink, a half stick of bronze wax, Sir Harold’s seal, and a half dozen letters, comprised the remaining contents of the packet.
The curtains were drawn across the windows, and Mr. Black had carefully vailed the keyhole of his door, so he leaned back in his chair, with a pleasant feeling of security, and engaged in the study of the letters. Five of them had been written by Sir Harold to his wife during the early part of his visit to India, and bore the Indian postmark. The sixth letter had been an enclosure in one of those to Lady Wynde, and was addressed to Neva. It had evidently been thus inclosed by Sir Harold under the impression that Neva would spend her midsummer holidays at Hawkhurst in the absence of her father. The letter had been opened by Lady Wynde and read, and she had thrown it aside, without thought of delivering it to its rightful owner.
“How the baronet adored his wife!” thought Craven Black, as he carefully perused the letters. “What a depth of passion these letters show. It is strange that Octavia should not have been touched and pleased by his devotion, and learned to return it. But she had an equal passion for me, and thought of him only as an obstacle to be removed from her path. I never loved a woman as Sir Harold loved her. I do not think I am capable of such intense devotion. I am fond of Octavia—more fond of her than I ever was of woman before. She is handsome, stately and keen-witted. Her tastes and mine are similar. She will make me a rich man, and consequently a happy one. Four thousand a year from her, and ten thousand a year from Rufus when he marries Miss Wynde. That won’t be bad. I could have married an African with prospects such as these!”
He studied the style of the composition, the peculiar expression, and the penmanship, at great length, and then took up Sir Harold’s intercepted letter to his daughter. It was very tender and loving, and was written in a deep gloom after the death of the baronet’s son in India. It declared that the father felt a strange conviction that he should never see again his home, his wife, or his daughter, and he conjured Neva by her love for him to be gentle, loving and obedient to her step-mother, to soothe Lady Wynde in the anguish his death would cause her, if his forebodings proved true, and he should die in India.
“Women are mostly fools!” muttered Craven Black impatiently. “Why didn’t Octavia send the girl this letter? Probably because Sir Harold mentions in it her probable anguish at his loss, and she was waiting impatiently for the hour of her third marriage. And Sir Harold writes as if he had expected his daughter to spend her summer’s holidays at Hawkhurst, and Octavia did not want her here at that time. The girl must have the letter. It will strengthen Octavia’s influence over her immensely.”
After an hour’s keen study, Craven Black seized pen and ink and carefully imitated upon scraps of paper the peculiar and characteristic handwriting of Sir Harold. He had a singular aptitude for this sort of forgery, and devoted himself to his task with genuine zeal. He wrote out a letter with careful deliberation, studying the effect of every line, incorporating some of the favorite expressions of the baronet, and this he proceeded to copy upon a sheet of the paper Lady Wynde had given him, and in a curiously exact imitation of Sir Harold’s penmanship.
He worked for hours upon the letter, finishing it to his satisfaction only at daybreak of the following morning. His nefarious composition purported to be a last letter from Sir Harold Wynde to his daughter, written the night before his tragic death in India, and under a terrible gloom and foreboding of approaching death!
The forger began the letter with a declaration of the most tender, paternal love for Neva on the part of the father in whose name he wrote, and declared that he believed himself standing upon the brink of eternity, and therefore wrote a few last lines to Neva, which he desired her to receive as an addenda to his last will and testament.
The letter went on to state that Sir Harold adored his beautiful wife, but that as she was still young, it was not his wish that she should spend the remainder of her life in mourning for him. He desired her to marry again, to form new ties, to take a fresh lease of life, and to make another as happy as she had made him happy!
This message he wished to be delivered to Lady Wynde from his daughter’s lips, as his last message to the wife he had worshiped.
And now came in the subtle point of the forged missive. As from the pen and heart of Sir Harold Wynde, the letter went on to say that the father was full of anxieties in regard to his daughter’s future. She was young, an heiress, and would perhaps become a prey to a fortune-hunter. From this fate he desired with all his soul to save her.
“I think I should rise in my grave, if my loving, tender little Neva were to marry a man who sought her for her wealth,” the forged letter said. “If I die here, I have a last request to make of you, my child, and I know that your father’s last wish will be held sacred by you. If I do not die, this letter will never be delivered to you. I shall send it to the care of Octavia, to be given to you in the case of my death. I know not why this strange gloom has come upon me, but I have a premonition that my death is near. I shall not see you again in life, my child, my poor little Neva, but if you obey my last request I shall know it in heaven.
