THE OLD LOVE IS MASTER.
“Two years since I left West Virginia and began this new life with
my dear father in New York! The time has slipped away so fast I can
scarcely realize it!” cried Eva as she swept aside with a white,
jeweled hand the rich lace curtains from the window and looked out upon
Fifth Avenue through a misty veil of fast-falling December snow.
You would scarcely call her “Little Eva” now, she had changed so much
from the slender maiden of seventeen to a tall, exquisitely rounded
young lady of nearly twenty, more beautiful now than in her first
youth, with all the added advantages that travel, culture, and wealth
could give.
The rich golden hair had caught a deeper sheen of gold, the great dark
eyes were like shadowed pools that held a sorrowful secret, the smile
of the rare red lips had a subtle touch of sadness, as if in her very
gayest moods Eva Somerville could not forget the past.
No, she could not forget; she bore a haunted heart within her heaving
breast--haunted by the memory of the love she had put away--a love that
was always crying to her by day or night, in the gayest or the saddest
scenes, for recognition.
Many changes had come to Eva since that golden May day when her father
had brought her away from West Virginia into this new life of luxury
and ease; she had traveled in many lands, she had learned to know the
world, and many lovers had knelt at her feet; but none had touched her
heart, none had dimmed the image of the handsome face of him from whom
she had been parted at the altar by so cruel a tragedy, who had so
nearly been her husband that it seemed to her as if their souls were
eternally one, though their lives were sundered by the cruel vendetta
of hate, begun by their families before they were born.
While she traveled those eighteen months abroad with her father,
acquiring the culture and polish necessary to her new station in life,
Eva kept up a constant correspondence with her friend Ada Winton, and
through her kept informed of all that had transpired since she left.
She had been nearly wild with fear lest Doctor Rupert Ludington should
be hanged for her cousin’s murder.
She knew in her heart that he was not guilty, that the accident had
happened while he was defending his own life. But she feared lest the
jury would not believe the plea for the defense.
She said to herself that, though she was parted eternally from her
heart’s beloved, she could not bear her life if they found him
guilty--if they punished him for his innocent sin.
She looked eagerly for the letters from Ada Winton; she read them over
and over; she wept with joy at the news that he was found guilty only
of manslaughter and his punishment fixed at only three months in prison.
The two young men who had been eyewitnesses of the tragedy had boldly
come forward and testified that Terry Groves’ death was an accident
caused by the struggle for the weapon with which he had first shot
Doctor Ludington.
So the jury had brought in their verdict as manslaughter, and in
accordance with the result he had been sentenced. The verdict created
different sensations, of course, among the opposing clans of Groves and
Ludingtons.
That was history now, and the young doctor had long ago been released
from prison and gone away from the scenes of tragedy that had
embittered his life. The Ludingtons had grown rich by the discovery of
oil on their lands, and the old people dwelt in luxury at Fernside, but
their son had become a wanderer, seeking surcease of sorrow in distant
scenes and pleasures, Ada wrote, with generous sympathy and pity for
the discarded lover.
The Groves twins had gone with Miss Ruttencutter to live at Clarksburg,
and within the past year Lydia had married a rich merchant of
Charleston and now made her home there. Cousin Tabby had visited her
there and realized her ambition “to see the governor and the other big
men,” but Patty was still sighing for New York and the great catch she
hoped to make there. She had been heard to remark that she was sorry
she was “at outs” with her Cousin Eva, for she might otherwise have
visited her there for a season.
But though Eva heard of the remark she did not take the hint; she could
never forgive Patty Groves for locking her up in her room while her
grandfather died. The malice and cruelty of that deed stood alone like
the act of a fiend.
Coming back to New York with her father to his palatial Fifth Avenue
home, Eva had been introduced to fashionable society by the widowed
sister of Mr. Somerville, who presided over his stately home. His
proud mother and elder sister, whose cruel scheming had deceived his
young wife, and driven her from home in despair, were both dead, and
the younger sister being in boarding school at the time, and now a
childless widow, knew just enough of the tragedy to welcome Eva as one
who had been wronged, and to whom she owed infinite love and care, in
atonement for the errors of the dead. This lady, Mrs. Hamilton, had a
handsome stepson, Reginald, who lived in apartments and led the gay
life of a young millionaire, but came often to the mansion, ostensibly
to visit his stepmother, but in reality to sun himself in the light of
Eva’s bewildering dark eyes.
The young aristocrat had decided long ago, on first seeing Eva, that
she would be the proper match for him when he decided to marry,
after sowing a crop of very wild oats. She was beautiful, well-born,
and would have an immense fortune from her father--all three were
requisites that Reginald Hamilton desired in a wife.
In the two months that she stayed in New York, before going abroad, he
laid siege to her heart with ardor, wondering why the pretty little
rustic seemed so indifferent to all his manly charms, but only piqued
to greater devotion by her hauteur.
