CHAPTER XXVII.
THROWN TOGETHER AGAIN.
Ada Winton had indeed kept Eva accurately informed as far as she knew relative to Doctor Ludington’s movements.
When his short sensational trial for murder was over and he had served out the three months’ sentence for manslaughter, he came out into the world again with a new purpose.
Once, led by the elusive light of tremulous hope, he had vowed to make Eva Somerville his own, defying the vendetta of hate that had held their youth so sternly apart.
He had loved her to madness; he was stunned by her pride and scorn that refused to forgive the deception he had practiced for both their sakes, that they might defy fate and be happy.
With her last frenzied words to him, hope had fallen dead in his heart. He felt she was lost to him forever.
When the prison doors clanged behind him he came forth a free man with a new purpose in his mind—to forget.
For years he had been a slave to beauty’s spell, with a dream of love in his heart. All was over now, the hopes, the fears, and the longings. He said to himselfover and over that he must never look again upon the fatally fair face that had wrought his undoing. He must thrust her from his heart, he must forget.
He knew that Eva’s father had claimed her and taken her away to a new life of ease and luxury, where her wonderful beauty would find its appropriate setting, and he was generously glad that it was so. For him, too, life had altered in many ways.
From being just comfortably well off, the Ludingtons were on the way to become millionaires owing to the abundant flow of their several oil wells.
He would not have to practice his profession any more unless he chose, and he decided to seek in travel and foreign study surcease for a tortured heart.
His parents did not say him nay. They realized that it would not be well for him to locate at Fernside again. It would be too painful, with its associations.
He became a lonely wanderer for a while, until time and distance had in some wise seared the bleeding wound in his heart; then he became a student in a Parisian school of medicine for specialists, studying diseases of the brain, for which he had acquired a taste in his short stay at the Weston lunatic asylum. There he remained almost two years, only returning home when he began to believe that his heart was cured of its grievous wound, that he could bear to meet Eva again if by chance their paths should cross, with the calmness of indifference, mixed with disdain at her cruelty.
He knew that she lived in New York. Perhaps it was for that very reason he decided to remain there for a time before returning home. He wished to convince himself of his perfect cure.
The poor fellow, instead of studying brain lesions, might better have investigated incurable heart maladies.
To give himself an excuse for staying he consented to act as a substitute for a famous medical friend of his in a famous New York hospital while his friend went abroad for a needed rest during the winter months.
Thus he was in a position to learn all of his lady’s life and thoughts that lay open to public view.
More than once he had seen her, too, at opera or ball, or in her carriage in the park, though she dreamed not of the nearness of the discarded lover who filled so many mournful thoughts.
He had not failed to learn, too, of her reported betrothal to Reginald Hamilton, and if it touched an aching chord in a wounded heart he made no sign; he bore it like a stoic.
When he saw the handsome young millionaire he owned to himself that it was a suitable match for Eva. She would be happy at last, and as for him—well, had he not forgotten, or, at least, learned indifference?
But after that he stayed away from places where he was likely to see her, and devoted himself with ardor to the hospital work.
Not that he needed money, for he was a millionaire now, but he could not be a drone, like Reginald Hamilton, he told himself bitterly. He had been brought up to work and he liked it, having a passion for his profession.
He wondered sometimes if Eva, in her fine-lady existence, waited on by obsequious servants, petted, adored, ever recalled the olden days when Patty and Lydia had made her a little drudge, at everybody’s beck and call. It was the little drudge he had loved, not the fine lady, lolling like a little queen on her carriage cushions in her rich attire, with her scornful dark eyes gazing languidly out upon the busy world.
He said to himself bitterly that he did not envy Reginald Hamilton now. She had a cold heart, this Eva Somerville, who could put away her promised husband with such cruel words: “I can never forgive you!”
He was always telling himself how little he cared, how entirely he despised her now. It never occurred to him to ask himself why, if he were so indifferent, he thought of her so much, and with such bitterness.
