The Cromptons Part 29

"I shall not go," Eloise rejoined, "until I see my mother. I tell you she is my mother. Has she never spoken of me?"

"Never," the Colonel answered. "She has talked of a baby who died, and you are not dead."

"No, but I am Baby,--her pet name for me always. Why she should think me dead, I don't know. Send for her, and see if she does not know me."

She had come close to the trembling old man, and put one of her hands on his cold, clammy one. He didn't shake it off, but looked at her with an expression in his eyes which roused her sympathy.

"I don't mean any harm," she said. "I only want my mother. Send for her, please."

There was a motion of a.s.sent toward Peter, who left the room, encountering Mrs. Biggs outside the door. There was too much going on for her not to have a hand in it, and she stood listening and waiting till Amy came down the hall, her white cashmere wrapper trailing softly behind her, and her hair coiled under a pretty invalid cap. She had been roused from a sound sleep, which had cleared her brain somewhat, and when told the Colonel wished to see her, she rose at once and started to go to him, fearing he was worse. He heard her coming, and braced himself up. Eloise heard her, and, with her head thrown back and her hands clasped together, stood waiting for her. For a moment Amy did not see her, so absorbed was she in the expression of the Colonel, who was watching her intently. When at last she did see her, she started suddenly, while a strange light leaped into her eyes. Then a wild, glad cry of "Baby! Baby!" rang through the room, and was answered by one of "Mother! Mother!" as the two women sprang to each other's arms.

Amy was the first to recover herself. Turning Eloise around and examining her minutely, she said, "I thought you dead. He told me so, and everything has been a blank to me since."

"You see she is my mother!" Eloise said to the Colonel; "and if she is your daughter, you must be my grandfather!"

If the Colonel had been carved in stone he could not have sat more motionless than he did, giving no sign that he heard.

"No matter! I shall find it all out for myself," Eloise continued, as she turned again to her mother, who was examining the red cloak as if she wondered how it came there.

The mention of "finding it out" affected the Colonel more than anything else had done. Amy had said the same thing to him once. She had not found it out, but this slip of a girl would, he was sure, and with something like a groan he sank back in his chair with a call for Peter.

"Take them away," he said huskily. "I can't bear any more, and,--and,--the girl must stay, if Amy wants her, and bring me a hot-water bag,--two of them,--I was never so cold in my life."

Peter nodded that he understood, and, ringing the bell for Amy's maid, bade her take her mistress to her room, and the young lady, too. "She is Mrs. Amy's daughter," he added.

There was no need to tell this, for Mrs. Biggs had done her duty, and every servant in the house had heard the news and was anxious to see the stranger. Amy was always at her best in her own room, where Sarah left her alone with Eloise, and hastened away to gossip with Mrs. Biggs and Peter. The shock, instead of making Amy worse, had for the time being cleared her brain to some extent, so that she was able to talk quite rationally to Eloise, whose first question was why she had thought her dead. "I was so homesick for you, and cried so much after you went away that he was angry and hard with me,--very hard,--and I said at last if he didn't send for you I'd never sing again, and meant it, too," Amy replied. "It was at Los Angeles on a concert night. I must have been pretty bad, and he seemed half afraid of me, and finally told me you were dead, and had been for three weeks, and that he had meant to keep it from me till the season was over. I believed him, and something snapped in my head and let in a pain and noise which have never left it; but they will now I have found you. I went before the footlights once that night, and the stage was full of coffins in which you lay, and I saw the little grave in the New England cemetery where he said you were buried. At last I fainted, and have never sung again. They were very kind to me at Dr. Haynes's, where he came often to see me till I heard he was dead. I was not sorry; he had been so,--so--I can't explain."

"I know," Eloise said, remembering her father's manner toward this weak, timid woman, who went on: "Then Col. Crompton came and brought me home.

