Eloise's Inheritance.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1659, 12 June 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

Eloise's Inheritance.

It was a bitter night in November, a promise of a cold, dreary Winter to come, when tvTO gentlemen, some thirty-eight or forty years old, sat over wine and cigars in a luxurious room, in an up-town boarding house, in New York city. One, the youngest of the couple, had landed a few hours before from a European sttamer, and had been telling traveller's tales to his companion, far into the night hours.

* Rich ?' he said, in answer to a question, ' No, but little richer than when I left here. But I have gained experience and knowledge in my Paris life. There is nothing like the French schools and hos^ pitals for a doctor. Bert, I vvould not take thousands of dollars and miss the last four

years. • But you are glad to come home, Cyrus ?' * Home !' said Cyrus Worthington, with a short bitter laugh, ' this is my home, a room in a boarding house, and I chose this because you were here, my old friend and chum.'

'But your relatives?'

1 1 do not know of one. Dr. Worthington took mo from a charity school when I was six years old, because I had a curious variation of scarlet fever he wished to study oit at leisure. I was an odd child, smart and active, and before the fever was* cured he became fond of me, and adopted me. We must have been a strange pair, Bert, the old bachelor wrapped up in his profession, and the elfish, half-starved foundling. But we were very happy. Until I went to Harvard, where we met, Bert, my benefactor educated me himself, and I devoured books. I had no one to love, and books filled the craving of my heart, so I studied everything before me, including the medical works in the library. You won't believe me, I suppose, if I tell you I could use a dissecting knife before I •was twelve years old.' 'I do not doubt, it. We all considered you a prodigy of learning at Harvard. By the way, how did you ever come to leave the doctor for college ?'

'He desired it, distrusting his own powers of tuition after I passed seventeen. When I came home, as you know, I became his partner and assistant until he died, leaving mo thirty thousand dollars, and I fulfilled my life-long desire and went to Paris.'

' Was that all that drove you to Paris ? "No love dream, no fair companion on the steamer ?'

'None. lam heart whole at thirtyeight. Can you say as much ?' 'Not 1,. My heart is as .full of holes from Cupid's darts as a skimmer. My last love though, is the sweetest maiden ever won a heart with soft eyes and golden curls. You shall see her. In all your travels you have seen no fairer face than Eloise Hunter's.'

Over Cyrus Worthington's face came a startled look that was almost terror.

* Eloise Hunter,' he cried ; then added, •with a forced carelessness, 'it is a pretty name. Who is she ?'

'The.-daughter of our landlady. Did I not mention her name when I wrote you I had secured rooms for you here ?'

'No.'

'Well, that is her name. She is the widow of one Daniel Hunter, who died leaving her without one dollar, having squandered her fortune as well as his own. Not a bad man, I judge, but one who was wickedly reckless in using money. Well lie-is.dead, and his widow keeps this > house ?'

'And this daughter—how old is she?' ? Nineteen or twenty, I should judge. She is so little and fair she looks like a child. You are tired, Cy,'

' Very tired.' 'You are pale as death. I will leave you to rest. Pleasant dreams,' Pale as death, and with his large, dark eyes full of startled light, Cyrus Worthington paced the floor, after his friend had retired.

•It is fate!' he muttered. 'Destiny. What accident could throw that girl across my path three hours after landing in New York. Eloise, only daughter, of "Daniel Hunter ! It makes me dizzy to think. If, after all, I am to grasp what I have coveted for years ! Patience, patience !' He paced the room for hours, till the gray dawn crept in at the window, when fie threw himself upon hi 3 bed for a few hours' repose. A man of iron will, of steady nerve, he had been assailed by the strongest, fiercest temptation of his life, and he wakened only to renew the mental conflict.

A late breakfast was presided over by a pale woman about forty, his landlady, but there was no sign yet of Eloise. Feverishly desirous to see her to form some estimate of her from his own observations, Cyrus Worthington lingered in the house all day. He was a man who once having resolved upon any course of action, could not be turned aside by trivial or.by weighty opposition, and he had resolved fco marry Eloise Hunter, never having seen her face or heard her voice. So with this purpose in his heart, he threw all other considerations to the wind, and waited to make the first move in this game of life, for two.

Educated, as he had said himself, by a man whose soul was wrapped up in his profession, the scholar had absorbed much of the teacher's enthusiasm. But, while Dr. Worthington looked steadily at the nobler aims of his profession, the power to alleviate suffering, to aid mankind. Cyrus loved it for its more abstruse investigations, its scientific scope, its broad field for self-aggrandizement. To make a name in the medical and scientific world, by some new work of value, to be known as the great Dr. Worthington's was the end of all iis study and research. But his ambition was second to his avarice. Not for money itself, but for free control of the luxuries money will procure, he longed for wealth; not merely comfort, that, his own income*secured, but riches, power to live in a palace with a score of servants, with luxury in every appointment, and money to spend freely in the pursuit of those scientific studies for which he had an earnest love, and from which he derived all his dreams of fame.

