CHAPTER IV.
“I RENOUNCE YOU FOREVER!”
For a moment it seemed as if Gran’ther Groves would break down and weep like a woman as he saw poor Terry, his only grandson, lying dead on the floor in his young manhood, cut off so suddenly in the bloom of youth and hope.
He had looked for him to be the prop of his feeble, advancing years, and to carry on the honest name to posterity, but all in a moment these cherished hopes were blasted forever.
There at his feet lay his last male descendant, slain by the hand of the enemy of his house.
One long, piercing cry came from his quavering lips, and then his stern manhood quickly reasserted itself, and his blood leaped again through his veins with the fire of youth.
Rising quickly to his feet, he pointed with abhorrence at the young doctor’s body where it lay with its feet to Terry’s, as they had fallen apart, sinking with their mortal wounds.
His eyes gleamed with anger and his voice was tense with rage as he shouted hoarsely:
“Send for them to take it away before I drag the dastard out with my own hands and spurn his body into the road.”
“Come away, sir, into your own room, and the body shall be removed directly,” one of the young men said, leading him gently away.
Meanwhile Miss Tabitha, even in that tragic moment, could not forget that shocking dishabille of poor, distracted Eva, and, pushing her behind a screen, she began to help her to huddle on her clothes.
“A pretty sight you look, Eva Somerville, and all these men about, and more coming, for o’ course the crowner will be here directly to sit on the corpses! Here, pull on your stockings an’ shoes! You can’t? Lawk a-massy, stick out your foot an’ I’ll help you. There, now, stand up an’ let me get your clo’es on! Why, you can’t help yourself no more than a baby. An’ I vow to gracious I wouldn’t tech you with a ten-foot pole only to make you look decent before us other decent females. I never did take to you, Eva Somerville, an’ I never expected no good of you! Set down there, now, in that cheer, and don’t go to swooning, as I see you’re like to do.”
She snatched a glass of water and flung it square in the girl’s face, bringing her back to consciousness with a strangling gasp.
At that moment Gran’ther Groves, still in his long red flannel bedgown, his gray locks awry like one distraught, his aged face purple with rage, reëntered the room and hobbled across it till he stood in front of Eva, crying out to her in terrible wrath:
“I jest natchelly ought to kill you, gal, same as Terry killed your vile partner in shame!”
“Oh, gran’ther, I am innocent!” little Eva answered, in wild remonstrance.
But, heedless of her passionate protest, the half-crazed old man began to pour out the most scathing denunciation, drawing every one around to listen except the two whose ears were dulled in death.
In a lull of his passionate accusations she cried frantically:
“Oh, stop and let me speak, dear, dear gran’ther! Do not believe your little Eva the vile thing you say! No, no, if I were, I would bare my breast for your deathblow! I tell you, there was some fatal mistake. If Terry had but waited a moment, Doctor Ludington would have explained all to him!”
“Perhaps you can explain it!” the angry old man sneered incredulously.
“Yes, yes, if you will listen in kindness, and not glare at me in such fury, like a wild beast about to spring and devour me! Oh, gran’ther, how can you be so cruel to your poor little Eva, that loved you so!” she sobbed reproachfully.
“Go on with your explanation,” he answered, with brutal impatience in his unreasoning wrath, and she sobbed on:
“I never spoke to Doctor Ludington in all my life until to-night. Some one—some wicked practical joker that ought to be hung—sent him here, telling him I was ill, dying, and wished him to come. Seeing how angry I was, he explained to me, and was about to go when—when Terry entered in a senselessrage—because he loved me and was jealous. Then he would listen to nothing! He fell upon an unarmed man, the coward, and killed him! That is the true story, gran’ther, and I swear to you I am innocent!”
But Patty and Lydia, who had stopped their lamentations to listen, joined in with Miss Tabitha in derisive sneers:
“A likely story, indeed! Never spoke to him until to-night!”
“Of course it was he that was bringing you the flowers, and poetry, and candy every night and being entertained in your room, you shameless thing, trying to pretend you had an unknown, honorable lover!”
