Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
SELECT LIBRARY No. 232
NEVA’S CHOICE
_By_ MRS. HARRIET LEWIS
[Illustration]
NEVA’S CHOICE
A Sequel to “Neva’s Three Lovers”
BY
MRS. HARRIET LEWIS
AUTHOR OF
“Adrift in the World,” “The Bailiff’s Scheme,” “The Belle of the
Season,” “Cecil Rosse,” “The Haunted Husband,” “Sundered
Hearts,” and numerous other books published in the
EAGLE, NEW EAGLE, and SELECT Libraries.
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
* * * * *
Copyright, 1871 and 1892
By Robert Bonner’s Sons
Neva’s Choice
SYNOPSIS OF “NEVA’S THREE LOVERS.”
A beautiful young widow, Mrs. Octavia Hathaway, with the connivance of
her admirer, Craven Black, succeeded in marrying the wealthy widower,
Sir Harold Wynde, who had a daughter, Neva, at school in France, and a
son, George, with his regiment in India. A hurried call to the deathbed
of his son frustrated the design of the two adventurers to poison the
baronet, who, after his son died, was reported to have been killed by a
tiger in India, instead of which he was kept prisoner by a treacherous
native servant. After fifteen months of outward mourning Lady Wynde
married Craven Black, and in order to secure the large fortune of
her stepdaughter, she determined that Neva should marry Black’s son,
Rufus. The latter, however, although in fear of his father, was not
unscrupulous. He had married a young girl named Lalla Bird, but as both
were under age he was persuaded that the marriage was illegal. Lalla
was reported to have thrown herself into the river on learning this,
but the body recovered was not hers. She found employment as governess
to the children of a Mrs. Blight. Rufus, believing her dead, proposed
to Neva, but was refused, and the young heiress became betrothed to
Lord Towyn.
Copyright, 1871 and 1892, by Robert Bonner’s Sons
(All rights reserved)
Neva’s Choice
* * * * *
NEVA’S CHOICE.
CHAPTER I. NEVA’S ANSWER TO LORD TOWYN.
Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, summoning the indispensable Mrs. Artress
to a private conference, passed some hours in their own room in
anxious deliberation upon their future course in regard to Neva.
It was necessary to the full success of the daring game they were
playing, that Neva should marry Rufus Black; but she had rejected him,
completely and finally, in obedience to her instincts of duty to God
and to herself, and her enemies began to believe that they would have
serious trouble in forcing her into the marriage.
In accordance with the conclusion to which they finally arrived, Mrs.
Artress went away from Hawkhurst that very afternoon in the family
brougham, and two trunks belonging to her were conveyed to Canterbury
in a spring wagon. It was given out that she was going to London to
visit a friend. She really went up to London, but to what point she
then directed her wanderings no one knew.
Rufus Black wandered disconsolately all day in the park, and came in an
hour before dinner. His father encountered him in the upper hall, and
went into his room with him.
“That’s a fine face, Rufus,” said Craven Black, sneeringly, “to win
the heart of a girl like Miss Wynde. You look as if you were traveling
straight to the dogs.”
“So I am, sir,” said Rufus, recklessly.
“You dare to answer me in that manner?”
“To whom should I tell the truth, if not to you?” cried Rufus
desperately. “You have made me what I am. I married a pure and innocent
young girl, who but for me was utterly friendless in the wide world.
You tore me from her. You persuaded me that my marriage was illegal--”
“And wasn’t it?”
“I suppose it was, but it was not null and void. It could have been
set aside by due process of law, because I was a minor, and because I
perjured myself in declaring that I was of age; but I refuse to believe
that it was null and void, no marriage at all. I never wronged my poor
Lally as you pretend.”
“Why this spasm of virtue?” demanded Craven Black, with a cynical
smile. “The girl’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she’s dead! God help me!”
“What a tragic groan! This morning you were in despair because
Miss Wynde rejected you. To-night you are mourning after your
corn-chandler’s daughter. I’d like to understand you--I would indeed.
Which are you wailing after, Miss Wynde or Lalla Rookh?”
“Which?” cried Rufus, with wild eyes. “For the girl you and I murdered!
It is she whom I mourn! I think of her stark form and open eyes and
dead bruised face, as she must have looked when they brought her up out
of the river, and my heart is like to break within me. She haunts me
day and night. In my bed I waken from my dreams to clasp her closer to
me, but my arms close on the empty air. I seem to feel the touch of her
hands on my face--oh, Heaven! I shall never feel them there again! I
was a poor pitiful coward. Yet what could I do? And yet you and I are
Lally’s murderers!”
