SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE.
Scarcely had the echo of Eva’s footsteps died away as she fled from
Stony Ledge, the old home farm, in disgrace and exile, ere it was
discovered that Gran’ther Groves had fallen down in one of the fits to
which he was subject.
Dan, the chore boy, who had just come in with a startled face, having
heard of the tragedy from the returning party in the hay wagon, grew as
pale as ashes when the twins quickly drew him aside and whispered some
eager warnings in his ear.
He whispered back hoarsely, with starting eyes:
“Mum’s the word, I promise you, for I ain’t going to put my own neck in
the halter! But ’twan’t my fault that things went wrong. I done jest
what you paid me for--went to old Doctor Binks’ office, near midnight,
and tole him to go to little Eva at once, ’cause she was ’most
strangling with a croupy cold, and might choke to death if he didn’t go
to her right away. But the ole fool was drunk as a biled owl, on one
of them dretful sprees he takes now and then, and says he to me, says
he, ‘Dan, I’m sick as the devil! I’m too sick to git into my buggy, but
I’ll send my assistant right off to see the poor little thing.’ So I
come away in a hurry, for I promised to go with the boys to take ole
Jimison’s gate offen the hinges, and turn his cows into Ludington’s
pasture, and a few other things! But, darn it all, I never thunk about
young Doctor Ludington assisting of ole Binks, or I’d knowed that he
could not come to Stony Ledge without an all-fired racket!”
“Well, it has happened, and all three of us will get into an awful mess
if our part in it ever comes to light. Indeed, we daren’t tell the
truth about it, although a hundred questions may be asked us at the
inquest to-morrow. The secret is between us three, for Doctor Binks,
being drunk, may not remember anything, and, if he does, we can deny
it. So remember that you know nothing at all, and be as dumb as an
oyster,” said Patty.
The frightened Dan had just assured them that he would carry the secret
to the grave, when Miss Tabby sharply called to him that he must go and
fetch Doctor Binks in a hurry to his suffering master.
Patty quickly arose to the occasion.
“Oh, Cousin Tab, we were just asking him to go, and he says he saw
Doctor Binks lying in the fence corner three miles away, so drunk that
no one could induce him to stand on his feet a minute, and they had to
leave him there till morning. So what shall we do, with the nearest
doctor fifteen miles away, only for old Doctor Ludington?”
She said this in a tone of despair, for all knew that even if the
hot-headed old ex-Confederate could be coaxed to the bedside of the
Union soldier, Gran’ther Groves himself would have preferred death
rather than a life saved by his enemy.
So it was settled that no physician could be gotten for the old man,
and they must do their best for him, an undertaking that gave very poor
results, so that Miss Tabitha was presently wringing her hands and
lamenting:
“Nothing we do don’t help him at all! See how purple his face is
getting, how his limbs twitch an’ draw up, poor soul, an’ how awful
hard he breathes, like as if he was dying! ’Clar’ to goodness if I’d
’spected this was going to happen, I’d never a druv little Eva off so
soon! She allays could doctor him better nor any of us!”
“’Cause she took more intrust in him, that’s why!” remarked Dan
bluntly, adding with a certain wistfulness: “Lemme run after her, Miss
Tab, and bring her back! She cain’t be gone very fur; the smoke will
git in her eyes, so’s she cain’t find her way!”
But at that moment the whistle of the east-bound express train sounded
loud and clear, and Lydia cried, with smothered triumph:
“It’s too late, she’s gone! There’s the train, now. Eva’s off to her
rich father in New York, and we have seen the last of her, thank
goodness!”
“And I’m sorry for’t! She was the nicest one of you all!” Dan
exclaimed, drawing his rough sleeve across his eyes.
The girls started to giggle at his self-betrayal, but they remembered
just in time that this was a house of illness and death, and Patty said
sharply:
“Hurry to the kitchen, Dan, and heat some water, quick, to bathe
gran’ther’s feet. It’s the way Eva always did in his worst spells.”