I used to live here years ago and called him father, till he said he was not my father. I never told you of him, or that this was once my home, although I described the place to you as something I had seen. If he were not my father I did not want to know who was, and did not want to talk about it, and after I married Mr. Smith it was very dreadful. He hated the Colonel when he found he could not get money from him, and sometimes taunted me with my birth, saying I was a Harris and a Cracker; but the cruelest of all was telling me you were dead. Why did he do it?"

"I think your fretting for me irritated him, and he feared you might never sing again unless he sent for me, and he did not want me," Eloise said. "He never wanted me. He was a bad man, and I could not feel sorry when he died."

"You needn't," Amy exclaimed excitedly, and, getting up she began to walk the floor as she continued, "It is time things were cleared up. I am not afraid of him now, although I was when he was living. He broke all the spirit I had, till the sound of his voice when he was angry made me shake. Thank G.o.d he was not your father! there has been a lie all the time, and that wore upon me. Your father,--Adolph Candida,--is lying in the Protestant burying-ground in Rome."

Grasping her mother's arm Eloise cried, "Oh, mother, what is this you are saying, and why have I never heard it before?"

Amy had been tolerably clear in her conversation up to this point, but she was getting tired, and it was a long, rambling story she told, with many digressions and much irrelevant matter, but Eloise managed to follow her and get a fairly correct version of the truth. Candida, whom Amy loved devotedly, and with whom she had been very happy, had died after a brief illness when Eloise was an infant. Homer Smith, the handsome American, who had attached himself to the Candidas, was very kind to the young widow, whom he induced to marry him, and to let her little girl take his name.

"I don't know why I did that," Amy said; "only he always made me do what he pleased, and he pretended to love you so much, and he didn't want his friends to know he was my second husband when he came to America. I couldn't understand that, but I yielded, as I did in everything. He seemed to hate the name of Candida, and was jealous of him in his grave, and would never let me speak of him. I think he was crazy, and he said I was, and shut me up. He once wrote to Col. Crompton for money and got a dreadful letter, telling him to go to that place where I am afraid he has gone, and saying I was welcome to come home any time, if I would leave the singing master. There was a bad word before the 'singing,' which I can't speak. I meant to go home some time and take you with me. I hated the stage, and the pain got in my head, and I forgot so many things after he said you were dead, but never forgot you, although I didn't talk about you much. I couldn't, for a bunch came in my throat and choked me, and my head seemed to open and shut on the top when I thought of you. Col. Crompton has been very kind to me since I came. I think now he is my father. I asked him once, and he said, No. I believed him then, and accepted in my mind some Mr. Harris, for I knew my mother was a true woman. We will find it all out, you and I."

"Yes," Eloise replied, "and the pain will go away, and you will tell me more of my own father. I know now why I never could feel a daughter's love for the other one. Does grandmother know? She was always kind to me, and I love her."

Amy shook her head, and said, "I think not, but am not sure. It will be clearer by and by. I must sleep now."

When she was tired she always slept, and, adjusting the cus.h.i.+ons on the sofa, Eloise made her lie down, and spread over her the little red cloak which had been the means of bringing them together.

"Yes, that's right. Cover me with the dear old cloak Jakey gave me,"

Amy said sleepily. "You'll help me find him."

Eloise didn't know who Jakey was, or what connection he had with the cloak; but she answered promptly, "Yes, I'll help you find him and everything."

Thus rea.s.sured, Amy fell asleep, while Eloise sat by her until startled by the entrance of Mrs. Biggs. That worthy woman had been busy telling the servants everything she knew about Eloise since she came to Crompton, and that she had always mistrusted she was somebody out of the common. Then, as Eloise did not appear, and the carriage from Miller's was still waiting at a dollar and a half an hour, it occurred to her that if Eloise should not prove to be somebody out of the common she would have to pay the bill, as she had ordered the turn-out. Going to Amy's room, she walked in unannounced, and asked, "Be you goin' home with me, or goin' to stay?"

"I don't know what I am to do," Eloise said, starting to her feet.

