Neva's choice A sequel to "Neva's three lovers"

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.”