Signing the Contract and What it Cost

CHAPTER III

ONE FOR LIFE

A noble, handsome fellow was Rolfe Heywood, and though the suffering stranger guest was neither forgotten nor neglected, “joy crowned the board” at Sweetbrier upon his return, and the weeks that followed were full of quiet happiness to himself, parents, and sister.

He was succeeding well in the new State of his adoption, and hoped to persuade these dear ones to join him there at some not very distant day.

He took a benevolent interest in the sick woman, and rejoiced with the others when the physician pronounced the crisis of the disease past and the patient in a fair way to recover.

“She’s come to her full senses now, and there ain’t no doing anything with her,” announced the nurse a few days later, looking in at the open door of the room where the family were at breakfast. “Not a morsel of food will she take, not a drop of medicine will she swallow. She just lays there with her eyes shut, and every once in a while I see a big tear a-rollin’ down them thin, white cheeks o’ hern.”

She withdrew with the last words, and while finishing their meal the family held a consultation on the case.

On leaving the table, Mrs. Heywood repaired to the sick-chamber.

The face resting on the snowy pillows was not only wan and emaciated, but wore an expression of deepest melancholy. The eyes were closed, but not in sleep, as Mrs. Heywood at first thought. Stepping softly to the bedside, she stood silently gazing upon her, thinking how sad it was that one so young and fair should be already weary of life.

“My baby, my baby!” came from the pale lips in low, heart-broken accents, and tears trembled on the long silken lashes that lay like dark shadows on the white cheeks.

“My poor, poor child,” said the old lady, bending down to press a gentle kiss upon her brow, “do not despair. Try to get well, and who knows but we shall be able to find your treasure and restore her to you.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said the nurse, putting a spoon to her patient’s lips. “Swallow this that the doctor left for you, there’s a dear, and then take a little of this beef-tea, and I’ll warrant you’ll feel a heap better.”

“No, no, take it away. Let me die in peace,” she sighed, averting her face, and with her wasted hand feebly putting the spoon aside.

“I want to die – I’ve nothing to live for now.” And great tears rolled down the pale sad face. “Ah, me! I gave her to them, and they will never, never give her up! Oh, my darling! my baby! my little Ethel!” she cried, bursting into hysterical weeping.

Endearments, persuasions, caresses, reasoning, exhortation on the duty of doing everything in our power to preserve the life God has given – all were tried by turns, but in vain. She lay there in silent despair, seeming neither to hear nor heed.

Though nearly as much interested in the suffering stranger as were his parents and sister, Rolfe had not ventured into the sick-room, and so had never yet seen her face; nor had he ever heard her voice or learned her name, of which last, indeed, they were all ignorant.

Something was taking him to his own apartments that evening on leaving the tea-table, when he met Mrs. Scott, the nurse, coming down the stairs.

“Do you leave your patient alone?” he asked.

“Never for long. I’m going down to my supper, and I’ll speak to Miss Ada to come up and take my place for a bit.”

She had left the door of the sick-room ajar. A moan caught Rolfe’s ear in passing, then the words, “Oh, my baby, my baby!” He started violently, a strange pallor suddenly overspreading his face. He stood still, intently listening. The words were repeated; and hastily pushing the door open, he stepped to the bedside.

“Ethel, Ethel! Can it be? Oh, Ethel, my light, my life!”

“Rolfe!” she cried, starting up in the bed, with both hands extended, the large, lustrous eyes full of joy and amazement.

He took her in his arms, seating himself on the side of the bed; her head dropped upon his shoulder, and folding her to his heart, “Yes, it is Rolfe,” he said. “Oh, Ethel, have I found you again? Are you mine at last?”

“Yes, yes,” she faintly whispered. “But they told me you were married to another; then – ”

“Never, never, my darling! I have loved you always – you alone. Oh, why did you write so coldly, rejecting my offered heart and hand, and telling me that another had won you?”

There was no answer. The strength excitement had supplied for the moment was gone, and she lay apparently lifeless in his arms.

With a sharp cry of agony he laid her back upon her pillow, and began chafing the cold hands and pressing passionate kisses on the pale lips.

