Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1898 — EVE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EVE

By-S.BARING-GOULD.

CHAPTER I. In a hollow of down, half a mile from oak woods and crags, with an ancient yew and Spanish chestnut before it, stood, and stands still, Morwell House, the hunting lodge of the abbots of Tavistock, built where a moor-well gushed from amidst the golden gorse brakes, and after a short course ran down the steep side of the hill, and danced into the Tamar. Seventy or eighty years ago this house was in a better and worse condition than at present; worse, in that it was sorely dilapidated; better, in that it had not suffered tasteless modern handling to convert it into a farm with laborers’ cottages. Even forty years ago the old banqueting hall and the abbot’s parlor were intact. Now all his been restored out of recognition. In the interior of this old hall, on the twenty-fourth of June, just eighty years ago, sat the tenant; a tall, gaunt man with dark hair. He was engaged cleaning his gun, and the atmosphere was foul with the odor exhaled by the piece that had been recently discharged, and was now being purified. Once—suddenly—he placed the muzzle of his gun against his right side under the rib, and with his foot touched the lock. A quiver ran over his face, and his dim eyes were raised to the ceiling. Then there came from near his feet a feeble sound of a babe giving token with its lips that it was dreaming of food. The man sighed, and looked down at a cradle that was before him. Presently, recovering himself from his abstraction, he laid the gun across the cradle, from right to left, and it rested there as a bar sinister on a shield, black and ominous. His head sank in his thin shaking hands, and he bowed over the cradle. His tears or sweat, or tears and sweat combined, dropped as a salt rain upon the sleeping child. All at once the door opened and a man stood in the yellow light, like a medieval saint against a golden ground and called in a hard, sharp tone, “Eve! where is Eve?” The man at the cradle started up, showing at the time how tall he was. He stood up as one bewildered, with his hands outspread, and looked blankly at the newcomer. “Are you Ignatius Jordan?” “I am.” “And I am Ezekiel Babb. I am come for my daughter.” Ignatius Jordan staggered back against the wall, and leaned against it with arms extended and with open palms. The window through which the sun streamed was ancient; it consisted of two lights with a transom, and the sun sent the shadow of mullion and transom as a black cross against the further wall. Ignatius stood unconsciously spreading his arms against this shadow like a ghastly Christ ’on his cross. The stranger noticed the likeness, and said in his harsh tones, “Ignatius Jordan, thou hast crucified thyself.” Then again, as he took a seat unasked, “Eve! where is Eve?” The gentleman addressed answered with an effort, “She is no longer here. She is gone.” “What!” exclaimed Babb; “no longer here? She was here last week. Where is she now?” “She is gone,” said Jordan, in a low tone.

“Gone!—her child is here. When will she return?” “Return!”—with a sigh—“never.” “Cursed be the blood that flows in her veins!” shouted the newcomer. “Restless, effervescing, fevered, fantastic! It is none of it mine, it is all her mother’s.” He sprang to his feet and paced the room furiously, with knitted brows and clenched fists. Jordan followed him with his eye. The man was some way past the middle of life, strongly and compactly built. His profile was strongly accentuated, hawklike, greedy, cruel. “I see it all,” ho said, partly to himself; “that cursed foreign blood would not suffer her to find rest even here, where there is prosperity. Bah! all her lust is after tinsel and tawdry.” He raised his arm and clenched fish. “A life accursed of heaven! Of old our forefathers, under the righteous Cromwell, rose up and swept all profanity out of the land, the jesters, and the carol singers, and theatrical performers, and pipers and tumblers. But they returned again to torment the elect. What saith the Scripture? Make no marriage with the heathen, else shall ye be unclean, ye and your child«“»-” He reseatea himself. “Ignatius Jordan,” he said, “I was mad and wicked When I took her mother to wife; and a mad and wicked thing you did when you took the daughter. As I saw you just now—as I see you at present—standing with spread arms against the black shadow cross from the window, I thought it was a figure of what you chose for your lot when you took my Eve. I crucified myself when I married her mother, and now the iron enters your side.” Again he paused. The arms of Jordan fell.

