CHAPTER II.
THE VENDETTA.
Had an angel from heaven pointed out the way to Eva’s heart, her mysterious lover could not have known more surely how to win the little beauty’s love.
She was intensely romantic, like the most of pretty young girls. She loved poetry and flowers, and she loved love for its own dear sake. Incidentally she doted on bonbons, and her unknown lover had catered to all these passions, adding to them the delicious flavor of a romantic mystery.
What a lover must he be who risked his life climbing to a two-story window at midnight to leave tokens of his love on her casement!
Vainly she had tried to entrap him, watching night after night for his coming behind her little white curtain.
Some instinct seemed to tell him when she was awake, so that he never ventured near until her tired eyes closed and she nodded wearily in her chair. Then her bold lover would leave his token on her window sill, beneath the embowering honeysuckles, and escape undetected by the beautiful object of his passion.
It was all so beautiful and romantic, it gave new zest and pleasure to her dull, prosaic life, and all herthoughts went out to him in gratitude and love. Those were the happiest days she had ever spent, dreaming of her splendid unknown lover—her lover whom she fancied must be as handsome and as noble as a demigod.
But now she reflected with regret and pain that everything would be at an end, for if he came again he must surely be detected by that stupid Dan, who had overheard outside the door her confession of her mysterious love affair, and on entering the kitchen had stolidly announced that he would watch for “that impertinent feller, an’ yank him down by the legs if he ever caught him climbing up to Miss Eva’s window again. It would break down all the vines, and was enough to skeer the pore gal to death, anyway, and he would put a stop to him with a gun if anybody told he might do it.”
“No, no, Dan; I forbid you to watch for him at all! I—I don’t want it stopped; I like for him to come. I love him!” the young girl cried breathlessly, but her cousins laughed, and urged Dan on, saying they would give him a quarter if he would find out the identity of Eva’s unknown lover.
Urged on by a secret jealousy, for he doted himself on lovely Eva, Dan declared that he would never rest until he found out the truth.
Chagrined to the point of tears, Eva flung out of the room, determining to go for a little canter on Firefly before the early autumn twilight set in darkness. There was nothing like a swift gallop in thecold, clear, bracing air to set the blood a-tingling and drive out the blues.
Firefly was her very own, a spirited colt that gran’ther had raised and given her when she was fourteen, because Grandma Groves had said before she died she wanted Eva to have it. It was the only property she possessed in the world, and the twins grumbled because she had that, but held their peace from reproaching gran’ther with partiality, because Miss Tabitha assured them they needn’t envy the red-headed little spitfire the possession of that wild colt, that would certainly throw her some day and break her proud neck.
The spinster persisted in calling Eva’s golden locks red, through sheer spite and envy of the loveliness she would never acknowledge.
“Not half as pretty as the twins, with their black hair, black eyes an’ red cheeks! I never could abide red-headed gals with black eyes. They have the devil’s own temper!” she said.
But Eva had been riding Firefly several years, and was not killed yet, nor likely to be; for Firefly, though wild and spirited, knew and loved his mistress too well; and as she cantered up the long country road alone, with her golden, curly hair flying loose beneath her jaunty Tam o’ Shanter cap, the pair made a vision of strength and force and beauty to turn an old man young.
Over the distant mountaintops and the autumn-tinted woods the purple haze of twilight was lingering,and it was so still and peaceful, with only the woodland sights and sounds about that an unconscious calm breathed over her ruffled spirits from the tender benisons of nature.
After she had met and passed young Doctor Ludington within a mile of her home, she saw no one else until she drew rein at the farmhouse gate returning home.
As for the doctor, she had cantered past without salutation, her golden head crested scornfully, and a heightened color on her dimpled cheek. He was the handsomest young man in the neighborhood, but “they never spoke as they passed by.”
The cause of their aversion dated back more than thirty years ago, to the Civil War, since when there had existed a vendetta between the families of Groves and Ludington, handed down from the principals to their descendants.
Briefly stated, Gran’ther Groves had been a Union man, and carried a gun beneath the Stars and Stripes for his country. Old Doctor Ludington, a Confederate, had resented his neighbor’s political views, and denounced him as a traitor to the South. Wordy encounters at length resulted in blows, and an estrangement that only widened with the flight of years.
