Read Ebook: Ellen Levis: A Novel by Singmaster Elsie

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Ebook has 2646 lines and 100018 words, and 53 pages

"Welcome to Melbourne Hall, Mr. Ord--I had begun to say that you had deserted us."

Gavin stammered some vain tale of lost train and business calls; but he did not tear his eyes away from the Lady Evelyn's face.

"Great God," he said to himself at last, "that was the face I saw in the river!"

BOOK I

THE ESCAPADE

A TELEGRAM TO BUKHAREST

Upon a night of May, some twelve months before Gavin Ord had gone down into Derbyshire at the Earl of Melbourne's invitation, Count Odin, a Roumanian celebrity of evil reputation in his own country and none in others, quitted the Savoy Hotel by the Strand entrance and had just called a hansom when a well-dressed girl, whom he was surprised to see afoot, stumbled by accident against him, and nervously, yet very prettily, offered him her apologies.

Gifted with a prodigious amount of quite unmeaning gallantry, the Count bowed low and said in passable English that no harm had been done and that it should be his part to apologize.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "it is all the fault of your narrow pavements. Here is a cab. Since we are no longer strangers permit me to drive you to your destination. The night is too hot for you to walk."

The girl drew back instantly as though covered with confusion, and without vouchsafing a single word of reply to the civil invitation, went on westward as fast as the busy street would permit her to walk. Her only desire appeared to be to escape recognition by those who passed her by. She might have been any age between twenty and twenty-five years; her hair was coal black, and her eyes were of the deepest blue. So much the Count had not failed to observe; but his curiosity was not by any means at an end. Dismissing the cab with a haste so pronounced that a fortune might have hung upon his quest, he set off down the Strand after the unknown; and was soon so near to her that his outstretched hand could have touched her as she walked.

Who was she? Whither was she going; whence she had come. The meeting had been so unlooked for, it appeared to be such a very story of marvels that the man would not, dare not even now, believe in his good fortune. For three years, often by day and night, he had been dreaming of an hour when he would find the daughter of the man who had consigned a father to a living grave and compelled the son to a vagrant life. And here, in a London street, he met her face to face--not by his own desire or cleverness, but by one of those accidents which are the true tragedies of life. Never for a single moment did he doubt that she was the woman he sought. He had come to England, guarding as a precious possession a miniature painting which had been found among his father's effects. The face which he had so often looked upon in that little picture was most certainly the face he had seen for one brief instant in the Strand this night. Eyes, expression, the shape of the characteristic mouth, the tiny ears, the coal-black hair, how familiar they seemed to him. "She is Forrester's daughter," he said, and walked the faster for the thought.

It was an easy task, for the girl had no idea that anyone followed her. Crossing the street by St. Martin's Church, she passed the National Gallery at the same swift walk; and neither looking to the right nor to the left, she made straight for Pall Mall and the Carlton Hotel there. At the first hazard, Count Odin believed that this was her destination, a fact which puzzled him not a little; but she passed the hotel without a glance at its doors and going on up the Haymarket, turned suddenly into one of the little courts there and was instantly lost to his view. In his turn, he recognized the place at a glance, and as though both relieved and enlightened stood a moment upon the pavement to debate the situation.

"So," he said to himself, "my lady is an actress--or would it be a chorus girl? Well, we shall soon find that out."

He strolled up the narrow alley, and coming to a broad double door of wood, saw written above it in big red letters, "STAGE DOOR," and, on a bell below, the words "Carlton Theatre." The comparative quiet of the scene, the few people about, and the darkness of the passage beyond the door told him that a rehearsal was in progress and not an actual performance. When he read the bill of the play, affixed to a dirty board, he learned that on the following Wednesday evening, at eight-thirty precisely, Mr. Charles Izard would present Etta Romney in the new play "Haddon Hall," by Constant Hayter. Not much of a play-goer, though a recognized frequenter of those houses devoted to musical comedy, the Count asked himself if he had ever heard the name of Etta Romney before. He could not remember to have done so--but, while he stood there, the stage door-keeper came out to smoke a pipe in the alley, and to him the Count addressed himself with that disregard of diplomatic approach which is a habit of the dubious adventurer.