“So she has left you,” muttered the stranger, “she has gone back to the world, to ifs pomps and vanities, its lusts, its lies, its laughter. Gone back to the players and dancers.” Jordan nodded; he could not speak. “Dead to every call of duty,” Babb continued with a scowl on his brow, “dead to everything but the cravings of a cankered heart; dead to the love of lawful gain; alive to music, to glitter. I will light my pipe.” Ezekiel Babb struck a light with flint and steel. “We have made a like experience, I with the mother, you with the daughter. Why are you downcast? Rejoice if she has set you free. The mother never did that for me.” The child in the cradle began to stir. Jordan rocked it with his foot. “I will tell you all,” the visitor continued. “I was a young man when I first saw Eve —not your Eve, but her mother. It was the great fair day. There were performers in the open space before the market. I had seen nothing like it before. What was performed I do not recall. I saw only her. I thought her richly, beautifully dressed. Her beauty shone forth above all. She had hair like chestnut, and brown eyes, a clear, thin skin, and was formed delicately as no girl of this country and stock. A carpet was liyd in the market place, and she danced on it to music. It was like a flame flickering, not a girl dancing. She looked at me out of her large eyes, and I loved her. It was witchcraft, the work of the devil. The fire went out of her eyes and burnt to my marrow; it ran in my veins. That was witchcraft. How else was it that I gave no thought to Tamsine Bovey, of Buncombe, till it was too late, though Buncombe joins my land, and so Buncombe was lost to me forever? Quiet that child if you want to hear more. Hah! Your Eve has deserted you and her babe, but mine had not the good heart to leave me.” The child in the cradle whimpered. The pale man lifted it out, got milk and fed it, with trembling hand, but tenderly, and it dozed off in his arms. “A girl?” asked Babb. Jordan nodded. “Another Eve —a third Eve?” Jordan nodded again. “Another generation of furious, fiery blood to work confusion, to breed desolation. When will the; earth open her mouth and swallow it up, that it defile no more the habitations of Israel?’ Jordan drew the child to his heart, and pressed it bo passionately that it woke and «rML

“I cannot deny that she was a good wife,” continued Babb/ “But what availed it me to have a woman in the house who could dance like a feather, and could not make scald cream? Then she bore me a daughter, and the witchery was not off me, so I called her Eve—that is yonr Eve, and after that* she gave me sons, and' then”—angrily—“then, when too late, she died. Why did she not die half a year before Tamsine Bovey married Joseph Warmington? If she had, I might have got Buncombe—now it is gone, gone forever.” He knocked the ashes out of bis pipe, and put it into his pocket. “Eve was her mother’s darling; she was brought op like a heathen to love play and pleasure, not to work and duty. When the mother died, Eve—your Eve—was a grown girl, and I suppose home became unendurable to her. One day some play actors passed through the place on their way from Exeter, and gave a performance in our village. I found that my daughter, against my command, went to see it. When she came home, I took her into the room where is my great Bible, and I beat her. Then she ran away.” “Did you not go in pursuit?” “Why should I? She would have run away again. Time passed, and the other day I chanced to come across a large party of strollers.- I learned from the manager about my child, and so, for the first time, heard where she was. Now tell me how she came here.” Ignatius Jordan raised himself in his chair, and swept back the hair that had fallen over his bowed face and hands. “It is passed and over,” he said. “Let me hear all. I must know all,” said Babb.