Hearing his cry as she neared the door of the sick-room, Ada hurried in, full of wonder and alarm.

“Rolfe!” she exclaimed in astonishment.

“Ada, make haste! Throw up the window to give her air! Hand me that bottle of ammonia – quick, quick! she’s dying! she’s dead! Oh, Ethel, my life, my love! have I found you only to lose you again?” he groaned, redoubling his efforts to restore her to consciousness, while Ada, divided between amazement at his presence there and excessive agitation, and her fear that life was really extinct, hastily obeyed his orders.

“Thank God, she yet lives!” he said in tones tremulous with emotion, as at length the eyelids began to quiver and a long, sighing breath came from the white lips.

“Rolfe,” they whispered very low and feebly.

“Yes, yes, I am here, my poor little Ethel,” he answered, kneeling by her couch and fondly caressing her hair and cheek. “You will live for me, and nothing in life shall ever part us again.”

A beautiful smile crept over her face as she opened her eyes for a single instant; then closing them again, she fell asleep with her hand in his.

Ada stood on the farther side of the bed, looking and listening in increasing surprise and wonder.

Mrs. Heywood and the nurse stole in on tiptoe and beheld the scene in no less astonishment and perplexity, but Rolfe motioned them all away, and kept guard over the slumbers of the invalid as one who had a superior and undoubted right.

She slept quietly, awoke refreshed, and refused neither food nor medicine at his hands.

But he would not let her talk.

“Wait, my Ethel, till you are stronger,” he said, “and then we will tell each other all. In the mean time we may rest content in the knowledge that we are restored to each other, and no earthly power can part us.”

Lips and eyes smiled brightly, and a faint color stole into her cheek, but faded again as she moaned sadly, “My baby, my baby!” the tears stealing down her face.

“We will find her; she shall be restored to you. Nothing is impossible to a determined will,” he said with energy.

She believed him, and once more resigned herself to peaceful slumber.

It was now near midnight, yet a bright light burned in the sitting-room. Mr. and Mrs. Heywood and their daughter, too much excited to think of retiring, sat there waiting for they scarce knew what. Reluctantly leaving Ethel to the care of the nurse, Rolfe joined them.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to their inquiring looks, “we knew and loved each other years ago in Jefferson, where I first set up business. She was an orphan, and the sweetest creature I ever saw, but very much under the influence of an older sister – a proud, selfish, scheming, domineering woman. She, I have always thought it was, who came between my love and me. I meant to speak before I left, and tried to do so, but she contrived to foil every attempt. Then I wrote, and the answer was, I have little doubt, dictated or forged by her.”

“She rejected you?”

Mrs. Heywood’s tone was both inquiring and indignant.

“Yes, mother; but don’t condemn her unheard,” he said, with a smile of filial affection. “That in so doing she did not follow the dictates of her own heart I now know beyond a question.”

“I don’t want to be uncharitable, or to wound you, Rolfe,” returned his mother, flushing slightly, “but that any woman should reject the man she loves and marry another seems to me both weak and wicked.”

“Wait, my dear, till you have heard her story,” said the old gentleman. “We don’t know how she may have been deceived and betrayed.”

A few days later Rolfe came to his mother with an explanation which even in her eyes exculpated Ethel.

“Ah, well, poor thing! she’s had a hard time of it,” said the old lady, wiping away a tear. “And I hope, Rolfe, if she falls into your hands you’ll try to make it up to her.”

“I shall indeed,” he said, with a peculiar and very happy smile. “Come, mother, come to her room with me. The minister is there, my father and Ada too, and Ethel and I are now to be made one for life.”

“Rolfe!” she cried in astonishment.

“Yes, mother; I cannot let her feel herself alone in the wide world any longer, and I must have the right to nurse her back to health. You will not withhold your consent, mother dear?”

“No,” she said, with a half-bewildered look as she accepted the support of his offered arm, “not if it is to make you and that poor young thing happy; but it is very sudden.”