Not a touch of pity stirred their hearts for Eva, thus cruelly banished
from the only home she had ever known, to seek refuge with an unknown
father, from whom her very existence had heretofore been carefully
concealed. They remembered nothing but their spiteful jealousy because
she had always been her grandfather’s pet, and because of her aversion
to Terry that she had but vainly tried to conquer or conceal. They
thought they were only paying off old scores by the terrible silence
that was staining with dishonor both the living and the dead.
It was blackest treachery to keep still over the dread mistake that had
sent two promising young men to bloody graves, and an innocent young
girl into cruel exile, when a word from their lips could have cleared
Ludington’s fame, and recalled the victim of circumstances from her
martyrdom.
But those two young girls, barely nineteen years old, were hard and
cruel at heart. They did not choose to save Eva, and bear the blame
that must fall on them if they confessed their malevolent scheme to
send old Doctor Binks to their cousin’s bedside, when the romantic
young girl was expecting a vision of her future husband.
They put a seal on their lips, they hardened their hearts, they did
not even take the spinster, their whilom ally, into their confidence,
fearing lest a certain sense of rugged justice inherent in her nature
might lead her to censure them for their silence. They justified
themselves by saying to each other that Eva was the same as Terry’s
slayer, since her lover had murdered him.
Soon the sympathizing neighbors from roundabout farms came in to help
and to sympathize, and the men took a turn with the sick man; but as
for those two lying stark and ghastly nothing could be done but to wait
for the inquest.
The news had been quickly carried to Fernside, Doctor Ludington’s home,
and it was whispered about that nothing like it had ever been seen--the
grief and rage of the old doctor, when they told him his son lay dead
in his enemy’s house.
His son, his only boy, the prop of his house, his idol--for his older
children were both girls, and long ago gone from Fernside to the
distant homes of their husbands. It was well that the mother was absent
on a visit to them, or the sudden shock of Rupert’s terrible death must
have broken her fond heart.
The stricken father could not believe the tale the dying Terry
told--that his noble son had clandestinely met a neighbor’s daughter
and brought shame upon himself.
“It is a foul lie,” he swore. “There has been some terrible mistake.
Rupert never spoke a word to Eva Somerville, old Groves’ granddaughter,
in all his honorable life! Have I not seen them pass each other with
averted eyes or looks of scorn? They inherited the hatred of their
ancestors. Go, bring him home to me, my murdered son! Let him not lie
beneath my foeman’s roof!”
When they told him that his son’s body must not be removed till after
the inquest his rage was terrible to witness. He flung himself with his
face to the ground, raving like a madman that he himself would go and
drag Rupert away.
Heaven knows how it all would have ended had not a young medical
student in the party ventured to insert some morphine into his arm,
drugging him into a restless sleep.
So the night wore away, and early morning brought the inquest and a
curious crowd to Stony Ledge.
All the family were rigidly examined, but no light was thrown upon the
mystery; nothing was learned either to support or refute the theory of
Eva Somerville’s dishonor that had driven her cousin to avenge her by
murder.
A simple verdict was rendered in accordance with the facts--the two men
had come to death by each other’s hands in a battle over Eva Somerville.
Then the body of Doctor Ludington was borne away to Fernside, and at
Stony Ledge the preparations went forward for Terry’s burial on the
next day.
Meanwhile, every one believed that the exiled granddaughter had gone
away as ordered the previous night to seek her father in New York.
Every tongue was busy in pity or blame. Some said it was a pity that
Doctor Ludington richly deserved his fate; others declared that Eva was
old enough to know better than to carry on a clandestine love affair
with the enemy of the family. She might have known he meant no good.
But, strangely enough, so biased was the evidence that no one doubted
her guilt. All thought she had been very lucky to have a father to go
to in New York, where perhaps her story need never become known.