The Ludingtons had the best of it, too, for all the country round about were on their side and the Groves family were almost ostracized for their unpopular sentiments in favor of the Union.
When old Doctor Ludington was imprisoned as a spy several months during the war, all the family, root and branch, denounced Gran’ther Groves as the man who had caused his arrest. Innocent or guilty, his broad shoulders had borne the opprobrious charge ever since.
One of the worst features of the case, too, was that their farms adjoined each other, and now, in their old age and dotage, they squabbled over the merest trifles, such as transgressions of stock, boundary lines, and even over the possession of some crab apples, the tree growing on Ludington’s side, the fruit falling on Groves’ land.
“Them two old fools!” said Miss Tabitha severely, “actilly quarreled an’ fit, an’ had to be parted from scratching one another’s eyes out, all on account o’ some pesky crab apples nyther one o’ them cared a rap about, an’ wa’n’t no airthly use except to make jelly; and enough then to supply the hull neighborhood, jest ’cause they was sp’ilin’ for another fuss.”
As Eva drew rein at the gate she saw the immense hay wagon drawn by six strong horses lumbering heavily away with its load of youths and maidens, and argus-eyed chaperones, to the music of tinkling bells and merry laughter, and her heart sank as heavily as a stone in her breast.
“Perhaps my mysterious lover may be among them!” she thought tearfully. “If he is, how his heart must be aching because I am left behind! And how cruel and unfeeling of Patty and Lydia to laughwhen they saw me coming on Firefly, and knew I must stay at home like poor Cinderella in the fairy tale.”
The twins had indeed laughed aloud as they left her behind, in malicious enjoyment of a cunning plot they had schemed for her humiliation.
Upstairs, while they were putting on their finery, one had said to the other:
“Did you notice that Eva did not eat any supper? Nor a single chocolate, either! You may depend on it, she is fasting to try her fortune to-night!”
“To try her fortune? How?”
“Why, Patty, don’t you remember what Cousin Tab was saying only yesterday? That if a young girl will fast all day on Hallowe’en, and spread a table of dainties by her bed when she retires, her future husband will appear at midnight and sup with her in love and joy!”
“Fudge! I tried that last Hallowe’en, when I visited over in Nichols, but nothing came of it!”
“Then you must be cut out for an old maid,” laughingly.
“No more than you, miss. Indeed, I believe I shall be the first one married!” retorted Patty tartly, adding: “So Eva is going to try the charm, too? Well, I only wish we could get up some joke on her, so that she might have to sup with a perfect fright!”
“Some horrid old thing like Doctor Binks, with a bald head and toothless gums, and a hooked nose a yard long! She would die of chagrin, thinking she had to marry such a beast!”
“Perhaps we could manage to send Doctor Binks there! What a capital joke that would be! We owe her something, Lydia, for getting ahead of us with that anonymous lover, and the airs she is taking over us. Come, let us put our wits together and do it.”
They laughed in malice, and when they saw Eva cantering up to the gate on Firefly they laughed again with dangerous significance, little dreaming they were plotting a tragedy that was to recoil with fearful force on their own hearts.
But they were right about Eva. She was indeed fasting to try her fortune that night, dear little romantic girl.
And with her healthy, girlish appetite, she could scarcely refrain from devouring the plates of dainties she placed on the little white-covered table beside her bed. But she bravely abstained, and, going to her window, drew back the white, ruffled curtain, and gazed long and thoughtfully out upon the clear moonlight night, with the light fog rising from the river and wrapping the bases of the mountains in impenetrable mist.
In his room across the hall Gran’ther Groves had already retired, with the little bell by his side to summon Eva if he felt any sudden stroke of illness. He had sat up later than usual, because they were expecting Terry to come home to spend Hallowe’en, but the train was hours and hours late, so he retired at last, disappointed.
“How I hate Terry! I wonder why it is I’ve alwayshated him, when he is not such a bad fellow, after all, and my cousin, at that?” mused Eva, as she lay down in bed after her little evening prayer, and cuddled down under the warm blankets and snow-white spread, until only the top of her golden, curly head was visible in the glow of her small night lamp.