"The young lady who just went in--I think she is a friend of mine."

"Ah," said the stage door-keeper, without taking his pipe from his lips.

"If you could tell me her name, I would send in my card."

"No doubt you would," said the stage door-keeper.

Nonplussed, the Count stroked his mustache a little viciously and began to fumble in his trousers' pocket.

"No good," said the stage door-keeper, anticipating the offer, and then bridling up as he recognized the kind of man he had to do with, he exclaimed peremptorily:

"Come, it's time you went home to dinner, ain't it; you look hungry enough."

"I was going to give you five shillings," said the Count.

"You keep 'em for your poor old mother in the workhouse," said the stage door-keeper, and he went within and slammed the doors--a hint that even Count Odin could not mistake.

Far from being disturbed at this honest rebuff, the Count, with an adventurer's ready resource, strolled round to the front of the theatre and consulted the play-bills there on the off-chance that one of them would enlighten him. The box-office was closed at this hour, but framed photographs of the company engaged for the new play, "Haddon Hall," decorated the pillars of the vestibule; while a large picture, full-length and conspicuously displayed, "presented" the heroine, Miss Etta Romney, to such of the curious as should care to take their stand before it. Hardly had the Count glanced at the photograph when he recognized the original of it to be the young girl whom he had just left at the stage-door.

"Forrester's daughter, beyond a doubt," said he.

He waited for no more but called a cab and drove to the telegraph office in Waterloo Place. Thence he sent a long telegram to Bukharest. It was vague in its terms and would have been understood by none but the person who read it.

"Tracked down," it said; "am remaining here."

ETTA ROMNEY IS PRESENTED

The new play, "Haddon Hall," had been announced for half-past eight precisely on the evening of Wednesday, the twentieth day of May. It still wanted a few minutes to the hour of eight when that famous American impressario, Mr. Charles Izard, permitted a waiter in the Carlton Hotel to serve him with a coffee and liqueur; while he confided to his invaluable confederate and stage-manager, Mr. Walter Lacombe, the assuring intelligence that he had no doubt either about the play or the company.

"They're ho-mo-gen-e-us," he said, lighting a cigar with comfortable deliberation; "the first act's bully and any play with that Third Act I produce. We must get something written for her to follow in. My side will take "Haddon Hall" and it will take Etta Romney. If it doesn't, I close up."

Mr. Lacombe, the stage-manager, had his own doubts, but he was far too diplomatic to express them.

"When you close up, I sell bananas," said he; "that will be in the Ides of March."

Mr. Charles Izard, who had not enjoyed the distinction of three years' idleness at Cambridge , produced those strange concatenations of sounds which served him for laughter before uttering a pious wish.

"Oh, of course," said Lacombe frankly, "they'll baste it, sure enough. No historical play is likely to please Watley. He'll say that hot blankets are the proper treatment."

"I'd like to wrap him up in 'em and smother him," interjected Mr. Charles Izard, still piously.

"Etta Romney, why yes! I'd like to see the man who wouldn't take her. It's a woman that makes from him tears came into her brown eyes.

The meeting seemed interminable. It was not always possible for the little flock to gather together on the Seventh Day, and once assembled they communed long together. This evening after the solemn ceremony of Foot-washing, the Lord's Supper would be celebrated, as was proper, as an evening feast.

The attendance was comparatively large, all that remained of the Ephrata flock having gathered, as well as a few members from Franklin and Bedford Counties; and Grandfather Milhausen, feeling the occasion to be important, was delivering himself of the fruits of a lifetime of meditation. He proved the necessity of baptism; he proved that baptism by sprinkling had no warrant in Scripture; he dwelt in conclusion with passionate outpouring of words upon the efficacy and comfort of trine immersion.

His voice, now loud, now soft, kept throughout a monotone. His hearers grew drowsy, slept, woke again, changed their positions, and slept once more. The little black lamb came again and again into the field of Ellen's vision, fifty accurately counted automobile horns sounded from a curve near by, and each member of the congregation was in turn gazed at and meditated upon.