CHAPTER 11. “Last Christmas twelvemonth,” said Ignatius Jordan slowly, “I was on the moor—Morwell Down, it is called. Night was falling. I heard cries for help. I found a party of players who were od their way to Launceston, and were caught by the storm and darkness. They had a sick girl with them ” His voice broke down. “Eve?” asked Ezekiel Babb. “Yes. I invited them to come here. The house is large enough to hold a score of people. Next day I set them on their way forward. But the girl was too ill to proceed. After a week the actors sent here to learn how she was. Then a month later, they sent again, but though she was better I would not let her go. After that we heard no more of the players. So she remained at Morwell.” He clasped his hands on his knees, and went on with bent head: “But the playactors returned and were in Tavistock last week, and one of them came up here to see her, not openly, but in secret. This place is solitary and sadugnd Eve of a lively nature. She tired of being here. She wearied of me.” Babb laughed bitterly. “And now she is flown away with a play-actor. As she deserted her father, she deserts her husband and child, and the house that housed her. See you,” he put out his hand and grasped the cradle: tHere lies vanity of vanities, the pomps of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, nestled in that crib, that self-same strain of leaping, headlong, wayward blood, that never will rest till poured out of the veins and rolled down into the ocean, and lost—lostlost!” Babb stooped over the cradle and plucked out the child. He held it in the sunlight streaming through the window, and looked hard t 1 it. Then he danced it up and down wi/h a scoffing laugh. “See, see!” he cried; “see how the creature rejoices and throws forth its arms. Look at the shadow on the wall, as of a Salamander swaying in a flood of hro. Ignatius Jordan seized the babe, snatched it away from the rude grasp of Babb, clasped it passionately to his breast, and covered it with kisses. Thea ae gently replaced it, crowing and smil'.ng, in its cradle, and rocked it with his foot. “You fool!” said Babb; “you love the strange blood in spite of its fickleness. Now that the mother is gone, who will be the mother to it?” “I—l—lF’ the cry of an eager voice. Babb looked round, and saw a little girl of six, with gray eyes and dark hair, a quaint, promature woman, in an old, long, stiff frocks Her little arms were extended: “Baby sister!” she called sac ran xuiwaru, and; kneeling by the cradle, began to caress and play with the infant. “What Is this?” asked Ezekiel. “My Barbara,” answered Ignatius in a low tone; “I was married before, and my wife died, leaving me this little one.” At a sign from the father Barbara rose, and carried the child out of the room, talking to it fondly, and a joyous chirp from the little one was the last sound that reached Babb’s ears as the door shut behind thorn. “Naught but evil has the foreign blood, the tossing fever-blood, brought me. First it came without a dower, and that was like original sin. Then it prevented me from marrying Tamsine Bovey and getting Buncombe. That was like sin of malice. Naw Tamsine is dead and her husband, Joseph Warmington, wants to sell. I tell you,” he went on fiercely, “that so long as all that land remains another’s and not mine, so long shall I feel only gall, and no pity nor love, for Eve, and all who lave issued from her--for all who inherit tier name and blood. I curse ——” his voice rose to a roar, and his gra" hair bristled like the fell of a wolf, curse them all with ” The pale man, Jordan, rushed at him and thrust hip hand over his mouth. “Curse not,” he said vehemently; then in a subdued tone: “Listen to reason, and you will feel pity and love for my little one who inherits the name and blood of your Eve. I have laid by money. It shall be the portion of my little Eve, and I will lend it to you for seventeen years. This day, the 24th of June, seventeen years hence, yi>u shall repay me the whole sum without interest. lam not a Jew to lend on usury. I shall want the money then for my Kve, as her dower. In the meantime take and use the money, and when you walk over the fields you have purchased with it—bless the name.”

A flush came in the sallow face of Ezekiel Babb. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. “You will lend me the money, two thousand pounds?” “I will lend you fifteen hundred.” “I will swear to repay the sum in seventeen years. You shall have a mortgage.” “On this day.” “This 24th day of June, so help me, heaven!” A ray of orange light, smiling through the window, was falling high up the wall. The hands of the men met in the beam, and the reflection was cast on their faces —on the dark, hard face of Ezekiel, on the white, quivering face of Ignatius. “And you bless,” said the latter, “you bless the name of Eve, and the blood that follows it.” “I bless. Peace be to the restless blood.” | (To be continued.)... a ,

Don’t comb your hair over the bald spot on your head and then kick because your grocer puts the big potatoes on top of the measure.