“I RENOUNCE YOU FOREVER!”
For a moment it seemed as if Gran’ther Groves would break down and weep
like a woman as he saw poor Terry, his only grandson, lying dead on the
floor in his young manhood, cut off so suddenly in the bloom of youth
and hope.
He had looked for him to be the prop of his feeble, advancing years,
and to carry on the honest name to posterity, but all in a moment these
cherished hopes were blasted forever.
There at his feet lay his last male descendant, slain by the hand of
the enemy of his house.
One long, piercing cry came from his quavering lips, and then his stern
manhood quickly reasserted itself, and his blood leaped again through
his veins with the fire of youth.
Rising quickly to his feet, he pointed with abhorrence at the young
doctor’s body where it lay with its feet to Terry’s, as they had fallen
apart, sinking with their mortal wounds.
His eyes gleamed with anger and his voice was tense with rage as he
shouted hoarsely:
“Send for them to take it away before I drag the dastard out with my
own hands and spurn his body into the road.”
“Come away, sir, into your own room, and the body shall be removed
directly,” one of the young men said, leading him gently away.
Meanwhile Miss Tabitha, even in that tragic moment, could not forget
that shocking dishabille of poor, distracted Eva, and, pushing her
behind a screen, she began to help her to huddle on her clothes.
“A pretty sight you look, Eva Somerville, and all these men about, and
more coming, for o’ course the crowner will be here directly to sit on
the corpses! Here, pull on your stockings an’ shoes! You can’t? Lawk
a-massy, stick out your foot an’ I’ll help you. There, now, stand up
an’ let me get your clo’es on! Why, you can’t help yourself no more
than a baby. An’ I vow to gracious I wouldn’t tech you with a ten-foot
pole only to make you look decent before us other decent females. I
never did take to you, Eva Somerville, an’ I never expected no good of
you! Set down there, now, in that cheer, and don’t go to swooning, as I
see you’re like to do.”
She snatched a glass of water and flung it square in the girl’s face,
bringing her back to consciousness with a strangling gasp.
At that moment Gran’ther Groves, still in his long red flannel bedgown,
his gray locks awry like one distraught, his aged face purple with
rage, reëntered the room and hobbled across it till he stood in front
of Eva, crying out to her in terrible wrath:
“I jest natchelly ought to kill you, gal, same as Terry killed your
vile partner in shame!”
“Oh, gran’ther, I am innocent!” little Eva answered, in wild
remonstrance.
But, heedless of her passionate protest, the half-crazed old man began
to pour out the most scathing denunciation, drawing every one around to
listen except the two whose ears were dulled in death.
In a lull of his passionate accusations she cried frantically:
“Oh, stop and let me speak, dear, dear gran’ther! Do not believe your
little Eva the vile thing you say! No, no, if I were, I would bare my
breast for your deathblow! I tell you, there was some fatal mistake. If
Terry had but waited a moment, Doctor Ludington would have explained
all to him!”
“Perhaps you can explain it!” the angry old man sneered incredulously.
“Yes, yes, if you will listen in kindness, and not glare at me in such
fury, like a wild beast about to spring and devour me! Oh, gran’ther,
how can you be so cruel to your poor little Eva, that loved you so!”
she sobbed reproachfully.
“Go on with your explanation,” he answered, with brutal impatience in
his unreasoning wrath, and she sobbed on:
“I never spoke to Doctor Ludington in all my life until to-night. Some
one--some wicked practical joker that ought to be hung--sent him here,
telling him I was ill, dying, and wished him to come. Seeing how angry
I was, he explained to me, and was about to go when--when Terry entered
in a senseless rage--because he loved me and was jealous. Then he
would listen to nothing! He fell upon an unarmed man, the coward, and
killed him! That is the true story, gran’ther, and I swear to you I am
innocent!”
But Patty and Lydia, who had stopped their lamentations to listen,
joined in with Miss Tabitha in derisive sneers:
“A likely story, indeed! Never spoke to him until to-night!”
“Of course it was he that was bringing you the flowers, and poetry, and
candy every night and being entertained in your room, you shameless
thing, trying to pretend you had an unknown, honorable lover!”