On her return home, more beautiful, more cultured, more fascinating
than before, Reginald Hamilton was genuinely enthralled, and took
advantage of his position as Mrs. Hamilton’s stepson to visit the Fifth
Avenue home daily, a freedom he could not otherwise have ventured on.
Society soon began to couple his name with Eva’s, predicting that it
would certainly be a match, and a very suitable one.
As Eva stood in the window gazing out at the fast-falling snow and
listening to the merry jingle of sleigh bells, she was thinking,
somewhat ruefully, of this same Reginald Hamilton, saying to herself:
“Poor Reggie, I am afraid I cannot stave off a declaration from him
much longer, and I wish I knew how I could refuse him without giving
mortal offense to everybody. I can see that auntie has her heart quite
set on the match, and that papa silently approves, while as for Reggie
himself, it is plain to be seen, despite all the snubs he gets from
me, that he thinks he has only to ask and have! He is spoiled by the
adulation of all the girls, and I suppose he cannot conceive of any one
refusing him.”
A long, long sigh quivered over her lips. Her bosom heaved beneath the
rich lace fastened with violets, costly as jewels at that season. The
diamonds on her rosy fingers flashed as she clasped them together and
raised them almost appealingly to Heaven.
“Oh, if I could but forget that other!” she half sobbed; “if I could
but forget that other, I would be willing to do what they wish! After
all, Reggie is very nice, and very handsome, too, and he has been kind
to me always--kind and patient; for he must see I am putting him off
every way I can. Perhaps he believes me only coquetting and meaning to
take him at the last. How disappointed he will be when I refuse him! I
pity him, for I know all the pain of hopeless love!”
She walked up and down the length of the long drawing-room, her little
hands interlocked, her dark eyes full of burning tears.
“Oh, my lost love!” she moaned. “How cruel it is that I cannot forget
you! I ought to hate you for your deception, for the fraud by which you
won my heart! I told you I would never forgive you, too, but can one
love without forgiving? Ah, yes, yes, yes; for if he appeared before
me at this moment I should send him away from me. I should look at him
with cold, proud eyes in which he could read nothing but pride and
indifference; I should speak to him scornfully, as to one I hated; I
should tell him to leave my presence at once and forever!”
A bursting sob swelled her throat as she added:
“He would obey me and go, but as he went, the reproachful glance of
his dear dark-blue eyes would pierce my heart like a sword. When he
was gone I should sink on my knees and ask God to let me die because I
could not have him I loved so madly for my own; because the barrier of
senseless hate stood between us; because my cousin’s blood cried out
against our union!”
She went back and looked out of the window as if she could see him
going away from her fancied dismissal, with his heart as heavy as her
own, but she could not even see the great snowflakes falling, she was
so blinded by her hot tears.
She was bidden to a grand ball, but she forgot all about it, though
she had a costly gown and new jewels to wear. Her thoughts kept going
back to the dead past; to the days when she was a little country girl
at Stony Ledge with but two great pleasures in her life--her daily
rides on Firefly and the offerings of her unknown lover whom she had
enthroned as a king in her romantic heart, thirsting for love and
happiness.
The twins had taken possession of Firefly when Gran’ther Groves died,
and sold him, for how was she to prove that he was really her own? As
for the lover, he was lost to her, too. She could never marry him, when
she learned he was a Ludington, for it would shock gran’ther, even in
heaven, if she had done such an awful thing!
“I wish,” she sobbed, “I wish no one had ever found out the truth! I
wish I had married him as Doctor Rupert and never known any different.
We should have been so happy. Oh, I wonder what has become of him, and
where he is at this moment? Does he love me still, or has his heart
turned to another?”
The bitterness of death was in that thought--the bitterness of death,
and the anguish of jealous love that tore her heart almost in twain.
Mrs. Hamilton came in so abruptly that she could not hide her pale,
tear-stained face from her startled gaze.
“Oh, my dear girl, what has gone wrong?” she cried quickly.
“Everything--my whole life!” cried Eva rashly, desperately.
Mrs. Hamilton knew nothing of the tragedy of Eva’s life. Her brother
had kept it a dead secret.
She gazed in wonder at the desperate girl, who added passionately:
“Auntie, dear, help me! advise me! My heart is breaking for some one I
loved in the past, but whom fate forbids me ever to marry.”
Mrs. Hamilton thought quickly:
“Some country bumpkin that my brother has torn her from when he brought
her home with him,” and, aloud, she answered soothingly:
“The very best advice I can give you, my dear niece, is that you should
accept one of the devoted lovers always dangling after you now. In
a happy marriage you would soon forget the fancy of your immature
girlhood.”
“Do you really think so, auntie? I am so unhappy at times I would give
the whole world just to forget.”
“You will never forget as long as you brood over the dead past, dear.
Put it away from you and come out into the sunshine of a new love and
hope,” was the tender reply, and Eva, drying her eyes, answered sadly:
“I have tried to, but I could not do it, and my heart seems breaking.”