CHAPTER XIII.
THE DEATH OF GRAN’THER.
“Now that I’ve signed the will that will make them rich when I am dead, my heartless gran’darters don’t care how soon I’m gone! And I don’t care neither! ’Tis lonesome lying a-bed these weary weeks all alone ’cept when they come to wait on me with sour looks and short words. And the neighbors, they ain’t over-sociable, coming in to watch with the sick! Sometimes I think ’tain’t their fault, mebbe, for I overheard Patty saying downstairs at the kitchen door to Neighbor Miller: ‘Gran’ther ain’t feeling well enough to see comp’ny to-day. He’s most always dozing, and would ruther be alone!’ She knows ’tis a story. I’m dretful lonesome all the time, and I can’t sleep much for the aching in my bones!” groaned Gran’ther Groves, turning over restlessly in his bed, staring with dim eyes at the flickering shadows of the firelight on the wall.
He was bedridden now, but Miss Ruttencutter and the twins had left him alone and gone in the Jersey wagon, with the new chore boy for driver, to a tawdry circus that had pitched its tents in the neighborhood, and was delighting the rustic heart.
“You will be asleep, gran’ther, and not miss us,” consoled Lydia, who had the kindest heart of the three.
He had begged to have his dog for company, but they said it must be left in the yard to keep off tramps.
He was very weak and childish now, and the tears came into his eyes as he sobbed:
“Cain’t even have my dog no more! They are mistresses of everything now, and I’m to blame for it all. If I hadn’t druv little Eva away I shouldn’t be laying here so lonesome, to die by myself. How good she always stayed with me, and laffed and talked so sweet, same like I was some young spark she thought all the world of! Never give me one cross word in her hull life, didn’t little Eva! Yet I was blind ’nuff and fool ’nuff to make that tur’ble mistake of my whole life and run her off, poor innocent lamb! They egged me on, Tab and the twins, that’s what they did! Doctor Binks said he knowed she wa’n’t guilty, and made me see it, too! He said: ‘There’s a devil’s job behind that Dan Ellis’ skulking, and I’ll cut his heart out if he don’t confess the instigator!’ Them’s his very words, and he meant ’em, too! But Dan runned away, and Eva went out of her mind, and I’m dying and will meet her mother and grandma soon, and when they ask me how’s their sweet little Eva, oh, Lord, how can I answer and tell ’em what I done?”
He groaned in remorseful agony, and, as if in answer, there was a light rustling among the darkest shadows near the door and a slight gray figure flew across the room to his side.
“Gran’ther! Gran’ther, darling!”
Two soft arms were wound about his neck, two warm lips pressed his cheek, and he felt her raining tears.
“Gran’ther, I’ve been listening at the door and heard all the kind things you said of me! Oh, I guessed already you had got sorry for that night and wanted me back! When I got over the craziness I kept longing for you always! I could hear you calling in the lonesome nights for your little Eva!”
“’Twas me you heard calling, little Eva, sure enough, for many’s the night I couldn’t sleep and kept praying to God for a sight of you, and last night I told Him, if He would forgive me for my sin to you, to send me just a vision of you if you couldn’t come yourself. He has answered my prayer and forgiven me, though I cain’t forgive myself! Is it really you, lovey, or jest a vision?” quavered the old man, fondling the bright head on his breast with a tremulous hand.
“It’s your own real Eva, gran’ther, that ran away from the asylum and begged her way on the train, and walked miles and miles from the station, hiding in the woods all day, until she dared to venture out like an outcast by night just to see you again,” sobbed the girl. “You won’t let them take me back there any more, will you? I am not crazy now!”
“No, darling little pet, you sha’n’t never leave me no more,” he promised, in his blindness, adding proudly:
“Turn the lamp up higher, little Eva, so I can seeyou better. We don’t have to be saving on kerosene now! And we have chicking for dinner every day—and pie, too! And the girls have new flim-flams, all sorts of fineries from Clarksburg! I have struck ile at last!”
“Oh, gran’ther!” and she caught her breath in joyous sympathy. He had been hoping for this so long.
But as the lamplight flared on his pallid face, with the blue lips, thin, pinched nostrils and sunken eyes, her heart sank like lead.
How awfully he was changed from their last meeting. Years had gone over his head in those few months. Was this death?
His feeble, halting voice went on:
“’Pears like I didn’t care much ’bout my luck while you was gone, the other girls are so selfish! But now I’m glad, for your sake, little Eva. Did I tell you they made me sign my will and cut you off with five dollars when I was so mad, jest at fust? Yes, they did, but since we struck ile I got sorry for it. Two wells a-spouting on old Stony Ledge, honey, enamost a hundred barrels a day, and me getting more’n forty dollars a day on my royalties and other leases. Coming in every day, Eva, all that money, and me not turning a hand to work for it! You shall have your share, too—the biggest share of all, for I’ll alter my will and make you my heiress, and jest a legacy to them other selfish ones that don’t care how soon I die!”