"I like Sister K?nig because she is so very fat and when she is not in meeting she smiles pleasantly.... I pity Brother Reith because they had to take his wife to the asylum, but I do not like him.... I pity Sister Herman because she had to be baptized in the cold creek last winter. I should choose the summer. I should"--there was a slight admonitory motion of the shoulder against which she leaned. But she was disturbed only for a second; then she settled her plump body still more closely against her brother's arm. He was tired, she was sure, and she was very, very tired. Grandfather's eyes, lifted a moment ago toward the ceiling, were bent now upon his congregation. He must see that they were tired, that they longed to go, but he took no heed of their misery.

Once more Ellen returned to her musing. She journeyed through the strange old building, passing from the meeting-room into a kitchen where, long ago, meals were prepared for visiting brethren, and climbing up into large empty lofts which had been their dormitories.

Then she sped in imagination out the door of the meeting-room and across the angle between the Saal and Saron. In Saron had lived a conventual sisterhood, young women who had left their fathers' houses, and older women who had left their own homes and their husbands and children, to pray, to spin and weave, to letter the old charts, and to sing morning, noon and midnight, strange, attenuated music from a latticed gallery.

The old building was an enchanting place--if only one were sometimes allowed there alone, so that one might dream without the guiding admonitions of Grandfather, to whom these women were all saints. Here were old spinning-wheels and a curious tower clock which struck the hours, and pieces of pottery and old books and still other elaborate charts. Climbing a narrow, winding stairway, one came to tiny cells where the sisters had slept on narrow benches fastened to the wall, with blocks of wood for pillows. Ellen pictured them lying stiffly; sometimes she imagined them falling with a crash from their narrow couches; sometimes she fancied herself pursued by them, and taking refuge with Matthew or her father. They wore, she seemed to remember, thick white dresses, tied about with ropes. The poor things lay now, dead and done for, in the little cemetery between the meeting-house and the road.

After a long time she resumed her meditations upon the subject of immersion.

"I would not like to be baptized when the water was high, either. I would do like Millie K?nig"--her eyes turned toward one of the youngest of the sisters, a girl about Matthew's age, with a meaningless, saintlike beauty. "I would take a nice day like Millie." She looked again at the downcast eyes and the crossed hands. "I hate Millie," said she calmly. Then her weariness became acute. It was dreadful to have to sit here while the world went on, dreadful, dreadful. She began to pity herself and saw her whole life wasted.

Suddenly she was acutely disturbed. It was not alone the admonitory motion of Matthew's shoulder; it was the preacher's eyes, bent directly upon Matthew and upon her. She sat upright. Something was going to happen after all--she anticipated that it was something more trying than the monotony.

"There are those in our midst who should be of us," said Grandfather, with jealous passion. "The children of a good mother who was a Seventh-Day Baptist should follow in her footsteps, should go down into the cleansing flood and there wash themselves clean of sin, should make a fresh start in the world, should put upon themselves the badge of separation. They have heard the call many times; they must be no longer disobedient to the heavenly vision. Brother Matthew, Sister Ellen, is it well that you should postpone what is right for you to do, that you should longer reject the peace of God?"

Ellen's head turned sharply, her eyes seeking her brother's. A shaft of sunshine fell upon his thick, light hair and across his smooth cheek. For a long time he did not answer and an awful fear began to take shape in her heart. Was he not going to answer, to get somehow between her and the dreadful eyes, the deathlike beard of Grandfather? Still he sat motionless.

Grandfather lifted his arms in supplication.

"Father in Heaven, Thou that takest care of the least of Thy children, Thou who rejoicest over each lamb brought into the fold, help us in this hour!"

Ellen leaned forward and grasped the edge of the seat with both hands. Was not Matthew angry, would he not be angry, would he not take her and himself away from this glittering, searching eye? She thought with sick longing of her father, so comfortable at home, or riding to see a patient. No one would dare, she was certain, to talk to him about his soul, or to suggest that he should take off his clothes and put on a long black robe and kneel in Cocalico Creek and let Grandfather dip him back and forth! Neither would Matthew submit to such indignity. Outraged and insulted, she tried to find his hand to assure him of her sympathy.

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