THE TRUTH AT LAST.
“What mystery is here?” cried a man’s voice sharply, with a note of
subtle pain.
It was the man who had paid Eva’s fare that morning she went to
Clarksburg--the handsome New Yorker, who had refused her his name, but
whom we know already was her own father, Clyde Somerville, of New York.
He was sitting in the office of a Parkersburg hotel reading the
_Sentinel_ just a few days after the arrest and imprisonment of Doctor
Ludington.
The reporter on the _Sentinel_ had served up what he called the second
installment of the Groves-Ludington tragedy in a very sensational
column.
Mr. Somerville, attracted by the name of Groves, read it through
attentively, starting when he came to the name of Eva Somerville.
Enough facts had been given to make him sure that she was the same girl
he had encountered on the train, the granddaughter of old Grandfather
Groves.
But why call her Somerville?
It gave him such a violent start that he read it over again with
feverish haste, though he found in it no answer to his tremulous
question.
A terrible suspicion crossed his mind, and his handsome face paled to
an ashen hue, while he cried out aloud in mingled pain and wonder:
“What mystery is here?”
He was quite alone, or people would have thought him demented, he
looked so wild and talked so strangely. He lost all his elegant
self-possession, he strode hurriedly up and down the room with the
paper crushed in his shaking hand.
His thoughts were in a whirl. He thought of the beautiful little Eva he
had met on the train; the piteous, frightened creature, so ignorant of
life outside her rustic neighborhood that she thought she could ride
on the train, and pay her fare afterward. He had not had the heart to
laugh at her mistake like the other passengers, because she had pierced
his heart with her subtle likeness to one long dead--the fair young
wife who had wearied of him and the luxurious home he gave her, and
fled from him back to her old home and her rustic surroundings to die.
Had she carried with her an unsuspected secret, poor, willful Nell? Had
her people dared keep from him the truth that, in dying, she had left
him a daughter? Had they let him go childless all these years, keeping
him from his own, and turning her out upon the world in disgrace and
despair?
His heart was on fire within him. He stifled an oath on his ashen lips.
The next moment the sharp peal of a bell summoned an attendant to his
presence.
“A carriage at once!” he said hoarsely, and within five minutes he
sprang into it, saying to the driver:
“The office of the _Sentinel_!”
A few minutes more and he was in the office of the editor.
“I wish to see the reporter who wrote this article,” he said, pointing
to the Groves-Ludington tragedy in the paper he still held crushed
within his hand.
“He is out, but I will call him,” going to the telephone.
Within ten minutes the reporter responded, gazing in wonder at the
pale, excited-looking visitor in the editorial office.
“What can I do for you?” he inquired blandly, wondering the while if
the man had escaped from Weston.
Mr. Somerville, still on fire with excitement, answered almost
imploringly:
“I have just read the article in the _Sentinel_, and found it of such
absorbing interest that I should like to read or hear the rest.”
“Ask me any questions you please,” was the reply.
“Who was this Eva Somerville?”
“The daughter of Nellie Groves, who married a rich New Yorker named
Somerville, and afterward left him, returning home to die of a broken
heart.”
The deserted husband’s anger was terrible, but he calmed himself with a
violent effort, asking simply:
“Are you sure?”
“Of my facts? Yes. I went down into the neighborhood and wrote up the
story.”
“The girl’s father--where was he?”
“I heard nothing of him, except that the Groves family, resenting his
treatment of their daughter, had kept him in ignorance of his child’s
existence.”
“Curses on them!” he muttered hoarsely, thus betraying his identity.
“You are----”
“Clyde Somerville, the deserted husband of poor, willful Nell, and
father of little Eva--the wronged, unhappy girl!”
“Great heavens! The third installment of the tragedy!” exclaimed the
startled reporter.
“Yes, and you may write it up for your paper if you choose,” was the
answer. “You may say that I was parted from my beloved wife by the
wicked machinations of my proud relations, and her loss has ever been
a thorn that rankles ceaselessly within my heart. After she ran away I
was a long time ill and helpless. When I grew better and was about to
sacrifice pride to love, and follow her to her old home, begging her
return, they wrote me she was dead, but naught of the child.”
“And little Eva?” asked the eager reporter.
“You may say that I left for Weston within the hour to claim my child!”