“You shan’t die now, gran’ther. I’ll nurse you backto health!” Eva sobbed, winding her fond arms about him to keep at bay the grim destroyer that never drew back from such weak defense.
“Eva, would you mind taking Firefly and cantering over to Lawyer Gilmer’s for me? Tell him to come with you right away. I want to change my will before to-morrow.”
“Oh, gran’ther, I wouldn’t leave you alone; no, no! Wait till they come back, and I’ll send the chore boy for the lawyer. Now, perhaps, I have talked to you too much. I’ll dim the light and sit by you while you sleep, as I used to, dear; don’t you remember?”
She kissed him and he closed his eyes gently and fell into a waking doze.
With her little hand locked in his chilly fingers, Eva leaned her golden head against his pillow, napping gently, too, trying to gain strength for the ordeal of her cousins’ return.
She had an idea that they would not welcome her with open arms, like her grandfather. Instead, they were sure to be very angry.
But she was determined not to be angry with them—to be on good terms, if possible, with all, for the sake of poor gran’ther’s happiness.
She thanked God dumbly that she had been taken back into the old home with love and rejoicing. She begged him to spare gran’ther many years to enjoy his new-found prosperity.
Then she dozed gently and started broad awakepresently because the old man was wandering in his mind and talking deliriously.
He had been thus several nights, but no one knew it. His nurses were very careless. As he said, so bitterly, they did not care how soon he died.
He was back in his old soldiering days, on the march, in the camp, and before the enemy. Little Eva heard his voice ring out in stern command to the company he had commanded under the Stars and Stripes, then sink in pity, as he asked that the wounded be carried to the rear.
She was terrified as he half rose in bed, with glaring eyes, brandishing his arm as though it held a sword.
“Lie down, gran’ther; lie down, that’s a dear! You are having bad dreams!” she cried, pushing him down under the covers again.
“Is that you, little Eva? Go home to your mother, child! The battle is raging and you will get hurt! That was all a lie of Ludington’s! I never got him arrested as a spy. How could I harm my old neighbor? I was slandered by them all, the traitors, because I fought for my country’s good! Hark! the enemy! they are retreating!” He rose wildly in bed again. “Follow, my men, follow!”
Eva burst into loud, frightened sobs that dimly arrested his attention. He muttered:
“There’s a woman weeping because her man is dead. Poor soul—died for his country! How many of uscame back from that grand charge? Yes, we shall know at roll call.”
Eva flew to the window and pushed it up, leaning forward to scan the moonlighted road with frantic eyes.
“Oh, if some one should be passing by that I could call to help me! He is very, very ill! The doctor ought to see him at once!” she moaned.
She heard sudden steps and voices in the room, and, dropping the sash, looked back over her shoulder.
Her three cousins were all in the room, glowering at her in rage and consternation.
The spinster was the first to recover from her trance of dismay, and, darting forward, she clutched Eva with an iron grasp.
“Lawk a-massy, here’s that crazy Eva got loose from the madhouse and come back! She has skeered pore ole gran’ther outen his senses, an’ she might ’a’ murdered him if we hadn’t come in the nick o’ time!”
“Lock her up until we can send her back to the asylum!” screamed Patty viciously, and between the three they dragged her across the hall and thrust her inside her own little room, while she sobbed to them:
“No matter what you do to me, cousins, please send and get the doctor to gran’ther! I’m afraid he’s dying!”
“If he’s dying, you’ve kilt him, coming back likethis, you loonytic!” screeched the spinster, and Patty added gibingly:
“Back you go to Weston to-morrow, and till then you’ll be locked in your room with the ghosts of poor Terry and wicked Doctor Ludington, that fight their battle over in the same place every night.”
The door slammed, and she was locked alone in the darkness.
She groped her way with a dry, choking sob to the bed, guided by the gleams of moonlight shining through the uncurtained window, and buried her pale face in the pillows, as if to shut out the grim sight that Patty had taunted her with—the spectres of the untimely dead fighting over again their fatal combat of Hallowe’en.
It all rushed over her as freshly as yesterday, the horror, the despair, the banishment, and herself out in the night and the gloom alone—an outcast, despised thing, without a friend, mad with misery that drove reason from its throne.
But she had one comfort that even her bitterest enemies could not take away. Her grandfather believed in her, loved her, and had taken her home again.
It was true Patty had threatened to send her back to Weston to-morrow, but Eva was not sure that she would do it.
