Originally published: 1900
Genres: Romance
Dime Novel Bibliography: https://dimenovels.org/Item/1112/Show
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70010
Chapters: 39
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
“I LOVE HIM WHOEVER HE IS!”
“Fly around there, little Eva, and pack the lunch basket while me an’ the other girls get ready for the hay ride an’ the party. Put in the half o’ thet caramel cake, an’ the thickest punkin pie, a big hunk o’ homemade cheese, a loaf of salt-risen bread, a glass o’ plum jelly, an’ some cucumber pickles. They got to find room in the hay wagon for that basket o’ pervisions, even if they do have to pack themselves like sardines, for I beant going to starve on a Hallowe’en party till after midnight!”
This was the rather long-winded pronunciamento of Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, spinster, as she flounced around and snatched a hot flatiron from the top of the big stove, then turned back to the board where she was ironing handkerchiefs and piles of white ruffled lingerie.
The scene was in the clean, roomy kitchen of a West Virginia farmhouse up in the oil regions, where fortunes were made and lost in a day in rash speculations almost as quickly as in Wall Street.
The roomy old farmhouse was going fast to ruin for lack of means to repair it, for the thirty-acre farm was rocky and sterile, and only afforded support to its owner by reason of being within the famous oil belt. He eked out a frugal subsistence by leasing part of the ground to the oil men, who were numerous in that section, reaping rich rewards from their speculations.
Some of the neighbors had got rich by oil, and Gran’ther Groves, as his neighbors called him, expected prosperity, too, if the lessees ever put down oil wells on his place, so that he could get some royalties on the yield. But they were “dretful slow,” he complained, adding that he was like to be dead and in his grave before luck struck the family.
Grandfather Groves, indeed, had been in hard luck many years, having four orphan grandchildren to rear and support in his old age.
His son and his son’s wife had died in Kansas in their youth, leaving one boy, Terry, and twin girls, Patty and Lydia. Sympathizing neighbors, not wishing them to come upon the town for support, had promptly raised a purse and sent the orphans, tagged, by express to their Grandfather Groves, in West Virginia.
Pretty Nell, his daughter, had eloped with a fine young Northerner, who was on a hunting trip in the neighborhood, and for three years little was known or heard of her, till she returned one stormy winter night, ill and faded and heartbroken, coming home to die, she said.
She had quarreled with her husband and left him forever. His family, the grand, rich Somervilles, had disliked her and were always coming between them, so she would never go back.
She had had one child, but it died at a year old and was buried in the Somerville vault at Greenwood.
Nell died when her second child was born, though she lived long enough to kiss the pictured face of her husband and say:
“You may write to him when I am dead. He can have little Eva if he wishes.”
But the father and mother, loath to part with all that was left of their bonny Nell, never wrote. They resented the coldness that had kept the husband from following his wife and suing for a reconciliation. They kept the child for their own.
“We will bring her up with Fred’s little orphans, and her cold, proud kin in New York need never be troubled with poor Nell’s child,” they said and devoted themselves to their grandchildren.
But when Terry was eighteen, the twins sixteen, and Eva barely fourteen, dear old grandma died of a fever. Then Miss Tabitha Ruttencutter, a distant cousin, rising forty, and “homely as sin,” came to reign over the farm, substituting an iron sway for the loving rule of the one who was gone.
As she soon announced frankly to the neighbors, she “never took to Eva Somerville.” All natures like Miss Ruttencutter’s must have a scapegoat. The youngest girl served the spinster in that capacity.
At the time of the opening of this story the twins were nineteen years old, handsome brunettes both of them, and Eva seventeen, a radiant young beauty of medium height, exquisite form, and combining her mother’s starry dark eyes with the golden locks of her Northern father, forming that fascinating type of loveliness, a dark-eyed blonde.
All four of the young women were invited to go on a Hallowe’en hay ride, but, as usual, Miss Tabby tabooed Eva’s going.
“She must stay at home with Gran’ther Groves. He might take one o’ them fits he’s subject to, and die if he was left alone,” she said bluntly.
Eva’s starry dark eyes suddenly brimmed over with rebellious tears, and she protested with tremulous red lips:
“I think you might stay with gran’ther yourself, tonight, Cousin Tab, and let me go and have some fun.”
“And who pays you for thinking about what I ought to do, Miss Smarty? Ain’t I one o’ the chappyrones, and in a manner ’bleeged to go?” was the tart rejoinder.