CHAPTER IV

A STRANGE REVELATION

For a few days the little Ethel was quite inconsolable, crying sadly for “Mamma;” but the new parents were very tender, patient, and affectionate, and the old love gradually faded from the baby memory, till at length it was utterly forgotten in the new. So also was the name her true mother had given her, Mrs. Kemper changing it to Florence, which she liked better.

Anxious that the child should believe herself their own by birth, the Kempers considered it fortunate that it was while journeying to a new home in the West, among strangers, in the little town of Cranley, that they obtained possession of her.

They breathed no hint of the little one’s history, and none of their new acquaintances had the least suspicion of the truth, as indeed how should they when to both parents “our little Floy” was evidently as the apple of the eye?

So loved and cared for, and blessed with a sweet, generous, affectionate disposition, hers was a bright, sunny childhood. She was spared even the loneliness of many an only child, finding companion, playmate, and friend in the little son of the nearest neighbor.

The grounds of the Aldens and Kempers adjoined, and immediately upon the arrival of the latter, friendly relations were established between the two families. Mrs. Alden called upon her new neighbors, taking with her her five-year-old Espy, a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed boy, who straightway fell in love with the lustrous, laughing brown orbs and dark curls of baby Floy.

She sat on a cushion by the side of her new mamma, daintily habited in white, a gold chain about her neck, knots of blue ribbon at her shoulders, and a wide sash of the same at her waist. The plump little arms hugged close to her bosom a doll half as large as herself, while the sweet baby voice sang cheerily, “Bye, baby, bye!”

“What’s your name?” asked Espy, regarding her with admiring eyes.

“Florence,” answered Mrs. Kemper quickly, “but we call her Floy for short.”

“That’s a pretty name, and you’re a pretty baby,” he said, giving her a kiss. “Nex’ time I come I’ll bring my kitten. She’s a nice cat, and I love her; but I’ll just give her to you, if you want her.”

“I was never more surprised,” remarked Mrs. Alden in an aside to Mrs. Kemper. “He prizes that kitten above all his other possessions.”

And thus it ever was from that first moment. Nothing could be, in Espy’s esteem, too good, beautiful, or precious to be given to Floy – “his little wife,” as he began to call her before she was three years old, challenging a special proprietorship in her with which no other boy was allowed to interfere.

A day seldom passed in which he did not present some offering at her shrine, though it were no more than a sweet-scented clover-blossom or a brightly-tinted autumn leaf.

They shared each other’s joys and sorrows: all her little griefs were confided to him; to her he recounted all his boyish dreams of future achievement when he should arrive at man’s estate.

He was a born artist, and found in Floy his chief inspiration; for while his parents and older brothers and sisters laughed at and discouraged him, she believed thoroughly in him, and was sure he would some day be a Rubens, a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or something even greater than any of them or all put together; and her graceful little figure and winsome face furnished him with a model that he was never weary of copying.

Mr. Alden, hoping that this son would embrace one of the learned professions, determined to give him a liberal education; and the first great grief either Floy or Espy had known was the parting when the latter went away to school. Yet there was compensation in a steady correspondence, kept up with the knowledge and approval of their parents, and in the joy of the reunion when vacation brought Espy home again.

Cranley could boast of a good school for girls, and Floy did not go from home for her education. At seventeen she was a very pretty, engaging girl, and as Mr. Kemper had prospered, and was known to be in easy circumstances, she had plenty of admirers; but she remained true to Espy, though theirs was as yet only a tacit engagement.

Floy graduated from school in June of that year, and Mr. Kemper took her and his wife on a summer trip to the East. They spent several weeks at the sea-shore, visited Philadelphia and New York and other places of interest, then turned homeward.

All had gone well with them, and now within a few miles of Cranley they were speaking of this gladly, thankfully.

“Oh, yes, we’ve had a delightful time,” said Floy, “and yet I am eager to be in our own dear home again. There is no place like home when it is as happy a one as ours.”

Mr. Kemper smiled indulgently upon her.

“Quite right, my little girl,” he said, “and our Floy makes half its brightness to us. Is not that so, mamma?” addressing his wife.

“It is indeed,” she answered, half sighing as the thought suggested itself that, some day, another would have a stronger claim than they upon this darling of her heart.

