The Shadow Between Them

OR,

A BLIGHTED NAME

BY MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

AUTHOR OF

“Her Life’s Burden,” “The Strength of Love,” “Married in Error,” etc.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

[Pg 4]

Copyright, 1900 By NORMAN L. MUNRO The Shadow Between Them

[Pg 5](Printed in the United States of America)

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’ home-made 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[Pg 6] for lack of means to repair it, for the thirty-acre farm was rocky and sterile, and only afforded a 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.

[Pg 7]

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.

[Pg 8]

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, to-night, 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[Pg 9] 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 to-night, 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 any more, and he had never been left[Pg 10] 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 was 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.

[Pg 11]

“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 had 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.

[Pg 12]

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 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[Pg 13] 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.”

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?”

[Pg 14]

“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[Pg 15] to Lydia, whose curiosity led her to follow Patty’s example, and read this aloud:

“LOVE’S MESSENGERS.”

“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 any one 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.

[Pg 16]

CHAPTER II.

THE VENDETTA.

Had an angel from heaven pointed out the way to Eva’s heart, her mysterious lover could not have known more surely how to win the little beauty’s love.

She was intensely romantic, like the most of pretty young girls. She loved poetry and flowers, and she loved love for its own dear sake. Incidentally she doted on bonbons, and her unknown lover had catered to all these passions, adding to them the delicious flavor of a romantic mystery.

What a lover must he be who risked his life climbing to a two-story window at midnight to leave tokens of his love on her casement!

Vainly she had tried to entrap him, watching night after night for his coming behind her little white curtain.

Some instinct seemed to tell him when she was awake, so that he never ventured near until her tired eyes closed and she nodded wearily in her chair. Then her bold lover would leave his token on her window sill, beneath the embowering honeysuckles, and escape undetected by the beautiful object of his passion.

It was all so beautiful and romantic, it gave new zest and pleasure to her dull, prosaic life, and all her[Pg 17] thoughts went out to him in gratitude and love. Those were the happiest days she had ever spent, dreaming of her splendid unknown lover—her lover whom she fancied must be as handsome and as noble as a demigod.

But now she reflected with regret and pain that everything would be at an end, for if he came again he must surely be detected by that stupid Dan, who had overheard outside the door her confession of her mysterious love affair, and on entering the kitchen had stolidly announced that he would watch for “that impertinent feller, an’ yank him down by the legs if he ever caught him climbing up to Miss Eva’s window again. It would break down all the vines, and was enough to skeer the pore gal to death, anyway, and he would put a stop to him with a gun if anybody told he might do it.”

“No, no, Dan; I forbid you to watch for him at all! I—I don’t want it stopped; I like for him to come. I love him!” the young girl cried breathlessly, but her cousins laughed, and urged Dan on, saying they would give him a quarter if he would find out the identity of Eva’s unknown lover.

Urged on by a secret jealousy, for he doted himself on lovely Eva, Dan declared that he would never rest until he found out the truth.

Chagrined to the point of tears, Eva flung out of the room, determining to go for a little canter on Firefly before the early autumn twilight set in darkness. There was nothing like a swift gallop in the[Pg 18] cold, clear, bracing air to set the blood a-tingling and drive out the blues.

Firefly was her very own, a spirited colt that gran’ther had raised and given her when she was fourteen, because Grandma Groves had said before she died she wanted Eva to have it. It was the only property she possessed in the world, and the twins grumbled because she had that, but held their peace from reproaching gran’ther with partiality, because Miss Tabitha assured them they needn’t envy the red-headed little spitfire the possession of that wild colt, that would certainly throw her some day and break her proud neck.

The spinster persisted in calling Eva’s golden locks red, through sheer spite and envy of the loveliness she would never acknowledge.

“Not half as pretty as the twins, with their black hair, black eyes an’ red cheeks! I never could abide red-headed gals with black eyes. They have the devil’s own temper!” she said.

But Eva had been riding Firefly several years, and was not killed yet, nor likely to be; for Firefly, though wild and spirited, knew and loved his mistress too well; and as she cantered up the long country road alone, with her golden, curly hair flying loose beneath her jaunty Tam o’ Shanter cap, the pair made a vision of strength and force and beauty to turn an old man young.

Over the distant mountaintops and the autumn-tinted woods the purple haze of twilight was lingering,[Pg 19] and it was so still and peaceful, with only the woodland sights and sounds about that an unconscious calm breathed over her ruffled spirits from the tender benisons of nature.

After she had met and passed young Doctor Ludington within a mile of her home, she saw no one else until she drew rein at the farmhouse gate returning home.

As for the doctor, she had cantered past without salutation, her golden head crested scornfully, and a heightened color on her dimpled cheek. He was the handsomest young man in the neighborhood, but “they never spoke as they passed by.”

The cause of their aversion dated back more than thirty years ago, to the Civil War, since when there had existed a vendetta between the families of Groves and Ludington, handed down from the principals to their descendants.

Briefly stated, Gran’ther Groves had been a Union man, and carried a gun beneath the Stars and Stripes for his country. Old Doctor Ludington, a Confederate, had resented his neighbor’s political views, and denounced him as a traitor to the South. Wordy encounters at length resulted in blows, and an estrangement that only widened with the flight of years.

The Ludingtons had the best of it, too, for all the country round about were on their side and the Groves family were almost ostracized for their unpopular sentiments in favor of the Union.

[Pg 20]

When old Doctor Ludington was imprisoned as a spy several months during the war, all the family, root and branch, denounced Gran’ther Groves as the man who had caused his arrest. Innocent or guilty, his broad shoulders had borne the opprobrious charge ever since.

One of the worst features of the case, too, was that their farms adjoined each other, and now, in their old age and dotage, they squabbled over the merest trifles, such as transgressions of stock, boundary lines, and even over the possession of some crab apples, the tree growing on Ludington’s side, the fruit falling on Groves’ land.