CHAPTER XXV.
THE OLD LOVE IS MASTER.
“Two years since I left West Virginia and began this new life with my dear father in New York! The time has slipped away so fast I can scarcely realize it!” cried Eva as she swept aside with a white, jeweled hand the rich lace curtains from the window and looked out upon Fifth Avenue through a misty veil of fast-falling December snow.
You would scarcely call her “Little Eva” now, she had changed so much from the slender maiden of seventeen to a tall, exquisitely rounded young lady of nearly twenty, more beautiful now than in her first youth, with all the added advantages that travel, culture, and wealth could give.
The rich golden hair had caught a deeper sheen of gold, the great dark eyes were like shadowed pools that held a sorrowful secret, the smile of the rare red lips had a subtle touch of sadness, as if in her very gayest moods Eva Somerville could not forget the past.
No, she could not forget; she bore a haunted heart within her heaving breast—haunted by the memory of the love she had put away—a love that was always crying to her by day or night, in the gayest or the saddest scenes, for recognition.
Many changes had come to Eva since that golden May day when her father had brought her away from West Virginia into this new life of luxury and ease; she had traveled in many lands, she had learned to know the world, and many lovers had knelt at her feet; but none had touched her heart, none had dimmed the image of the handsome face of him from whom she had been parted at the altar by so cruel a tragedy, who had so nearly been her husband that it seemed to her as if their souls were eternally one, though their lives were sundered by the cruel vendetta of hate, begun by their families before they were born.
While she traveled those eighteen months abroad with her father, acquiring the culture and polish necessary to her new station in life, Eva kept up a constant correspondence with her friend Ada Winton, and through her kept informed of all that had transpired since she left.
She had been nearly wild with fear lest Doctor Rupert Ludington should be hanged for her cousin’s murder.
She knew in her heart that he was not guilty, that the accident had happened while he was defending his own life. But she feared lest the jury would not believe the plea for the defense.
She said to herself that, though she was parted eternally from her heart’s beloved, she could not bear her life if they found him guilty—if they punished him for his innocent sin.
She looked eagerly for the letters from Ada Winton;she read them over and over; she wept with joy at the news that he was found guilty only of manslaughter and his punishment fixed at only three months in prison.
The two young men who had been eyewitnesses of the tragedy had boldly come forward and testified that Terry Groves’ death was an accident caused by the struggle for the weapon with which he had first shot Doctor Ludington.
So the jury had brought in their verdict as manslaughter, and in accordance with the result he had been sentenced. The verdict created different sensations, of course, among the opposing clans of Groves and Ludingtons.
That was history now, and the young doctor had long ago been released from prison and gone away from the scenes of tragedy that had embittered his life. The Ludingtons had grown rich by the discovery of oil on their lands, and the old people dwelt in luxury at Fernside, but their son had become a wanderer, seeking surcease of sorrow in distant scenes and pleasures, Ada wrote, with generous sympathy and pity for the discarded lover.
The Groves twins had gone with Miss Ruttencutter to live at Clarksburg, and within the past year Lydia had married a rich merchant of Charleston and now made her home there. Cousin Tabby had visited her there and realized her ambition “to see the governor and the other big men,” but Patty was still sighing for New York and the great catch she hoped to makethere. She had been heard to remark that she was sorry she was “at outs” with her Cousin Eva, for she might otherwise have visited her there for a season.
But though Eva heard of the remark she did not take the hint; she could never forgive Patty Groves for locking her up in her room while her grandfather died. The malice and cruelty of that deed stood alone like the act of a fiend.
Coming back to New York with her father to his palatial Fifth Avenue home, Eva had been introduced to fashionable society by the widowed sister of Mr. Somerville, who presided over his stately home. His proud mother and elder sister, whose cruel scheming had deceived his young wife, and driven her from home in despair, were both dead, and the younger sister being in boarding school at the time, and now a childless widow, knew just enough of the tragedy to welcome Eva as one who had been wronged, and to whom she owed infinite love and care, in atonement for the errors of the dead. This lady, Mrs. Hamilton, had a handsome stepson, Reginald, who lived in apartments and led the gay life of a young millionaire, but came often to the mansion, ostensibly to visit his stepmother, but in reality to sun himself in the light of Eva’s bewildering dark eyes.
The young aristocrat had decided long ago, on first seeing Eva, that she would be the proper match for him when he decided to marry, after sowing a crop of very wild oats. She was beautiful, well-born, and would have an immense fortune from her father—allthree were requisites that Reginald Hamilton desired in a wife.
In the two months that she stayed in New York, before going abroad, he laid siege to her heart with ardor, wondering why the pretty little rustic seemed so indifferent to all his manly charms, but only piqued to greater devotion by her hauteur.
