CHAPTER XXIX.
A DESERVED REPULSE.
Eva could scarcely believe the evidence of her own eyesight when the blatant spinster, Miss Ruttencutter, stalked noisily in with her silk rustling and her jets rattling, bearing the handsome brunette, Patty, boldly in tow.
Miss Groves, however, was gotten up in more style than her cousin, and looked decidedly well in her rich taffeta silk gown of a deep plum color, with a sealskin sack and large velvet hat with ostrich plumes. The diamonds at her neck and ears were rather grand for daylight wear, but they harmonized well with her large, sparkling, dark eyes and raven hair.
A passionate anger flew all over Eva at the bold, unwarrantable intrusion of the two women, whose shameless treatment of her in the past should surely have secured her from their fawning.
She did not rise from her seat; she did not utter a word; she simply sat and gazed at them in blank astonishment, but her freezing reception did not disconcert them in the least, for the spinster added affably:
“That’s right, Eva, set still! We know you was hurt yesterday an’ must keep quiet. I hope you air feeling better!” and she grabbed Eva’s cold, inerthand, shaking it vigorously, and would have pecked at her cheek with deceitful lips only that Eva resolutely turned her head away.
Patty, following her cousin’s lead, caught and pressed the little hand, but it made no response and dropped heavily from her deceitful grasp, while Eva entirely ignored their presence by directing her stony gaze to another part of the room.
Nothing daunted, however, Miss Ruttencutter selected the softest, most luxurious seat in the splendid room, closely imitated in everything by the less forward Patty, in whose mind was struggling the consciousness of having so cruelly ill-treated her cousin that this attempt to reinstate herself in Eva’s good graces was, to say the least of it, simply outrageous.
Cousin Tabby now turned her gaze on the astonished Mrs. Hamilton, and observed:
“Seeing as Eva is feeling too poorly to interduce us, ma’am, my name is Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, an’ her’n is Miss Patty Groves. What’s your’n?”
“I am Eva’s aunt, Mrs. Hamilton,” coolly replied the lady, with a smile of amusement.
“You live here?”
“Yes.”
“Your husband, too?”
“Mr. Hamilton is dead.”
“Um-hum, poor thing! So I s’pose your brother gives you a home?”
Mrs. Hamilton could be haughty enough when shechose, but she perceived that the spinster was too simple to mean anything sarcastic.
So she replied, with perfect good humor:
“I am not poor, Miss Ruttencutter, but I stay with my brother because we are both lonely, and it is pleasant to be together. It is convenient also to have me here to chaperone Eva.”
“Um-hum! Same as I chappyrone Patty,” returned the spinster, with an approving nod that made all her green feathers dance wildly.
Then she added, with another nod toward Eva:
“I guess you have your two hands full, Mis’ Hamilton, to chappyrone Eva! She never could abide chappyrones. She thought the girls didn’t need ’em.”
Eva declined to defend herself or be drawn into the conversation in any way by preserving a countenance of stony immobility that entirely ignored her presuming and unwelcome callers.
“Patty, go an’ set by your cousin an’ talk to her, won’t you, whiles I converse with Eva’s aunt?” commanded the spinster, bridling.
Patty made as if to hitch her chair closer, but an anxious glance at Eva’s face decided her to keep still. She had some knowledge of Eva’s unyielding obstinacy when seriously offended. At Stony Ledge the twins used to say, when Eva refused to talk, that “she was possessed of her dumb devil.”
So Patty sat still, and answered curtly:
“I don’t think Eva wants to talk.”
“She has a headache, poor dear,” explained Mrs.Hamilton, secretly amused at the little byplay and wondering what Eva’s cousins had done to be treated so cavalierly.
But she had confidence enough in her niece to know that she must have a reason for her conduct, although, just for pastime, she herself preserved an air of courtesy toward the guests of the moment. It was as good as a comedy, that silly old maid, she said to herself with concealed mirth.
Cousin Tabby at once recommended some homely remedies, but Patty, secretly enraged and humiliated, cut in tartly:
“Maybe she would rather call in Doctor Ludington to prescribe!”
She saw by Eva’s uncontrollable start that the shot told, and gave a hateful, significant little sneer that Cousin Tabby reproved by saying quickly:
“Now, Patty, ’tain’t right to throw up the feller to her that way! She wa’n’t to blame for what he done, an’ I think she done very pretty breaking off the marriage at the last moment when she found out who Ludington was! I jest glory in her spunk, an’ I believe she would ruther die this minit than call him in to save her life!”
“He brought her home yesterday—I read it in the papers this morning,” Patty answered angrily, but the next moment she started with alarm, for Eva had sprung to her feet with the suddenness of a statue galvanized into life.