“Gran’ther will take my part—if he lives! Yet, oh, how ill he looks! What if he should die while they are keeping me from him? I will not bear it!” shesobbed, getting up and rattling the door, and screaming at the top of her voice when she found it would not yield to her efforts.
She thought that her grandfather might hear her, and demand her release; but no one came near. They could all hear her plainly enough, but they made capital of it to declare that she was as crazy as bedlam, and Patty quickly sent off a telegram to the insane asylum, asking the superintendent to send for her immediately, as she was violent, and in danger of injuring herself or others.
After that, as they were tired and sleepy, all went to bed, and left Grandfather Groves to his raving, that grew worse, because Eva’s long-continued screams and the rattling of her doorknob blended in with his delirious fancies.
They would not call a doctor, as Eva had begged them—no, indeed! Physics couldn’t help him how, and his bedridden life was a weariness even to himself. Let him slip away as soon as nature willed to death.
That was what they frankly said to each other without pretense, for his will was made, and he had struck oil, so they had no further use for him.
Just as long as he lived they must vegetate here at Stony Ledge, for he had sternly refused to move to Clarksburg when they struck oil.
“I was born at Stony Ledge, and, please Heaven, I’ll die here!” he answered to all their entreaties, andthey knew they must abide by his decision. They could not remove him by force.
In their angry disappointment they wished him dead, and did not want a doctor to hinder him even an hour from his haste to the grave.
Terribly frightened lest he should recover sense enough to send for some one to change his will, giving Eva a part of his good fortune, they locked him in as they had done little Eva, and left him there till morning.
At length Eva’s wild shrieks died away from sheer exhaustion, and by and by the old man sank into deep, hard-breathed slumber, loud enough to disturb the chore boy in his room downstairs.
It was near daylight, anyhow, so he ventured to rouse the spinster with a rap on her door.
“I b’lieve the old man’s dyin’. I kin hear him breathin’ hard all over the house!” he said.
“Nonsense—only snoring,” she answered testily, but she dressed and aroused the girls.
“He’s goin’ at last,” she said unfeelingly, as she unlocked the door, and they filed in, shivering with the chill of the early morning air.
Gran’ther trying to get out of bed in his delirium had tumbled face downward on the floor, and lay there half-stifled, purple and breathing heavily. They had to call Nick to help them put him back under the covers, and he was cold as death already.
“Not a word of this to any one,” they cautionedthe boy. “Folks are so fault-finding, they might say we neglected him, when the truth is we are all worn out nursing him.”
“I’ll fetch the doctor if you want me,” Nick said, with a feeling glance at the pitiful figure on the bed.
“’Tain’t no use—not a mite! He’s too fur gone for a doctor. You go an’ start up the kitchen fire, and do up your chores soon’s possible. You hear?”
Nick went down, and they stood around watching the dying man, who breathed a little more freely now, and suddenly opened his deeply sunken, fading blue eyes, and glanced at them in turn with a weak inquiry that solved itself into the one word:
“Eva!”
Patty frowned and answered:
“Gran’ther, Eva ain’t here, you know. You sent her away.”
He faltered weakly:
“But she came back last night.”
“Oh, no!” each of the three exclaimed innocently, all together.
In vain he cried piteously that while they were all gone last night little Eva had come back and stayed with him.
“I can see her now, and feel her arms around my neck. Oh, Eva, little Eva, come back!” he moaned; but they assured him he had dreamed it all, that there was no chance of poor crazy Eva coming back any more.
Their assurance was so complete that they staggered his belief, and convinced him it was all a vision of his sleep. He sighed, and murmured:
“I saw her so plain I thought it was real! But send for a lawyer. I want to add a codicil to my will, so that if little Eva ever gets well she may share the fortune with you.”
What significant looks they cast on each other, and the spinster answered quickly:
“Very well, gran’ther, we will have Mr. Gilmer here directly. Now take your nourishment and go to sleep.”
He shook his head, and would take nothing, waiting wearily with failing strength for the coming of the lawyer they had never summoned.
Toward noon he grew drowsy and delirious again, and the spinster, realizing that his end was too near to be helped or hindered now, sent out for the neighbors.
They came gladly enough, full of pity, but Grandfather Groves was too far gone to be glad of their neighborly company now, much as he had fretted for it when the women selfishly kept them away. They could only offer the last kind ministrations to the dying man, who had sunk into a gentle sleep, with gasping breaths coming slower and slower.
When some one, a woman, wiped the death damp from his brow with her soft handkerchief he stirred slightly and smiled with a broken murmur. Thosewho heard it plainest said afterward that the murmured word was “Eva.”
With that murmur he died, sinking away gently as a child in its mother’s arms into the calm repose of death.