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.