Amy decided for her. Mrs. Biggs had roused her, and, hearing what was wanted, she protested so vehemently against Eloise's leaving her even for an hour, that Mrs. Biggs departed without her, thinking to herself as she rode in state behind the fleet horses, "It beats the Dutch what luck some folks have. I've lost my boarder, and Ruby Ann has got the school, just as I knew she would, and mebby I'll have to pay for the rig. I wonder how long I've had it."

CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

This was on Sat.u.r.day, and by Monday the whole town of Crompton, from District No. 5 to the village on the seash.o.r.e, was buzzing with the news told eagerly from one to another. The young girl who had sprained her ankle while coming to take charge of the school in District No. 5 had, it was told, turned out to be the daughter of Mrs. Amy, and was at the Crompton House with her mother, who had thought her dead. This some believed and some did not, until a.s.sured by Mrs. Biggs, who, having done her was.h.i.+ng on Sat.u.r.day, was free on Monday to call upon her neighbors and repeat the story over and over, ending always with, "I mistrusted from the first that she was somebody."

The second piece of news was scarcely less exciting, but sad. After his interview with Eloise, the Colonel had complained of nausea and faintness, and had gone early to bed. Before going, however, he had asked if Eliza Ann were still in the house. An idea once lodged in his brain was apt to stay, and Eliza Ann had taken too strong a hold upon his senses to be easily removed.

"Bring her here," he said.

She came at once and asked what she could do for him.

"Sit down," he said. "You seem to be lame."

He had evidently forgotten about the accident, and Eloise did not remind him of it, but sat down while he catechised her with regard to what she had told him of herself. Some of his comments on Homer Smith were not very complimentary, and this emboldened Eloise to tell him who her real father was.

"Thank G.o.d!" he said emphatically. "I'm glad you are not that rascal's, and because you are not you can stay with Amy and fare as she fares. But why did she think you dead?"

Eloise told him all she thought necessary to tell him, while his face grew purple with anger, and his clenched fists beat the air as if attacking an imaginary Homer Smith.

"It's a comfort to know, if there is a G.o.d--and I know there is--he is getting his deserts," he said. Then, as his mood changed, he continued, "And you are the little normal I didn't want, and you board with Mrs.

Biggs?"

"Yes," Eloise replied. "I am the normal you did not want, and I board with Mrs. Biggs, where I heard a great deal of Mrs. Amy, as they call her. I must have a slow, stupid mind, or I should have suspected who she was. I never heard the name Harris connected with her. If I had I should have known. It is so clear to me now."

The Colonel looked at her a moment, and then said, "If you are Amy's daughter you are a Harris, and they are queer, with slow minds,--and now go. I am infernally tired, and cannot keep up much longer."

He moved his hand toward her, and Eloise took it and pressed it to her lips.

"D-don't," the Colonel said, but held fast to the soft, warm hand clasping his. "If one's life could roll back," he added, more to himself than to Eloise, as his head dropped wearily upon his breast, and he whispered, "I am sorry for a great deal. G.o.d knows I am sorry. Call Peter."

The old servant came and got him to bed, and sat by him most of the night. Toward morning, finding that he was sleeping quietly, he, too, lay down and slept until the early sun was s.h.i.+ning into the room. Waking with a start, he hurried to his master's side, to find him with wide-open eyes full of terror as he tried to ask what had happened to him. All power to move except his head was gone, and when he tried to talk his lips gave only inarticulate sounds which no one could understand.

"Paralysis," the doctor said when summoned. "I have expected it a long time," he continued, and would give no hope to Amy and Eloise, who hastened to the sick-room.

The moment they came in the Colonel's eyes brightened, and when Amy stooped and kissed him he tried to kiss her back. Then he fixed his eyes on Eloise with a questioning glance, which made her say to him, "Do you know me?"

He struggled hard for a moment, and then replied, "Yesh, 'Lisha Ann!