CHAPTER XVI.
RUFUS ASKS THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION.
Craven Black and his son met at their late breakfast in the private parlor of the former. The father was himself again, cold, polite, and cynical. The son was sullen and irritable, at war with himself and all mankind. His grief for the loss of his young wife had lost none of its poignancy, although he had avowed himself the suitor of another. His thoughts during the night just passed had been all of Lally, and not of Neva. In his dreams at least, he was still true to the loving heart he had broken.
The pair were sipping their coffee when a waiter brought in Mr. Black’s morning paper, just arrived from London. Craven Black unfolded the sheet and scanned its contents lazily.
“Any news?” inquired Rufus.
“Nothing particular. It’s all about a war in prospect between Prussia and France. I never read politics, so I’ll skip the French letter and alarming head lines. I prefer to read the smaller items. Ah, what is this?”
Craven Black started and changed color as his eye rested upon a familiar name in an obscure paragraph, under a startling title. His agitation increased as he glanced over the paragraph, taking in its meaning.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Rufus. “Any of your acquaintance dead? Any one left you a fortune?”
“It is terrible,” said Craven Black, shuddering, and regarding the paper with horrified eyes. “How could she have been so utterly foolish and insane? It was not I who killed her.”
“Killed whom? Then some one is dead?”
“Poor girl!” muttered Craven Black, still staring at the paper with wide eyes, as if he read there an accusation of wilful murder. “Poor Lally—”
“Who?”
Rufus leaped to his feet with a shriek on his lips, bounded to his father’s side, and snatched the paper in his trembling hands.
“I—I see nothing,” he cried. “You shocked me cruelly. I—I thought that Lally— Oh, my God!”
He stood as if suddenly frozen, staring as his father had done at an item in a lower corner of the paper—an item which bore the title: “Distressing Case of Suicide. Another unfortunate gone to her death!”
From the midst of this paragraph the name of Lalla Bird stood out with startling distinctness.
Unconsciously to himself, Rufus Black read the brief paragraph aloud in a hoarse, strained, breathless sort of voice, and his father listened with head bent forward, and with a horrified look graven on his face, as upon stone.
“Last evening,” the notice read, “as officer Rice was pursuing his usual beat, a young woman dashed past him, bonnetless, her hair flying, and ran out upon Waterloo Bridge. She was muttering wildly to herself, and her aspect was that of one beside herself. The officer, comprehending her purpose, rushed after her, but he was too late to arrest her in her dread purpose. She looked back at him, sprang up to the parapet like a flash, and with a last cry upon her lips—a name the officer could not make out—she precipitated herself into the river. In falling, her head struck a passing boat, mutilating her features beyond all semblance of humanity. She was dead when taken from the water, and will have a pauper’s burial unless some one comes forward to claim her remains. No token of her identity was found upon her person, but her handkerchief, floating on the water and picked up immediately by a boatman, bore the name of Lalla Bird. The girl, for she was very young, was pretty, and without doubt belonged to that frail class which more than any other furnishes us suicides.”
Rufus Black read this paragraph to the very end, and then the paper fell from his nerveless hands.
“Dead!” he said hollowly. “Dead!”
“Dead!” echoed his father hoarsely.
“Dead!” said Rufus Black, turning his burning, terrible eyes upon his father’s face. “And it was you who killed her! I loved her—I would have been true to her all her days, but you tore us asunder, and drove her to despair, madness and death. You are her murderer!”
Craven Black started, nervously, and looked around him.
“Don’t, Rufus—don’t,” he ejaculated uneasily. “Some one might hear you. The girl is to blame for killing herself, and no one else can be held accountable for it. I offered her money but she would not take it. It was the landlady who drove her to the—the rash act. The old woman listened at the door, and suddenly burst in upon us and called the girl some foul name and ordered her out of her house. The girl fled as if pursued by demons. I thought then she meant to kill herself—just as she has done!”
A groan burst from Rufus Black’s lips.
“My poor, poor wife!” he moaned. “She was my wife, and she shall not lie in a pauper’s grave. I am going up to London—”
“To make a fool of yourself,” interrupted Craven Black, recovering from his shock. “And to-morrow morning the papers will all come out with the romantic story that this girl was your wife, and the story will stick to you all your days. People will say that you drove her to her death. Your chance of becoming master of Hawkhurst will end on the spot. You will be cast out and abhorred. Others as pretty and as good as this girl have been buried at the public expense. Leave her alone.”