“There’s a-plenty chaperones without you, Cousin Tab. Indeed, I never could see why all the frisky widows and cranky old maids in the country must go poking along with every little frolic the young folks have as if one settled old woman wasn’t enough to keep them straight! I believe the hateful old things go just to have a good time themselves, thinking to cut the girls out and get a young husband!” ejaculated Eva angrily, in her disappointment, so that Gran’ther Groves, from his corner seat, where he was patting the big dog’s head between his knees, looked around and chuckled:
“Good for you, Eva, my honey; you hit the nail square on the head! I’m thinking, too, that the boys and girls could be trusted together without so many old women to keep ’em from sparking; eh, Pat and Lydia?”
The twins, deprecating the spinster’s wrath, wisely made him no reply, but little Eva flew to his side and, clasping her soft arms about his neck, cried, with her rosy cheek pressed against his dear, white head:
“Dear old gran’ther, please make her let me go on the hay ride if I can persuade Dan to stay with you.”
“Sartain, sartain, child,” the old man answered soothingly.
Dan was the chore boy, a stout, stupid fellow, fond in his way of little Eva, but he had his own plans to go out with the boys on Hallowe’en larks tonight, so he resisted all the little beauty’s blandishments, and would neither be coaxed nor bribed to stay.
Then Gran’ther Groves, pained at his darling’s disappointment, valiantly announced he would stay alone.
Pooh! what was he afraid of, he who had shouldered a musket four long years in the Civil War and marched with Sherman through Georgia?
But, alas, that wound he had got in the last battle had impaired his health for life. He was never able to till the soil anymore, and he had never been left alone again since the day he had fallen with his face in the creek in a dreadful fit and been saved by a passing fisherman, who dragged him out just in the nick of time.
The old doctor had said the fit resulted from his wound, and that he must never be suffered to go about alone, lest he should come to grief.
For a while, Terry had been his companion, but he had gone away to the university, at Morgantown, to study law, so the duty fell by common consent on Eva.
At his cheerful little speech, she hushed her sobs and exclaimed tenderly:
“Say no more about it, for I will never leave you alone, gran’ther, dear.”
“Then quit your fooling and pack the lunch basket for us,” interpolated Patty, who was sewing a new red ribbon into the neck of her waist.
“Yes, do,” added Lydia lazily, from her rocking chair and novel.
“I won’t, so there!” declared Eva pettishly. “You may wait on yourselves, Pat and Lyd, since you like so well to leave me at home like a poor little ashcat, and go off and have all the fun yourselves. I won’t even help Dan to milk Spots and Dapple! I’m going to sit down and rest and read my love letter over again!” throwing herself into a chair and drawing a large, square, white envelope from her apron pocket and unfolding a closely written sheet, which she began to read with demure interest.
“A letter? Where on airth would that child get a letter?” demanded the spinster, while the twins faced about with equal wonder.
A letter! Why, little Eva had never received a letter in her life, they were sure.
Yet there she sat, demurely rustling the large, satiny white sheets of paper, while its delicate scent of violets exhaled into the room above the kitchen odors of pumpkin pie, caramel cake, and the homely white loaf of salt-risen bread dear to the West Virginian’s heart—the bread his mother made.
“Humph, it smells mighty sweet! Is it from your beau? You don’t mean to say Terry has written you?” demanded Patty sharply.
Eva’s starry eyes flashed angrily at the question, and she answered, with subtle scorn:
“Terry? Why, if Terry had written me this letter I’d take hold of it with the tongs and lay it on the fire.”
The luckless Terry had aroused her ire on a recent visit by too-free lovemaking and had gotten in return a tingling cheek from a rough contact with a little white hand.
“Don’t you ever dare kiss me again against my will, you brute!” she stormed, rubbing her offended lips till they burned in her rage to be rid of the hated caress.
Bitterly had the twins resented their brother’s repulse, cruelly had they punished her, working through Cousin Tabby, for her daring.
They darted angry looks at her now, and Patty taunted sharply:
“You ought to be grateful to Terry for life. He’s the only fool I ever saw that wanted to be your lover.”
“I should have had dozens before now if you three jealous old maids had not kept me from the chance of knowing any young men,” retorted Eva maliciously, adding, with keen triumph: “But I have a splendid lover, in spite of all your arts.”