“My request is this. I have long taken a keen interest in the character and career of a young man now at Oxford. His talents are good, his character noble and elevated, his principles excellent. His name is Rufus Black. He comes of a fine old family, but he is not rich. There is not a man in the world to whom I would give you so readily as to Rufus Black. He will come to see you at Hawkhurst some day when the edge of your grief for me has worn away, and for my sake treat him kindly. If he asks you to marry him, consent. I shall rest easier in my grave if you are his wife.
“My child, your father’s voice speaks to you from the grave; your father’s arm is stretched out to protect you in your desolation and helplessness. I lay upon you no commands, but I pray you, by your love for me, to marry Rufus Black if he comes to woo you. And as you heed this, my last request, so may you be happy.”
There was a further page or two of similar purport, and then the letter closed with a few last tender words, and the name of Sir Harold Wynde.
“It will do, I think,” said Craven Black exultantly. “I might have made it stronger, ordered her to marry Rufus under penalty of a father’s curse, but that would not have been like Sir Harold Wynde, and she might have suspected the letter to be a forgery. As it is, Sir Harold himself would hardly dare to deny the letter as his own, should his spirit walk in here. I’ve managed the letter with the requisite delicacy and caution, and there can be no doubt of the result. The handwriting is perfect.”
He inclosed the letter, and addressed it to Miss Neva Wynde, sealing it with the bronze wax, and Sir Harold’s private seal. Then he inclosed the sealed letter in a larger envelope, that which had inclosed the baronet’s last letter to his wife from India. The letter which had come in this envelope was written upon three pages, and contained nothing at variance with his forged missive. Upon the fourth and blank page of Sir Harold’s last letter he forged a postscript, enjoining Lady Wynde to give the inclosure—the forgery—to Neva, in case of his death in India, but to keep it one year, until her school-days were ended, and the first bitterness of grief at her father’s death was past.
Craven Black made up the double letter into a thick packet resembling a book, and addressed it to Lady Wynde. He gathered together all his scraps of paper and the envelopes remaining and burned them, and cleared away the evidences of his night’s work. He extinguished his lights, drew back his curtains, opened his windows to the summer morning breeze, and flung himself on a sofa and went to sleep.
He was awakened about eight o’clock by the waiter at the door with his breakfast. He arose yawning, gave the waiter admittance, and summoned a messenger, whom he dispatched to Hawkhurst, early as was the hour, with orders to give the packet he had made into the hands of Lady Wynde or Mrs. Artress, Lady Wynde’s companion.
“Artress will be on the look-out for him,” thought Craven Black. “She will meet the messenger at the lodge gates, and carry the packet herself to Octavia. So that is arranged!”
He summoned his son to breakfast, and presently Rufus came in, worn and haggard, having evidently passed a sleepless night. The two men ate their breakfast without speaking. After the meal, when the tray had been removed, Rufus would have withdrawn, but his father commanded him to remain.
“I want you to write a letter to that girl in Brompton,” said Craven Black, in the tone that always compelled the abject obedience of his son. “Tell her it is all up between you—that she is not your wife—that you shall never see her again!”
“I cannot—I cannot! I must see her again. I must break the news to her tenderly—”
“Do as I say. There are writing materials on my desk. Write the letter I have ordered, or, by Heaven, I’ll summon a constable on the spot!”
Rufus sobbed pitifully, and turned away to hide his weakness. He was but a boy, a poor, weak, cowardly boy, afraid of his father, unable to earn a living for himself and Lally, unable even to support himself, and he had actually gained his marriage license by committing perjury—swearing that he was of age, and his own master. He had laid a snare for himself in that wrong act, and was now entangled in that snare.
He felt himself helpless in his father’s hands, and sat down at the desk, and with tear-blinded eyes and unsteady hand, dashed off a wild, incoherent letter to his poor young wife, telling her that their marriage was null and void—that she was not his wife—and that they two must never meet again. When he had appended his name, he bowed his head on his arms and wept aloud.
Craven Black coolly perused the letter and approved it. He folded it, and put it in his pocket-book.
“I will take it to her,” he said quietly. “My cab is at the door, and I am ready to start to London. I shall take the half-past ten express, if I can reach Canterbury in time. You will await my return here. I shall be back before evening. Reconcile yourself to your fate, Rufus, and don’t look so woe-begone. I shall expect to find you in a better frame of mind when I return. As to the girl, I will provide for her liberally. Fortunately I am in funds just now. I shall send her away somewhere where she will never cross your path again!”
Without another glance at his son, he took up his hat and went out. The rumbling of the carriage wheels, as it bore Craven Black on his way to Canterbury, aroused Rufus from his stupor. That sound was to him the knell of his happiness!