“Didn’t all of us see you down on your knees, kissing him and telling
him you loved him, before he died--that bad man, the son of gran’ther’s
enemy?”
So they overwhelmed her with reproaches, stifling the voice of mercy in
gran’ther’s breast by their plausible accusations, to which she only
answered sadly:
“I pitied him because he suffered for my sake! But, gran’ther, I swear
to you I am innocent. Do not let my cruel enemies turn your heart
against me!”
No one saw the twin sisters whisper dismayedly to each other:
“How did Dan come to make such a terrible mistake?”
“God only knows!”
“We must never let him confess the truth.”
“That will be easy enough. Tell him he was the cause of all the
trouble, and that he will be hung for murder if it is ever found out.”
Then they turned back again to listen to Gran’ther Groves, seeking to
embarrass his decision by crying out:
“No wonder she hated poor Terry and was always so mean to him! Doctor
Ludington was making love to her all the while, setting her against our
poor brother.”
“Yes; no doubt she went to meet him this afternoon when she rode out,
to tell him to come and see her to-night, as every one would be away;
only poor gran’ther fast asleep in his room. She did not count on
Terry’s coming in the nick of time and catching them.”
In the midst of their coarse denunciations Eva could but think, with a
swelling heart, of how coldly and scornfully she had passed the young
doctor in her canter on Firefly. Many times had they thus met and
parted, never exchanging a word until to-night, and now--oh, the pity
of it!--he lay there dead for the sake of one who had never given him a
smile or a kind word!
Her heart swelled within her almost to bursting. She felt a passionate
regret surging over her that she had not been friends always with the
handsome young man that, as boy and man, had been their neighbor.
She remembered how all the girls had raved over him when he graduated
at the West Virginia University, two years before, and succeeded to
his father’s practice, the old man retiring in his favor. He was very
young, scarcely older than Terry; handsome, and manly, and winning.
Every girl in the neighborhood except three had set their caps at him.
It all rushed over Eva now with keen regret that she had been so
scornful to one whom fate had destined to lay down his life for her
sake.
She comprehended soon that the kiss and the kind words she had given to
him in his dying hour were being used to her disadvantage now, but it
seemed to her that, not to have saved her life would she have repented
or taken back her impulsive farewell, for if she lived to be a hundred
she would never forget the look of love surprised that shone in his
dark-blue eyes the moment of his death.
“How strange; how very strange! Perhaps he did not hate me, after all!”
she thought, in wonder, and turned back to her grandfather, pleading:
“Gran’ther, do not judge him hardly. He is dead, and cannot defend
himself against your blame. Indeed, I do not believe he was a bad man.”
“Oh, no, for you loved him! You told him so before us all!” mocked
Patty, with fiery scorn.
“Yes, you loved him!” hissed Gran’ther Groves, in a sort of fury. “You
loved him, the enemy of your family; you trailed our honest name in
the dust for the vile wretch who stole into his neighbor’s house to
dishonor its fairest flower! No woman of our race ever thus stained our
clean name before, but, before Heaven, if it had been any one but a
Ludington you stooped to I might have pitied and forgiven you because
you were so young, and motherless, and ignorant! But this was a crime
that never can be forgiven. I renounce you!”
“But, gran’ther, I am innocent!” she shrieked, in agonized pleading,
her young face as white as death.
Unheeding her words, he went on fiercely:
“I renounce you, Eva Somerville, and disown and disinherit you. Terry
Groves branded you with shame in his dying moment, and dying lips dare
not speak falsely. You are no longer my granddaughter, and this roof
can never shelter you more. I have told you of your father, from whom
you must have inherited this vile streak in your blood. Go, now, and
seek him in New York; tell him who you are, and that your future home
must be with him!”
He flung a well-filled purse into her lap, adding furiously:
“Begone at once! There is money for your journey! Tabitha, her cloak
and hat! Help her to get ready, the sooner the better! Not an hour
longer shall she sully the air of this home!”
He turned his back on her and hobbled out, leaving Miss Tabitha to obey
his mandate with cheerful alacrity.