FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
It was enough to unbalance Eva’s mind again, the terrible shock of her
interrupted marriage, declared all her friends. So they watched her
anxiously to see how it would end--that terrible apathy of mind that
settled on her after the first outbreak of frenzied despair, when she
had rashly tried to end her fevered existence by swallowing poison.
Fortunately Doctor Bertrand had not left the house, and her vigorous
dosing soon put the wretched girl out of danger, though her bitter
reproaches were heart-rending.
“You should have let me die! Life is too cruel!”
They could not scold her. They could only pity her for the awful shock
she had sustained.
Only once had any one dared to name the lover who had deceived her so
fatally.
“Can you not forgive him? He loved you so, and you seemed to be made
for each other!” said Ada Winton gently.
The great dark eyes lifted to hers with a sombre flash, and Eva
answered solemnly:
“My cousin’s blood flows like a crimson sea eternally between our
hearts. Let no one ever name him to me again!”
And she sank into a strange, apathetic state, from which no one could
rouse her, sitting all day with her small hands folded in her lap, her
dark, solemn eyes fixed on vacancy, never a word to any one to hint at
what was passing in her tortured mind.
“Unless we can rouse her to some interest in life again we shall have
her back in the asylum wards soon,” sighed Doctor Bertrand on the third
day, as she left after making her daily visit.
Ada Winton, who remained by her night and day, wept her bright eyes dim.
“It fairly breaks my heart. Oh, why was Doctor Ludington ever found
out? I am sure it was no sin for him to marry her, as he killed her
cousin by an accident,” she said over and over, and some agreed with
her, while others took Eva’s view that her cousin’s death was an
impassable barrier between their hearts.
That day, after Doctor Bertrand went away, as Eva sat drooping in
the small parlor with her far-off, dreamy gaze, the kind Aunt Susan
suddenly appeared at the door, ushering in a tall, gray-haired,
distinguished-looking stranger.
“A gentleman to see you, little Eva,” she said, rousing the dreamy girl
with a gentle touch on her shoulder.
Clyde Somerville, quivering with emotion, went and stood before his
unhappy daughter, saying in a broken voice:
“Little Eva!”
With a little tremulous start she lifted up her heavy eyes and met his
tender, compassionate glance.
“Oh!” she cried, in swift, half-shamed recognition.
“You remember me?”
“Oh, yes--yes, sir. You were kind to me that day on the train when I
ran away from the asylum to see poor gran’ther, who--who died, you
know,” with a quick sob. “So--so there was no one to pay you when you
went there, and--and you thought me a wretched little cheat. But you
have seen that I advertised in the paper for you to send to Weston
and get your money. But I am discharged, and I am penniless. Oh, I am
ashamed to ask you to wait a little longer!”
He let the torrent of words flow on; he thought they would ease her
overburdened heart. Then, as she paused with a sob of distress, he
knelt by her side and took her cold little hands in his own with such
infinite tenderness that she let him hold them, gazing at him in mute
wonder as he answered:
“You owe me no money, little Eva, but you owe me years of love that
I was defrauded of by your grandfather’s mistake. I am your forsaken
father!”
At that word she recoiled from him as though in fear, but he held the
small hands tight, crying eagerly:
“Do not shrink from me, my daughter, for when you have heard how your
parents were deceived and forced apart by cruel schemes to separate
them, that succeeded, alas, too well, you will pity both of us, and you
will not withhold your love from one who has been already too deeply
wronged.”
“But they taught me to hate you,” Eva faltered, drawn to him against
her will.
“I could curse them in their graves for that wrong!” he cried out
bitterly; then restraining his fiery anger, he added: “But no, they
thought I had wronged their child, and they could not help resenting
it, little dreaming of the artifice that separated us, and that I have
never known a happy hour since I found her gone in jealous anger that
had no foundation, save in a schemer’s lies. But now that I have found
I have a daughter, I shall not be lonely any more. Now that you have
been cast off by those that kept you from me, my darling, you will come
to your father’s heart and rest there.”
Every word sank into Eva’s hopeless heart, drawing her close to him for
comfort in her despair.
But she held back from him, faltering humbly:
“You would not take me, father, if you knew all--my cruel past, my
blighted name!”
A cloud passed over his face. He was proud, very proud, and the truth
was very bitter. But he held her hands tighter; he leaned nearer till
his lips touched her brow.
“I knew it all before I came for you, Eva,” he said gently. “But
whether innocent or guilty, you are still my daughter, and you must
come with me to a new life so far away that your sad past can never
rise again to blight you with its shame, and I will make your future
happy!”