Craven Black shivered involuntarily.
“You act as if you had a touch of the D. T.” he said. “Have you been
spending the day in a Canterbury pot-house?”
“No; I have been wandering in the park, trying to forget. You need not
fear that I shall get drunk again.”
“Your reflections were rather singular for a rejected lover of Miss
Wynde,” sneered Craven Black. “I thought you loved the heiress?”
“So I do, but not as I loved Lally. If Miss Wynde does not take pity on
me, I am lost. The love of a good woman would save me from madness and
utter despair. In time I might grow to love her as I loved Lally, and
in any case I would worship her from very gratitude.”
“I am blessed if I can understand you,” said Craven Black, his lips
curling. “You love a dead woman and a living woman, and mourn one while
you want to marry the other. It is very curious. It’s a pity you are
not a Mahommedan, so that you could have had both.”
“Stop!” cried Rufus, in a tone of command. “Don’t speak such words in
connection with the names of Lally and Miss Wynde. I want to marry Neva
to save myself from going mad--”
“After another woman? Exactly. No wonder Miss Wynde declined the honor,
with thanks.”
“I shall leave here to-morrow,” said Rufus.
“You won’t do any such thing. You will stay at Hawkhurst for the
remainder of the week, and play the lover to Miss Wynde, and sigh like
any donkey in her ears, and spout poetry, and touch her heart. ‘Faint
heart never won fair lady,’ says the proverb. Girls often refuse a man
the first time he offers, for fear of being held too cheap. Pursue the
girl gently, but keep pursuing.”
“She says her father wrote her a letter saying he knew me,” said Rufus
doggedly. “She asked me about him, and I told her I didn’t know Sir
Harold from a butcher.”
“You did?” gasped Craven Black. “The devil!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you have put your foot in it. I knew you were a fool, but I
didn’t suppose you had arrived at such a low state of idiocy as it
appears you have. Didn’t I tell you what to tell the girl if she ever
spoke of her father?”
“I believe you did, but I couldn’t stand there with her eyes on me and
deliberately lie to her. I understood about the letter. _You_ wrote it.”
“Hush! I’ve a good mind to leave you to yourself, and let you fetch up
in some union,” declared Craven Black angrily. “Such a dolt as you are
isn’t fit to live. How do you expect the girl to marry you when you
yourself put obstacles in the way?”
“See here,” said Rufus. “What are you going to make out of my marriage
with Neva Wynde?”
“Ten thousand pounds a year, which you are to formally agree to pay me
out of her income.”
“I thought you had some motive in the matter besides love to me. But
I’d pay it if she’d marry me. But she won’t.”
“She will, if you choose to be a little bolder. We leave here, my wife,
Neva and myself, next Monday for Wynde Heights. Mrs. Black will use all
her influence with Neva during our absence to induce her to accept you,
and I am sure she will succeed. You are to hold yourself in readiness
to come to us at any moment on receiving my summons.”
“Where is Wynde Heights?”
“In Yorkshire.”
“Very well. I will come when you notify me. But I don’t think going
will do any good. Miss Wynde is no coquette, and not likely to change
her mind. Besides, she is likely to marry Lord Towyn.”
“I think not,” said Craven Black significantly. “She is a minor, and I
don’t believe she would marry against the wishes of her step-mother?”
“The question is if your wife _is_ her step-mother,” remarked Rufus,
still recklessly. “The probability is that the relationship is worn
out by this time, and the sense of duty that Miss Wynde may have felt
toward her father’s widow will fall short when it comes to be directed
toward Craven Black’s wife.”
“We won’t go into details,” said his father coolly. “If you want to
marry the girl, keep telling her so. There’s nothing like persistence.”
“Ye-s; but about that ten thousand pounds a year?” said Rufus
thoughtfully. “I don’t think it would be right to take any such sum out
of her income, and besides, it might be impossible.”
“Leave that to me. As to the right and wrong of it, a perjurer is not
qualified to judge. Confine yourself to what you can understand. It
is time to get ready for dinner, and I advise you to come down with a
cheerful face.”
With this advice, Craven Black went away to his own rooms.
Rufus resolved to act upon his father’s advice, and when he went down
to dinner with a pale, melancholy face, and haggard eyes, he wore an
air of assumed cheerfulness which touched Neva’s heart.
That evening he sang with her while she played upon the piano. He
quoted poetry to her in the third drawing-room, where they were alone,
and afterward induced her to walk with him in the moonlight upon the
terrace.
