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!