So the weeks slipped away and brought December snow and the good sleighing that he never could resist.
In a dashing little cutter, behind a fine pair of bays, he joined the gay throng in Central Park, getting not a little attention, so that the question became frequent:
“Who is that very handsome and distinguished-lookingyoung man? He must be a stranger in New York or we should know him.”
Very few could answer the question—only one or two knew that he was a physician just graduated in Paris and temporarily filling a friend’s place at the famous hospital.
Meanwhile, Doctor Ludington, exhilarated by the sport and the scene, and by no means unconscious of the admiring glances cast on him from lovely eyes, was enjoying his outing so well that a sudden uproar and confusion, blended with shouts of “Take care! Take care! A runaway!” produced an instant revulsion of feeling in his mind.
To the day of his death he would never forget that scene of awful excitement as Reginald Hamilton’s exasperated team dashed wildly forward, spurning his control upon the reins, dragging the rocking sleigh behind them with a force that threatened to overturn it every instant.
Sitting bolt upright, his face ashen, his eyes wild, every nerve alert to prevent the catastrophe his anger had precipitated, Reginald Hamilton strained on the horses’ bits to stop them, but all in vain, while Eva Somerville, maddened by fear, had sprung up to dash herself out upon the ground.
“Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!” a hundred hoarse voices thundered at her; but in her fear and bewilderment she gave no heed, but with a maddened shriek sprang out upon the ground.
And on dashed Hamilton’s horses, eluding everyoutstretched hand that would have arrested their terrible speed, while like a grim statue of despair he leaned back, clinging with all his force to the reins as they bore him on to destruction.
Still as death lay Eva upon the ground where she fell. Her forehead had grazed a stone and was cut and bleeding; her senses had fled.
Some one recognized the half-dazed physician from the great hospital, and they almost dragged him from his cutter in their mad haste.
“Excuse us, doctor, but the young lady will bleed to death in the snow unless you hasten!” and there in the wintry weather he stood in the snow by her side again—the bride who had discarded him at the altar with that cruel sentence: “I will never forgive you!”
Had she died in her reckless plunge from the sleigh and waked up in another world?
It almost seemed so to Eva when she sighed and opened her dark, wondering eyes upon the face bending anxiously over her—the fair, handsome face with its dark violet eyes that haunted her daily thoughts and nightly dreams, the face she never could forget.
Soft, cool fingers were touching her brow like a caress, smoothing back the golden rings of sunny hair, while he deftly bound his own handkerchief about her head, saying to the eager bystanders:
“It is not at all dangerous—only a surface wound, and I will take her home and put a few stitches in it to make it all right. See, she is already reviving. Permit me, Miss Somerville,” and with a little masterfulair he lifted the slight form in his arms and bore her to the cutter, wrapping her closely in the warm fur robes, and saying, as he took his place by her side:
“I will soon take you home now, and if you feel faint you may lean against me while I drive.”
She did not answer a word; she was dazed with happiness, weak with despair. He was by her side again, her loved and lost.
He took up the reins and drove out of the park as fast as he could, followed by the admiring glances of the crowd, who, now that Eva was safe, began to wonder what had befallen Reginald Hamilton in the mad race of his frightened team.
As for Eva, she had forgotten all about her rejected lover in the surprised and painful joy of Doctor Ludington’s reappearance in her life, just as if he had dropped down from the skies in the nick of time to her assistance.
She was obliged to lean against him as he had bidden her, for her head was too dizzy to hold upright, and, as it rested heavily against his shoulder, a delicious thrill of unconquerable joy went through her at contact with him again.
She could no more help loving him, and thrilling in his presence, than she could help breathing.
She felt an insane desire to throw her arms about him and rest her weary head on his breast, sobbing out repentantly:
“Oh, love me, love me, love me! I cannot live without you! I was mad when I sent you away!”
But the spectres of her dead cousin and her old grandfather came coldly between these passionate yearnings and stayed the wild impulse of love, murmuring menacingly:
“Between your hearts there is a great cloud.”