The next day he was full of delicate attentions to Miss Wynde. She
found a bouquet of wood violets at her plate at breakfast, with the dew
still upon them, and knew who had procured them for her. He asked to be
allowed to accompany her on her morning ride, and Neva assented. After
the ride, they played chess, gathered bouquets in the conservatory,
and, later, walked in the park. Neva was gently courteous to him all
the while, but there was a quiet reserve in her manner that forbade him
to speak again of love or marriage to her.
The day after Lord Towyn called at Hawkhurst, and Mr. and Mrs. Craven
Black received him with all courtesy, and were so politely attentive to
him that he could not exchange a word with Neva unheard by them.
The young earl went away, as may be supposed, troubled and annoyed.
On Friday he rode over again from his marine villa, and was similarly
entertained, and again could not see Neva alone.
On Saturday he came to Hawkhurst in the early morning, and learned at
the lodge gate that Miss Wynde, attended by her groom, was gone for
a ride, and that she had gone by the Dingle Farm. His heart bounded
within him, and he spurred away in eager pursuit.
He traversed the wood and crossed the wide common, and skirted the
dangerous chalk pit, and rode up to the old farm gate just as Neva,
remounting her horse, came riding out on her return.
The young earl’s warm blue eyes flashed a tender radiance upon her,
and he raised his hat, his golden hair gleaming in the sunshine while
his noble face glowed with a laughing delight. An answering radiance
flashed from Neva’s red-brown orbs, and she blushed as she bade him a
careless good-morning.
“I came out to meet you,” said Lord Towyn, as he wheeled his horse and
rode at her side.
“I have much to say to you.”
He glanced over his shoulder, but the discreet groom was hanging back,
and with a mental blessing upon the fellow, Lord Towyn saw that the
field was clear, and that the time had arrived in which to learn his
fate.
They rode on for a little while in silence, until they were past the
chalk pit and out upon the breezy common. The groom was out of earshot,
and the young earl said gently:
“Neva, I have been twice to Hawkhurst to receive the answer you
promised me, but I could not speak to you alone. I may not find another
opportunity than this, as you go with the Blacks to Wynde Heights on
Monday. And so, although this does not seem a fitting place, I ask you
again if you will be my wife. I love you, Neva, with all my heart and
soul. If you will trust your happiness to me, you will find in me a
true lover to the end of our days. Do you think you could be happy with
me?”
Neva’s pure proud face flushed hotly, and she bent her head low
toward her saddle-bow. Lord Towyn waited for her answer in an almost
breathless suspense, but she did not speak until they were in the wood
path and out of sight of even the lagging groom.
Then she lifted her head shyly, and turned upon her lover a face as
divinely fair and roseate as a June morning, and although she spoke no
word he read assent in the drooping eyes, the reddening cheeks, and the
proud, tremulous mouth.
He pressed toward her in rapture, and seized one little gauntleted
hand, pressing it in his own.
“It is Yes, Neva?” he whispered, as if fearing the very birds might
hear him. “Oh, my darling, how shall I deserve this great joy?”
He raised her hand to his lips, and the contact thrilled his very soul.
He looked back. No one was in sight. He stooped in his saddle and bent
toward her, and his kiss, warm, tender and passionate, fell upon her
scarlet mouth, and thus they were betrothed.
The next instant he was again erect in his saddle, and the ecstasy of
his glowing face and the unrepressed rapture of his manner, and the
tender caressing in his very gaze, proclaimed his great and solemn joy.
“I have a ring, it was my mother’s, Neva, and I ask you to wear it as a
sign of our engagement to each other,” he said. “When I see my mother’s
ring on your finger, I shall feel that you are indeed mine.”
He took from his little finger a gold ring set with a single brilliant
of great size and splendor. Neva tremblingly removed her gauntlet,
and the young earl placed the ring upon that finger which custom has
dedicated to the purpose.
“That is the seal of our betrothal,” he whispered.
Neva slowly put on her glove.
“Arthur,” she said suddenly, “do you think papa would have approved my
marriage with you?”
“I know he would, my darling. It was his wish, as it was my father’s,
that we should marry.”
“If I could only think that he never changed his mind!” sighed the
young girl. “I have a letter he wrote me the night before he perished
in India, Arthur, and in this letter he says that he desires me to
marry Rufus Black.”
The young earl looked surprised, incredulous.