Her great, flashing, dark eyes fairly blazed upon them in the wrath of her soul, as with extended quivering fingers she pointed to the door, saying hoarsely:
“Go, go, both of you, at once! And never dare to darken these doors again!”
“Humph, very polite, I’m sure!” grunted Patty, without moving to obey the imperious command.
“Why, Eva, you hurt my feelings talking so high and mighty, child!” supplemented Cousin Tabby, also without rising, and adding, with a slightly venomous tone:
“When we come up to New York to board at a big hotel an’ enter sassiety, we concluded to let bygones be bygones, and make friends with you, even though you did have a scandalous bad name at home, an’ everybuddy in the State a’most knowed about yer carryings-on with Doctor Ludington an’ that ther old St. Clair at the crazy asylum, an’——”
“Oh, go, go, will you? And relieve me of your hateful presence! Why, I had sooner a rattlesnake crawled across my path than you two hypocrites!” almost shrieked Eva, in her passionate resentment, pointing sternly to the door.
Mrs. Hamilton here interpolated gently:
“As my niece is really the mistress of this house, and too unwell to bear so much excitement, I must second her request, ladies, that you withdraw!”
Both understood that they were dismissed, and they dared not parley with this calm, dignified lady as theywould have continued to do with Eva, whom they looked on merely as a child, without realizing that she had come to womanhood’s years since escaping from their clutches.
They rose instantly from their seats and proceeded to beat an undignified retreat from the house, muttering as they went of “folks that didn’t have no manners, even if they did live in fine houses,” to all of which no one replied as they hurried down the steps to their waiting carriage.
When safe within it the spinster sighed lugubriously:
“Well, we made a dead failure at that, eh? We cain’t never git into sassiety through Eva Somerville.”
“Oh, but wouldn’t I just like to get revenge on the proud piece,” hissed Patty, her eyes gleaming with a tigerish glare.
She would, indeed, have liked to take hold of Eva and shake her, as she had been wont to do in her younger days when might made right.
In her father’s beautiful home, surrounded by love and luxury, Eva had seemed to her like a little queen, and rage and envy filled her heart.
They scolded all the way back home, the precious pair of schemers, and they could have killed Eva for her pride and scorn. Miss Ruttencutter said indignantly:
“We couldn’t make the least headway with her, for all we tried to forgive her everything, an’ associatewith her on equal terms, like as nuthing had ever been said ag’inst her character. She treated us like the dirt under her feet.”
Meanwhile Eva had flung herself, sobbing, into her aunt’s arms.
“To—to—think of having such shocking relatives,” she wailed.
Mrs. Hamilton soothed her tenderly, replying:
“Miss Groves was quite handsome and well-dressed, my dear, though the old maid was rather ridiculous in speech and dress.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind that if she only had a good heart, auntie,” sobbed Eva. “It’s the kind heart I look for always, and that may beat behind an uncouth exterior and under the coarsest gown! But those two vile hypocrites! Oh, I would like to tell you how wickedly they treated me before papa found me and brought me away! Some day, with his permission, I will tell you all!”
“Very well, dear; but now you are so excited I must give you a sedative or we shall have to call in Doctor Ludington again, as your cousin suggested,” Mrs. Hamilton remarked rather wickedly, as she rang for a servant and the medicine.
Eva swallowed it without protest, though she had crimsoned painfully at the reference to Doctor Ludington. She thought:
“What strange thoughts auntie must have of me after the vile innuendoes of my wicked cousins! Imust obtain papa’s permission to tell her my story. She deserves it for her generous loyalty to me!”
Aloud she said:
“I hope this sedative will quiet my nerves, for my dear friend Ada will arrive this evening, and I want to feel well enough to enjoy her company! Only think, what a lovely winter we shall have with dear Ada for a guest! She is very beautiful, you know, auntie, and—perhaps—she may console Reggie for losing me.”
But Mrs. Hamilton frowned slightly, and answered:
“I should not fancy such a match. I wanted him to marry you, my dear little niece, and no other.”
“I told you, auntie, I had refused his offer,” protested Eva.
“You were hasty, my dear. Perhaps you may come to reconsider the case.”
“But I told you, also, that I loved another.”
Mrs. Hamilton wondered suddenly if that “other” could be the handsome Doctor Ludington, and she quickly decided that this was the case. It explained things that were otherwise inexplicable. But aloud she said, in her calm, gentle way:
“But you told me your love was hopeless, Eva!”
“Yes, quite hopeless!” sighed the girl, stifling a sob that seemed to rend her very heart in twain.
“Then you will have to put that love away from you, and try to forget. The easiest way to do it would be to become interested in another and marry him.A happy marriage is, to my mind, the only remedy for your pain.”
Her father had used the same words to her, and they recurred to her again. Was it true? Would a marriage with Reggie, who adored her, teach her to forget?