“I cannot—”
“Suppose you go then? What will you say to the coroner, or police justice? What excuse will you have for abandoning your wife, as you persist in calling the girl? Shall you confess your perjury? Can you stand the cross-questioning, the badgering, the prying into your life and motives?”
Rufus shrank within himself in a sort of terror. The besetting weakness and cowardice of his nature now paralyzed him.
“I cannot go,” he muttered. “Oh, Lally, my lost wronged wife!”
He dashed from the room, and entered his own, locking his door, and was not visible again that day.
Craven Black attired himself in morning costume and walked over to Hawkhurst. Neva was in the park, and he had a long private interview with Lady Wynde. In returning to his inn, he crossed the park, ostensibly to cut short his walk, but really to exchange a few words with the heiress.
He found her in one of the wide shaded paths, but she was not alone. Lord Towyn, on his way to the house, had just encountered her, and they were talking to each other, in utter forgetfulness of any supposed obstacles to their mutual love. Craven Black accosted them, and lingered a few moments, and then pursued his way homeward, while the young couple slowly proceeded toward the house.
Craven Black called at Hawkhurst the next day, and the next, but alone, Rufus remaining obstinately sequestered in his darkened chamber. Neva was busy with visitors, Lady Freise and her daughters, and other friends and neighbors, hastening to call upon the returned heiress. Lord Towyn found excuses to call nearly every day. He was devoting all his energies to the task of wooing and winning Neva, and he pushed his suit with an ardor that brought a cynical smile to Craven Black’s lips continually.
There were fetes given at Freise Hall in Neva’s honor; breakfast and lawn parties at other houses; and the young girl found herself in a whirl of gayety in strong contrast with her late life of seclusion.
During the week that followed the publication of the announcement of Lally Bird’s suicide, Rufus Black did not cross his threshold. He meditated suicide, and wept and bemoaned his lost darling with genuine anguish. During this week, Craven Black made various overtures to Miss Wynde, uttered graceful compliments to her when Lady Wynde was not within hearing, and threw a lover-like ardor into his tones and countenance when addressing her. But he could not see that he was regarded by her with any favor, and grew anxious that his son should again enter the lists, and win her from Lord Towyn, who seemed to be having the field nearly to himself.
After an energetic talk with his son, Craven Black persuaded Rufus to emerge from his retirement and to again visit Hawkhurst. There is a refining influence about grief, and Rufus had never looked so well as when, habited in black, his face pale, thin, and sharp-featured, his eyes full of melancholy and vain regret, he again called upon Neva. The impression he had made upon her upon the occasion of his first visit had been favorable, and it became still more favorable upon this second visit. Neva received the impression, from his steady melancholy and the occasional wildness of his eyes, that he was a genius, and became deeply interested in him.
Add to this interest the influence of the forged letter, which she devoutly believed to have been written by her father now dead, and one will see that even Lord Towyn had in the boy artist a dangerous rival.
Lady Wynde steadily pursued her preparations for her marriage, keeping a keen watch upon her lover, whom she more than suspected of faithlessness to her. She loved him with all her wicked soul, and was anxious to secure him in matrimonial chains, but her engagement to him had not yet been announced, and even Neva did not know of it.
By the exercise of Lady Wynde’s influence, the Blacks, father and son, were invited to all the parties given in Neva’s honor, and Rufus Black and Lord Towyn were ever at the side of the young heiress. Lady Wynde hinted judiciously to a few of her chosen friends that Neva and young Black were informally betrothed, but that the betrothal was still a secret.
As the summer passed and September came, bringing near at hand the time appointed for the marriage of Lady Wynde and Craven Black, both the Blacks, father and son, became uneasy and restless. The former was anxious to try his fate with Neva before committing himself beyond retrieval with her step-mother. Rufus had learned to love the heiress with a genuine love, not as he had loved Lally, but still with so much of fervor that he believed he could not live without her. His grief for his young wife had not lessened, but time had robbed the blow of its sharpest sting, and he thought of Lally in heaven, while he coveted Neva on earth. He grew anxious to put his faith to the test.