A man in perfect health, who had never injured an iron constitution by any excess, of hard, keen intellect and strong will, he was a dangerous wooer for fair Eloise Hunter, a lily in her fair, sweet beauty, with a delicate constitution, timid to a fault, and modest as a violet.

He was in the drawing-room in the

afternoon, reading a novel, half hidden by the folds, of a curtain, when he saw a lady coming across the soft carpet, who he felt sure must be Eloise Hunter, Small as a child of fourteen, exquisitely fair, with a wealth of golden curls caught from a low, bmad brow, a sweet, childlike mouth, and purely oval face, she was as lovely a vision of girlhood as ever man's eyes rested upon.

Yet Cyrus Worthington, studying the face, unseen himself, thought only :

' How weak, timid, easily influenced !'

Not one thought of the wrong he was to do her dawning womanhood troubled him. Whatever scruples of conscience had troubled his night's vigils were all crushed under the iron heel of his will, and there was no thought now of turning back from his purpose. While his eyes still rested upon her face, Eloise opened the piano, and from the little taper fingers flowed the music that comes only by divine gift, the outpouring of inspiration, It moved even Cyrus Worthington, no mean judge of the wondrous execution of the girl's fingers, or the power of her genius. From a heart full of sadness came wailing melodies, melting into dying cadences, full of tearful meaning, then slowly there gathered on the sweet lips an intense smile of wondrous radiance, and the minor passages were changed to tender rippling airs, happy as an infant's smiles, till some glorious chords of grand harmony completed this true maiden's dream.

It was evidently holiday work, for with a sigh Eloise took a book of alarm-looking exercises from the music rack, and began to practice in real earnest. Cyrus Worthington drew further back in the folds of the curtain, and resumed his novel. An hour flew by and then Mrs. Hunter came in.

' Five o'clock. Eloise. and pitch dark. Are you practising properly in the dark ?' ' I know these lessons by heart, mamma,' the girl answered in a low sweet voice, with a shade of weariness in the tone.

' Don't waste time darling,' the mother said anxiously, ' you know I cannot pay for many lessons, and next year you must try to find scholars.' • I wish you would let me help you more,' was the reply, ' It seems wicked for me to be studying and practising while yoti have so much care and work.' ' You will help me. soon. But I want you to be independent, Eloise. I may die, and you could not run this great house, but you could teach. Go up stairs now; the gentlemen will be coming in soon to dinner.'

' Did the new boarder come last night ?'

'Dr. Worthington. Yes, dear! Mr. Loring tells me he is a great physician, author of some medical books, and wonderfully skilful. He is well off, too!' ' O,mamma, if he could help that pain !' ' No dear, no, we will not trouble him with our aches and pains. There dear, run up stairs, I will send Maggie for you when I eat my dinner.'

Then the parlor was empty, for Cyrus sauntered off to" his own room, when Mrs. Hunter and her daughters were gone.

He was not many days an inmate of Mrs. Hunter's house before he discovered that it was not that lady's policy to parade her daughter to her boarders. The girl lived like a nun, in her own room nearly all day, practising at an hour when the gentlemen were away, and the few ladies lying down, or out. Yet with his resolye in full force, Cyrus Worthington contrived to see Eloise very frequently. He would bend his great dark eyes upon her face, and hold her fascinated for hours by the eloquence with which he spoke of music, of poetry, of all the girl-soul worshipped. He drew from her the story of the pain her mother suffered around her heart, and delicately offered professional service, where his skill availed to bring relief, thus malting one step by winning the gratitude of mother and child.

But while his own heart knew on more now than before the sweetness of love, he lead in Eloise's eyes none of the emotion he hoped to kindle there, Heart-whole himself, he had not been without conquests in his selfish life.

Women had owned the magnetic power in his great dark eyes, his rich voice, the winning eloquence of his tongue. Belles whose conquests were of well-known number, had let him read the love he wakened in their eyes, and flirts had owned themselves beaten at their own game. . Yet this shy violet, this little recluse, liking him well, gave him no part in her heart. One word from Bert Loring, one glance of his blue eyes would call up flying blushes to the fair cheeks, all Cyrus W"orthington's eloquence failed to bring there.

But Bert, though older than his friend, had been an unsuccessful man. A poet by the gift of God, he was almost a pauper by the non-appreciation of man. Just the tiniest patrimony kept him from actual want, bu* though he had a hallroom at Mrs. Hunter's, his boots were often shabby, his clothes well worn, and his purse lamentably slender. And Mra. Hunter seeing Dr. Worthington in her best room, prompt in payments, faultless in costume, with a certainty of thirty thousand dollars, and a possibility of greater wealth in the practice of his profession, encouraged his attentions to Eloise, frowning upon poor, loving Bert, who, spite of his jest about his well-riddled heart, gave the young girl true, loyal love.