“Bah, you are fibbing, Miss Vanity,” cried Lydia mockingly, but at the same moment she made a rush behind Eva’s chair and pinioned her arms to her side, shouting gayly to her sister:
“Snatch the letter, and see who wrote it.”
There was a sharp little scuffle, and Patty came off the victor, seizing the letter and springing upon the kitchen table.
Lydia cheered her on:
“Read it aloud, while I hold her down, and we’ll soon know all about that boasted lover!”
Little Eva was like wax in the grasp of her stronger cousin. She wriggled and twisted, but escape was impossible, so, at length, she drooped her head with a dejected sob, while Gran’ther Groves looked on benignly, thinking it was all just a girlish frolic between the girls. His honest mind never suspected their secret malignity toward his pet.
“Why, it’s poetry! What weak rot! It makes me feel sick!” ejaculated Patty.
“I want to know! But read it, anyway. I’ll listen if it makes us all sick,” put in the spinster curiously, so Patty cleared her throat and read with an air of fine disdain:
“WHEN EVA LAUGHS.
“When Eva laughs the dimples play
At hide-and-seek upon her cheek,
Like butterflies ’mong roses gay,
While twinkling, starry eyes bespeak
A mirthful mind, a nature kind,
A heart all true and warm and pure,
And music floating down the wind
No sweeter than her laughter’s lure!
“When Eva laughs I seem to hear
Glad echoes of the joyous spring;
The lilting birds, the humming bees,
The skylark on its soaring wing;
The murmur of the rippling stream,
The minor chords of ocean’s tone;
The lover’s sigh, the maiden’s prayer,
The rustling leaves, the wind’s low moan!
“When Eva laughs it drives away
Life’s shadows as the golden dawn
Dispels upon its rosy way
The darkness of the night time born.
As though the azure slipped aside
From heaven and let a sweet song through,
Her happy laugh can thrill the heart
Till fainting hope springs up anew!”
Gran’ther Groves slapped his knee a resounding blow and chuckled with delight.
“I swan, it’s true as the Gospel—every word on’t! Now, what smart young man writ that pretty verse, honey?”
“Who writ it, indeed?” echoed Miss Ruttencutter, with open scorn and secret envy.
But Eva could only blush up to the edge of her curly hair and falter:
“I—I—don’t know!”
They could not believe her; they plied her with curious questions until, in self-defense, to get rid of their importunities, she confessed all she knew.
“I found the verses on my window sill one morning in September—and afterward others just as pretty. And sometimes flowers, and now and then boxes of candy—real chocolates!”
“Chocolates—oh!” breathed Lydia, with upturned eyes of ecstasy.
“And you have devoured all the heavenly things by yourself, greedy little pig!” groaned Patty, jumping down from the table in disgust.
“Oh, no; I’ll give you all some if you like,” cried Eva, running upstairs, followed by gran’ther’s entreaty:
“Bring some more of that spark’s pretty rhymes!”
All blushing and smiling, she returned with a large box of candy and passed the plump, brown dainties all around.
“Ain’t it nice, gran’ther?” she cried.
“Best chocolate drops I ever ate,” he agreed, adding: “Did you bring some more poetry?”
“Just one little piece. I didn’t want to make Patty sick again,” laughed Eva archly, and she handed it to Lydia, whose curiosity led her to follow Patty’s example, and read this aloud:
“LOVE’S MESSENGERS.
“My heart is on each wind that blows
Toward you, dearest, in the spring—
I send a message by the rose,
My love, by every bird that goes
Your casement near to lift and sing.
“My heart is in the sun that shines
Upon the ripples of your hair,
The moonlight’s kisses bring you mine,
Dream kisses upon lips divine,
Love’s messengers are everywhere!”
“Just as pretty as t’other piece; but I wonder who on airth writ it to you, Eva?” exclaimed gran’ther in admiring wonder at his pet’s mysterious lover.
“I don’t know, gran’ther, but I feel sure I could find out if Cousin Tab would let me go out like other girls, and meet the young gentlemen of the neighborhood. It must be one of them, surely, and I do not believe he could keep his secret if we were face to face. His eyes must surely betray the love in his heart, and then I should know him for my heart’s choice, for I love him, whoever he is, and I am not ashamed to own it. I will never marry anyone but my poet-lover!” declared Eva, with a willful toss of her bright curly head.
“You are a silly little love-sick goose!” commented the spinster, with frank disapprobation.
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