She shuddered as with fear, and he felt in her nearness the thrill that shook her graceful form. Turning his face toward her for a moment, he said coldly:
“You are uneasy over Mr. Hamilton’s fate. Do not borrow trouble before it comes halfway to meet you. It is very probable that the horses have been stopped ere now, and no doubt he is safe. It is always better to sit still during a runaway than to spring out. You acted imprudently, and might have been killed.”
“I should not have cared!” she half sobbed under her breath, and the grave dark-blue eyes looked at her in frank surprise.
“Those are strange words from you, Miss Somerville. You have everything—youth, beauty, wealth, and love to make you desire life,” he replied gently.
It was on her lips to cry out to him that he was mistaken about the love. She did not know that Doctor Ludington believed her engaged to be married to Reginald Hamilton, according to the gossip of the world.
She did not dream that a jealousy as cruel as death was tugging at his heart, as he thought of her belonging to another.
The latent feeling he believed to be dead, slain by time and despair, had suddenly flamed into passionate life again.
Masking his feelings under a calm and cold exterior, he did not permit Eva to suspect them, and her swift glance at his handsome face showed it so well under guard that she felt, with a sudden treacherous sinking of the heart, that he despised her now.
It had never occurred to her before that he could forget any more than herself their brief, broken love dream.
Somehow it made her pain more cruel to feel that he loved her no longer; that he had broken loose from the shackles of their hopeless love. It might be selfish, but she could not help it any more than she could help living.
It struck her speechless, the pain of it, and she could find no words to answer him. So keen was the pang that consciousness deserted her again.
He felt the yielding form droop more heavily against him, and looking down saw that she had fainted.
Fortunately, they were at her door, and springing out upon the snowy sidewalk he took the limp form tenderly into his arms and carried her up the steps.
And he could not resist the temptation of holding her very closely against his wildly beating heart, with the feeling that their mutual love gave him the right.
Yes, it seemed to him little short of sacrilege for Eva to give herself to any other man, she who hadso nearly been his own fair bride, whom he loved still with desperate, hopeless despair.
He realized that he would rather see her dead than given in marriage to any other man than himself.
But while these passionate emotions surged through his heart he calmly rang the bell and was admitted with his helpless burden to the stately mansion by an astonished manservant.
“Your mistress has been hurt by an accident,” he began when Mrs. Hamilton, herself, coming down the stairs overheard the words and exclaimed:
“Will you kindly bring her upstairs, sir, to her room? Oh, I hope my dear girl is not badly hurt!”
“It is nothing serious—a flesh wound on the temple that must be closed at once,” he replied, as he followed her into Eva’s luxurious apartments.
He laid Eva down on the white couch Mrs. Hamilton indicated, putting the unconscious girl most reluctantly from his arms while he said:
“I am a physician, madam, and by your leave I will close the wound before Miss Somerville recovers consciousness.”
“Pray do, doctor——” she paused, and he supplied the hiatus.
“Ludington, of the —— Hospital, madam.”
She called Eva’s maid, and rendering him every necessary assistance, they watched with interest as he unbound the handkerchief, and, bathing the blood from Eva’s brow, closed the little jagged cut fromthe stone with a few skillful stitches done with exquisite skill and tenderness.
Then, looking up with a pale face and twitching lips at Eva’s aunt, he hurriedly described the accident, adding the courteous hope that Reginald Hamilton would escape injury.
“I must go now. She will revive directly, and you must keep her quiet for a day or so, then she will very likely get well by Christmas,” he said, turning to go, with a pang of bitterness in his tortured heart.
“You will call again to-morrow, Doctor Ludington!” she exclaimed.
“No, I cannot come again. My—my duties at the hospital are too urgent, madam. But it is not likely she will need another physician. I have done all that is necessary. If—if she does not get on all right you must call in your family doctor!” he answered, with a mixture of coldness and excitement, bowing himself out with a brusqueness that made her exclaim:
“Dear me, how very busy he must be.”