And while the busy tongues wagged all day over the scandal and the
tragedy that had set the whole countryside agog, no one dreamed that
as the day waxed old, and the winds raged, and the rain and snow drove
through the bleak, bitter air, putting out the forest fires, and
clearing the smoky atmosphere so that one could see the mountain tops
again, that little Eva, freezing and starving, lost in the lonely wood,
bereft of reason by the weight of her woe, was wandering back and forth
beneath the bare trees, over the rustling leaves, wreathing her golden
locks with blossoming briers and scarlet leaves.
Miles and miles had she wandered from Stony Ledge, but though she had
lost the road in the stifling smoke and darkness, she had indeed come
upon the lands of Goody Brown’s lazy spouse, not more than a mile from
their comfortable home.
And that bleak afternoon, while the winds raged and the rain descended,
the old woman was rating her partner:
“See how cold it’s getting, Sam Brown, and not a dozen sticks in the
woodpile to keep us from freezing till morning. Say no more about it,
but hitch up the wagon and go to the woods for a load of wood, you
shif’less mortial!”
Lazy Sam having ignored this daily rating till they had come to almost
the last stick in the woodpile, knew that even the rain would not save
him now, but rather add to the fury of his spouse’s wrath.
So he sighed and drew on his “slicker,” as he called his old rubber
overcoat, and went out to the stable to help the chore boy hitch up the
horses to the old wagon.
And presently they drove toward the wood, the old man shouting back to
his wife in the kitchen door:
“If I catch my death o’ cold, it’ll be your fault, Goody!”
“My back is broad enough to bear the blame!” she retorted nonchalantly,
adding to herself:
“He knows he’s as tough as a pine knot!”
Sam Brown drove on into the wood, and by and by he pricked up his ears
at a strange sound.
“Lord a-massy, Jinkins, who can thet be singing like a loonytic yonder
’neath the trees?” he exclaimed.
It was such a strange, eerie sound that they stopped the horses to
listen to the weird chanting to the tune of the bleak wind.
“Gosh, how crazy-like it sounds? Though pretty, too!” snorted Jinkins,
as they drove on nearer and nearer into the wood, and came close enough
for a sight of the singer.
Eva, for it was she, was kneeling down, a slim, drenched figure,
golden-haired and flower-crowned with the blossoming briers and
scarlet leaves, the rain pouring down upon her through the bare boughs
overhead, while she sang a weird song.
* * * * *
“I swan to goodness, I never had sech a turn in my life, Goody, as
when I see that awful sight--little Eva that we always sot sech store
by, a-singing like mad,” Sam confided to Goody that evening over the
blazing logs that he had made a second trip to get.
For the first thing he did was to gather up the poor, drenched girl in
his arms and press her to his warm heart, while he said huskily to his
man:
“Fust thing we do, Jinkins, let us carry this poor lamb home to Goody,
and make a second trip for the logs. I don’t know how she come to be
here crazy, but it’s little Eva that we all love, and her gran’ma was
my wife’s dearest friend!”
Little Eva was melancholy mad. The weight of woe had turned her brain.
Gentle and irresponsive as an infant, she suffered Goody Brown to
undress her by a cheerful fire, after feeding her with brown bread and
new milk, and put her to bed between warm white blankets.
Then, overpowered by weariness, she slept almost as soundly as the dead.
Goody wept in sympathy as she wrapped the scratched and bleeding little
hands in salve and linen bandages, saying tenderly:
“Poor little dear, she had started to see us, maybe, and got lost in
the smoke, so she couldn’t find the way. Then she went out of her head
with uneasiness, but no doubt she will be just like her own sweet self
in the morning. Do you think we ought to send word to her gran’ther
that she’s safe, Sam?”
“Well, p’r’aps, to-morrow,” replied her husband, adding apprehensively:
“You cain’t expect nobody to ride nine miles to Stony Ledge to-night in
sech a snowstorm as is coming up now!”
“No, I reckon not,” she returned placidly, for she could not urge him
to forsake the blazing open fire and homely cheer of the kitchen to
encounter such a storm, even to allay Grandfather Groves’ anxiety.