She went to sleep, with her pretty little nose under cover, so as not to be tempted by the delicious smell of the cake and candy, when she was so tantalizingly hungry from her long day of fasting.
“Will he indeed appear at my bedside and sup with me this Hallowe’en?” she murmured, with delicious thrills of commingled hope and fear, then slid softly into the land of dreams.
The moments and hours slipped away until it was midnight and past, and in the distance sounded the shrill whistle of the belated express train coming into the station half a mile away.
Terry Groves was coming, although too late for the hay ride. Ah, Terry, how much better had you stayed away!
Another was coming, too, before him. Lightly, stealthily, footsteps crept up the stairs, and along the broad hall to Eva’s door, that was always left slightly ajar, that she might more easily hear the least sounds of illness from gran’ther’s room.
The intruder slipped into the room with light, noiseless footsteps, and paused to watch the beautiful sleeper in her warm, white nest.
She had tossed one arm over her head, disturbingthe covers, and her upturned face was rosy with health, and smiling as with happy dreams.
The daring intruder into this white bower of maidenhood was a tall, handsome young man, in a well-fitting business suit of dark gray. He stood like one fascinated, gazing on Eva, his dark-blue eyes sparkling with admiration.
“How beautiful! And the very picture of health! What a strange message! I do not understand it, but I will not arouse her! I will wait till she wakes!” and he was about to sink into a chair by the table when the floor creaked at his movement, and she opened her eyes.
For a moment they gazed speechlessly at each other, the man wondering, the young girl slightly dazed, believing her eyes must have played some trick on her brain.
Here before her stood certainly the very handsomest man she had ever seen—tall, elegant, fascinating—and she was certainly expecting something like this to happen—or, at least, hoping it.
But her great dreamy, dark eyes suddenly dilated from wonder to surprise and horror, her cheeks blanched, her lips parted with a gasping cry:
“What is this? Have I lost my senses? Is it you, Doctor Ludington? How dare you?”
She sat up in bed, huddling the covers about her with one hand, the other pointed at him in dismay.
Doctor Ludington stood still, with his hand on the back of the chair, and answered gravely:
“Are you not ill, Miss Somerville? Then why did you send for me?”
“I send for you, sir? Never, never! I am not ill! If I were, I would die before I sent for you, the son of gran’ther’s enemy! Go, go, at once!” cried Eva, with bitter scorn.
But he stood still, replying gravely:
“Hear me, Miss Somerville, before you banish me in scorn! We have fallen into the snare of some practical joker, who sent for me to come here, saying that you were ill, dying—ah,” and his eyes fell on the table bespread with dainty viands, and he smiled in the face of her scorn. “I understand now,” he added. “You spread your table for a phantom lover, and some jester sent me to personate him. Ah, Miss Somerville—Eva—what a happy chance! Am I pardoned for coming, believing you were ill and needed me? Will you permit me to sup with you, indeed, since I am really quite famished, having been far into the country without food since breakfast, on my rounds to the sick?”
Still half dazed, Eva motioned him to eat, and with a grateful smile he drew up his chair to the feast, saying gently:
“But not one morsel without you, Miss Somerville. Permit me,” and he passed her the cake with a profound bow.
A strange spell seized on her, intoxicating her senses with subtle pleasure, so that she mutely obeyed his gentle command, and, accepting the cake, beganto eat, feeling almost as famished as he had declared himself to be.
“Thank you; I am going in a moment, but we have broken cake, if not bread, together, and we may be friends hereafter, may we not?” pleaded Doctor Ludington earnestly, bending his blue eyes tenderly upon her troubled face.
What she might have answered, whether with friendship or scorn, we may never know.
An unheard footstep had come along the hall, and Terry Groves listening a moment to the murmur of voices in the room, suddenly stalked in with blazing eyes and a face purple with fury.
Words of denunciation leaped from his lips; epithets of scorn for her who had dishonored the good old family name, curses for the man who had trailed her honor in the dust.
“You shall not live to boast of her dishonor!” he hissed savagely, drawing a weapon from his breast.
“Listen! I can explain it all!” cried the other, striking up his hand, but not before the bullet was buried in his breast. Then the men closed in mortal combat, hand to hand, the one in blind fury, the other to avenge the death he felt closing down upon him.