“Didn’t all of us see you down on your knees, kissing him and telling him you loved him, before he died—that bad man, the son of gran’ther’s enemy?”
So they overwhelmed her with reproaches, stifling the voice of mercy in gran’ther’s breast by their plausible accusations, to which she only answered sadly:
“I pitied him because he suffered for my sake! But, gran’ther, I swear to you I am innocent. Do not let my cruel enemies turn your heart against me!”
No one saw the twin sisters whisper dismayedly to each other:
“How did Dan come to make such a terrible mistake?”
“God only knows!”
“We must never let him confess the truth.”
“That will be easy enough. Tell him he was the cause of all the trouble, and that he will be hung for murder if it is ever found out.”
Then they turned back again to listen to Gran’ther Groves, seeking to embarrass his decision by crying out:
“No wonder she hated poor Terry and was always so mean to him! Doctor Ludington was making love to her all the while, setting her against our poor brother.”
“Yes; no doubt she went to meet him this afternoon when she rode out, to tell him to come and see her to-night, as every one would be away; only poor gran’ther fast asleep in his room. She did not count on Terry’s coming in the nick of time and catching them.”
In the midst of their coarse denunciations Eva could but think, with a swelling heart, of how coldly and scornfully she had passed the young doctor in her canter on Firefly. Many times had they thus met and parted, never exchanging a word until to-night, and now—oh, the pity of it!—he lay there dead for the sake of one who had never given him a smile or a kind word!
Her heart swelled within her almost to bursting. She felt a passionate regret surging over her that she had not been friends always with the handsome young man that, as boy and man, had been their neighbor.
She remembered how all the girls had raved over him when he graduated at the West Virginia University,two years before, and succeeded to his father’s practice, the old man retiring in his favor. He was very young, scarcely older than Terry; handsome, and manly, and winning. Every girl in the neighborhood except three had set their caps at him.
It all rushed over Eva now with keen regret that she had been so scornful to one whom fate had destined to lay down his life for her sake.
She comprehended soon that the kiss and the kind words she had given to him in his dying hour were being used to her disadvantage now, but it seemed to her that, not to have saved her life would she have repented or taken back her impulsive farewell, for if she lived to be a hundred she would never forget the look of love surprised that shone in his dark-blue eyes the moment of his death.
“How strange; how very strange! Perhaps he did not hate me, after all!” she thought, in wonder, and turned back to her grandfather, pleading:
“Gran’ther, do not judge him hardly. He is dead, and cannot defend himself against your blame. Indeed, I do not believe he was a bad man.”
“Oh, no, for you loved him! You told him so before us all!” mocked Patty, with fiery scorn.
“Yes, you loved him!” hissed Gran’ther Groves, in a sort of fury. “You loved him, the enemy of your family; you trailed our honest name in the dust for the vile wretch who stole into his neighbor’s house to dishonor its fairest flower! No woman of our race ever thus stained our clean name before, but, beforeHeaven, if it had been any one but a Ludington you stooped to I might have pitied and forgiven you because you were so young, and motherless, and ignorant! But this was a crime that never can be forgiven. I renounce you!”
“But, gran’ther, I am innocent!” she shrieked, in agonized pleading, her young face as white as death.
Unheeding her words, he went on fiercely:
“I renounce you, Eva Somerville, and disown and disinherit you. Terry Groves branded you with shame in his dying moment, and dying lips dare not speak falsely. You are no longer my granddaughter, and this roof can never shelter you more. I have told you of your father, from whom you must have inherited this vile streak in your blood. Go, now, and seek him in New York; tell him who you are, and that your future home must be with him!”
He flung a well-filled purse into her lap, adding furiously:
“Begone at once! There is money for your journey! Tabitha, her cloak and hat! Help her to get ready, the sooner the better! Not an hour longer shall she sully the air of this home!”
He turned his back on her and hobbled out, leaving Miss Tabitha to obey his mandate with cheerful alacrity.