Goody was a splendid housewife, and Sam an appreciative husband,
though he did rile her sometimes by what she called “his shif’less,
percrasterinating ways!”
But they did not have to wait till morning to find out the news, for
presently a belated wayfarer happened in, craving shelter for the
night; and then, over the apples and cider, and fresh gingerbread and
pipes, he told them the story of the awful tragedy at Stony Ledge.
They listened open-mouthed, with bated breath, to every word, their
ruddy cheeks paling with horror.
Now they understood why dear little Eva had been wandering crazed in
the woods, driven mad by the awful consequence of her sin.
For like others, they could not doubt that she was guilty, with the
difference that a great pity surged up in their hearts for the erring
girl.
“She was so young, and Ludington was a handsome, smooth-spoken young
scamp--not but we thought he was all right till now. You remember how
soon he cured your rheumatiz last winter, wife?” said Sam.
“Yes, and I said I would never call in that drunken old Binks again,
long’s I could git Ludington,” she replied, adding, with a long sigh:
“He was very pretty spoken, to be sure, but now I think he was a wolf
in sheep’s clothing, for who else could have wronged sweet little Eva?”
“’Tis to be hoped that her folks in New York will never find out the
truth, and turn her out so onmarciful as her gran’ther did!” observed
the guest, who inclined to the side of mercy.
What was his surprise to be told that little Eva was sleeping under the
same roof!
“Mad as a March hare!” added the host, after relating the story of how
he had found Eva.
“She couldn’t never have started to New York. I b’lieve in my heart,
Sam, the poor gal was coming right to us in her mis’ry! She was on our
land, skeerce a mile away!” cried Goody, with a choke in her throat at
thought of Eva’s confidence in their love.
The guest replied thoughtfully:
“Well, you’ve got her for keeps, sure, unless you turn her out like her
own folks, or write to her father in New York to take her home. ’Twon’t
be no use to send word to Stony Ledge. Them folks has washed their
hands of her forever.”
“And ’tain’t likely her dad will be willing to have her, neither.
Proud, rich folks like him that broke his poor wife’s heart, ain’t
like to own a daughter that has brought disgrace to the family,” Sam
answered despondently, as he refilled and lighted his pipe, obscuring
the warm air with curling blue rings of smoke.
“Whatever on earth will you do with her, then? Let her stay here?”
questioned the guest, and Goody answered with a troubled air:
“I’ve never took to girls as went wrong like her, but yit I ain’t the
heart to turn her out, homeless, like a stray dog. I think me and Sam
will have to pray over it to-night and consult the preacher to-morrow,
before we can rightly decide our duty to her and the Lord.”
But they did not consult the preacher the next day, for all night on
the bleak mountain the storm raged, and the snow drifted, until all the
roads were impassable for days and days.
The guest did not get away for three days, but he made his company
acceptable by lending a hand in clearing away the snow from the paths,
and assisting Jinkins at the hog-killing and sausage-making; which
beguiled the time till the sun came out and melted the snow with its
genial rays, when he mounted his horse and rode away, calling back as
his last word:
“I see nothing for’t but to send little Eva off to Weston!”
Sam and his wife both shuddered at the word, and turned back, without
answering, into the house, where Eva sat upon the floor like a child,
moving her head and her hands in a restless fashion, and singing low
to herself aimless words and snatches of songs, all in a wearisome,
tuneless monotone, enough to drive a sane person mad.
She was ill, too, and coughed often between her chanting, from a
terrible cold she had contracted that night when she was lost on the
mountain.
She did not recognize her kind friends, and no light of reason had
glimmered in her big sombre, dark eyes since Sam Brown had brought her
home, drenched and shivering, in his kind arms.
Tears came into Goody’s eyes as she said sorrowfully: “I see nothing
for’t, as he said, but to send the poor thing off to Weston!”
The nearest insane asylum was located at Weston.