A favorable opportunity was afforded him.
Neva was fond of walking, and frequently took long walks, despite the fact that she had carriages and horses at command. One mild September evening, after her seven o’clock dinner, she walked over to Wyndham village to purchase at the general dealer’s some Berlin wool urgently required for the completion of a sofa pillow, or some such trifle, and sauntered slowly homeward in the gloaming.
Rufus Black, who was idly wandering in the streets at the time, hurried after her and offered his escort, and took charge of her parcel. They walked on together.
As they emerged from the village into the open country, Rufus felt that the hour had come in which to learn his fate from Neva’s lips. He revolved in his mind a dozen ways of putting the momentous question, but the manner still remained undecided when Neva sat down to rest upon a way-side bank in the very shadow of Hawkhurst park.
This bank was her favorite halting-place when going on foot to or from Wyndham. It was shaded by a giant oak, and clothed in the softest and greenest turf. Here the earliest primroses blossomed and hearts-ease starred the ground. Near the bank a small private gate opened into the park. Rufus decided in his own mind that this was the spot, and this soft, deepening twilight the hour for the avowal of his love.
There was no one within the park within view to interrupt him; no one coming along the road. With a slight sense of nervousness he even surveyed a way-side thicket that flanked the bank upon one side, as if fearing some way-side tramp might be lurking there within hearing, but he saw nothing to discountenance his projects.
“It’s a lovely evening,” said Neva softly, looking up at the shadowing sky and around her at the shadowed earth. “The air is full of balm!”
“Yes, it is lovely,” said Rufus, fixing his gaze upon the young girl, as if he meant his remark to apply to her face. “How the time has sped since I first saw you, Miss Neva. Life was very dark to me in those July days, but you have given it a glow and brightness I did not dream that it could ever possess. It seems to me that I never existed until—until I knew you. You cannot fail to know that I love you. I have often thought that you have purposely encouraged my suit. But be that as it may, I love you more than all the world, Miss Neva. Will you be my wife?”
He waited in a breathless suspense for her reply.
Neva’s face did not flush with joy, as it might have done had the speaker been Lord Towyn. She looked very grave, and into her eyes of red gloom came a sadness that was terrible to see.
“I like you, Rufus,” she said gently, looking beyond him with a strange, far-seeing gaze. “I believe you to be good and honorable—would to God I did not—for then—then—Rufus, I do not know what to say to you. What shall I answer you?”
“Say Yes,” pleaded Rufus, with the energy of a gathering terror. “Do not refuse me, Neva, I implore you. I am not handsome and titled like Lord Towyn; I am plain and awkward, but I love you with all my soul. I place my fate in your hands. I have it in me to become great and good, and if you will be my wife I will be noble for your sake. But if you cast me off, I shall perish. In you are centred all my hopes. Oh, Neva, I beseech you to be merciful to me, and to save me from the utter misery of a life without you. I cannot—cannot live if you cast me off!”
He spoke with an earnestness that went to Neva’s soul. She trembled, as if the burden of responsibility laid upon her were too heavy to be borne. In her uplifted eyes was a wild, beseeching look, as if she called upon her father from his home in heaven to aid her now.
“Remember,” said Rufus desperately, “you are deciding upon my life or death—mortal and physical!”
Neva read in the declaration an awful sincerity that made her shudder.
“I must think,” she faltered. “I cannot decide so suddenly. Give me a week, Rufus—only a week in which to decide. Oh,” she added, under her breath, with a passionate emphasis, “if papa only knew! He would have spared me this.”
Rufus assented to the delay with a beaming face. If she had intended to refuse him, he thought, she would have done so on the spot. But she had not refused him, and there was hope. She should be his wife, and he would be master of Hawkhurst yet.
In the midst of his self-gratulations, Neva arose and walked slowly onward, grave and sorrowful. Rufus walked beside her with a joyous tread.
When they had passed on into the thickening shadows, and the primrose bank had been left far behind, a ragged, childish figure stirred itself from the further shadow of the thicket, and a childish face, wan and thin and haggard, with a woman’s woe in the great dark eyes, looked after the young pair with an awful horror and despair.
That face belonged to the disowned young wife whom Rufus mourned as dead! The wild and woful eyes were the eyes of Lally Bird!