“I have the letter with me,” said Neva. “You can read it. In it papa
says he desires me to marry this young man, whom he esteems and
loves. I have struggled to obey papa’s last wishes, but I cannot--I
cannot! And he was such a good father, Arthur, that I reproach myself
continually for my disobedience. I never disobeyed him before, and I
seem to see his eyes full of reproach fixed upon me, and to hear his
voice--Oh, Arthur! Arthur!”
“Let me see the letter, darling.”
Neva extricated it from the folds of her dress, and gave it to
him. They halted while he read it. A look of surprise, wonder and
incredulity mantled Lord Towyn’s face as he read. It was followed by a
sternness that well became his fair and haughty face.
“I pronounce the letter a forgery!” he declared. “May I keep it, Neva,
for the present? I desire to show it to Mr. Atkins, who shall give us
his opinion on the handwriting.”
“Yes; keep it,” assented Neva.
Lord Towyn carefully put it in his pocket.
“I pronounce the letter a forgery,” he repeated sternly. “How did it
come to you, darling?”
“Lady Wynde gave it to me on my return from France. Papa desired her to
retain it for a year. Who would forge such a letter, Arthur?”
“I don’t know. I am puzzled. One cannot suspect Lady Wynde, and
yet--and yet--I don’t know what to think, Neva. I don’t believe Sir
Harold ever saw Rufus Black.”
“Rufus says he never saw papa, or that he never spoke to him,” said
Neva. “And that remark made me doubt the letter. But Rufus never forged
it, Arthur. Rufus is a kind-hearted, but weak-willed boy--he is no
more. If he had more ‘backbone’ in his character, he would be even
noble. I like him, Arthur, and I know he never wrote that letter. Lady
Wynde did not. She is too good for that. It might have been written by
Craven Black. I do not like him, and think him quite capable of the
forgery, only so many of the words are papa’s own that it seems wicked
to doubt its authenticity.”
“I will prove it a forgery!” cried the young earl. “Sir Harold was
incapable of binding your fate in this manner to a man you never saw
before it was written. There is some foul conspiracy against you, Neva,
but we have outwitted your enemies. I am impatient to have you under my
own guardianship. The possibility that you have enemies makes me afraid
to trust you from me. Give up this visit to Wynde Heights, darling.”
“It is too late, Arthur. We shall stay there but a fortnight, and I
have promised to go. Papa bade me love his wife and obey her, and
though she no longer bears his name, and I no longer owe her obedience,
yet I have given my word to go up to Yorkshire with her, and must keep
my promise.”
“But when you return, Neva, you will marry me? Do not condemn me to
a long probation. Let us be married quietly some morning at Wyndham
church, after due intimation to our friends. Shall it not be so?”
Neva yielded a shy assent.
“We will be married a month hence, Neva?” whispered the ardent young
lover.
“Two months,” said Neva, smiling. “I must not be too lightly won, Lord
Towyn. And, besides, I must have the orthodox trousseau. I will tell
Mrs. Black of our engagement when I am with her at Wynde Heights. Rufus
is not going with us, nor is Artress.”
They had threaded the wood and come out upon the highway long since
while they were talking, and were now within sight of Hawkhurst. Rufus
Black was riding out of the great gates, on his way to meet Neva.
The _tete-a-tete_ of the young pair was over for the morning, and
recognizing the fact, and not wishing to proclaim his happy secret to
his defeated rival, Lord Towyn made his adieus to Neva, begging her to
write him daily from Yorkshire, which she promised to do, and, then
raising his hat to Rufus Black, the young earl spurred his horse and
rode swiftly on toward Wyndham.
Neva returned home with Rufus.
On Monday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, accompanied by Miss
Wynde, departed for Wynde Heights.
On Wednesday, Lord Towyn looked for a letter from his young betrothed.
None came. Thursday, Friday and Saturday went by, and still there came
no letter from Neva, announcing her safe arrival in Yorkshire.
The young earl wrote every day, his uneasiness increasing as the time
passed. He communicated his alarm to Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins,
and they telegraphed to the clergyman of the little town in whose
vicinity Wynde Heights was situated, begging him to call and see if
Miss Wynde was in good health.
The answer to this dispatch came promptly, and also by telegraph. It
was to this effect:
“Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins: Wynde Heights is untenanted, save by
the housekeeper. Miss Wynde has not been here, nor have Mr. and Mrs.
Black.”
On receipt of this astounding message, the young earl posted up to
town, as did Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins. They searched for the
missing heiress and her guardians, but their search was futile. Not
a trace of her could be found. She had come up to London with her
enemies, but no further clue to her could be found. She had completely
disappeared, and her fate was shrouded in dark and horrible mystery!