CHAPTER XVIII.
YOUNG LOVE.
“A poor girl’s lot is indeed hard and cruel. She must bear with wrong and injustice without daring to complain,” thought Eva the next morning, reviewing the disquieting incident of the night before with the conviction that it was better, after all, to take Ada Winton’s practical advice.
For where could she go if she left the asylum as she had first meant to do—where could she shelter her homeless head?
The Browns were her only friends outside the hospital, and she did not know whether they would receive her under their roof or not.
Besides, she had no money to get away with—not even a penny. And she could not adventure another railway trip on credit. Then she gave a little gasp of dismay, suddenly remembering the gentleman who had paid her fare when she ran away from the asylum.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, what must he think of me?” she sighed. “Oh, why did he withhold his name, and say he would call on gran’ther next week for his money? What did he think if he went and found no one to pay him? That I was a wretched little cheat, of course.”
Scalding tears rushed to her eyes and she crimsoned with mortification. She had liked the kind NewYorker so much that she hated for him to believe her mean and dishonest.
A bright thought came into her mind and she seized a pen and wrote rapidly on a slip of paper:
“If the gentleman who paid a young girl’s fare on the train going to Clarksburg will send his address to Miss Groves, Weston, stating the amount paid, he will receive the money at once, with the thanks of the one benefited.”
“If the gentleman who paid a young girl’s fare on the train going to Clarksburg will send his address to Miss Groves, Weston, stating the amount paid, he will receive the money at once, with the thanks of the one benefited.”
“I called myself Miss Groves because he called me that,” she thought; “and now if dear Doctor Bertrand will lend me enough money to pay for this advertisement I will pay the nice gentleman as soon as I begin to earn a salary here. I should like to see the kind stranger again some time.”
She made up her mind to work on at the asylum patiently until some better opening presented itself, and she would be so distant and dignified with the superintendent he would not presume on her poverty again to offer her a love that was a cruel insult.
But her cheeks were burning, and she trembled like a leaf when she entered his office next morning to be assigned to her ward. Her spirits rose the minute she saw Miss Blue looking over the newspapers, and she knew she would not be alone with him.
The doctor was curt and cold. He looked her over as though she were a stranger, and dismissed her with a few sharp orders. But she did not mind; she was only too glad to escape.
She could not guess at the mingled rage and love seething in his undisciplined heart. It was his misfortune that he could never resist a fair face. He was like a butterfly, roving from flower to flower, culling sweets wherever he could. To Miss Blue he remarked, with fine sarcasm:
“Such a shy, trembling little birdie; one would never take her for the heroine of a terrible scandal, would they, my dear Mattie?”
She flashed her keen black eyes at him, shrugged her shoulders, and retorted poutingly:
“You would make her the heroine of another great scandal if you had your way, sir!”
“Bah! you’re jealous, Mattie,” he answered gayly, and the pert young lady kicked over his waste basket, tousled his gray locks with her white fingers, threw him a saucy kiss, and flirted out of the room.
He gazed after her admiringly, muttering:
“Great fun, that girl! I wish little Eva had her spirit and liked me as well. She is only acting the prude, of course. The heroine of so awful a scandal cannot be hard to win. She is worth an effort, the proud little beauty, and I will not give her up, though I will act distant and offended till I throw her off her guard. Ah, those pouting red lips! A kiss were well worth half my year’s salary, would she but sell it at that price!”
He let Eva severely alone for a week, and she faithfully performed her duties, silently looking and hoping every day for a sight of Doctor Rupert again.Every day of his absence was like a month to her heart, and she caught herself wishing that he would write her a few lines just to let her know that she was not forgotten.
But no letter came, no token save a beautiful box by mail of her favorite bonbons. Inside the lid was a card with his name only, but it was traced in the same familiar writing as the love poems, and Eva instantly thrilled with joy, though presently came a perplexing thought:
“How did he know me before I came to the asylum, when I lived at Stony Ledge? I never saw any one there like him. It is very strange.”
She racked her memory hopelessly for some means of identifying him with her past.
She remembered at last that on infrequent occasions the whole family had sometimes attended worship at a church seven miles away, going all together in gran’ther’s large Jersey wagon.
Eva decided that Doctor Rupert must have made one of the congregation at this Methodist church in the woods.
“He must have fallen in love with me at first sight! How charming! One must certainly be quite pretty to win a lover’s heart at first sight,” she thought, lingering before the mirror and noting each several charm with questioning eyes.
She decided that, after all, she must be rather pretty, although she had not given much thought to it before, in the quiet days at Stony Ledge. Cousin Tabby andthe twins had always insinuated that she would never “set the river afire with her beauty.”
Perhaps they thought it wise to throw a damper on any little maidenly vanity that she might be cherishing. Now that they had wickedly thrown her upon the world they could not keep her ignorant of her charms any longer.
She would read the truth in men’s eyes that she was wondrous fair. Doctor St. Clair had not hesitated to tell her so with eager lips. But she remembered his words with detestation, and thought only of the flash in Doctor Rupert’s eyes that told her without words she was lovely and adorable.
She cared for his praise and no other, with her heart just awakened to love’s sweet song.
How slowly the days passed in her uncongenial labor of caring for the wretched insane patients for the sake of daily bread, while the twins were fine and rich on gran’ther’s inheritance.
Eva would have felt bitter over it, but she knew that her grandfather had not wished it to be so; that if she had gone for the lawyer as he wished that night she might have been his heiress.
“I would not have left him alone for all the money in the State!” she murmured.