It was the old, old story, and Eloise, torn by her filial affection and her girl love, was growing pale and wan as the Winter wore away. There was no coercion. Mrs. Hunter loved the only child of her heart too well for that; but loving her she could not give her to poverty and Bert Loring. And one day, when Bert pleaded his cause she told him :

• Dr. Worthington asked me this morning to give him Eloise. I like you, l?ert. You are dear to me as a son, but we must think of the child above all. You know how dreamy, sensitive, and helpless Eloise is. You know that hard work would be slow murder for her. She lives in her music, her books.

' And her love! She loves me,' interrupted poor Bert, a hoy yet in many tender phases of his nature.

'And you, loving her, would you see her toiling, slaving, starving, a poor man's wife P 1

' You put it hastily.' 'I put it truly. While I can keep this house up you^are*[welcome to a

Lome here, but any day I may die These heart spasms mean a sudden death some day, Bert. Then, where are you to take Eloise ?' ' I will work for her.' 'Work first then, and woo her afterwards. My poor Bert, you are too like her to marry her. Could I but give you wealth, you could live in a poet's paradise, you and Eloise, never growing old, two grown-up children. But we are all poor Do not tor.ure her 4 Bert; you who love her. Go away and let Dr. Worthington win her.' 1 She will never love him.' ' Not if you are here !' 'I will go then. You will" let me tell her ?' ' Why ?It will only make her life harder, if she thinks you suffer. I will 'never force her to marry. But —if Dr. Worthington can win her, I tell you frankly, it will make me very happy.' So Bert—honest, loyal Bert, for his very love's sake, turned his face from his love and went to another city, where he was offered a position as assistant editor upon a magazine, that was to be a fortune in the future, but in the present was rather a log on the necks of the proprietors. And Eloise, wondering at Bert's desertion, knew all the sunlight was gone from her life when he said farewell. There had been no secret in Bert's partiug with his friend. Frankly he had told him his hope, love and despair, and pathetically implored j him to cherish Eloise lovingly, if he could. 1 win her love. Even while he spoke, Cyrus Worthington knew that this love would never come to answer his wooing, know that one "^ord of his could flood two lives with happiness, yet kept silence. In the days that followed, when he wooed the fair, pale girl, tenderly, devotedly, no pang of remorse wrung his heart, though he knew he trod carefully upon all loving flowers of hope in hers. He was a man who could have seen his own mother writhe in agony, if by her torture he could have wrung one new fact for science, and in the scheme of his life, the heart pangs of a girl counted for less than nothing. And while he courted the unwilling love patiently and gently, Mrs,. Hunter, with her failing health, her pale race and weary step, pleaded eloquently in her very silence. A home .of rest for her mother was what Eloise had been promised in delicate words, that could not be resented as a bribery, 1 You,dear mother may live for years in a quiet house, but this constant care and toil are killing her !' So little by little wearing out the young heart's constancy by steady perseverance, Cyrus Worthington won Eloise for his wife. She told him she did not love him, but knowing nothing of Bert's spoken love to her mother, she kept her maiden secret folded close in her own heart, and whispered nothing of her love for Bert. If on her wedding-day her white drawn face was corpse-like in its forced composure, what cared Cyrus Worthinglon for that.? He had won his game. Only one week after his wedding-day, leaving Eloise with her mother, he wended his way to the office of a. leading lawyer and asked for an interview. 'You were lawyers for Gervase Hunter P' he asked. • We were.' ' You are aware that he died in Paris last September ?' ' We were not aware of that. Our business has not required correspondence since that time.' ' I was his physician, and to mo he committed the care of all his papers, his will amongst the number.' cH'm, making you his heir?' ' No, sir, making his nephew's only child heiress to his wealth, nearly a million, I understand.' 'Nearly double that sum. You will leave the papers ?' ' Assuredly, and Mrs Hunter's address. Miss Hunter became my wife one week ago, I leave you the address of my assistant in Paris, the lawyer who drew up the will, and the witnesses, that you may ascertain that all is correct.'

And unheeding the lawyer's keen, scrutinizing looka, Cyrus Worthing ton bowed himself out of the office.

' A bold game,' the lawyer muttered; 'he has played his cards well.'

And while he spoke there was a noise in the street, a rush of many feet, a clattering fall. • A scaffolding on the house next door has given way,' a clerk cried, with a white face.and there are men killed. Nine or ten they say.' Nine or ten bricklayers, masoas, carpenters, and one gentleman who had been passing by, and in whose face the lawyer recognized the features of his late visitor. Dead, with his scheme complete, Dead, with the road to his ambition, gold, strewn open before him, Dead, with his hand upon the wealth he had planned to win. Dead!

They carried him home to his young wife, and tenderly broke the truth to her. Even in the first shock, she felt her heart recoil when the lawyer told her of the the errand completed two minutes before her husband's death. She had not loved him, but had she never known his baseness, she could have mourned a kind friend lost. It was two years before Bert came to share her home, to be the husband of her heart, to fill the paradise her mother had painted. But in their happiness they, give Cyrus Worthington's name the charity of silence. Never is it spoken by the wife he deceived or the friend he wronged. • .