On her return home, more beautiful, more cultured, more fascinating than before, Reginald Hamilton was genuinely enthralled, and took advantage of his position as Mrs. Hamilton’s stepson to visit the Fifth Avenue home daily, a freedom he could not otherwise have ventured on.
Society soon began to couple his name with Eva’s, predicting that it would certainly be a match, and a very suitable one.
As Eva stood in the window gazing out at the fast-falling snow and listening to the merry jingle of sleigh bells, she was thinking, somewhat ruefully, of this same Reginald Hamilton, saying to herself:
“Poor Reggie, I am afraid I cannot stave off a declaration from him much longer, and I wish I knew how I could refuse him without giving mortal offense to everybody. I can see that auntie has her heart quite set on the match, and that papa silently approves, while as for Reggie himself, it is plain to be seen, despite all the snubs he gets from me, that he thinks he has only to ask and have! He is spoiled by the adulation of all the girls, and I suppose he cannot conceive of any one refusing him.”
A long, long sigh quivered over her lips. Her bosom heaved beneath the rich lace fastened with violets, costly as jewels at that season. The diamonds on her rosy fingers flashed as she clasped them together and raised them almost appealingly to Heaven.
“Oh, if I could but forget that other!” she half sobbed; “if I could but forget that other, I would be willing to do what they wish! After all, Reggie is very nice, and very handsome, too, and he has been kind to me always—kind and patient; for he must see I am putting him off every way I can. Perhaps he believes me only coquetting and meaning to take him at the last. How disappointed he will be when I refuse him! I pity him, for I know all the pain of hopeless love!”
She walked up and down the length of the long drawing-room, her little hands interlocked, her dark eyes full of burning tears.
“Oh, my lost love!” she moaned. “How cruel it is that I cannot forget you! I ought to hate you for your deception, for the fraud by which you won my heart! I told you I would never forgive you, too, but can one love without forgiving? Ah, yes, yes, yes; for if he appeared before me at this moment I should send him away from me. I should look at him with cold, proud eyes in which he could read nothing but pride and indifference; I should speak to him scornfully, as to one I hated; I should tell him to leave my presence at once and forever!”
A bursting sob swelled her throat as she added:
“He would obey me and go, but as he went, the reproachful glance of his dear dark-blue eyes would pierce my heart like a sword. When he was gone I should sink on my knees and ask God to let me die because I could not have him I loved so madly for my own; because the barrier of senseless hate stood between us; because my cousin’s blood cried out against our union!”
She went back and looked out of the window as if she could see him going away from her fancied dismissal, with his heart as heavy as her own, but she could not even see the great snowflakes falling, she was so blinded by her hot tears.
She was bidden to a grand ball, but she forgot all about it, though she had a costly gown and new jewels to wear. Her thoughts kept going back to the dead past; to the days when she was a little country girl at Stony Ledge with but two great pleasures in her life—her daily rides on Firefly and the offerings of her unknown lover whom she had enthroned as a king in her romantic heart, thirsting for love and happiness.
The twins had taken possession of Firefly when Gran’ther Groves died, and sold him, for how was she to prove that he was really her own? As for the lover, he was lost to her, too. She could never marry him, when she learned he was a Ludington, for it would shock gran’ther, even in heaven, if she had done such an awful thing!
“I wish,” she sobbed, “I wish no one had everfound out the truth! I wish I had married him as Doctor Rupert and never known any different. We should have been so happy. Oh, I wonder what has become of him, and where he is at this moment? Does he love me still, or has his heart turned to another?”
The bitterness of death was in that thought—the bitterness of death, and the anguish of jealous love that tore her heart almost in twain.
Mrs. Hamilton came in so abruptly that she could not hide her pale, tear-stained face from her startled gaze.
“Oh, my dear girl, what has gone wrong?” she cried quickly.
“Everything—my whole life!” cried Eva rashly, desperately.
Mrs. Hamilton knew nothing of the tragedy of Eva’s life. Her brother had kept it a dead secret.
She gazed in wonder at the desperate girl, who added passionately:
“Auntie, dear, help me! advise me! My heart is breaking for some one I loved in the past, but whom fate forbids me ever to marry.”
Mrs. Hamilton thought quickly:
“Some country bumpkin that my brother has torn her from when he brought her home with him,” and, aloud, she answered soothingly:
“The very best advice I can give you, my dear niece, is that you should accept one of the devoted lovers always dangling after you now. In a happymarriage you would soon forget the fancy of your immature girlhood.”
“Do you really think so, auntie? I am so unhappy at times I would give the whole world just to forget.”
“You will never forget as long as you brood over the dead past, dear. Put it away from you and come out into the sunshine of a new love and hope,” was the tender reply, and Eva, drying her eyes, answered sadly:
“I have tried to, but I could not do it, and my heart seems breaking.”