The whistle blew, the train slackened its speed, then came to a stand-still at a little country station.

“Peaches! apples! pears!”

A boy had come in with a basket of fruit on his arm.

Mr. Kemper bought liberally of him; then selecting a gold half-eagle from the contents of his purse, he dropped it into Floy’s hand, saying, “There’s a trifle for you. I wonder how long it will be before you spend it.”

“A good while, papa, if you keep me in greenbacks enough to supply my wants,” she returned gayly, as she deposited it in a dainty portemonnaie. “Thanks for the gift; I’ll be sure to think of you when I look at it.”

“Better put it in bank along with the rest; there’s five hundred dollars there now to your credit.”

“Then I can afford to keep this to look at.”

The smile died on her lips almost before the words left them.

“Something’s wrong with the engine,” a voice was saying behind her. “Nobody knows how long we’ll have to stop here, and we’re not up to time by half an hour. Hark! what’s that? Another train coming! we shall be run into!”

Faces paled with sudden fear; men and women started to their feet in wild affright. There was a shrill whistle, answered by another, a rush and roar, then a crash, many voices blending in an awful cry, and Floy knew no more till, waking as from a deep sleep, she felt herself gently lifted, while a strange voice said:

“She’s only stunned; not much hurt, I hope. But this other woman is horribly mangled, and the man – well, his pains are over for this life at least.”

Instantly restored to perfect consciousness, Floy opened her eyes with a cry, “Mother! father! oh, where are they? Let me go to them!”

The men set her down on a fragment of the wreck, and turned to help those in greater need.

The girl passed her hand over her eyes as if to clear her vision. Oh, was it not all a horrible dream? The heaped-up ruins, the bleeding, mangled forms of the dead and dying, the shrieks, the groans, the cries for help, the running to and fro of those who were trying to give it, the frenzied search for missing loved ones, the wail of anguish over the wounded and the slain!

What was that they were bearing past her? Could that be her mother’s voice asking in quivering, agonized tones for husband and child?

She sprang up and ran after the rude litter on which the crushed and bleeding form was borne along toward a farm-house a few rods distant. She caught sight of the face, white with the pallor of death and convulsed with pain. A gleam of joy shot over it as the eyes fell on the face and figure of Floy. “My darling! safe, thank God!” came from the pale, quivering lips.

“Mother, mother!” cried the girl.

“Be comforted, darling; I can bear it; ’twill not be for long,” gasped the sufferer.

They carried her into the house and laid her on a bed. Floy knelt by her side, grasping the dear hand in hers, laying it to her cheek, pressing it to her lips, passionately weeping with a grief that seemed to rend her heart asunder.

“Floy, dearest, it is all right. God’s will be done. He knows best. He will comfort you.”

The quick ear of the girl scarcely caught the low-breathed words, and with the last Mrs. Kemper fainted.

At the same moment a gentleman came hastily in and stepped to the bedside.

Instinctively Floy comprehended his errand, even ere he laid his finger on the pulse or raised the shawl that half concealed the shattered form.

She rose, outwardly calm and collected.

“Can my mother live?” she asked.

“For some hours,” he said, looking pityingly into the grief-stricken face of his questioner.

“Where is she hurt?”

“Poor child! how shall I tell you? Her lower limbs are completely crushed, and even amputation would not save her life.”

Floy caught at the bedstead for support, a low cry of heart-breaking anguish bursting from her lips. “Oh, mother, mother! And my father!” she gasped, “oh, where is he?”

“The gentleman who occupied the same seat with this lady? Ah, my dear child, he is done with pain.”

The girl sank upon her knees again, hiding her face in her hands and trembling in every fibre. So sudden, so terrible were these successive blows that the very earth seemed slipping from beneath her feet.

“Dear Lord, her heart is overwhelmed; lead her to the Rock that is higher than she.”

The words were spoken by an old woman in homely attire who was assisting the physician in his efforts to restore Mrs. Kemper to consciousness. The tones were very tender and pitiful, and the aged hand rested lightly for an instant upon the bowed head.